Where the Dead Men Go

by Liam McIlvanney

  Chapter Fifteen

  I woke early, sweating, a sense of having overslept. Angus and Mari beside me, breathing in unison, heads canted at the same degree, their lips parted in a uniform pout. Even in sleep I spoiled the symmetry of things.

  I slid out of bed, lifting my jeans from the chest of drawers, holding the buckle to keep it from rattling, eased shut the door. There was a shake of orange juice in the carton in the fridge. I left a note on the kitchen table.

  Down to Charing Cross. It was barely light, the traffic sparse. The M8, then signs for Stirling. I spun the wheel and whistled along to the harmonica on ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright’.

  Maguire was right. What was I doing? There wasn’t enough crime to report on, I had to go out and find more?

  ‘We don’t report crime. That’s the first thing to get straight. We report some crime, and some types of crime.’

  That was MacCrimmon, my first week at the Trib. Lunchtime in the Cope. The newsdesk grinning into their pints, watching the Crimmer school the rookie.

  ‘You know how many crimes are committed in the Strathclyde police area in a single month? I’m talking about crimes made known to the police and cases coming to court. Everything, the whole jing-bang. Rapes, murders, traffic offences. What’s the figure?’

  The others smiled. They’d heard it before. I took a sup of McEwan’s and pictured the city, spread out below the Campsies, the spire of the Uni, the high flats on the northern edge, the packed tracts of housing in the outlying schemes. The acts of malfeasance that seven hundred thousand souls could get through in a calendar month. I hadn’t a clue.

  ‘Couple of thousand?’

  He looked at the others, shaking his head, stilled the glass at his lips. ‘Fifty thousand, son. Fifty thousand. How many crimes does the Trib report in a month? Eighty. A hundred if you’re lucky. It’s not even one per cent. We don’t report crime.’ He drained most of his beer, left a half-inch of dregs, swirled it, held the glass to the light.

  ‘Drop in a barrel, son. That’s what we report. Crimes of violence, sex crimes. Some of those, almost none of the rest.’

  A fresh pint appeared on the bar-top and he tipped the dregs of the old one into it.

  ‘It’s just numbers, son. That’s all they care about, the politicians, the coppers.’ He brought his face close to mine. ‘Fuck the numbers. Fuck the numbers, son. It’s your job to tell the story, make it real. Make them feel what the victim felt. It’s all you can do.’

  The window dropped as I held the button. Cold air bumping my forehead and cheeks. I drove through Moodiesburn and Mollinsburn, the streets looking scoured and penitent, small towns shuttered against the winter cold. I felt like an absconder, entertained a momentary urge to keep on driving, to motor clear to the Highlands, board a ferry to one of the isles, hole up in some hotel bar with a tumbler of malt, in earshot of the booming surf.

  At Croy I stopped to look at the map. Up ahead was the Forth & Clyde. The canal had been widened here and the boats were tethered in rows, their glossy black hulls reflecting the water. Their cabins were painted in deep greens and yellows and smoky bright reds: they had the sombre gaiety of gypsy caravans. An ugly new hotel stood by the roadside. A weatherproof banner with a loose, flapping corner advertised Happy Hour and all-day breakfasts. He’d stopped for a drink here, Moir had. A deoch an doris, one for the road. The bar staff remembered him.

  I parked the Forester and pushed through the double doors. The reception desk was empty. Beyond it was a bar area and off to the left a big wilderness of yellow pine tables and chairs.

  ‘We don’t open till eight.’ A man was crossing towards me with a J-cloth in one hand and a spray-gun in the other. ‘But I’ll get you a coffee if you want to wait. Have a seat.’ He gestured at the empty tables.

  ‘Great,’ I said. ‘Good man.’

  When he brought the coffee I had my business card ready for him. He fished his reading glasses from the V of his polo shirt.

  ‘Tribune on Sunday,’ he read. ‘It’s about the journalist, isn’t it? The guy who died.’

  ‘It is. Martin Moir was his name. Was it you who saw him?’

  He shook his head. ‘I was off on a golfing weekend, over in Islay. Izzie served him. My wife.’

  ‘Is she here? Can I speak to her?’

  ‘Wait there.’

  He was back in five minutes with a short plump woman in sweatshirt and jeans. She had one of those pork-pie hat-style hairnets on her head.

  ‘I’d shake your hand but . . .’ She held her hands before her in their latex gloves, a surgeon on his way to theatre. ‘I’m prepping the turkeys for lunch. And dinner. Turkey turkey turkey.’ She rolled her eyes and gave a bright little laugh.

  ‘It’s that time of year,’ I said. ‘Gerry Conway.’

  ‘Isobel Tweedie.’

  ‘I’ll spell you with the turkeys,’ said the husband, setting his cleaning stuff down on a table and heading off to the kitchen.

  ‘Can you tell me about Martin, the guy who died? How come you remembered him?’

  She rested a forearm on the back of a chair, keeping the glove free from contact. ‘I remembered him fine. Still do. It was early, maybe 7.30 when he came in. We don’t get busy till around nine. That’s when the band starts. He was wearing a beautiful suit, dark grey, that shiny sharkskin stuff. He ordered a fresh orange and lemonade and sat over there.’ She waved her arm at the tables near the reception area. She leaned down towards me, spoke in a raspy stage whisper. ‘You wouldnae have kicked him out of bed, either. That’s how I remember him.’

  ‘Right. He didn’t seem, I don’t know, distressed? Upset?’

  ‘He was fine. A bit maybe distracted, you’d say, but he didn’t look, you know, suicidal, if that’s what you’re asking.’

  I nodded, took a sip of the coffee, put my cup down. ‘That’s lovely. Italian roast?’ She nodded. ‘So. Was he drunk?’

  Her eyes narrowed. She straightened up, holding her hands primly away from her body. ‘We’re not in the habit of serving customers who are intoxicated.’

  ‘Even if they’re drinking fresh orange and lemonade? Look, I’m not the cops,’ I told her. ‘I don’t care who you serve. I’m just trying to find out about my friend.’

  ‘Trust me,’ she said. ‘I know a drunk man when I see one. This guy, your friend? He was stone cold.’

  ‘Okay. Point taken. He speak to anyone? Anyone speak to him?

  ‘Not that I noticed. He was waiting for someone, though.’ She caught my look. ‘Oh aye. He was waiting.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He hardly touched his drink. Kept looking at his watch, looking at the door.’

  ‘Did he meet them outside, maybe? You got CCTV in the car park?’

  She smiled. ‘That’s what the cops asked. No. We’ve got the entrance, the back door. But the car park’s blind. Anyway, he got fed up waiting. He gave it half an hour and then left. Left most of his drink.’

  I pictured it. Moir walking into the cold dark night, making for his car. Someone waiting in the car park, two guys, maybe more. Moir opening the driver’s door, the point of a gun in the small of his back. The short drive up to the quarry.

  It wasn’t hard to imagine.

  ‘Listen, that’s brilliant. Thanks for your help. Thanks for the coffee.’

  ‘Hurry back.’ She waved both gloved hands, turned on her heel, ambled back to the kitchen.

  Back in the Forester I turned right at the exit, followed the last half-mile of Moir’s journey. At the quarry turn-off the road climbed on but I turned into the empty car park. The wind was worse up here and I zipped my Swanndri against the cold, shaded my eyes against the white winter sun. There were mounted signs on the grassy verge: NO SWIMMING and DANGER: RISK OF DROWNING, with a stylised image of a swimmer in distress, a stick man with upraised arms, disappearing into wavy lines of water.

  The ground beside the bushes was churned to hell, a mess of pits and ridges. Massive tyre-tra
cks – the recovery vehicle, presumably – had gouged deep diagonals in the brown earth. The treads of various work-boots criss-crossed the verge. Whatever clues the snow might have covered had long since gone.

  I stepped towards the edge. The dark water swung into view. I felt a tremor in my knees, my toes curled in my training shoes the way they curled on the high board at Mureton Baths. It all came back, the echoey shouts of my friends, the wavering oblong of blue, the white Speedo wall-clock, the curious sleepiness that always seemed to grip me as I swayed above the pool.

  Easier to fall than to jump.

  Then a hand grabbed the back of my shirt and yanked me back.

  ‘Jesus, mate.’ He put his hand on my chest. ‘You were nearly away there.’ A bearded face peered into my mine. ‘Are you alright?’

  A dog was pawing my thighs, a wolfish grey mongrel, pink tongue and shiny black eyes, I could feel its nails through my jeans. I knelt down beside it, ruffled its throat, dodged the pink tongue, ran its ears through my hands.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said. A smile spread over my face. ‘I’m absolutely fine.’ I stood up and put out my hand and the man took it warily, shook it limply as if agreeing to something he would later regret.

  Back in the car I dug around in my CDs, found Otis Rush, The Cobra Recordings, and cranked it up. I drove off fast for Glasgow with ‘I Can’t Quit You Baby’ slicing the air. I stopped for rolls, a packet of square sausage and half a dozen eggs at the minimart on Queen Margaret Drive. Back in the flat, I knew by the silence that Mari and Angus were still asleep. I stepped out of my shoes, hung my jacket on the hook, stuck the sausage and eggs in the fridge, kicked off my jeans and slipped back into bed, snuggling up behind her. She groaned and stirred and reached back a hand to pat my leg. The nape of her neck was damp with sweat. I hooked my chin over her shoulder, smelling her stale-sweet sleepy breath. On the bedside cabinet was a photo of Mari’s old dog, her childhood pet, a dozy golden lab with a brown shoe in its mouth.

  Chapter Sixteen

  That morning, after sausage-and-egg rolls with brown sauce and hot sweet milky tea, I sat at the kitchen table with the folder of Moir’s cuts. I spread the pages out on the scrubbed wood, stared at the headlines, scanned the opening pars. Behind me, Angus was standing on a kitchen chair, splashing at the sink. Skiddling, was the word we used when I was wee; he’s skiddling at the sink. Mari had filled a basin with lukewarm water and dropped in some plastic cups and bowls. I could hear the scuffed cups knocking together, the spattered drumroll as the water spouted out, the bloop of a cup plunging under. I thought of the reservoir, the car smacking the surface, the inrush of water, the languid gulp as the blackness swallowed.

  The printer had deepened the shadows in Moir’s byline photo. He looked menacing, fierce, like one of the villains in his stories. ‘Journalist of the Year’ in bold font beneath his byline. I could hear his voice as I read the cuts, that indignant Ulster whine. I remembered the day he started at the Trib, Maguire emerging from the lift with a lanky, crew-cut teen, a nervous copy-boy.

  ‘Gerry, this is Martin Moir.’

  He was twenty-two, though he looked eighteen. Not straight out of uni – he’d cubbed for a year at the Belfast Tele – but the bland, open face above the smart blue suit made him look like a prefect, a kid on a placement.

  ‘He’ll be helping you out for the next few weeks.’

  I took him to the canteen, stood him a greasy bridie and a cup of orange tea. This was 1997 when you could still smoke in public buildings and I offered my Regals. Moir didn’t smoke. Didn’t drink either, at that stage. He was serious and eager to learn. He reminded me of guys I’d known at uni, long-vowelled Ulster Prods, grammar-school boys from Crawfordsburn or Bangor. They intrigued me, with their complacent out-of-dateness, their neat side-partings, their schoolbook Britishness. They’d grown up amid bombs and political murder, but they seemed – to the rest of us – innocent and unworldly. Balefully square, they wore rugby shirts and stonewashed jeans. Their barbered heads were there in your line of vision, always in the selfsame spots, when you eased in late to a lecture. Their assignments, spell-checked and double-spaced, landed in the tutor’s pigeonhole with a day or two’s grace. They joined the Glasgow University Union and drank in the Beer Bar, while we holed up in the QMU, necking cider-and-blacks in the Steve Biko Lounge.

  Here we go, I thought, when Maguire left Martin Moir at my side. Another grammar-school boy. Another Ulster Prod determined to feel at home on this side of the sheuch. Moir had been hired to beef up the political staff for the devolution referendum.

  He was good, though. This was quickly clear. He impressed us all with his contacts, his blue suits, his intimate knowledge of the Scotland Act. For the next few days I’d see colleagues standing impassively in front of Moir, as he spoke to them in earnest advocacy, his hands making balancing gestures like a man choosing fruit. He was explaining the new voting system, its German-style fusion of party list and first-past-the-post. He was enthusiastic. We went to the same press conferences; did some vox pops together. I started to like him.

  And then, with less than a fortnight till the poll: the smash-up in the underpass. The mashed black Merc. It was Sunday morning, naturally, so that was the paper fucked, our splash – whatever it was – now as trivial and tinny as a radio jingle. I spent the day in boxers and T-shirt, flicking through the channels. All the channels carried the same live footage, only the grain of the picture varied slightly. You kept thumbing through the channels, as if the granular variations were significant, as if some hidden message would emerge from the matrix. The newscasters looked hyped, buzzed. You felt they’d been preparing for this. Everything looked rehearsed: the tight, Churchillian tones; the black ties; the portentous pauses, the funereal punctiliousness between anchor and correspondent, who bowed like duellists after every exchange. And always, every few minutes, the fresh declaration; the need to keep saying it, to state the fact, keep telling the news, the anchor’s head sinking reverently to his papers at the end of each sombre announcement.

  ‘Fuck!’

  Fiona Maguire was on the phone.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Fuck! Bastarding fuck!’

  ‘I know, Fiona.’

  ‘You couldn’t script it. Jesus. You know what’s gonnae happen.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come on, Gerry. Union flags at half-mast. Yards of floral tributes. Have you seen the telly? It’s the 1950s already, bring on the Dimblebys. It’s a fucking nightmare.’

  ‘It won’t matter, Fiona. It won’t make that big a difference.’

  Maguire laughed, a mirthless bark.

  ‘Right. Okay. Hold that thought, Gerry.’

  Over the next few hours I began to wonder if she wasn’t right. Maguire was paid to read these things, to decipher trends, divine the hidden consequences, the ramifying ambit of catastrophe.

  I sat on in front of the screen, a bolus of dread collecting in my chest.

  Campaigning was suspended for a week. Until after the funeral. Dewar, the Scottish Secretary, was reportedly livid; he wanted a shorter moratorium, but the word had come down from London. A full week.

  For the rest of that week, Moir and I were redundant. It was like burst pipes at school: you turned up every day and they told you to go home. There was nothing to do. We couldn’t even help with the Diana stuff – the news guys were all over it. We ended up going to the Cope at lunchtime, the afternoon passing in a sun-shot daze. The three-fifteen from Goodwood on the box above the bar. The winking of daylight through a last half-inch of lager. The ominous rumble of pool balls being released. It was then, during one of these sessions, that Moir told me about home, about his father in the RUC, the daily routine of checking the car for suspect devices. I began to see that he wasn’t as artless or green as I’d thought.

  I saw it anew as I read through his cuts of the past few months. The stories were the usual blend of the banal and macabre. A man smothers his fifty-two-year-old neighbour with
a cushion while they watch a football highlights show and the body is dumped in a wheelie bin. A baby found dead, wrapped in a football shirt and a pink woollen blanket, in the stairwell of a derelict tenement. A prisoner on remand hangs herself two hours after being taken off suicide watch. I’m not sure what the cuts told me, but they didn’t tell me much about Moir’s death.

  ‘Wet!’

  The voice rose behind me, a tragic keen: ‘We-e-et! We-e-et!’

  He had sluiced the water all down his front, a black, damp V on his long-sleeved T-shirt. It had gone cold now and he was sobbing with abject abandon. I lifted him down from the chair and took his T-shirt over his head, the little arms rising. I popped the poppers on his vest and took that off too. Then I wrapped him in a towel and took him through to get changed.

  It was late afternoon before I sat at the table again, bottle of Sol at my elbow. It was pointless. I was looking through Moir’s cuts for the key to his life, his death. What if someone did this to me? Would my own cuts tell them anything worth knowing? So little of life, so little that is vivid or true, gets into a news story. Even things you’ve witnessed for yourself, they get warped, translated, standardised in the telling. The fixed format, the set phrases. The news is a kind of liturgy; names and places vary but the shape of the story stays the same.

  On their own, the cuts were useless. What I needed was someone to sift them, someone to pick out the story that mattered. I could start with the other guys in the Hey You, the flagship three-man Investigations Unit (‘IU’) Moir headed up under Rix’s regime. They were friends, I figured, not just colleagues. They were close to Moir. I remembered them swaggering up to the stage at the Scottish Press Awards, three amigos in their leather jackets and ties, sharing the mike, waggling their trophies as they trooped back down. These guys might have their own theories about Moir’s death. If nothing else, they’d want to share their sense of Moir, talk out their grief. But when I reached Ian Ramage that afternoon – the third member, Dominic Young, had emigrated to Melbourne last year and was apparently beyond the reach of Google – he was curt to the point of rudeness. He was busy, he said. Work was hectic. He didn’t see what good it would do. He’d be doing me a favour, I told him, and when I rode out the hostile silence that followed this remark he sighed and arranged to meet me in his lunch hour on Monday.