Blood City

by Douglas Skelton

  ‘Frank,’ he said, keeping his voice low, formality dropped now that they couldn’t be overheard. ‘You’ll’ve heard that Davie McCall is getting out in a couple of days?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I need a favour.’

  ‘Okay, sir.’ Donovan hoped he didn’t sound guarded.

  ‘I need you to make contact with him, once he’s out.’

  ‘With McCall, sir?’

  ‘Yes. I think you have a…’ Bannatyne searched for the correct word, ‘connection with him.’

  ‘Don’t know about that, sir.’

  ‘You saved his girlfriend from being shot that night. If you hadn’t pulled her out of the way, Clem Boyle would’ve done her for sure. And you caught the bullet. He might think he owes you.’

  Donovan resisted the impulse to touch the scar on his chest. ‘Or he might think we’re even because he chased Boyle and helped bring him down.’

  ‘Maybe, but I’d like you to try anyway.’

  Doubts aside, there was no way Donovan could refuse. They both knew it. ‘What is it you need, sir?’

  ‘You were involved in the Joe Klein investigation. You know there were questions.’

  Joe Klein, the gangster they called Joe the Tailor, shot in his own home ten years before. The case was officially unsolved. ‘Yes, sir. But no evidence. As far as we know, it was Jazz Sinclair.’

  ‘He wasn’t capable of doing an old hand like Joe.’

  Donovan shrugged. ‘Everybody gets lucky sometimes.’

  ‘Frank, someone else was there. I know it. I need you to find out what McCall thinks, what he knows. What he’s going to do about it. Joe was like a father to him and I don’t need him coming out like some lone avenger.’

  ‘That the only reason, sir?’

  Bannatyne looked away briefly, then gave Donovan a long stare. ‘I feel responsible.’

  Donovan frowned. ‘For Joe’s death?’

  ‘Yes. I told Johnny Jones that it was Joe who had put us on to him – remember we visited Jones in his flat that night?’ Donovan nodded. Jones had been credited with kick-starting the big time heroin market in Glasgow, back in 1980. He was shot later that year. Another unsolved killing. There was a lot of that about that year, Donovan recalled. Bannatyne went on, ‘I thought I was being clever but I think all it did was piss Jones off. He sent Jazz in that night but the boy wasn’t up to it. Someone else finished the job, I feel it in my water. I owe it to Joe to find out who.’

  Donovan shifted from one foot to the other. He felt he was out of line in saying what he was about to say, but he was going to say it anyway. ‘Joe was a crook, sir. What do you care about him?’

  Bannatyne gave him another of his long, hard looks then nodded, as if giving Donovan retrospective permission to ask the question. ‘He wasn’t a bad guy, not compared to what we have now – drug dealers, scumbags, thugs in shellsuits attacking innocent people. He had rules, he had standards. God help me for saying this, but he even had morals, of a sort. We’ll never see his like again.’

  Donovan nodded, understanding now. Bannatyne was old-fashioned, too. Tough, sometimes pulled strokes, but always basically honest and with a distinct lack of respect for desk-bound authority figures who had forgotten what police work was all about. There would have been mutual respect between him and Joe the Tailor, even though they were on opposite sides of the fence.

  ‘I’ll see McCall as soon as I can, sir. I’ll let you know what he says, if anything. But if I remember rightly, he doesn’t say much.’

  Bannatyne nodded. ‘All we can do is try, Frank. I appreciate it.’ The DCI inclined his head towards the second floor window of the flat they’d just left. ‘You got a victim ID?’

  ‘Virginia McTaggart. Could be a tart, we’re not sure. It’s not her flat, so maybe her customer brought her back here. Flat’s rented out to a John Keen.’

  Bannatyne thought about this. ‘Want me to ask Jimmy Knight to speak to his touts? He’s got a few who work The Drag – maybe they know this lassie?’

  Donovan knew that Jimmy Knight had a number of informers among the prostitutes who worked ‘The Drag’, the grid of streets between Anderston Cross and Sauchiehall Street. He had often walked the rain-swept area with Knight in search of information. Donovan knew that Knight extracted more than intelligence from some of the girls, the big cop being physically unable to keep it in his pants. Normally he wouldn’t want Knight anywhere near an investigation, good and intuitive detective though he was, but as Bannatyne had asked, it would be churlish to refuse.

  ‘That’d be a good idea, sir, thanks.’

  Bannatyne patted him on the arm and walked to his car. Donovan made his way back to the murder room, his mind on Davie McCall. He had thought about the young man often over the past ten years, each memory accompanied by the dull ache in his chest where the bullet had caught him.

  Davie McCall.

  He was eighteen when he went in. He’d be a man now. He’d had a difficult time in prison, Donovan had heard, though jail was never easy. Donovan wondered how much it had changed him.

  2

  AROUND HIM THE night sounds of the prison continued. He had grown used to the coughs and the murmurs and the footsteps. He had even found comfort in them, just as he had in the routines of prison life.

  When the judge sentenced Davie McCall, he showed no emotion. It stung that he had been sent away on perjured evidence, even if he’d actually committed the warehouse robbery, but four years inside didn’t worry him. He could handle it. He had never been jailed before, never been to Borstal. Earlier that year he had spent his first night in a police cell following a square-go in Duke Street, but that hadn’t exactly prepared him for life in the Big House. His mind, though, was filled with thoughts of his father’s sudden reappearance, and he wandered through the induction process in a fog. He was aware of orders being barked by stern-faced prison officers, providing his personal details, being given a prison number as well as a striped shirt and jeans, showering then a quick medical – bend over, cough, head raked for lice, and questions designed to assess if he was a suicide risk.

  There was no question of non-compliance, he and the rest of the prisoners were herded from one point to the next, making Davie think of the cattle in the slaughterhouse on Duke Street he used to pass on his night-time walks. He was a meat eater, but he always dreaded coming so close to that grey building with its sharp angles and its sense of death. None of the men here were destined for death, no matter how heinous their crime, but they were little more than cattle all the same. That was how prison worked – routine, order, discipline.

  Then he was put in one of the dog boxes.

  The tiny compartments, little more than a cupboard with a single bench at the back, were a way-station for prisoners while paperwork was being processed. It was only a few square feet and would have been claustrophobic enough if he was the only one in it, but there were two other guys already waiting when the prison officer ordered Davie inside and slammed the door shut. He pressed himself against the door and looked at his new companions wedged side by side on a narrow bench, their shoulders pressed hard against the walls on either side. He had never felt this before, this sensation of the walls closing in on him, and it was a tense two hour wait until they were taken out. Davie had never felt relief like it.

  Barlinnie had five wings, each called a hall. Davie’s new home was in ‘B’ Hall and the cell he shared on the second gallery with one other inmate – a petty thief called Tom from East Kilbride – was larger than the dog box at least. However, it was still no suite at the Waldorf, with two slop buckets in the corner that reeked continually of stale urine and shit and a single, slatted window so high up the wall that all he could see through it were ribbons of cold, grey Glasgow sky. His cellmate, his co-pilot as they called them in the jail, was an okay guy, if a bit dodgy, and Davie resolved to keep a close eye on whatever he had, but he generally kept himself to himself, which suited Davie.

  Davie resolved
to get through his sentence as easily as he could. He would give the screws no trouble, he would be a model prisoner and get out to resume his life. To get back to Audrey.

  They had met on a night out in the West End when he had stepped in on her attempted rape by the same young guy who would later kill Joe the Tailor. Davie had taken a beating that night, but it had been worth it. He met Audrey. Audrey, who had almost died because of him but who still cared for him. Gorgeous Audrey, the straight arrow who didn’t give a toss about his past and who saw something in him that he didn’t know was there. Although he didn’t like her seeing him in prison clothes and being ordered around by the screws, she insisted on visiting him as often as she could. She believed he could change and because she believed it, so did he. All he had to do was get through his sentence.

  Rab visited two or three times in the early months, but Davie could tell the big fellow was uncomfortable. Rab knew he could leave the visitors room and do what he wanted on the outside, but still Davie could see a thin line of sweat beading on his permanent five o’clock shadow and, even though he tried to hide it, his nervousness was palpable. Eventually, the big guy stopped coming altogether, though he wrote now and again and sent messages via Bobby Newman. One year into his sentence, it was Bobby who told him that Rab was getting married, to a girl from Northern Ireland called Bernadette. She had been staying with relatives in Ruchazie and Rab met her at a party.

  ‘Shoulda seen him, Davie, arse over tip he went, love at first sight,’ Bobby said, his voice low so that others in the visiting room couldn’t overhear them talking about Big Rab McClymont’s personal business. Rab was a major player in The Life now, thanks to working with Luca Vizzini, Joe’s old friend and business partner.

  Davie smiled, ‘Can’t imagine Rab being married.’ He was not as successful with women as Bobby, who merely had to look in a girl’s direction to have her tumbling into bed, but Rab did all right. Now he was about to be married and, Bobby assured him, strictly a one gal guy. Whatever this girl Bernadette had, it was potent.

  The match was further testament to the ecumenical nature of their training from Joe the Tailor, for Bernadette was Roman Catholic. Her family back home were far from pleased that she was marrying a Prod.

  ‘They’re pretty heavy back in Belfast,’ Bobby had said. ‘Don’t know if they’re IRA or anything like that, but they’re a tough bunch. But Bernadette, she’s not taken any shit from them. She just told them she was marrying Rab and if they didn’t like it, they could go take a flying fuck to themselves. Maybe no those exact words, mind you, but that was certainly the sentiment.’

  Bobby also brought news of Abe, the plucky wee mongrel dog Davie had rescued from an abusive owner. Joe had always said they must never accept cruelty to women, children or animals, and Davie had taken it to heart. It brought him Audrey and it brought him Abe. When he was sent down, he asked Rab to take care of the wee dog, but in his heart he knew the big guy was not an animal person. To be fair to Rab, he tried, but eventually Abe was rehomed with a young couple in Easterhouse. Bobby Newman had checked them out and he knew the dog was going to a good life. The girl was pregnant and they believed a child should be brought up around animals, which was good. Bobby said he looked in every now and then and Abe was happy, which pleased Davie.

  So the months passed and Davie’s release date grew closer as he settled into the routine of being locked down, slopping out, working making concrete slabs, in the cobblers or the laundry, lunch, exercise, work, teatime, lock-down, recreation, supper and lock down. Then the next day it all started again – slopping out, work, meal breaks, exercise, lock down. Every day the same. Every day being yelled at by grim-faced prison officers. Every day hearing the alarm bells go off somewhere and seeing the officers running to contain some trouble, for Barlinnie was full of violent men and the violence within them must boil over. Davie McCall had violence in him, he knew that, but he fought hard to keep it bottled up. And he succeeded.

  Until Donald Harris came along.

  3

  AUDREY FRASER WATCHED the illuminated numbers count down to the ground floor. She was alone in the lift of the Daily Record high rise at Anderston Quay, heading out to interview a drug addict. It was bog-standard stuff, the horrors of addiction laid bare as the sub-heading would no doubt have it, and she wasn’t particularly looking forward to it. There had been a time when she would have given her eye-teeth and one or two of her internal organs for a chance at doing such a piece, but she’d been green and hungry then. Now she was ripe and well-fed, thank you very much. But the interview was part of a larger series about the drug trade in Glasgow and the West of Scotland, and necessary, if she was to give the full picture.

  The lift doors opened on the second floor and Audrey smiled as she saw the reed-thin frame of Barclay Forbes. She had known Barc since those green and hungry days as a young reporter on the Evening Times. Barc had proved to be a good friend over the years, teaching her everything he knew about crime reporting. And his knowledge was extensive.

  Barc returned her smile and said, ‘Going down, hen?’

  ‘Buy me dinner first, big boy,’ she said.

  He shook his head solemnly as he stepped into the lift and punched the button marked ‘G’, even though it was already lit. ‘Sex on the brain, you.’

  Audrey’s smile broadened. ‘What brings you to the dark side?’

  Barc had worked for years with the Glasgow Herald and Evening Times, a broadsheet and tabloid respectively owned by a rival publisher. ‘Retired man now,’ said Barc, his voice still bearing the roughness of decades of smoking, though he’d given up two years before. Audrey was glad of that, she had nagged him long enough, and in the end he had given in. ‘I can go anywhere I want. The Sunday Mail’s serialising the book, needed me in to do a wee bit of editing.’

  In the year since he’d retired, Barc had been writing his memoirs, stories of Glasgow crime from the 1950s onwards. He said it looked like a trilogy as the first one only came up to the mid-’60s.

  Audrey said, ‘Hope they’re paying mega bucks for the rights.’

  ‘Bloody right they are. No that I’ll see much of it, right enough, once the publisher takes their chunk.’

  ‘Shouldn’t have taken such a big advance then, greedy sod.’

  The lift came to a halt and the doors slid open. Barc gave her a sideways glance as they walked out. ‘Who’s side you on?’

  She laughed as they headed for the exit onto Anderston Quay, where Audrey knew a black cab was waiting. Even though she knew he’d given up, she still half-expected him to light up as soon as he was in the open. He didn’t look right without a fag hanging from his lips.

  ‘You want a lift?’ she asked.

  ‘Where you headed?’

  ‘Gorbals, interview with a junkie.’

  He nodded. ‘Nice people you mix with.’

  ‘Present company excepted?’

  A smile. ‘No necessarily.’

  ‘Anyway, you taught me everything I know.’

  ‘And don’t you forget it.’ His eyes flicked to the taxi idling at the kerb. ‘Nah, thanks for the offer, hen – I’m headed up the West End. I’m keeping company with a lady of independent means in Kelvingrove now.’

  Audrey gave him a leer. ‘Keeping company? That what you young folks are calling it now?’

  Barc shot her a stern look. ‘Behave yourself, hen, no everything’s about sex. You’re no seeing this junkie alone, are you?’

  ‘No, meeting a snapper there.’

  ‘Good,’ Barc nodded, satisfied. Audrey smiled again, glad that he was still looking out for her. He turned away and she was about to step down to the waiting taxi when he swung back and moved close to her again.

  ‘I hear that guy you used to see is getting out tomorrow,’ he said, quietly. She halted in her tracks.

  ‘Davie?’

  ‘You didn’t know?’

  She shook her head. It was just like Barc to know something like that. That’s what m
ade him the best, even now. ‘Well, I hope he behaves himself.’

  ‘Boys like him, they don’t know any better.’

  ‘I don’t know, Barc, I always told you Davie was different.’

  ‘That why a four year stretch turned into ten years then? ‘Cos he knew better, ‘cos he was different?’

  She looked down at the ground. ‘I’m not sure what happened there.’

  ‘He reverted to type, that’s what happened. You know it, hen – that’s why you ended it.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, feeling guilty about the way she had handled things, but something in her voice made the old reporter’s nose twitch. Barc stared at her, his eyes narrowing as he tried to read her. ‘Stay away from him, Audrey.’ Audrey, not hen. That meant he was serious.

  ‘Barc, don’t worry – I’m over all that, believe me.’ She kept her voice light and airy, holding up her left hand and wiggling her fingers. ‘Respectable married lady, remember?’

  He looked at the ring on her finger and nodded. ‘Aye, married maybe. No sure about the respectable…’

  He walked away and she watched him go. Davie McCall. She hadn’t thought of him for a long time. That hadn’t been an easy trick to pull off.

  * * *

  The man called the top flat of the high rise ‘The Crow’s Nest’, even though the tower block didn’t quite scrape the sky as much as others in the city. The Gorbals used to be known as Hell’s Hundred Acres, a tag Audrey always thought unfair. But then, she’d never seen the place when the dark tenement was king. Back in the ’60s, these flats had been hailed as the future, but now they were slated for demolition, though no-one knew when that would happen. From what she had seen, it was not before time. Audrey and Big George Gillan, the photographer, had passed a number of boarded up doorways as they walked to this one, the architect’s dream crumbling into a damp, crime-ridden hellhole.