‘Oh God!’ she yelped. ‘It can’t be!’ She crushed my hand.
‘Sam, it is. It’s them. But you’re safe now. You’re with me.’
Under smart grey uniforms and caps were the two ruffians we’d last seen on Arran as bodyguards to Gerrit Slattery. They’d failed in that duty and Gerrit had no further need of them, not now he lay full fathom five undergoing a sea change in the Firth of Clyde.
Curly had earned his limp at my own hand. I’d shot him through the foot back in April as a sort of discouragement to the rest of his gang. The last time I’d seen him and his pugilist-faced pal they were diving into the sea to douse the gobs of flaming petrol that clung to them from my booby-trap. It looked as if their shrapnel burns had healed, though it was hard to tell at this distance.
Their eyes darted about before they got in the car and drove off. Their masters were just entering the building, the tall younger man having bounced his father backwards up the steps in the wheelchair.
‘OK, cabbie. Drive on please, and let us out at the entrance.’
Sam clutched my arm. ‘No! Wait! We can’t go on now! We can’t go in! What if they’re waiting? What if . . .’
‘Sam, Sam, it’s OK. They’re gone. There’s no one to fear inside. Interrogate, yes. Fear, no. The Maxwells have some explaining to do. I have no idea where all this is going, but there are some threads beginning to come together.’
I looked at her. She was breathing hard and clinging to my arm as if it were a lifebelt. Her eyes were wide and her face whiter than usual.
From the front: ‘Are we moving, sir, or are we sitting here?’
‘Give us five minutes please. The lady needs a cigarette. Keep the clock running.’
We sat back. I lit two and slid one into her holder. She took it in shaking fingers. I wound down the windows and let the soft evening air in. The memory flooded back. I could see it in her own eyes . . .
Wild seas slapping on Arran’s rocky shore. The big white house. Setting the pier alight to attract this pair like thuggish moths. The exploding can of petrol shredding their faces with red-hot fragments. My assault on the house to find it empty. Sam carried off into the night by Slattery on his fast ketch. Racing after him in my borrowed power boat. Sam, lying tossed and bruised and hogtied on the deck. My raging attack on the ketch, meting out condign retribution to Slattery. Freeing Sam, terrified, battered and groggy with chloroform . . .
I had soothed her, assuring her that it was all over.
Seems it wasn’t.
‘Did you hear their names?’ I asked her. ‘I only know the one with a limp as Curly.’ I was thinking that putting a name to a demon would help.
She swallowed. ‘Curly’s good enough. Gerrit called the other one Fitz.’
‘Curly and Fitz. Do you think there’s a recruitment agency that specialises in hiring out thugs? Maxwell phoned them and asked them to send round a couple of experienced hoodlums?’
We sat until we’d finished our cigarettes and her breathing had slowed. ‘Ready to face this?’
‘I’m fine, Douglas. Shall we?’
We had the car drive forward and pull up at the kerb. I got out and handed her out. I gave her my arm and we walked up the broad steps like a charmed couple. A blonde and her beau. Only the turmoil in our heads confounded the image. We were greeted at the door and I waved our invitation. Tall glasses were thrust in our hands and we chinked them together before sipping the bubbles. Rationing? What rationing? We pressed forward into the huge vaulted nave of this baroque cathedral to art.
We followed the noise of a murmuring crowd, guided on our way by liveried staff who smiled and pointed the direction in their chalk-white gloves. The portal ahead showed Glasgow’s society at play. A gaggle of colours with black punctuation. They looked as if they belonged here. Belonged together.
I’m an upstart and I know it. My dad was a miner and I only had an education through charity. I’d walked out on my old tribe and never been accepted by a new one. After all this time my instinctive reaction to the upper classes and their privilege is still to knock them down. It was petty and puerile, but for a second I was arriving at my first formal dance at university. My throat thickened and my heart raced. Sam must have sensed it.
‘Courage, mon brave. Imagine them naked under their fine clothes.’
As we were just passing a particularly plump dowager sporting a pair of fleshy pillboxes on her uncovered chest, I gave Sam a raised brow. ‘Thanks for the image.’
She smothered a giggle.
A tall man and woman stood just inside, greeting the couple before us. His head was shiny bald, hers a piled-up highlight of gold and reds. Her diamonds flashed his wealth.
In a smiling and low-voiced aside, Sam explained, ‘Kenny Rankin and his wife Moira.’
‘The ammunition king.’
‘With an art gallery named after him.’
I just had time to look up at the plaque above the door – ‘The Rankin Wing’ – as we joined the line-up. Then it was our turn to be announced.
‘Samantha! It’s so good to see you. Haven’t seen you in simply ages.’ Lady Rankin was gushingly kissing and hugging Sam while I was having my hand pumped by Sir Kenny.
‘Saw Samantha was being escorted. Delighted to meet you, Major Brodie. Regiment?’
‘Late of the Seaforths, sir. Second Battalion.’
Kenny Rankin was tall, eyes level with mine. In his prime he’d been a big man. He was still vigorous and imposing but his jacket now seemed hollow at the shoulder and bulging round the midriff. He seemed twice the age of his consort, which fitted with Sam being at school with her. Rankin scanned my medals then gazed at me shrewdly.
‘MC, eh? A good war, Major. 51st Highland? North Africa?’
‘Yes, sir. Then the standard European tour.’
He laughed. ‘I was with the Gordons in the Great War. Only ever saw the inside of a bloody trench in France. Not counting a weekend in Paree, eh?’
I felt a hard stare on me, sizing me up. ‘Kenny, you’re not to start your reminiscing already. Now introduce me to Samantha’s young man.’ Moira Rankin was smiling as she said it, but not with her eyes. I remembered what Sam had said about her society aspirations and wondered what she and Sam had had in common other than a school uniform.
It would seem from Kenny Rankin’s reaction that he hadn’t made the connection with Brodie of the Seaforths and Brodie of the Gazette. Or if he had, he was too well mannered to mention it. Whereas his wife was now skinning me, analysing my soul and my worth, and finding me wanting on all fronts. Quickly enough her flensing stare flicked beyond me to the next in line, and we were dismissed. As we moved away, in an aside to Sam, I murmured, ‘I thought you and Moira were pals?’
Sam looked puzzled. ‘We are. I’ve known her all my days. She knew I was upset at her stealing Kenny from his first wife, but that’s all history.’
‘Not the way she was looking at you.’
‘Just jealous of my handsome escort.’ She smiled, took my arm and we plunged into the crowd. We swapped our empty glasses for new ones and the evening began to improve. The gallery was high-ceilinged, the walls freshly painted in soft red. Pictures hung beneath discreet lamps on every wall. No one was pretending to admire them. They were here to inspect each other and compare notes on time’s ravages on faces and wallets.
‘Well, if it isn’t Samantha Campbell. We haven’t seen you around for a bit. Been hiding?’
It was a high, clear drawl, without a trace of Scots in it. I felt Sam’s hand pinch my arm. She turned us both to greet the voice. It came from a man about my age, with slicked-back waves and an Errol Flynn moustache. Like Flynn, the absence of decorations on his dinner jacket suggested this guy had managed to sit out the war. He stood behind a wheelchair bearing an old man with puzzled eyes and thin grey hair. The eyes were the same brown marbles, but the younger’s were unblinking and evaluating. The Maxwells.
Sam cranked her own accent up in retaliation. ‘Wh
y, Charlie, I’ve been busy, you know. Criminals to defend. Juries to convince. You know how it is.’ Sam put on her most innocent smile and turned to the seated man.
‘Colin, so good to see you.’ Sam was bending forward and touching the old man’s hand. His eyes focused and a smile touched his face.
‘And you, my dear.’ It was a breathy, weak voice, struggling to be heard above the babble. ‘And is this your husband, Samantha?’
Sam smiled and shook her head. ‘No, Colin. Just a friend of mine. My escort for this evening. Major Douglas Brodie. Douglas, this is Sir Colin and Charlie Maxwell.’
We all shook hands and smiled at each other in a stilted fashion, waiting for someone to provide a conversational hook. I took the measure of the younger Maxwell. His eyes had just grazed my medals. The corner of his thin mouth lifted in amusement. Sam had described him as a pompous ass. I was more than prepared to take her word for it. I mistrust anyone who claims to be Scots but sounds like a BBC announcer. The sort of accent that only the best English public schools provide. With one lift of the corner of his mouth, with the languid dismissal of his eyes, I knew him.
Supercilious, certainly; a thin mouth with a built-in sneer as a result of holding the rest of the world in contempt since he learned he had money. He embodied every slight, every disdainful glance, every social cut that put a straitjacket of inhibition on my time at secondary school and then university. I don’t normally want to punch someone at introduction, but with Charlie boy I was prepared to make an exception.
It was loathe at first sight.
THIRTY-SIX
Charlie was the first to break. Grudgingly he asked, ‘Still serving, Major?’
‘Late of the Seaforths.’
‘And now?’
‘I’m a writer.’
‘Really? Novels? Military history?’
I smiled. ‘Nothing so grand. Newspapers. I’m with the Gazette.’
I wish there had been a photographer. Charlie’s face seemed to swell.
He asked, ‘What was the name again?’ He hadn’t bothered to listen to Sam’s introduction. I hadn’t been important enough.
‘Brodie. Douglas Brodie.’ I watched his brain working it out.
‘Is this some kind of bloody trick?’ Charlie’s face slid from disdain to vicious. His father looked worried and anxious at the raised voice.
Sam interjected. ‘Goodness me, Charlie. Is that a bad conscience we’ve poked? Major Brodie is indeed a reporter, but he’s off duty tonight. Aren’t you, darling?’
Darling? I patted the flat panels of my dinner jacket. ‘No room for my notebook. We can speak freely.’ I smiled encouragingly.
There was no answering smile. Instead, Charlie got behind the wheelchair and hustled the old man away.
‘I think you’ve just got me struck me off his dance card, Douglas.’
‘But I think he’s just added me to his get-even card. I wonder how much Curly and Fitz told him about me? And how they got hired?’
I shouldn’t have said it. Her face clouded, but then she smiled again. ‘Come on, Douglas. Let’s get drunk on Rankin’s fizz.’
For the rest of the evening we waltzed round the room, greeting and glad-handing Sam’s old pals, in a fever of drink-inspired denial. Denial that we’d just seen ghouls from our past in the pay of a man who seemed to threaten our future. Denial that we might have glimpsed the deep vein of corruption predicted on by McAllister. Maxwell junior knew my name. He knew where I worked and that the Gazette was picking away at the edges of a tapestry of sleaze. The former Slattery henchmen may well have told them what I’d done to their bosses. The look I’d got from Charlie Maxwell was as close to murderous as makes no difference.
We didn’t run into the third member of the crooked cabal, Tom Fowler, but learned he’d scuttled off to his hammock in the Bahamas. A tactical withdrawal, possibly, following Wullie’s probing articles.
In our febrile state of mind, Sam and I egged each other on to be sparkling and witty, as though we were trying to impress everyone we met. I found the social gears in my brain being lubricated by the booze, like old machinery coming to life. Or so it seemed. Wit can only be objectively assessed by the recipient. As Burns said:
O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us,
To see oursels as others see us!
Maybe we just looked drunk.
For Sam, this was a re-engagement with old friends and acquaintances, from school days and university days, from the time of her parents. She was a bright goldfish back in a gilded tank with her kind. Whereas my first thought was that I’d rather be facing the 7th Panzer Division. Then I remembered that I had, and none of this, none of them, had a hold on me any more. The crowns on my shoulder had finally replaced the chips. Beneath their Bearsden accents and their Hyndland airs and graces were a bunch of people with prejudices and opinions, intellects and personalities, no more valid or weighty than any to be found in the Horseshoe Bar on a Saturday night. And a lot less fun.
Burns also summed it up: ‘A man’s a man for a’ that.’ I’d fought alongside men from every class for six years, and the only hallmark of worth was how you dealt with being shot at – either literally or figuratively. I thought of Hugh Donovan in his final days: resigned, philosophical almost, concerned more for the woman he was leaving behind. I wasn’t there as they pulled the suffocating bag over his head. I didn’t stand alongside him as they pulled the lever. But I was pretty sure that Hugh had gone to his maker without lamenting the unfairness of it all. I hoped his maker budged up and gave him a prominent seat on his right.
At some stage in the short ride home Sam and I grew silent. The champagne highs tipped into champagne melancholy. I steered a now wobbly Samantha Campbell up the stairs to her house. We stumbled through the door and I kicked an envelope which had been thrust through the letter box. It skidded down the polished parquet hall. Clutching the handrail, Sam flowed down to the kitchen to put a kettle on. I stooped, picked up the envelope and checked the address. It was for me. I recognised the hand. I opened it.
Brodie,
We need to meet. Be at the McLennan Arch at noon, Sunday. Come alone. I will.
Ishmael
I stuffed the letter into my breast pocket just as Sam bounced up to the hall from the kitchen and headed for the drawing room. There was no sign of a sobering teapot. She was holding a fresh bottle. I went after her.
I joined her in a glass of Scotch but made sure hers was as well watered as possible. Sam wound up the gramophone. We smiled and she hummed along with Peggy Lee confessing ‘I don’t know enough about you’ as we tried to recapture the mood we’d left behind at the start of the evening.
Sam began to sway and twirl. I caught her on one of the twirls and we danced together as if we meant it. But when I bent to kiss her again and continue where we left off, she pushed me back. Her eyes were full of tears.
‘I can’t take any more, Douglas. It’s too much.’
‘Sam, we’re fine. Trust me. I won’t let them near you.’
The music ground to a halt and I stood holding her as she sobbed in my arms.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’ve drunk too much. This is pathetic.’
‘Wheesht, Sam, wheesht. It’s all right.’ I stroked her head and her back like a pony to calm her down. Finally she pushed herself back from me, sniffed, pressed her gloved finger to my lips and wished me a good night.
I stood staring after her, cursing myself for raising my hopes again. I never seemed to learn. I knew I was being unfair. It was one helluva shock for Sam to run into Curly and Fitz. Not to mention charming Charlie. He seemed to hold particularly repellent memories for her. But I was the good guy! Wasn’t this when she needed me most? My drunken, maudlin thoughts turned to Morag. She wouldn’t spurn me. We might have been revelling in bed by now. So why was I here? Why was I making life hard for myself? The choice was surely easy enough: an ageing ice-queen hamstrung by her past, versus the open arms of an eager young woman? Sam would a
lways be hard work. Morag would always be adoring and pliant.
I unpicked my medals one by one and set them down on the mantelpiece. I hefted the cross. Was this it? The high point of my life stamped in bronze and silver? Downhill from here. Maybe I should have gone back to London. Maybe I still should? I picked up the note from the Marshals. More a summons. Why should I respond? Why was it always me?
I filled my glass and walked round the room touching the soft furnishings. I pulled back the curtains and looked out at the night wondering what or who was out there, and what they were doing. Morag asleep, warm and snug in her wee bed, her red hair curling on her soft cheek. Maxwell and his hoodlums planning what? Against whom? McAllister dreaming of one last set of front-page headlines. And the Marshals, sneaking around bombed-out factories, breaking out from time to time to dispense their arbitrary justice to the sinners of this sleeping city.
I wondered about this meeting Ishmael had called. If he was coming alone to a public park, he’d hardly be wearing a balaclava. What was he up to? And how did it tie into the murders of three homosexuals? And what were we going to do about this new front that had been opened by McAllister against the great and the not-so-good? Defend or attack?
I finished my drink and my sentimental mulling. It was one in the morning. I was tired and drunk. The air had turned muggy and close. There was a storm in the offing, presaging another welcome break in the long sapping drouth.
I started the long climb up to the second floor, pausing on her landing to see that her light was out. I climbed the next flight and pushed into my bedroom hoping stupidly – was there no end to my self-delusion? – to find a warm female body in my bed.
Empty.
But sometime later, as I lay smoking in the dark and listening to the distant rumble of thunder echoing through the deserted streets, my door opened. She came in, dropped her dressing gown, and slid into bed. I stubbed out my fag.
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