Goldie was back, standing by the desk, hands on his hips. McCormack looked up. ‘When you get round to this guy here’ – he tapped the Kilgour file – ‘let me know. I want to come along.’
Goldie glanced down at the file, back at McCormack. He dragged his chair out with a scrape, thudded down into it, jockeyed it closer to the desk. ‘Your funeral,’ he said.
2
The sky-blue Vauxhall Velox came nosing round the corner into the empty street. In the closemouth of a gutted tenement, Robert Kilgour watched it pass, gravel crackling under the tyres, the two men hunched on the front bench-seat, the slim passenger, heavyset driver.
Kilgour moved from the shadows towards the open air. He stood in the doorway, watched the pink taillights floating in the dusk. He pinched the bridge of his nose and his fingers came away wet, dripping, he shook the sweat from them. Framed in the back windscreen he could see the two heads in silhouette, twisting to look. They would know he couldn’t have got far. Another fifty yards, another hundred they would stop, turn and come back. He had to move now.
He tried to remember the layout of these streets. His own flat was only three or four streets away but he had run blindly when he spotted the parked Velox as he crossed to his building. As he ran he’d been aware of nothing but the sound of the car’s engine and now he was lost. It was barely three weeks since he’d moved to this district. They kept knocking bits of it down. Every time you went out there was another gap-site, another missing street, you never knew where you were.
Across the street was a block of empty tenements. It struck Kilgour that there was another dead street beyond this and then maybe the main road. Buses, bars, shops. People. Places to hide.
He took a breath, closed his eyes for a second, tugged his sweat-soaked shirt away from his chest. Then he left the closemouth at a sprint, running low with his hands up around his head, as though fearful of falling debris. Without looking he knew the car had stopped. There was a hollow crunch as the driver found reverse and a veering screech as the car swung round. Kilgour made it into the building across the street, feet slapping through the echoey close and he heard the engine’s angry rasp as the driver found first and ramped up through the gears.
Emerging into the dark backcourt Kilgour heard the car suddenly louder, the engine’s whine stretching as the car took the corner and gunned down the straight.
He’d been heading straight across the backcourt but now he sheered off to the left, nearly slamming into a metal clothes-pole. The hard-packed earth was strewn with bricks and rubble and his ankles flexed and buckled as he ran. He ran with his hands out in front of him, feeling for clotheslines and other impediments in the gathering dark and soon a black wall reared up in front of him. He scrambled on to the roof of a midden, hauled himself on to the wall and dropped down into the next backcourt.
He kept running, weaving from side to side like a man dodging bullets. He couldn’t hear the car, the only sound now was Kilgour’s own breathing and then his running foot kicked something, a tin can that sparked and rattled over the broken ground, splitting the night like a burst of gunfire. When he reached the next wall and struggled on to the midden he was losing heart, his legs were heavy, the fight was draining out of him.
Before him was a big patch of waste ground: bricks and rubble, puddles catching the last of the light. He raised his eyes and saw the squat low outline, a building shaped like a shoebox.
Kilgour slipped over the wall. He drew his sleeve across his brow and picked his way through the rubble. His knees almost gave way as he pushed through the double doors.
‘Did you win?’ The barman was smiling as he passed him his change.
Kilgour stared at the red stupid face.
‘What?’
‘The race you were in, did you win it?’
Sweat was dripping from Kilgour’s brow on to the bar-top, spotting a beermat. McEwan’s Export: the Laughing Cavalier, with his foaming tankard of ale. Kilgour shook his head and slipped the change into his pocket and tried to still the tremor in his leg.
He was sick of running. He’d been running – one way or another – for over two years, since he’d walked out of Peterhead on a wet spring morning with his worldly goods in a black BOAC flight bag. He was sick of moving, changing flat every couple of months. But what could you do? It followed a pattern. For a while things would go well in a new flat. Then someone would place him, make the connection. And then it would start. Dogshit through the letter box. Catcalls from the local kids. Crude words scrawled on his door. Rocks through the windows. Getting jostled in the street. That’s when he’d look for another place.
You could change your name, but why give them the satisfaction if you hadn’t done anything wrong?
He heard the pub doors rattle. He didn’t look round. He stared down at the bar-top and in the vertical black groove of a cigarette burn he saw the gable end of a building, a dark street. He saw a woman on the pavement, sitting up now, clutching her throat, choking, retching, her torn blouse hanging open, her skirt shucked up around her waist. Her face was pink and gorged, her eyes bulging and bloodshot, swimming in tears. A rope of snot and saliva swung from her upper lip. He remembered the burst of pain in his head and the ground swinging up to smack him, and a dead weight on his back, a man sitting astride him, forcing his arm up his back. He’d lain there, oddly placid, with his face pressed to the gritty street and the weight on his back until the siren drew closer and gulped to a stop and a pair of black boots filled his line of vision.
Now he watched in the whisky mirror as the burly man shooed the barman away and the thin man shook his head.
Kilgour wiped a hand down his face. The same hand reached for the whisky and then pulled back. He reached into his jacket pocket for his smokes and then changed his mind. The cops watched him. He could see his own face in the gantry mirror, sick and scared, the features obscured by the ‘FIN’ of ‘FINEST SCOTCH WHISKY’. He looked bad, he was sweating, the hair at his temples in damp little spikes.
Then his leg started again, his right leg shaking, the knee joint flexing. He reached out for a drink and his hand knocked the glass, whisky pooling on the sticky bar-top. When he bolted to the Gents he could sense them coming after.
‘Robert Kilgour?’
Piss and carbolic. The bare lightbulb flaring in the scuffed steel of the trough.
‘Kilgour,’ he said. The cop had pronounced it to rhyme with ‘power’: Kilgour rhymed it with ‘poor’.
‘Why did you run?’
The fat cop had backed him up to the trough.
‘Why did you run, Kilgour?’
Kilgour glanced at the other cop, the tall one. He was still looking at the tall one when the fat one kicked his legs from under him and Kilgour slammed on to the dark concrete, his elbow cracking on the floor, the back of his head catching the lip of the trough. Then the fat one reached down and hauled him up like a bag of chaff and dumped him into the trough. Kilgour waggled his arms for balance, his hands paddling in the piss and running water, he felt the cold wet soaking into the arse of his trousers. He struggled to his feet, wiping his hands on the front of his jacket.
‘How did you know it was you we were looking for?’ The tall one had a different voice, softer, not a city accent. Kilgour felt the old injustice welling up again and fought to keep the tremor from his voice.
‘It’s always me. Ever since that lassie on the south side. The Keevins lassie. It’s always me you’re looking for.’
Kilgour’s hand was in his pocket again. The fat one leaned forward and Kilgour flinched but the man gripped Kilgour’s wrist and yanked his hand from his pocket. The cigarette packet flipped out and landed on the tiled floor. The two-tone red stripe: Embassy Filter. The cops exchanged a look.
‘Smile.’
Kilgour looked up, uncertain. His eyes slid to the tall one, Who is this lunatic? and the fat one stepped forward and gripped Kilgour’s jaw in the V of his right hand, thumb and fingers compressing the flesh
. ‘I told you to smile. You fucking nonce. Don’t you know how to smile?’
He released his grip. Kilgour’s lips drew back, exposing his teeth in a queasy sneer. They were ordinary teeth, nicotine-brown, averagely crooked.
‘Good enough.’ The fat one tugged the cuffs from his jacket pocket. ‘Turn round.’
The cuffs went on. As they frogmarched Kilgour through the pub they passed a table of four men, near the door. Dominoes. Boiler-makers. Metal ashtray needing emptied.
‘Hey!’ One of the men was on his feet, a stocky man in a grey suit jacket. Pocked face. Rangers scarf. ‘Hey! What’s the score here? Ah’m talking to you. Hi! Fuckin’ Zed Cars.’
The cops stopped. The fat one nodded for the other to take charge of Kilgour and rocked unhurriedly up to the table. He had two or three inches on the man with the scarf.
‘You’ve got something to say?’
‘The boy done nothin’,’ the man was saying. ‘Mindin’ his own fuckin’ business. You think we didnae see that?’
‘Just like you, eh? Mindin’ your business.’
The man snorted. ‘Fuckin’ police state youse are runnin’.’
The cop stepped back and pointed at Kilgour. ‘You know this guy? Is he a friend of yours?’
Rangers scarf kept his eyes locked on the cop’s. ‘I know he was minding his own fuckin’ business. Till you cunts started.’
‘Uh-huh. OK. The missus kick you out or something? Is that what this is about? You needing a bed for the night?’
The man glowered, said nothing.
There was a whisky and a half-pint of heavy on the table in front of the man with the scarf. The cop leaned forward and tipped the half-pint over, just pushed it with three fingers in an oddly camp gesture. ‘Tsk, would you look at that.’ The liquid spread across the tabletop, spilled over the edge in three ropy columns, spattering the lino. ‘I’ve gone and spilled your drink. That was clumsy.’
‘Bud, leave it.’ The man’s friends were grabbing his sleeves, pulling him back down into his chair. ‘Leave it, Bud. It’s not worth it.’
The cop took up the whisky glass and poured it on to the floor, raising the glass smartly as he poured so that the whisky formed a long golden string that hissed on the lino. He replaced the glass on the table, upside down, his fingertip resting on the base.
‘My advice? And I say this in a spirit of reconciliation and public service. Be like your friend over here. Mind your own fucking business.’
Outside on the pavement, Kilgour found his courage. ‘Youse huckled me for the last one. No remember? You’ve done me already. I’m in the clear.’
The night air was cool on their forehead and cheeks.
‘This time’s different.’ A big hand pushed Kilgour towards the car, the Velox parked on the waste ground. When the hand gripped his shoulder, Kilgour tried to shrug it loose.
‘How’s it different?’
The thin one had the door open and the heavy one bundled him into the car.
‘This time there’s a witness.’
3
‘Sandy’s what she said.’ DCI George Cochrane dragged a chair from a vacant desk and straddled it, crotch splayed. He rubbed two hands up and down his face. ‘Sandy. Fair. Light-coloured. I don’t know how else to say it.’
They were in the Murder Room at the Marine, maps on the wall, boxed statements on the shelves, the sun already burning in the high sash windows. Photos pinned to the board behind Cochrane’s head. The victims’ smiling faces. The victims’ naked bodies.
Jacquilyn Keevins. Ann Ogilvie. Marion Mercer.
‘Flaxen.’ Goldie couldn’t help himself. ‘Straw-coloured, sir. Pale blond.’
Cochrane twisted a finger into the corner of his eye. He gave no indication of having heard Goldie. ‘Jokes you can do.’ He nodded heavily. ‘Acting the clown. Catching killers? That’s the tricky part for you boys, right? The fucking hotshots.’ He stood up sharply and the chair scraped on the floor. ‘Scottish Crime Squad. Fucking Flying Squad. What’s the matter, they don’t teach you how to read witness statements?’ Goldie said nothing. Cochrane tugged his shirt away from his chest, blew down its front. ‘Sandy, she said.’
Goldie shifted in his chair. ‘She said.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘The doormen tell it different, sir. The manager, too. Mid-brown, maybe darker. And the boy and girl, the couple, who came forward after the first one; they had him mid-brown, too.’
‘We’ve been through this, Detective. She’s the witness.’
‘Plus the height. The doormen call it five-eight, nine. Not six foot.’
‘She’s the one shared the taxi with him. She’s the one was in his company for most of the night.’
Goldie cleared his throat. ‘She’s the one too pissed to know her own name. Her own colour of hair.’
Cochrane turned his back, stared at the wall, the map of the city. ‘He says you punched him,’ he said.
‘What’s that, sir?’
Cochrane kept his back to them. ‘Kilgour. Your suspect. The nonce. He says you assaulted him.’ Cochrane turned. ‘What’s Boy Wonder going to say about that, hmm? How’s that gonnae look in his report?’
Goldie shrugged. The question was put to Goldie but it was McCormack who had to answer it.
‘DS Goldie behaved professionally throughout the arrest.’
‘It’s not going into your wee report? When you tell the brass how we’re doing it wrong?’
McCormack said nothing. He figured Cochrane had a right to be aggrieved. He had watched his biggest case, the case that would define him, become a slow-motion nightmare. Three women murdered and still no one charged. Months slipping past, the task getting bigger, not smaller. There were thousands of fair-haired men in this city, tens of thousands, men between twenty-five and thirty-five, men with overlapping teeth. Men who matched the photofit, the artist’s impression. Men who smoked Embassy Filter. But the papers didn’t get any kinder as time went on and the pressure from the brass didn’t slacken. If Cochrane was sore he had every excuse.
The suspect, Kilgour, had been held in the cells overnight. There was a magistrate’s court attached to the Marine and the cells were often busy. They’d given Kilgour a mate, put him in with a fairy they’d lifted on Kelvin Way. Cold white tiles. A shitter with no seat.
They’d arranged a parade for the morning. Nancy Scullion, sister of the third victim, Marion Mercer. At 10 a.m. a squad car picked Nancy up from her work – she was a secretary at Harland and Wolff’s – and took her to the Marine. Ten minutes later she was being driven back to Govan. She’d walked down the line of men, looked at Cochrane and shaken her head. In the foyer, she told Cochrane, ‘You think it’s number four, don’t you? It’s not really like him.’ Kilgour was number four. Kilgour went home. Kilgour was a waste of everyone’s time.
Now Cochrane had his hands behind his head, fingers laced, his teeth bared in a bitter grin. ‘You know what they’re calling us? The fucking papers?’
The two men knew. Everyone knew. But Cochrane told them anyway.
‘The Marine Formation Dance Team.’ Cochrane smiled. ‘Cute, eh? Fucking clever.’
The Quaker Squad had been haunting the city’s dance halls for the past year, brushing up their dance skills, mingling with the punters, looking for the man with the overlapping teeth and the regimental tie, the short fair hair and the desert boots. It was easy to spot the cops: they were the ones watching the men, not the women.
‘I’d say we’ve never seen anything like it, but even that’s not true.’
The two detectives nodded. They knew what Cochrane was talking about. It was Manuel all over again. Another dapper killer. Peter Manuel. Another stain on the city’s name. Ten years back. Cochrane had worked it. Goldie too. McCormack was too young.
‘Happening again, sir, isn’t it?’ Goldie grimaced.
McCormack remembered. He’d been too young to work it but not too young to remember. The crowds outside the High Court d
uring the trial, men and women in their good clothes, wee boys climbing on the High Court railings. He was working in C Div at the time, lodging with Granny Beag in Partick. Manuel was convicted of seven murders, confessed to eight more. They hanged him on 11 July. McCormack’s birthday. Waking up in Granny’s flat, coming through for breakfast, the present on the kitchen table, the radio on, Granny Beag sitting in her quilted dressing-gown and fur-lined slippers, a lit cigarette in the ashtray, they announced it on the radio. Sentence of execution was carried out on Peter Manuel in Barlinnie Prison at one minute past eight this morning. McCormack unwrapping the parcel. His body was buried in an unmarked grave in the prison grounds. A watch, a Rolex Tudor with a leather strap, the watch he still wore.
Cochrane stood up, dragged the chair over to the other desk, rested his hands on its back. ‘Sometimes I think it never stopped.’ He sighed out some smoke. ‘Him down in Manchester. Brady. He’s one of ours, too, God help us. Pollok boy. You got a minute, McCormack?’
‘Sir.’
McCormack followed Cochrane into the narrow office next to the Murder Room. He closed the door behind him.
‘Did he hit him?’
‘Like I said, sir, DS Goldie behaved professionally.’
The Quaker Page 3