Blood City

by Douglas Skelton

  ‘You got some identification on you, son?’ Knight asked.

  The boy shook his head.

  ‘Ok, that’s Ok, not everyone carries ID, do they? We need to check up on you, though, you know that, right?’

  ‘Why? I haven’t done anything wrong.’

  ‘I know that, son, it’s just routine. I mean, after all, we’ve got a dead lassie here.’

  Again, Knight nodded to the body and again Lowry refused to look at her. He kept his eyes between Knight and Donovan and barely seemed to notice the dead girl just a few feet away.

  Knight asked, ‘D’you know her maybe?’

  The boy shook his head, his hands thrust deep into his pockets.

  Knight said, ‘You’ve no even looked at her, so how do you know you don’t?’

  ‘I don’t know her.’

  ‘Never seen her before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She wasn’t at the party?’

  ‘There were a lot of people at the party. I couldn’t possibly remember everyone.’

  ‘Why don’t you look at her, maybe you’ll recognise her.’

  ‘I’d rather not.’

  ‘How no?’

  ‘I’m… well, I’d rather not.’

  ‘You squeamish?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘It might help us, though. Might help us catch the guy who killed her. You’d want that, wouldn’t you?’

  Lowry didn’t answer. He stared straight at Knight, his eyes still wide, his hands moving inside his pockets, the blood on his white scarf now reaching out to the police officers like a bad smell.

  ‘What about it, William Lowry like the painter?’ Knight said, moving slightly closer to the boy. ‘You want to assist the polis with their inquiries, or what? You want to take a quick peek at this lassie here, tell us if you’ve ever seen her before? Just a quick look, that’s all. It’ll be like looking at a picture. Then you can be on your way.’

  The boy’s head was shaking from side to side and Donovan thought he could see the livid red marks of a recent wound on his neck, scratch marks that had left blood on his scarf. ‘No,’ said Lowry, ‘I don’t want to look!’

  ‘Come on, pal,’ coaxed Knight, now close enough to touch the youth. ‘Just a wee peek…’

  Knight lunged, but the boy was quick, jumping back and whirling on his heels before breaking into a sprint back down the pathway.

  ‘Fuck it!’ Knight took off after him, yelling over his shoulder. ‘Blow it in, Frank – he’s the fucker we want.’

  Donovan watched his partner vanish into the dark and leaned into the microphone clipped to his uniform collar. ‘C 1-3-2, C 1-3-2. C 1-0-8 in pursuit of male suspect on towpath of Forth and Clyde Canal, heading towards Firhill Basin. Request immediate assistance. Repeat, request immediate assistance. Suspect is white male, around 20 years of age, name of William Lowry.’

  A voice crackled back, ‘Lowry? Like the painter?’

  ‘Affirmative.’

  Donovan took his finger off the button and looked back along the pathway. The sound of Jimmy Knight’s size tens had long since vanished and he was left once again with the lapping water behind him and the occasional engine on Maryhill Road. There was just him and the girl left now, waiting for the circus to arrive.

  * * *

  Knight could hear footfalls ahead of him, but he couldn’t see their source. He pounded after the sound, a smile on his lips. This was the part of the job he enjoyed, chasing a scroat, bringing him down. Lowry-like-the-painter was as guilty as Judas and Police Constable James Knight was going to be the man who brought him in. And that would not do his future any harm at all. No harm at all.

  He imagined the boy running blindly through the darkness ahead, perhaps occasionally darting a look over his shoulder to see if the tall, dark-haired policeman was still on his tail. Don’t worry, son, I’m here. I’m right here – and I’m not giving up. You’re my ticket out of uniform and into plainclothes, where the real action is.

  Lowry-like-the-painter had killed a lassie and made the mistake of returning to the scene of the crime. God knows what had been going on in his sick wee head, but he’d come back and walked more or less right into Knight’s arms. And Knight wasn’t about to let him slip away. He followed the sound of the boy’s feet, his mouth set in a tight, determined line.

  Everything went quiet at Firhill Basin and Knight came to a halt to catch his breath. Once this had been a thriving sawmill but now it was silent, a derelict memorial to the canal’s bustling heyday where darkness hung heavily around the crumbling buildings and discarded lumber. The canal had fallen into disuse years before and its waters were so choked with weeds and rubbish that he’d heard it called the ‘filth and slime canal’.

  Sometimes joy riders brought their stolen cars here and set fire to them, but not this night. Sometimes teenagers gathered here to drink and experiment with sex, but not this night. On this night there was only the darkness and somewhere in that darkness there was a frightened little killer. Knight strained his ears for any sound, but all he could hear was the faint gurgle of water to his right.

  ‘End of the road, son,’ he shouted. ‘Nowhere to go now.’

  He paused and listened again, stepping carefully through the darkness, his feet crunching on the crisp ground. He slowly drew a wooden baton from his pocket, his hand slipping easily into the strap.

  ‘Come on, pal – this is a waste of time. We got a good look at you, me and my neighbour, a right good look. We’ve got your name and I think it’s your real name. It’s only a matter of time before we get you.’

  Knight stopped and held his breath. He thought he’d heard something, just a faint sound, like a sob, coming from a burned-out shed ahead of him. He moved closer, the solid baton hidden in the folds of his coat.

  ‘I’ll bet she was asking for it, eh? The lassie. Prick teaser, was she? Leading you on? That what she was?’

  He heard it again, another sob, and he smiled. There you are, you wee bastard. There you are.

  ‘I loved her!’

  Knight stopped when he heard the distraught voice pierce the air to his right, where a skip filled with rotting timber stood.

  ‘So what happened?’

  The boy didn’t answer. Knight took a couple of steps towards the hulking skip, placing his feet carefully to lessen the rasp of his sturdy boots on the frost. ‘Come on, son, we can’t help you if we don’t know what happened. She two-timing you, or what?’

  ‘She laughed at me,’ said the boy, his voice floating through the darkness, ‘when I told her how I felt, she laughed at me. I’ve loved her for months. She goes... she went to the Art College with me and I would see her every day. She’s beautiful. And tonight when I saw her at the party I had to tell her. It was now or never, you know? But all she did was laugh at me. So when she left with that guy, I followed her. He’s another student at the college. And when they came up here and they… well, they… she let him… I watched. I watched them rutting up against that wall over there.’

  Bit cold for a kneetrembler, Knight thought, but hey – when the sap is rising there’s no holding it back.

  Lowry said, ‘They didn’t see me or hear me, they were so bloody intent on what they were doing. They didn’t hear me or see me when I came up behind him and hit him with a rock.’

  Oho, thought Knight as he crept forward, another body maybe. A double killer, this lad. All the better for me.

  ‘She was really surprised when he went down. “I loved you,” I told her. “I loved you and all you could do was laugh.” And then I hit her. Not with the rock, just my hand. I would’ve hit her again, only that bastard moved and I looked away.’

  Not dead then. Knight was disappointed.

  ‘She ran off down the path, and I gave the bastard another dose of the rock and went after her. I didn’t want to hurt her but she’d laughed at me, you see? I caught her where you found her and we struggled and then I …I …’

  ‘Then you kill
ed her,’ said Knight softly and the boy, lost in the memory of recent events, looked up in surprise from his hiding place to see the big policeman standing over him. Knight gazed down at the youth crouched down behind the skip, his knees pulled up under his chin, his arms wrapped around them, eyes big and round behind his glasses, pale face creased with grief and fear and self-disgust. For a brief moment, Knight felt some sympathy for the young lad. There’d been many women he’d wanted to give a wee skelp. This lad had just taken it to the next level.

  Lowry nodded and laid his face on his knees. ‘I didn’t mean to, it just happened. We were rolling around on the ground and my hands were round her throat and I think I just pressed too hard, that’s all.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Knight, and brought his baton crashing down on the back of the boy’s head. Regulations banned blows to the head, but Knight believed an unconscious prisoner was a perfect prisoner, and he knew just how hard to hit without causing permanent damage. If anyone raised an eyebrow he’d say Lowry-like-the-painter had come at him and he defended himself.

  He jerked his handcuffs from his waist and chained the boy’s wrist to a rusting piece of pipe in the wall behind him. Then he looked back across to the deserted buildings where he was sure he had heard sobs earlier. Somewhere out there was a lad with his head bashed in – and if Knight couldn’t have his double murder, then he’d have to settle for saving the boy’s life – being the hero.

  ‘Talk about win-fucking-win situations,’ he muttered and, with a quick glance at Lowry to make sure he was out cold, he set off into the darkness again, his torch stabbing the frosty air.

  3

  MAY 1980

  IF DAVIE McCALL EVER felt overwhelmed by Rab McClymont’s size, he never showed it. He was just average height himself, big enough for Glasgow, which had more than its share of ‘wee men’. But Rab was a giant. Davie was acutely aware of the height difference – when you constantly find yourself eye-level with a guy’s shoulder, you can’t not be aware – but unlike others, he never felt threatened by the big fellow. If anything, it was the other way around.

  David McCall had carved himself a reputation far beyond his 18 years. If Danny McCall had left him one thing worth knowing, it was how to take care of himself. Davie seemed to have no fear, constantly inserting himself into situations that would make bigger men pause for thought. And once inserted, he displayed a propensity for violence that bordered on savagery. As soon as he was committed to a course of action, Davie McCall followed it with a cold-blooded efficiency that was rare even in the tough East End streets of a tough city. It was this skill, and a single-minded determination to be the last man standing, on which Joe the Tailor capitalised in his less-than-legitimate enterprises.

  Davie, Rab and Bobby Newman stood together outside Luca’s Café on Duke Street, while Joe sat inside for a meeting. Small stores and family traders catering for mostly local customers lined both sides of the street, topped by red sandstone tenement flats. Here there were barbers, butchers, bakers and, this being Glasgow, bars. The exteriors of some of the pubs on Duke Street may have lacked allure, but it was not their intention to attract passing custom. They had their regulars. These were no wine bars or licensed restaurants. They weren’t even watering holes. They were pubs, pure and simple, and the men who spent their time in them came to smoke and to drink and to let the world outside spin on its merry way without them.

  No big department stores or nationwide chains here, they kept themselves to the city centre, but the street was nonetheless busy for a weekday. Old women with hats pulled over tight perms, wearing shapeless coats even on a warm May morning, trudged past carrying ancient leather bags or wheeling tartan shopping trolleys behind them like old and faithful dogs. Younger women moved faster, but those who pushed prams or dragged unwilling children at their heels could be a danger to other pedestrians. Young girls flitted singly or in pairs, their arms crossed over their breasts as they walked. Sallow-skinned and narrow-faced young men with watchful eyes scurried by, shoulders hunched as if to fend off the cold. They cupped lit cigarettes in their hand against the wind as they hurried to the pub or the bookies or wherever they went on a weekday while out of work. Occasionally one dodged the cars in order to cross the wide road, it being somehow unmanly to use the pedestrian crossing nearby. Sometimes, eyes darted to the café door and the pace would quicken as they recognised the trio standing there, guessing that whatever was going on inside was not something they wanted to be anything near, thank you very much, pal.

  The man Joe was meeting was known to Davie and his pals, by reputation if not by acquaintance. Johnny Jones was a former safeblower and founding member of a crew the press liked to call The Backroom Boys, a tag they earned because one of their MOs was to hide in premises until they closed and then loot it six ways from Sunday. They were also known as Robbery Inc, a loose confederation of like-minded felons who came together only when there was a big blag on – hospital and factory payrolls, bank cash transfers, anywhere there was a big score. That Jones and the Tailor were together in the same room was something of a coup, even if it was just a wee café with no other customers. It was named after Luca Vizzini, a tousle-headed little Sicilian, but Joe owned the place, and any hungry or thirsty locals who Davie and his pals might have to turn away would be no real loss to turnover. Anyway, they’d be back.

  The Tailor hadn’t revealed why he was meeting Johnny Jones, and Davie was unbearably curious. Joe wasn’t above using violence to get his way, Davie knew that first-hand, but Jones’ style was considerably more vicious. The old man felt that Johnny and others like him in the city were just a bit too ‘profligate with the chastisement’. Joe often used words like that, forcing the lads to seek out dictionaries to find out just what the hell he was talking about. Joe Klein had never hidden his distaste for the likes of Johnny Jones, so the two of them sharing a coffee was bound to raise an eyebrow or two.

  Davie glanced through a window pitted with city grime and saw the Tailor’s familiar figure sitting back in a relaxed manner as Jones, a cadaverous drink of rancid water, leaned over the table top towards him. They made an odd couple. The Tailor was as immaculate as ever and looked as if he’d just been scrubbed with a wire brush, skin pink and fresh and his crop of white hair shining clean. Jones was dressed in an old denim jacket and jeans, a pair of trainers on his feet, his thin grey hair plastered to his skull. A good scrubbing with a wire brush would only reveal another layer of grey skin. He was talking, a long skinny finger stabbing in punctuation at the cracked formica on the table top. The old man occasionally shook his head. Davie wondered for the second time what they were talking about, but, sensing no threat in the room, turned away from the window.

  Across the road a group of three young men lingered outside an off-licence. They were in their late teens, roughly the same age as him, for all intents and purposes the same as Davie and his pals. But there was something about them that appeared lifeless, even witless. They had nothing to do and nowhere to go do it, and Davie knew their presence outside an offie was no accident. Inside was cider, and maybe even Buckfast, the fortified wine with a killer kick, but they idled there with an almost studied nonchalance, talking among themselves as their gaze flicked down the road. Davie suspected they were waiting for their banker to arrive.

  ‘You got a match, Bobby?’ asked Rab. Bobby nodded, reaching into the jacket of his combat jacket to fetch a box of Bluebells. He was easily the best looking of the three, a thick head of blond hair and handsome features making many a local girl think of a young Robert Redford. There had been one or two guys who misguidedly looked at his long, golden locks and had come to the conclusion that Bobby was somewhat less than masculine. Bobby soon disabused of them that notion. He lacked the sheer power of Rab and the killer instinct of Davie, but Bobby Newman was more than capable of handling himself when the occasion called for it.

  ‘Ta, mate,’ said Rab, taking the small box and pushing open the drawer to peek inside. Then he said, ‘You
got a fag to go wi them?’

  Bobby sighed. ‘Jesus, Rab – you ever buy your own?’

  ‘What do you think I keep you around for? Your sparkling personality?’

  Bobby shook his head and handed over a packet of Embassy tipped. ‘I’m tellin you, Rab, I don’t know how long I can afford to stay pals wi you.’

  ‘You’d be lost without me, wee man, and you know it,’ said Rab, sticking a cigarette into the corner of his mouth and striking a match.

  ‘How’d you work that out?’

  ‘Who’d watch your back? Who’d be there when you needed him? Who’d throw your ugly sister a shag every now and then, keep her sweet?’

  Bobby took the cigarette pack back and thought carefully about what Rab had said. ‘Listen, ugly she may be…’

  ‘Oh, she is, believe me…’

  ‘Aye, but if my sister didnae polish your pole you’d never get any action and you’d be even more bad tempered than you are. You’re no oil painting, Rab McClymont.’

  Rab jutted his prodigious jaw in Bobby’s direction. ‘Fuck off, ya wee bastard. I’m perfectly proportioned, know what I mean? When I take off my trousers and unleash my weapon they think someone else has walked into the room.’

  Davie smiled but kept his eyes on the knot of young men on the other side of the road. He could easily have been any one of them, had it not been for the Tailor. After he left the hospital he’d been taken in by his mother’s sister, a nice enough woman when sober, but that, alas, was a rarity. Drunk, Aunt Mamie was nasty and boorish and cared as much for Davie as she did about water in her whisky. That suited him well enough – it left him free to come and go as he pleased, the authorities being satisfied that he was domiciled with a responsible adult. Whether that meant his aunt or the succession of gentlemen friends she had staying with her, Davie wasn’t sure. The current ‘uncle’ was a burly carpet fitter by the name of Ted MacMillan, who for some reason looked at Davie as if he was desperate to have a square-go.