Where the Dead Men Go (19 page)

I started for the car, pulling out my phone, scrolling for the number. It went to voicemail, the stupid, upbeat message:
Mari, Gerry and Angus are
having too much fun to come to the phone. Leave your number and we’ll call you back!

‘Mari.’ I cleared my throat. ‘Mari, are you there? You need to pick up Angus from nursery.’ I tried to keep my voice even but it buckled, broke. ‘Now. As soon as you get this. Call me.’ I tried her mobile; it rang out.

The chef was gone, I looked at the empty wall where he’d stood, thinking,
This is what you’ll remember, this scene will live with you forever if something’s happened.
Then I turned the ignition, put the Forester in drive.

It was the feeling you have when you’ve lost a child, when a toddler wanders off in the shopping mall, when your first frantic search draws a blank and your brain circles back round the words: lost, gone, dead. You enter this zone of abeyance, a poisonous lull. If something has happened, it’s happened. The time you let slip, the six or seven minutes when you weren’t watching, will happen again. They have already happened to the boy; now they will happen to you. You will find out what your next card is: do you get your life back or will fate, God, chance‚ take it away?

I drove down the Crow Road, onto Great Western. I drove like an old lady, drove as if there was a tray of eggs on the back seat. Keep as quiet and still as you can, and nothing bad will happen. Neil’s voice came into my mind, as if he was sitting beside me in the car.
You can’t keep a thing safe, you don’t deserve to keep it.
Onto Byres Road. Dowanhill. I turned the wheel left and right and swung round corners till the building loomed up, the nursery with its yellow sign, the artwork in the windows, coloured cellophane, the smiling bears and happy tigers.

I’d held it together till now but when I reached the car park panic swelled. I sprang from the car, keys swinging in the ignition, door agape, and plunged towards the steps. A mum was coming out with a red-haired toddler, a wee girl, maybe two years old. She was tugging a hat from her head and she chucked it on the ground and the mother stooped to lift it.

You’re supposed to let the door click shut and then press the buzzer – it’s a security thing – but I slammed past the mum and into the hallway, lunging for the tweenie-room, bracing myself on the jamb. The heads looked up from their toys and games. In a corner, two kids were asleep on beanbags, the little bodies sprawled as though they’d fallen from a height. Music was coming from a portable CD player, a nursery rhyme with tinny percussion. A boy in a pinny at the water tray pointed at me and said, ‘Angus!’ I heard the click from the supervisor’s knees as she rose and came towards me, frowning.

‘Angus is gone. He’s away already. Did she not tell you?’

‘What? Who?’

‘Your wife phoned. Your sister picked him up. You’ve just missed them.’

The room seemed to buckle, to bulge in random places: the suds in the water-tray, a curly blond head, the crest on the supervisor’s polo shirt. I lurched through to the baby room, the pre-school room – frantic, calling his name – then spun out onto the steps.

And then I saw it. Three-pointing in the street: the black Beamer X5, the tinted windows. I ran for the Forester, hauled the door shut, stamped on the gas. At the car-park gate I saw braking tail-lights, the Beamer turning right onto Great Western.

My hands were shaking as I sped up the street and signalled right, waited for a break in the traffic. All down Great Western I kept the black tailgate in sight. St George’s Cross, onto the motorway, spurt of speed, crossing three lanes, rush hour starting. Blue signs overhead, Kilmarnock, Prestwick Airport. The South. I ran through the possibilities. South Side, Ayrshire, the ferry to Ireland, straight down to England. I looked at the fuel gage, the needle bumping ‘F’. Good: I’d filled up last night, coming back from the five-a-sides.

The Kingston Bridge looped us over the Clyde, the river molten yellow, sun fizzing on the Armadillo. I was right on the tail, no cars now between my front end and the tinted rear window. The Beamer left the motorway at Junction 1, zipping past Pollok Park. I kept on its bumper through Shawlands, into Newlands, the big sandstone semis, plenty of trees. Then a furniture lorry swung out of a side street and I jammed the horn with the heel of my hand, mounted the pavement, cleared the rear wheel by a tenth of an inch.

When I turned the next corner the Beamer was swinging to the kerb, brake lights flaring. There was a space right behind it but I put the foot down to get alongside, wrenching the wheel to swing my nose round, blocking it off. The belt slapped my chest, slammed me back in my seat as the Forester bucked on its chassis but already I was out, sprinting round the car, yanking the door, two fistfuls of shirt, hauling the guy from his seat, shouting for my son. The driver’s head was bucking in slow-motion, his arms flapping as the seat belt held him. A child was crying, screaming, I couldn’t see the child.

I dropped the driver and hauled on the rear door. The eyes swung round, the pink screaming mouth; a blond boy, not Angus, not mine. I frowned at the child and my temple exploded, dropping me onto one knee, my cheek bumping the bodywork. I staggered up and back. The driver stood swaying, mad eyes, mouth yawing, the fingers of one hand clenched in the other.

‘I’m sorry.’ I backed up, hands high. ‘My son. I thought you had my son.’

He lashed out, made a clumsy orang-utan swipe with his good hand as I ducked past him and into the Forester, punched the locks, found reverse, found drive, away.

Barrelling down the street I could see him in the rear-view, planted in the roadway, legs apart, cradling his broken hand.

My head was pulsing with pain as I turned onto Kilmarnock Road. My Hugo Boss specs were hanging askew – a leg had snapped when the driver lamped me – and the eye on that side was closing. The bump to my cheek had gashed a gum and blood was pooling in my mouth, slipping down my throat like brassy phlegm. But my chest wasn’t heaving. The mist had cleared. The ball in my stomach was gone. I was thinking straight. When my phone rang I fished it calmly from my pocket.

‘Gerry?’ Mari’s voice was small and scared, a voice I’d never heard before. ‘Have you got him? I got your message.’

‘No.’

‘You want me to go?’

‘No. I’ve been. He’s not there.’

I thought I’d lost her for a minute but her voice came back, smaller than ever.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m in the car. Hold on.’ I tossed the phone on the passenger seat, pulled out of the traffic, into a side street, parked.

 ‘Mari, look. Listen. I met a cop today, a detective. He gave me a list of companies that Hamish Neil’s involved in. The nursery was on it, Abacus. Hamish Neil owns Abacus. He knows I’m doing the story, he knows the cop was meeting me. When I got there Angus was gone. They told me you had phoned and that my sister had picked him up.’

Silence. A little hiss that might have been Mari catching her breath. I haven’t got a sister.

‘Gerry this isn’t funny. Tell me this is a joke.’

‘I’m sorry. Mari, listen—’

‘Someone’s got our son? A
gangster’s
got our son? What are the police doing?’

‘Can’t call the police. It’s Hamish Neil, Mari. He might do something stupid.’

‘Something stupid? Something fucking
stupid
? He’s taken our son.’

‘I’m calling Lewicki. I’ll call you back.’

The charge was now under five per cent, a sliver of red in the battery icon. I scrolled to Lewicki. Voicemail. Fuck. I left a message.

There was nothing to do but drive.

Twenty minutes later I parked behind Mari’s Outback. Took the stairs four at a time, tore the pocket of my best blue jacket as I yanked free the keys. Was I hearing things, I wondered, or did something else make this noise, the noise of thumping feet, but here he was, tearing through from the living room, his straight wide smile, his long-sleeved T-shirt with ‘It’s Not Fair’ stitched on the front. He thumped into my arms and I hoisted him high and hugged him, swinging him round in the tight little hall, laughing. His kicking feet caught the overhead light and the shadows swung drunkenly over our dance. When I stopped, breathless, smudging his neck with a kiss and lowered him to the floor, Mari was framed in the kitchen doorway – spent, haggard, sick. She turned on her heel. The boy laughed at the slam of the living-room door.

When the shouting was over, the tears and the rage, she told me what happened. After I called her from the car, Mari was frantic. She tried to phone the nursery but the line was engaged. Before she could try again the phone rang; it was the nursery manager calling to apologise. There’d been a mistake, she said. The girl in the tweenie room was new, confused, she’d got Angus mixed up with another kid. Angus never left – he’d been away having his nappy changed, he’d been in the changing-room all along. Mari drove to pick him up.

That night, when Angus was in bed and some sort of cookery showdown played at an unthreatening volume on Channel 4 and the air in the living room seemed to ring with aftermath, Mari held a ladybird-patterned vest by its tiny shoulders and told me she was taking Angus to New Zealand. She was kneeling on the floor, folding the boy’s clothes and placing them in piles on the sofa. I closed my eyes for a moment and opened them again. We’d talked about this. Her parents hadn’t seen Angus since just after his birth, when they flew over and stayed with us for a month. It would be good for Angus to see them again, good for Mari to be with her folks. We’d talked about it but nothing more. Now she was going.

‘Two weeks before Christmas? If you even get a flight it’ll be an arm and a leg.’

‘Right. Let’s expose our son to the vengeance of a fucking sociopath because the flights are too dear. I’m booking it tonight.’

She bent to her work, something implacable in the crown of her head, the fierce symmetry of her centre parting. On the TV an anxious bespectacled man tossed a handful of scallops into a flaming wok.

‘Okay. We’ll talk when you get back.’

She didn’t say anything.

‘When are you coming back?’

She carried on folding the clothes, laying them out on the bed. She didn’t look up.

‘You’re not going to answer me?’

She looked up, back at the clothes.

‘Ger, you need to sort this out. I can’t have this. I can’t have my son threatened, in danger.’

‘Your
son?’

‘Ours. No, fuck it, mine.’ She was angry now, she threw the crumpled T-shirt back in the basket and jabbed her thumb at her chest. ‘
My
son. Mine. He’s your son when you learn to keep him out of danger. The bare fucking minimum. Keep him safe.’

You can’t keep a thing safe, you don’t deserve it.

She was right. I hadn’t kept him safe. I’d failed him. The boy was hers now more than mine.

In a minute or so she stopped folding and came round behind my chair. Her hand cupped my jaw, slid round my neck, drew me in.

‘I’m sorry.’ She kissed my ear. ‘I didn’t mean that.’

‘No, you’re right.’

‘No I’m not. But, Gerry, it’s the best thing. He can’t go back to nursery anyway. Not now. He’s better away from here.’

Quis separabit
. I nodded, pulled her back into me, held her. As I pressed my lips to her hair Angus started crying. She clapped my back twice and went through to lift him. 

‘You’re a lucky man,’ Haining said. ‘I was on my way out. Five minutes later and you’d have missed me.’

His raised eyebrows measured my narrow escape. I gripped the hand that emerged from a glinting white cuff and we bumped shoulders. It was like the clasp before a bout. There was a chair in front of his desk and I took it.

‘I need some information.’

Haining was settling back behind his desk and he froze for a second, his elbows locked on the arms of his chair, like a man on the parallel bars. Then a smile quenched the scowl on his face and he eased himself down.

‘Gerry Conway, the emperor of small talk.’ He was shaking his head, smiling as if to himself. ‘Can I at least offer you a coffee?’

I was done with fucking about. My family was flying to New Zealand in two days’ time. I didn’t know when I would see them again. The only way to get them back was to put a stop to Hamish Neil. We were publishing the list of Neil’s fronts in Sunday’s paper. For now, this sack of creash was going to do his bit to help.

‘I need the names of the successful bidders for the Commonwealth Games contracts.’

He goggled genially. He leaned forward with his elbows on the desk and smacked his knuckles into his palm a few time before spreading his hands.

‘Anything else?’

‘That’s it.’

‘Really?’ He waved an expansive hand. ‘You wouldn’t like the details of my own contract: salary, terms of employment?’

‘I imagine they’re adequate.’

‘Okay,’ he nodded. He sat back in the chair and crossed his legs, dragged a big hand through his hair. ‘Maybe you’d like to enlighten me, tell me what the story’s about.’

‘I’m not writing a story,’ I told him. ‘Not yet.’

‘Uh-huh.’ His attempt to stay genial and composed was sending little pulses down his jawline. He squared his shoulders, rolled his head like a boxer loosening his neck muscles. With some effort, a little hoarsely, he asked: ‘What, then; idle curiosity?’

‘I’m taking it to the police. I’ve got a contact in the Agency; when you give me the information I’ll pass it on to him.’

The last gleam of bonhomie had been extinguished. We faced each other in the big square office and Haining looked at me with honest contempt.

‘What is it you think you’ve found out?’

‘I haven’t found out anything. But you know what I’m going to find out. The bidders are fronts. The money’s going to Hamish Neil.’

He gazed off, not at the window, where the pigeons burbled and pecked along the balustrade, but at a window-sized painting on the opposite wall. It depicted a covered arena, its yellow pennants twisting in the wind, rising in triumph above tiers of A-frame chalets, while sleek faceless citizens – mostly in couples or family groups – enjoyed the verdant walkways. It was an artist’s impression of the athletes’ village.

‘There’s one thing that gets me,’ Haining was saying. He was frowning at the illustration and I thought for a moment he had spotted a flaw, a glitch in the artist’s vision. Then he faced me with a look of savage puzzlement. ‘Why aren’t the cops asking this? The fuck are you doing here?’

I shook my head. ‘They don’t have enough evidence to move on this yet. They can’t come down here asking questions.’

‘But you can.’

I shrugged.

‘So you’re the message boy?’

‘I’m doing a favour,’ I said.

‘Oh yeah? Could you do me one?’

‘It’s you I meant. I’m doing you a favour. If you go ahead with these contracts you’re finished, fucked.’

Haining ran his tongue across his teeth. He tapped his fingers softly on the desk.

‘Maguire know you’re here?’ he said quietly. ‘Threatening elected officials. Defaming them, spreading lies, hearsay? Of course she doesn’t. Go home, Gerry. Some of us have got work to do. Even if I wanted I couldn’t tell you the names. The contracts haven’t been awarded yet. There
are
no successful bidders.’

‘I mean the lowest bidders. The ones who’re going to get the contracts. I also need the timing of the bids, relative to the others.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Who was the lowest bid. Who was the latest bid. I’m guessing they’re the same.’

Haining smoothed his tie with a big flat hand.

‘You know how much it’s worth, that information? How sensitive it is?’

‘You want to read your website, Councillor.’

‘Sorry?’

‘The deadlines have passed. I checked the web this morning. Have the deadlines passed?’

The big jaw swivelled in acknowledgement. ‘Most of them.’

‘Then it’s worth fuck all. Except to you. It might be worth something to you, if you’re smart enough to use it. When do you announce the winners?’

‘The new year. Three weeks’ time.’

He was staring at the desk, breathing through his nose. The noise seemed to fill the room.

‘Good. Then your question’s wrong. It’s not how much the information is worth, it’s how much the city’s image is worth, the city’s good name. Look, you announce the successful bidders in three weeks’ time. I start digging, the cops start digging. If there’s dirt we’ll find it. You think we won’t?’

He didn’t look up from his desk.

‘Then you’ve given contracts to gangsters. The Games are tainted. Your shot at First Minister’s fucked. You tell us
now
, we’ve got two or three weeks to dig. If we find anything in time you can cancel the contracts.’

He looked up. ‘And if you don’t?’

‘Oh we keep on digging. But this way, if something turns up, you’re covered. You cooperated with the authorities, you did all you could.’

‘And if I don’t tell you?’

‘Then there’s a nice big space on the
Trib
’s front page with your smiling face on it. You knew about the police’s suspicions and you did nothing.’

He didn’t waste time complaining. He didn’t cast up his favours to me, or the Friday lunches, the spot on the
Spectrum
show. He pushed his chair back and yanked on the knot of his tie and flipped his top button with a vindictive thumb. He crossed to the window and rested his knuckles on the deep wooden sill.

‘I’ll need some time,’ he said.

I joined him at the window. The fog had thickened and swelled, filling the square, obliterating the lunchtime strollers. Only the statues – black and dully lustrous – were still visible. Just below us a figure in a top hat and frock coat was jabbing his cane at the insubstantial ground. On the far side Queen Victoria steadied her horse amid the shifting mist. And above it all, teetering on his column, with a plaid across his shoulders and a novel in his fist, was Sir Walter Scott.

Our breath whitened the window as if the fog had seeped inside.

‘I can’t email it,’ he said.

‘And you don’t want me coming back here twice in a week.’

He looked at me sourly. I fished a card from my breast pocket and wrote my home address on the back. ‘Send it there.’

‘I’ll need a couple of days,’ he said.

‘Fine.’ I tapped the card into his breast pocket. ‘If I don’t hear from you by Friday, you might want to give Sunday’s paper a miss.’

I jogged down the marble staircase, thinking of the picture on Haining’s wall. You would like to live in a city like that, with its pastel shades, its green indeterminate trees, its slender strolling citizens. A year ago, Haining had been the Pharoah of the Clyde, captain of the city’s fate. Then in May the Nationalists took five of the city’s eight seats. Haining’s empire was hanging by a thread and no amount of Carrara marble or Spanish mahogany could hide that fact.

I pushed through the revolving doors into the bright muffled light of the square. I lit a Café Crème, set off through the milling shoppers. At Queen Street Station I stopped and looked back. Across the square the City Chambers rose from the snow like the palace of some Doge or Viceroy. Domes and balustrades and columns, all the Second City pomp. White sky mirrored in the Chambers upper windows. It was too far to see, but I could picture him there, the Chevalier, the lost leader, looking out across a square named for a foreign king, the statues of another country’s heroes.

Despite my frozen feet, my throat, the press of Christmas shoppers, I felt good. I had struck a blow. The old Ulster euphemism –
returning the serve
– came back to me. I had returned the serve. My cigarillo landed with a
tsk
in the puddled slush. There was nothing I could do until Haining’s letter arrived and then everyone could get to work. Me, Lewicki, the Agency.

A rockabilly three-piece was busking at the top of Buchanan Street, beneath the green statue of Donald Dewar. A crowd had gathered and I joined its outer edge. A flat-topped double-bassist in a cut-off checked shirt with the collar turned up was spanking his machine, his hand bouncing like a flail, the low notes burbling up beneath the sharp loose click of the strings. A hunched drummer stroked a skeleton kit with his brushes, and the clean jabbing licks of the frontman’s Gretsch sliced through the wintry air. ‘Stop the Train’ was the number they were playing and the simmering rhythm stayed with me as I climbed the steps to the Buchanan Galleries.

I had barely thought about Christmas but now, for the first time that year – and maybe for many a year – something in me lifted at the piped music, the golds and the silvers, the rich metallic reds, the thick foxy ropes of snowy tinsel. I wanted to shop, I wanted to align myself with the bag-toting crowds. I wanted a toy for Angus. Maybe it was the buskers’ song but I wanted a train, an old-fashioned wooden affair and I found the very thing in a boutique toy shop on the upper level. An engine of white sanded wood, its funnels and wheels slicked a thick glossy red, with hook-and-eye carriages and sickle-shaped segments of tongue-and-groove track. ‘I do,’ I told the woman when she asked if I wanted it gift-wrapped, and her perfunctory smile couldn’t stop me adding, ‘It’s for my son.’