The Bird That Did Not Sing

by Alex Gray

  Malcolm Black stood up and brushed invisible flecks from his well-pressed trousers. He was a trusted employee of Folkfirst Securities, a firm whose reputation had earned them several big contracts in recent years, including Police Scotland and the 2014 Commonwealth Games. That their duties included updating telephone services had been most fortuitous.

  It was during a conference on security that he had encountered the man whose identity badge had borne the name John MacGregor. Meeting the man whose vision held the key to the restoration of the MacGregor lands and fortunes had been a pivotal point in Black’s life. And given his own extensive knowledge of security systems, he had found it possible after much searching to locate the leader’s true identity. Not John MacGregor, but Robert Bruce Petrie, a man of wealth and privilege who had recruited several like-minded men to his cause. Petrie paid them well, but for Black the reward was not the money being amassed in his bank account but the thought of a Scotland freed from the tyrannies of its absentee landlords. Once the bomb had exploded there would be a sense of outrage from the public, and it was their aim to turn that outrage against their foreign masters and rally good honest Scots to the cause. To others the Proscription might be ancient history, but to Malcolm Black it was as if the last four hundred years had nourished resentment in every one of his ancestors, culminating in his own fierce desire for change. Wait for the referendum, some might have told him. But the time for waiting was over as far as he was concerned. The time for action was now.

  Petrie had insisted that getting rid of Detective Superintendent Lorimer was of paramount importance, and Black smiled as he recalled how his own part in that was being played out. They had infiltrated the heart of the man’s working environment, although bugging the offices in Stewart Street had taken months of painstaking work, Black posing as a telecommunications engineer on several occasions. Now it was up to him to reach into Lorimer’s domestic life too. Like most policemen, Lorimer was aware of the need for a home alarm, and today Mr Black from Folkfirst Securities would be at his property on Glasgow’s Southside to check that everything was in working order. By the time he left, there would be eyes and ears secreted in the Lorimers’ house, devices planted to help them bring down one of the people who seemed to stand in the way of their success.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Hide in full sight, Worsley had suggested, and McAlpin had nodded his grudging agreement. No one would be looking for a short-haired, clean-shaven man whose shirtsleeves and double cuffs hid his snaking tattoos, the former weightlifter told himself. He’d hail a taxi in Gordon Street outside Glasgow Central Station, he decided, crossing the road along with other pedestrians. A quick trip to that place in Dennistoun should help pick up Shereen and Asa’s trail. He’d find the pair of them, and when he did, there would be two less bitches on the loose to make trouble for him.

  McAlpin sat in the back of the cab, silently looking out at the city he knew like the back of his pale, freckled hand. George Square was awash with banners and flags now, the melee of tourists everywhere adding to the growing excitement of the approaching Games. They were still on for 23 July, Worsley had told him. And it gave the big man looking out at the grand City Chambers no little satisfaction to imagine the shock and horror that would follow the explosion out at Parkhead. Pity for the footie fans, of course, but some insurance company would take care of that little problem, he thought as the cab’s meter ticked on.

  In minutes McAlpin was thrusting some notes into the cabby’s hand and striding away towards the close mouth of the tenement building where the moneylender lived.

  He listened for a reply from the insistent buzzer, stepping back a little to catch a glimpse of the twitching curtain high above the street before a familiar thickly accented voice asked, ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s me, Stefan. You know fine who I am,’ McAlpin growled. ‘Probably smelt me coming, you old bugger.’

  He heard the chuckle, then the door was released and McAlpin stepped into the gloom of the close and headed swiftly up the stairs to the top of the building.

  It was the grandson who waited at the open door, and McAlpin thrust past him, deliberately knocking the boy’s skinny shoulder, making him gasp.

  ‘Right, Stefan, where are they?’ McAlpin grabbed the old man by his arms and lifted him bodily from the chair where he had been sitting in front of the television.

  Stefan Kovary opened his mouth to scream, his gold front tooth gleaming in the light, but no sound came, the breath knocked out of him as he was slammed against a wall.

  ‘Where are they?’ McAlpin repeated, his hands around the old man’s throat. ‘Swanson and the girl. They must have come to you for money!’

  He released the moneylender long enough for the old man to choke out a reply.

  ‘She came, yes, she did.’ He nodded, eyes bulging as he saw the big man’s hands looming over him. He would shake him like a dog shakes a rat before it kills, and the Hungarian knew this, blind terror making him stutter out the words. ‘J-just the fat woman, n-nobody else.’

  McAlpin let him go and the old Hungarian slumped to the floor.

  ‘How much did you give her?’

  ‘Three hundred, no more than that, I swear!’ Stefan squeaked, eyes darting to the open doorway, but there was no slim figure hovering there to effect his rescue, his grandson having made himself scarce.

  ‘Address?’

  ‘She said she was staying at your place,’ Stefan whined in an injured tone that was soon drowned out in a stream of invective from the red-haired man towering above him.

  ‘What about her first payment?’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Stefan replied quickly.

  Their eyes met, and in that moment it was clear to Stefan Kovary that he would never recover the roll of notes that he had lent to the Jamaican woman. If McAlpin was seeking her, she would know better than to turn up here.

  And as he dropped his gaze, the Hungarian was certain of one thing more: the big man whose facial appearance had changed so dramatically was not only desperate to find these women but was also scared for his own life.

  ‘You never saw me here,’ McAlpin growled, reaching out a hand to raise the old man to his feet.

  ‘No worries, no worries,’ Kovary agreed, relief that he was still alive making him prattle on. ‘Never saw you in my life, never did any business with you.’

  ‘Make sure you keep it that way,’ McAlpin told him, giving the old man a final push that sent him back into the armchair. ‘Healthier if you do,’ he added, before striding out of the flat and slamming the door behind him.

  ‘Grandfather?’ a timid voice enquired. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Get away,’ Kovary spat at him. ‘Follow that fattyú wherever he goes and let me know. Understand? Nobody comes in here and treats us like that,’ he added, spittle coming from his mouth as gnarled fingers felt the place on his throat where the big man had grabbed him. ‘Nobody!’

  ‘You need to get that taken off,’ Shereen told the girl, looking at the angry red rash that was seeping from under the plaster. ‘Cut off. Snip, snip,’ she added, making scissors of her fingers and cutting motions all along the cast.

  ‘We’ll go back to that hospital,’ she said, then sat down on the edge of the bed next to Asa. ‘Or maybe not.’

  There would be people at the Royal Infirmary who might remember Asa and alert the authorities, take the girl away from her to some hellhole of a detention centre. Perhaps it would be better to cross the city and find a different hospital altogether. Claim that the girl was visiting and needed her plaster removed. Yes, that was a better idea.

  Shereen searched in her handbag and counted out the money that remained. She had to be careful what she spent, and paying for a taxi to take them to the Southern General and back would eat into her meagre resources.

  ‘Come on, Asa,’ she decided. ‘We’re going out.’

  The young girl’s eyes lit up. Asa had learned several English words now, and the woman could see from h
er expression that out had a magical ring to it. Out meant away from the room where she could see Asa beginning to feel so confined and into the busy street where there were lots of people. Shereen had taught her more than new words, however, warning the girl that danger lurked everywhere, even in a crowded street.

  Buchanan Street bus station was a magnet for druggies who needed a fix, their eyes watching each and every passer-by as they held out their polystyrene cups, begging for change. They had come to this pass somehow, demeaning themselves publicly before their fellow men, yet persisting in their task, the need to put fire into their veins overwhelming any sense of shame. Asa paused, the look in those pale blue eyes something she recognised. The boy sitting under the grey blanket was just like her, a waif, a stray desperate to be shown some kindness.

  ‘Come on.’ Shereen pulled the girl away. ‘Haven’t time to stop and stare,’ she added.

  Asa nodded, more at the gesture than the woman’s words. In truth, the young girl wanted to stare at everything, including the strange sculpture of legs running under a clock face. Were those legs trying to escape from the inevitable progress of life? Or was it something to do with catching a bus? Asa had been on a bus back home, a trip to the medical centre in a nearby village. The authorities had sent the dilapidated vehicle to take them there and she could recall being hustled on board for the return journey. ‘Come on, it’s time to go,’ the driver had shouted to the youngsters. Perhaps the legs were hurrying to catch a bus. Though to Asa’s eyes they appeared to be running away from the bus station. It was very puzzling.

  Once inside the glass-walled building, the Jamaican woman seemed to relax and took Asa’s hand, guiding the girl into a small queue that was forming. The big red bus stood empty outside and the girl looked at Shereen then pointed at it.

  ‘Yes.’ The woman nodded. ‘That’s ours. Need to wait for the driver, and when it’s time to go we’ll get on.’

  Asa caught a word or two, the yes and the nod sufficient to let her understand that they were to remain standing until a driver came to start up the bus that would take them to the hospital.

  Afterwards, Asa wanted to talk to Shereen, to tell her how she had felt as the big bus trundled out of the square and into the city’s traffic. Like everyone else, she might have said, in an effort to express the way she had envisaged herself, a passenger on that seat, face up against the window, looking out. There was a sort of kinship with the other people on the bus, her fellow travellers, as well as those on different buses stopping at the pavement to disgorge their human cargo and let more come on. For a time the girl was mesmerised by the flow of figures arriving and departing, people who chatted together or were silent, eyes fixed on their destinations. It was, she might have said, a peaceful interlude in her tempestuous young life, that bus journey from Glasgow’s busy heart out to the district of Govan.

  The voices around her were like a song, the shapes of the words a joyous wave of camaraderie, the accents rising and falling in a rhythm that reminded her of home. And occasionally those words made sense. The old women directly in front of her spoke about the hospital; were they going there too? Asa’s glance fell on them from time to time: one with dyed black hair and many wrinkles on her orange skin, the other a bleached blonde whose ponytail allowed the girl to see the large silver hoops dangling from her earlobes and the smudges of mascara around her watery blue eyes. And when Shereen nudged her to stand up, the bus slowing to a halt, the two women did indeed shuffle out from the aisle and into the warm day, their feet also taking them to the entrance where a huge sign proclaimed their arrival at the Southern General Hospital.

  What the Nigerian girl did not see was the broad-shouldered man, face half hidden by a baseball cap, skulking along the city streets, hands in his pockets.

  Kenneth Gordon McAlpin (or simply Kenneth Gordon, as the passport in his pocket now read) had alighted from the taxi and was now heading up Renfield Street as a line of buses came to a halt at the traffic lights. His eyes scanned the street for any dark face in the crowd. The anger that had risen against the Hungarian had not yet abated and McAlpin clenched his fists tightly, imagining how it would feel to grip the girl around her skinny throat till she choked.

  It was a moment he would never forget. He blinked, hands falling loosely to his sides as he saw her. They might have passed one another by had he been slouching along, eyes to the ground. It was, he told himself, a miracle, seeing the girl’s dark face gazing out, blithely unaware of his presence.

  In that moment all of the big man’s senses seemed to be heightened: the fresh breeze touching his naked chin, the sound of the bus as it drove away, the smell of its exhaust fumes lingering.

  As long as Asa was blithely unaware of how easily her tormentor could have jumped on to that bus and grabbed her, he had a chance to do just that. But here in this busy city centre, with cameras tracking his every move, that was not such a great idea. If only he hadn’t had to ditch the van…

  The orange lights of an approaching cab were like a beacon of hope to the big man, and in moments he was seated once again in the back of a black taxi, its destination as yet unknown.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  ‘Last one for the day, Mrs Lorimer.’ The man in the navy rain jacket smiled cheerfully at Maggie as she signed the two spaces on the form headed Folkfirst Securities.

  ‘Glad you were able to be in at this time of the day. Not bad being a school teacher in this weather,’ he continued, nodding towards the back door that was lying open to let in the afternoon sun.

  ‘No,’ Maggie murmured. Had she mentioned being a teacher? She hadn’t thought so, but perhaps the engineer remembered her from a previous visit, though she could not recall his face. Malcolm Black was a handsome young fellow, well groomed and with just the right amount of charm to make a tedious visit from the alarm company that little bit more pleasurable.

  ‘Nice to have the long holidays to look forward to,’ Black continued. ‘The wife’s a primary teacher. Can’t wait to get away to Spain for our two weeks,’ he lied. There was no Mrs Black, though for working purposes he wore a wedding ring. It made the married ladies feel safer, he had joked to his colleagues. The comment about Spain was half true, though, a package holiday having been planned to coincide with the date of the opening ceremony so that the man known to some as Number Five would be free and clear when the mayhem began.

  As she shut the front door, Maggie could hear the engineer whistling as he walked towards his bright blue van, but the sound that gave a lift to her spirits was one of triumph for the man who had so recently placed bugging devices inside the detective superintendent’s home.

  Getting rid of Lorimer was a priority, but it would be easy now that they could track his movements. Make it look like an accident, Petrie had told them. And as he drove away from the quiet cul-de-sac, Black gave no thought to the woman he had just left, nor to the fact that he was planning to make her a widow.

  Marlene sat in the café, one foot tapping relentlessly against the metal stem of the table. She was all out of gear and needed a fix so badly that her mind was beginning to play tricks on her. The boss had been in and out again, but was it him? Or someone who just reminded her of McAlpin? The man she had seen had no thick beard or long hair straggling over his collar. It was him, though, she knew it was, just as she was certain that the man who had been talking to him that day was the dead man in the photograph.

  Twenty thousand pounds. She licked her lips as though she could already taste the drugs she craved. One phone call. That was all she needed to make. And a policeman she needed to talk to. Lorimer, that was the name she had overheard when the boss had been speaking to Harry. It was a name she knew. He’d got a result after those murders around Blythswood Square, hadn’t he? Murders of girls who’d been Marlene’s friends. Aye, that was who she’d call, Marlene thought as her foot suddenly stopped jiggling in mid air.

  ‘This caller says she wants to talk to Lorimer,’ the liaison officer in the CID roo
m said, holding the telephone handset away from her ear.

  ‘It’s Alistair Wilson who’s SIO on the case,’ DC Lennox replied. ‘Why does she want Lorimer?’

  ‘Says she knows him.’

  ‘Okay.’ Lennox shrugged. ‘Put her through to his office. But record every word. You know the routine, right?’

  The woman nodded. They’d been inundated with stupid calls after the latest press release had mentioned the amount of that reward. Not one had been worthwhile, though they had all been investigated, taking up more of the force’s precious resources. This agitated woman was different, though. She knew Lorimer from somewhere, needed to speak to him. They would record her call, try to put a trace on it if possible and take it from there.

  In his office along the corridor, the detective superintendent picked up the ringing telephone.

  ‘Putting you through now, ma’am,’ the liaison officer said.

  ‘Lorimer.’

  ‘I know about that dead man,’ a woman’s breathy voice told him. ‘Charles Gilmartin. I seen him the day he was supposed to have died, didn’t I?’

  ‘Who am I speaking to?’

  There was a lengthy pause during which Lorimer wondered if the line was about to be cut, and then, ‘Marlene. Marlene McAdam,’ she said. ‘I was a friend of Tracey-Anne Geddes.’

  ‘Ah.’ Lorimer let the word stretch out as he remembered the murdered prostitute. ‘What can I do for you, Marlene?’