DEATH WATCH

by Marie Rowan

  DEATH WATCH

  Camlachie Nights Trilogy

  Book 1

  Marie Rowan

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to my dear friend and fellow tour-guide, Alex O’Donnell, with love.

  Prologue

  The beguiling green eyes were wide open, staring blankly – but no, not quite yet, which was exactly as it should be. The best was yet to come. Or were they gold-flecked, hazel eyes? Hard to tell in the dark. Probably green for this was a daughter of the Emerald Isles. A most obliging daughter, too. The dark figure watched the prone form, smiling secretly, contentedly, from against the rough wall a few feet away barely seeing in the thick, suffocating fog that was blanketing all about. Disembodied voices, as anonymous as the dank, seething fog itself, floated briefly through that filthy curtain, punctuating the threatening silence with hidden promises of retribution. What was that? But relaxation swiftly followed that brief moment of panic. Pissing. Someone pissing. Stinking urine, a coarse stream, putrid and vile like Lena herself. But time was wasting away. Stepping quickly over to the dying woman, the cord was roughly removed from the slender neck and within moments, the coal rained down mercilessly on those accusing eyes, lump by fatal, razor-edged lump, till the face was rendered featureless. Stoning really was quite biblical, wasn’t it? A warm, consuming feeling of righteousness eased its way pleasantly from head to toe. Deep satisfaction as the coal dust rose and mingled with the choking fog. Only bursts of laughter and singing occasionally pierced the heavy silence of the evening as customers came and went from The Clay Pipe public house nearby. Time to leave, time to rest awhile, time to score one off the list.

  Chapter 1

  Barney McDaid crossed his bare, well-muscled arms over his chest and waited in the freezing cold air on the pavement.

  “You were saying in the pub, MacNamee? Something about taking me on outside? Well, here we are. I’ll wait till you get up out of the gutter.” He stepped forward threateningly and MacNamee rose and took off like a bat out of hell. The landlord of The Clay Pipe smiled, shook his head and re-entered his pub. He shivered and made for the back kitchen and a heat from the blazing coal fire. His son’s voice sounded another warning from the bar and the Maghera lads quietened down. Barney grinned and sat down at the kitchen table as his wife ladled him out a large bowl of potato soup. He chose an outsider slice from the bread plate, buttered it thickly, and then dipped it into the delicious liquid meal in front of him.

  “I’ll be glad when that football match is over and done with, for tempers are flaring up all the time.” This was Friday evening and the following day would see Celtic take on Clyde in The Glasgow Cup Final. His wife nodded in agreement.

  “Heard his voice. Tommy MacNamee again?” Barney McDaid nodded.

  “Five feet one inch and built like a half-starved whippet. Finished up in the gutter.”

  “Oh, no, Barney,” his wife protested.

  “Never laid a finger on him, Brigid. He just tripped over a man who’d bent down on the pavement to tie his lace as Tommy shot out of the door when he saw me making for him. Last we’ll see of him for a bit, I suppose.”

  “Tommy!” screamed Brigid and promptly dropped the plate of soup she was putting out for herself. Her screaming reverberated round the pub till Barney shoved her into the toilet off the kitchen and locked her in. Tommy MacNamee made to stagger after her but a back-hander from the landlord quietened his screaming down.

  “Get tae hell out of here the lot of you,” McDaid bawled but hauled MacNamee back from automatically obeying the pub landlord. He watched as his patrons filed back into the bar. “Now shut up, Tommy, and don’t sit down, for there’s no way that blood’s going to touch one stick of my wife’s furniture.” Brigid was wee, but of a very determined and forceful nature. The second of McDaid’s sons shut the mob out of the back kitchen and himself in. MacNamee collapsed onto the tiled floor.

  “Think he’s a goner, Da,” said Diarmid McDaid as he picked him up and dragged him over to the Belfast sink. “This should kill or cure,” he said as he held the semi-conscious MacNamee under the fast-flowing, icy water. The gaslight flickered and went out.

  “Aw God, that’s all I need,” muttered McDaid and dipped his bread once again into the soup. MacNamee struggled for breath as Diarmid brought him back over to the fire. The lights went on again. His father finished his meal and sighed.

  “Okay, Tommy, who clobbered you this time? Diarmid, sit him on that wooden stool before he passes out again.” MacNamee shook his head free of the icy water, tried to speak but failed miserably. The singing had broken out again in the bar and it seemed as if Tommy MacNamee was yesterday’s news. “So, who hit you?”

  “Blood and guts – everywhere.” MacNamee burst out crying. Diarmid threw a wet cloth to him but he did not notice. Brigid had quietened down.

  “Get your mother out of there, son. The key’s in the lock. She’ll sort this dozy git out.”

  Brigid had calmed MacNamee down, then helped him clean himself as best he could. She nodded to her husband and Barney McDaid took over.

  “So?” he asked and waited.

  “It was at the coal-righ. Wullie Roberts’ coal-yard. That’s where I …. well, I like my privacy.” They all got the message.

  “What was up with using the lane? I pay good money for the strongest disinfectant available and Eck McKay knocks his pan out sluicing it down first thing in the morning. Brigid here keeps an eye on him as he does it.” MacNamee avoided looking at the others.

  “I use the coal-righ,” he confessed.

  “God’s truth, man, am I responsible for that, too?” roared McDaid appealing to his wife and son.

  “I didn’t do anything that’s not in liquid form, Mr McDaid,” MacNamee protested. “I’m a responsible citizen.”

  “Diarmid, get him tae hell out of here. Finish wiping yourself down, Tommy, and then, Diarmid, put him back into the street.” McDaid made to enjoy his rapidly cooling soup.

  “She’s deid!”

  “What?” said both male McDaids together.

  “In the coal-righ, under about ten tons of coal.” Barney McDaid shook his head slowly.

  “You lay off the hard stuff, MacNamee. Now, beat it!”

  “If she’s under the coal, how do you know she’s there?” asked Diarmid as he threw the soiled rag into the fire.

  “I just saw part of what’s left of her head!”

  “If you’re sick, Tommy, you’ll get down on that floor of mine and clean it up yourself,” warned Brigid, now scowling at the wee man. The men in her family had not yet got over MacNamee’s news. Diarmid looked incredulously at his father.

  “I think it’s Lena Dolan.” Total silence greeted this.

  “Lena? Dead?” MacNamee started backing off as McDaid spoke very quietly.

  “I think, I don’t actually know, Mr McDaid.”

  “Send somebody for the police, Diarmid. MacNamee, take me to where she’s lying. Under the coal, you say?” MacNamee nodded. “Move! Say nothing in the pub, Diarmid, in case this ne’er-do-well’s hallucinating. Come on.” McDaid lifted his jacket off a peg behind the door and headed for the coal-righ just along from his pub, and into the choking, damp fog. MacNamee went first.

  The thick, wooden, double-door entrance to the coal-righ lay just beyond St Justin’s Lane, high and heavy and fronting the pavement, Great Eastern Road running straight on past both the coal-yard and The Clay Pipe pub, the alley of dubious smells lying in between them. A narrow side door was Tommy’s usual method of entry. McDaid shivered, cursed the fog, then followed his customer through the narrow side door to the right just beyond the gates. He coughed up the filth-laden fog that he had inadvertently swallowed and pulled his woollen scarf from his pocket and tie
d it closer round his neck and mouth. He cleared his throat loudly, for the sound was somehow comforting, and then he peered into the gloom of the yard.

  “Where?” he whispered softly into the suffocating blackness. But MacNamee had held firmly to his chosen spot by the side door.

  “There!”

  “What the hell do you mean ‘There’? That blank wall in front of you, man, is fog. Thick, near-impenetrable fog. So, where’s ‘there’? Now get moving and I’ll follow you. There’s a plate of potato soup that’ll have your name on it back in The Clay Pipe when you’re finished here to my satisfaction.”

  “And a pint, Mr McDaid?” MacNamee was chancing his arm and he knew it. He also knew that Lena Dolan had once worked as a cleaner in Barney McDaid’s pub and so was family of sorts.

  “And a pint,” said McDaid grudgingly, aware that his wife took a motherly interest in all her workers both present and past. “Lead on.”

  Tommy MacNamee took a deep breath and moved off into the enveloping darkness. He stopped so suddenly that McDaid bumped into him and sent both of them sprawling amongst the coals. MacNamee screamed loud enough to waken the dead and Barney McDaid followed suit as he felt his entire body weaken as his hand, now wet and sticky, drew itself along a piece of mangled, bloodied flesh. He gasped in horror, raised himself to his knees, and felt the bile rise in his throat. Why he closed his eyes, he never understood, for the sight of the woman could not have been worse than the feel.

  “Get down here, Tommy, and stop screaming,” he shouted above MacNamee’s agonised cries. “If you’d had any bloody brains, you’d have crawled back out onto the pavement and not up to the top of the coal-righ.” MacNamee was suddenly silent, comforted now by the remembered presence of another living human being. He slithered down the massive face of the coal-righ and stood shaking beside McDaid, only now he was facing the street. McDaid waved away the choking coal dust that had followed MacNamee’s descent. His legs had not nearly begun doing what his numb brain was feebly instructing them to do. “I’ll wait here.” He hoped that sounded authoritative. “You see to it that Diarmid has summoned help.” He knew he had no way of knowing if MacNamee would do as he had instructed him, but he waited just the same in the eerily, silent coal yard. He suddenly wondered why all their noise had not summoned the yard night-watchman. Past experience told him that the man was either paralytic drunk somewhere or still trying blindly to locate their voices. McDaid cursed the fog yet again.

  “Da?” To his surprise, McDaid’s legs began to move as ordered and so did his brain.

  “That you, Diarmid? Over here!” Much as he desired to leave the deathly horror behind him, such was the thickness of the fog that he knew he would be better staying by the poor woman’s body. He swore yet again only this time at the person who had hopped it when the coal had fallen and left the woman to her fate, for he had no doubt that coal-stealing had not been the reason for her being there. He could hear Diarmid’s tentative attempts at reaching him. “Keep coming, son. Straight ahead. That’s it.” He grabbed his son’s arm as he eased past. “Are the police on their way?”

  “I certainly hope so. We’ve half the pub outside that gate and a good few working girls as well. MacNamee’s big mouth.”

  “I take it he’s back in the pub?” asked his father.

  “Aye. Having a breakdown between each spoonful of soup. Ma’s keeping an eye on him. God, what a mess!” Diarmid looked away fast and clamped his hand over his mouth. “Is it Lena right enough?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine, Diarmid, as it’s only a pile of bloody gore that’s visible. Looks like MacNamee has gone by her hair. I just hope that whoever you sent has reached the police station in double-quick time.”

  “I sent that lad who can run like a greyhound. He’ll stick to the wall of the buildings and should have reached there by now. PC Proctor comes by here about now on his rounds anyway.”

  “I’ve never known him to be late despite the weather.”

  “It’s that plate of soup he gets from ma that helps his time-keeping,” said Diarmid shivering.

  “Think the fog’s lifting?” asked McDaid hopefully.

  “A bit. Who would do a thing like that? Run off and leave her there,” said Diarmid. McDaid had no illusions.

  “Just about all of the male population who knew her, I suspect. My God, son, the law will have its work cut out tracking him down.”

  “If they bother, Da,” said his son.

  “Aye, you’re right. They could hardly charge him with disturbing a coal-righ, could they? What’s that? The police?” The sound of murmuring outside the yard suddenly erupted into shouts and McDaid knew that PC Proctor had arrived. His strident voice cut through the rabble outside.

  “Stand back now everybody and let Inspector Pollock and Sergeant Jacobstein by. You’ll see nothing that’s inside in this fog so ease away from the side gate. Mr Roberts is on his way here, too, so clear a path, please.”

  “Where the hell is the watchman? You don’t think he was up to his old tricks again, Diarmid, do you?”

  “Well, if he wasn’t, Mr McDaid,” said Ben Pollock, “we’ll have an eye-witness account and we can all go back to minding our own business. Where is the lady?” McDaid smiled at the detective.

  “Good evening, Inspector Pollock, it seems the coal-righ collapsed on this poor thing.” The fog was definitely beginning to thin a little and McDaid pointed over to the prostrate figure almost completely covered by the coal. He heard Pollock gasp quietly as he bent down and saw the destruction before him. A long minute later, the policeman indicated to Jacobstein to come over. Both men rose at the same time.

  “Mr McDaid,” Ben Pollock called, “you and your son can go back to The Clay Pipe and take your customers with you. I’ll call on you later so keep yourself available for we’ve a murder on our hands here. We’ll need this place closed up until our men get here. Goodnight to you both for the time being.” Ben Pollock of the Criminal Investigation Department thought that the perpetrator of the crime was a most unfortunate man for he and his sergeant were now, quite by accident, in the best possible place to deal with this crime. By pure chance, they had walked into the local station for a cup of reinvigorating tea only to run into McDaid’s errand boy.

  Pollock watched as McDaid and Diarmid walked quickly away and envied them. The chill had begun seeping into his fine frame, his Harris tweed coat seemingly useless against the bitter winter cold. Jake Jacobstein towered over him. He was dark-haired, dark featured and his flesh seemed to hang on him like a pound of mince on a butcher’s hook. Black-eyed and a deep thinker. Too deep, thought Pollock, for Jake seemed not only to hone into the heart of a problem but also to go right on past its solution and concentrate on how and why the person was feeling when he did it. Pollock himself was a native Glasgwegian like his sergeant, ex-Indian Army and carried his thirty-five years with ease. His light brown hair was cut short, more to avoid the lice of the vice-ridden dens and crime in the High Street than from personal preference. His fine, tanned features spoke of his years of service under a boiling sun, his pale grey eyes too innocent to betray the calculating mind behind them. He owed his temporary promotion to his superior’s illness and nothing more, and had no great hopes of retaining the rank once Detective Inspector Edward Bell was fit again. His thoughts lingered awhile on Bell. He had been beaten to a pulp one night in the Goosedubs area just off The Saltmarket. It had been Pollock’s years in the army’s ‘other ranks’ that had saved both of them and this promotion had been his reward. The temporary nature of it had not phased him. He was experienced and every bit of that counted.

  “Wait here, Jake. The watchman should have put in an appearance before now. Hope to God he’s legged it for one corpse at a time is more than enough. What’s his name, d’ye know?” Jake looked at his ever-present notebook before answering.

  “Costello, Harry Costello. Does the odd bit of portering for the Emporium if it’s the same man.”

  “Rig
ht.” Jacobstein had stepped up a temporary rank with Pollock and knew him well. The fog had lifted enough to let Pollock navigate his way gingerly towards the watchman’s howf well over to the left though it was pitch black and, without PC Proctor’s lamp, Pollock would have simply stayed by the body.

  He went round the foot of the coal-righ and suddenly realised that there was indeed another body as he peered inside the howf through a grime-caked window. Harry Costello lay stretched out on the floor by his desk and the bottle beside him gave Pollock, as well as the obviously drunk man, some degree of comfort. The inspector entered past the ill-fitting door of what was no more that a rough shack and hauled the sleeping man to his feet before depositing him roughly on the only chair in the room. Pollock’s first instinct was to splash him with what liquid remained in the bottle but that, he thought, would be a total waste of whisky. A quick look round gave him an even better substitute. The very watery, cold mince and sliced potatoes, lying forlorn in a battered pot on the rickety table that posed as a desk, did the trick. Costello came to fast as the contents smacked off his face.

  “God Almighty, mister!” The night-watchman’s hands searched blindly for his bottle on top of the clapped-out desk as he struggled to come to, his extreme annoyance obvious at being forced out of his peaceful, alcoholic slumber by a confrontation with Inspector Ben Pollock of the CID. The alcoholic haze did not prevent him from recognising the detective although he had seen him only from afar. “Is it a wee fly bag of coal you’re wanting, sir? I’ll get you it.” Pollock watched Costello’s pathetic attempts at rising from the chair before sighing deeply and smiling widely. He knew the feeling.

  “I just want a word with you, Mr Costello. No coal. Have you heard any sounds from the direction of the coal-righ this evening, sir?” Costello looked blank. “Anybody prowling around?” The watchman shook his head emphatically, then groaned loudly.

  “Not possible. I lock the side door as soon as the last employee has left.”