Potter's Field

by Dolan, Chris;

  “Dunno.”

  “Did Tony Kennedy get a job when he got out?”

  The slightest of pauses, then: “Might have.”

  “Might’s not good enough, Jim,” Russell growled. But all of them knew that mights and maybes were as good as they were going to get. McArthur’s around, not in the know.

  “What about you, Jim? You get a job to do?”

  The little man still looked sad and said nothing. The big boys don’t play with him.

  “Funding the Republican cause couldn’t have gone down well with around half the population in Saughton.”

  McArthur looked at Russell, surprised. “Everyone knows Big Lenny used to work for the IRA. Not anymore, but. Not for years.”

  That’s as much as they would get out of him. Information the Maddy Shannons of this world could do nothing with in court. Uncorroborated hearsay by an unnamed minor crook. But at least Coulter and Russell now knew that Ian Lennon had favours and paying jobs to hand out; and that one of the people he’d dealt with was Sy Kennedy’s father.

  She hadn’t seen him since Sunday afternoon. She had kept her distance from him as much as he had from her. That was fine. In a way, she might have preferred it if Louis had gone home already. They’d got on well. Laughed, talked and worked fine together. Slept well together. Nothing too bowel-churning, and so far no embarrassments. No truths they’d rather not know surfacing. She didn’t want to find out now if he was the father of six, or four-times divorced with a cruelty case behind him. Maybe tonight was going to be a mistake.

  He looks good, though, studying the menu. Not too tailored. Not too combed and cologned. There are different kinds of Americans, Maddy thought. Irish-American. Black-American. Louis Casci’s not just Italian-American, he’s near enough Movie-American. Might as well enjoy the show while it lasts.

  She’d taken him to The Sisters restaurant. An unfashionable part of town, not quite West End. Lorries and buses strained up Crow road. Trains shrieked across a loose-sounding bridge nearby.

  “Great place,” Louis said, and he seemed to mean it.

  Maddy had skate, Casci steak. The eponymous Sisters were the daughters of an old friend of her dad’s. Pauline the kitchen matriarch, Jackie front-of-house.

  “NYPD?” Jackie turned from Louis to Maddy. “He’ll not be wanting the poteen then on his steak.” Then, heading for the kitchens she called out. “Pauline, tell the dancers to put their clothes back on.”

  Maddy decided she had chosen right. The place cosy and friendly, the food amiable and spirited. Louis let her choose the wine and she did what she always did – third bottle down on the list. Louis doubled up with beer. The tables were packed close together and, although the hum of general conversation covered their own talk, they still felt the need to keep their voices low, as though they were having a slightly furtive assignation.

  Maddy explained about Petrus and petro-chemical poisoning. How the company was, ultimately, American owned, but being so supra-national, any national court could only take bits of it to task. No doubt the illegal dumping went on all over the shop, but they could only do anything about it here. “Company as big as that – they’ll move their garbage all over the globe.”

  It was okay, talking shop. They weren’t skirting round other stuff; it wasn’t a conversation with subtext. Work had brought them together. They were both married to their jobs – and, in the lack of any mention of another kind of marriage, Maddy assumed Louis must have nothing to tell. They compared notes, talked about the Potters’ Field and the Kelvingrove cases. She sipped her Merlot, he took gulps of his pint. They felt relaxed, normal.

  Ten years ago, a night out in Maryhill’s Cottars Arms would have been the social equivalent of a birthday party in Barlinnie prison. The clientele, even the decor, the atmos, the same. It had been given a radical makeover since then – new carpet and wallpaper, high stools and tables, polished wood and prints – Scottish Munros and the Mcgillycuddy Reeks – freshly hung on the walls. But the underlying smell of embattled poverty, of cheap drink and fags, seeped slowly from behind Ben Lomond and the Cobbler, like fog, like damp rot.

  Coulter and Russell marched up to the bar where a tall cumbersome youth, pulled up to his full height – six four at least – stood glaring down at them.

  “A coke and mineral water, please,” Coulter said. The usual reaction to that in a pub like this was a fleeting moment of disbelief, then the dawning that they must be polis.

  “Sure, mate. Sparkling or still?” the barman said, unfazed. Glasgow was becoming a confusing place. Since when did bushy-tailed young Australians work in dead-end bars in Maryhill?

  “Your boss in, son? Tell Charlie there’s a couple of old friends here to see him.” Coulter paid for the drinks and watched the barman lope towards Dempsey’s office. He went to sit down, when he noticed that Russell had stopped in his tracks. In a snug, behind the entrance, sat Jim and Elaine Docherty. A man had his back to them, but Coulter and Russell both knew that delicate frame, that incipient bald patch. Coulter put his drink on the table and strolled over.

  Elaine clocked him first – Docherty and Whyte still deep in conversation. She never quite lost that lazy look about her. But, behind the tired eyes, her face registered surprise, and perhaps guilt. Only for the quickest of seconds, but enough for Martin Whyte to pick up on it, and turn around. Coulter beamed broadly at them. “Martin. How are you doing? Elaine. Jim.” He sat down like he’d bumped into his dearest old friends. “John, bring over the drinks, eh?”

  Russell scowled and waited for the Coke and water. Jim Docherty shifted in his seat. Elaine sat up a little straighter. Whyte didn’t even look at Coulter.

  “I know this place has had a job done on it, but I still wouldn’t have thought it was quite the design centre of Glasgow.”

  “We happened to be nearby,” said Whyte, as Russell returned.

  “You’re not friends of the landlord by any chance, are you? Charlie. Known him myself for years.”

  Whyte turned round in his seat until he was facing Coulter directly. “We happen to be working with an architect on a housing association new build. We had a meeting with the community in a public hall round the corner. This was the nearest place to sit down.”

  “Mr. Whyte, the only public hall round here is quarter of a mile that way down Maryhill Road. If you mean the new flats going up over towards Summerston, that’s a mile in the opposite direction. I can think of several pubs and even a cafe in that area. None of them great, but no worse than this.”

  “This is the one we happened to come across. We left our cars in the Tesco car park.”

  Coulter saw Dempsey’s “Staff Only” door open. The big Australian barman came out and gave Coulter a thumbs-up. Coulter got up from his seat. “Small world, isn’t it?” was all, lamely, he could think of saying.

  “Isn’t it just,” said Whyte, dismissing him by mimicking the banality of the remark.

  The Cottars Arms makeover had been even less successful in Charlie Dempsey’s office. No amount of cheap paint could stop it being a store-room with a desk and a couple of chairs. Pine air-freshener not enough to mask the reek of stale alcohol and loose morals.

  Charlie looked like several different men stuck together. His prematurely white hair was a veritable halo, but his eyebrows were as thick and black as the devil’s. He had long, thin fingers, but a big round belly. His legs seemed too small for the rest of his body. Coulter had known him for years, but still felt as if he’d just walked into a room full of strangers.

  “DI Coulter. Been a while. You here to give me a certificate of good behaviour?”

  “D’you deserve one, Charlie?”

  “Course I do. Who’s the new little helper?”

  Charlie better watch himself here. Detective Sergeant Russell was a more violent man than Dempsey imagined, and liable to fly off the handle.

  “Don’t give us it, Dempsey. You’ve come across me often enough.”

  “Have I? So sorry.”
He turned to Coulter. “What?”

  “You’ve taken to chilling with the creatives, Charles.”

  “Come again.”

  “Graphic artists. Designers. Messrs Whyte and Docherty.”

  Charlie shrugged. “I make it a rule not to consort with anybody who drinks in here.”

  “Not even Ian Lennon.”

  “What about him? He’s a gardener now. Found that wee lassie – what more d’you want? Let me guess – you’re giving him dog’s abuse just because he once worked for my dad?”

  When Old Charlie was alive, he used to admit that his old man had been a bit of a bad lad, but he had cleaned things up now. Young Charlie took the same tack. He’d gone further – giving the impression at least that the Cottars Arms had gone legit. No longer a social hub for thieves and racketeers, a cover for dirty money and IRA backhanders. To be fair, it was a long time since the Arms had appeared on any police report. Maybe Young Charlie was a better operator than Old Charlie.

  “He’s worked for you, too.”

  “Nothing to do with me. He was my dad’s man, not mine. Doesn’t even like me.”

  “How is the old man, Charlie?”

  “Not so great. Prostate cancer.”

  “Ach,” Russell said. “That can take years to kill you.”

  “No way your old man and Ian could still be up to their old tricks again?”

  “Don’t be daft.”

  But there was a flash of doubt in his eyes. Chances are, Coulter thought, that young Charlie genuinely is more or less clean these days. Not because he’s a reformed soul, but because the rough boys don’t respect him enough to work for him. They’d still respect his father, though.

  “My old man’s dying, Mr. Coulter. He’s not up to running protection rackets, and keeping an animal like Lennon on a leash..”

  “Sorry to hear that, Charlie.” Russell looked at Coulter, wondering if he meant it.

  “Tony Kennedy, Charlie. Know him?”

  “One of the Kelvingrove boys’ father, no?”

  “So you can read,” sneered Russell.

  “Aye they’ve got newspapers in Maryhill too, these days,” Charlie hit back. “Never come across the gentleman myself. Poor bastard.”

  Charlie Dempsey had been brought up on secrets and falsehoods and fabrications, telling different versions of every story to his friends, his colleagues, the Polis, himself. Smoke would come out of a lie detector.

  Louis had gone on through into the sitting room. Maddy was in the kitchen, making coffee, running through her messages. About six from Mama. Better phone her back – the big day being tomorrow, Sunday.

  “Don’t know why you’re thinking of moving!” Louis shouted through. “This pad’s terrific. In New York, it’d be worth a fortune.”

  The next message was from Coulter. “Sorry to bother you. Tell Casci Lennon’s looking deeper in it with every passing day. Amy Dalgarno found out today that one of the houses he gardens for has two big Labradors. Both black. And hairy. Lennon was working there the day before the boys were found. Amy’s round there now with Russell, chasing these dogs around trying to get samples. Anyway. Tell Louis, if I don’t see him, to have a good flight. If you bump into him, like. Talk to you Monday.”

  He sounded so sad. Every case hurt him in new ways. First the not knowing, then the knowing. One was as bad as the other. All that and Martha to deal with too. Alan was phoning from home, she could hear the television on in the background.

  The coffee pot began to gurgle. Maddy turned the flame under it down, slowing down the percolating till she phoned her mother. Before pressing the last number in, she called out:

  “Louis? What you doing tomorrow?”

  “Nothing planned. My Work Here is Done.”

  “Want to go back to church?”

  He laughed. “You turning into some kind of religious nut? Or do we have to go every time we…” He tailed off. There was no guarantee he was going to end up in her bed tonight. She smiled, imagining him squirming next door, putting his foot in it.

  “Not church exactly,” she said, returning. “But you may have to put up with a few preliminary prayers and litanies and stuff.”

  He had loosened his tie and she thought of Sinatra asking Joe to set ’em up in the wee small hours, which made her think, confusingly of sexy strangers at midnight, and her granddad singing tunelessly along in a chip shop in Girven. By the look in his eye, Louis’s thoughts weren’t so complicated.

  Alan Coulter came home at the back of ten and still no one was up. He sat in his own living room as if he were waiting for the dentist, flicking through Sunday supplements. Lauren and Peter usually come round on a Sunday but Lauren, the eldest, had developed the radar years ago to sense when mum was having one of her turns. Jennifer was sleeping over at a friend’s after a party. Beth was sleeping in. Martha, too, would still be in bed, but not sleeping. She never slept when she was not well, but lay still as death in the curtained darkness.

  Alan had already been out to work and back. The first time he’d met Tony Kennedy he saw an anguished father, hopping around like a bird whose wings had been damaged. This morning, the tragedy of Tony’s son’s murder had ebbed someplace deeper inside him, and the natural mistrustfulness towards policemen of a man who hadn’t always managed to live inside the law came back to the fore.

  “Mr. Kennedy. We’ve visited Barlinnie. We understand that an Ian Lennon gave you a job to do when you got out.”

  Tony flitted about, denied it a couple of times, then stared up at his interrogators. “Is this off the record?”

  Russell had been shorter-tempered than usual, desperate to get to a Rangers early kick-off. “There is no off the record, Tony.”

  “If Lennon finds out I told you…”

  “He won’t find out from us.” Coulter had tried to sound convincing, but Kennedy gave in to the inevitable. “Week I got out, back in ’03, he gave me a note to deliver.”

  “To where?”

  “Private residence.”

  Shit, everyone spoke in jargon these days. “To where, Tony?”

  “House up in Maryhill Park.”

  “You remember the name?”

  “No.”

  “The address?”

  “Somewhere up in Maryhill Park.”

  An area that had recently gone stellar on the housing market. Professionals out-pricing themselves in the West End had moved a couple of miles further out. Those who didn’t have the dosh for Westbourne or Cleveden, and weren’t old enough to move out to Milngavie.

  “Come on, Tony, give us a name, or we’ll be here all morning.” They’d arrived before 9.00 AM, surprised to see Kennedy up and dressed and about his business.

  “Can’t remember. Ross?”

  After they left Tony Kennedy, they phoned in the paltry information to the research boys and Russell scuttled off to change for the game. Coulter, back home now, threw the supplements aside and couldn’t stop himself from checking Ben’s room. Every weekend he hoped his son might make an unannounced appearance from London. Not this weekend. He went back down and started preparing breakfast in the kitchen. He was cracking eggs into the scrambling bowl when the phone rang.

  “Mr. Coulter?”

  Sales call, or he wasn’t the only man working early on a Sunday.

  “This is Dan McKillop.”

  It took a moment for Coulter to place him. The big Assistant PF in Maddy’s office. Tailored to within an inch of his life, bent as a nine bob note and reeking of cologne. Coulter had never taken to him.

  “I’ve been trying to get in touch with PF Shannon.”

  That was the kind of false formality that irked Coulter. They both knew her as Maddy, for Chrissakes. “She’s at some family party, I believe.”

  “I know that. But she had her mobile turned off.”

  “Is there something I can help you with?”

  “It’s just some information. Might not be important. Maybe it could even wait until tomorrow.” A seldom-seen crac
k in the lawyer’s self-confidence. And unless he had acquired photographic evidence of Sy and Micky and Frances being killed and a signed confession from the killer, there wasn’t actually much that couldn’t wait twelve hours or so.

  “I’ve been looking – in the course of preparing another case altogether – into the records of children who have left the school system in Glasgow and not shown up anywhere else.”

  Why did Fiscals all think they were natural born gumshoes? Maddy was the same. But at least she was a team-worker. And better looking.

  “I’ve an appointment with Mr. Sunail Shehadeh in the Education offices first thing tomorrow morning.”

  Wasn’t McKillop being disloyal to his boss here? Maddy always swore by him. Best Assistant she’d ever had. Coulter reckoned he was the ambitious sort who could dump you easy after years of friendship.

  “But I’m almost certain Maddy might not be available tomorrow morning.” There was a note in his voice… “In court or something.”

  She’d be with Casci. McKillop was being tactful – whether to protect Maddy’s professional name, or because he suspected Coulter was jealous, Coulter preferred not to dwell on.

  “So?” Coulter couldn’t quite get a grip on this conversation.

  “I wouldn’t want the Fiscal’s office to be accused of trying to hide anything, or hold things up. We might have a name.”

  Coulter waited patiently through the dramatic pause. McKillop knew he had earned it; he knew how crucial identifying Micky was. How much Coulter had tried to identify the mysterious boy lying next to Sy Kennedy.

  “Paul Pacchini.”

  Coulter was disappointed. Pacchini? Didn’t sound right. Micky was a Johnstone or a McRae or a Jones if ever he saw one. Not even the first name sounded right. He’d had him down as a Malky or a Joe, or possibly a Jason or Justin. He said thanks to McKillop. Hung up, and went for his coat, forgetting about the eggs waiting to be scrambled. Paul Pacchini. He crept out the front door. Paul. Pacchini. Trying to get used to the name, like a new pair of shoes.

  “Here, Nonno, let me help.”

  Maddy took her grandfather’s arm and bore his weight as he struggled to get out his chair. In fact, there was little weight to bear. Nonno had never been a bulky or a tall man. When she was growing up – Nonno must’ve been in his fifties and sixties – she thought of him as a dancer. Fred Astaire rather than Gene Kelly: diminutive, neat, always exquisitely dressed, foppish even in shiny brown leather shoes and dark suits, cravats and ties and big 70’s collars. He’d move boxes of lemonade around dressed like that, sometimes even served chips, his suit on under his overall. By that time, of course, it was her parents doing most of the work, Rosa serving, Packy frying. Nonno would sit at one of the tables screwed to the floor, listening to Sinatra or Dino on the juke box, looking over the shop’s paperwork.