Where the Dead Men Go

by Liam McIlvanney

  ‘There’s nothing to do.’ Rod was lagging behind. ‘This is boring.’ He would keep on like this, in a voice like someone scratching a balloon, until you lost the plot and shouted him down. Or you could bluster him out of it, chivvy him round.

  ‘Rubbish,’ I said. ‘Brisk walk. Fresh air. What more could you want? A growing boy.’

  ‘But where are we going?’

  James looked up too, waiting for the answer.

  ‘I don’t know. A walk. Listen, we make it as far as the University Café I’ll buy you a slider.’

  ‘Can I have a tub?’ James was serious now, establishing the conditions. ‘Can I have a tub instead of a slider. And strawberry, not plain.’

  ‘Course you can. Alright, Roddy?’

  ‘Fine.’

  There were carol singers outside Hillhead Underground, a proper choir, eight or ten cheery souls in matching red scarves, a conductor in a Santa hat. Shoppers paused to listen. A spirited version of ‘God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen’ was under way, the basses angry at the back, frowning and blustering, the sopranos joyful at the front, open-mouthed like fledglings. I gave the boys a pound coin each to drop in the Marie Curie bucket and that’s when I heard the sound, faint at first, a distant sob from Dumbarton Road, then suddenly loud as an ambulance slalomed through the stalled traffic. The carollers flinched, kept their eyes on the song-sheets, eyes and lips growing desperately expressive as their voices were overwhelmed, before the ambulance passed, its loud sarcastic whoop dwindling towards the Botanics. Almost immediately, two police cars came slashing past, lights flashing Christmassy blue in the dusk.

  I felt it in my chest, like the bass at a gig, a thumping note, panic. This was it.

  ‘Right guys,’ I said. ‘Change of plan. Come on.’

  James sensed my agitation, felt for my hand. I tugged him through the shoppers, moving too fast, I could feel him skipping to keep up. I had a flashback of him as a toddler, Elaine and I holding his hands, hup-two-three and then the lift, the little legs cycling the air, Again! Again!

  ‘Dad, what is it, Dad?’ James was craning to look in my face but I stared straight ahead, kept up the pace. ‘What’s happened, Dad?’ He was still at that age, his dad knew everything, his dad could answer all questions. Roddy snorted.

  ‘Don’t be soft, James. How’s Dad supposed to know?’

  A knot of shoppers was outside Ceòl Mòr, a craning crowd, the ambulance and cop cars parked askew in the street, blocking the traffic on Great Western Road. A uniform was out in the roadway, waving on the cars and buses; another one guarded the door of the pub.

  I fumbled for my press card. I held it up for the cop on the door.

  ‘Gerry Conway. Tribune on Sunday. Can you tell me what’s happened?’

  He looked at the card, then down at the boys. The blue lights flickered across his young face, the set mouth.

  ‘There’s been an incident, sir. A statement will be released in due course.’

  ‘Bad one, is it?’

  He looked at the boys, back at me, frowning.

  ‘Not at liberty to say. Sir, I’d get the kiddies away from here, it’s not, it’s not suitable.’

  Another car pulled up, two men getting out, suits and ties, Lewicki and a shorter colleague, moving slowly, stopping in the roadway to take it all in, the scene, the crowd, the short guy hitching his trousers.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said to the uniformed cop. ‘Come on, guys.’

  I caught Lewicki’s eye as we passed, he looked down, gave his head the smallest of shakes. The two detectives were making for the door, taking their time.

  ‘What happened, Dad?’ James was still anxious, he wanted an answer.

  ‘I don’t know, son. An accident. Maybe a person collapsed in the pub, a heart attack. The ambulance was there to help them.’

  ‘Three cop cars?’ Roddy whistled. ‘Some accident.’

  I felt the rage, out of nowhere, turned on him, crouched on the pavement, hands on his shoulders, my back to James. ‘You think that’s smart?’ His white shocked face. ‘Frightening your wee brother? Think you’re the big man? How would you know what’s happened?’ I knocked his shoulder with the heel of my hand. ‘Smarten up!’

  ‘All right!’ He shook himself free, scowling, the jaw tightened, Jamie scared now, fighting tears. Fuck it. I stayed kneeling on the pavement, chin on my chest, let my eyes close. One boy hurt, another scared, and who knows what had happened in the pub. Nice work, Gerry. First fucking class. Leave things better than you found them.

  In the flat I closed the front door and leaned against it, closed my eyes. I felt I could sleep standing up. I pushed myself off with my palms and stumbled through to the living room.

  ‘Guys, look, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for shouting. You want to do something, play a game? Want to play the Wii?’

  They were rifling through the DVDs. They looked up, heads together, looked at each other. ‘We’re fine, Dad.’

  When they were small, when they’d wanted me to play with them I was too busy, too tired. Now that I was ready to play it was too late, they didn’t need me.

  Through in the kitchen I slumped at the table, let my head cant forward onto folded arms. I thought about phoning it in, alerting the desk but I couldn’t lift my head from my arms and I didn’t know what to tell them. They would know soon enough, I figured. We would all know soon enough.

  It was six o’clock before Lewicki answered his phone.

  ‘Well that was a fun afternoon. Thanks a fucking million for setting that up.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Lewicki snorted. ‘What happened? They missed him’s what happened.’

  ‘Missed him! How?’

  A long exhale. ‘They fucked up, Gerry. They’re still waiting for Maitland to show when this blonde at the bar pulls a gun from her purse and starts unloading into Hamish Neil.’

  ‘A woman?’

  ‘Well that’s what they think. Finally one of them gets a round off and takes the shooter down. When the smoke clears Hamish Neil’s slumped in the booth with a chest full of holes and Walter Maitland Jr’s on the deck, blood pumping from a leg wound and a blonde wig on the floor beside him.’

  ‘Aw, Jesus, Jan. They were supposed to stop it. They were supposed to step in.’

  ‘Yeah. Well. You cannae always legislate for skinny trannies wi’ guns in their purse. Anyway, fuck it, it’s a result. One dead, one in the Bar-L. What do you care, your worries are over. You’re laughing.’

  He rang off. I didn’t feel like laughing. A man was lying dead in the city morgue. Not the best of men, you could say, but which of us was? A man who wouldn’t be dead if I hadn’t phoned him.

  Later – it might have been ten minutes, might have been an hour – I lifted my head, groaned to my feet. The boys would need something to eat. There was a sign saying ‘Poison’ on the fridge door, a magnet with an 0800 number, the emergency helpline. Who to call if a family member ingests a toxic fluid. Did we have these as kids, poison hotlines? We never swallowed any bleach or weedkiller. Does it make it more likely? Does the presence of the number on your fridge door attract these sorts of events, call them into being? I peeled it off, dropped it in the bin. There was ham in the fridge, a wodge of pink slices folded like banknotes, a puckered tomato in the salad drawer.

  I took the sandwiches through. The boys were still busy at the screen. My Fender was resting against the bookcase. When I picked it up something rattled in its innards. A plectrum. Angus liked to post them through the hole. They had all done this, all three of the boys, they had all gone through that stage. I held the guitar by the body, turned it under the light, peering into its coffin-like depths till I saw the little triangle of white. I shook it into position and then spun the guitar upside down. The plectrum dropped noiselessly onto the carpet.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  ‘Beat you to it.’

  Jimmy Driscoll at my elbow, pink shirtsleeves, shaking his head, the wry smile.

  ‘Sor
ry, Jim?’

  ‘Maitland’s boy. With Hamish Neil. Another couple of weeks and you’d have got him. We had a book on it. I said you’d get him in the New Year. Like you got Packy Walsh. But young Maitland got there first.’

  I straightened up from the screen, clicked away from Torcuil Bain’s flatulent ‘Death of a Godfather’ splash in the Mail.

  ‘Well, the boy’s keen. Or maybe he wanted to hook up with his old man again, the Dads and Lads unit at Peterhead. You seen Maguire?’

  ‘Upstairs, mate. Listen, she’s spoken to the Yanks. You’re safe, Ger. We both are. Maguire’s moving up. Sixth floor.’ He grinned. ‘I’m getting the big chair.’

  He was stoked, so boyishly pleased that it felt churlish not to grasp his hand, clap him on the back, tell him he deserved it. The big chair. The paper would founder within two years, five at most, but Driscoll was happy.

  *

  The morning of the funeral was cold and dull, thunderheads massing, dark over Riddrie. I knotted the tie in front of the hall-stand, the tie I’d worn at Swan’s, at Moir’s, got in the car, headed east. Outside the church I watched the mourners file out, collars turned to the cold, took my place in the line of cars heading east to Riddrie Park cemetery. Shrunken islets of dirty white, the residue of last week’s snow, lined the pavements. It was Burns Day, the butcher on Provanmill Road had a window display of haggis and tartan, a portrait of the Bard watching the cortege pass. The pace was glacial, the hearse an old-fashioned horse-drawn affair. After five minutes of nose-to-tail I signalled, pulled out, and powered up the line, ignoring the pink shocked faces at the windows.

  In the cemetery I found the grave they’d hacked from the wintry earth. A tarp was draped over the banks of soil and weighted down with a couple of planks. An unmarked cop-car was parked nearby – I spotted the extra aerial – and when the driver’s door opened it was Lewicki who hauled himself out, zipping his leather and stamping on the cold gravel.

  I took off my glove to shake hands.

  ‘Finished at the kirk?’

  ‘Aye, they’re on their way.’

  He nodded, sparked a roll-up. It was too cold to stand still so we walked together down one of the paths. A game was under way on a municipal pitch beside the cemetery, two pub teams hacking around on the chewy turf, urgent shouts, breath pluming in the frozen air. We watched it for a minute.

  ‘The cop at the locus, the boy on the door, the uniform. Works out of Maryhill. Tells me a journalist showed up, straight after the shooting. Didn’t catch the name but describes him. Pushing six feet. Glasses, dark hair.’ He sniffed. ‘Two wee boys in tow.’

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘That was fucking stupid, Gerry.’

  I couldn’t argue. We watched the game until the dull purr of low-geared engines reached us across the headstones.

  The undertaker, in striped trousers and a morning coat, a top hat swathed in crepe, preceded the hearse down the cemetery drive, two white horses in blinkers and harness, black showgirl feathers bending in the wind.

  Behind the hearse came the lacquered black limos. The cars crunched to a halt and the widow emerged, the gymrat, a sleek leg pointing from the limousine door, a hand holding a hat against the wind. She swayed over to the graveside, tanned, the Jackie O sunnies, the short fur coat, spike heels catching in the gravel. A heavy, rougher-looking woman held her elbow, the sister or the sister-in-law; she gave me the hard eye as she passed where I leant against the Forester, lighting a Café Crème.

  The mourners shuffled into place around the grave. DAD, SON, HUSBAND: the floral tributes were lifted from the hearse. Three undertakers took the coffin by the handles and laid it on the tarp, on top of the planks, then stepped back, hands clasped over their groins like footballers in a defensive wall. The Saturday traffic ground past on the Provanmill Road. The sun was sinking behind the Red Road flats as the minister started to speak. His voice was lost in the wind, overwhelmed by the footballers’ shouts, the reedy peep of the referee’s whistle. I left before it was over, walked to the car without looking back.

  I wrote it up and Maguire gave it a show. Not the splash – Neil wasn’t that important any more – but a nice page four lead with a new photo byline. There was a picture of Clare on page five, standing next to Niven and Maguire as she presented the Martin Moir Award for Investigative Reporting to a student journalist from Aberdeen.

  Two days later I was pulling into the short-term car park at Glasgow Airport. The flight wasn’t due for another half-hour. I bought a Guardian and sat in arrivals with a latte and a glazed Danish. Soon they would come through those double doors, my partner and son. I turned a page, tried to focus on the sports reports.

  My mobile buzzed on the table. It was a voice I couldn’t place – Irish, Ulster – wanting to thank me.

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘It’s Davey, Gerry. Davey Moir.’ The cousin at the funeral, the one who spilled the drinks. ‘Look, you did a good job. We want to thank you, the family does.’

  ‘Thank me for what?’

  ‘For helping with Martin. For finding out the truth.’

  Was that what I’d done?

  ‘Right. Holding up, are they? His mum and dad?’

  ‘Yeah, they’re OK. Listen, that thing I mentioned? With Martin’s da? Your man was involved, Hamish Neil.’

  He told me the story as I watched the arrivals board refresh itself, the flight from Heathrow ticking up the screen. Ronnie’d been on a job, Martin’s dad, the DI in the Royal Ulster Constabulary. One clear spring morning in 1993 he was waiting at the port of Larne. For months they’d been working on the same job: cutting the UVF’s supply line. They knew the Blacknecks were getting guns from Scotland and now they had a lead. The target is a lorry on the ferry from Stranraer. A cattle truck. They know what they hope to find. Beneath the truck-bed, under the hooves of the beasts, the shifting flanks running in shit and piss, will be a palette of crates. ‘CORNED BEEF’ will be stamped on the lids but the actual goods will be wrapped in oily rags, the latest consignment from Walter Maitland, the Blacknecks’ Scottish armourer. The lorry disembarks and they tail it through the sleeping streets, stop it on the edge of Larne.

  They’re taking the driver down from the cab when an armoured car pulls up out of nowhere. Four Brits, one in civvies. The civilian’s brass: clipped Sandhurst tones, MI5 or Special Branch. He takes Ronnie aside, tells him the arrest’s not going to happen. We need you to let him go. Bigger picture. Ronnie’s raging, months of work are slipping down the pan, he goes for the Brit, swinging punches, his own boys have to pull him off. Two days later he’s back in uniform, bumped down to sergeant.

  ‘But how was Hamish Neil involved?’

  ‘Neil was the driver. Neil was making the drop.’

  I’d known about Maitland, the Special Branch deal, how his handlers let him boss Glasgow so long as he briefed them on Belfast. I should have known that Neil was in Belfast too. He might have been in on the deal. But the deal didn’t work. The deal didn’t save Maitland from Peterhead jail and it didn’t save Neil from Maitland’s boy.

  I thanked Davey Moir and rang off. It was too late to worry about any of it now. A plane came down in an italic slant, bumped onto the tarmac, shuddered to a halt. It wasn’t theirs, but theirs would land soon. Mari would come through those doors with the boy in her arms or holding his hand. She’d be full of her news. I had news of my own. I tapped the folded schedule in my pocket, the sheet of particulars from the estate agent. I’d seen a place, a house with a garden, sea view, not far from the city. I’d spoken to the vendor. It needed a bit of work – the tile on the front step was loose, the doorbell clanked like a chisel on stone – but we could live with that.

  Acknowledgements

  The person who helped most with this one – who made the whole book possible – would rather not be named. You know who you are and how deeply you’re owed.

  Stephen Khan and Lindsay McGarvie again shared their knowledge of the newspaper trade.
/>   Lee Brackstone and Derek Johns showed me how to rescue the first draft.

  For help and advice of various kinds I would like to thank: Katherine Armstrong‚ Michael Downes‚ Wendy English‚ Ronnie Fyfe‚ Colin Gavaghan‚ John and Nikki Hall‚ Michael Harlow‚ Paula Hasler‚ Peter Kuch‚ Linda Shaughnessy‚ Dougal McNeill‚ John Stenhouse and the Stuart Residence Halls Council.

  Valerie McIlvanney and the four boys who share our house had a lot to do with this too‚ and they know how grateful I am.

  About the Author

  Liam McIlvanney was born in Ayrshire. He is the author of Burns the Radical and All the Colours of the Town. He lives in Dunedin with his wife and four sons.

  By the Same Author

  Burns the Radical

  All the Colours of the Town

  First published in 2013

  by Faber and Faber Ltd

  Bloomsbury House

  74–77 Great Russell Street

  London WC1B 3DA

  This ebook edition first published in 2013

  Typeset by Faber and Faber Ltd.

  All rights reserved

  © Liam McIlvanney, 2013

  Epigraph lines taken from ‘Lunch with Pancho Villa’ from New Selected Poems 1968–1994

  by Paul Muldoon‚ published by Faber and Faber Ltd‚ 2004.

  Reproduced with kind permission from Faber and Faber Ltd.

  The right of Liam McIlvanney to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988