Where the Dead Men Go

by Liam McIlvanney

  ‘He’s a person of interest, number of enquiries. We’ve interviewed him more than once. Blood from a stone. Suddenly he’s down Aikenhead Road giving a statement. He’s falling over himself to cooperate. He can name the pimp, he tells them. A Roma guy. Slovak. And the guy he names? He’s a known associate of Packy Walsh.’

  The old tactic. Grassing to settle scores.

  ‘It could still be true,’ I said. Angus had scrambled onto the couch and was running his car up my arm.

  ‘It could still be true. Except the Slovak’s got a decent alibi. He was in the Western on the morning in question. Recovering from stab wounds. Not discharged till the following day.’

  The car was on my head now, catching hairs in its tiny wheels. I set Angus down on the carpet, passed him his car, leaned across to snatch a pen from my computer table.

  ‘This Slovak.’

  ‘Radislav Gombar.’

  ‘Say it again.’

  ‘Radislav Gombar. Just as it sounds.’

  I wrote the name on the pad. The guy McClymont fingered for the incident in Govanhill was in hospital when it happened. Expect that was the point, wasn’t it? The girl in the close, the milk crate, the child sex ring: it was bullshit. None of it happened. It was Neil’s man setting up Walsh’s man, a porky for the porkies, a fairytale Moir had reported as fact. I was suddenly angry, angry at Moir for writing the story, making me see what had never been, mad at myself for getting suckered.

  ‘So Moir got stitched up.’

  Lewicki sniffed. ‘That’s one way to put it.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  ‘She expecting you?’

  The desk-sergeant had a boss eye. It gave him a bitter, incredulous look, as if life kept finding new ways to provoke him.

  ‘She’ll see me.’ I pushed my card across the desk. ‘Tell her it’s to do with Martin Moir.’

  I waited on the blue bench-seats, under the public-information posters in four languages, the Crimestoppers number, the announcement of a knife amnesty. There was a box of toys against the wall, a stunted Christmas tree in the corner under the telly. The desk-sergeant looked too old for his uniform. I didn’t like him. The grin he kept for the bantering officers who passed in and out faded as soon as their backs were turned.

  Twenty minutes passed. Half an hour. A buzzer sounded. Gunn came through the inner doors, shrugging into a grey pinstripe jacket. We didn’t shake hands. She looked harassed. There were flakes of pastry on her black shiny blouse.

  I signed in and followed her up the stairs. At the first-floor landing a thin man in a blue suit passed us on his way down and Gunn turned, spoke to him over my head.

  ‘Derek! Can I use your room? Ten minutes.’

  The man looked neutrally at me. ‘Fine, Sheena.’ He tossed a bunch of keys and she caught them right in front of my face.

  The desk took up most of the cubicle. She squeezed behind it and frowned at me.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I appreciate this. Seeing me, taking the time.’

  She nodded, said nothing.

  ‘Look. He didn’t do it.’ I told her. ‘He never killed himself.’

  ‘Sit down, Mr Conway.’ She rubbed her thumb and forefinger over her eyelids, looked at the wall beside her. A map of the city was tacked to a corkboard. Thick black lines carved the districts into unfamiliar wedges, operational divisions.

  ‘I think he was murdered. You were right all along.’

  She leaned back. A tiny skylight window threw its square of light in her face. She shielded her eyes.

  ‘Slow news day?’

  ‘Slow?’ I snorted. ‘Look in a mirror, you want to see slow. You’ve been sitting on this for bloody weeks.’

  ‘Yeah. Okay. You’re looking for a story, Mr Conway. Don’t ask the police to help you.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re right. I’ve just dreamed this up in an idle moment. It never crossed anyone else’s mind that Moir was murdered.’

  Gunn’s eyes closed briefly. When she opened them she was looking past me, sucking her top lip.

  ‘We kept an open mind, Mr Conway. We considered the possibility, yes. But it was your evidence. It was your phone that gave us the suicide note.’

  ‘But you were right the first time. That’s what I’m saying. He didn’t send the text.’

  She was looking at a spot on the wall beside my head.

  I moved my head to catch her gaze. ‘Look, it’s simple, he always wrote things out in full. He never used text language. Never. He had a thing about it.’

  She plumped her elbows on the desk, rested her chin on her clasped hands. She was tired and riled and unbelieving, and the set of her mouth drained all conviction from my words. We sat there in silence.

  ‘Why don’t you ask me who killed him?’

  ‘Because I don’t believe he was killed.’

  ‘I think you do. I think you’re scared of the answer.’

  She looked down at the desk, brushed the pastry from her blouse. Folded her arms.

  ‘You know what I ought to be doing right now?’

  I shrugged. She was looking at me now.

  ‘A wee girl’s been attacked,’ she said. ‘Eight years old. I won’t tell you what’s been done to her. I’m working through the known offenders. That’s what I should be doing right now. That’s what you took me away from. So. Now that you’ve got my full attention, Mr Conway. Now that you’ve held up another investigation. Who killed Martin Moir?’

  She gave it the sing-song lilt of a rote question. My answer sounded hollow, even to me.

  ‘Packy Walsh killed him.’ ‘I’ said the sparrow, with my bow and arrow.

  ‘That’s good.’ She nodded and tapped the desk twice as she got to her feet. ‘Thanks for sharing that, Mr Conway. The clearance rate’s going to look a lot healthier.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  She held the door.

  ‘Well unless you’ve got a slightly stronger card to play than the intuition of Gerard Conway I’d say we’re finished here, wouldn’t you?’

  *

  Back at the office an A4 envelope with an Ayrshire postmark was sitting on my desk: the PM report, with a note from Clare. It was nearly lunchtime so I took it to the Cope. It was a two-doctor autopsy. One doctor would mean they’d already decided it was suicide. Where the Fiscal suspects murder, where a prosecution is likely to follow, he stipulates two doctors. It’s a question of corroboration.

  I took a sup of Deuchars, started scanning through the pages. The report noted water in the lungs. There were abrasions on the wrists, consistent with the deceased thrashing around while drowning, and both wrists had been broken, possibly by the deployment of the air bag. The rope had been examined. The configuration of the knots was such that the deceased could readily have tied them himself. No indication of serious head trauma. Some bruising and contusions to the right temple, probably sustained at the moment of impact. No trace of controlled substances or toxins in the blood but very high levels of alcohol. The conclusion – suicide by drowning – had that air of judicious finality common to all PM reports. I folded it into my Tribune and finished my pint.

  So that was that. As ever, it was the things that weren’t mentioned that bothered you. No word of torn shoulder muscles or abrasions on the chest. And if Moir had been drinking, why had he seemed sober in the canalside hotel? The report hadn’t settled anything. We knew in advance that it might have ruled out suicide, though in the event it hadn’t. But despite the pathologists’ conclusions, it hadn’t ruled out murder either.

  Back at my desk I was reading Moir’s cuts when the phone rang loud, seemed to bounce at my elbow.

  ‘Gerry, a word.’

  ‘Fiona, give me five minutes. I’m onto—’

  ‘Now.’

  I looked up from my screen. She was framed in her doorway, a vengeful silhouette, then the doorway was clear. I got to my feet.

  ‘Sit down, Gerry. Shut the door.’ She went behind her desk and stood at the window. ‘I give you a few d
ays to get this out of your system. Now, what, you’re visiting brothels?’

  ‘What?’

  The daylight haloed her. I couldn’t see the expression on her face. I thought maybe that was a good thing.

  ‘You’re visiting brothels. On company time.’

  ‘On a story, Fiona, I was on a story. Who told you this?’

  ‘What story?’

  ‘Moir. Govanhill.’

  I told her about Moir’s child sex piece, my visit to the tenement, the boy who took me to the new place.

  ‘You went with one of the girls.’

  ‘Who told you this?’

  ‘A call was made. Anonymous call. You denying it?’

  ‘Anonymous! Packy fucking Walsh, Fiona. Wanting me stopped. “Call off your boy.” And that’s what you’re doing.’

  ‘Did you go with a girl?’

  I shielded my eyes. Her perfume was choking me, burning my nostrils.

  ‘Well that was kind of the idea. Difficult to talk when there’s a half a dozen people in the room.’

  ‘Talk,’ she said. ‘Talk, that’s good. Did you pay her?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard.’

  ‘Yes I paid her. Of course I paid her.’

  ‘Your own money?’

  ‘My own fucking money, Fiona. I’m not claiming it on eccies. I’m not putting it in my tax return.’

  She stepped away from the window and sat on her desk. She crossed her arms and uncrossed them.

  ‘Did you have sex with her?’

  ‘Fuck this.’ I stood up. ‘I’m going to HR and I’m going to MacLaurin.’ Hugh MacLaurin was our union rep, Father of the Chapel. ‘You better have a good reason for carrying on like this. It’s not illegal. In case you didn’t know. Even if I paid her for sex, it’s not illegal.’

  ‘Well that’s fine then. Knock yourself out. Top Trib journo tours the brothels. That’s a great look for the paper.’

  ‘I don’t know. Might put a few hundred on the Sunday.’

  ‘Don’t fucking push it, Gerry.’

  I stopped in the doorway. Our eyes were locked, the stand-off stare.

  ‘Tell me you got something then. At least tell me that.’

  I held her gaze for another few seconds and slammed out into the newsroom.

  When I got back to the flat Mari was crashed out on the sofa with Angus on her chest. I hoped there was still a beer in the fridge. Mari’s Christmas Crooners CD was playing in the empty kitchen, a lot of swooping strings and festive suavity. I opened the last Sol and slumped onto a kitchen chair. According to Bing it was beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

  I took a long pull on the bottle.

  ‘You fucking think so?’ I said.

  Chapter Nineteen

  McCallum and Stokes had their offices on Hope Street. Good address for a law firm, I thought, as I slogged up the communal stairs and took my seat in reception. Ian Ramage was running their in-house PR. I remembered him well from my first stint at the Trib. He was the one who got the biggest kick out of the Hey You’s ‘undercover’ look, the one who stayed in character, even in the office, scuffed Sambas up on the desk, swigging Coke, rubbing his five-day beard and talking out of the side of his mouth in that nasal Clydeside whine. I wondered if he kept it up at home. You pictured him scowling at the telly, dousing a fag in an empty tinnie, cuffing his kids on the back of the head.

  Now, though, he was striding to the double doors, polished loafers winking in the striplights. Clean-shaven, black suit and a soft-touch open-necked shirt, cornflower blue. Thin and pinched. I wouldn’t have known him.

  We stopped at Pret A Manger for takeout sandwiches and coffees and then walked on down, without discussing our destination, to George Square. A pale winter sun was squatting on top of the City Chambers. Despite the cold the benches were full, the office workers squashed together with their Greggs pasties and sandwich cartons on the little islands of grass. We sat side-by-side on the steps of one of the statues, an equestrian number, all hooves and helmet plumes.

  Ramage sucked his iced latte with its straw, its see-through plastic dome. I shifted my hams on the cold marble step, stowed my turkey-and-cranberry wrap in the pocket of my Berghaus.

  ‘Missed you at the funeral.’

  ‘Right.’

  He tore a bite off his sandwich, a shred of rocket hung from his lip and he pushed it back in with a twist of his thumb.

  ‘You couldn’t make it?’

  He chewed down his bite of sandwich, sucked on the straw.

  ‘I worked with the guy. It doesn’t make me his friend.’

  I nodded, took a slug of mocha.

  ‘Does it make you his enemy?’

  Ramage looked away across the square. He turned right round to face me.

  ‘The fuck kind of question is that?’

  ‘I don’t know. You work with the guy for three years. Three-man team. You’re too busy to go to his funeral?’

  ‘And that’s your business how?’

  ‘I’m asking, that’s how. I was his mate and I’m asking.’

  Ramage was shaking his head, bulge of muscle in his jaw.

  ‘I didn’t like him. It happens sometimes. In fact, I think it might be happening again.’

  I didn’t say anything. We chewed our sandwiches together. Ramage looked at his watch.

  ‘How are things anyway?’ he said finally. ‘On the Quay.’

  ‘Fine. Apocalyptic gloom. Hysterical laughter. It’s like the last days in the Führerbunker.’ I shrugged. ‘Same old same old.’

  Ramage laughed. ‘Didn’t you leave?’ He frowned round at me. ‘I thought you left.’

  ‘I came back,’ I said. ‘Couldn’t keep away.’

  He took another bite of his sandwich. We chewed together in companionable silence.

  ‘Glutton for punishment.’ He stamped his foot at one of the red-legged pigeons that were encroaching on our space. ‘I was glad to get out of the Trib. Glad to see the back of it.’

  I kept quiet. Ramage shuffled back against the plinth, sucked down some more latte.

  ‘I kept thinking I’d get my chance,’ he said. ‘Keep the head down, file your copy, the break would come.’

  ‘Fat chance.’

  ‘Yeah. Well. Slow learner, me. I wrote a piece about a year ago, a child-benefit scam.’

  ‘I remember it. Govanhill.’

  I did remember it. A Roma gang was trafficking kids up from England, registering them at local schools and claiming child benefit. The kids never showed up in school; they disappeared, back to England, back to Slovakia, and the gang collected the benefits.

  ‘That’s it. The Leeds and Bradford connection. Anyway, it was a decent story. And I did the running. I found the story, stood it up. I wrote the copy. My first splash. I was stoked, you know? I stopped off on the way home, bought some bubbles at the offy. I get up on Sunday morning and they’ve swapped the first two pars and given the byline to Martin Moir. With additional reporting by Ian Ramage. I thought: fuck this for a game of soldiers. That’s when I knew: I’m never getting anywhere in this game.’

  ‘Been there,’ I told him. ‘You’re on a hiding to nothing. He’s the name reporter. It’s his byline that puts on readers.’

  ‘Oh Moir was the talent, no question. In some way I didn’t even mind. Moir could write. He had it all over me and Dom, as a writer. But getting stories? He didn’t have the nose. Stomach either, come to that.’

  ‘Yeah? I think he did alright, all the same.’

  Ramage’s latte ran out, his straw rasped in the empty carton. He burped. ‘Think what you like. We fed him the stories – Dom Young and me. Everyone thought Moir was the golden goose. Like fuck. He was the wee runty bird in the nest – left to himself he’d have starved to death.’

  Ramage’s lunch-break was over. We stood up to go.

  ‘Fuck is this guy anyway?’

  He was craning up at the black prancing hooves, the bulging chest muscles, the plumed helmet. />
  ‘I don’t know, Ian. Listen, there’s nothing you worked on together, nothing that might give us a clue, some idea of what happened, what kind of trouble he was in?’

  Ramage crumpled his sandwich tray, wedged it in a bin with his coffee carton.

  ‘I’m happy to help. I actually am. But, Gerry: the guy wrote exposés of gangsters. That was his job. You want to know who’s happy Martin’s dead? There’s whole streets in this city, entire fucking postcodes.’

  We walked back across the square.

  ‘So you came back?’ he said. He was smiling now, scornful and maybe a little bit jealous.

  ‘The bad penny,’ I said. ‘Dog to its vomit.’

  It’s not a job. No one comes to papers for the job. It’s not a career. It’s Woodward and Bernstein. Your name on a byline. Your splash on the news-stand, the big black type in its lattice frame. It’s Welles in his black fedora atop a mountain of bundled Inquirers. It’s Redford’s corduroy suit in All the President’s Men. Break the news. Expose the facts. Tell the truth and shame the devil. That’s why you started. The career, the mortgage, the school fees, the car; all that came later. And once you’re encumbered with kids and cars and monthly repayments, that’s when you weigh things up and that’s the time – if you’ve got any sense – that you look round for something else. Even then, though, you’d linger a bit on your way out the door.

  We walked up St Vincent Street. Sun in the windows. Hard yellow sky. Traffic fumes. At the corner with Hope Street we shook hands and swapped business cards. I was halfway across the junction when he shouted.

  ‘Gerry.’

  At the far kerb I turned. The green man was flashing, the traffic already pulling away. Ramage stood on his tiptoes and shouted something but it died below the engine noise.

  ‘What?’

  He tried again, his voice pitching higher.

  ‘The stories he wasn’t writing,’ he shouted. ‘Think about them.’

  He turned on his heel and a double-decker ground past. When its orange bulk had passed he was gone, lost among the bobbing heads.

  When I got back to the flat that evening Mari was lying on the living-room carpet watching the Disney Junior channel. Angus was asleep on her chest again. I put a cushion under her head and turned down the telly.