The Hanging Shed

by Gordon, Ferris,

  I ran at the door and hit it with my shoulder. It was a tough old plank of oak and I bounced back. The locks held. I slid my revolver in my belt and drew the sawn-off. I stood back and blasted the area round the keyhole. I kicked the door in and dived through headfirst, rolling into the small hall. Dermot was well down a long corridor dragging the woman into one of the rooms. She was shrieking her head off. I couldn’t fire in case I hit her. He slammed the door and locked it. I heard furniture being dragged across. I ran down the corridor like an avenging angel. I stood to one side of the door in case there was a third shotgun in Dermot’s hands.

  ‘Dermot! You might as well come out! Or I’ll come in and get you! I won’t harm the woman. Unless of course you’ve injured a single hair on the head of Samantha Campbell! In which case all bets are off. Do you hear me?’

  All the response I got was more sobbing and more crashing of furniture. Then there was a new sound, of hinges opening, followed by the sound of feet on the gravel. He’d got out the window. I sprinted back down the corridor and flung myself through the front door. Dermot had dived into the car and was starting it up. The motor whirred and caught and he flung it into gear. The car shot forward sending pebbles flying back at my face. It accelerated down the 150-yard drive towards the wooden gate.

  I dropped the sawn-off and gripped my revolver in both hands. I fired steadily, once, twice, three times, smashing the rear window but seemingly doing no other damage. I stuffed it in my waistband. I had one shot left in the sawn-off. I knelt, picked it up, and let fly. I blew a hole in the boot but the car sped on. Shit, shit, shit! I dropped the useless weapon and ran forward, maddened at my rotten shooting.

  I snatched up the Dickson and broke it open. The two used cartridges spun into the air. I delved in my pocket and grabbed one shell. No time for a second. I rammed it home and slammed the gun closed. I knelt in the gravel, pulled the Dickson tight into my shoulder and took a deep breath. Then another. The car was racing for the wooden gate and escape. I took a careful bead on his head and then lowered the barrel. I needed him alive to find out about Sam. I squeezed the trigger. The gun jerked back into my shoulder. I waited. There was no time to reload and fire. He was within twenty yards of freedom.

  At first I thought I’d missed and was regretting my generosity of not aiming at his head. Then I saw the car lurch to the side as a rear tyre blew. Slattery swung the wheel to counter it. Swung too far and was on the grass. Swung again, all the while accelerating, aiming to ram his way through the gate. But the big car pitched again and hit the solid stone pillar with an almighty crash. I ran down the drive ramming shells into my revolver.

  There was a great hissing and clattering as the engine kept trying to pull the car forward. But the fan was jammed and there was nowhere to go. I wrenched the door open to find Slattery sitting with blood all over his face, groaning against the steering wheel. His head had gone through the screen. But I was taking no chances.

  I caught him by his shirt collar and tried to drag him out of the car. He was stuck. I looked closer. The steering shaft running from the front axle up into the cabin had been driven back with the impact. Like a long blunt-ended spear. At the same moment his seat had catapulted forward. His chest was impaled on the central column. The bastard was dying.

  He wasn’t getting off that easy. I grabbed his hair at the nape of his neck and shook him. ‘Where’s Samantha Campbell, you little prick!’ I shoved the gun barrel into his ear. ‘Where is she!’

  Someone was running down the drive. It was the woman he’d used as a shield. Her legs were flapping as she stumbled forward in her bare feet. Her hands were clawing at her mass of white hair. ‘Don’t kill him! Oh, don’t kill him!’ she shouted and flung herself at me.

  I pushed her back and held her away from me, as she flailed at my head. ‘OK, OK! Tend to your man!’

  Her mad eyes searched my face and then she sagged like a broken doll. She dived into the car and held Slattery’s bloody head. He moaned and red seeped from his mouth.

  ‘He needs an ambulance!’ she shouted at me. ‘Get help! There’s a phone in there!’

  ‘Mrs Slattery?’ I said quietly, ‘he needs a priest.’

  She stopped and turned to me, her eyes filled with despair. ‘That’s the last thing Derry Slattery needs. The very last thing.’

  There was a sound from Dermot, a great groan. He turned his face to her and tried to speak. Only a moan came out of his broken lips.

  ‘Oh darlin’, don’t try to speak. You’ll be fine. Just wait. We’ll get the doctor to ye. Just you hold on.’ She turned to me. ‘Can we get him out? Make him more comfy?’

  Together we tugged and pulled and manoeuvred his wrecked body out of the car and on to the grass. We laid him on his back and she cradled his head. She wiped the blood off his face as best she could using her skirt. Then she rocked him gently like a child until Dermot Slattery shuddered once more and gave up his violent life.

  I have no idea why I helped her, but I found myself dragooned into dragging his body back the 150 yards to the house. We passed the now still body of Fergie without a glance. We dropped Dermot on a bed and I sought the kitchen. I found what I was looking for. It was Irish, but it had the same effect. I poured a big glass and ran some tap water into it. I slugged it back in two gulps. Then I stood by the sink and rinsed the blood off my hands and off my jacket sleeves as best I could. I realised my legs were shaking. The day was catching up on me. The familiar pattern. When the fighting stops the adrenaline drains away. I felt sick and leaned over the sink in case. For a moment I was flung back to the darkest days this past winter. Despondency swept over me, disorientated me. The smell of the foxhole in the Ardennes choked me. I’d lain in it for two days while the shelling and straffing went on. Just me and my dead corporal. It seems I’d only killed one dog out there. I sucked in air and clung to the sink until the nausea passed. I heard someone come in. I turned fast in case she was carrying a grudge and a gun.

  She shouldered me aside and filled a bowl with clear water. She took a towel and went off again. Later she returned and flushed the bloody bowl down the sink. Then she rinsed her own hands.

  ‘I’m makin’ tea,’ she said.

  ‘Is that an offer?’

  She shrugged.

  FORTY-TWO

  We sat opposite each other at the table, warily sipping the hot sweet tea. It was a bizarrely domestic scene given that three men and a hellhound lay slaughtered within twenty feet of us. Sometimes only old rituals get you through.

  ‘So, you’re the angel of death, Brodie.’ She said it like a fact, as though she’d been waiting for me, and was mildly disappointed at the guise I’d turned up in.

  ‘You’ll not believe me when I say I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs Slattery. But I am. I’m not sorry he’s dead though. He had it coming.’

  ‘Do ye think so, do ye! An’ what do you know of Derry Slattery? What do you know of his life?’

  ‘I know he took the lives of others. Or arranged for it to happen. Do you deny that?’

  She took a deep breath and let it out. She shook her head. ‘It got out of hand. He didn’t start this way.’

  ‘Mrs Slattery, I don’t have time for his personal hard-luck story, with all due respect. I’m trying to find Samantha Campbell. Advocate Campbell?’

  ‘I know who she is! That bitch!’

  I nearly flung my tea over her, but I needed help here. ‘Why do you say that? What harm has she done you?’

  ‘She’s her father’s daughter, that’s who she is! Fiscal Campbell! He was always after Gerrit. Never letting him go. Always hauling him into court. He had to be stopped. It was all settled. And then she ends up disturbing our lives again!’

  I gazed at her, and rubbed my suddenly dry lips. ‘What do you mean: “He had to be stopped” and “It was all settled”?’

  She turned up her mouth at me, like a sneer. Suddenly I knew with complete certainty what she meant. The sequence of niggling coincidences were noth
ing of the sort. The constant harassment of the Slattery clan by the Procurator Fiscal in the late twenties and early thirties came to an abrupt halt when Sam’s parents drowned. Were drowned.

  ‘Dermot killed her father and mother, didn’t he? On the loch.’

  She got up and walked over to the sink. She picked up the whiskey and two glasses. She poured them full and plonked them between us.

  ‘It’s all one, now. Derry had no choice. Same old story. He had to protect his brother. It’s how it’s always been.’

  I felt sick again. Maybe it was the last of the adrenaline oozing away, or the peaty whiskey. Maybe it was the long dark story that stretched down the years. The tale that started with the deliberate drowning of an old couple on a walking holiday and led to Sam’s own abduction and possible murder. The brutal and callous removal of everyone who might give evidence against them. The final retreat to the old country that ended in violence and gore.

  I asked quietly, scarcely daring to hear the answer, ‘Where is Samantha Campbell? Do you know?’

  She shrugged, as if it was of little interest to her. ‘Gerrit has her, I expect. The boy was always daft, so he was. Mental.’

  I gripped the table, my guts churning in a mix of outrage and fear. Gerrit – the rabid dog – had her. ‘Where?’

  She took a big pull on her whiskey. ‘That would be tellin’ now, wouldn’t it?’ she smirked.

  I flung the half full tumbler at the wall. It smashed to pieces and left a dark reeking stain down the whitewash. ‘Well, you’d better be telling! Right here, right now!’

  I was ready to beat the information out of her, and she knew it. I’d wiped the smirk off her face and for a second, fear lit her eyes. But then her face glazed into a tight mask. This wasn’t the first tumbler she’d seen smashed off a wall. It wasn’t the first threat she’d had. Mrs Slattery had seen the worst life could offer and wasn’t about to turn into a quivering jelly at this late stage. I let the silence fill the kitchen. Neither of us moved. I got control of my shaking hands by clasping them together on the table as though I was going to say grace. I decided to try the long way round.

  ‘You said, “It’s how it’s always been.” What did you mean?’

  Her mouth softened. ‘Since they were kids. Dermot looking after his wee brother.’

  ‘Tell me.’ I reached over and topped up her glass.

  She eyed me up. She’d been beautiful once, I imagined. The white hair would have been thick black curls, and the curves more subtle. She would have set Dermot Slattery’s blood racing. I bet she was a dancer. That shrug again. Another big mouthful.

  ‘Trouble with the authorities. That sort of thing.’

  ‘Were they IRA, Dermot and Gerrit?’

  She laughed. ‘Sure, everybody’s a wee bit IRA round these parts.’

  I tried a long shot. ‘What about the priest? Why did Father Cassidy have to die?’

  Her already flushed face turned crimson round the neck. She rocked to her feet and stood swaying. ‘That’s it! I’ll say no more! Now, get out of this house. You’ve destroyed us all, so you have! Just you get going!’

  I stood up to face her, just as much at the end of my tether. ‘Where is Gerrit Slattery! Where is he keeping Samantha Campbell?’

  She tottered and nearly fell, then caught the edge of the table. Her speech was slurring. ‘It’s likely too late. Gerrit’s a devil, so he is.’

  ‘I need to try. For pity’s sake, woman, just give me an address,’ I pleaded. ‘Enough folk have died, have they not?’

  She looked out of the kitchen window as the darkness grew. She wiped her face and turned back to me.

  ‘Gerrit brought all this down on us. He didn’t deserve a brother like that.’ She nodded towards the room where her husband lay. ‘Derry was a good man. It could have been different for us. Him and me. But always, always, that bloody maniac threw everything up in the air. Just for the fun of it half the time. Or for his dirty treats. And now my Derry is in there. And he’s out there laughing at us all.’

  ‘Out where, Mrs Slattery? Is it right that Gerrit lives on and your Derry doesn’t? After all that Derry did for him?’

  She gazed at me through bleary eyes. She knew what I was doing, what I was saying.

  She sighed, ‘He’ll be in one of two places. The cottage in Arran, or the den in Dumbarton. Him and his pals. And they’ll get you this time, Mister smart murdering angel-of-death Brodie.’

  ‘Well, you won’t mind giving me the addresses then, if they’re going to kill me?’

  She squinted at me, the logic sifting through her fuddled brain. Then she grinned. ‘That’s right. Send you to hell, so I will…’

  She told me, and my stomach turned over at the thought of Sam being captive so close to me in Glasgow while all the time I was chasing the wrong target. I collected myself and started making for the door. I faced her again.

  ‘What about…?’ I nodded towards the room where Slattery lay oozing on to the bedspread.

  ‘We’ll take care of our own.’

  ‘And the ones outside?’ I felt no guilt about these deaths. It was them or me. But there was the small matter of the police. All she had to do was pick up the phone and I’d be explaining this evening’s work behind bars until I turned old and grey. Or they hanged me.

  ‘I know some folk. We’ll do it our way. The quiet way.’

  I believed her, but to make sure, I made her make one phone call to a local number. She asked for two men. They would be round directly. I ripped out the phone from the wall and tore the cable away. Then I picked up my Dickson where it lay outside and walked off down the driveway in the warmth of a fine spring evening. I ejected the spent cartridge and filled both chambers afresh. I stepped round the big black saloon whose lifeblood was ebbing into the gravel in a glistening mix of oil and water and fuel. I climbed over the gate and walked off into the humming darkness.

  FORTY-THREE

  I drove through the night and got to Larne harbour in the wee small hours. I parked, and slept fitfully in the back of the car and woke to the sound of chains and horns. I caught the first ferry back to Stranraer. I found a baker’s open and bought a couple of soft rolls filled with some nameless paste. I stopped a milkman finishing his rounds with his horse and cart and acquired a couple of pints of milk. I chewed and drank as I drove. By eleven o’clock I was coaxing a garage in Girvan to let me have a couple of gallons without coupons. He took double the price but money wasn’t my problem. Time was. Eighty miles to Glasgow.

  I hammered the Riley up the A77 shore road past Ayr and then cross country through Kilmarnock. I was doing seventy down the Glasgow road overtaking everything in sight like a madman. I reached the Jamaica Bridge by one o’clock and headed out west towards Dumbarton. I’d decided to start with this den she’d talked about. If I found nothing there, I’d cross the Erskine ferry and catch the boat to Arran.

  Initially I passed rank upon rank of swinging cranes on either side of the Clyde where the shipyards were dinning away. Then there was the long stretch of Clydebank where a town used to sit next to the yards. The community was blitzed to rubble in ’41. On along the Dumbarton Road past the Erskine Ferry until the big rock of Dumbarton castle shunted into the clear blue morning. It was a perfect site for a fortress and had held the pass through the Clyde estuary for centuries. Kings of Scotland, and before them, Pictish kings, had been crowned here and ruled the surrounding fertile valleys. But not even a Celtic seer could have forecast the Luftwaffe.

  I eased the car down the long sloping road into the town and began to look for Bute Street. Finally I stopped and asked a road sweep. I took his directions and found myself passing through the town on a shore road that ran back towards Glasgow. The quiet road finally petered out into a farm track with grass down the middle. Ahead I could see a glimpse of water through the trees.

  I paused. There were eight wooden huts slung along the lane – four either side – and peeping out from the trees and shrubs. Each had its o
wn mud path running off the road up to the front door. They were more like wooden caravans than houses, with clapperboard walls and corrugated flat roofs. There was no smoke coming from any of the rickety chimneys. They seemed abandoned but were probably just holiday homes.

  I parked the car on the tarmac road and got out. I slid my revolver into my waistband and closed my jacket. The Dickson was harder to hide but there was no one around to see it. I checked the new cartridges were sitting neatly in their chambers and clicked it closed. I stepped up to the entrance to the lane and looked down the tunnel of foliage, peering into the mint-fresh greenery. In front of each hut was a simple stake with a number on it. Some of them also had crude names hanging from them. According to Mrs Slattery I was looking for number 4. I just hoped she wasn’t lying. There was no sign of telephone cables linking the huts to civilisation so I assumed she had no way of contacting her brother-in-law. But I’d soon find out if I had a reception committee or not.

  The hut to my left was number 1, the next number 2. Number 4 was at the end of one row. It sat at the river end of the glade and well back from all the others. It looked as if it had about double the land around it compared to the rest. The windows were blacked out and there was no sign of a car.

  I flicked off the safety on the Dickson and slid into the trees behind the left-hand huts. I crept round through the patchy undergrowth until I was behind a tree within thirty feet of number 4.

  No sign of life, but Gerrit could be in there with at least two of his thugs, and possibly Sam Campbell. I stood listening. Apart from spring birdsong it was quiet as a morgue. The hut had a front door square in the middle. I guessed it would also have a back door. I shuttled round until I could see. There was a little wooden porch and a door. I eyed it up. Standard panelled job, one big lock and a smaller Yale above it. No sign of reinforcing.

  My old sergeant in initial training told me that when in doubt, just bleedin’ charge the bastards, shouting your bleedin’ head off. I skipped the battle cry but dashed across the open clearing, bounded once on the wood terracing and drove at the door with my shoulder.