Welcome to the Heady Heights

by David F. Ross

  There was silence in the studio, apart from some clearly orchestrated boo-ing, which built to a crescendo. The clap-o-meter, strangely, detected only applause; another indication to Archie that the whole show was rigged from the outset. The High Five scored three percent.

  ‘Looks like we’ve seen the last of those lewd, objectionable yobbos, folks!’ said Heady.

  A velvet curtain ruffled behind the personality. Like a Tommy Cooper comedy routine. Two hands reached out from below and behind it to grab at Heady’s ankles before the body they were attached to was yanked back. Before Heady Hendricks could signal to his musical director to strike up the band, a muffled voice yelled: ‘Heady Hendricks sucked ma boaby!’

  Wullie Wigwam switched off the set. Smug and self-satisfied, he raised a glass to Archie.

  ‘Well, we’ve done it, son. The big time, eh?’

  ‘What dae ye mean, Wullie?’

  ‘The fix was in. Ye fucken twigged that we planned it aw, no?’ Wullie was toying with Archie. He knew that Archie was in the dark. In fact, The Wigwam’s grand plan relied on it.

  ‘Aye … but bettin’ us aw the way tae the winners show … they’ve fucked that up now!’

  ‘Naw. Naw, they haven’t,’ said Wullie, smugness transforming into a big cheesy grin. ‘We bet hundreds ae wee sums on the first show … low odds, laid by loads ae different plants. Aw over the city. Nae suspicions. Then we did the same for the cunts tae lose. An’ even bigger bets tae win on that daft wee lassie fae Auchen-fucken-shoogle or whether the fuck she’s from!’

  Archie was stunned. No one had told him about this volte-face. Wullie explained that it was to protect him. If cornered, he could legitimately act dumb, although he was proving to be quite adept at that in any case.

  ‘Chib laid the trap. Telt the bam that he had tae get the wee Amy yin back on the show somehow. An’ for The High Five to fucken sink without a trace.’ Wullie smiled contentedly. ‘Fair play tae the daft bastards … couldnae have gone any better.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ said Archie. ‘Did they know?’

  ‘No’ tae start wi’, but Chib phones the other night wi’ a peach ae an idea. They’d aw spotted these clowns on the telly … the Six fucken Pistols or somethin’. He tells me they want tae go on the show as punks. Fucken magic, ah tells him.’

  Archie was drained.

  ‘So, what happens now?’ he said.

  ‘We collect the winnings, divvy up, hand the scud photos an’ aw the other shite back. Go on our merry way.’

  ‘You think it’s gonna be that simple? You really think Hendricks’s mob will let this go?’

  ‘Aye. Ah do. They dinnae want aw the palaver. Ah knew the minute ah saw that dirty cunt at the Great Eastern. They’re fucken shysters, Archie, just like us. Ah mean, it’s no’ as if we’ve robbed their bloody money, is it? Heady’s probably knobbin’ that wee lassie’s maw. This’ll make it easier for him. He should be fucken thankin’ us, the cunt!’

  Archie walked home. Briskly, and steering clear of the streetlights where possible. He was beginning to suspect that looking over his shoulder would be an hourly occurrence for the rest of his life, regardless of how brief that might be. Tomorrow was another day though. A day in which Chib’s intervention would see Geordie free of the Mackintosh shackles. His dad’s health improving and Archie’s meeting with WPC Sherman confirming the blaze was accidental, and not the work of hired Cockney hitmen. And Bobby Souness freed from the baseball target practice routines, poor bastard. Next week, Jimmy would return with the van, and at least five of the boys … and this whole ill-advised descent into fame-curdled madness would finally be over.

  36

  December 1976 – Saturday

  Chib came home on the overnight train. He hadn’t gone to Teddington Lock with Jimmy and the boys. He’d watch the televised chaos unfold on multiple sets in a Granada TV Rental shop window near Euston. He then bought a ticket for the sleeper.

  He was unaware that The High Five had been detained in a local police cell, coppers demanding to know where the sixth member – Manky Marvin – was and what Archie Blunt had done to him.

  In Glasgow, Archie was only aware of this because Jimmy had used his one permitted phone call to ring his friend in Tennyson Drive. Archie instinctively knew that this was the Vince Hillcock plan reaching a conclusion. Hold on to Jimmy and the boys on a trumped-up charge until the incriminating evidence of The Circle’s shocking activities had been retrieved, and then probably dispose of them all.

  Archie was in a similar position. Even with the material back in the hands of the perpetrators, how could they know additional copies hadn’t been made, or if it had been shown to other people? Vince was using the media to close these avenues off. If Archie went public now, the papers would be more interested in his ‘kidnapping’ of Marvin, and in the connotations of a single, fifty-something man in charge of a group of male teenage singers. Archie Blunt, after all, was no Tam Paton, and as had been publicly demonstrated, The High Five were no Bay City Rollers. No one would cry for Archie Blunt.

  Chib looked out at the car lot. The only vehicle available was a Hillman Imp. He reluctantly grabbed the keys. Squeezed into it, he looked like he was wearing the vehicle like a tight waistcoat. Chib headed for the arches under the Expressway.

  He wasn’t surprised to find them vacant. The lock had been jemmied, and there were signs of a struggle inside. But the place hadn’t been used for days. Tiny mould spores were emerging in the abandoned dregs of more than one teacup. The milk in the small fridge was off. But a two-day-old newspaper was lying on the desk in the main space. It had a scribbled address on the top right corner. A new paperboy, most likely. Fucken morons, thought Chib. He left and headed back to the car.

  The Mackintosh flat was in a densely populated deck-access concrete slab. A big mass of horizontal ugliness, like an old, square grey warship run aground in Dennistoun. Laundry wafted like tiny sails from improvisational rigging on every level. Steam billowed out of air vents and rooftop flues, and crag-faced women leaned over the decks, gossiping and moaning to their doppelgangers on lower and upper levels. Chib looked up at the scene. Block Four, 3/D. It could’ve been worse, he thought. He climbed the steps, his cane of more use than a loose, unsafe handrail. Three children stopped eating their jammy pieces when he walked past them. His massive frame, clad totally in black, and his skinned head the stuff of their future nightmares. Even at their tender age, they knew he was an enforcer. Here to give some poor walloper a doing. Rather than follow, they headed into the safety of the shadows, hoping and praying it wasn’t their da.

  Chib reached the door. He lifted the letterbox and peered in. No signs of activity inside. A radio played ‘Stuck in the Middle with You’. Chib fixed the dusters on each hand. He tried the doorhandle. The door opened silently. He stepped inside. A bedroom on the right. As untidy as fuck, but empty. Another bedroom. Then the kitchen, with a kettle starting to boil. Someone was here. Another door opened. A bald, middle-aged man emerged. Chib raised the cane. Geordie McCartney squealed in shock.

  ‘Fuck sake, man!’

  ‘McCartney?’

  ‘Ahhh … em … aye. It’s me. Dinnae hit me!’

  ‘Anybody else here?’

  ‘Eh … naw. They’ve just nipped out. Went a message.’

  Chib peered into the living room. A heavy rope was tied to a heating pipe. Apart from that, the scene was normal.

  ‘Ah’m meant tae be here tae free you, ya diddy. What the fuck’s goin’ on?’ Chib was bemused.

  ‘Ah. Right. Cheers.’

  ‘Fucken spill, Kojak!’

  ‘Well, they brought me here on Friday. After Archie turned up at those garages.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘They’ve been aw’right tae me. Ah cannae really complain, ye know?’

  ‘Look son, ah’m no Esther fucken Rantzen. Ah’m no’ askin’ ye for a consumer ratin’ for That’s Life.’

  ‘Ah know that … ah’m just sayin’, ah began
tae feel sorry for them. It was weird. They were feedin’ me, an’ they let me untie the rope an’ go tae the bog on my own, an’ that.’

  ‘They left the front door open, for fuck’s sake. What are ye still dain’ here?’

  ‘Ah dunno. It’s warm in here. An’ there’s a big tin ae corned beef through there. Haven’t had that for years. The wife widnae buy it for us.’

  ‘Christ on a fucken bike! How many ae them are there?’

  ‘Four. One ae them’s a woman tae.’

  ‘Right. Fucken beat it … before ah panel you tae!’

  Geordie gathered his cigarettes, his jacket and the tin of corned beef and left. Chib took a seat on the bed in the first room after the front door. He sat on the piles of clothes and waited. He was finished after this. Enforcement was a young man’s game. Chib lived frugally. He could retire and disappear into the anonymity of the smog.

  It was nearly two hours before they came back. Chib could hear them out on the deck. An older man and his son, arguing. Souness had escaped, it transpired. Stealing the younger man’s bike.

  ‘Ah’ll head back out an’ look for him after ma tea,’ said the son. ‘Shouldnae be that tough tae track down a middle-age jakey ridin’ about on a chopper in the scud!’

  The door opened.

  ‘Telt you no’ tae let him down. Even for a fag. We should have kept the prick hangin’ there,’ said the dad.

  ‘Sorry, Da,’ said the son.

  ‘You need tae sharpen up, son.’

  The bedroom door opened. The younger man had only taken a step over the threshold before Chib’s cane hit him right on the Adam’s apple. He went down immediately. His father came running. Straight into Chib Charnley’s metal-lined fist as it swung around the door jamb into his path. Blood spurted from a nose that was split in two. A bit of bone fragment protruded. The man was out cold. Chib’s boot smashed into the younger man’s jaw. He too now was no threat.

  Minutes later, another young man walked straight into a piledriver right as Chib punched through the frosted glass of the front door. Another one down like Liston in the rematch, an eye socket fractured this time. A woman screamed. Susie Mackintosh. She dropped the fish suppers and the carry-out. Chib stormed out, a black stormtrooper hunting her down. She turned, but he grabbed her long hair and dragged her back in. Doors along the deck shut. No one would be interfering. No police would be summoned. She wasn’t that close a neighbour, they’d rationalise.

  Susie screamed. Chib covered her mouth. She bit his palm. Chib laughed. He lifted her head back and rammed his fist into her mouth. Broken teeth flew as she collapsed.

  It had been a long time since he’d administered a beating to anyone, and one to a woman was a new entry for the CV. A rage had taken him over just like it did in the old days. He was breathing heavily. Getting too old for this. He walked along the deck, swearing, as he had done many times before, that this would be the last. The concrete stairs were cold. Rain that had fallen through the open access was starting to freeze. Not easy for a man with a dodgy hip. He used the cane, but still the segs on his brogues made the downward journey precarious.

  On the last flight, a voice called out: ‘Ye got the time, mister?’ One of the kids from earlier.

  Chib stopped. The top of the flight. He looked at his watch. It had stopped.

  ‘Naw,’ he replied. ‘Time you were in yer bed, wee man.’

  He moved his weight forwards. The cane caught in a ridge on the concrete. Chib’s free hand shot out for the rail, but the rail wasn’t where he expected it to be. He tumbled forwards like a Hollywood stunt man without the padding. Seventeen cold concrete steps. The one that killed him was the last.

  37

  December 1976 – Sunday

  The double doors opened, flooding the otherwise blacked-out room with light.

  Albert retreated briefly and reappeared holding a golden breakfast tray with ornate legs. His master looked as if he was lying in state. Propped up on pillows, sporting a gold lame blindfold and monogrammed pyjamas. Albert approached cautiously.

  ‘Sir?’

  Heady didn’t respond. His cheek and hand twitched. Albert knew he was awake.

  ‘There was a call for you earlier, sir. I told them you were not to be disturbed.’ Albert paused. Heady hadn’t moved. ‘The gentleman left a message, sir.’ Albert noticed Heady swallow hard. ‘I was asked to inform you that … it’s a long way to Tipperary.’ Heady Hendricks was breathing harder.

  Without moving, he croaked, ‘Take it away. I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Jimmy? Is that you, mate? Where are ye, now? What the fuck’s goin’ on, man?’

  Archie had been wakened by the telephone ringing. He’d pulled the answerphone out from the wall. Hearing his own voice telling the caller he was out was disorientating him. And besides, he figured that hired English hitmen wouldn’t bother calling him first.

  ‘Ah cannae speak for long, bud. Ah’m on the run!’ said Jimmy.

  ‘Eh? On the run fae what?’ Archie wiped his eyes to ensure he wasn’t dreaming again.

  ‘The coppers, for fuck’s sake! Keep up, son.’ Jimmy was frazzled.

  ‘Hey. Haud on a minute. What’s happened?’ asked Archie, frantically.

  ‘We aw got nicked, remember? Did ye no’ see the fucken show?’

  ‘Aye. Ah did but…’ Archie was having trouble distinguishing fact from fiction, and Jimmy hadn’t elaborated on the charges against them during his previous, brief phone call.

  ‘Gross indecency, it was. They daft laddies effin’ and fucken blindin’ live on the telly. They got let go, but ah got detained … cos ae the bastardin’ proby.’

  ‘So…’ Archie was still missing a few links.

  ‘The boys came back. That daft cunt Marvin sets fire tae the cop shop … alarms are goin’ off aw’roads. An’ wi’ us all out on the street, the boys nabbed me.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Jimmy!’

  ‘Naebody knew where he was but turns out Marvin had been gettin’ held in a locked cupboard in that studio for nigh on a week. He breaks out, batters some cunt, follows us tae this daft wee polis station. The other yins get out, an’ then he comes back an’ torches the arse out the place,’ Jimmy laughs, as if unable to believe his own account. ‘The total state ae this polis station, man … like a wee village hall run by the Keystone fucken Cops!’

  ‘So where are ye now?’

  ‘Fuck knows. Some tiny wee service station on a B-road.’

  ‘Why…?’

  ‘Cos drivin’ up the M6 in a fish an’ chip van wi’ The Codfather painted aw over it would be pretty fucken easy tae spot.’

  ‘Hmm. Aye, ah suppose so.’

  ‘Look, Archie … ah’ll need tae scram here. Ah’ve nae more change left anyways. Ah just wanted tae make sure we’re still on for the business.’

  ‘Aye. Sure Jimmy, sure.’ Archie had almost forgotten the promise he’d made to Jimmy in return for driving them to the shows.

  ‘Right. We’ll drop the van off. You an’ McCartney are in charge, an’ ah’ll disappear tae the heat dies down.’

  Archie couldn’t help thinking Scotland Yard might have more serious things to do than chase his pal. He was Jimmy Rowntree after all, not Jimmy Cagney.

  ‘Geordie? Is that you? Fuck sake, man … are you aw’right?’ Two phone calls. Both unexpected. A couple of hours apart.

  ‘Aye … em, ah’m no’ sure!’

  ‘Geordie, what is it? Where are ye?’

  ‘Chib Charnley’s dead!’

  ‘Jesus Johnny … how?’

  ‘Fell down a flight ae stairs.’

  ‘Christ … the polis got tae him, then, aye?’

  ‘Naw. He fell down a flight ae actual steps. Concrete yins. It was an accident. Smashed his own head in. He’d just freed me fae the Mackintosh gang.’

  ‘Did you see it?’

  ‘Aye. Ah was sittin’ on a bench over the road. Eatin’ a meat pie. Ah’d fuck all else tae dae, so ah just thought ah’d wait an’ wat
ch.’

  ‘What about the Mackintoshs?’ Archie couldn’t bring himself to call them a gang. That sounded way too melodramatic.

  ‘Dunno, but five went in … an’ one came out…’ Geordie McCartney had watched too many Clint Eastwood films. ‘An’ then went arse over tit, an’ killed himself!’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Ah’m pickin’ up some clothes, pal. Then ah’m hightailin’ outta here. Ah’m done, man. If ah dinnae get away, it’s gonnae be a fast black tae heart-attack central!’

  ‘Where can ah get a hold ae ye?’

  ‘Ah’ll be at Deek’s … out in Cumbernauld.’ Archie was sure he had Geordie’s brother’s address written down somewhere. He’d find it later.

  ‘Wullie, is that you?’ A third call. Archie Blunt making it this time.

  ‘Aye. Look ah’ve nae time, son. Chib’s been found dead.’

  Archie didn’t want to admit he knew this in case it opened more worm-filled cans. ‘Fucken jokin’! How?’

  ‘Still gettin’ tae the bottom ae that.’

  ‘Look, Wullie ah appreciate this might no’ be a good time … but have ye done the collections yet? Ah’m fucken brassic, an’ ah need tae sort out ma da’s situation.’

  ‘Did ye no’ hear me? Chib’s fucken broon breid! Ye know how long he’s been wi’ me, eh? Show some fucken respect, Archie!’

  ‘Ah’m sorry.’ Archie was sorry. Chib was a harder than a demolition ball hitting a derelict tenement, but everybody knew what he meant to The Wigwam. And it sounded like the bookie was in tears.

  ‘Come round the cabin on Tuesday. Ah’ll square ye up, then.’ The line went dead.

  ‘Hello. Heady? Are you on the private line?’

  ‘Yes. What do you want, Vince?’

  ‘I need to come over.’

  ‘No. I’m not seeing anyone.’

  ‘Heady, it’s important.’