The Low Road

by A. D. Scott

  “I know, Don McLeod told me.” She turned and they went upstairs to the end of the reporters’ floor. “Come on, McAllister, our esteemed editor can’t wait to hear all about Councilor James Gordon and his shady deeds in the Highlands.”

  Her good sense touched him. What had happened between them was an episode of that moment, that night of terror, and never to be repeated. Or spoken of.

  “Can’t get rid of you,” Sandy Marshall said when they came into his office. They settled down to thrash out what they knew, and what they could print.

  “I now know the background, and it may explain everything,” McAllister told them.

  Both journalists noted the “may.”

  “Don McLeod told me the gist of Councilor Gordon’s visit to the Highlands,” Mary said. “So I’ve been trawling through the company records of the building business in Whiteinch. Not that I’ve found much, as yet. But Gordon’s trying to take over a Highland building company is interesting.”

  “Everything about Councilor Gordon was hearsay until your deputy tipped Mary off,” Sandy Marshall added.

  “I’ve been researching company records, building tenders, contracts, building suppliers, employment contracts, everything and everywhere there might be a paper trail,” Mary continued. “The trouble is, it’s mostly cash in the building trade, and the union officials I’ve spoken to know very little about this company. The father registered it under the name Gordon Brothers thirty years ago. Now another Gordon is director with two brothers, but Councilor James Gordon’s name is not registered with Company House . . . What? What are you two grinning at?”

  “Do you ever come up for air?” Sandy asked her. “You’ve spoken all that in one breath.”

  “Eff off.” Mary shook her head at him. “However, I do have some other leads—”

  “I’m only joking,” Sandy said. “This is one of the news stories of the decade . . . if we can prove it.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to do. Only Mr. Sleazy, who is too busy filling in his football pools, is worse than useless, and accounts are after me as my taxi fares are astronomical. I need help. So, McAllister?”

  “I’m here to find Jimmy and bring him home.” That stopped the flow of words.

  “McAllister, everyone’s concerned about Jimmy McPhee, but . . .” Sandy couldn’t bring himself to say what he believed.

  McAllister could see they thought Jimmy was dead. “This was left for me at the front desk.” He gave the note to Sandy and watched as he and Mary read it.

  Mary shrugged, saying, “This won’t stop me, I’ve had far worse threats than that.” She looked at the note again. “ ‘And him’? Does that mean he knows where Jimmy is?”

  “Does ‘him’ mean Jimmy?” was Sandy’s question.

  “I don’t know but I think it does.” McAllister hoped it implied Gerry knew where he was. As for Jimmy being alive, and well, that he could only hope for.

  “What do you propose?” Sandy asked McAllister.

  “Find Gerry Dochery.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Mary said.

  “No.”

  From the way he said no, she knew McAllister meant it.

  “Best you follow up the contracts angle.”

  She shrugged. He was right, that was what she did best. But being ordered to stay away from the action, that she did not like. “I want an interview with Gerry Docherty as soon as you find him. I want to know if he knows about the Gordon brothers’ business dealings.”

  “And ask Gerry if he knows about the one thousand pounds,” Sandy added. “That’s a small fortune.”

  “I did hear Councilor Gordon has a great big place on a lochan in Milngavie.” Mary was certain this was a good lead.

  Milngavie was a rich suburb on the outskirts of Glasgow where Lanarkshire became Stirlingshire. There was a large reservoir, and in some areas views to the Campsie Fells. Amongst the more recent post–World War I semidetached houses of solicitors and civil servants, there were a good number of large Victorian homes inhabited by citizens whose wealth had been passed down through generations of merchants, many in the East India trade. The best of these backed on to a large pond or small loch, depending on your aspirations, and it was a place of beauty. Not a place for a Gordon of Partick Cross notoriety.

  “You find out whose name the house is in,” McAllister told her. “My mother said Gerry Dochery might be hiding out in his late grandmother’s house in Strathblane. That’s only fifteen miles further on from Milngavie, so I’ll drive past and check it out.”

  “Drive by. That’s all,” Sandy warned. “No confrontations, no letting Gordon know you’re on to him.”

  “I’ll look but won’t stop,” McAllister promised.

  He left Sandy and Mary to their discussion about how to continue with the story. He had a late breakfast at the canteen. He went to the big department store on George Street. Then drove to his mother’s flat.

  Not including his mother, there were four women there, with mops and scrubbing brushes. The fumes from the bleach and disinfectant made his eyes water. His mother was sitting in a cleaned kitchen drinking tea out of the one surviving cup from her wedding tea service.

  “Thon nice man Mr. Gillespie from upstairs is going to repaint the hall for me,” she said. He could see the effort it was taking her to keep bright. “Then on Sunday me and Mrs. Crawford are going to the Barrows to shop for more dishes.”

  “I’ve got a wee present to start you off.” He handed her a box. Watching her as she opened it, he was expecting the usual protests of you shouldn’t, or you have to take it back, it’s too expensive. He was wrong. His mother lifted out the teapot first, then the milk jug, then the sugar bowl.

  “The cups and saucers are in this other box,” he said, waiting for a reaction.

  Mrs. Crawford came in smelling of furniture polish. Lavender, he thought.

  “Mrs. McAllister, that’s right lovely. A new tea service exactly the same as your other one.”

  “It’s right good of ma John to think of it,” his mother said proudly. “And I have a spare cup.” She held up the one she was drinking from and toasted, “Slaínte.”

  Mrs. Crawford began to laugh. The other ladies came in to see what was happening.

  McAllister smiled. Patting his mother on the shoulder, he whispered, “I’ll be back later.” He left to the sound of billing and cooing from the old ladies as they unwrapped and admired the Crown Derby half tea service, a replacement for the one that represented the decades of Mrs. McAllister’s married life. And his mother could show it off to her friends, proving what a good son she had.

  • • •

  He did not need a map. Nor, he decided, did he need to visit old Mr. Dochery. Not that he distrusted the old man, but he didn’t want Wee Gerry Dochery to suspect that McAllister knew of his possible bolthole in the countryside.

  Maybe he’ll be there, he thought as he started the engine and drove out of the East End towards the main arterial road north.

  He’d been to the village once before and remembered a swift-flowing burn and the steep escarpment of the ridge that rose only a scant mile from the village. On that one visit, someone, he couldn’t remember who, had pointed out a waterfall that to his child’s eyes was only a long white scar on the face of the cliff. Then a few minutes later he saw what the adults were looking at. The waterfall was streaming upwards, in reverse direction, and throwing off rainbows into the bright sky. He was a wee boy, and he’d thought it was magic, water traveling upwards. “It’s the wind,” someone had explained. “It blows the water up through the chimney in the cliff.” The explanation had puzzled him, for he saw no chimney, and as every child knew, adults couldn’t see magic, so he decided magic was the real explanation.

  The main road north to the Trossachs ran out through Maryhill and Anniesland and was busy, but not as busy as later when returning workers would commute to the more desirable suburbs on buses and trams and, more and more, by motorcar. He passed the n
ew Roman Catholic church, an inverted V shape, appreciated by architects, and not much loved by the parishioners. He took the right turn to Milngavie, then, towards the northwest of the suburb, he turned into the street that wound around the circumference of the loch, which was more a large pond, and could be glimpsed only in occasional gaps between substantial gardens, and trees, some being magnificent specimens of copper beech.

  He was looking for house number 73. He was driving slowly, but not too slowly. This was a street with gardeners and housekeepers, or nannies pushing prams and women walking dogs; a slow-moving car would attract attention. “Sixty-five, -seven, -nine . . .” he muttered as he read the number plates on houses and gates.

  There it was; the number 73 was entwined in an intricate wrought-iron faux art nouveau design. The gates and a semicircular, gravel-filled driveway, were wide enough to accommodate a coach and horses of royal magnitude. The house was set well back and looked deserted. McAllister found it hard to believe that this was the home of Councilor James Gordon, born in the slums of Glasgow.

  He drove around the road once more. Seeing nothing of interest, he returned to the main road and continued onwards past the high banks of what he knew was a reservoir, for it said so on a large sign, towards the high ridge of the Campsie Fells and Strathblane.

  When he arrived, it came back to him. Gerry Dochery’s grandmother’s house was on the other side of the village and semi-isolated. Of a different ilk than Councilor Gordon’s supposed home, it was in a row of perhaps twelve dwellings, separate flats upstairs and down, the outside stone stairs to the upper flats doubling back and bordered with black metal railings. The building seemed lifted from a city or outside a colliery, and dropped into the green and pleasant countryside. A burn flowing by added to the rural idyll.

  The football pitch was as he remembered from the visit many years since. The road also; unsealed, it was a walking track about three hundred yards long, running alongside the burn, past the block of flats, and continuing on to the next village, Blanefield.

  McAllister knew that if Gerry was there, there was no chance of a surreptitious entrance. It being the school holidays, there were girls skipping over a long rope, chanting out the rhymes, boys kicking balls. It being an unusual summer of long warm days, women were sitting on stone steps or hanging over railings, chatting, drinking tea, all curious as to what a well-dressed stranger was doing walking down the track towards them.

  As he approached a group of women of different ages, sitting and standing at the foot of a staircase, he started, “I came here when I was a boy. Not much changed.”

  One of the younger ones laughed, a mother, he deduced, from the nappy pins stuck in her overall cum apron, in one of the ubiquitous floral prints beloved of housewives everywhere. “Aye, you’re right there, nothing changes in this place.”

  “Except more bairns,” her companion added, and they both laughed.

  “Does the waterfall still blow skywards in the right kind of wind?”

  “Aye, it does.” The woman who answered was pretty, with freckles and brown curly hair falling into tight ringlets at the back and sides. A stray strand kept falling into her eyes and, in a gesture that reminded him of Joanne, she blew it out of her face, only for it to fall back.

  “Fancy you remembering that,” her friend said.

  “I came with my dad and his friend,” McAllister said. “We visited the grandmother of a boy I was at school with. Gerry Dochery is his name.”

  It was as though he had cast a spell.

  “I need to be getting the dinner on. The bairns’ll be starving,” one woman said.

  “The washing’ll surely be dry in this sun. Best get it in and ironed,” said another.

  They were all gone before he could say another word, and he knew it was highly unlikely they would return.

  He walked back to his car. Then thought he would try the village shop. This was a general store that served also as newsagent and sub–post office, and outside there was a large round red postbox on the edge of the pavement. Next door was a butcher’s shop. He tried the newsagent first.

  “No, I don’t know any Mrs. Dochery.”

  “Not Mrs. Dochery. I don’t remember her name, but she was Mr. Gerry Dochery senior’s mother-in-law,” he tried explaining. The same hard shut-down faces looked at him. He knew better than to press his luck.

  As McAllister returned to his car, about to give up, an old man who had been lingering in the corner of the shop watching the exchange, spoke.

  “You’ll no’ find Gerry Dochery here.”

  “Has he been here recently?”

  “Maybe. You have a cigarette to spare?”

  They lit up. The old man looked again at the oval-shaped cigarette and said, “I haven’t had one o’ these since I was in the Black and Tans. An Irishman we captured smoked them.” Took them off him before we shot him, he remembered, but didn’t say.

  “Gerry Dochery,” McAllister reminded him as they leant against his car, enjoying the smoke.

  “The flat’s no’ his anymore. He visits from time to time, but no’ recently. He keeps his friend there—if you take my meaning. Nice lass, though.”

  “Do you know where she is?”

  “Naw.” He grinned. His top teeth dropped, so he pushed them back with a nicotine-stained forefinger. “An’ if I did, I wouldn’t be telling.”

  McAllister handed him a ten-shilling note. “Here, get yourself some cigarettes.” He had the key in the car door and was about to open it when he heard the parting bombshell.

  “Aye, she’s right nice, Gerry Dochery’s girlfriend. And the wee lass an’ all. Her faither dotes on her.”

  McAllister turned to ask more, but all he got were two raised hands and a shaking head and “That’s all I’m saying. Even that’s too much.” And he was gone, back into the newsagents, to buy cigarettes, McAllister thought. I should be off too. But he changed his mind and drove to the local hotel for a beer and a think. When no plans as to how to find Gerry came to him, he drove home. But he knew he now had a hold on his old friend.

  He has a girlfriend. And a daughter. That is information Gerry Dochery will want kept quiet. Not once did he feel guilt that he might use this to threaten Gerry; Jimmy’s disappearance, the trashing of his mother’s flat, and Gerry’s complicity in both cases had changed the unwritten rules. He also felt he would not have to wait. Word of his visit would reach Gerry. And Gerry would come looking for him.

  TWENTY

  Arriving back at his mother’s flat, he found neat piles of broken furniture and cardboard boxes of smashed crockery on the pavement waiting for the council scaffies, or for those in need, to help themselves—broken did not matter when you were desperate.

  Inside the difference was remarkable. The place had been cleaned, giving the impression that the tenant had packed up, ready to leave for another place of residence. Only the gouges near the skirting board on the left side of the hallway betrayed the vandalism inflicted on his mother’s sanctuary. It was enough of a reminder that he would, somehow, anyhow, have revenge on whoever did it. Or ordered it done.

  In the kitchen his mother and Mrs. Crawford were sitting at the table making a black-and-white jigsaw puzzle from scraps of photographs, the result more a modern abstract from an art college student than a family photograph.

  His wee brother’s silver boxing trophies were lined up on the kitchen cabinet and, in spite of the bashes and the twists in the thin metal, they were gleaming.

  Mrs. Crawford saw him smile. “Ach,” she said, “may as well clean them afore we take them to yon man down the Trongate. A right good silverworker he is. I’m sure he’ll make them as good as new.”

  “And when you’ve pieced the photos together I’ll take them to the Herald. The photographic department might be able to do something with them,” he offered.

  “Maybe,” Mrs. McAllister said, “but I found an old envelope wi’ the negatives for most o’ them. Mind you, they’re old . . .”

/>   “The lads in photographic are brilliant with old stuff and can at least give it a go.”

  At that news everyone cheered up. They had a cup of tea together. Then he left them to finish what needed finishing, his mother telling him that the beds were made, the borrowed sheets and pillows ready for use.

  “Not yet,” Mrs. Crawford said. “You’re stopping wi’ me till this is all over.”

  Again his mother surprised him by agreeing.

  “Soon,” he promised. “It will all be over soon.”

  She nodded. “Do your best, Son.”

  It was what she always said when, at school, he struggled with his arithmetic and mathematics. And again his guilt at involving her angered him. He could only nod in reply.

  • • •

  At the Herald reception desk, the same woman greeted him and gave him a similar sheet of cheap notepaper, the writing in the same hand. As he read it, he pursed his lips, nodding to himself. Just short of three hours and already Wee Gerry’s heard. Maybe told by the man I was speaking with. McAllister had noticed the phone box across from the newsagent and was convinced this was what had happened.

  The huge clock above the reception desk showed it was nearing six o’clock. The note read, Meet me at seven and named a pub. He took a bus to the well-known Celtic supporters’ pub in the Gallowgate, next to Barrowland, the huge covered market beloved by Glaswegians searching for bargains, secondhand goods, and items that “fell off o’ the back o’ a lorry.”

  He took off his tie and stuffed it into his pocket before he went in. There was nothing he could do about his twenty-guinea suit. Ditto his hat, old but expensive from a hatter’s in London. He took a seat in a corner as far as possible from the door to the lavatory, where the smell, on another warm summer’s evening, was noticeable, though not enough to deter the hardened drinkers that frequented the place. Gerry has chosen this place well, he thought as he ordered a Guinness, eyeing the shamrock etched into the mirror above the bar. Home turf. McAllister may have escaped a Christian Brothers education but he knew the etiquette. And the songs.