Screams in the Dark (2 page)

From where Rosie was standing, it was hard to see what this lot were fighting over, but she’d decided to come up to the Balornock housing scheme in the north of Glasgow and see for herself. The protest had been staged by the angry residents of the council flats who’d become incensed at what they claimed was special treatment for asylum seekers. Charity begins at home, said one of the banners. Go home foreigners, exclaimed another. She sighed. Welcome to Glasgow – the city with the big, bleeding heart.

‘You fae the papers?’ A lantern-jawed man sucked on a roll-up cigarette as he approached her.

Rosie looked at him and paused before she answered. On a scale of the most unwelcome guests in a place like this, number one was the cops, two was the DSS snoops, three was anyone from the papers.

‘Yeah,’ she took a chance. ‘The
Post
. Came up to see what all the protest is about. Can I ask you exactly what’s happening?’ Not that she didn’t know.

‘What’s happening?’ His voice went up an octave with indignation, and Rosie got a whiff of just-drunk booze. ‘What’s happenin’ is these fuckin’ foreigners are gettin’ everythin’ handed to them on a plate and we get fuck all.’

‘Really?’ Rosie tried to look sympathetic. ‘Like what?’

‘Hoovers,’ he said. ‘And kettles. Washin’ machines. Stuff like that. They come skiving in here from some foreign place and get a council house, fitted carpets, new kitchens. But if you’re born and bred in Glasgow you just get in the queue behind them. We’re like second-class citizens. It’s pure shite, by the way.’

Rosie nodded. ‘I see what you mean.’

But she didn’t really. Sure, it might not have been clever to accommodate the sudden influx of asylum seekers in Balornock, one of the most socially deprived housing schemes in the city. But Rosie could bet if you did a straw poll of every Balornock council tenant who wasn’t a refugee, you’d find that two in three of them had Irish grandparents. If they were to take their heads out of their backsides for a moment, they might consider that their own ancestors were themselves half-starved, impoverished refugees from Ireland who came over here on the boat with nothing but the clothes they stood in. And right now, the very people waving placards were second or third generation from those refugees who fled violence and bigotry in their own country. But if you were ten floors up and skint on a Friday, with your man on the dole and four hungry kids, you jealously guarded what little you had.

The sound of glass crashing and people screaming made them both turn towards the crowd.

‘See what I mean? This could end up in a riot. Fuck them.’ The man took off at speed towards the youths throwing bottles.

A police van drew up and a bunch of uniformed officers jumped out and headed towards the mob. Rosie followed close behind. Another police van arrived with reinforcements and they headed to the front of the crowd to form a human chain. Rosie weaved her way through the mob to see what had triggered the trouble.

In front of the Red Road flats, she could see two minibuses full of people, refugees by the look of fear on their faces as bottles rained down on them, bouncing off the windows. Children screamed from inside the bus.

‘Get to fuck back to wherever you came from,’ a skinny woman spat from the crowd.

‘You don’t belong here,’ another screamed.

Half a dozen police officers went across to one of the minibuses and began to let the people out one by one, escorting them inside the building, while the rest of the cops stood holding back the crowd.

Rosie watched as the terrified refugees stepped out, some of them in tears, all of them with the haunted, deathly pallor she’d witnessed in conflicts all over the world. Her mind flashed back to Kosovo, still fresh and raw enough to make her stomach turn over. She’d only come back two months ago after six weeks on the frontline, and the images of the traumatised Kosovo Albanian refugees, beaten and bloodied by the Serbs, continued to haunt her sleepless nights. That was partly why she’d suggested to McGuire, her editor, she should come up to Balornock to see just what was going on with this discord over asylum seekers building up a head of steam. Already,
there had been several random attacks on refugees in the scheme, apparently the work of vigilantes determined to run the foreigners out.

Now, just seeing the faces being helped out of the minibus and into the flats, Rosie was back in the muddy field in the border post in Blace, as stricken refugees staggered into Macedonia, each with a horror story of what they had suffered at the hands of Serbian soldiers who butchered their way through towns and villages. To survive all of that, and then end up here? Where you were a figure of hate because you had a fitted carpet? Christ almighty! Rosie looked back at the crowd and felt ashamed of her fellow countrymen.

Her mobile rang in her pocket and she fished it out.

‘You still up in Balornock, Rosie?’ It was Lamont, the news editor, whom she despised and seldom had to deal with.

‘Yeah, why?’

‘McGuire wants you back down here. Tony Murphy’s just been found hanged in his office. Oh, and there’s a torso been fished out of the Clyde. I’ve sent Reynolds over on that one. But McGuire wants you back.’

‘Fine. What’s the story with Murphy?’

‘Dunno. He does mostly refugees these days. Asylum cases. Who knows?’

‘I’m heading back anyway. I’ve seen enough here.’

Rosie didn’t need to sell the news feature on refugees to Lamont. She knew he’d be negative, as he always was with every idea she put up – backstabbing bastard that he was.

The police seemed to have calmed the situation, and the crowd began to disperse, so Rosie made her way across the back court to her car. As she walked past the back entrance to the flats, she stopped when she saw a young man standing against the wall. He looked Bosnian or Kosovan, or he could have been Turkish – it was hard to tell. But he was definitely a refugee, she decided. He had that lean, lost look they all had. He stood there weeping, his lip quivering. Rosie watched him for a moment and he looked through her, tears running down his face. He was obviously in some kind of meltdown.

‘What’s the matter?’ Rosie went over to him. ‘Is there anything I can do. Are you sick?’

He shook his head. ‘English no very good. I am Kosovan.’ He sniffed and wiped his face, seeming to compose himself.

‘You living here?’ Rosie pointed to the flats.

He nodded.

‘How long you been here?’

‘One month.’ He started crying again. ‘I alone. My mother, my father …’ He drew his hand across his throat. ‘They killed.’

‘The Serb soldiers?’

He nodded.

‘Do you not have friends here? Other Kosovo refugees? There are a lot of Kosovan people here now.’

He shook his head and bit his lip. ‘My friend. They take him.’

‘Who?’ Rosie asked. ‘Who took him?’

He took a cigarette out of his jeans pocket and his hands trembled as he lit it.

‘I not know.’ He glanced over his shoulder.

Rosie screwed her eyes up, confused. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

‘I run away. They take my friend. I not know where he is.’ He wiped his tears with the palm of his hand.

Rosie automatically extended a hand of comfort, but he flinched and drew back.

‘Let me take you for a cup of tea.’ She pointed to the cafe across the road. ‘We can talk there. Maybe I can help you.’

He shook his head, and began to back away.

‘Don’t be afraid. It’s okay. My name is Rosie. Rosie Gilmour. I am a journalist. Do you understand? Newspaper?’

He nodded, then shook his head. ‘I am frightened. I must go.’ He began walking away, with Rosie pursuing him.

‘Please. Wait. Hold on. Please.’ She caught up with him and he stopped. She reached into her bag and pulled out her business card. ‘I just want to give you this.’ She held out the card. ‘It’s okay. I promise.’ She reached out and touched his arm. ‘Don’t worry. I want to help you. I was in Kosovo in April. I was there. And in Blace. I saw … things.’

He seemed to calm down a little. He looked at her, took the card and put it in his pocket.

‘What is your name?’ Rosie asked.

He paused and looked around him.

‘Emir,’ he whispered. ‘My name is Emir.’

Some of the protesters were making their way across the car park, and he glanced at them.

‘I go.’ He backed away.

‘Emir. You can phone me. Any time. I will come.’

CHAPTER 2

‘Dear oh dear! Two stiffs and it’s not even lunchtime,’ McGuire chuckled as Rosie walked into his office. ‘This never happens when you’re not involved Gilmour. Must be down to you.’

‘Yeah, very funny, Mick.’ Rosie plonked herself on the leather sofa opposite his desk. ‘You should try and incorporate that air of sympathy the next time you’ve got a funeral eulogy to make.’

‘Ha! That’s good coming from you,’ he grinned. ‘By the time you got home from Spain last July, there were bodies everywhere. By the way, is that paedo Vinny Paterson still trying to climb out of the well your mates chucked him down in Morocco?’

‘Touché,’ Rosie half smiled, ‘but I can assure you this morning’s unfortunate stiffs have nothing to do with me.’

‘Don’t worry, Rosie. We’ll soon change that.’ McGuire took off his reading glasses and placed them on his desk. ‘That’s a real shocker about Tony Murphy. Hanging from
the ceiling in his office?
Very
strange. Got to be something dodgy there. I feel a scandal coming on. What’s the word on the street?’

Rosie sat back and rubbed her face with her hands. The whole protest scene up the road had somehow exhausted her.

‘I talked to one of my lawyer pals on the way back from Balornock. Like everyone else, he’s stunned. Murphy seemed to have it all. Married, two kids at university, big house, didn’t appear to have money worries. Mostly did a lot of refugee work in the past couple of years, helping asylum seekers stay in the country, fighting for their rights. All that sort of stuff. Wasn’t always like that though.’

‘Yeah, I’ve seen his face on the telly talking about refugees. What do you mean?’

‘Few years ago,’ Rosie said, ‘he and his partner Frank Paton were more into criminal law. They defended any hoodlum with a wedge of money, or some lowlife toerag as long as they got legal aid. You could sometimes see the pair of them in O’Brien’s with a couple of wellknown gangsters. I’ve seen them myself a few times, but not for a while. I thought it was a bit strange that they suddenly became these white knights fighting for poor bastard refugees. They never struck me as woolly-headed liberals.’

‘Money, Rosie,’ McGuire said. ‘It’s all about money. These lawyers fighting asylum cases make a fortune in legal aid fees. It’s all appeals, fights against deportation, long drawn-out hearings. Every time some asylum seeker
turns up at a lawyer’s office, the tills start jingling like Christmas Eve.’

‘True,’ Rosie agreed. ‘That sounds like Paton and Murphy. Naked greed. But why hang himself? He must have been into something. I’m waiting for a few people to get back to me, in case he was into drugs or anything.’

‘Any suicide note?’

‘Nothing. It might not have been suicide. Maybe it was just made to look that way.’

McGuire raised an eyebrow. ‘Is that just your vivid imagination, Gilmour, or are you basing it on actual evidence?’

Rosie paused. ‘No, nothing really. But something drove him to suicide, Mick. I’m going to do a bit more digging.’

‘Good. Nothing like a bit of intrigue to give a shape to the weekend – as long as the Sundays don’t come up with any revelations about what made Murphy cash in his chips.’ He turned to his computer screen. It was time to go.

‘Oh, Mick,’ said Rosie as she stood up. ‘Talking of intrigue, something else up at the Red Road.’

McGuire was still looking at his screen.

‘Never mind,’ Rosie said. ‘I’ll tell you later.’

‘What, Rosie?’ He looked up. ‘Don’t fuck about.’

‘Well, it’s just that as I was about to leave the protest, I came across this refugee. A Kosovan guy, late twenties or early thirties. Always hard to tell with refugees as they’re kind of old before their time. But he was crying.’

‘Crying?’

‘Yeah. At the back of the flats. Just standing there sobbing by himself. My heart went out to the guy. Poor bastard is probably traumatised by everything in Kosovo and just feels desperate and alone. Who knows, but I went over and spoke to him.’

‘Go on.’

‘He didn’t speak great English, but from what I understood his parents were murdered by Serb soldiers. Then he said he was alone now, that he’d been here a month, and that his friend was taken.’

‘Taken? Here or in Kosovo?’

‘Here. He said “my friend they take him”, and then he said that
he
ran away. But when I pressed him for more information he just backed off. The guy was absolutely terrified. Something has happened, but I don’t know what. I gave him my card, and told him I’d been in Kosovo. I think he’ll phone me.’

‘How can you tell?’

‘Sometimes you just know, Mick. I feel it. He’s got something to tell and he just doesn’t know how to yet, but something has scared the shit out of him. And his pal is missing.’

‘You need to find him, Rosie. Can you stake out the flats?.’

‘If it comes to it I will. But I’m hoping he gets in touch before I have to do that.’ Rosie changed the subject. ‘What about the torso? Any word on that? What’s Reynolds saying?’

‘Not much. All we’ll get from him is what the cops want us to get. He told Lamont that cops are still trying
to identify it, but they’ve revealed it’s a male. These plods are amazing. I guess they came to that conclusion because the torso had no tits.’

Rosie chortled.

‘I’ll see what else we can find out as the day goes on, but I want to have a better look at Tony Murphy. Find out a bit more about his work as a refugee lawyer. I’ll talk to some contacts.’

‘Fine,’ said McGuire, ‘but I hope your weeping refugee guy phones you. He sounds interesting. Either that, or back in Kosovo they told him he was going to Madrid or somewhere exotic, and he’s just depressed he ended up in Balornock in the rain.’