The Stone Gallows (2 page)

And it was still doing it. Deep, gut-busting lungfuls, bellowing its
misery like a foghorn. How could something so small make so much noise?

‘I'm fuckin' serious, Maria. If you can't make it shut up, take it into
the fuckin' bedroom.'

Aye, Maria. The girlfriend. Seventeen going on eighteen, one year
younger than him. Twelve months ago she'd been just another dirty wee
slapper who liked it all ways. The tart had told him she was on the pill.

That turned out to be another lie, but he'd gone along for the ride. After
she got knocked up, the council had set her up in a two bedroom flat, and
it was handy to have another place to crash.

God knows, he'd tried to make it work. Painted the tiny second bedroom yellow. Moved his Playstation in. Bought a big screen TV from
Mad Malky Toseland. Played house. And it had been just fine until
Maria had dropped the wean. Then she had changed. Aged thirty years
overnight. Started talking about saving enough cash for a deposit on a
house, of going to college and getting an education. One day, she used the
phrase “We Need To Put Something Away For The Baby” seven times.

He'd counted. And to top it all, she was still fat from the pregnancy. Not
chubby. Not a bit porky. Fucking Jabba fat. It was like shagging an in-flatable couch. And there was no squeeze in her fanny either. He'd tried
using the back door, but her arse was too padded to allow any worth-while penetration. (The fact that his penis might have been too small
never even crossed Gaz's mind.)

Maria took the baby into the bedroom. He could hear her trying to 
comfort it from his station on the couch, talking in that sing-song voice
that made him want to smack her through a window. I need to chill, he
thought. Just calm down. It's no' her fault that the wean's crying all the
time.

He took the remote and flipped through the television channels,
hoping to find something calming. Football, or a Bruce Willis movie, or
even one of those documentaries about the porn industry that were more
about titillation than information. The closest he could find was a film
on Channel Four. Some bird standing naked in a window with her back
to the camera. Nice arse. But then the scene changed to a bunch of old
men smoking in a pub, talking in a language he didn't understand. There
were subtitles, but they were gone before he could read them. Bloody
foreign movies. What was the point? He bet they didn't show bloody
Scottish movies in France. He stepped over and flipped his Playstation
on. Maybe killing some cops would improve his mood.

It didn't. Eight minutes later he was bored. Ten minutes later he
remembered about the ecstasy.

He'd been saving it for the weekend, when he and some of his mates
had planned to go up the town, but the situation was desperate. He went
through to the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. There they
were, four brownish white pills in a grubby cellophane bag. He held each
tablet up to the light, examining it between forefinger and thumb. No
pharmacy markings, which meant at least that they weren't aspirin or
dog-worming tablets. They'd been given to him by a loser called Tommy
Graham, who owed him twenty pounds for a wee favour. They were a
stop-gap, something to discourage Gaz from kicking the shit out of him
for not actually paying the money.

Just take the two, Gaz thought. Two now and two at the weekend.

Ah, fuck it.

He tossed all four pills into his mouth and washed them down with
tap water, before heading back to his settee and his game.

The baby's cries had faded to a dull whimper. Maria came and sat
next to him. ‘I've rubbed Calpol into her gums. Maybe that'll help her
to settle.'

Gaz barely looked up. ‘Fuckin' better.'

Maria watched her boyfriend's face in the glow of the television. He
always bit his lip when he was concentrating on something. She said,

‘There's an open day at Langside College tomorrow. I was thinking I
might go along and see what there was.'

‘Oh aye? How are you going to get there?'

‘I was going to walk.'

‘Aye, right.' He jerked his head in the direction of the bedroom. ‘Two
miles with Screaming Annie there? That'll be fun.'

‘I was hoping you could keep an eye on her. I could go to the shops and
get some food.'

He shook his head. ‘I can't.'

‘How not?'

‘Cos I fuckin' can't, alright? I'm busy.'

‘Doing what?'

‘Stuff.'

‘What, like smoking dope and playing video games with your pals?'

‘It's none of your business.'

‘Gaz, I'm just asking you for a wee bit of help. All you're doing all day
is sitting around the flat anyhow. Plus you should spend a bit more time
with Sonata Blue.'

He smiled at that. She'd wanted to call it Meg, but he'd been the one
that went to the registry office. If it had been a boy, it would have been
named after the Rangers first eleven. All of them. ‘But what if she needs
her nappy changed?'

‘I showed you how to do it.'

‘Aye, but I can't be changing nappies in front of the guys. They'll think
I'm a tosser.'

Maria sighed as she got to her feet. ‘Alright, I'll take her with me. I'm
going to go and have a shower. Are you coming to bed?'

He shook his head. With her out of the way he could put on a Ben
Dover DVD and have a five knuckle shuffle. ‘Nah. Maybe in a couple of
hours.'

3.

Coombes and I had been on surveillance for two weeks and one day. The subject was a guy called Alan Grierson, and the location was a truck depot in Dalmarnock. Grierson was owner of a haulage firm that had plenty of business in Europe, and he and several of his drivers were suspected of bringing in some less than legal loads. Our snouts painted a fairly depressing picture; as well as the usual few kilos of heroin or hash, Grierson had apparently branched out over the past year into human trafficking. We hadn't figured out every link in the chain, but there had been a sudden influx of Polish girls working the street, and we were pretty sure who was at the bottom of it.

Except that in fifteen days we had learned nothing. Zip. Round the clock surveillance had revealed little of value. Trucks came, trucks went. Every morning, Grierson rolled up in a shiny black Merc, and every night, he went home. Alone. Aside from the occasional trip to the casino, the guy seemed to be a dedicated businessman. If we didn't turn something up by the end of the week, the operation was going to be cancelled.

We weren't just operating on a tip-off. Grierson had been a good boy for the last thirty years, but he did have some form. Way back in the early seventies, he did a two year stretch in Barlinnie for assault and living off immoral earnings. He'd been a pimp, and one night he beat one of his girls halfway to death. Usually, in seventies Glasgow, beating up a hooker warranted no more than a slap on the wrist, but Grierson was unlucky enough to have his case judged by the legendary Harry Thomas. Now, Harry is long since retired and living in a nursing home, but in the seventies he'd put it about a bit. Rumour had it that he liked them to sing nursery rhymes. It's a standing joke in the trade; ask any working girl in Glasgow for a Harry Thomas, and they'll immediately give you a chorus of
Baa Baa Black Sheep
. Just about everybody knew that the girl Grierson had beaten was one of Harry's favourites, and it was no surprise when Harry handed down a hefty sentence.

Of course, that was thirty years ago. Since then Grierson had kept his nose clean, but that didn't exactly make him a model citizen. He socialised with key players in the Glasgow crime scene. His haulage operation was smooth, but he had a reputation as a hard man. Drivers who were late with their loads were rumoured to be punished with broken fingers and broken noses. And, of course, there was the obligatory Tachometer fixing. We had plenty of ex-employees who confirmed Grierson's management strategies, but none who were prepared to go on the record.

All in all, not a very nice guy. Whoever brought him down a peg or two would get a very welcome little feather in their cap – and being the new boy, I needed all the feathers that were going.

I checked my watch. Twelve fifteen AM. I'd dressed in layers: two T-shirts, one fleece and, of course, the standard CID leather jacket. I was still freezing. We couldn't run the heater for fear of draining the battery, and we couldn't run the engine because an idling car attracts attention. At that moment, I would have sold my soul for a cup of soup.

Bloody Coombes. I could imagine him, pint in one hand, pool cue in the other. The bastard was probably laughing at me.

Fuck him. The idea of a nice warm pub was tempting, but I would rather sit here in the cold than be his pal. I just had to keep reminding myself that he was the one in the wrong.

Grierson's business premises were in an industrial estate that had seen better days. Two thirds of the occupants had gone to the wall in the past five years and the rest. . . well, let's just say that it was easy to imagine their owners checking their insurance premiums before leaving lots of unsupervised candles burning. Most of the units were abandoned, the rest just neglected. The only place that was thriving was the haulage depot itself, and that was something else that was suspicious. In a field where most of the players were struggling to break even, Grierson Haulage had declared a pre-tax profit of one point four million pounds in the last financial year.

The depot was forty yards from where I was parked, and consisted of a large yard surrounded by an eight foot high brick wall. Entry was through a set of wrought-iron gates. Since the start of our shift, three trucks had left and one had arrived. This wasn't unusual; import and export is a twenty-four hour business.

I'll say this for him, Grierson worked long hours. Every once in a while he would stay the night, sleeping on a camp bed in his office. He owned a home in Bearsden, but he seemed to only use it at weekends.

Mind you, we had all seen his wife. She was the size of an articulated lorry, and nowhere near as attractive.

Twelve twenty. Coombes had been gone for twenty-three minutes.

Enough time to empty his bladder, neck a pint of heavy, and rejoin me. There was no sign of him. I guessed he would show up around about half past one, half an hour before our relief was due to arrive, sucking on Extra Strong Mints. If I was lucky, he would bring me back a packet of pork scratchings.

Twelve thirty. Nothing happened.

Twelve forty. Nothing continued to happen.

Twelve fifty. My back was sore, and now I needed to pee. I used the empty McDonalds cup and tossed it out of the window. Coombes was probably on his third drink by now. I had to be satisfied with a Polo mint.

At twelve fifty-five the gates opened, and a familiar black Mercedes moved slowly onto the street. Instead of turning in the direction of Grierson's home, it swung toward me. There was an instant's worth of eye contact as he motored slowly past me; I got a quick image of stubbled jaw and heavy jowls. Hopefully he would assume I was a nobody, just a taxi-driver taking a break.

There was someone else. A passenger. Not enough time for me to get a close look. Just a quick glimpse – straight brown hair, pale face, worried eyes. Definitely female, definitely young, and definitely not somebody we had previously logged.

Showtime.

4.

An hour later, Gaz was more wired than ever. He'd watched his DVD,
had his fun and wiped his semen onto the cushions. Now his heart rate
had doubled, his vision had trebled and there was a buzzing in his ears
that had nothing to do with Sonata's moonlit serenade. Fucking Tommy.

Where did he get his stuff? Whatever it was, it wasn't ecstasy. It wasn't
even remotely fun.

At least the kid was quiet. Gaz stood over it for a few minutes as it
slept in its cot, a tiny thing with a shock of black hair and a thumb corked
in its mouth. Every few seconds it whimpered as it slept, scrunching its
face up like a bulldog eating a wasp. He wondered how Maria and her
stupid friends could spend hours cooing over it.

Christ, his skin itched. Like spiders were crawling all over him,
thousands of little burning feet running up and down his torso. It felt like
he was on fire. He went through to the bathroom and stuck a
thermometer in his mouth. After a few minutes, he took it out and peered
at the mercury.

One hundred and six.

Was that good or bad?

He didn't feel so good, that was for sure. Along with the itchy skin and
blurred vision, his mouth was dry, his tongue coated with sandpaper. He
clenched and unclenched his fists, the muscles in his arms vibrating like
guitar strings. He went through to the bedroom, the thermometer still
clutched in his sweaty hand.

There she was, his tubby little princess, one hand flung to the side and
a trickle of sleep-drool running down her chin. He flicked the tip of her
nose. ‘Maria, wake up.'

She stirred. He flicked her again, harder this time. Her face wrinkled
at the sudden pain and her eyes opened.

‘Maria, I don't feel so good.'

‘What?'

‘I feel sick. I took a couple of eccies and now I think I'm sick.'