‘Now see that … See that right there … what you just asked… if I were you that’s a question I would never ask again. John Largo is someone you don’t want to know anything about. If ever I’ve told you anything worthwhile, Lennox, it’s this: John Largo doesn’t exist. Hear it, accept it and get on with your life. Otherwise you might not have a life to get on with.’
‘Oh now wait a minute, Jock. You can’t …’
‘I’ve got to go. I’ll see if I can find anything out about Soutar for you. In the meantime try Jimmy MacSherry.’
Before I could say anything he was gone. I leaned against the bar and looked down at the half-full whisky glass he had left. I knew this was big, big stuff. When a Scotsman leaves a free drink unfinished, you know it’s serious.
Bridgeton was the kind of place you felt overdressed if you wore shoes. It seemed that footwear was optional until age twelve; thereafter you were expected to wear heavy work boots with soles studded with metal segs that made a seven-stone youth sound like a Nazi division marching down the street. Like ninety-nine per cent of the population of Bridgeton, Jimmy MacSherry wasn’t on the ’phone. So I decided the best thing to do was to go down and do some door knocking. I made sure I had my sap with me. Bridgeton was the kind of place you would feel naked without some kind of means of injuring another human being.
I got a call from Davey before I took the tram down to Bridgeton. There was, as expected, nothing to report other than Kirkcaldy had left for his afternoon session at the Maryhill gym he had always trained in. I had told Davey to stay on the house, not on Kirkcaldy and that’s what he had done. I could tell he was worried that I would be disappointed that he had nothing to report, but I reassured him he was doing just fine and he rang off as eager as when I had left him there.
For the rest of the world, a Glaswegian was a Glaswegian was a Glaswegian. They all looked the same, spoke with the same impenetrable patois, worked in the same industrial sweatshop of shipyard, factory or steelworks; they all lived in the same kind of slum. They also shared the same schizoid tendency to be the warmest, friendliest people you could meet while, at the same time, displaying a propensity for the most psychopathic violence. Sometimes simultaneously. Within Glasgow, however, lay a chasm that divided its working class. On the surface it was a religious divide: Protestant versus Catholic. The truth is the divide was ethnic: Scottish Glaswegians versus Irish-descent Glaswegians. And the focus for the biblical hatred between the two communities were the football teams, Rangers and Celtic.
Bridgeton was part of the city’s fringes. And it looked pretty much like all the other parts of Glasgow’s fringes. The streets were lined with tenements or four-storey apartment buildings. The building material of choice in Bridgeton had been red rather than blond sandstone or red brick, but it was all pretty academic as all the buildings had been grime-darkened, like every other structure in Glasgow. Occasionally an ember of the underlying colour would glow through the soot, giving a tenement the look of a dark, rusting hulk looming into the sky. Like other parts of the city, the worst of the slums were gradually being cleared to make way for new blocks of flats. The spirit of the Atomic Age had reached Glasgow and soon all of its denizens would enjoy the very latest modern amenities. Like flushing inside toilets.
But Bridgeton was different from the other areas of the city in one way. It distinguished itself in the intensity of its hatred for its neighbour. This was the most ultra-loyalist Protestant, Catholic-hating part of Glasgow.
A few weeks before, as it was on the Twelfth of July each year, Bridgeton had been a mustering ground for the pipe bands, drummers and marchers who celebrated the victory of Protestant King William of Orange over Catholic King James at the Battle of the Boyne. And once they had mustered, they would march triumphantly through the streets of Glasgow. Especially the predominantly Catholic streets. Surprisingly, the curmudgeonly Catholics didn’t seem to get into the spirit of things and refrained from joining in with songs containing lyrics like ‘We’re up to our knees in Fenian blood, surrender or you’ll die’.
But Glasgow was nothing if not a city of balance and fairness, and there was an ultra-republican Catholic, Protestant-hating part of Bridgeton too. The Norman Conks, the Catholic counterparts of the Billy Boys, had been concentrated in the Poplin Street and Norman Street part of Bridgeton. Their speciality, as well as offering the same skills for plastic surgery with open razors as the Billy Boys, was throwing Molotov cocktails made with paraffin or petrol at the marchers on the Twelfth. Or occasionally the odd ‘sausage roll’: human excrement loosely wrapped in a sheet of newspaper.
I sometimes wondered how Rio could compete with Glasgow’s carnival atmosphere.
As I walked through Bridgeton, however, there were no marching bands and little in the way of a carnival atmosphere. In fact, even on a pleasant summer’s day, I couldn’t imagine anywhere less festive. I certainly was glad I hadn’t brought the Atlantic with me. There were no other cars parked in the street in which MacSherry resided, and a knot of five or six children, faces grimy and feet bare, were playing maliciously around a streetlamp. As I walked past one block doorway, a man of about thirty stood watching me from beneath the brim of his cap. He was wearing a collarless shirt and a waistcoat, his shirtsleeves rolled up to expose forearms that looked woven from steel cable. He had his thumbs looped into the pockets of his waistcoat and leaned against the doorway, his heavy-booted feet crossed at the ankles. It was the most casual of poses, but for some reason he gave me the idea he was some kind of guard or lookout.
The only other person I passed was a woman of about fifty who emerged from a house further up the street. She was as wide as she was tall and dressed in a formless black dress. Or maybe it was just the body beneath that was formless. She had a headscarf tied tight around her head and her legs were naked, her stockings having been rolled down into beige bracelets around her ankles. She was wearing dark tartan slippers on her feet. Something had caused the skin of her legs to mottle a purplish red and I suddenly felt the need to foreswear ever touching corned beef again. She walked past me and eyed me with even more suspicion than the shirtsleeved sentinel I had just passed.
I smiled at her and she glowered back. And just when I was about to tell her how pleased I was that Dior’s New Look had at last made it to Glasgow.
I found the tenement I was looking for and climbed up the stairwell. It was the weirdest thing about Glasgow slums: you could have eaten your dinner off the flagstone stairs or the doorsteps of each flat. Glaswegians took an inordinate pride in cleaning communal areas – closes, stairs, entrances. There was normally a strict rota, and failure to have a sparkling doorstep or landing would result in the offending housewife becoming a social pariah.
The MacSherry flat was on the third floor. The landing was as spotless as I had expected, but there was some kind of unpleasant smell wafting about in the air. I knocked on the door and it was opened by a woman in her sixties who made the female I’d passed on the street look positively svelte.
‘Hello, could I speak with Mr MacSherry, please?’
The fat woman turned from me wordlessly and waddled back along the corridor, leaving the door open behind her. She tortured some vowels in quick succession, which I took to be ‘It’s someone for you.’
A man in his late sixties or early seventies emerged from the living room and came to the door. He was short, only about five-five, but he was compact and wiry with a heavy head topped with white bristle. There was something about him made me think of an older Willie Sneddon. Except Sneddon’s razor scar was delicate needlepoint compared to the criss-cross of ancient slashes on MacSherry’s cheek and forehead. Like Uncle Bert Soutar, this was a man whose history of violence was written all over his face, but in a different vernacular.
‘What the fuck do you want?’
I smiled. ‘I wondered if you could help me. I’m looking for information on somebody. Someone from the old days.’
‘Fuck off,’ he said, without
anger or malice, and pushed the door shut. I stopped it by jamming my foot between it and the jamb. Old MacSherry opened the door wide and looked deliberately down at my shoe and then back up at my face. He smiled. It was a smile I didn’t like and I contemplated the ignominy of having the crap beaten out of me by an Old Age Pensioner.
‘Sorry,’ I said swiftly and held my hands up. ‘It’s just that I’m willing to pay for the information.’
He looked at my foot again and I removed it from the doorway.
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Do you know … or did you know someone called Bert Soutar?’
‘Aye, I knew Soutar. What’s it got to do with you? You’re not police.’
‘No, no … nothing like that. I represent a group of investors who have an interest in a sporting event. Mr Soutar is involved with this event and we’re just doing a check into his background. You see, Mr Soutar has a criminal record.’
‘You don’t fucking say.’ Irony was not his strong suit.
‘I do say,’ I continued as if I had missed his sarcasm. ‘Not that that is, in itself, a problem. But we’d like to know the kind of people we’re dealing with. Did you know Mr Soutar well?’
‘You said you was willing to pay for information.’
I took out my wallet and handed him a five-pound note, keeping a second fiver in my hand. ‘Maybe we could …?’ I nodded along the hall.
‘If you like,’ said MacSherry, and he stood to one side to let me in.
The living room was small. Cramped. But again surprisingly clean. A large window with no curtains looked out over the street below and there was a bed recess, a typical feature in Glasgow tenements, in one wall. The furniture was cheap and worn but there was the occasional item that looked incongruously new and expensive, and I was surprised to see a small Pye television squashed into one corner of the room. It had a set-top aerial sitting on it, its twin extendable antennae each stretching at a wild angle from the other. I understood MacSherry’s reluctance to let me into the flat: the mix of new and old was the difference between the legitimately owned and the knocked off.
The fat woman whom I’d guessed was MacSherry’s wife left the room. It was clear that business was often conducted here.
‘Are you a fucking Yank?’ MacSherry had a charming, welcoming manner about him. I guessed I wasn’t going to be offered a cup of tea.
‘Canadian.’ I smiled. It was beginning to make my jaw ache. ‘About Soutar …’
‘He was a Billy Boy. And a boxer. He fought bare-knuckle. Hard cunt. I know what this is all about. It’s about his nephew. Bobby Kirkcaldy. That’s your fucking sporting event, isn’t it?’
‘I’m not at liberty to say, Mr MacSherry. Soutar was a member of the Bridgeton Billy Boys about the same time as you, is that right?’
‘Aye. I didn’t know him that well, though. He was a mental bastard with a razor in his hand, I can tell you that. And with his fists. But then when it got all military, you know, when the Billy Boys started having morning drills and stuff like that, he fucked off. He hated fucking Fenians but he liked making money more. He was still boxing though. It was after he cut them coppers, that was him finished.’
‘I thought you said he’d left the Billy Boys?’
‘He had. This wasn’t a rammy. It was after a match, right enough, but he was breaking into a credit union. He had some fucking mad idea that the mounted polis would be too busy dealing with the rammy. But two coppers caught him in the back close of the building. From what I heard, Soutar got lippy with them and they was going to give him a bit of a doing. That was his biggest problem, too fucking mouthy for his own good. Anyways, he always kept two razors in his waistcoat pockets. The two cops made a move on him and he cut them both. Popped an eye on one. You seen the state of his face?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He must have taken more than his fair share of beatings in the ring.’
‘That’s got fuck all to do with boxing. Bert Soutar was too light on his feet to get battered like that in the ring or in a bare-knuckle fight. No, that was the fucking polis that did that to him. They half-killed him. Took fucking turns with him. You see, it was a message … you don’t cut a Cossack.’ MacSherry referred to the Sillitoe Cossacks, the gang-busting mounted police squad set up by the then Chief Constable of Glasgow, Percy Sillitoe. ‘When Soutar came out of prison he gave up the Billy Boys. Apparently he was a model prisoner inside and got out after six years. And he came out with big ideas. He said he wasn’t interested in the Billy Boys any more. He said there was no money in it. And he was finished as a boxer. The beatings he took in prison fucked up his face. He couldn’t take any more damage, and couldn’t get a licence ’cause of his face and ’cause he was an ex-con. It was about then that he started hanging around with some Flash Harry who filled his head with all kinds of money-making schemes.’
‘Who was the Flash Harry?’
‘I didn’t know him at the time. He wasn’t from Bridgeton and I think he was younger than us. Quite a bit younger. But, like I say, flash as fuck. Soutar and this bloke got into the boxing game for a while. Fixing up fights, in more ways than one if you get my fucking drift. Never saw him after that, but I don’t think the partnership lasted. Soutar just disappeared and MacFarlane became a big fucking success.’
‘MacFarlane?’
‘Aye. Small Change MacFarlane. That was the Flash Harry. Became a big-time bookie. Fuck all good it did him considering he ended up having his coupon smashed to fuck.’
I sat and nodded as if I had been processing the information, hiding the fact that a dozen possible combinations of people and events were now running through my head. The flat door was still open and I heard voices out on the hall. The old fat woman and a male voice. Time to go. I stood up and handed MacSherry the other five pounds.
‘It’s not enough,’ he said.
‘What?’ I put on my best confused expression. I wasn’t confused at all.
‘Another ten.’
‘You’ve been paid for your time, Mr MacSherry. More than adequately paid.’
He stood up. I heard a sound behind me and turned to see the collarless sentinel had been the voice out on the landing and was now blocking my exit through the hallway. He smiled maliciously at me.
‘Another ten. Hand it over. In fact, let me save you a lot of trouble. Just hand over your fucking wallet.’
I weighed up the situation. Sticky. The old guy would have been tough enough to deal with on his own, but the younger man tipped the scales well and truly against me.
I shrugged.
‘Okay. I’ll give you all the money in my wallet. It’s nothing to me. I just claim it back from the investors I was telling you about.’ I frowned pensively then made out as if an idea had suddenly struck me. ‘Why don’t I just get them to come and see you in person. You can sort out remuneration with them. Mr William Sneddon is my employer. Mr Jonathan Cohen is the other investor.’ I kept my tone friendly, as if I really didn’t mean it as the threat it was. ‘I know Mr Sneddon is very angry about people interfering in his business arrangements. So I’m sure he’ll take your request for more payment seriously. Very seriously.’
MacSherry looked over my shoulder at the younger guy and then back at me. ‘Why didn’t you say you worked for Mr Sneddon? Maybe you’re just pissing down my back and telling me it’s raining.’
‘If there’s a working callbox anywhere in this shithole, then we can take a wander to it and you can ask him yourself. Or I could simply ask for Twinkletoes McBride to come down here and convince you of my credentials.’ I dropped the friendly tone. It was a careful balancing act. Some people don’t have the sense to know when to be scared. I’d have bet my last penny on MacSherry being one of them.
He gave a jerk of his head in a signal for the younger man to let me past.
‘Thanks for your help, Mr MacSherry.’ I turned and walked out of the flat casually and unhurriedly.
But I didn’t take my hand from the sap in my
pocket until I was out on the street and around the first corner.
CHAPTER EIGHT
By the time I had waited for a tram it was nearly six before I got back to my office. It was turning into another oppressive evening, the air clinging, humid and heavy, and I felt my shirt collar damp at the nape of my neck again. Davey Wallace called me at six on the dot, as agreed. Davey couldn’t drive and I told him to stay put and wait in the Atlantic until I came up. I decided I’d probably take a taxi up to Blanefield and get it to take Davey back home. Riding in a taxi was one of the luxuries in life most Glaswegians only ever experienced on special occasions. Before I went up to Blanefield, I ’phoned Sneddon. I told him what had happened at MacSherry’s place.
‘He knew you was there for me?’ he asked.
‘Not to start with. But I told him later.’
‘Fucking slum rats. I’ll arrange a lesson in respect.’
‘You better send a mob, then. From what I can see, the old guy still has a crew of sorts. And he has a reputation that must have been earned.’ I neglected to tell Sneddon that MacSherry had backed down at the first mention of his name. I was pissed because the old man had tried to turn out my pockets. A lesson in respect, as Sneddon said.
‘Aye? Well, I’ll arrange a change of scenery for him. I bet he doesn’t get out of Bridgeton much,’ said Sneddon, reminding me of the promise Superintendent McNab had made me. There was so much local colour here; maybe ‘fucking off back to Canada’ would do my health a bit of good.
‘I did get something interesting out of the whole encounter,’ I said. ‘Did you know that Bert Soutar went into business with Small Change MacFarlane? Some time around the start of the war?’
The Long Glasgow Kiss Page 15