The Quaker
Page 32
Greg Hislop heard him out, sitting on McCormack’s sofa while McCormack paced the room in bare feet and dress trousers. He asked four or five questions and listened frowningly to the answers. Then he made a phone call.
Half an hour later MacInnes arrived. James MacInnes, Levein’s number two in the City of Glasgow CID, a Dunbeg boy with a long blue lugubrious chin, a doctor’s manner, a dark kirk-elder’s suit with the dusty gloss of a blackboard. McCormack told it again and MacInnes nodded, glancing now and then at Hislop. Then another call was made and they drove in MacInnes’s car, north, to the Bearsden villa of Chief Constable Arthur Lennox.
There were things to be settled. Lennox was less surprised than McCormack expected. He was all business – if this happens then that follows; and how do we deal with this? – so that the central determination (a serving senior officer was to be charged with murder and accessory to murder) was rather buried in practicalities. At one point they left McCormack in the study and removed to a kind of billiard room next door. McCormack could hear them conferring in low expository tones, like the members of an appointment panel. They came back into the room wearing the same tight smile. He had got the job.
There were conditions, however. He would give a statement to MacInnes at St Andrew’s Street and pass on all relevant paperwork. He would put them in touch with Helen Thaney and ensure her willingness to testify. He himself wouldn’t have to testify. But he would have to leave. The City of Glasgow Police, naturally. But also the city. In fact, best to leave Scotland altogether. Start afresh someplace else. Maybe the Met could be an option.
McCormack shook the hands of all three men. MacInnes drove him back to Partick.
The next day, Levein was arrested. Somebody tipped off the papers and a photograph of the ex-Head of Glasgow CID with a uniformed officer gripping his bicep as he walked him to a squad car featured in the Evening Times.
With Levein in Barlinnie Prison, everything else would fall into place. Flett would move up to Levein’s old job and somebody other than McCormack would now get the corner office at St Andrew’s Street. William Bickett would go down for a long, long time and Nancy Scullion and all the other relatives would feel the better for it. Paton would be charged with the Glendinnings job and nothing else. Helen Thaney would emigrate. For Robert Kilgour there would be no retrial, no exoneration. But he would at least have a comforting thought. Of the bastards who cost him four years of his life, one was in hell and the other in purgatory.
And Derek Goldie? The buzzer rang in McCormack’s flat, the night before he left. He had the suitcase open on the bed, filling its silk innards with the remnants of his Glasgow life: two suits; a handful of shirts; some underwear and paperback books. His refugee possessions.
‘It’s me,’ the voice said.
‘Hello me. Come on up.’
There was nothing to offer him, McCormack realized, but Goldie came up the stairs toting an off-licence carrier bag: a half-bottle of Bells and four cans of Export. They sat at McCormack’s table and drank.
‘How are they taking it then?’ McCormack asked. He’d been off the grid for the past three days.
‘Levein? No one’s shedding too many tears, Duncan. They’re containing their grief.’
‘It’ll stick, though, you reckon? He’s down the road?’
‘Oh, he’s finished, Dunc. Bobby Stokes has done a deal. He’ll do eighteen months in Low Moss or somewhere after he’s ratted out Levein. But Levein’s doing serious time.’
McCormack raised his tinnie and clacked it against Goldie’s. ‘And McGlashan’s shitty wee empire? That’ll go to the dogs now. Fun and games never stops.’
‘It might do.’ Goldie nodded. ‘There again. I hear Maitland’s taking over.’
‘Maitland?’ McCormack paused the tinnie at his lips. ‘Walter Maitland’ll never hack it. A jumped-up bouncer.’
‘You think?’ Goldie was half smiling. ‘I spoke to Forensics. They matched the whisky in the glass at McGlashan’s. Matched it to one of the bottles.’
McCormack’s eyes narrowed. His mind went back to the big room at McGlashan’s house and then to a dresser in a shabby kitchen in Cranhill. He drew his head back, half turning from Goldie. ‘Glen Grant?’
‘The very same.’
‘Levein sent Walter Maitland to kill McGlashan?’
‘Well, who knows, Duncan? There were no dabs on the glass. But who better to send?’
‘The last man Glash would suspect.’
‘McGlashan gone. Levein gone. Who’s still standing?’
‘Right.’ McCormack held up his hands. ‘The jumped-up bouncer.’
Goldie drained his second tinnie. McCormack waggled the half-bottle, still two-thirds full.
Nah.’ Goldie scraped to his feet. ‘Thanks anyway. Early start and all that. Better be getting back.’
McCormack rose too. They stood beside their chairs, shifting their feet. Goldie’s hand kneaded the air as he fumbled for the words.
‘I wanted to tell you,’ he said finally. ‘It never made any difference to me. It never changed how I felt. I wanted to say.’
‘You mean you hated me just the same. Boy genius of the Flying Squad. Meddlesome prick.’
Goldie laughed. ‘Something like that.’ He gestured round the room. ‘So what’ll you do with this?’
‘Rent it out,’ McCormack said. ‘Furnished flat. Pack my clothes up and I’m done.’
‘And MacInnes has fixed you up?’
‘Aye. He sorted out the transfer. Start on Monday. The bloody Met.’
‘Well. Meddlesome prick should do well down there.’
They embraced then, an awkward bumping of shoulders and clapping of backs, and Goldie was off down the stairs. McCormack finished packing.
And now the noise of the plane’s engines was sending him to sleep. The engines and the whisky. McCormack opened his eyes. The empties were gone. Another two miniatures stood in their place. Fresh glass, fresh ice. McCormack filled the tumbler. A mid-flight lull had settled on the cabin. Through the cold little oval at his elbow he could see the cloud cover billowing off in soft cobbles, a red sun at the horizon flaring on the wingtip. He toasted his ghost in the window’s reflection and tipped back the whisky and drank.
Acknowledgements
It’s a privilege to work with Jim Gill and Yasmin McDonald at United Agents, and with Julia Wisdom and Finn Cotton at HarperCollins.
Anne O’Brien is the Lionel Messi of copy editors and sees things everyone else misses.
Bob Barrowman and Alastair Dinsmor shared their knowledge of police work in 1960s Glasgow. Allan Macinnes kept me right on the legend and lore of Ballachulish. Calum MacLeod corrected my Gaelic. For help and advice of various kinds, I want to thank: Angela Bartie, Liz Cameron, Gerry Carruthers, Wendy English, Colin Gavaghan, David Goldie, Paula Hasler, Carol Jess, Stephen Khan, Peter Kuch, David McIlvanney, Hugh McIlvanney, Siobhán McIlvanney, Aidan and Robert Norrie, Andrew Perchard, Alan Roddick, Sarah Sharp, Will and Joanna Storrar, Donna Young, the Caselberg Trust and the Stuart Residence Halls Council.
Valerie McIlvanney was there every step of the way: love, as ever, to her, Andrew, Caleb, Isaac and Diarmid.
About the Author
Liam McIlvanney was born in Scotland and studied at the universities of Glasgow and Oxford. He has written for numerous publications, including the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement and the Guardian. His debut, Burns the Radical, won the Saltire First Book Award, and his most recent book, Where the Dead Men Go, won the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel.
He is Stuart Professor of Scottish Studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand. He lives in Dunedin with his wife and four sons.
@LiamMcIlvanney
www.liammcilvanney.com
Also by Liam McIlvanney
Burns the Radical
All the Colours of the Town
Where the Dead Men Go
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