Peacock's Alibi

by Stuart David

  ‘You’re full of shit, McFadgen,’ I said. ‘And on top of that, you’ve got nothing. You’re like a hard-wired conspiracy theorist, connecting the dots where no connection exists, identifying patterns where there are no patterns. You’re on to plums, pal. Nothing doing.’

  He leant back, thankfully, cause he’d started in on the mad grinning again. Then he slowly rearranged his jacket and got to his feet.

  ‘You know where to find me when you change your mind,’ he said. ‘Unless I’ve already come for you first, with a signed confession from your pal.’

  He wandered up to the counter and stood waiting while they served him a cup of coffee. There was a big ketchup stain on the tail of his jacket, and I looked at the rest of it smeared about on the seat he’d just vacated.

  What a fucking tumshie.

  He was attempting some light-hearted banter with the girl at the counter, but he was the only one laughing. She was just looking severely embarrassed, trying her best to smile back at him as she handed him his change.

  ‘I’ll be seeing you sooner than you think, Johnson,’ he said as he breezed past the table again. ‘In highly pleasurable circumstances, for me at least.’

  Then the chump was gone, and I sat on and digested the shitty news he’d left behind him.

  There was very little left of the warm glow I’d been feeling immediately before he appeared, I can tell you that. The fact that I’d managed to unburden myself of my Wilma Caldwell guilt really wasn’t doing that much for me anymore. It had been totally superseded by the fact that I’d landed my best pal in the jail. For murder, no less.

  I started to wonder for the first time if this fingerprint-erasing enterprise would really turn out to be worth all the havoc it had caused me – if it would justify me having laid waste to the lives of so many innocent bystanders. And then something else began to vie for my attention, another consideration. I could tell it wasn’t going to be a jolly thought, and for a few minutes I did what I could to pretend it wasn’t there. I tried to get my attention onto the subject of how I could get wee Jinky out of McFadgen’s clutches, but this thing was relentless. It just kept badgering me, coming at me from all angles, until finally there it was, fully formed, sitting right behind my eyes in all its glory. And its proposition was this: what if Jinky actually knew who had stolen that painting from Pollok House? What if he knew it was Vince Cowie?

  You see the enormity of that?

  If McFadgen started offering him preferential treatment in return for that information, and if Jinky had already come into possession of the facts, via John Jack for example, then that would be everything fucked.

  The more I sat there and thought about it, the more it seemed highly likely to me that McFadgen didn’t even really believe his bampot double-alibi conspiracy theory. I mean, who would? It started to seem more plausible that he’d just taken Jinky in to try and frighten him into revealing that I’d stolen that painting, in exchange for letting him go. He’d no doubt spin Jinky the tale that I’d done everything in my power to frame him, up to and including grassing him up to McFadgen for the theft of the picture. And maybe McFadgen even thought if all else failed I’d step up and do the decent thing to get the wee man off the hook – turn myself in.

  The exact ins and outs were, in a way, purely academic. The pertinent point was that McFadgen would squeeze Jinky for that painting data, and if Jinky had it to give he would eventually spill it. And I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t let McFadgen get his hands on Vince Cowie before the wedding, not after all the shite I’d put up with to get to this stage.

  I got up and dumped my cup and my chip poke into one of the bins, and then I got myself out onto the streets. Motion was what was needed – I needed to be moving to get the juices flowing, to get the blood rattling round my brain. The best ideas always come to me when I’m in motion, and the idea I was in need of now was going to have to be one of the best I’d ever had. How in the name of Christ do you stop a fragment of information passing between two bodies who are locked away together behind closed doors – in the interrogation room of a secure police unit – one of them no doubt skilled in the art of extracting vital intelligence, and the other one ready and willing to give it just so he can get home to his bed?

  Something of a brain-tickler, I think you’ll agree.

  I strode along Argyll Street at a fair old pace, just about breaking into a jog as I turned up onto Queen Street, then slowing down slightly on Buchanan Street cause the hastily consumed chips were beginning to bring on a stitch. God alone knows how long I walked for. All that mattered to me was getting the adrenaline buzzing, getting the synapses firing, getting the back bit of the brain working away on all cylinders. It was a hell of a task that lay ahead of me – I was under no illusions about that – but I’m an ideas man, it’s what I do, it’s what I’ve always done. And I knew that if I stuck with it long enough, and just kept walking and walking, I was giving myself every chance that I possibly could. And that’s the best you can do under any circumstances, eh?

  Just keep the brain ways open, and keep the faith.

  11

  The idea, when it finally came, was a monster. An absolute behemoth. I mean, I’ve had some belters in my time, but this one impressed even me.

  The only question was whether it had arrived too late. It had fair taken its time in turning up, I can tell you that.

  I’d got nothing during all the time I’d spent charging about the city centre, and in the end I’d decided to walk home – across the Jamaica Bridge and all the way down Pollokshaws Road. That’s no idle stroll, I can assure you. But as I clambered my way up the stairs to the flat, on the verge of collapse, I was still entirely empty-handed. I sat staring at the telly for a couple of hours, listening to the wife nattering away, hoping that the surface distractions would allow my unconscious to do the business. But by the time I flopped into bed I was still right where I’d been when I left McDonald’s: fucking nowhere.

  It was a hell of a night – the tossing and the turning, the staring at the patch of light on the ceiling that had sneaked in through a crack in the curtains. Brutal. But after the wife had gone to work, and I’d continued to lie there slipping in and out of fuzzy dreams, it finally occurred – the revelation.

  Here’s the thing, though – it didn’t come to me the way these things have come in the past. It didn’t form itself slowly in the darker parts of the psyche, finally announcing itself in a blaze of glory, fully assembled. Far from it. All that happened was this – I was lying there defeated, convinced Jinky must have cracked by now, and I started going over the shite McFadgen had been spouting, when I clocked that McFadgen himself had told me exactly what to do, in plain speech. Not hinted at it, or said something that fired off a series of associations in my mind that led to the ultimate solution, just actually said it: ‘You can either admit that you killed Dougie Dowds and save your daft pal from rotting away in Barlinnie for the rest of his life, or . . .’

  Et cetera, et cetera.

  Simple as that. The very nugget I’d been looking for, and I sprang out of bed at a clip, hoping against hope that I might still have time to put the thing into action.

  Here’s how I saw it . . .

  As long as Jinky hadn’t spilled the beans yet regarding Vince Cowie’s involvement, I could simply approach McFadgen, tell him he’d been right all along, and claim that the guilt of landing the Jinkster in the shit had finally been too much for me, and that I was here to confess. No doubt I’d have to put up with a sickening level of self-congratulation on McFadgen’s part, but that was the only real downside. All other investigation into the matter would cease for the time being, Vince Cowie would be in the clear, the wedding would progress unimpeded, and once it was all done and dusted, fully binding in the eyes of God and the eyes of the law, I could get John Jack to unleash the truth about Vince and get me out of there.

  The funny thing was, I realised this idea was so solid I could have put it into practice a h
ell of a lot earlier and saved myself a bucketload of grief. If I’d just cottoned on to it as soon as John Jack told me who stole the picture, I could have been quietly tucked away in a nice cell somewhere ever since, instead of spending my time lurching from nervous breakdown to nervous breakdown, as had been the case.

  That’s the measure of the best ideas, though – they’re always blindingly obvious in retrospect. You can never work out how come some bastard never thought of them sooner.

  Look at the paperclip.

  Case in point.

  I threw on my clothes and dived outside to find a taxi. At a rough estimate it was about nineteen hours since they’d hauled Jinky in. He’d already been deprived of one night’s sleep, which might hardly matter in the case of most folk, but this was the Jinkster we were talking about, not the toughest of customers at the best of times. And to further add to the tension, I’d still a quick trip to make to John Jack’s place, to fill him in on the plan that would prevent me rotting away in a jail cell for the rest of my days, utterly abandoned.

  ‘Can you pick it up a bit, pal?’ I said to the taxi driver as he dawdled along the riverside as if we were on a sightseeing tour. But all that served to do was encourage him to take things at an even more leisurely pace than beforehand.

  The sweat was soaking through my shirt by the time I burst into John Jack’s office, waving at him to get off the phone. He gave me the finger and carried on wittering for what seemed like another half hour, but was probably only a couple of minutes, and the second he hung up I unleashed my pitch, forgoing any run-up or semblance of social niceties.

  I talked without hardly taking a breath, the words gushing out at such a rate that even I began to wonder if they were making any sense. I laid the whole plan out for him, telling him that as soon as Wilma and Vince left for their honeymoon he was to call McFadgen in and alert him to the reality of the situation, and that he was to phone Bev at her work in a couple of hours from now and let her know what had happened to me, and assure her it was all a daft mistake, and that he was already working on finding out who the real villain was, and that he’d have me out of the jail in no time. When I finished J.J. just pulled a cigar out of his drawer, lit it up, sat back in his chair shaking his head, and said, quite matter-of-factly, ‘I don’t think I like it, Peacock.’

  I’ll be perfectly honest with you, I just about lost the nut at that point. No word of a lie.

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ I shouted at him. ‘What do you mean you don’t like it? Get a grip, John. It’s a peach, pal. It’s one of the best ideas I’ve ever had.’

  But the big man just sat there quietly, watching me. He puffed at the cigar and tapped it on the edge of his ashtray. Then he repeated himself. ‘I don’t like it,’ he said. ‘Simple as that. It’s too risky.’

  ‘How is it risky?’ I said. ‘The only risk involved is me standing here talking to you when I should be out there stopping Jinky fucking everything up. That’s the only way it can possibly fail. I appreciate your concern for my wellbeing, John, but it’s hardly your place to decide what risks I take or don’t take. I’m a big boy, pal.’

  He frowned at me. ‘You’re attributing a level of concern to me that I don’t deserve,’ he said. ‘I don’t give a flying fuck whether there’s any risk to you involved or otherwise. Far from it. You can get yourself into whatever mess you want. The bigger the better, as far as I’m concerned. What I’m talking about here is the risk involved for me. I don’t want any dealings with McFadgen. At all. If I make the slightest contact with him he’s bound to start sniffing around me for all kinds of other reasons, and that’s something I don’t need. That’s the risk I’m talking about. And that’s the risk I’m not willing to take.’

  I felt about ready to explode. I clenched my fists, feeling like I might be on the verge of a massive coronary, and then, suddenly, a huge wave of calm washed over me. I’d connected again. It must have been something to do with the fact that I was wound up to high doh, the adrenaline greasing the wheels and what not, but I’d just had another blinder.

  ‘Rab Clark,’ I said, not even bothering to formulate my thoughts before I started speaking. ‘You’ve been itching to get info from him since the minute he was banged up. Am I right? If I spend a couple of weeks in there with him, I’ll be in the perfect position to pump him for it. And once you get me back out again, I’ll be able to bring it straight to your door.’

  He knew I’d got him. He tried to hide it for a minute, but there was no way he was about to pass up on an opportunity like this.

  ‘You’re a bastard,’ he said in the end. Short and sweet. He was totally fuming.

  ‘Phone the wife after six,’ I said. ‘And contact McFadgen as soon as Wilma and Vince are airborne. I don’t want to spend a minute longer under lock and key than I need to.’

  I started heading for the door while the big man took a good deal of his frustration out on his cigar, chewing at it in a way that suggested it was a surrogate for my intestines. It was clear he was itching to score some kind of point against me to make himself feel better, but I didn’t have time to stand about waiting for his lumbering brain to kick into gear.

  I pulled the door open.

  ‘What about Brian Caldwell?’ he said.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘If you think I’m filling him in on your pish plan you’re up a gum tree,’ he said. ‘McFadgen and Bev are my limit. I swore years ago I’d never talk to Caldwell again. I’m hardly about to break that vow for you.’

  I shrugged. ‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘He’ll find out the truth soon enough, when I get back out again.’

  ‘Unless he’s already decided to invest his cash in something else by then, having assumed you’re serving a life sentence and what not. Something to think about on your quiet nights after lock-up anyway, I’d imagine.’

  He gave me a fuck-you grin with the cigar still clamped between his teeth and I battered my way down the stairs and out onto the street, immediately on the lookout for a taxi. What a prick, man. All of a sudden he had me in a right fucking tizz. I checked my watch. If he hadn’t made me go all round the houses getting his agreement to do me two simple favours I’d probably still have had the time to make a quick detour to Brian’s place, to fill him in on the situation. As it was, I couldn’t take a chance on it stopping me getting to McFadgen before Jinky cracked. The trouble was, though, the big fat snidey bastard was right. There was every possibility that on hearing the news about my incarceration, Brian would make alternative plans for his alimony windfall. Not least of all since he might find the idea of going into business with a cold-blooded killer somewhat unpalatable.

  A taxi with its light on breezed towards me on the other side of the road, and I stuck my arm up in the air. The driver tried to pretend he never saw me, so I charged out into the traffic and called his bluff.

  ‘Here you!’ I shouted. ‘Get a grip.’

  He did the staring-straight-ahead thing, but then the lights changed and he was suddenly at a standstill, stuck there like a total doolie. I pulled his back door open and jumped in.

  ‘Take me to the police station on Stewart Street,’ I said. ‘Quick as you like.’

  The most probable scenario with Brian Caldwell was that he’d think our business was fucked when he heard about my arrest, but that his finances would still be available by the time I got out again. Surely. It was just John Jack trying to get in about me, to stop himself feeling bad about the fact that I’d played him like a violin. I mean, who finds another goldmine to invest in within the space of a fortnight? Everything was sure to turn out for the good.

  ‘Do you want me go the Expressway, or via Charing Cross?’ the charioteer asked.

  ‘Which way’s quicker?’

  ‘Hard to tell at this time. Six and two threes.’

  I thought about it, and I thought about lying on my jail bunk every night, torturing myself with the thought of Brian Caldwell’s financial infidelity, and all th
e other mad stuff he might have found to commit his money to in my absence. And I looked at my watch again.

  ‘Fuck it,’ I said. ‘Turn it around. Take me out to Maryhill. There’s been a change of plan.’

  He voiced his displeasure in a wordless grunt and started causing havoc amongst his fellow road users by spinning the cab around in the middle of the street.

  ‘And pick it up a bit,’ I told him. ‘Less of the bewildered-pensioner-on-a-Sunday-afternoon act, and a bit more of the boy racer. I’m on a schedule here, pal. Let’s get a jildy on.’ 167

  12

  Concision – that would have to be the watchword here. Just get in, get to the point, and then get straight back out again. The thing was, it had struck me I’d need to present Brian with an alternative explanation for why I was doing what I was about to do. Charging in there and telling him I was about to turn myself in to make sure his ex-wife ended up married to a murderer might not be the most advantageous way to go about things. A more subtle approach would probably be required. Just to be on the safe side.

  ‘Are you wanting me to wait?’ the taxi driver asked when we finally pulled up at the kerb outside Brian’s place. ‘Are you wanting me to take you on to Stewart Street when you’re done here?’

  ‘I’d be quicker dragging myself there on my belly,’ I told him, and pushed a tenner through the wee hole in the Perspex. ‘Keep the change, pal. That’s you discharged.’

  The journey had been a bloody nightmare. I’d half started to wonder if he even had a licence at one point. It seemed like he must have sat his test on a milk float, the speed he drove at. We barely broke the ten-mile-an-hour mark the whole way there.

  ‘There’s no change to keep,’ he said as I opened the door. ‘The fare’s twelve quid.’

  I fished out another fiver and then ejected myself. If Jinky’d already cracked by the time I reached the police station, I’d know who to blame.

  This guy.