Blood City

by Douglas Skelton

  Frank Sinatra was singing about the wee small hours of the morning on Joe’s fancy stereo as Davie stared at the board. Joe waited patiently, his face giving nothing away. Davie knew the old man was up to something with his Bishop, but he couldn’t work out what. He reached forward and touched his Rook, planning to fire it across the board at Joe’s piece, but something made him hesitate. He sensed he was being set up, but wasn’t sure how.

  ‘Tell me about your girl,’ Joe said eventually.

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Do you like her?’

  Davie nodded, withdrawing his hand from the Rook without moving it and studying the board again. There was a trap here, he could feel it.

  Joe asked, ‘Her name is Audrey?’

  Davie nodded. Named after Audrey Hepburn, she had told him, because her father had fallen in love with the actress after he saw her in Roman Holiday. His pet name for her was ‘Funny Face’, from a musical the actress had starred in. Her father was an engineer and had wanted her to go into teaching, but she had harboured a desire to become a reporter since her early teens. Her father could tell it was what she desperately wanted to do and let her go her own way. She could always win him over, she’d said, while her mum was a harder nut to crack. She was a secondary school history teacher and was well-used to the wiles of teenage girls. Audrey told him she had a brother three years younger who was going to university to study Law and a black and white cat she called Bustopher Jones from some poem. She told him all this over the course of three further dates while he had told her very little of himself and nothing at all about the night his mother died. There had been times she had left the door open for him to speak about himself, but he had thus far refused to step through it. He hadn’t spoken of it to anyone apart from Joe. However, there was a growing part of him that wanted to tell her.

  He wondered if this was what love felt like. He had no real frame of reference. He’d loved his mother, certainly, but this was different. He was, he knew, emotionally naïve, but thoughts of Audrey, of seeing her, of touching her – they made him feel at peace. He liked the feeling. He wanted it to last forever.

  Joe sensed the depth of feeling. He said, ‘You must be careful, David.’

  Davie looked up and saw concern in Joe’s eyes. ‘Why? Because she’s a reporter?’

  ‘No. Because you may hurt her.’

  ‘I’d never hurt her.’

  ‘Not physically, certainly. But you could hurt her in other ways. Your world is not her world, you must know this.’

  Davie looked down at the chess board, but he no longer saw the game. ‘What if I changed?’

  Joe sat back in his chair. ‘Do you think you can?’

  ‘Do you think I can?’

  ‘I am unsure whether any of us can really change what we are.’

  ‘But we can try.’

  Joe thought briefly of his own life, of how the violent actions of one German soldier had changed his destiny. He thought of his family, of little Rachel and the last time he saw her, or at least thought he saw her, in that snow-covered forest. He thought of the men he had killed in the war and those he had killed in peacetime. He thought of the path he had chosen and from which he had never veered. Could he have changed at some stage? Could he have become something else? Or was that path set from birth? All his adult life he had plotted and schemed. But he was wearying. Could people like him change? Could Davie? When Joe looked at the young man he often saw the father looking back, they were so alike. How much of the father lived in the son, he wondered?

  ‘Yes,’ said Joe, gently. ‘We can try.’

  Davie moved his Rook to take the Bishop, just as Joe had plotted. He had sacrificed the piece in order to achieve checkmate within two moves, the first of which was to send his Knight to within striking distance of Davie’s King. Joe reached out to place a fingertip on his Knight, then withdrew it slowly and moved his Queen instead, thus ruining his carefully planned strategy.

  That night, Davie won his first game of chess.

  * * *

  A convoy of cars followed the two hearses from Drumchapel through the streets to the sprawling graveyard at Lambhill. It was a beautiful morning, the heat that had been building steadily for days reaching a new high, which somehow made the events even more poignant to Joe. He and Luca sat in the back of the Rover while Rab drove and Davie stared out of the passenger side window. No words were spoken, everyone sensing that Joe had no desire to hear any idle chatter.

  When they reached the gates of the cemetery a bank of reporters and photographers waited, and Davie’s thoughts turned to Audrey. But he knew the gangland funeral was to be covered by Barclay Forbes. Davie had never seen the veteran reporter but he saw someone he thought fitted the description Audrey had given him.

  ‘Fuckin parasites,’ muttered Rab as he steered through the gates. ‘There’s nothing they’d like better than to have us kill each other off in time for their fuckin deadlines.’

  Davie glanced at his friend and said, ‘They’re no all like that.’

  Rab shot a look back at Davie and gave him a shrug, as if to say he wasn’t so sure.

  The sheer number of vehicles meant they had to park a fair distance from the plot and the four of them walked up a gentle incline to where a knot of Barney’s family and friends already gathered. They positioned themselves a respectful distance from the open grave, but close enough to hear the priest speak a few words of comfort over the coffin, his voice punctuated by sobs from Sheila and Melanie Cable as they held each other’s hands. Barney’s mother, Beatrice, stood stiff and straight nearby, staring with unwavering intensity at the coffin which housed her son’s body. Harry King – Norrie Kennedy’s one-time lieutenant – was present with a couple of his boys. So was Big Jim Connors and two of his lads. They both bore mournful expressions, though they were no doubt plotting how they were going to move into Barney’s territory. A little further away, as if they were not part of the funeral party, he saw Bannatyne and the two cops, Knight and Donovan. He craned his neck to spot the police photographers but couldn’t see them. At least they had the decency to keep themselves hidden.

  Joe had assured them that there would be no unpleasantness at the funeral and Davie had let his guard down. He was annoyed with himself that he neither saw nor heard Johnny Jones and Clem Boyle move in behind them. The first he, Joe or Rab knew of their presence was Jones’ rasping voice when he said, ‘Funerals are always sad, eh, Joe?’

  Joe displayed no surprise when he turned, but Davie knew him well enough to spot irritation tightening his jaw. ‘You are not welcome here, Johnny.’

  Jones gave him a small, stiff smile. ‘Got to pay my respects.’

  ‘You are not welcome here,’ Joe repeated and turned his back on the man again. Jones’s eyes deadened, and Davie watched Boyle, who stared back with a sneer on his lips. The two eyed each other while their respective bosses talked. The thought that this was the first time he’d seen Boyle without Sinclair niggled at Davie’s mind.

  Johnny leaned into Joe’s ear and whispered, ‘I know you fired me in with that bastard Bannatyne, Joe. That wasn’t right, neither it was.’

  Joe remained silent but his eyes flicked across the crowd to where Bannatyne stood with Donovan and Knight. Joe saw Bannatyne watching them intently and gave the detective slight nod.

  Jones hissed, ‘I’m no gonnae let that pass. You’re a fuckin grass, Joe Klein, and I’m gonnae let everyone know it.’ Joe whirled so quickly that the skinny man stumbled back slightly in surprise, his face paling just a little and his disdainful smile faltering. Boyle took a step forward, as did Davie, but Rab was closer and he laid one hand on Boyle’s chest, fingers splayed. It was relatively gentle but there was no mistaking the threat in his eyes.

  ‘Take that fuckin big mitt off me, McClymont,’ Boyle warned, his voice loud enough to attract attention from the people at the graveside. The Priest faltered in his speech and looked their way, as did Sheila, Melanie and Beatrice
. Knight and Donovan looked at their boss, but Bannatyne shook his head. Rab removed his hand from Boyle’s chest in an exaggerated fashion and held it in the air. Joe looked from them back to Jones, who had recovered his composure and was smiling again.

  ‘I suggest you leave, Johnny,’ said Joe quietly. ‘You’ve already disrupted proceedings quite enough.’

  ‘Aye, we’re going, so we are,’ said Johnny, his voice low. ‘Just wanted to say what had to be said.’

  Jones flicked his eyes over Luca, who stared back at him, face impassive. Jones turned and walked away. Boyle glared at Rab for a second, then turned his attention back to Davie. ‘Soon, Davie boy,’ he said. ‘Soon.’

  A few minutes later the graveside service ended and the mourners drifted away. Beatrice Cable stepped into their path, her body as straight as an iron bar and just as unyielding. She looked directly into Joe’s eyes and said, ‘My son told me you are a good man, Mister Klein.’

  Joe shook his head, ‘That was kind of him, but I fear I am not a good man, Mrs Cable.’

  Beatrice reassessed her words. ‘An honourable man, then. He said you were a man of your word.’

  ‘I like to think that is true,’ conceded Joe.

  ‘Then give me your word on this, Mister Klein. Give me your word that the men responsible for my son’s death will pay for what they have done. Tell me they will pay in blood and that their families will feel what I am feeling now.’

  Joe sighed, ‘Mrs Cable…’

  ‘Your word, Mister Klein. An eye for an eye, it says in the Bible. A life for a life. Give me your word.’

  She stared at him, her gaze unwavering, but Davie saw something tremble at her chin. And when he saw her eyes glistening, he knew her iron was beginning to melt. Joe saw it, too, and finally he nodded. ‘You have my word.’

  22

  BY THE TIME Joe Klein reached home that evening, he felt physically and mentally drained. He rejected any notion that he was growing old, but at 55, he knew that his young friends already saw him as such. Even some of his not-so-young friends looked on him as the old man. He often wondered if it was his years in the forests and mountains of Poland that were catching up with him. The cold and the damp were never far away then, seeping into his flesh and bones as he slept rough in caves and leaky barns, alternately avoiding and then stalking Germans. Whatever it was, he was weary. The past few weeks had been particularly stressful and he knew he could do with a break. Planning the murder of Norrie Kennedy – and Joe did not think of what he had done as anything less than murder, even if Kennedy was a prime candidate for being put down – and then the hasty mopping-up made necessary by his poor choice in contractor had taken their toll. Then there was the business with that little rat Johnny Jones. What had started off as an unappealing business opportunity had grown into something that could engulf the entire criminal world. Barney Cable and Peter Morton had paid the price, and Joe knew it wouldn’t stop there. It couldn’t stop there. He had promised Beatrice Cable that the guilty would pay and Joe Klein was indeed a man of his word. He had even started the ball rolling, making a few phone calls from a public call box. Such arrangements were not made on an easily traceable landline.

  Despite what he might tell cops like Bannatyne, Joe didn’t see himself as a businessman. He was a criminal, a crook – what Luca would call a hood. It was a choice he had made years before and he had never regretted it. Yes, he had a number of legitimate interests and they brought him a nice return, but these were merely blinds for the real money makers. Joe Klein had never been much for self-analysis but he did wonder how different his life might have been had that German soldier not slaughtered his family. He probably wouldn’t have travelled to Warsaw, would certainly never have arrived in Scotland, never have taken up residence in Glasgow. No, as a Polish Jew in wartime he was more likely to have been herded with his sister and parents onto a cattle car and taken to Dachau or Treblinka where they would have been reduced to names on a meticulous Nazi death list, just a tiny fraction of the six million poor souls who died because they were Jewish, or gay, or gypsies, or communists. Joe didn’t think about the past too much, but he did often think of Rachel. It would have been nice had she lived. She had been on his mind more and more recently, and, sometimes, when he was alone in his house, he was sure he felt her presence, just a wisp of something at the corner of his consciousness, a shadow on the edge of his peripheral vision. But he had no time for such nonsense. The dead were dead and they had no further contact with the living. To believe otherwise would have driven him insane. He had killed too many men to consider an after-life.

  He locked the front door behind him and walked into the kitchen, where he opened the fridge door and stared inside. He was hungry but didn’t want to eat, which he admitted was a strange sensation. He decided instead on a small glass of milk, just to line his stomach. He could think about making himself something later. He had become, over the years, a cook of some distinction, at least among the few people for whom he prepared food, that being only Davie, Rab and Luca these days. His kitchen was large and boasted every gadget and implement he needed. It was a large room with a long picture window looking out onto his rear garden, a mature stretch of grass stretching off to a high stone wall dotted with bushes and a couple of ash trees. A top-of-the-range, wall-mounted gas oven and hob were situated on the far wall of the kitchen amid more working surfaces and oak panelled cupboards and drawers. The centrepiece was an ancient solid wood table he had bought at an auction. It was a hefty piece of furniture, scored by decades of use and it looked somewhat incongruous in the middle of his hi-tech and gleaming work surfaces, but it reminded him of his home in Poland, of meals shared with his family around just such a table. Like everything else in Joe’s home, it was spotlessly clean.

  He carried his milk to his study, thinking he would sit for a few minutes listening to music.

  He placed the glass on his desk and turned to the stereo system on the bookshelves. The hi-fi was one of his luxuries, a sound system for which he’d paid a considerable amount of money. The speakers – four of them – were expertly situated around his room in order to ‘maximise his listening pleasure’, as the salesman had put it. He had bought the system from an up-market outlet on Bath Street. The store supplied only individual pieces of kit that came together to form a whole for the more discerning listener. Joe had paid extra to have an engineer come to his home to set up the system and site the speakers, because it was important that everything be perfectly aligned. Joe loved his music – Sinatra, Martin, Davis – the music of his era. He had nothing against rock and pop, though he abominated disco, but he loved the crooners and the fullness of sound from a big band. He powered the amplifier then turned to the rows of albums on a custom-built set of shelves beside it. He ran his finger along the spines, finally selecting a double Sinatra album, A Man and His Music. Carefully, lovingly, he eased the second disc from the sleeve. He placed it on the turntable and pressed start. As usual, he felt the thrill of pleasure as the stylus hit the vinyl with a soft thump and Sinatra’s voice began to fill the room.

  He walked back to his desk and settled himself down in the soft leather chair. He took a sip from his milk and laid it down on the blotter before finally sitting back, closing his eyes and letting Frank’s voice drift over him. Joe exhaled deeply and felt the tensions of the day leave with his breath. He opened his eyes and let his gaze travel across the selection of photographs on the far wall, finally lighting on the one of him with Old Blue Eyes himself. If Joe had such a thing as a prized possession, it would be this. He had seen Frank perform in Glasgow in 1953 but had not actually met him. This photo had been taken in London’s Royal Festival Hall in June of 1962 after Frankie’s show. Joe was introduced as the owner of a string of pubs in Central Scotland, which was, in fact, true. There was, of course, no mention of the brothels, the money-lending, the extortion or the armed robberies he funded. Joe often wondered if Frank would’ve batted an eye if he had known, given the shady s
houlders he was reputed to have stood upon in the United States. Frank had his arm round Joe’s shoulder in the picture and they were both grinning at the photographer, their hands filled with whisky glasses the size of half pint mugs. Joe seldom touched strong liquor but he had made an exception that night. When Frank Sinatra offered you a drink and poured it with his own hand, you did not turn it down. Even now he could feel the pressure of the singer’s hand on his shoulder and he smiled.

  The picture was slightly askew, which was troubling. He had a woman come in four mornings a week to clean, but this was the only room in the house from which she was denied entry. This was his sanctuary and he did all the cleaning, polishing and vacuuming himself. He was unlikely to have left that photograph, his prize photograph, slightly off-centre. He tried to think of when he had last touched it but he was too tired to recall. Of course, it was possible he had brushed against it and not noticed. In the end, it didn’t matter – though he did resolve to ask the cleaner if she had entered the room that morning.

  He gazed across the surface of his desk, which he himself had polished that morning. He saw a smudge on the right hand corner that he must have missed, which wasn’t like him. He thought about fetching the polish and a soft cloth but decided it could wait. He wasn’t that obsessive. He took another sip of the cool milk and it was as he was placing the glass down again that he saw the top right drawer was not fully closed. He reached out and slowly pushed it snug into the desk with the tips of his fingers.