The climb was getting steeper. The hillside was covered with bracken and the fronds brushed his thighs as he climbed. There was a nice pain in his thighs and his calves from yesterday’s walk but he knew that he would work this off. He wasn’t tired. The sun threw his shadow on the bracken ahead of him and it seemed as though the shadow was leading the way. As long as the shadow kept moving then Paton could follow.
He stopped at one point and looked back down the hill, surprised at how far he’d come. The bracken seemed to spring back into place as soon as you passed and his progress up the hillside had left no trace. It was waist-high, the bracken. If he sat down now he would disappear.
On the summit of Conic Hill he shrugged out of his rucksack. He finished the burn water, tipping the last drops over his head. The sky was a clear milky blue. To the south he could see the Campsies and the Kilpatrick Hills and the faint, grey tower-blocks of Glasgow. Westward was the loch and the islands, the low blue bulk of Arran. Further north the three peaks of the Cobbler and the purple shoulder of Ben Lomond.
He looked again at the islands on the loch. Could you steal a boat and hide out on one of these brown and green puddles of land? But the boat would be missed and the smoke of a fire might be seen from the shore. And an island would be a rat-trap if the polis landed on it. Better to keep pushing north, up the eastern shore of the loch. Hold to the high ground; avoid the busier shoreline road.
His knees juddered as he tramped downhill. The land lay all before him, half of Scotland it looked like, spread out like a map and he himself the only moving object. How could they catch him here? Even a plane or a helicopter would be useless if he simply lay down in the ferns. Unless they came with dogs. The thought stayed his leg and he paused for half a minute. They could track him with dogs. Scenes from a dozen convict movies sprang to mind. A pack of straining hounds slipping the leash and pelting into the distance; and a wide-eyed, leaden-legged convict scrambling hopelessly through a muddy forest. Paton hitched his pack and quickened his pace.
He was halfway down the hill when he heard a noise. He stopped. Was it someone at his heels? An odd whispered sound. He moved forward a few paces and stopped again. Then a pheasant rose up in front of him and he thrashed through the bracken. It was a burn. Shallow and barely broader than a road but big enough to mask his scent once he crossed it. He splashed into the burn and was making for the far bank when he pulled up short. If they tracked him to this point they would just need to cross the burn to pick up the trail on the other side. He should choose one direction, uphill or down, and walk in the water for a while to throw them off.
He turned uphill, splashing through the shallows, the stones shifting and sliding under his boots. His feet were wet but the cold water was pleasant in the heat. He could feel his socks squeaking when he flexed his toes. After another ten minutes he needed a rest. In the pack there were two bottles of stout that Paton had bought from the Balmaha shop. He stepped on to the far bank and found the bottles and wedged them in the water with four or five stones to hold them in place. The current split whitely round the curved brown glass and the canted necks of the bottles looked like the prows of tiny ships.
Sitting on the bank he picked the wet bootlaces loose and worked the boots off and set them on a rock in the sun with their laces spread loose and their tongues pulled out. He wrung out his socks and set them beside the boots and sat with his arms resting on bent knees and the breeze playing coolly on his feet.
He smoked a cigarette. After a while he reached down for one of the bottles and clamped his palm on its belly to check for coldness. Then he rooted in his rucksack for the knife and found the bottle-opener. When he prised off the cap the beer foamed up out of the bottle and spilled down over his fingers. He sucked the beer from his fingers and wiped them on the grass and took a long pull from the bottle.
The beer fizzed in his nose and he spluttered and then the splutter turned into a laugh. He was happy, he suddenly realized. Here, on a bare hillside with wet feet and sore legs, with the police forces of several counties on his tail, he was happier than he’d been in months. He could have burst into song. He drained the bottle and drank the other and stowed the empties in the bracken. He felt rejuvenated. He felt as if he could walk for miles.
The pack was lighter without the bottles. Traversing the flank of the hill with the lochside in view down to his left, he broke into a slow jog. Would he have shot him? Would he have shot that fat tub of lard, Spencer Gilchrist? He was glad it hadn’t come to that. It might still happen, further down the line, but not now, not yet. Maybe it was like cracking safes. Sometimes you nudged and twirled and listened, it was a question of clicks and delicate adjustments. And sometimes you blew it to fuck. Gelignite was the clincher. Use it sparingly and only when needed. You got results but you lost some control. He needed to keep what control he still had. You did that by keeping out of sight.
He was above Ross Point by now, where the loch narrows and deepens. They said the loch was six hundred feet deep here. He thought about the darkness down there. The eels swirling in the black icy depths.
He took a shit in the trees and wiped himself with docken leaves and washed his hands in the burn, scouring his fingers with gravel.
It was getting too dark to walk without stumbling. Soon it would be too dark to find a proper camp. He moved along the ridge, found a space beneath an outcrop of rock, an oval clearing, broad enough to pitch the tent. He worked quickly, dragging the inside of his boot across the ground to smooth it down, howking out a couple of stones, spreading the tent, tamping the pegs with a tin of baked beans. He hung his pack on the branch of a tree.
He would risk a fire. It was almost pitch-dark now, the waters holding the last pale light from the gleam above the Arrochar Hills, but he gathered twigs and sticks from under nearby trees and used the saw-blade of his Swiss Army knife on the low-lying branches and soon a good-sized blaze was crackling and smoking near the entrance to the tent. He took the can of beans he’d used to tamp the pegs with and opened it and tipped it into the pot and crumbled some oatcakes into the pot and warmed it up on the open flame. It tasted good and before he knew it his spoon was clattering on the sides of the pot and he wished he’d had some bread to swab up the sauce. He picked his way over to the burn, holding the pot like a tomahawk.
When the pot was cleaned he stowed it in the pack and threw some damp grass on the dwindling fire and crawled into the tent. He wrestled out of his boots and shuffled into the sleeping bag. He was using a couple of folded shirts for a pillow. When he closed his eyes the face of Bobby Stokes came into his mind as if Stokes had poked his head inside the tent.
It was Stokes who’d set him up. Paton sat up in the tent and fumbled for his cigarettes. Stokes was the one. Stokes set him up with the safe house. Stokes knew where he would be. It had to be Stokes. Otherwise it was all just coincidence, magic, the Quaker choosing the building out of shitty bad luck. That kind of luck was never just luck. So what did it mean? Paton sucked on the cigarette. Did Stokes know the Quaker? Was Stokes the Quaker? It made him cold to think of Stokes – smiling, gormless, Bobby Stokes – stalking women through the dance halls, taking their elbows, walking them into the night.
He got out of the tent for a piss. He stood in his bare feet, his water spattering on the grass. Off in the distance was the sodium glow above Glasgow, the low, black, smouldering city. He’d have to find Bobby Stokes. Find Bobby Stokes and not get found himself. Tomorrow would be soon enough. Tomorrow he would make his way back.
28
‘Thirteenth May.’ Goldie kept repeating the date. ‘So how the fuck did you come up with that?’
‘It was staring me in the face. Literally. I was looking at the date in big stone letters on the side of the monument. It just struck me.’
They were in McCormack’s flat, sinking some tinnies after another twelve-hour shift at the Marine. All day the Marine had been buzzing. The news broke that morning that Paton had been sighted. A shopkeeper in
Balmaha had recognized him. He’d been camping on the shores of Loch Lomond. Half of the force was up there now. Dogs, frogmen, chopper, the works. Everyone at the Marine walking round with these quiet little smiles. The scent of imminent triumph in the air.
Meanwhile McCormack was explaining his theory to Goldie.
‘So that’s Victim One. Found in Carmichael Place in Battlefield on the four hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Langside.’ McCormack tapped the map. He had a dog-eared street map of Glasgow spread open on his kitchen table, weighted at the edges with an ashtray, a sugar bowl and two cans of Pale Ale. ‘That’s the battle that gives its name to the district. Victim Two: Mackeith Street in Bridgeton.’
‘What’s Mackeith Street named after?’ Goldie swigged from a third can of ale.
‘You mean what’s Bridgeton named after? After the battle, when everything’s lost and Mary’s getting chased for her life, she stops off at Bridgeton.’
McCormack had read it in the biography. Mary watched the Battle of Langside from a hill overlooking the field. When she saw her men routed by Moray’s smaller force she spurred her horse and fled with an escort of loyal troops. She was heading south but stopped for some food and fresh water at Bridgeton before crossing the Clyde.
‘She’s a Catholic and she stops off at Bridgeton?’ Goldie snorted. ‘Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, was she?’
‘It was just a fishing village then.’ McCormack’s tone had hardened, quashing Goldie’s raillery. ‘But the key thing it had was the bridge. She was heading south for England, so she crossed the Clyde at Bridgeton.’
He could picture it, the party clattering up to the crossing, the tall queen on the snorting horse, her rich silks and stuffs, the men casting backward glances, wary of pursuers. Later they would burn a bridge after they’d crossed it, down by Dumfries, to thwart the Regent’s men. Here, though, they simply passed over, hooves drumming on the timber, heading pell-mell for England, for Elizabeth, the poor cell in Fotheringhay, the block, the blade, the head tumbling into a wicker basket.
‘Hold on.’ Goldie’s raised index finger stopped the course of Scottish history. ‘Hold on a jiffy. She’s already on the south side. Langside’s south of the river.’
‘OK, Sherlock. She flees north from the battlefield to escape Moray’s forces. But she’s heading for England so she has to recross the river later on. Happy?’
‘That’s two,’ Goldie said. ‘What about three? What about Marion Mercer?’
McCormack nodded, conning the map like a field marshal. He slid a finger to the west. ‘Earl Street, Scotstoun. Any number of earls come into the story. Darnley. Moray.’
Goldie frowned. ‘Jesus, it’s a bit thin, isn’t it?’ He crumpled his empty tinnie and pumped his fist when the tinnie landed in McCormack’s bin, eight feet away on the other side of the room. The south-east corner of the map sprung back as Goldie lifted the second-last can of beer and cracked it open. The ring-pull lay on the map where he tossed it, a curling metal tongue.
‘OK. I know. But then, this new one. Number four. It’s as if he’s spelling it out for us. You’re too thick to spot it with the first three, so here it is in so many words.’
‘Queen Mary Street. Right. But I still don’t get what you’re saying. What does this mean?’
‘I’m not sure what it means. But for sixteen months we’ve been struggling to see a connection between the pins on the map. Maybe this is it.’
‘But Mary Queen of Scots? The fuck do we do with that? There’s choppers scanning the hillsides for a fugitive and we’re having a history lesson?’
‘There’s choppers scanning the hillsides for a peterman. Not a killer. Not the fucking Quaker.’
‘So where is the Quaker?’
‘That’s down to us. They’re not even looking for the Quaker.’ McCormack slapped the map. ‘This is what the fuck we do with it. This is how we find him.’
Goldie shook his head, frowning at the tattered map. ‘And Helen Thaney, what about her? Did you find the friend, the one she fell out with? What’s-her-face?’
‘Carol Strachan. Yeah, I did. I saw her last night. Turns out she lives round the corner. Partickhill Road.’
‘So what was the fight about?’
‘Men.’ McCormack drained his own can of beer, crumpled it between his palms, tossed the flattened disc on the table. ‘She said she and Helen had a thing going. With the big spenders.’
‘Whoring?’
McCormack made the seesaw gesture with his outstretched hand. ‘Not exactly. More a kind of informal arrangement. If a punter was tipping you big enough, you’d maybe think about joining him when your shift finished. She said she and Helen were a team. Worked the same shifts, paired up to snare the high rollers.’
‘So what happened?’
‘She says Helen got greedy. Says she wanted what was hers and what was Carol’s and everyone else’s in between.’
Goldie snorted. ‘You mean she was better looking than Carol and Carol couldnae compete.’
‘Maybe. I don’t know. I think Carol knew she was the consolation prize. I don’t think it bothered her. It all worked out fine until Helen got carried away. She wanted all the good ones for herself. At least she did until the new boyfriend came on the scene.’
‘Right. The bloke with the Prince of Wales jacket. Does Carol know who he was?’
‘If she does, she’s not saying.’
Not saying seemed to be the way of it, McCormack reflected, so far as Helen Thaney was concerned. The Quaker Squad had been digging into her background but there wasn’t much background to dig. She had no family to speak of. She grew up in the Irish Republic, got into trouble with a boy in her teens. She’d been taken into care, some kind of church-run institution in Waterford, and then came to Scotland to start a new life.
Goldie sipped his beer. He plucked a Mayfair from his packet and jabbed it at McCormack like a dart. ‘If the boyfriend was so serious, what was she doing at the Barrowland?’
McCormack nodded. ‘And why was she putting it about so bloody blatantly?’
‘She was cutting loose for the night? Slipping back into her old routine?’
‘I don’t think so. It was more than that. She was making sure she was noticed. Dancing with five or six guys, scrapping with somebody’s bird. It’s too calculated. She wanted everyone to remember she’d been there that night.’
‘Why, though?’
‘That’s the question.’ McCormack reached for the last can of beer and the map curled back on itself. ‘Did she maybe know she was in danger? Was she trying to send out some sort of signal?’
Goldie yawned, stretching extravagantly, and swept both hands through his shaggy blond hair. He studied the landscape of crumpled tinnies and heaped ashtrays on McCormack’s kitchen table. ‘Well, I know what signal that’s sending. Get your arse home to bed, Goldie boy.’
He hauled to his feet and wrestled into his jacket. He stood nodding solemnly at McCormack for a minute, swaying under the kitchen’s bare bulb. Then he drew McCormack clumsily to him and clapped him on the back with his big soft paw and headed off to find a taxi on Dumbarton Road.
29
Bobby Stokes caught the barman’s eyes and signalled for another Grouse. When the whisky arrived he ordered a chaser of beer to go with it. The beer tasted sour and he tipped the whisky into it. Now it tasted worse. He drank it down in three convulsive gulps. His drinking was getting out of hand. Since the Glendinnings thing, he’d been putting it away like a man with hollow legs. Since Paton had missed the meet. Since Paton had gone AWOL. Dazzle was taking it badly but, Jesus, McGlashan was another thing again. You’d have thought Glash had done the job himself. He needed his taste, he’d told Dazzle. Fifteen grand. They had a week to front up. Find Paton or start paying.
Stokes signalled for another whisky and tried to wipe the memory of McGlashan’s light blue eyes. Not half an hour before, McGlashan had swept into the pub with two lieutenants who took up their stance a
t the bar while the boss slid into a booth opposite Dazzle and Cursiter. Stokes took a stool at the end of the booth. Dazzle launched into his spiel, his hands dancing like puppets as he assured McGlashan that Paton would be found, the stones recovered, the money paid, the earth returned to its axis. McGlashan never spoke. He sat straight-backed, his slabbed hands loosely folded on the table, a thick gold wedding-band sunk in the flesh below one knuckle. His black hair was longish, carefully cut. Between his bulldog jowls a girlish lip, plump and pinkish, protruded in a slight frown. Blue eyes, pale and raw-looking, never strayed from Dazzle’s face.
There was a tumbler of malt on the tabletop in front of him but he left it untouched. When Dazzle’s excuses petered out, McGlashan leaned forward slightly, the light catching the nap on the shoulders of his lightweight suit, grey with a light blue check. His low, unhurried voice set out what would happen. One week. Fifteen grand. Then he turned with a lifted finger and one of his men crossed with the water jug. McGlashan tipped a splash of water into the whisky, swirled it for a minute and threw it back. Everyone stood as the boss slid out of the booth, buttoning his jacket as he made for the door.
Stokes finished his drink. McGlashan was bad enough. And now this: Paton’s face on the front of the Record. Paton as the Quaker. It made no fucking sense.
No one knew what to believe. He looked down the bar to where Dazzle and Cursiter huddled in their booth, hunched like two witches over their brews.
He needed air. Outside it was mild, a fine August night. Pale yellow sky. Something hopeful in the breeze that rocked a dented tin can in the gutter. He strolled to the end of the block and turned the corner. He’d gone about ten yards when a man stepped out of a doorway as he passed.
‘Jesus! Paton! You frightened the shit out of me. The fuck happened to you?’
‘You’ve got a guilty conscience, Bobby.’ Paton stepped back in the shadows. ‘Anyone would think you weren’t happy to see me.’
The Quaker Page 20