The Quaker

by Liam McIlvanney

  ‘You do?’ McCormack’s raised eyebrows posed the question: How do you run a car on the salary of a Corporation housing officer?

  ‘It’s a bit of banger, really,’ Bickett said, touching his goatee beard. ‘Just a runaround.’

  He was a slim man in a brown suit. White shirt. Paisley pattern tie. His hair was longish, fair, expensively cut. There was a little glinting pin on his lapel: silver, two curved intersecting lines: a stylized fish.

  ‘What model?’

  ‘The car? It’s a Fiat 1300.’

  ‘Nice car. Reliable?’

  ‘It’s not bad.’

  ‘How long have you had it, sir? The Fiat?’

  ‘Well now. I suppose. It must be …’ Bickett crossed his legs and stared up at the ceiling. He seemed to be struggling with a tremendously complex calculation. ‘A year?’ he said finally. ‘Something like that?’ He flinched a bit and grimaced, like a quiz-show contestant waiting to hear if his answer was correct.

  ‘And before that?’ McCormack asked brightly.

  ‘You mean …’

  ‘I mean, what kind of car did you drive before the Fiat, Mr Bickett?’

  ‘Oh. I see. It was, yeah, it was a Volvo.’

  ‘Colour?’

  ‘Red.’

  ‘Do you recall the registration number?’

  ‘The registration of the Volvo?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘No, Inspector. I’m afraid I don’t. It’s like old telephone numbers, eh?’ Bickett’s laugh was stillborn.

  McCormack could reel off the telephone number of every place he’d lived, but he nodded politely. ‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘A year’s a long time. You’ve been very helpful, Mr Bickett. We may be back in touch. In fact, we probably will.’

  McCormack started leafing through the papers on his desk.

  ‘That’s it?’ Bickett had his hands on his thighs, ready to lever himself out of the chair.

  McCormack watched the man’s smile falter. He let the silence build. ‘Why? Was there something in particular you wanted to tell us, Mr Bickett?’

  ‘No. I just. I thought you might tell us, you know, what it’s about. The, uh, case.’

  ‘Murder.’ Goldie leaned sharply forward at this point, glaring into Bickett’s face. ‘This is a murder inquiry, sir.’

  ‘Right.’ Bickett nodded uncertainly. Goldie’s flat Glasgow voice sounded menacing after McCormack’s soft Argyllshire.

  ‘In fact it’s three murders.’ Goldie told them off, a thumb and two fingers: ‘Jacquilyn Keevins. Ann Ogilvie. Marion Mercer. Three women.’

  ‘Isn’t that …?’

  ‘The Quaker? Aye. It is.’

  ‘But you’ve got him? Didn’t you get him? The guy from down south? Whatsisname, Paton?’

  McCormack put a hand on Goldie’s arm and Goldie slumped back. ‘We do have someone helping with inquiries, sir,’ McCormack told Bickett. ‘As you and others have been doing. The inquiry is ongoing.’

  ‘And you think that someone in here …?’

  ‘It’s a line of inquiry, sir. Do you recall any of these names in your professional capacity? Maybe one of these women applied for a house?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’ Bickett’s eyes were flicking back and forth, his smile visibly sickening. ‘I mean, maybe they did. I can’t be sure, but I don’t remember them.’

  ‘That’s all right, sir. As I say, we’ll be back in touch. Thank you for your time, Mr Bickett.’

  The chair scraped and Bickett hauled himself to his feet and waded blindly for the door.

  ‘And Mr Bickett?’ McCormack glanced up from his papers with a tight smile. ‘Like they say in the movies: don’t leave town.’

  The door closed with the softest of clicks.

  McCormack checked his watch; they had ten minutes till the next employee was due. He stretched noisily and stood, strolled over to lean his hands on the windowsill, forehead on the glass, watching the trucks and diggers down below, moving around at Charing Cross, working on the half-built motorway. People with a plan, people who knew what they were doing. He spoke with his back to Goldie.

  ‘What’s your thoughts, then?’

  ‘Thoughts? Jesus Christ. It’s the poster come to life. Man’s a walking artist’s impression.’

  ‘There’s a resemblance, certainly.’

  ‘It’s fucking him. Did you see the lapel badge? The wee fish? It’s a Christian thing.’

  ‘I know.’ McCormack turned. ‘We’ll need more bodies – someone to go through the records here, looking for the women. I’ll see Flett about it. When we finish up here, you get on to the DVLC, get details of his previous cars, back to ’67.’

  ‘You know it’s him, don’t you?’

  45

  ‘Boyfriends?’

  She said the word as if checking that she’d heard it correctly, or as if her pronunciation might be at fault.

  ‘Boyfriends? She’s twenty-nine years old. Was twenty-nine. I’m not their mother. I’m not their priest.’

  ‘I understand that, Mrs Haddow. It’s just that, you know, you own the building. You live in the building. Maybe you noticed if Helen Thaney had a regular visitor. What he looked like. Maybe you heard his voice. That’s all. It’s a simple question.’

  She nodded, slowly, with her eyebrows raised and a tight appraising frown, to let him see how wrong he was. ‘There are twenty people in this building,’ she said. ‘You think I keep track of their coming and goings? Their guests and their … what have you? You think that’s simple? You think I log them in and out?’

  ‘No, I don’t think that,’ McCormack said. They were in the sitting room of Mrs Haddow’s ground-floor flat in a tenement block in Dennistoun. Polished brass fire-set. China dogs on the mantel. McCormack slapped his palms on his knees to get some kind of grip on the situation. ‘I don’t think that at all. I do think that you might start answering my questions, though. I think maybe that would be a good idea.’

  ‘Why?’ Mrs Haddow looked at him evenly. ‘What good can it do? The woman’s dead. The man who killed her’s in jail, God rot him. Waiting for what’s coming to him. What good can answering questions do? You want to dig dirt about boyfriends? What’s wrong with you? The woman’s dead.’

  The rasping sound was McCormack breathing out through his nose. He spread his hands and tried again. ‘Mrs Haddow. Here’s the thing. The man who did the others. We don’t think he did – we don’t think he murdered Helen.’

  Mrs Haddow looked pityingly at him. ‘She was strangled with her tights. Raped and murdered. Dumped in a derelict building.’

  ‘Nevertheless.’

  ‘You mean it’s like a copycat?’

  ‘Mrs Haddow.’ McCormack stood up now, buttoning his jacket. ‘How about we leave the questions to me? I’d like to see Helen’s flat, please.’

  ‘I suppose you’ve got a warrant?’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ McCormack had his hat in his hand; he shook it at the woman. ‘She’s dead, for Christ’s sake! Helen’s dead! I’m trying to find the man who killed her. You don’t want to help?’

  Mrs Haddow’s face was the face of a martyred saint. Wordlessly, she went to the sideboard, drew out a bunch of keys that she plunged into the pocket of her cardigan. She marched to the door and held it open.

  He followed her indignant hams up the stone stairs to the landing on the first floor.

  ‘Wait here, please!’

  Mrs Haddow disappeared briefly into the flat, then the door opened again. ‘You may come in. I’ve kept it as she left it. Please don’t disturb her things.’

  The room was reasonably disturbed already. Clothes were piled on an armchair in the corner, as though Helen had been trying on various outfits. There were shoes piled drunkenly on the floor of the open wardrobe. An electric bar-heater squatted awkwardly in the marble fireplace. On the mantelpiece was a photograph of a smiling, thirtyish woman with windblown hair and a floral dress. She was standing in front of a thatched holi
day cottage with a baby in her arms.

  Mrs Haddow came in and hovered beside the half-closed door. He noticed that, in addition to the Yale lock and the mortice, there was a shiny new bolt on the back of the door.

  McCormack wandered over to the dresser and picked idly through the bottles and canisters clustered by the mirror. Hairspray, deodorant, little bottles of whisky-coloured perfume. There was a bottle of hair-dye, ‘Diamond Blonde’. A pewter ring-tree with a dozen rings and silver chains hooked on its branches.

  He pulled open the drawers. Underwear. Tights. A box of pads. There was a chequebook in the top drawer. Clydesdale Bank. McCormack noted down the address of the branch.

  A black lacquer drinks cabinet stood beside the television set. The double bed had a headboard of white padded leather, fussy ruffled pillows and a frilly valance. The sheets were silk, peach-coloured. A black silk bolster at the foot of the bed.

  McCormack dropped to his knees. He swept a hand under the valance and his knuckles bumped on something hard. Chamber pot? No: his spidering fingers settled on a tacky dimpled surface and what he drew out was a slender ball-peen hammer. He thought of the hammer he’d wielded as he charged into Paton’s safe house. Why would Helen Thaney need a hammer? He looked again at the door, the thick cylinder of the bolt, the chunky bracket winking in the sunlight.

  He brandished the hammer at Mrs Haddow. ‘Did you know about this? Did she think that someone … Did she know she was in danger?’

  Mrs Haddow crossed to the sofa, wrapping her cardigan tightly around her. She sat with her knees pressed together and her arms folded under her breast, huddling against a cold only she could feel. She nodded tightly at the carpet. ‘I think she did.’

  McCormack waited.

  ‘I think she knew. She asked me to watch out for people at the door. Visitors. There was a man, she said. Someone at work. He used to watch her.’

  ‘Someone on the staff, did she mean? Or a customer?’

  ‘Customer, I think. She was frightened of him. I asked her why she didn’t just get him chucked out, but he never did anything wrong, she said. It was just the way he looked at her.’

  ‘Did she describe the man? Was it someone she already knew?’

  ‘I don’t know. She didn’t like to talk about it. A big man with black hair, she said. Thick moustache.’

  ‘Age?’

  ‘She didn’t say. You think it’s him who killed her?’

  ‘Look, I don’t know, Mrs Haddow. Did you keep an eye out for him?’

  ‘I did. But I never saw anyone who looked like that. Maybe someone else saw him, one of the other tenants.’

  McCormack’s gaze took in the silk sheets, the lacquered drinks cabinet.

  ‘About the tenants,’ he said. ‘Single women, are they?’

  There was a pause before Mrs Haddow stepped heavily forwards, rubbing her palms down her hips. ‘Now that’s just about enough.’ Her voice was shaky. ‘We have families here. Nurses. Teachers. Where the hell d’you get off? Christian families. A policeman, if it matters.’

  ‘Really? Who’s the cop?’ McCormack turned, closing the doors of the drinks cabinet.

  Mrs Haddow’s face slackened. The wariness seeped back into her eyes. She was frightened she had said too much.

  McCormack snorted. ‘I can walk out there and read the nameplates, Mrs Haddow. The voter’s roll. Who is the cop?’

  ‘His name’s Graeme Layburn,’ she said resentfully. ‘And he’ll be hearing about this.’

  ‘He certainly will.’ McCormack clamped his hat on his head. ‘Thank you very much, Mrs Haddow. Thank you for your time.’

  Before he left he climbed to the third floor and worked his way down, knocking on all doors. It was six o’clock. Cooking smells hung in the stairwell. Men came to their doors shirtsleeved, chewing food, napkins dangling from their fingers. They rubbed their chins and nodded while McCormack spoke but nobody had anything useful to say. Almost nobody. A man on the second floor had seen Helen Thaney with a man he’d assumed was an older relative: late fifties, tallish, mid-brown hair.

  No one answered at Graeme Layburn’s flat.

  Outside, the summer evening was exotically fine. People strolled – singly, in pairs – with no thoughts of murder. Or was that wrong? Maybe these idling, shirtsleeved men, these women in thin summer dresses, maybe they all had someone they wanted to kill.

  The yeasty smell from the brewery was in McCormack’s nose as he unlocked the car. Duke Street. High Street. The Saltmarket. He parked by the riverside, climbed the broad stone steps and nodded at the doorman. The weighted doors closed behind him with a satisfying whisper, sealing the high white lobby. He crossed the springy plush to the games room, where he wrote a cheque at the cashier’s window and carried a short stack of chips to the blackjack tables.

  The casino was quiet, some of the Garnethill Chinese at the baccarat table, a bald man in yellow tweeds glumly playing roulette. McCormack ordered a whisky and soda from a waitress in a white blouse with puffy sleeves, tight black pencil skirt. She was younger than Helen Thaney, mid-twenties at most. He tipped her with one of the chips.

  The croupier was another young woman, dressed in a masculine white shirt and blazer, her hair tied tightly back. McCormack played a few hands, making modest bets, sticking on sixteen. At one point he looked up to see a short, stocky man in a tight dark suit standing by the fire escape. He nodded at McCormack and McCormack nodded back.

  He was eight or nine quid up when he called it quits, leaving a chip for the croupier and another for the waitress. He drifted through to the restaurant. An elegant, ponytailed waiter with a Geordie accent took his order. McCormack was suddenly hungry when his steak and chips arrived. He cubed the pinkish meat, puddled the salty chips in the mix of blood and gravy, mopped it up with garlic bread. His carafe of red was almost gone when the man in the tight dark suit pulled out the chair opposite and sat down.

  ‘Gerry.’ McCormack finished dabbing his mouth, dropped the napkin on his plate. ‘How’s tricks?’

  ‘Ach, struggling on, Duncan. This a professional visit? Or you just got some money you’re needing to lose?’

  McCormack laughed. ‘I’m a few quid up, believe it or not. Drink?’

  ‘Not on duty, thanks.’

  ‘Right. I’ll get to the point, Gerry. Helen Thaney,’ McCormack said. ‘How well did you know her?’

  Gerry’s head swivelled sharply on the short neck. ‘You think I was fucking her? Who told you that?’

  ‘Whoa, Gerry. Jesus! I just mean, did you know her well?’

  Gerry was still frowning. He was a former cop – sergeant with the Fraud Squad – and you never lost the look. The truculent mouth. Smell of shit in the nostrils.

  ‘What is it you’re asking me, Dunc? Last I heard, you’ve got the guy in Barlinnie. What’s the interest in Helen?’

  McCormack shook his head. ‘No particular reason. I’m just trying to get a sense of her frame of mind, before she died. I spoke to her colleague, Denise Redburn. She says Helen was nervous, the weeks before she died. Says she was acting like she knew she was in trouble.’

  ‘Frame of mind?’ Gerry said. ‘Frame of mind? And Denise Redburn? She’d tell you the Pope’s a Prod if there was something in it for her.’

  ‘So she’s just wrong then?’

  Gerry rolled his shoulders. The fat bottom lip protruded. ‘I don’t know. Helen was Helen. She wasn’t what you’d call the nervous type. She sometimes got a bit jumpy when her ex came in. But, fuck, I get a bit jumpy when her ex comes in. Everyone gets jumpy when her ex comes in.’

  ‘Her ex?’ McCormack failed to stop the tightening in his voice. He tried again, leaning back in his chair, casual, a man shooting the breeze with a former colleague. ‘Who might her ex be, Gerry?’

  The short man was grinning. Then he wasn’t. ‘Jesus Christ, you’re serious? You really don’t know? McGlashan, Dunc. She was fucking John McGlashan. For about two fucking years. What, youse didn’t think it was imp
ortant? Youse didn’t think to check the boyfriends?’

  IV

  THE DOOR WE NEVER OPENED

  ‘Robes and furred gowns hide all.’

  King Lear, 4.6.181

  46

  McCormack sat at his desk in the squad room. He had a photograph in front of him, a headshot of John McGlashan. This was the man Helen Thaney had been eager to avoid, the man she had her landlady looking out for, the big black-haired fucker with the bushy ’tache. John McGlashan. Her ex-boyfriend. The reason she feigned headaches, the reason she ducked out of work in the middle of a shift.

  But why was she scared? McCormack flexed the photo. Maybe McGlashan was jealous. But Helen was his fancy piece, not his wife. And how had it ended? McGlashan, you had to assume, was the ditcher, not the ditchee – it was hard to envisage anyone mustering the chutzpah to give the city’s top gangster his marching orders. But he could still be jealous. Probably he thought of Helen as belonging to him. He was angry at the new relationship. Maybe warned her to end it.

  But would he kill her out of jealousy? It seemed thin. It seemed wild, way too wild and reckless, even for Glash. And anyway, wouldn’t he lean on the boyfriend first? Threaten to have his legs broken. Have his legs broken. Unless the boyfriend was someone he couldn’t touch? And he’d clearly been good to Helen, at least in some ways: the bank manager had got back to McCormack that morning to say there was upwards of two thousand pounds in Helen’s account.

  McCormack’s train of thought was halted by the door smacking back against the wall as Goldie burst into the squad room, waving a sheet of paper.

  ‘Volvo, says he. Volvo, my arse.’ He parked his backside on McCormack’s desk. The DVLC had phoned that morning: the previous vehicle registered to Ronald William Bickett was a 1963 Ford Consul 375. White. ‘It’s him. Has to be. Let’s get him in.’

  The following morning Nancy Scullion was standing at the window of her Scotstoun flat, waiting for a squad car to take her to St Andrew’s Street for the identity parade.