This day, though, the sun shone again. It had been a brilliant period of weather, and men and women made their way to the graveside from all directions.
Macallan stared at the coffin, numb and cold despite the warmth of the day. She was afraid she might break down and dug her nails into the palms of her hands. She barely heard anything that was said, still in shock, but when she looked up and realised that her name had been called she stepped forward.
As the coffin was lowered into the ground the tears ran down her face and dropped onto the dry earth. The coffin settled and she stepped back from the grave. Jack put his arm round her and gripped tight. He was still weak but had recovered well and had been determined to make it to Jimmy McGovern’s funeral.
Macallan put her head on his shoulder and thanked any God who was listening that he was alive. She’d prayed when it had looked like he wasn’t going to make it, even though she was a confirmed atheist.
McGovern, that quiet rock of a man. He had only been in her life for a few years, but he had been her friend as well as a colleague. In Ulster she had lost more than one close colleague, but it never got any easier. She found it hard to imagine he would no longer be in her life. Too early, but that’s what happened sometimes. His heart had been weaker than he’d admitted, and it had just given out one night when he’d been watching a match at home. McGovern had been a native of Musselburgh and he’d told Macallan a lot about it, proud of the Honest Toun’s ancient history.
When they were finished Macallan walked round and took McGovern’s wife in her arms and said something quietly to her. Jack watched and sighed. He was lucky to be alive, and he promised himself that they wouldn’t waste a day of their lives. They’d love, spoil the children and make sure nothing would change that. McGovern had had that with his wife – he’d seen it every time he’d met him and his family and he knew it was worth all the effort.
He walked over to Macallan and Sheena McGovern, who were still holding hands. Macallan had explained to Sheena that Jack still wasn’t strong enough to attend the gathering after the funeral much as she wanted to be there. Jack kissed Sheena on the cheek and took Macallan by the hand. ‘Let’s go home.’
Macallan looked at all those names on stones. So many stories. ‘Let’s do that, Jack.’
Epilogue
Later in the summer Jack’s mother was in Edinburgh for a few days and convinced them to take some time off from the children and go away for a night. They decided on Glasgow, a swish hotel and a great show in the evening. Jack was fully recovered and writing full-time again.
The next day they wandered round the city centre and did some shopping, which Macallan never really enjoyed, but Jack had encouraged her to brighten up her wardrobe. He always wound her up by saying that she dressed like an undertaker half the time.
They stopped off for a coffee and as Jack browsed the paper she stared out of the large window and people watched. She was only vaguely aware of the music playing somewhere nearby.
‘It’s weird, Grace, but they’re still running this story about Psycho McManus. It’s turning into a real mystery and the conspiracy theories are starting.’
‘What’s the latest?’ She was still staring out of the window and saw the source of the music just a few yards further along the road. It was a Salvation Army team giving it laldy for the Lord.
‘They still can’t find out where he came from before he was sixteen. No trace of him anywhere – no family, and no one claims to have known him. Jacquie Bell’s done a bit today.’ He read something from Jacquie’s piece. ‘It will remain one of gangland’s great mysteries.’ He put the paper down and smiled. ‘How about that?’
Macallan wasn’t really listening. She was staring at one of the Salvation Army team who wasn’t playing an instrument. It was Bobo McCartney, dressed up in a uniform, handing out leaflets and praising God. She shook her head and smiled. Life was strange indeed.
As Macallan and Jack relaxed and laughed as she told him the story about McCartney’s arrest, his sister Wilma was on a train back home. She’d seen the reports on the web about McManus being killed by the police and just wanted to be back in Glasgow again.
Alan Logan was in a bar only a few hundred yards from them. He too was pleased with life. His brother Abe had been handed a heavy sentence and was cracking up in Bar-L. All he had to do was wait for his chance to take Frankie down and their empire would all be his.
Some things never change.
glossary
Bam - nutcase
Bar-L - HMP Barlinnie
Big Hoose - HMP Barlinnie (usually ‘The Big Hoose’)
Bizzies - detectives
Blues and twos - blue light and warning tones
Boracic - skint (rhyming slang, from boracic lint)
Bottle of B - Buckfast wine
Carly - Carlsberg beer
Ceramics - piles
Cocos - police (from Coco Pops rhyming with cops)
Crash bag - emergency medical response kit kept ready by prison officers
CROP - Covert Rural Observation Post
Dabs - fingerprints
Deek - a look
Denis Law - marijuana (rhyming slang for draw)
Dubbed up - locked up (in prison)
Dug’s baws - the best (the dog’s bollocks)
DO - Detective Officer
E Hall - the protection wing in Barlinnie prison
Gadgie - many different meanings, derived from a Romany word; tends to mean a male and probably close to a ‘ned’ or someone of low status or bad dress sense
Glasgow smile - a cut along the length of the mouth and into the cheeks
Goonie - Scots for nightdress
H - Heroin
Hee-haw - fuck all
HOLMES - Home Office Large Major Enquiry System
Howlin’ - smelly
Inspectorate - Scottish Government body that reports to the Parliament and has responsibility for the inspection of the effectiveness and efficiency of the Police Service of Scotland
Jakey - addicted to class A drugs or, more likely, alcohol and regarded as a low life as a consequence
Jambos - Heart of Midlothian FC (from jam tarts rhyming with hearts)
Keech - excrement
Laldy - Glasgow slang meaning to do something with great gusto (could be anything from singing a song to attacking someone)
Locus - the place where a crime or other incident has occurred (legal term; Scottish alternative to the ‘scene’)
Malky - to attack or murder
Moody gear - a commodity that is fake or of poor quality
NCA - National Crime Agency
Neds - non-educated delinquents
On the batter - taking part in a drinking session
Osman - warning given by the police to someone when information has been received of a serious threat against that person (and required to be passed on even when the information has been obtained during a covert intelligence- gathering operation)
Plouk - a pimple/spot
PM - post-mortem
Pokey - prison
PSNI - Police Service of Northern Ireland
Radge - someone who is a bit deranged and gets into fights
Rammy - a brawl or fight
Rubber heels - anti-corruption/internal investigations squad
SB - Special Branch
Scooby - a clue (rhyming slang, from Scooby-Doo)
Scran - something to eat
Snash - aggravation or verbal abuse
Swanny - toilet
Wean - child
Acknowledgements
I’d just like to say a special thanks to the prison authorities and staff in Barlinnie prison for making me so welcome. It was a bit of a revelation. I’ve done a lot of prison visits in my time as an investigator, but I only realised during my research for this book that I had never been further than the interview rooms. It opened my eyes to the tremendously difficult job the men and women do in these institutions, and thank God the
y’re there. The prison scenes in this novel are fiction and cannot come close to what life is like there, so for anyone who thinks that time inside is a holiday then please think again. In fact, what was going to be a short passage in the book became one of the most significant parts of the story.
Thanks also to the team at Black & White for all their support. I now realise it’s a team effort. Of course, thanks to all the people who encouraged me to make Grace take on another case. I loved writing this one.
Detective Grace Macallan returns in ...
Our Little Secrets
1
Davy McGill, or ‘Tonto’ as he was better known, ran like fuck across Gorgie Road, his lungs burning with the combination of high intensity activity and the fact that Pete the Pole was chasing him with a large axe. He’d got the name Tonto from his love of Indian food and his almost encyclopaedic knowledge of the cuisine; it was the only thing apart from the Jambos that he’d studied in depth.
‘I fucking slice you up!’ Pete the Pole had screamed it a few times now and Tonto knew for certain that if the boy caught him that’s exactly what he’d do. He was nuts and everyone had warned Tonto not to deal with the radge; he was built like Superman and consumed so many steroids that he was in serious danger of exploding one day.
They were hard times for Tonto, although it was never anything else, and he was dealing to anyone who could supplement his wages. The previous couple of years had been reasonable enough by his own shite standards, selling dope or stolen gear around the city or wherever he could punt it. At one time he’d done a bit of work and bought his gear from the Flemings in Leith, but they’d been sent to gangster heaven so he started working for the Graingers, who basically ran the west side of Edinburgh and were still expanding. A bit of part-time dealing supplemented his earnings with them, which never seemed to be enough. It wasn’t that Tonto was any worse off than most of the guys in his position, and his spending habits were limited to a few bets on the nags, bevvies when he could, and following the Jambos. The truth was that working at the bottom end of a gangster’s team didn’t really pay that well, and all that stuff in the movies about the glamour, that was just shite. He wasn’t exactly Prince Charming anyway, pish poor with the ladies and only tended to score when some inebriated female was in a worse state than him. And as for his flat . . . well, it was cold and barely furnished; it certainly didn’t have a ‘home sweet home’ sign hanging anywhere. Apart from that, the stair he lived on was inhabited by drunks and bampots. However, as he was always staggering around the edge of the poverty line anyway, he spent most of his waking hours on the streets hunting for new ways to earn, so his domestic situation didn’t really matter much to him. The Graingers paid him for the odd dope run and dealing, but he was way down the pecking order and he wondered if he’d ever get to be a real gangster, whatever the fuck that was.
The Graingers were OK as long as everything was hunky-dory, but seriously violent bastards if there was trouble. Their old man was Dublin Irish, a small-time gangster who’d come to Scotland to try and make a better life. It hadn’t taken him long to discover he was just back in the old one with a slightly different view from the front door. To appease his second wife, who’d said she could not tolerate the idea of living off illegal income, he ended up in a shite job feeding the scaffie’s lorry but determined his boys would do better. That had partly worked: his eldest son, Dominic, having noticed that his father looked old before his time, decided at an early age that he wanted success, and quickly. It just wasn’t the kind of success his stepmother had envisaged. But as his generation had been told that greed was good, she tried to believe perhaps it wasn’t all his fault.
He started to build his own gang and mini-empire in the concrete heroin fields of Broomhouse and Wester Hailes, and his stepmother only started to forgive him when he bought them a decent home in Inverleith. She got through life by pretending the boy wasn’t what he was; his dad was secretly quite proud of him. And although the house was enough for his parents, Dominic wanted nothing less than it all, the result being that by the time he was in his twenties he was respected even by the bad bastards.
Something marked him out as a bit different, just a bit savvier than the normal career gangster. He’d realised that eventually even the best of them took a fall – they always got that little bit too greedy and stood under a big fuck-off light that shouted ‘Arrest me!’ He’d seen it and learned the lesson. As quickly as he could turn illegal wonga into legal wonga he invested in legit businesses, and he was good at it. Most of the investments thrived and he had a gift for negotiation with other businessmen, whether they were on the right or the wrong side of the law. On the surface he positioned himself squarely in the middle of the legit business and let his younger brothers carry on with the villainy. That way he spread the risks, and although his siblings always came to him for decisions, he’d put firewalls between him and the crime side of the business to keep himself reasonably safe. It didn’t make him completely fireproof, just safer than most, and it would take pretty determined law to come after him. That was the secret – make yourself really fucking difficult to catch and most of the time it’ll put the law off coming after you. He took care of the finances from the crime side for his brothers, and they were happy to leave it to his skills in washing their profits. At least that’s how it should have worked.
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