Blood City

by Douglas Skelton

  Mouthy nodded.

  ‘Bobby, we’ll go with him,’ said Rab, ‘just to make sure he understands we mean it.’

  Bobby nodded and pushed himself to his feet. Mouthy hesitated for a few seconds then rose, too. From behind the counter Luca watched them leave. Rab paused in the doorway and glanced back at him. Luca gave him a single nod. Rab nodded back.

  The following morning, a cleaner walking to work in a primary school found Mouthy’s body face down on a stretch of wasteground, a single bullet hole in the back of his head. On a broken down wall nearby the words ‘Mouthy Grant is a grass’ were scrawled in white paint. A pair of thick woollen gloves lay beside the body. Tests later revealed they had been worn by the shooter.

  The murder was never solved.

  * * *

  The evidence against David McCall for the warehouse robbery was bog standard, but strong enough to win a conviction. The security guard was able to identify Davie, but only Davie, as one of the trio of robbers. He took off his mask once, he said, and had given him a good look. He was corroborated by his supervisor, who also said he could identify Davie. A fingerprint was also found on the barrow they had used. It was at that point that Davie knew he was being fitted up, albeit for something he did actually do, because he had never taken his gloves off throughout his time in the warehouse. Transferring a print from one place to another was easy enough if you knew what you were doing. And Knight would know what he was doing. Amazingly, neither of the men was able to identify Rab. Perhaps they were more afraid of him than they were an 18-year-old youth, Davie’s reputation being reserved only for those in his immediate circle.

  His defence counsel tried valiantly to switch the blame to Mouthy Grant, who had been in his grave for three months by the time the case came to court. However, there was nothing to connect the dead youth to the crime, even though the lawyer implied he had incriminated his client only to avoid prosecution himself. The prosecution had not mentioned him at all in their narrative. Davie regretted Mouthy’s death and he knew Rab was behind it. Rab, of course, had denied all knowledge.

  With the security guards unwilling to identify him, the case against Rab was dismissed while Davie was given four years. He listened to the sentence without emotion, his eyes finding Knight in the gallery. Why the Black Knight was fitting him up and not Rab was something he would think about in the coming months. The one thing he was certain of was that Rab would never turn against him. Not Rab. They were mates. They were brothers.

  As they led them both from the box, Davie murmured to his mate, ‘Look after Abe for me.’

  Rab nodded. As he was led from the dock, he glanced at the public gallery and saw Knight grinning at him. Rab couldn’t help but feel he really had made a deal with the Devil.

  * * *

  Davie was led from the rear of the court into a van to be taken to Barlinnie Prison, where he would spend the next couple of years at least. At the end of the lane he saw a group of people, some of them press photographers trying to snatch a picture, his street fight with Boyle having made him something of a celebrity. He had refused to speak to any reporters, even Barclay Forbes, but they never gave up. He had offered Audrey an exclusive but she had declined, saying she didn’t want to use their relationship to further her career. He loved her all the more for that, but he worried about their future. He had told her not to come to court and was unsure if he wanted her to visit him in Barlinnie. He had almost got her killed and while part of him wanted her badly, a more sensible part told him to distance himself from now on.

  He paused at the rear of the van and glanced down the alleyway to the mob at the end, scanning the faces, hoping he might see her, but she wasn’t there. He felt disappointed and relieved at the same time. Then, just as two burly prison officers helped him up the steps into the secure compartment, he saw a face. It was a flash, a glimpse, and at first he thought he had been mistaken. Even so, he felt an electric shock run through him. As the doors closed he darted another look towards the crowd but the face was gone.

  When he sat down on the hard bench inside beside three other lads being sent up for some crime or another, he felt the beating of his heart in his temples and his mouth was dry. He ran his handcuffed hands through his hair, his fingers trembling against his scalp, all thoughts of Audrey banished by what he had seen.

  He replayed the brief snatch of the face in his mind, telling himself he was wrong, that it was too fast to be certain, that it could not be him. But as the van lurched into motion, he knew in his heart that it was true. Davie was certain. He knew it was him.

  Danny McCall was back.

  Epilogue

  DECEMBER 1980

  Johnny Jones had never felt safer. Okay, he had lost Clem Boyle and Jazz, but on the upside Joe Klein was dead, Rab McClymont was keeping his head down and McCall was only three months into a four year stretch for housebreaking. The agreement with the wee Italian was holding strong and pretty soon they’d be making money hand over fist. All the other faces invited from the west coast had stumped up their investment money and the first consignment of heroin was due from Turkey the following week. They were all playing nice, but that wouldn’t last. When the rift came, and it would come, Johnny would make sure he was well away, living off his rapidly growing nest egg. For the moment, everything in Johnny’s garden was decidedly rosy.

  He didn’t know how Luca had taken McCall out the picture. Of course, Johnny would have preferred a more permanent solution for both him and Rab, but the wee Tally didn’t seem to want that. McClymont would be useful to them, he had said. McCall was in the jail and no threat for now.

  But he’ll get out in a couple of years or so, Johnny had said.

  Rab will keep him in line, Luca had said.

  Aye, you thought the Tailor could be kept in line.

  Luca had glared at him. Rab and Davie are not Joe Klein and never will be.

  Not if they’ve got bullets in their head, Johnny thought, but he kept it to himself. There had been too much killing, too much attention, too much heat. Let things cool down, let things lie and see what happens. Everything comes to he who waits.

  Johnny was driving back to Castlemilk from Duke Street as he thought this all over. He sat in a line of traffic at the bottom of the High Street, where the road curved round the old Tolbooth tower. This was the site of the old town jail, his dad had once told him, and the tall clock tower was the only part of the building left. The radio was on and a track by The Who was playing, Behind Blue Eyes. The song made him think of both Joe Klein and David McCall, blue-eyed boys both. Well, fuck ‘em, he thought.

  He heard the motorcycle before he saw it. He glanced in his wing mirror and saw the leather-clad biker weave through the stationary traffic behind him, his head and face completely encased in a black helmet and visor. Jones had never been on a motorbike, never been attracted to them, but watching this guy skipping up the line, he could see the benefits. The bike came to a rest beside his window and Johnny studied the powerful machine. Yeah, might be something in two wheels, right enough. Nippy wee thing, get him across the city in no time. Don’t fancy the leathers, though, the way he was hunched over there looked like a big, black cr–

  The bullet shattered the driver’s side window and plunged into Johnny’s right eye, spraying a clump of blood and brains from the back of his head. There was very little noise and no one paid attention to the sound of breaking glass. Johnny’s body slumped in the seatbelt and the biker slipped the silenced automatic back under his leather jacket before roaring off through Glasgow Cross. He was well away down the Saltmarket before the angry horns began to blare.

  On Clyde Street, with the river on one side and the walls of the city’s High Court on the other, the rider pulled the bike into the side and walked swiftly away, still wearing the dark helmet. One or two people looked at him as he passed, but he ignored them. He crossed Stockwell Street at the Victoria Bridge, then made his way to the walkway along the edge of the river. He by-passed the s
uspended footbridge that led to the south bank and headed for the shadows below Glasgow Bridge. There, where no one could see, he peeled off the leathers to reveal a light windbreaker and dark jeans. He thrust the garments into the helmet and dropped them over the side into the dark waters of the Clyde. He knew they would be found eventually, but by that time he would be long gone and was confident they would yield no real clues. The gun he threw separately, as far out into the water as he could. As he did so, he wondered just how many shooters rested in the river’s silty depths. Enough to arm a small country, he was sure. Even if they did find it, he was certain it wouldn’t lead them to him. No one knew he was in Glasgow, in fact he could arrange to have a handful of people swear that he was with them in London when Jones was shot. With one final, careful glance around him to ensure that no one had seen his face, he moved back into the daylight and began to walk to Central Station to catch the next train south.

  The man had accepted the contract with Joe on the day he had died. The Tailor had been a good customer and the man had fulfilled the obligation free of charge, as a sign of respect.

  Joe Klein had killed his last man.

  Enjoyed Blood City?

  Here’s a sneak peak of Crow Bait, Book II

  in the Davie McCall Saga…OUT NOW!

  Prologue

  THE BOY IS running across a field, the long grass around him sighing softly as a warm breeze whispers through its stalks. He is running, yet he moves slowly, like a film being played back at half-speed.

  The boy is happy. It is a good day, the best day ever, and his young heart sings with its joy. They have taken him out of the city, away from the black buildings, away from the stench of the traffic, away from the constant roar of engines. A day in the country, where the sun didn’t need to burn through varying levels of grime to warm the land. His first day in the country and he revels in the feel of the soft grass caressing his legs as he runs.

  He can see them waiting for him at the far end of the field, the car his father has borrowed from his boss parked under trees behind them. They smile at him as he draws nearer and his father wraps his arm around his mother’s waist. He gives the boy a friendly wave. It is a tender moment and the boy is sorry the day has to end.

  But the air cools as the gap between them narrows and the field darkens as if a cloud has passed over the sun. The boy looks up, but the sun is still there, burning brightly in an unbroken blue sky. And yet, the day has shadowed and the grass has lost its colour. The green and sun-bleached yellow is gone, replaced by blacks and greys.

  The boy stops and looks to his parents for an explanation, but they are no longer there. In their place is a dark patch, a deep red crying out amid the now muted surroundings, and the boy knows what has caused it.

  ‘Dad, don’t…’ he hears himself say.

  ‘Dad, please don’t…’ he murmurs as he backs away, fearful of what he might see in that pool of crimson. His mother, he now knows, is gone, never to return. But he also knows his father is there, somewhere in the red-stained darkness, waiting, watching.

  So he backs away and he begins to turn, all the joy replaced by a deep-seated dread. He retreats, for all he wants to do now is get away from that corner of the field, and the sticky redness of the grass, so he turns to run, he turns to flee, he turns to hide.

  But when he turns he finds his father looming over him, the poker raised above his head, the love he had once seen in the man’s eyes gone and in its place something else, something the boy does not fully understand, but something he knows will haunt him for the rest of his life. Something deadly, something inhuman.

  And then his father brings the poker swinging down…

  * * *

  Barlinnie Prison

  One night in November, 1990

  Davie McCall woke with a start and for a moment he was unsure of his surroundings. Then, slowly, the grey outline of his cell, what he had come to call his peter, began to take shape and the night-time sounds of the prison filtered through his dream-fogged brain: Old Sammy snoring softly in his bed; the hollow echo of a screw walking the gallery; the coughs and occasional cries of other inmates as they struggled with their own terrors.

  He had not had the dream for years, but now it had returned. The field was real and he had run through it on just such a warm summer day when his mum and dad took him to the Campsie Hills to the north of Glasgow when he was eight. They had been happy then. They had been a family then. It ended seven years later.

  Danny McCall vanished when Davie was fifteen.

  But the son knew the father was still out there, somewhere.

  He had seen him, just once, little more than a fleeting glimpse, a blink and he was gone. It had been ten years before outside a Glasgow courthouse, just as Davie was being led away. He could not be sure for it was just a flash, but the more he replayed it in his mind, the clearer the face became, as if someone had tweaked the focus. It became a face he knew as well as his own, for the son was the image of the father. It bore a smile on the lips yet there was a coldness in the blue eyes.

  And then, just as Davie was pulled away, a wave. He had not registered it at the time but as the months passed and he replayed the scene in his mind, he became sure of it. A wave that said I’m back.

  1

  IT WAS A small room in a small flat and the glow of the electric fire stained the walls blood red. They used to call these one-roomed flats single ends, but that was before the estate agents moved in. Now they were studio apartments, to make them more attractive to the upwardly mobile. Not that the yuppies would be interested in this one. An enthusiastic salesman might call it a fixer upper, but really the only thing that would fix this place up was a canister of petrol and a match. It was run down, on its uppers. If this room had been a person, it would be homeless.

  The wallpaper had been slapped on its walls back in the ’70s, when garish was good. Bright orange broken up by black wavy lines and the light radiating from the three bar electric fire made it look like the flames of hell. The furniture – what there was of it – would have given items thrown on a rubbish skip delusions of grandeur: a lumpy, stained two-seater settee, a matching armchair, the back bleeding stuffing, an old kitchen table, two wooden chairs, one lying on its side. A standard lamp, the bulb smashed, also on the floor. An ironing board, open and standing, a man’s shirt still hanging from the edge, the iron itself disconnected from the mains and discarded on the threadbare rug. There was a small kitchen area in the corner – a grime-encrusted cooker, a stained sink, a small fridge that looked incongruously new. The unmade single bed in the recess had clean, if rumpled linen, so someone was choosy about what they slept in.

  It wasn’t the decor that obsessed the men and women moving to and fro. It was the woman on her back behind the table. A heavy poker lay in a pool of blood beside her. There was more blood caked on the frayed carpet, spattered on the walls and streaked on the ceiling. The woman’s face was a pulpy mass of battered tissue.

  ‘For God’s sake, will someone turn off that bloody fire,’ Frank Donovan said. The heat was making him feel sick. A Scene of Crime technician reached out with a gloved hand to comply.

  Donovan looked at the body and sighed. The wounds were so ferocious that it was difficult to tell how old the victim was. They already knew she didn’t live here – the flat had been rented to a man called John Keen one month before. Neighbours had never seen him and they had no idea who the woman was. Donovan would have someone check with the letting agent, see if they could pull a description of the guy who signed the lease.

  A Detective Constable named Johnstone rifled through a handbag found beside the bed and removed a purse stuffed with five £10 notes and a Strathclyde University student matriculation card dated 1988 in the name of Virginia McTaggart. DC Johnstone handed the plastic card to Donovan, who studied the girl’s face. She’d be twenty-three now, he calculated, dark-haired, pretty in an unassuming way. She wasn’t pretty now, though. The bastard with the poker had seen to t
hat.

  He looked up from the card, back to the body, then scanned the room again. Something about this crime scene bothered him, as if a memory had been prodded but had not come fully to life.

  ‘Frank.’ Donovan looked up to Johnstone, who was holding out a handful of condoms. ‘What do you think – working girl maybe?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Donovan, looking back at the card. ‘Get someone to check this card out with Strathclyde Uni. See what we can find out about her.’

  Johnstone nodded and took the card back from Donovan. As the DC turned to the door he almost collided with Detective Superintendent Jack Bannatyne who, as ever, looked immaculate. Dark coat over a grey suit, crisp white shirt, muted red tie. Donovan, as usual, felt underdressed in his crumpled blue suit, lighter blue shirt and dark tie, all courtesy of messrs Marks and Spencer. Donovan was surprised to see his old boss here. He headed up Serious Crime now and a solitary murder up a close in Springburn wasn’t usually something that blipped on their radar.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Donovan,’ said Bannatyne, formal as ever in front of the foot soldiers, as he studied the corpse at their feet. ‘Bad one, this.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Battered with the poker?’

  ‘That’s what we think, at this stage. The PM will confirm.’

  Bannatyne nodded, his eyes flicking around the room. ‘Need a quick word. Can we step outside, away from this heat?’ Donovan hesitated, unwilling to refuse a request from a superior but just as unhappy about leaving a crime scene. Bannatyne caught his hesitation. ‘It’s alright, Sergeant, I checked with your DI downstairs. He’s happy to spare you for a minute.’

  ‘Of course, sir,’ said Donovan, wondering what brought him to this murder scene. He followed Bannatyne down the winding staircase to Keppochill Road. Blue lights flashed in the night from the variety of police vehicles angled at the kerb while technicians and officers, both plainclothes and uniformed, moved between them and the closemouth. Bannatyne led Donovan a few feet away from the hubbub for some semblance of privacy.