He found himself in a district of shabby tenements, shutting out the sun with their high black walls. He walked in their shadows and his mind kept cutting back to the same frame: his palms on the jamb of a doorway, the splayed and naked form, the dark patch at the crotch, the pulped and bloody face.
As if to escape that face he dodged up a darkened close, mounted the sagging stairs. A doorless flat, a hallway. In the main room three figures, sitting cross-legged round a burning brazier, one of them reaching a bottle to his neighbour. The faces turned in the ruddy light. He saw mad eyes, a scurf of white around a chin, the glint of gold from a tooth. One of them putting his palm on to the floor to help him get up.
Paton turned. Back down the stairs, along the street, up another close. Straight to the top this time, another doorless flat, a cave, nothing inside it but walls and floors. Not even floors – the boards had been torn up in the centre of the room. Paton skirted the hole and leant against the far wall, sliding down till he sat on the floor. At some point he took out the Browning and laid it beside him.
He sat there all day. Twice he heard sounds in the closemouth, kids’ voices and running feet, and he gripped the gun but no one climbed the stairs. He waited for darkness, watched the comforting black absence of the doorway. Were the cops on his trail? They would have his prints. He’d touched the doorjamb at Queen Mary Street. Pretty soon they would find his hideout, if they hadn’t already. He’d pulled the door until the Yale lock engaged but they would find the flat, they would break down the door. More prints. His holdall and clothes.
The floor beside him was thick with dust. He traced his name with his finger and then smudged it with his sleeve. Once they matched his prints they would know his name but the photo would be ten years old. He had never let himself be photographed since that mugshot in ’59. But what did photographs matter? The boy had seen his face. So had those people in the Green. They would do an artist’s impression, an identikit maybe. His face would spring up all over the city. And his hands, those fucking swifts on his hands: they wouldn’t need a photo if they knew about those.
The thing to do was get out of the city. He thought of the toolbox wedged in the roofspace. They would find it or they wouldn’t, there was no point in fretting. He would come back and get it when it all died down.
He shifted his position and settled down to wait it out. It was between midnight and dawn, when time seeps imperceptibly, like a gas. At one point a bottle broke softly in the next street or the next again and then there was nothing, just the hard floor and the luminous paint on his watch showing how slowly a night could pass.
As the dawn brought the contours of the room into view he thought of the snooker hall on the Garscube Road. His father used to take him there when Paton was twelve or thirteen. Away from the planes of bright green baize beneath the curtained oblong lights, the hall was a valley of shadows. You haven’t a prayer, son. The words his father spoke when the reds split nicely at the Imperial and he started on a clearance came back to him now. You haven’t a prayer. For the first time he felt their literal sense. There was no one he could turn to now. Nobody would help him. Everyone’s hands would be raised against the Quaker.
In the morning he pissed in the corner of the room and stole down the sagging stairs. He walked into town along the Trongate. He felt his head glow, his tell-tale fair hair flaring like a torch, a struck match. Here’s the culprit, folks, the man you’ve all been waiting for, the poster boy for multiple murder. Call a polis, get him huckled.
He moved quickly, not running, keeping close to the wall, head down, lighting a smoke.
At Black’s on St Vincent Street he bought a ‘Safari’ frame tent and a Primus stove and a quilted canvas sleeping bag and a rucksack to put them all in. He bought moleskin trousers and a blue cagoule and a bobble hat and hiking boots. Two pairs of socks. In the gents toilet at Queen Street Station he rolled up his suit and squashed it into a plastic bag along with his shoes. When he stepped out on to Buchanan Street he was a hiker striking out for the hills. At the corner of Hope Street and Bothwell Street he wedged the plastic bag into a litter bin.
At a grocer’s on St Vincent Street he bought packets and tins. Biscuits. Oatcakes. Bars of chocolate. Sardines and crackers. A Melton Mowbray pork pie. Two big bottles of oatmeal stout. He stowed it all in the rucksack. He bought a pair of sunglasses in Boots the Chemist and caught the bus for Maryhill. On Maryhill Road he changed buses. He worried that someone he knew, one of the old Maryhill crew, might spot him, but the reflection he caught in a butcher’s window – hat, glasses, week-old beard – was like no one he’d ever seen. The bus took him to Milngavie and he walked out on the Drymen road, heading for the far blue hump of Dumgoyne.
It was after four when Paton reached Balmaha, on the shores of Loch Lomond. He crunched across the shingle, the sun warming his scalp. His shadow, broad as a tombstone with the pack on his back, slid over the blue-grey stones. His eyes picked out the flat thin stones, the skimmers, and filed them away for future use, another and then another until his head filled up with stones and he shrugged out of his pack, let it fall where he stood, and dropped to his haunches to gather them up, flat and round-edged and smooth and dry. He filled his pockets. At the water’s edge he hooked his index finger round a stone, drew back his arm and whipped it smartly at the loch. It hit the water and kicked up once, twice, little spurts of foam, before the hits speeded up and petered out. He chose another stone. A few more skimmed stones and the city and the cops, the corpse, the Quaker, the toolbox in the roofspace, all of it fell away. As if you could leave it all behind, wish it all away.
A sharp mashing sound behind him: Paton turned his head. A man was making towards him down the shingle beach. Paton watched him come.
‘Fine day.’ The man was fiftyish, fat. He stood with his hands on his hips, nodding. Paton glanced back at the rucksack, where his bobble hat was sticking out of a side pocket.
‘Let’s hope it lasts.’ Paton’s hands had found their way into his pockets.
‘You’ll be at the fishing?’
Paton hesitated. There was no rod in his rucksack but fishing was plausible, fishing was a pretext.
‘Well, could be. Maybe.’
‘Relax, son. It’s perfectly legal. You’ll get a permit at the hotel. Best to get one, though – it saves any confusion.’
‘I’ll do that. Thanks.’
The man nodded. He clicked his tongue and thrust out his hand as if he’d forgotten what he came for. ‘Spencer Gilchrist. I run the shop in the village.’
His handshake was firm and dry. Paton didn’t give a name. There was a folded newspaper sticking out of the man’s pocket and he saw Paton notice it.
‘D’you want a look at the paper? I’ve finished with it. Here—’
‘No!’ Paton smiled miserably. ‘I mean: no, thanks. I try to avoid the news when I’m on holiday. Get away from it all.’
He had the feeling that if the man drew his paper from his pocket they would both see Paton’s face reproduced beneath a headline and the whole bright day would shudder to a halt.
The man shifted his feet, poking the stones with his stick.
‘You’ll be up from Glasgow?’
‘Actually, London.’
Shit, Paton thought. Why add London to the mix? Keep it simple.
‘London, now? Is that right?’
Paton caught the man’s frown and his own mouth split in a gormless grin. ‘I mean, Glasgow, yes. Originally. But I live down south now.’
‘Just up for a wee break?’
‘That’s the idea.’
‘Well,’ the man whacked the ground twice with his stick. ‘You’ve brought the weather. I’ll leave you to it. The hotel’s up yonder, past the kirk.’
The man tipped a finger to his forehead in a jaunty salute and crunched back up the beach. Paton let out a breath. He emptied his pockets, the stones spattering on to the beach and bent to pull his beanie from the rucksack.
Now he
sat outside his tent in the shadow of Conic Hill, watching the stew bubble and sputter. He could hear a guitar from down at the lochside, laughter, a girl’s high pure voice, singing. He had gotten away with it, he thought, the encounter with the busybody, Gilchrist, but he wished that he’d been wearing the hat. He would wear it at all times, now. He thought of the gun at the bottom of his pack, folded into a pair of woollen socks. The food was ready and he ate it straight from the pot.
The Tribune lay beside him on a rock. He’d bought a copy in the village shop, nervous in case Gilchrist came in and caught him. There were copies of the Record, the Express and the Scotsman on the counter and he would have bought these too if it hadn’t seemed suspicious.
Though the headline – QUAKER KILLS ANOTHER – was huge, the report in the Trib was frustratingly short. The victim was unidentified. A man seen leaving the scene on Sunday morning was described as six feet tall, red-haired, weighing around twelve stone, dressed in a dark suit that was either blue or black. Paton himself was five feet ten, blond, and ten stone two. The suit he’d left in the Glasgow litter-bin was charcoal grey. It ought to have cheered him but the inaccuracy troubled him, as though it was some kind of trap. The report also mentioned the suspect’s ‘light beard’. Maybe the village shop sold disposable razors.
The paper also carried the new artist’s impression of the Quaker, though the officer in charge of the investigation – Detective Chief Inspector George Cochrane – had declined as yet to confirm this as a Quaker killing.
Paton put the pot aside and lit a cigarette. The sick feeling, the hard tight ball in his chest, had nothing to do with Gilchrist’s paper. It had nothing to do with the violence he had seen, the viciousness inflicted on the poor woman. What troubled him now was just the coincidence. There were all these derelict tenements in the city, a city of a million people. And the Quaker kills someone in the building where Paton is hiding? It couldn’t be a coincidence. But how could it be anything else?
Paton lifted the pot and walked over to kneel beside the burn. He sloshed out the pot, scouring it with a sprig of heather and filled it with water. When the tea was brewed he looked through the paper again – maybe he’d missed something on the Glendinnings job – but nothing jumped out. The tea in the new steel mug had a harsh salty taste. He was reaching over to slosh it out on the bracken when a thought stayed his hand. The shock brought him to his feet and made him stand in his socks with the half-filled mug in his hand. He’d missed the meet! He’d been due to meet with Dazzle and the others at exactly – he looked at his watch, twisting his wrist to catch the last of the light and spilling some of the tea on his socks – two hours ago in the lounge bar of the Lord Darnley. They’d be sitting there now, gathered round the table, getting drunk and nasty. Cursing him out. Maybe Dazzle would speak up for him, give him the benefit of the doubt. Cursiter, he knew, would be bitter against him, urging them to hunt him down. McGlashan would get involved. McGlashan’s crew would be after him now, as well as the cops.
He paced around on the spot. He could phone Dazzle tomorrow. There was a payphone in the bar of the hotel. He would explain about the body, how he’d left the flat in a panic. Maybe they’d seen it in the paper, the murder, put two and two together. Maybe he could get Dazzle to speak to McGlashan. Maybe – actually, fuck maybe. He tossed the dregs of the tea and bumped back down on to the ground, flopped right back with his hands behind his head. Why phone at all? Why not keep it all for himself? He laughed out loud, staring up at the nameless stars. It was he who’d busted the jewels out of the Glendinnings safe. It was he who’d stashed them, he who’d have to get them back. Even if they got their hands on their share, Dazzle and the others would only waste it, kicking upstairs to a wanker like Glash. Fuck them all. They want to come after him? Let them come.
The light breeze had dropped and suddenly there was an indoors feeling on the hillside. Looking down on the loch in the failing light he felt for a moment that he was back in the Gorbals flat. The packed earth was the wooden boards and the hole in the floor was the darkened loch. Something was missing, though, and he rooted in the rucksack till he found the balled woollen socks and fumbled them till a dark object thudded on to the ground. He closed his fingers on the gun. The whole thing – the grip and the snub-nosed barrel – almost fitted into one splayed hand. He hefted the Browning and pointed it downhill towards the yellow lights of the village. He made a soft explosion with his lips and let the barrel kick up in his fist.
24
And after all the bad blood and suspicion and the near-miss of a stand-up fight in the Murder Room, it was Goldie – out of all of them – who came to McCormack’s aid. It was Goldie who told Cochrane he was happy to go on partnering McCormack and who took McCormack’s part with the squad in the Marine. McCormack was as baffled as anyone by Goldie’s change of heart. Maybe it was belated gratitude for McCormack’s support during the Kilgour episode. Or maybe Goldie figured that McCormack was their best shot at cracking the case now that a new death had thrown them a lifeline. McCormack never asked and Goldie never told. They just got on with working the case.
Tuesday evening. McCormack and Goldie strolling down the sunny side of Buccleuch Street, looking at the numbers.
The locket had appeared on that morning’s front pages and calls had begun to come in. There was the usual number of cranks. Some of the callers wanted to claim it as their own. It was explained to them that, by doing so, they were placing themselves at a murder scene. At that point their interest tended to flag.
Two calls, however, seemed worth the legwork, and this was one of them. Denise Redburn, thirty-three, cocktail waitress at a riverside casino. She’d called in to say that she recognized the locket. Her colleague, Helen Thaney, had worn one exactly like it for the past few weeks – a gift, apparently, from a new boyfriend. Helen had missed her last three shifts at the casino and no one had seen her since early last week.
The detective who took the call asked about distinguishing marks. No marks, said Denise Redburn, but a few weeks back Helen had dyed her hair. Blond.
‘Here we are.’
One-four-five was a well-kept four-storey tenement. Little railed garden out front. Flight of steps up to a bright red door. White-tiled hallway. Redburn’s flat was on the top floor. Of course it was. Goldie flapped the letter box, mopping the back of his neck, and McCormack held his warrant card ready.
Denise Redburn was dressed for her shift. Black waistcoat, white blouse, floppy black riverboat gambler’s tie, black pencil skirt over sheer stockings. The fluffy pink slippers, McCormack surmised, were not regulation.
She invited them through to a living room that smelled of incense sticks and menthol cigarettes.
‘Yep. That’s it.’
Goldie had produced a laminated photo of the locket.
‘She got it last month,’ Denise said. ‘Wore it every day since.’
She held the photograph in both hands, shaking her head. She sat down, still gripping the photo. ‘I knew something wasn’t right. I had a bad feeling. But the Quaker? Jesus.’ She shook her head again.
McCormack fished his notebook from his inside pocket. ‘But you didn’t call the police, report her missing?’
‘She’d missed shifts before. Actually, she’d been doing it a lot lately. Maybe not three in a row but, I don’t know. I figured it’s the new boyfriend. Maybe they’re getting married, she doesn’t need the job any more.’
‘Married? They were serious, then?’
‘Well, she was getting on, wasn’t she? I mean it was now or never.’
McCormack’s glance strayed to Denise’s own hand. She shook her head. ‘Oh, that ship’s sailed, Inspector. Anyway, when I saw her last Monday she said she was going to the dancing at the weekend. Saturday night. Wanted me to come. She was giving the boyfriend the night off.’
‘She went dancing on Saturday? Whereabouts?’
‘The Barrowland,’ Denise said. ‘At least, that was the plan. I told her I’d let
her know. Turns out I had a date on Saturday. I was planning to tell her on Friday but she never turned up for her shift.’
‘And you never went?’
Denise pouted, a sad little moue. ‘Maybe if I’d gone she’d still be here. But then, maybe I’d have got it instead. Maybe he’d have taken me.’
McCormack finished what he was writing, pointed the pen at Denise. ‘What was his name, then?’
‘The boyfriend? That would be a state secret. She kept it all very hush-hush.’
‘Maybe he was married already.’
She smiled. ‘Oh now. Let’s not always think the worst of people.’
‘And you never met him?’
A little flicker of the lids before she sparked up the menthol ciggie. ‘No.’
‘How about you tell me the truth, Denise?’
The pink lips pursed in a smile. ‘Or what? Youse’ll take me down the station? I am telling the truth. I never met him. Not met, not properly.’
‘Not properly. What does that mean?’
She shifted in the chair, tucked her legs up underneath her, tugged her skirt down. ‘It means I was in Helen’s flat once and he was there. But I never met him. He was in the bedroom. Sleeping it off, I suppose.’
‘This was when?’
She blew smoke at the ceiling. ‘Three weeks ago? Four? I’m not sure.’
‘Was this a social call? You’d arranged to meet?’
‘No.’ Denise tapped her cigarette on the standing ashtray. She looked up, met McCormack’s eyes, the full glare. ‘I was borrowing money, OK? That’s what I was doing. If you’re short before payday you can generally get by on, you know, tips. But I’d had a cold that week, I’d missed a couple of shifts. Helen was cool about it, I’d done the same for her often enough.’
‘You ring the buzzer,’ Goldie said. ‘Helen answers.’
Denise looked at him for a beat, shook her head. Then she sighed, clamped her hand on her ankle, tugged her legs further under her. ‘Helen answers. I thought it wasn’t her at first, cause she’d dyed her hair. Bottle blond. Anyway. We go in. Well: at first, she doesnae want to let me in. I tell her I’m not telling the whole fucking close my business, so she lets me in. But she’s nervous, telling me to keep my voice down.’
The Quaker Page 17