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Where the Dead Men Go

Page 21

by Liam McIlvanney


  He picked me up within the hour. I was walking up Great Western Road when the Saab pulled in ahead, no signal. I’d copied the files onto my MacBook and I passed Lewicki the pen-drive.

  ‘And you got this how?’

  ‘Had it all along, Jan. Took it as a keepsake when I cleared his desk. Thought it was just a key-ring.’

  We drove right out Great Western Road, through Anniesland and Knightswood, clean out to Clydebank. Parked in an empty business-centre car park. Lewicki fetched a laptop from the back seat. He worked through the files and photos, grunting now and then. I lit a Café Crème and watched the lights of Inchinnan across the river.

  A grin kept stretching my lips so I could hardly smoke my cigar. I felt absurdly pleased that Moir was clean. I’d been wrong. We’d all been certain that Moir was gunning for Walsh and that Packy held the key to Martin’s death. We’d been facing the wrong direction, stuck on the Clyde’s wrong side. We should have been looking north, not south – to Cranhill not to Pollok. But I’d been right, too: Moir had kept the real stories hidden. Hid them so well that we nearly missed them. His real target was Hamish Neil but he never got the chance to see it through. I felt bad for doubting him. The only thing now – not for my sake or for Clare’s or the girls’ or Neve McDonald’s but for Martin Moir himself – was to finish the job. Starting with the cleanskins – this florist, this retirement home.

  ‘It’s good.’ Lewicki shifted in his seat, frowning at the screen. ‘The florist’s a front, we know that. The nursing home too. But the bills are new, the invoices. They’ll turn out to be ghosts, would be my guess. If we can tie Neil to these dockets we might have a crack at this. Sit tight for the minute, I’ll check with the tech boys tomorrow. Fucking Moir.’ He shook his head. ‘Should have known he’d never have done it, break the ninth commandment.’

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  ‘Chrysanths are always nice.’ The woman waved a vague hand at some buckets by the till. ‘Or—’ She peered around the shop, distracted, forlorn, a hand poised in the air, like someone who’s just come into a room and forgotten what she came for. ‘Or orchids?’ Her fingers tapped the tissue-paper backing of a window display where three vulgar blossoms hung in waxy, drooping folds.

  ‘I hate orchids,’ I said. ‘The smell.’

  ‘Not everyone’s taste,’ she said brightly. ‘What’s the occasion?’

  She was fair, late forties, a heavy-set sensual woman with a smoker’s crimped lips. She moved among the displays with a buoyant grace. She wasn’t the woman in Moir’s photos.

  ‘I’m visiting my aunt,’ I said. ‘She’s in a nursing home in Bearsden.’

  ‘Bearsden’s nice.’

  ‘Laurelbank Retirement Home.’ I lifted a Mackintosh vase, checked the price on the base. ‘Do you know it?’

  She had her back to me, scanning the arrangements along the back wall. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘What about a plant? They last longer.’

  She smiled at me over her shoulder.

  I bought some yellow carnations.

  *

  Laurelbank was a whitewashed villa with red tiled roofs in the sleepy streets behind Roman Road. A smiling teenage girl in a white nurse’s tunic answered the door.

  ‘I’m here to see my aunt.’ I brandished the carnations. ‘Mrs Glendinning.’

  ‘Come in.’

  She slipped behind the reception desk and smiled afresh, as if greeting me for the first time.

  I waited.

  ‘The name again, sir?’

  ‘Glendinning.’

  Her manicured fingers rattled the keys. The name on her name badge was ‘Katya’. She grimaced at the screen.

  ‘I’m sorry, we don’t appear to have a resident of that name. Are you sure you have the correct . . . facility?’

  I nodded. ‘This is the place.’

  ‘Well, I can’t see it.’ The smile was back. ‘Why don’t I get Mrs Cole? I haven’t been here long. Mrs Cole will have a better idea.’

  She disappeared through a swing door and I leaned across the counter to steal a glance at the screen but it was back at the homepage and I moved smartly across to stand beneath the bucolic landscape that hung above the empty fireplace: a man in grey on a hillside casting a fly, a chill-looking dawn mirrored pink in the river.

  ‘You’re looking for Mrs Glendinning?’

  The woman who stepped out from behind the counter and strode towards me was wearing a smart dark-blue two-piece. The suit had a mature, even matronly cut, but the body underneath it was good, and the woman’s eyes and the two-inch heels on her court shoes suggested she knew it.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I’m very sorry, but Mrs Glendinning left us in August.’ The woman’s hands were clasped beneath her chest and she was nodding slowly.

  ‘She died?’

  ‘Oh no!’ The lips twisted in a waspish smile. 'No, the family took her away.’

  ‘Do you have an address?’ The address on Moir’s invoice was a PO box in Edinburgh.

  ‘For the family? I’m afraid not. They were moving away. Down south; Cornwall as I understand it. They were taking Mrs Glendinning with them. What did you say your connection was, Mr— ?’

  ‘Moir. Martin Moir. I’m the nephew.’

  I watched the eyes for a reaction.

  ‘Martin Moir?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And do you have an address where we can reach you, Mr Moir, if something, if something turns up?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’ I put out my hand and she grasped it lightly, absent-mindedly. ‘I think I may be moving soon too. Thanks for your help.’

  The receptionist was still rattling the keys as I pushed back through the doors and into the street.

  I drove round the block and parked a little farther down the street on the opposite side. I smoked two roll-ups, enjoying the weak, low sun on my half-closed eyes. In twenty minutes a white Porsche Cayenne pulled up outside Laurelbank and a slim brunette in jogging gear – three-quarter-length black leggings and a fitted, waterproof vest with fuchsia panels – slipped down from the driver’s side and bounced across the gravel on her spotless white Mizunos. When she tossed her hair on the top step I was ready with the iPhone and snapped two shots before the door closed. The short bobbed hair, the Jackie O sunspecs: it was the woman in Moir’s photos. I tossed the iPhone onto the passenger’s seat and headed back to town.

  Lewicki phoned that evening. He had a colleague, Callum Kidd, who wanted to meet me, pass on some data. There were front companies the Agency knew about, even if they couldn’t yet prove them to be fronts. As of now they’d decided to share their intelligence with public bodies – local councils, health trusts, licensing boards – to prevent them awarding contracts to firms with criminal links. Kidd was prepared to show me the list.

  The next afternoon I drove to Lock 27, picked my spot in the empty car park. The pub had yet to open but the chef stood smoking by an open fire-door, the wind rippling his thin checked trousers. There was no one else around. I thought it might be more conspicuous to ignore him so I jerked my chin as I headed for the towpath and he raised two fingers of his smoking hand, blessed me with his cigarette.

  I was heading east. Low sun. The frozen grass sparkling, like something sprayed with silver paint. A jogger was powering towards me, the sun at her back, a silhouette of legs in black Lycra. I stepped onto the grass and she rasped past, jiggle of blonde ponytail, a swivelled eye.

  The second bench was empty. I wiped a glove across the perforated metal, wiped the glove on my leather jacket. I was five minutes early. The Forth & Clyde was freezing over, two wavy lines of ice jutting out from either bank, a stripe of standing water in the middle. I could feel the bench through my jeans, the frozen metal, a dull itchy chill on the backs of my thighs. But the sun on my face had some heat and I closed my eyes to savour it. When I opened them a dog was rooting in the weeds at my feet, a boxer, its dainty waist twisting back and forward as the scents dre
w its nose. The man attached to it stood uncertainly, a pained half-smile on his long face. He wore a short jacket of houndstooth tweed, a scarlet scarf. He held the leash in a brown gloved hand.

  ‘Conway? Gerry Conway?’

  ‘Aye.’

  I gave my hand to the dog, let it snuffle and lick, the blunt snout bumping my fingers, then took it away as the tailless rump shuffled up to the bench, the leg lifting. The man looked on with pursed lips. He didn’t look like a dog person. Was the dog even his? Was he a cutout, I wondered? Was this the cop?

  ‘I’ve got something for you.’

  He took off his gloves, hunched his shoulders to reach into his inside pocket. I took a folded paper from his hand, stowed it in my own breast pocket.

  ‘Alright?’

  I nodded. He was nodding too. A swan slid into view behind him on the black strip of water, like something on a rail. We needed a form of words to finish this, to bring the transaction to a close.

  ‘Be careful, alright?’

  I tapped my pocket.

  ‘Won’t let it out of my sight.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘No, I mean you. You be careful.’

  ‘Okay, I will.’

  He looked off up the towpath and back at me. He was deciding whether to tell me something. A cop, I thought. He’s the cop, not the cutout.

  ‘Hamish Neil finds out we gave you that?’ He shook his head, tugging at the gloves, flexing the fingers. The dog watched his hands. There was something else, something behind his words. He turned to leave and I grabbed his forearm, the wiry tweed.

  ‘Hold on. How would Hamish Neil find out?’

  He held my gaze. ‘Hamish Neil’s got a habit of finding things out.’

  ‘A rat?’

  I thought he hadn’t heard me at first.

  ‘It could be.’ He studied the towpath. ‘Aye. We think so.’

  I looked across the frozen water, the solitary swan slow-moed back into view. Did swans not come in pairs?

  ‘You mean he’ll know about this? Our meeting? Hamish Neil?’

  ‘Just be careful,’ he said again. He tugged hard on the animal’s leash and crunched off up the frozen path. The dog’s cropped tail wagged like a finger.

  ‘Hey!’

  He stopped. The dog turned at my voice and they both stood and waited.

  ‘Why the canal?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘I live near here. It’s where I walk the dog.’

  He strode off, the dog trotting beside him in the frozen grass, rooting for smells. I tugged the paper from my pocket, two sheets of A4, stapled, folded in quarters. A printed list of company names and their registered addresses. Citywide Cabs, Skyline Scaffolding, Greene Group, Judd Construction. The usual fronts – cabs, builders, demolition. Then the others. Sunset Boulevard Tanning Salon, Flowers By Genevieve‚ MacKay’s Coaches. Two hairdressing salons. Cash businesses, Lewicki had told me. Any place you can fabricate clients, phantom customers. Laurelbank Retirement Home was there, and a fitness club in Bothwell.

  Would Maguire publish the list? I wasn’t sure. But she would publish the fact that the list existed, that we had it in our possession. That in itself should get the Justice Committee excited, spook Neil’s cleanskins.

  Then I turned the page and the words swam up, Abacus Nursery, 15 Jeffrey Street, G12. I closed my eyes, flinched as from a blow, opened them, read it again. I was breathing through my nose, I could hear the snorkeling of air as if I was under water.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  I started for the car, pulling out my phone, scrolling for the number. It went to voicemail, the stupid, upbeat message: Mari, Gerry and Angus are having too much fun to come to the phone. Leave your number and we’ll call you back!

  ‘Mari.’ I cleared my throat. ‘Mari, are you there? You need to pick up Angus from nursery.’ I tried to keep my voice even but it buckled, broke. ‘Now. As soon as you get this. Call me.’ I tried her mobile; it rang out.

  The chef was gone, I looked at the empty wall where he’d stood, thinking, This is what you’ll remember, this scene will live with you forever if something’s happened. Then I turned the ignition, put the Forester in drive.

  It was the feeling you have when you’ve lost a child, when a toddler wanders off in the shopping mall, when your first frantic search draws a blank and your brain circles back round the words: lost, gone, dead. You enter this zone of abeyance, a poisonous lull. If something has happened, it’s happened. The time you let slip, the six or seven minutes when you weren’t watching, will happen again. They have already happened to the boy; now they will happen to you. You will find out what your next card is: do you get your life back or will fate, God, chance‚ take it away?

  I drove down the Crow Road, onto Great Western. I drove like an old lady, drove as if there was a tray of eggs on the back seat. Keep as quiet and still as you can, and nothing bad will happen. Neil’s voice came into my mind, as if he was sitting beside me in the car. You can’t keep a thing safe, you don’t deserve to keep it. Onto Byres Road. Dowanhill. I turned the wheel left and right and swung round corners till the building loomed up, the nursery with its yellow sign, the artwork in the windows, coloured cellophane, the smiling bears and happy tigers.

  I’d held it together till now but when I reached the car park panic swelled. I sprang from the car, keys swinging in the ignition, door agape, and plunged towards the steps. A mum was coming out with a red-haired toddler, a wee girl, maybe two years old. She was tugging a hat from her head and she chucked it on the ground and the mother stooped to lift it.

  You’re supposed to let the door click shut and then press the buzzer – it’s a security thing – but I slammed past the mum and into the hallway, lunging for the tweenie-room, bracing myself on the jamb. The heads looked up from their toys and games. In a corner, two kids were asleep on beanbags, the little bodies sprawled as though they’d fallen from a height. Music was coming from a portable CD player, a nursery rhyme with tinny percussion. A boy in a pinny at the water tray pointed at me and said, ‘Angus!’ I heard the click from the supervisor’s knees as she rose and came towards me, frowning.

  ‘Angus is gone. He’s away already. Did she not tell you?’

  ‘What? Who?’

  ‘Your wife phoned. Your sister picked him up. You’ve just missed them.’

  The room seemed to buckle, to bulge in random places: the suds in the water-tray, a curly blond head, the crest on the supervisor’s polo shirt. I lurched through to the baby room, the pre-school room – frantic, calling his name – then spun out onto the steps.

  And then I saw it. Three-pointing in the street: the black Beamer X5, the tinted windows. I ran for the Forester, hauled the door shut, stamped on the gas. At the car-park gate I saw braking tail-lights, the Beamer turning right onto Great Western.

  My hands were shaking as I sped up the street and signalled right, waited for a break in the traffic. All down Great Western I kept the black tailgate in sight. St George’s Cross, onto the motorway, spurt of speed, crossing three lanes, rush hour starting. Blue signs overhead, Kilmarnock, Prestwick Airport. The South. I ran through the possibilities. South Side, Ayrshire, the ferry to Ireland, straight down to England. I looked at the fuel gage, the needle bumping ‘F’. Good: I’d filled up last night, coming back from the five-a-sides.

  The Kingston Bridge looped us over the Clyde, the river molten yellow, sun fizzing on the Armadillo. I was right on the tail, no cars now between my front end and the tinted rear window. The Beamer left the motorway at Junction 1, zipping past Pollok Park. I kept on its bumper through Shawlands, into Newlands, the big sandstone semis, plenty of trees. Then a furniture lorry swung out of a side street and I jammed the horn with the heel of my hand, mounted the pavement, cleared the rear wheel by a tenth of an inch.

  When I turned the next corner the Beamer was swinging to the kerb, brake lights flaring. There was a space right behind it but I put the foot down to get alongside, wrenching
the wheel to swing my nose round, blocking it off. The belt slapped my chest, slammed me back in my seat as the Forester bucked on its chassis but already I was out, sprinting round the car, yanking the door, two fistfuls of shirt, hauling the guy from his seat, shouting for my son. The driver’s head was bucking in slow-motion, his arms flapping as the seat belt held him. A child was crying, screaming, I couldn’t see the child.

  I dropped the driver and hauled on the rear door. The eyes swung round, the pink screaming mouth; a blond boy, not Angus, not mine. I frowned at the child and my temple exploded, dropping me onto one knee, my cheek bumping the bodywork. I staggered up and back. The driver stood swaying, mad eyes, mouth yawing, the fingers of one hand clenched in the other.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I backed up, hands high. ‘My son. I thought you had my son.’

  He lashed out, made a clumsy orang-utan swipe with his good hand as I ducked past him and into the Forester, punched the locks, found reverse, found drive, away.

  Barrelling down the street I could see him in the rear-view, planted in the roadway, legs apart, cradling his broken hand.

  My head was pulsing with pain as I turned onto Kilmarnock Road. My Hugo Boss specs were hanging askew – a leg had snapped when the driver lamped me – and the eye on that side was closing. The bump to my cheek had gashed a gum and blood was pooling in my mouth, slipping down my throat like brassy phlegm. But my chest wasn’t heaving. The mist had cleared. The ball in my stomach was gone. I was thinking straight. When my phone rang I fished it calmly from my pocket.

  ‘Gerry?’ Mari’s voice was small and scared, a voice I’d never heard before. ‘Have you got him? I got your message.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You want me to go?’

  ‘No. I’ve been. He’s not there.’

  I thought I’d lost her for a minute but her voice came back, smaller than ever.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m in the car. Hold on.’ I tossed the phone on the passenger seat, pulled out of the traffic, into a side street, parked.

 

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