by Jay Stringer
Thirty-Five
The taxi driver was called Murdo. He was waiting out in the car with the dinner lady. Her name was Senga. You have to love Glasgow; once everyone figured we had enough people named Agnes, they just reversed the letters and started again.
Hillcoat gave me an envelope full of cash and told me to call it a retainer. I didn’t bother counting it. I’d do that when I got home, and laugh and jump around a little.
Murdo and Senga had been my first leads of the day, the first people to warn me off looking for Rab. I didn’t trust them, and I hesitated as I walked over to them. I didn’t want to get back in the car.
That’s when Murdo gave me their names.
‘I wouldn’t trust me either,’ he said with a smoker’s cackle. ‘But Senga’s got a heart of gold. Wouldn’t hurt a fly.’
‘I remember.’
‘Sorry about earlier, hen,’ Senga said. ‘We’re used to warning people off, protecting Rab. People come in looking for him all the time. Want money, or a fight, or just to say they met him.’
‘That’s why you told me he was in London?’
‘Aye, that’s our usual line.’ Murdo pulled my purse from his pocket and held it out for me. ‘I think someone was counting on that. Using us. Whoever done for Rab knows us too, and how we work. Knew we would play dumb if people came looking for him. Gave them time to cover their tracks.’
I took the purse and stepped past him, climbing into the back of the taxi. They both slid into the front, and I waited until the engine was turning over before asking my next question.
‘Any ideas who did it?’
Murdo looked at me in the rear-view. ‘All I know is who’s talked to me about Rab in the last couple of days. There have been a lot of questions—yesterday and today. One of them has done it.’
‘Can you give me the list?’ I still bit back on the one name I had. ‘That’ll be my starting point.’
Both Murdo and Senga watched me silently in the mirror for a while. It was still light outside, but the temperature had dropped. That odd Glasgow summer chill was in the air, where you need a jacket but can still die of sunstroke if you fall asleep in the park.
‘When you find out who it is,’ Murdo said, ‘how’s about you let me know first, before you tell the old man. Give me a run at the guy. Give me a chance to make things right my own way.’
‘You and Rab go back?’
‘Aye. All our lives. Grew up together.’
‘So how come you’re working with Hillcoat now? I don’t get the impression that he and Rab have ever been on the same side—not with the Mackie situation.’
‘You ask the right questions.’ He pulled off the motorway by Shawfield, the greyhound racing track that my dad had taken me to a few times when I was younger. ‘The thing with Mackie was strange. Rab was never the same after that. I think it affected him—he didn’t want to be involved in all the same old stuff after he saw what happened to his nephew. That’s when he started trying to ease out of it, write the books and move on.’
‘And you working with Hillcoat?’
We paused at traffic lights. He used this as an excuse to stay quiet for a moment, pretending to concentrate on the lights as they changed.
‘Rab changed and so did I. I’m getting old. I don’t want to be keeping up with the kids any more. I’d rather sit and drink and read the paper. Keep an eye on my family and friends. When they grabbed Rab, they changed the rules. Me and Hillcoat both want them stopped.’
We pulled up outside my flat but stayed in the car. I wanted to ask more questions, but I wasn’t going to invite them in. They’d already been in, sure, but that wasn’t by my choice.
‘When was the last time you saw Rab?’
‘Last night. He was drinking at the Pit, him and Mackie. They were both steamboats, absolutely gone. Mackie was upset, crying over something, and Rab talked him into going to the brothel on Copland Road.’
‘What was he upset about?’
‘His psychiatrist had been getting into his head, making him talk about the murder over and over until he was convinced he hadn’t done it. He was asking Rab to help him figure out who set him up.’
Rab finds out Mackie wants to investigate the murder.
Rab talks Mackie into going to the brothel.
Mackie gets shot at the brothel.
The maths didn’t look good for Rab, and I couldn’t be the only one thinking it, but I decided now wasn’t the best time to say that out loud. I kept it on-topic.
‘Was Rab fine when he left the Pit?’
‘Aye. A bit emotional after having to deal with Mackie, but that’s just what the drink does to you. He made a couple of phone calls—one I know was to Gary Fraser—then he got up and left.’
‘Gary Fraser?’
‘Aye. You’d find him at Lebowskis. He’s a dealer, maybe can get a few guns from time to time. Useful guy to know, but I don’t know what Rab wanted from him because Rab never deals with guns or drugs.’
I asked again for a list of the people who’d spoken to Murdo about Rab in the last two days. I stressed I wanted it to be everyone, and he was good to his word. The list he scribbled on a taxi receipt included me and Andy Lambert, from our run-in at the Pit. At least there were two names I could cross off straight away.
Thirty-Six
I watched through the small pane of glass in the front door as the taxi pulled away, and waited until it was out of sight and the sound had faded from the end of the street before turning the lock and putting the chain on the door.
I went from room to room, checking the windows, and found they were all secure. Something that would usually make me feel safe only worked to make me feel worse. They’d got in without breaking anything. They must have got in through the front door without a key.
How?
The flat felt very open and exposed.
I pulled a chair up against the front door, jamming it below the handle. It wasn’t much. It wasn’t anything, really. It was going to have to be enough to get me through the night. Last night my biggest problems had been paying the rent and trying to run a little faster. Now I was mixed up in an epic-old grudge match that felt like a greater threat with every passing minute.
Best form of defence is to attack. That’s what my dad told me once, when he took me to a game at Parkhead, trying to get me into football. Go on the attack, and they can’t score. One day involved in this, and I was already reaching for a sporting metaphor. Still, it held. Get it done. Get them out of the way.
My dad’s files were in the spare room, the makeshift office. Boxes piled on top of one another, with letters and dates written on the sides. His filing had been sharp and perfect. His cases were broken down by year, and then, within each year, were organised alphabetically by the name of his client. He had a pile of notebooks, ledgers where he kept an index of them, so that every case he’d ever worked could be found with a few turns of the page. When I was going through university, I’d taken over the maintenance of his filing for some part-time work, and one of the first signs that his mind was giving up on him had been when I noticed things being filed the wrong way. I’d sat on it at first, fixing his messes, but it had got worse, and I’d been the one to force him to go to the doctor.
There hadn’t been a day since then that hadn’t felt like a small betrayal.
I searched the ledger books and found an entry for Hillcoat, then traced the case to the right box, but there was no file for the case. I went back to the books and searched for entries under other names, like Anderson, but there was nothing. I googled news stories from Mackie’s court case and confirmed his real name, then checked that in the ledger too. Still nothing.
I called Phil. When he answered, I could hear the sounds of professional wrestling in the background, the shouting and smacking of large heaps of meat onto canvas. He sounded far more awake tha
n the last time I’d called him. At this time of night, he was just starting to come into his own.
‘Hey, chum.’ He was going to keep this Batman thing going all night. ‘What’s up?’
‘You ever gone through Dad’s file boxes?’
‘Hell no. You know I made a mess any time I tried to sort it. That’s your area.’
‘You didn’t see us drop anything when we moved them all from the office, did you? There’s a file I need, and it’s not in the right place.’
‘Have you looked through the other boxes? You know he started to get a little cuckoo with the whole system. Maybe he’s filed it under the first name or something. Why’d you need it—a new case?’
‘No, same one.’
‘Sam, I thought we were dropping this.’
‘I’ll explain later. It’s about Dad.’
I hung up and started going through the other boxes, through Dad’s entire career, file by file, looking for one in the wrong place. Was Phil right? Had this been an early example of Dad’s mind going? I felt guilty, but part of me wanted that to be the case. I didn’t want to think that he’d deliberately lost the file. Why would he do that? There was no answer that led anywhere good.
The old answer machine was flashing. I clicked on the button, and the message played. It was from Fiona Hunter, and she didn’t sound happy.
‘Ms Ireland, I think we need to have a meeting. We had a visit today from a police officer, a Detective Inspector Andrew Lambert, and he seemed to have knowledge of your assignment that could only have come from you or from the file we gave you to deliver. I will welcome your views on this at 9.15 tomorrow morning, in my office.’
Great. At least I knew the exact moment that my chances with that company were going to be shot down in flames.
Wait—hang on. Andy? How did he know who I was working for? And why would he visit them? I looked again at the list Murdo had given me. Andy’s name was on there, before mine. I’d assumed it was only there because he’d gone into the Pit for my belongings.
It couldn’t be any other reason.
And then there was that wound on his hand, the morning after Rab’s dog was killed.
He couldn’t be involved.
Could he?
Thirty-Seven
I decided to check out the first lead Murdo had given me. Gary Fraser. I sent Phil a text to meet me outside Lebowskis and caught the train from Bridgeton to the Exhibition Centre station, which was only a few minutes from the bar.
It was not too far to have walked, but I avoided being in the city alone after dark. Glasgow, for all its bravado, was a city that couldn’t handle its drink. It got loud, angry and sloppy. Men, women and crazed hen parties trotting up and down the streets, falling over and throwing up. The second reason was rape. There was a culture of it in the city. A woman was getting assaulted or raped every month in Glasgow, and the press barely touched it. Didn’t matter where, didn’t matter how exposed or public the location—nobody helped. When the Occupy movement were camped out in George Square, a woman was raped in one of the tents. Other campers would later tell the police and press of the sounds, of hearing the woman in distress and crying. Nobody seemed to take the extra step of going to see if there was anything they could do to stop those sounds.
City life always had ways of showing how little it cared about you. If you were a woman, Glasgow had a few extra.
I stepped off the train into the cool evening air. The temperature had dropped even further, and it felt like we might finally get some rain. Honest-to-goodness Scottish weather for the first time in a month. I looked forward to it. I looked forward to moaning about it. I headed up Minerva Street, which was pretty much just car parks and bad driving, and turned onto Argyle Street. Phil was already parked up ahead, on the side of the road I was walking down, leaning against the side of the car and waiting for me.
‘What’s the rumpus?’ he asked.
‘What?’
‘From a film—never mind. What’s going on—we still on the Anderson case?’
‘Long story short, we’ve been hired by someone else to look into the same case. Sort of. It might tie into an old murder, and we’re being asked to keep working on it, try and follow the lead back.’
‘Murder? Sam? We don’t do murders. We do insurance fraud, cheating husbands, background checks on defendants. Police do the murders.’
‘They might have got this one wrong.’
I saw him think it through. Whether to keep challenging me or roll with it. It was a look I’d seen in him his whole life; he’d picked it up from our father. Our father who, in turn, had picked it up from looking in the mirror a few too many times.
‘Okay,’ Phil said, rolling with it. ‘So what’s the deal here? Who we talking to in Lebowskis?’
‘I’m talking to Gary Fraser. You’re standing behind me at the bar, looking scary.’
‘Gary?’
‘You know him?’
‘Aye.’ He answered as if it should have been obvious. ‘I buy weed off him sometimes.’
Well, that changed things. Hard for Phil to play my heavy in the background if he was known in there. Nobody who knew Phil was scared of him. His imposing appearance lasted until precisely ten seconds after he opened his mouth and started talking about eighties cartoons and superhero movies.
A new plan was needed.
‘Okay, time for you to play detective,’ I said. ‘I’ll play the heavy in the background, to probably mixed results. You try and get information from Gary.’
‘What do we need to know?’
‘Why did Rab talk to him yesterday? Does he know where he was going? And is there anything else we can use for information? But don’t just come out and ask that, because people get defensive. You need to sneak up on it; talk about anything other than what we want to know, then find ways to sneak the questions in.’
‘Gotcha.’
We crossed the road, dodging between the evening traffic because we were too lazy to walk the twenty yards down to the pedestrian crossing. There was no bouncer on the door at the bar, which was unusual for this time of night. Maybe it was a place that never encountered any trouble. Sometimes that was more worrying than a bar that had a small army of bouncers.
It was dark inside, but not in a scary or intimidating way. The lights looked like they had been specifically designed for the exact right pitch for drinkers. Dark enough to protect the fledgling hangovers and put people at ease, but bright enough to remind everyone not to fall asleep. There weren’t many drinkers inside, and Phil headed straight for a wiry man seated at the bar. I hung back a few steps, trying to look cool and mysterious, but the man at the bar only had eyes for me as we walked over.
‘Phil, how you doing?’ The man extended a hand to shake Phil’s. ‘Who’s your bodyguard?’
‘Gary, this is Sam, my sister. Sam, Gary Fraser.’
He looked at ease, totally at home. His stubble was carefully sculpted, and his hair combed to look uncombed. He looked like he practised being at ease, but it suited him. I leant in and shook his hand. I waited for his eyes to move up to meet mine before I spoke.
‘How you doing, Gary?’
‘I’m great,’ he said. ‘So are you.’
Groan. I felt my cheeks flush, but it was anger rather than embarrassment. In moments like this I lost all sense of my own safety and security, and went for being as annoying as I could. Phil had already started some ambling introduction, small gossip about other dealers, but I took hold of the conversation.
‘So, Gary, why did Rab Anderson come to see you last night?’
His eyes popped wide, like a cartoon, before he regained the cool indifference that he’d clearly spent years practising. He looked from me to Phil, then back to me. He noticed my face for sure now. I’d forced him to take me seriously.
‘Direct, aren’t you?’ h
e said. ‘Anderson came here, but it’s personal business.’
‘He’s dead. He doesn’t have any personal business any more.’
‘Dead?’ His face cracked into real emotion again—this time it was surprise. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Neda Tenac told me.’ I decided to lean on the name, try and let him imagine I was more connected than I was. ‘And people are talking, saying he came to you last night for a favour.’
He thought about this. Phil stayed silent, but I could see him looking around the bar, casting glances at the other drinkers, watching for any movement. Gary set his drink down on the bar and ran his tongue along his teeth inside his closed mouth.
‘Who’s been talking?’
‘Pretty much everyone I’ve spoken to. They’re all wondering what he came to you for.’
‘Nobody knows?’
‘Doesn’t seem so.’
Gary checked his watch and then turned back to Phil for the first time since the introductions. ‘You got your car?’
Phil nodded.
‘Let’s go.’
He stood up off his stool and reached behind where he’d been sitting to lift up a canvas bag. He nodded for us to get moving, and we let him lead the way. We headed outside, where I felt a little rain, finally. We crossed the road, with Phil pointing Gary towards the car. Gary climbed into the back seat and slid down, keeping as low as he could, and Phil and I sat in the front.
‘Where we going?’ Phil asked, the key in his hand hovering a few inches from the ignition.
‘Nowhere,’ said Gary. ‘We wait here.’
‘For what?’ I turned round to see him, but he waved me back.
‘Stay facing forward,’ he said. ‘We don’t want anyone to notice us. Just look like you’re sitting in your car chatting to your man there.’
‘What’s going on?’ Phil made eye contact with Gary in the rear-view. ‘Why the sudden panic?’
‘Rab came to me last night, asking for money. Sixty grand. I agreed to have it for him today, a loan.’ In the mirror I saw his hand pat the bag on the seat beside him. ‘I’ve had it with me all day. Been a pain in the arse going to the toilet with my bag; makes me look like I’m shooting up.’