Meantime, there was one piece in the sheaf of cuts on the table, one story that stood out. Its heat seemed to waver up from the varnished wood. I flipped through the pile and found it. Six months old. Page six lead. ‘Child Sex Probe at Southside Flats’, by Investigations Editor Martin Moir:
A child prostitution ring is operating on the south side of Glasgow, the Tribune on Sunday can reveal.
Police have confirmed that several addresses in the Govanhill area of the city are under surveillance as part of an ongoing investigation into child sexual abuse. Children as young as nine are believed to be involved.
The abuse came to light when a local father-of-two stumbled on a man having full sex with a girl in a tenement close.
Grant McClymont, 41, was walking his dog on the morning of Tuesday 12 May when he made the shocking discovery.
‘The dog was off the leash,’ Mr McClymont told the ToS. ‘He ran into a close on Temora Street. It’s like a rubbish tip in there – bin-bags and what have you – so I went in after him. In the back close there’s a man having sex with a young lassie. It stopped me in my tracks. They just looked at me.’
The girl, who appeared to be around ten years of age, was standing on an upturned crate.
‘I couldn’t believe it,’ says Mr McClymont. ‘This was ten o’clock in the morning, in broad daylight.’
Mr McClymont says he left the tenement to seek assistance and called the police on his mobile phone. However, when officers arrived the close was empty.
Both the man and his victim appeared to be of Roma origin.
Police say the incident was consistent with their intelligence.
‘We have had persistent and credible reports of child prostitution at locations in the Govanhill area,’ said a police spokesman. ‘Our enquiries are ongoing. If we find any evidence of criminality we will come down on the perpetrators with all the force at our disposal. The abuse of children will not be tolerated.’
I slipped it back in the pile, took a pull of beer. The cuts lay in a square of sunlight. You couldn’t not picture it. The girl in the dank close. Drugged eyes and thin limbs. Feet apart on the plastic crate. The frail frame jouncing as the man bucked and rose. The beer heaved in my gullet and I swallowed it back down.
But something else got me. A dog walker? An unnamed police source? It was thin as piss. You could paraglide through the holes in this story. Moir had done something that Moir didn’t do. He had taken a flyer. Why?
Lewicki answered on the sixth ring. The private number.
‘Yeah, rings a bell. This was when, again?’
‘March. The incident was 12 March. Story appeared on the sixteenth.’
‘And no follow-ups?’
‘Nothing. He never wrote about it again.’
I stood up from the table – the low sun was hurting my eyes – and wandered through to the living room, bottle swinging from my free hand’s knuckles. Something big – a lorry or a van – was parking in the street.
‘So what, then?’ Lewicki was irritable. ‘He couldn’t stand it up. No big mystery.’
‘You mean you don’t believe it happened?’
I crossed to the window. A white van was parked across the street, next to the wasteground, its back doors ajar.
‘Mate, I could believe anything happened in Govanhill. Not just Govanhill. But if there’s no follow-up it was probably bullshit.’
A man backed out of the van, hugging the end of a sofa. He dropped it on the pavement and hauled on the arm until the other end bumped down from the van. The sofa was cheap velour, champagne-coloured, missing its cushions. The man – a lanky skinhead in jeans and a pale denim shirt, Timberland work-boots – shoved and kneed the sofa over to the railings, then stepped back into the interior.
‘An unnamed police source,’ I said.
‘Mm. It happens.’
The guy backed out again, toting a floppy beige sausage of carpet. It buckled in the middle and the cheese-coloured boots kicked it to the railings. I could practically read it from the window – the ‘No Fly Tipping’ sign tacked to the railings. The window buzzed as I slapped it with my palm but the guy was back in the van.
‘It couldn’t be you?’
‘What?’
‘The police source. It wasn’t you?’
A black TV. Bending at the knees he set it down beside the sofa. Rubbed his palms down his jeans.
‘Why would it be me, Gerry?’
‘I don’t know, Jan. Just a thought.’
The guy was slamming the van’s back doors.
‘Right,’ Lewicki said. ‘I’ll ask around. Be good.’
I battered the window again. The guy looked up, shielding his eyes from the sun, head bobbing as he pinpointed the window. Then the smile, the slow erection of the middle finger. The engine rasped as he drove away.
Chapter Seventeen
The school was tall, Victorian, a barracks in sandstone. High, square and cold; a building designed to terrorise kids. Carved in imperative capitals at one end of the façade was the word ‘boys’. At the other end, as distant as symmetry would permit, ‘girls’.
I locked the car. It was Sunday afternoon, a thin rain sweeping the playground. A trio of jacketless boys stroked a ball back and forth on the netball court. As I crossed the road, one of them sprang onto the railings and hung there grinning, thin brown fists and sparky black eyes, a patterned jumper with fraying cuffs.
The building I wanted was next to the school. I’d got the address from Doug Prentice, the snapper who’d worked on it with Moir, the Govanhill sex story. I stopped at the path. Two smashed windows on the ground floor, squares of cardboard taped to the glass. A big splotch of damp on the building’s façade, a mossy green track where the downpipe had been.
The boy on the railings was watching. The front door gave at my push but slammed shut again. I shouldered it open and squeezed through. The big landing window was glassless and a gale was blowing through the close. But the cold wind couldn’t mask the stench. Rubbish was piled at the foot of the stairwell, black bags burst and torn, their innards spilling on the dark concrete – glinting tin cans, buckled two-litre coke bottles, a streaked sanitary towel, a blue translucent nappy-sack. The paint in the hallway was flaking, there were holes in the ceiling, thin ribs of light-coloured wood where the plaster had fallen away.
I stood in the wind and the smell and half-closed my eyes. It came unbidden, the image, a grainy tableau. A girl on a crate amid strewn garbage, a man’s shoulders rising, his breath short, trousers bunched at his ankles.
I picked my way through the rubbish to the back door and slid the bolt. The back green had a cold, abandoned look. A carousel stood like a broken tree, baby clothes limp in the rain, a line of white vests pinned by the shoulders. A black cat stepped from a washing machine that lay canted on its side, a foundered hulk in the uncut grass. A single mattress flopped against the back wall. The wall between the garden and the school had a yard-high metal fence along its top. One end had been worked loose and pulled back, so the schoolboys could squeeze through to get their ball back. Take a shit, too, by the looks of the grass.
‘Hey!’
I turned and craned up. A man at a second-floor window, Asian, his hand raised. A woman at his back, flash of orange, baby on her arm. He stabbed his finger on the pane.
‘You stay!’
Back in the close I could hear him rattling down the stairs. He caught me at the front door, grabbed my shoulder, hauled me round.
‘You police?’
He was small, slim, his teeth bared under a thin moustache. He was wearing a tank-top over a white shirt. Stain at the shoulder, birdshit white.
‘No.’
‘No.’ He was nodding. ‘No. Why you come here?’
He was moving a lot, his head bobbing like a boxer’s.
I shrugged, looked at the front door. He leaned across me to place his palm on the door, holding it shut. I could smell the stain now, not birdshit but curdled milk, a little spl
ash of baby vomit.
‘It finish.’ He pointed at the floor. ‘It finish here. All finish. No more here. OK?’ His hand was on my shoulder again. A sort of anguished smile spreading as he stared into my eyes like a man scanning for signs of life.
‘OK,’ I said. I moved his hand from my shoulder. ‘It’s finished. Fine. I get it.’
‘No come back,’ he said. He took his hand off the door.
Back in the street I gulped the cold air. A passing car sprayed slush on my jeans. I crossed the road and leaned on the Forester, reaching for my keys.
‘Big man.’ The Glasgow accent. ‘Mister.’ A boy’s footsteps crossing the road. ‘Mister, I can help you.’
I turned. The boy from the railings. The refugee pullover. Dirty blue joggers. New white trainers.
‘Help me with what?’
He smiled.
‘What you want.’
‘Yeah? What do I want?’
The smile broadened. The rain was beading his black hair. He was smiling at the trick question. I was a man, I had a cock, I wanted what everyone wanted.
He jerked his thumb at the tenement. ‘They had to move. Too near the school. I know where it is.’ He nodded. ‘I’ll take you.’
I looked across the street. The Asian man had gone back inside.
‘Two minutes’ walk, chief. No problem.’
I jerked my chin at the boy.
He held both hands up, fingers spread.
I nodded, dug into my jeans pocket for a tenner, watched him fold it into a tight tab and tuck it into a spotless trainer.
‘Don’t walk beside me. Stay on the other side of the street. The door when I stop to tie my laces? That’s the close. Second floor left.’
I trailed him through the sandstone streets, keeping pace on the opposite pavement. When he stood up from tying his laces he turned and walked back, didn’t glance in my direction.
Second floor left. The door had a spyhole, no nameplate.
‘Yeah?’
A woman in her forties, heavy but holding it well, in a straight black skirt and a tight red sleeveless blouse. Her blonde hair hung in a shortish bob.
‘The boy,’ I said finally. ‘The boy sent me.’
‘What boy?’
The hallway behind her gave nothing away: a tasselled lamp, a mirror. What kind of hall would a brothel have?
‘The boy at the school.’ I gestured towards the stairs as if the boy was at my shoulder. ‘I went to the old place. A boy in the playground brought me here.’
‘Who told you?’
‘What?’
‘Who told you about the old place?’
‘I don’t know. A friend.’
She shook her head.
‘I don’t remember,’ I said.
‘Yeah, well when your memory comes back you can come and see us again, love. OK?’
The door was closing.
‘I’ve got money.’
‘That’s handy. Have a good day.’
‘Walsh!’ I almost shouted as the door clicked shut.
‘What’s that?’
The door was open.
‘It was Packy Walsh. OK?’
‘You know Packy Walsh? Packy Walsh told you about this place?’
‘Uh-huh.’
She stood aside and held the door but as I stepped through it she placed her hand on my chest. I looked down at the painted nails, the plump fingers puckered with rings.
‘What’s your name, sweetheart?’
A sour guff below her perfume, a spoor of meaty armpits.
‘Gary.’
‘Well it’s nice to meet you, Gary. I’m Carol. No rough stuff, no excitement. We’re through here.’
The living room was dark, the curtains closed. A yellow dancing glare from the telly. Three girls were on the sofa and they straightened as we entered, tossing their heads. I stood there, adjusting to the light, Carol at my elbow. The three girls smiled, heads up, backs straight. Carol snapped a lamp on and turned off the telly.
Two of them were veterans. Late thirties. Plucked and burnished, eyes like garnets. The third was trying to look hard but the eyes said something else. I nodded at her.
‘Gina,’ said Carol.
The girl rose awkwardly on her heels and I followed her down the hall.
The bedroom was cold. It smelled of damp, an earthy, underground musk. She crouched to flick the switch on a two-bar electric fire. She stood up and smiled.
‘Sixty,’ she said. The accent was thick, guttural. East European.
‘Right. Sorry.’ I dug out my wallet and took out three twenties.
‘Thank you.’ She put them in a box on the mantelpiece.
When she turned round she was already loosening the belt on her dress. There were buttons big as jam-jar lids all down the front and she snapped them open. I had the sense you have in dreams, of things moving out of your control, events proceeding at a pace of their own.
‘There.’
The dress landed on the armchair.
‘Brrr!’
She laughed, hugging herself and rubbing the backs of her arms. Her body in its flesh-tone underwear was skinny and pale, gooseflesh-grey. I noticed her collarbones, the hollows at the pelvis where the fabric of her knickers stood away from the skin.
She stepped out of her heels and sort of skipped across the carpet and gripped the lapels of my jacket.
Her shoulders were stippled with cold. I ran my hands down the backs of her arms, traced with my thumb the little white hollow on her upper arm.
She pulled my jacket off my shoulders and tugged it down, pinioning my arms. I had to fight and wriggle to work it loose. It thumped onto the floor. She touched me then, cupping me lightly and I looked away.
‘Don’t worry. She smiled. ‘Take your time.’
She pushed me onto the bed but when her hands started working on my belt I reached down and gripped them.
‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s not – I’m a journalist.’
I struggled up and stepped away, buckling my belt. She was kneeling by the bed like a child at prayer.
‘I’m a journalist.’
She shook her head. I mimed fingers hitting a keyboard. ‘A reporter. For a paper.’
The girl shrugged, her breasts moving in the pallid bra. I sat on the bed.
‘A man saw something. A few weeks ago. Not here but in the old place. On Temora Street. Temora Street?’
She nodded. She said the words, ‘Temora Street.’
‘He saw a young girl. Very young. A man was with her. There are young girls here?’
‘Young.’ She was nodding, she knew the word. ‘You like young?’
‘No! No. It was in the paper.’ I mimed opening a newspaper. ‘A news story. A man saw a girl. She is too young.’ I pressed my palm down on the empty air, measuring the height of a child. ‘A kid. A girl. With a man.’ I pointed at the door. ‘Is she here? Do you know her?’
I had lost her. She smiled uncertainly, waiting for me to go on, waiting for it to make sense. I could hear a door closing, movement in the hall. I had the ridiculous notion that the door would burst open and I’d be caught not fucking, caught with my pants up. The girl shrugged and smiled.
It was useless. I got her dress from the armchair and tossed it to her. She put it on slowly, still confused, rising from her knees, working the buttons. She was wary, now, something was wrong, she had failed, it was her fault.
I picked up my jacket. There were cards in the top pocket and I fished one out and passed it to the girl. She closed her fist round it.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, though I couldn’t have said what I was sorry about.
In the hallway the woman called Carol was waiting.
‘Enjoy yourself, love?’
‘Great,’ I said, but she didn’t buy it and I knew that the girl would be getting a hard time. Whatever I might have looked like walking down that hall, it wasn’t like a man who’d just had sex.
‘She works Tuesday to Saturday, afterno
ons. Friday nights too.’
‘I’ll bear it in mind.’
*
That evening I was flicking through the channels when Mari came through, pointing the phone at me like a TV remote, mouthing the word ‘Lewicki’. He never gave his name when he called but she knew his voice by now. I killed the sound on the telly.
‘Moir’s story,’ he said. ‘Govanhill.’ I’d emailed the cut to him. Lewicki had an email address in a bogus name; he checked it daily in an internet café.
‘The lassie in the close. What about it?’
Angus was playing at my feet, moving his cars around on the carpet, running them up the leg of the coffee table.
‘Well there’s a reason it came to nothing.’
‘Yeah?’
‘The witness. Grant McClymont. Bit of history.’
‘Not just a dog walker?’
‘Assault. Couple of breaches. Intent to supply. Not a celebrity but he’s done time.’
Angus looked up from his toys: ‘Dog!’
‘Doesn’t mean he’s lying, Jan. Doesn’t mean he didn’t see it.’
‘No, but it means you ca’ canny. Exercise a degree of caution. Plus, the dog – it’s some fucking walker. It likes a walk that dog.’
‘He’s not local?’
‘His sister’s local. She lives the other side of Queen’s Park. He says he was visiting her. But McClymont’s from Cranhill.’
A little stress on the last word, a rising inflection.
‘Cranhill,’ I repeated. Angus was running a car across my shoe, up my shin.
Lewicki sighed. ‘Who’s who in Cranhill, Gerry? You’re the fucking journo.’
‘You mean he’s one of Neil’s? He’s working for Neil?’
‘He drives for Hamish Neil.’
The guy at the Goldberry, standing at the fire door, the big bloke in the crombie.
Where the Dead Men Go Page 14