Where the Dead Men Go (17 page)

‘Back to the scene of the crime.’

Lewicki spun the wheel, took us deeper into the dreary streets. The water tower loomed above the grey maisonettes.

‘What crime’s that?’

‘Take your pick. This whole estate’s a crime scene. You know what that was?’

We were passing a newish apartment building in yellow brick, already streaked brown where the rivets had rusted, bled down the frontage.

‘Surprise me.’

‘The Bellrock.’

He pulled in to the kerb to light a ciggie and I studied the building, the little pocket of wasteground beside it.

The Bellrock Bar was one of the fabled Glasgow pubs, like the Saracen Head or the Vulcan Bar. It was Walter Maitland’s shop. Two men had been murdered there in the late Nineties. They were picked up in another pub and brought to the Bell. The doors were locked, the shutters closed and the fun began. Teeth were pulled. Fingers smashed with hammers. Facial hair burnt off and noses scorched by cigarette lighters. The post-mortem revealed scalding to the head and upper body of both men in a pattern consistent with kettles having been emptied over them. Ligature marks on the elbows, wrists and ankles suggested each man had been tied to a chair. Both had been shot in the head.

‘You know what happened there?’

‘I covered it,’ I told him. ‘I wrote the story.’

Lewicki tapped the steering wheel. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘X marks the spot.’

I also knew what happened next. Maitland had friends on the force. Though the wasted bodies were dumped beside an exit on the M8, they were linked back to the Bellrock Bar. His police mole gave Maitland the heads-up. He called his men out at midnight, trucks and diggers and bulldozers. He flattened the Bell, not a stone left standing, and trucked the rubble into the night. When the cops showed up to do the forensics, a riot squad with a battering-ram and the SOCOs in their moon-suits, the pub was gone, vanished. Just a raw patch of earth, a low wall filmed in brick-dust.

Lewicki killed the engine. Turned the key again to bring the window down an inch then turned it off again.

‘You knew,’ I said. No petulance, no tone of accusation; just a statement of fact. ‘You knew about Moir.’

Lewicki looked out of his window, blew smoke though the gap. ‘I had an idea.’

‘How?’

‘It was one of his stories.’ He was still facing his window. I watched the back of his head. ‘The Café Verona shooting, end of last year.’

I remembered it. A man had been murdered in a pizzeria frequented by the Walshes. Two men with scarves round their faces walked in and shot him in the chest as he ate linguine with his girlfriend. Four bullets. A junior Walsh lieutenant.

‘What about it?’

‘Well, your friend’s report was commendably accurate. It was a little
too
accurate. He knew some things that we hadn’t made public.’

‘Like what?’

Lewicki turned to face me. ‘Like the number of shots.’

I zipped up my jerkin. With the engine off the heater had stopped. Cold air surged in through the open window.

‘But he spoke to the witnesses. Other diners.’

‘Witnesses.’ Lewicki grinned, shook his head. ‘What would they know about it? I could take a gun out right now and fire six shots at that wall and you wouldn’t be able to count them. A busy restaurant? The crowd, the panic, the echo. The shooter wouldn’t know himself until he checked his magazine. But Moir knew. Four bullets. He also knew that the killers escaped in an SUV.’ Lewicki nodded. ‘Well, again, that was news to us. News to the witnesses. They
heard
the killers drive off but they didn’t see them.’

A man had come onto a balcony, three floors up, gripping the railing as if he was planning to vault it.

‘You’re saying what, Jan? You’re saying he was in on it, the hit?’

‘I don’t know. He knew about it. If he didn’t know in advance he knew soon after.’

‘Why would they tell him?’

‘Make sure it gets a good show. And maybe a favour to Moir. Throw him a bone.’

The man on the balcony raised his arms in a stretch, locked his hands behind his head. He was wearing saggy black boxers and a V-necked dark green T-shirt.

‘You ask him about it?’

‘We pulled him in.’

‘And what?’

Lewicki shook his head. ‘Look at this eejit. T-shirt and drawers in the middle of winter. Prick. And nothing, Gerry. He denied it. Says he spoke to a witness at the scene, a wee boy in the street who saw two men leaving in an SUV. Says a witness in the restaurant told him the number of shots. He’s lying through his teeth but what can you do?’

Moir was dirty. Moir was bent, bought, crooked. The prince of the
Tribune
. The boy king of Pacific Quay. Doing a scumbag’s bidding.

 ‘Hey. Don’t take it so hard,’ Lewicki was saying. ‘They’ve got everything else. Lawyers, judges, cops, no shortage of cops. Why wouldn’t they have journos too?’

Was this why I’d done it? I thought I was vindicating Moir’s memory, tending the flame. But really what I wanted was to find him out, prove that Moir was just as shabby as the rest of us.

‘I’m not taking it hard, Jan, I’m just, I cannae see what – look, you’re going to have to explain this to me.’

‘Explain what?’

‘What he wants with a hack. A polis, yeah. A judge? All the better. Every home should have one. But buy a hack? We report things anyway. That’s the job.’

Lewicki was frowning, a sour grimace, it pained him how slow I was, how much he had to school me.

‘Think about it, Gerry.’

‘I am thinking. Who even reads us any more? The best we can do is leave him alone. And put the bloody window up, I’d rather die of secondary smoke than freeze to fucking death.’

‘It’s not about him.’ Lewicki chipped his smoke onto the pavement, shut the window. ‘It’s about the other guy.’

‘What other guy?’

‘Jesus, Ger, do you read your own paper? What was Martin writing for the past twelve months?’

‘Crime. Gangs. The usual.’

‘Crime where?’

I thought of the cuts on my kitchen table.

‘Southside. Govanhill.’

‘And who runs Govanhill?’

‘Packy Walsh runs Govanhill.’

The man on the balcony leant to spit over the railing. He watched it land and went back inside. I knew all the answers to Lewicki’s questions, I just didn’t know what they meant.

‘You see it now? He’s not writing stories about Govanhill. He’s writing stories about Packy Walsh. If the papers are all over Walsh, then the polis will follow. If the polis are tied up with Walsh, they can’t come after Neil.’

‘It’s a diversion.’

‘Pure and simple. Plus, if there’s too much heat on the South Side, they can’t trade. Where do the smackheads take their business?

‘Okay. I see it.’

‘The Neils are cute. They’ve got touts in the Walshes’ crew, always have done. They give Martin stories about Walsh. Most of what they feed him is true, but sometimes they’ll give him a ringer. See if he’ll run it.’

‘The girl. The child sex ring.’

‘Maybe there was a child sex ring. Maybe there wasn’t. Kids being abused, pimped out in Govanhill? Probably. But the guy McClymont fingered, Radislav Gombar – he wasn’t involved. And the story Martin wrote was a fairytale. Just a bullshit story to keep the heat on Walsh.’

I cabbed it back to the Quay. On the way there we passed the site of the athletes’ village. The signs on the hoardings had changed: I saw the outline of the lighthouse, the stylised beam of light –
BELLROCK SECURITY
. At the
Trib
building I paid the driver and trudged across to the revolving doors but I stopped in my tracks. I couldn’t face it, riding up in the lift to the fourth floor, sitting at my desk, tapping out my bullshit stories. I crossed the concourse to the river, gripped the chill railings, closed my eyes as the wind stirred my hair.

How could he have done it? How could Moir have kept it going? Sitting in conference every Tuesday, filing his copy on Friday, reading his byline on Sunday:
By
Martin Moir, Investigations Editor
. And all of it fed to him by gangsters. All the splashes, all the page-four leads, just a ruse to keep the polis tied up with one hood and not another. I remembered Ramage’s words.
Everyone thought Moir was the golden goose. Like fuck. He was the wee runty bird in the nest – left to himself he’d have starved to death.

I turned and leaned against the railings. He’d sold us out, betrayed us. All the things he believed. And Moir did believe them, despite what he’d done, I was sure of that. Moir believed them even if no one else did. Though, what, after all, had he betrayed? The building rose above me, six stark storeys of smoked glass, and the big neon eagle on the roof. A hollow boast of a building. A statement that no one believed any more.  

The sounds of the river, the song of the Clyde. That’s what comes back now, the river’s jostling slaps and slurps, two inches from my head where it lay against the hull. All that summer we lived on a boat, a Loch Fyne skiff, berthed at Renfrew. Elaine’s dad was a scallop diver but he’d cracked three ribs toppling from a bar stool on Paddy’s Day so the boat was idle. We gave up our uni flat and moved in. I was eighteen, Elaine twenty. We slept in the bow, two curving bench-beds that met at a point. Every night, after a beggarly half-pint of Bass in the Harbour Bar, we would pick our way across the rubbled yard and climb down the rungs to the wooden pontoon. Stepping across a black half-yard of river I would pause with my foot on the gunwale. You could sense the boat’s heft through the sole of your shoe; one flex of your ankle could tilt the whole craft.

We took her out once – the
Jessie Jane
, she was called – when Elaine’s dad came to visit. Sailed her down to the Tail o’ the Bank. Past the big container cranes at Greenock, out to where the river widens. The day was fine. The Clyde shone in its bowl of green hills. We stood on the little deck and spun around to take it all in. The mouths of the Gareloch, Loch Long, the Holy Loch. The estuary towns – Helensburgh and Greenock – looked trig and grey in the sun. On the way back we left the channel, took a short cut and grounded on a sandbank. For miles around us the Clyde stretched away, flat and blue in the failing light, and the
Jessie Jane
in the middle, grounded. We weren’t stuck fast – the engine took us off and we motored back in the dusk with the cormorants flying low across our path – but I remember that moment, the sand grinding the hull, and the three of us on deck, on solid ground and out at sea.

I looked at it now, through the streaked windscreen. The grey firth, its skin shirred by wind. Dark hills dissolving in rain. I thought of what lay beneath, the ticking hulls, the warheads, the sleek black shapes that snagged the nets of trawlers. Why did he do it? I lit a Café Crème and turned the key to press the button, bring down the window an inch. Blade of wind in my ear, rain spotting the leg of my jeans. Was it money? Was that enough, was that all it took? Or was it the promise of all those stories, the thrill of his byline under the splash?

I knew that craving, knew what you’d do to feed it. I couldn’t feel superior to Moir, not even now. We were none of us journalists, not any more, not properly. But it had cheered me, it had solaced me to think about Moir. Still answering the bell. Still coming off the stool. Digging out stories and standing them up. Better than the rest of us. Better than me. Tell the truth and shame the devil: that was why Moir had been going after Walsh. Not just to gladden a scumbag like Neil.

I chipped the smoke out the window, three-pointed on the gravel and left the lay-by, heading south. Out on the moors, the rain turned to sleet. I prayed for snow, great banking drifts that might trap me in the car till the news got better.

It was after seven when I parked outside the house. The curtains were parted to show off the tree, a fancy white one, swathed in silver tinsel. Globular baubles in hard metallic reds and greens, candy canes like the handles of umbrellas.

‘Gerry.’ She seemed pleased to see me, stood aside to let me enter, cocked her head for a peck on the cheek.

‘The girls in bed?’

‘More or less.’ I could hear muffled shrieks from upstairs, bare feet pounding a hardwood floor. She turned away and I followed her down the hall.

‘You want a drink?’ She stopped in the kitchen doorway. ‘I’m having one.’

‘I’ve got the car,’ I said. She looked at me. ‘Yes, I want a drink. Small one.’

The living room smelled of furniture polish and coffee. The girls’ toys were neatly stacked in bright plastic boxes along the far wall. The painting above the fireplace was new – a cool blue abstract with hard clean lines – and a photograph of Martin hung beside the bookcase, a studio portrait in black and white, a jumpered Moir smiling hopefully out, ten years younger. One of the overhead spots caught it full on.

‘Here you go.’ Clare was back with two brimming glasses. I took mine in both hands.

‘That’s small? Jesus, I’d hate to see a big one.’

She smiled. ‘There’s an answer to that but I’ll restrain myself. Saw you on the telly.’

‘Aye.’ I’d been on
Spectrum
at the weekend, pretending to know about the referendum.

‘Martin used to do that. In the old days. Not staying?’

‘Sorry.’ I shrugged out of my jacket, dropped onto one of the sofas as the door burst open and Esme skidded in.

‘Mum, Chloe’s in my bed and she keeps rumpling around. Hiya Uncle Gerry.’

‘Hiya, sweetheart.’

She backed onto Clare’s lap, threw an arm up and round her mother’s neck.

‘You excited?’ I jerked my head towards the tree.

She nodded rapidly, sat up straight. ‘It’s fourteen sleeps. Mum, is it fourteen sleeps? It’s fourteen sleeps, Uncle Gerry.’

‘I know it is, kiddo. I’m marking them off.’

‘Alright, chancer.’ Clare lifted Esme by the waist and set her down on her feet. ‘Off. Tell madam to get to her own bed, or else.’

She skipped over to say goodnight and I kissed her cheek. Clare refilled my glass and sat back in the armchair, nursing her own. The blues, greens and purples played on her left cheek, on the skin of her bangled forearm. Christmas lights. I sipped my wine and tried not to feel like the bad Santa, though she must have known that to come unannounced like this, through the driving sleet, with a death-knock face, when the girls were in bed, could bode nothing good.

She was ready now, waiting for me to speak. I set my glass on a coaster, nodded at the photograph. ‘That new?’

She turned to appraise it.

‘Had it for years. Just never got round to putting it up.’

‘Clare, there’s a guy called Hamish Neil.’

‘I can read. I read the papers. My husband was a crime reporter.’

‘I’m sorry. You know him, then?’

She was swallowing a gulp of wine but she waggled her head.

‘Hamish Neil? No, of course I don’t know him. I know who he
is
.’

‘Well your husband knew him. Martin knew him.’

Her eyes above the wine glass gave nothing away. I leaned forward, draped my hand over my own glass, twisting it back and forward on its coaster.

‘Knew him pretty well.’

She nodded, sipped her wine. ‘Say it then, Gerry. Don’t be shy.’

‘He was on the take, Clare. Your husband was bent. He wrote stories for Hamish Neil, stories Neil supplied him with.’

I was staring down at the coffee table. When I looked up she was frowning.

‘That’s it? He got his stories from a gangster? That’s your big revelation? Gerry, that’s the job. That’s how you do it.’

‘This was a bit different, Clare. There was money involved. He drew a wage. He wrote the stories that Neil wanted written. He wrote stories to order, for a Glasgow gangster.’

There were folds in Clare’s brow, a deepening crease between her eyes.

‘Why would he do that? Why would a gangster want stories?’

‘He wrote about the Walshes, Clare. He went after the Walshes. Not every week, but enough to keep up the heat. The polis follow the papers. We’re still good for that. You make something stink enough in the papers, the cops have to clean it up.’

I lifted the bottle, splashed some pinot into my glass. Threw it back, splashed some more. I’d to drive across the moors in the dark and the snow but I couldn’t get through this sober.

‘You mean it keeps them off Neil’s back?’

‘Yeah, but mainly it ties up the Walshes. You’ve got the cops camped out on the front lawn, it tends to restrict your movements. It’s about the contracts, mainly,’ I said. ‘Martin was just doing his bit to clear the ground for Neil. Take out the competition. He’d probably have got them anyway.’

She was rubbing her wrist; the bangles shivered.

‘The money,’ she said. ‘The twenty-six grand.’

I nodded.

‘You said contracts?’

‘The Games, Clare. The Commie Games. Building, demolition. Transport. It’s all up for grabs. Security. They’re all out to tender, there’s plenty at stake.’ I finished the wine and stood up. ‘Anyway I’m sorry.’

She was nodding, still rubbing her wrist. ‘How much?’

‘What?’

‘There’s plenty at stake. How much?’

‘I don’t know.’ I lifted my jacket, squeezed the pocket for my keys. ‘Over a billion, I think. I don’t know the exact figure. Big biccies anyway.’

She shook her head. Her eyes flicked round the room, took in the Linn, the wall-mounted plasma.

‘Should have held out for more, shouldn’t he? Sold himself short.’

She walked me to the door.

‘Don’t say that, by the way, Gerry. Pay us both the respect.’

‘What?’

‘“Sorry.” You’re not sorry.’ We stopped in the hallway. ‘Coming to my door with your hangdog face.’ She shook her head. ‘He’s off his pedestal now, isn’t he? Bad as the rest of you. Worse. Got what you wanted.’

‘I never wanted this, Clare.’

I zipped up my jacket and took out my car keys. I was waiting for her to open the door but she wasn’t finished.

‘Doesn’t change anything,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t mean he wasn’t killed.’ I’d hoped she wouldn’t go down this route. ‘Even if it’s true, Gerry, even if you’re right. Martin was on the take. Doesn’t mean he wasn’t murdered.’

‘I’m thinking it does, though, Clare. I’m thinking a guy ties himself to the wheel and drives into a quarry, that’s a guy who hates himself. Well, maybe now we know why.’

I let the door swing free as I walked down the path, the dull crump of snow under my boots. I had to scrape the fresh snow from the windscreen, run the engine for a minute or two. When I pulled away she was still standing in the doorway, backlit by the hall light. I didn’t wave.