The Quaker

by Liam McIlvanney

  At the hotel they were shown straight to one of the big round tables, where dinner – oxtail soup, then a choice of chicken or steak – was about to be served. When the pudding plates were cleared away (Black Forest gateau or sherry trifle), the dance band struck up, a twelve-piece with a slim, dapper bandleader called Harry Margolis who leaned in to croon a few lines now and then before spinning back to conduct the band with great fluid swipes of his arms. McCormack danced a couple of numbers with Nancy and then headed for the bar to refresh their drinks.

  Most of the men had gathered by the bar. They looked ill at ease with their wives and girlfriends present. They looked ashamed, was what they looked. Ashamed and resentful, as if the women in the room could read their collective thoughts, know how they were when they all got together. They kept their noses in their drinks, spoke out of the sides of their mouths. Nobody knew where Levein was. The guest of honour was making them wait.

  McCormack spoke briefly with some guys he used to know in the C Div days. Then he just stood, happy enough, leaning on the bar, drinking whisky. Nancy was dancing with George Cochrane.

  ‘There he is.’ McCormack recognized the deep, indulgent tones. He took a gulp of his whisky and turned.

  Peter Levein was holding his hand out, stiff-armed, for McCormack to shake. But McCormack wasn’t looking at the hand. He was staring at the pattern on Levein’s jacket sleeve, the intersecting black-and-white staves that seemed to buzz and throb, that seemed to stand somehow clear of their backdrop, floating free on a plane of their own.

  Prince of Wales check.

  McCormack limply gripped the chief’s hand as a chain of little explosions went off in his head.

  The jacket on the chair-back in Helen Thaney’s living-room was Levein’s.

  Levein was Helen Thaney’s lover.

  McGlashan was Helen Thaney’s ex, so Levein was connected to Glash.

  Levein was Glash’s handler.

  The indigo passport that Denise Redburn saw was a warrant card, not a passport.

  He raised blank eyes to Levein’s grinning face.

  ‘You still with us, Detective?’ Levein snapped his fingers before McCormack’s face. ‘You’re miles away, son. I thought you teuchters could handle the drink. Away home and have a rest. You’ve earned it. We all have.’

  The whisky sloshed in McCormack’s glass as Levein clapped his shoulder. Then the big man was moving away, torso flexing under the jacket, the black-and-white parallels stirring like snakes.

  McCormack subsided against the wall for a minute. Then he set his glass down on a nearby table and staggered out.

  49

  Things were slipping away. You reached this stage in a case sometimes, when all the strands and ramifications got on top of you and what you needed to do, above all, was just act. Do something. Make an intervention and see what happened.

  McCormack had gone to Flett and told him what he knew. Not about Levein – he still didn’t know if he trusted Flett that far – but about Bickett and Nancy Scullion and Helen Thaney and McGlashan. Flett had agreed to a raid, signed out revolvers for Goldie and McCormack.

  McCormack also told Goldie. He told Goldie everything. Levein and Helen Thaney. Levein and McGlashan.

  So now McCormack was crossing the river in the purple pre-dawn in the back of a Black Maria with Goldie at his side and four uniforms on the bench-seat opposite, the faint buttery glow from the streetlights sliding across the buttons of the tunics, the barrels of the Webley 38s. Flett had tried to get them the old Enfield 303s but the brass had demurred at the notion of rifles. This wasn’t a national emergency: it was an alarm call for a hoodlum.

  The van turned into St Andrew’s Drive, heading west. They could see almost nothing from the back of the van but McCormack pictured the castles of the wealthy sliding past in the darkness, the blond sandstone cliffs, the chequerboards of massive ashlar blocks, the crow-stepped gables, the turrets and spires.

  They were in McGlashan’s street now, purring along under the big black silhouettes of trees, low branches scraping the roof. Then the van stopped with a jerk. Muffled curses up front, McCormack and the others craning to see through the mesh to the front windscreen. Something wrong here. What was happening?

  The uniforms raised their pistols. The driver leaned back to hiss at them through the mesh. What was he saying?

  ‘It’s a squad car. There’s a bloody squad car in the driveway.’

  They pulled into the driveway anyway, piled out of the back, boots mashing on the gravel. Then they stood around looking at each other. They knew to the split second what they should have been doing, but now the plan had changed and they were all at sea. McCormack stamped up the path to the front door, cursing under his breath. Some arsehole had jumped the gun, some uniformed dickhead had queered the whole pitch. A uniform was coming down the drive towards him and McCormack’s rage was so high that it took him some time to register the stiff awkwardness of the man’s movements, the catch in his voice.

  ‘This your doing, Constable? Who the fuck authorized this?’ McCormack had his card out, shoving it in the uniform’s face.

  ‘Authorized what, sir? A man’s been shot. It came over the radio. We just got here ten minutes ago.’

  ‘Shot?’ McCormack’s anger was ebbing, but not quickly enough to catch up with his voice. ‘What you on about, man? Who’s been shot?’

  ‘He’s inside, sir. In a kind of study. Like a library. Ambulance is on its way, but I don’t think … I mean, it looks like he’s gone.’

  There was the tell-tale smell in the hallway, the peppery whiff of cordite. McCormack followed the constable through to the back of the house. A dog was whining behind one of the doors, a high keening note.

  ‘A neighbour heard shots, called it in. It’s in here, sir.’ The constable led him into a large, book-lined room where another uniform was leaning over a body sprawled in front of the fireplace. The uniforms stepped back to give McCormack room.

  It was McGlashan all right. Even with his left cheek blown off and his eye-socket shattered, there was no mistaking the down-turned mouth and the blue-black hair. This was the face that had stared down at McCormack from the pinboard at St Andrew’s Street.

  He had fallen backwards and looked to have swept an arm along the mantelpiece as he fell. A couple of framed photos were lying face down beside the body and an elaborate porcelain beer-stein lay smashed in the fireplace, its pewter handle still fixed to the lid.

  He was wearing pleated trousers in a rich blue mohair, a dull sheen on the nap; a creamy white shirt, sleeves folded to the elbow; tasselled black loafers in high-gloss patent-leather. There was a gold bracelet on the right wrist. The left hand was missing two fingers – he must have raised his hand to shield his face when the gun was raised.

  Two whisky glasses were sitting on a coffee-table, one almost full, the other nearly empty. On a shelf above an L-shaped bar in the corner of the room stood a dozen or so bottles of whisky: Glenfiddich, Glen Grant, the cream-and-gold badge of a Macallan.

  ‘What about family?’ McCormack asked the nearest uniform. ‘Is there nobody else in the house?’

  ‘It’s empty, sir. We’ve been through the rooms.’

  The ambulance arrived while McCormack was standing over the body. Two lumbering paramedics in clumpy boots and overalls. The older one blew a tired raspberry. ‘Jesus. No point even checking a pulse. This one’s for the Fiscal.’

  They clumped back out. McCormack heard the ambulance reversing on the gravel, pulling away. It sounded as though the van was following it.

  The low whistle at his elbow was Goldie. ‘I sent the soldiers away,’ he said. ‘Told them we’d get a lift in the squad car. Fucking hell.’ He shook his head. ‘Should have come for him sooner, shouldn’t we? Soon as Bickett named him.’

  ‘Well. We’re here now.’

  Goldie drew him aside, away from the uniformed constables. ‘It’s not a “gangland slaying”, as the Record would have it. Is it?’


  ‘Unless you treat your rival gangster to a crystal goblet of single malt before he plugs you then, no, I think we can discount that possibility.’

  The two uniforms went out to the squad car to use the radio, report back to base. D Div, McCormack thought neutrally; Shawbridge Street.

  ‘You think it’s him?’ Goldie was standing at the window, his back to the mess beside the fireplace.

  ‘Of course it’s him. He’s cleaning things up. Putting his house in order.’

  McCormack went over and joined him at the window. Daylight was breaking over Rutherglen, the streetlights flickering off. This was how it ended. No fanfare or great celebration. Just the city rousing itself to another day, going about its business. The Procurator Fiscal would be on his way. The pathologist too. There would be back-slapping in the police offices of the city when the news filtered through. But there would be no trial, no showpiece conviction. The Quaker was dead. But the man who’d killed him was very much alive.

  50

  The knock came when McCormack was fixing himself a drink, so he wasn’t fully sure that he had heard it. He stopped stock still in the little kitchen, holding up the square whisky bottle like a man in an advertisement. His building had a door-entry system, so either this was a neighbour, or someone who’d gotten into the building as one of the residents was leaving. Someone from Levein? Was it Levein himself? Was McCormack next on his list?

  The knock came again – light but sharp and clear, a measured double tap. McCormack put the bottle down.

  The spyhole framed a red-haired woman in a light-coloured raincoat. When he opened the door he saw that she was carrying a small suitcase and that the shoulders of her raincoat were spotted with rain.

  ‘Are you McCormack?’ she asked him. Her face looked pinched and pale. ‘Are you Inspector Duncan McCormack?’

  She glanced down at the nameplate, which he had never bothered to change. Though he owned the flat now, his mail still came ‘c/o Beggs’.

  ‘I’m McCormack.’

  ‘I need to see you. I need to talk.’

  He stepped aside to let her through and followed her hips and spiked heels.

  ‘Can I get you a drink?’ McCormack said. He felt himself at a disadvantage, in his undershirt, suit trousers and stocking feet before this woman in heels and a belted raincoat.

  ‘You can,’ she said. ‘If it’s not just for decoration, I’ll have a spot of that.’ She nodded at the whisky bottle that McCormack had left on the coffee table when he answered the door.

  He fixed two large whiskies and she took hers in both hands and gulped the first third of it down.

  ‘Excuse me just a moment.’ McCormack went through to his bedroom to put on a shirt and step into his slip-ons. When he came back she had taken off her raincoat. She was wearing an emerald silk blouse and a straight black skirt. Her drink was finished.

  McCormack tipped some more whisky into her glass and sat down across from her.

  The woman was thirtyish. A hard face, sharp-featured. Curtain of blond hair shading one eye. Good-looking, he supposed, in a carefully made-up way. She was gripping her glass as if she was trying to crush it, and breathing through her nose, but something close to mischief fizzed in her eyes.

  Her face looked familiar but it was the voice – light, with an almost Highland softness – that made him wonder if she was from home, the younger sister of one of his old Balla schoolmates, maybe, seeking out a hometown polis in her hour of big city trouble.

  ‘Do we know each other?’ he asked her, crossing his legs. ‘You look familiar. Where do you live?’

  ‘I don’t,’ she said, and the sparkle was back in her eyes as she watched him over the rim of her glass.

  The accent wasn’t Highland, not exactly.

  ‘You mean you’ve just moved to the city?’ He glanced at the suitcase, tucked neatly into the side of the sofa. ‘You haven’t found somewhere to stay yet?’

  ‘No.’ She set her glass neatly down on the coffee table. ‘I mean that I’m dead.’

  McCormack nodded. It was a mark of how unflustered he was that his first response was to think, Not Highland: Irish.

  He sipped his whisky.

  ‘You don’t look too bad,’ he said. ‘All things considered.’

  ‘Thank you. I don’t feel too bad. Of course, I’ve been in excellent hands. You yourself investigated my murder.’ She craned round in her seat. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised to see my picture up there. On your wee wallchart.’

  She turned back to face him. Above her head, on the strip of wallpaper pasted inside out on the living-room wall, was her name, like a caption.

  McCormack sipped his drink.

  ‘You knew all along,’ she said. ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘I had an idea,’ he said. ‘When the PM report showed track marks on one arm. Plus the dyed hair. And what he did to the face.’

  ‘Don’t talk about it.’

  ‘Who was she, Helen?’

  Helen Thaney looked away towards the window. ‘I don’t know her name,’ she said. ‘She was a prostitute. She worked in a brothel in Dennistoun. Peter always said we could have passed for sisters. That’s what gave him the idea.’

  For the next hour he listened to Helen Thaney’s story, filling her glass when it emptied, lighting her cigarettes. She’d come over from Ireland, she said, in ’63, glad to see the back of it. Her mother had died when she was eleven and her father couldn’t cope. He spent all his nights in the pub, left Helen to see to the wee ones. When she was fifteen she got pregnant by a neighbour’s son. Her father sent her away to the nuns, to a laundry run by the Good Shepherd Sisters, a kind of slave-camp for wayward girls. She bought her way out in ’63, took the boat for Glasgow.

  It was when she started working at the casino that she met McGlashan. He took her out a couple of times, bought her Oysters at Rogano’s. He set her up in a flat in a terrace on Great Western Road, overlooking the Botanic Gardens. He would come by to see her two or three times a week.

  ‘And did you know?’ McCormack asked her.

  ‘You mean did I know he was killing women? No. I knew he was bad news. I knew he was a selfish arrogant prick. I knew he was a gangster. But that’s all.’

  It lasted for two years. When McGlashan finished it he undertook to cover the rent for another six months. But by that time Helen had hooked up with Peter Levein.

  She knew Levein from the casino, where he lost middling sums at baccarat with good-natured regularity. Also, the Claremont had private rooms and McGlashan would sometimes meet Levein in one of those.

  ‘And how did Glash take it? I mean when you started seeing Levein?’

  ‘Was he jealous, you mean? I think he was relieved, if anything. Glad to get me off his hands.’

  ‘Had McGlashan told you about Levein? What the relationship was?’

  It seemed important to McCormack that he gave Helen Thaney no pointers here, that she describe the arrangement just as she understood it.

  ‘John told me nothing. About anything. Ever. Peter was different.’

  ‘How was he different?’

  She swept the hair from her eyes. ‘John was just looking for someone to fuck. Peter, God help him – Peter was in love. He wanted to trust me, he said. Confide in me. He told me things about John. I think he wanted to put me off. If I ever thought about going back.’

  Go back? Why would you go near McGlashan in the first place? McCormack wanted to ask. He nodded, motioned for her to go on.

  ‘He told me how it worked,’ she said. ‘John provided intel on other gangsters, other crews around the city, the fringe players in his own outfit. He had contacts all over the city, he had guys in all the pubs – South Side, East End, out west – that would tell him stuff. John would feed all this to the CID. In return, he got free rein on the Northside. The cops let him do what he liked.’

  ‘They let him kill women. Did Levein tell you McGlashan was the Quaker?’

  She looked at him through her hair.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Not exactly. He came to see me one night. Late. One in the morning, maybe two. I was living in Dennistoun by then. I’d never seen him in such a state. He was shaking, freaking out. I poured him a whisky and he could hardly hold the glass. He kept pacing about, babbling about McGlashan. I put him to bed. Of course the next day I saw the papers.’

  ‘Jacquilyn Keevins?’

  She was nodding. ‘Jacquilyn Keevins. And he was so full of remorse. It was “poor woman” this and “if I’d only done that”. But of course there was nothing to be done. He was in so thick with McGlashan that he couldn’t do anything. He’d taken McGlashan’s money. He’d used McGlashan’s hoors. God knows what else. So Peter just had to live with his conscience. Until he reconciled himself. Which never took long.’

  Her eyes were wet with hatred. A sharp burst of rain drilled the window and her shoulder jumped spasmodically.

  ‘So what went wrong?’ McCormack asked.

  ‘McGlashan started getting ideas. He got it into his head that I knew.’

  ‘That you knew he was the Quaker?’

  She nodded. She tried to take a drink but her glass was empty. McCormack was frowning.

  ‘But how did you know?’ he asked.

  ‘That McGlashan was the Quaker? I’ve already told—’

  ‘No. That he knew you knew.’

  ‘He told Peter.’ She shrugged. ‘He wanted Peter to— Well. He wanted Peter to take care of it.’

  ‘He told Peter to kill you?’

  ‘Otherwise he would do it himself.’

  Another gust of rain spattered the window.

  ‘And that’s when you got the idea.’

  ‘It was Peter’s idea.’

  McCormack rolled his whisky round the glass. ‘And that night at the Barrowland. The different men. The fight on the dance floor.’

  ‘Yeah. That was Peter’s idea. He wanted me to make sure I was noticed. Make sure people remembered me. That way there’d be less chance of questions.’