Bloody January

by Alan Parks

  Published in Great Britain in 2017 by

  Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

  canongate.co.uk

  This digital edition first published in 2017 by Canongate Books

  Copyright © Alan Parks, 2017

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 78689 133 4

  Export ISBN 978 1 78689 134 1

  eISBN 978 1 78689 135 8

  Typeset in Bembo by Palimpsest Book Production Ltd, Falkirk, Stirlingshire

  Contents

  1st January 1973

  One

  Two

  2nd January 1973

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  3rd January 1973

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  4th January 1973

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  5th January 1973

  Twenty

  6th January 1973

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  7th January 1973

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  8th January 1973

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  9th January 1973

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  10th January 1973

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  11th January 1973

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  20th January 1973

  Forty-Two

  Acknowledgements

  For my mum and dad

  ‘For indeed any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war with one another.’

  – Plato

  ‘Every picture tells a story, don’t it?’

  – Rod Stewart

  It became one of the cases cops mark their career by. Peter Manuel, Bible John and Bloody January. Nobody really knew where the name came from, probably some passing remark in Pitt Street or in a pub next to Central. The papers got a hold of it pretty quick. Banner headlines straight away. Most famous one still framed and hung up in stations across in the city.

  BLOODY JANUARY: HOW MANY MORE TO DIE?

  Years later the cops that worked Bloody January would tell the younger guys that they had no idea what it was really like back then. Six bodies in one week. They’d sit in pubs and reminisce, retired now, run to fat and drinking too much because they had nothing else to do. They’d tell their war stories, about how close they came to an arrest or finding one of the bodies. The younger ones would smile and nod, listen with one ear on the football results coming out the TV, thinking, ‘It can’t have been that bad.’

  But it was.

  1st January 1973

  ONE

  McCoy headed along the corridor towards the stairs, heels clicking on the metal walkway, breath clouding out in front of him. Never changed, Barlinnie. Freezing in the winter, boiling in the summer. The old Victorian building was on its last legs. Wasn’t built for the number of prisoners they had stuffed into it now. Three, sometimes four of them locked up in a cell made for two. No wonder the whole prison stank. The smell of overflowing slop buckets and stale sweat was so thick it caught in the back of your throat soon as the big doors opened; stuck to your clothes when you left.

  He’d been coming up here since his first weeks on the beat. Only good thing about Barlinnie was that it saved you going anywhere else. The whole spectrum of Glasgow’s wrongdoers ended up in here. From rapists and murderers, nonces and kiddie fiddlers to bewildered old men caught coming out the Co-op with two tins of salmon stuffed up their jumpers and their wives not long in the ground. Barlinnie wasn’t fussy, it took them all in.

  He leant over the balcony rail, peered through the netting and the fug of tobacco smoke at the rec hall below. Usual crowd milling about in their denims and white plimsolls. Couple of boys whose names he couldn’t remember playing ping-pong. Low-level troops from the gangs in the Milton gathered round the pool table, all long hair, moustaches and borstal tattoos. One of them pointed with his cue as Jack Thomson was wheeled in front of the TV, started sniggering. A year ago he would have been too scared to even look at someone like Thomson. Now the poor bastard had a dent in his head so deep it was visible from up here. That’s what happens when someone takes a sledgehammer to each knee and then gives you a few whacks on the head for luck. Can’t walk and your brain’s so scrambled you don’t even know where you are.

  He buttoned up his trench coat, blew in his hands. Really was fucking freezing in here. A wee fat guy stood up from the card school, looked up, nodded. Steph Andrews. Still kidding himself that no one in here knew he was a tout. McCoy dug in his pocket, took out one of the packets of Regal he’d brought with him and dropped it over the side. Steph had caught it, pocketed it and was off before anyone even noticed. First rule of a visit to Barlinnie: bring fags. McCoy leant over a bit further, still couldn’t see the reason he’d come up here.

  ‘Feeding time at the zoo, eh?’

  He turned and Tommy Mullen was leaning on the rail next to him. He took his cap off, scratched at his head. When McCoy had first started coming up to Barlinnie, Mullen’s hair had been black. It was mostly grey now.

  ‘How much longer you got now, Tommy?’ he asked.

  ‘Three more cunting weeks. Counting the days.’

  ‘Not sad you’re going then?’

  ‘Joking, aren’t you? Cannot fucking wait. Wife’s brother’s bought a wee caravan down in Girvan. Fresh air. Get the stink of this place out my nose.’

  ‘What is it he wants anyway?’ McCoy asked. ‘All I got was a call at the station to get up here.’

  Mullen shrugged. ‘Think he’s going to tell me?’ He took a roll-up out his baccy tin and lit up. McCoy looked over the balcony again, tried to see him in the crowd.

  ‘You’ll no see him down there,’ said Mullen. ‘He’s been moved. He’s in the Special Unit now.’

  McCoy let out a low whistle. The mysterious Special Unit. Nobody knew much about it or how it was supposed to work. Had been set up last year. Prison Services embracing the sixties far too late. McCoy remembered a news conference on the telly. A grim-faced warden sitting behind a desk flanked by two hippy professor types. The hippies blabbering on about Art Therapy, Positive Custody and Breaking Barriers.

  Even though it was early days, any mention of the Special Unit was enough to start the papers frothing at the mouth, most of the polis too. According to them the Special Unit was going to be Sodom and Gomorrah rebuilt on the banks of the Clyde. According to the hippies it was just a small section of the prison where top security prisoners would be treated like human beings. McCoy wasn’t too bothered either way, wasn’t like the usual stuff was working anyway. Bully squads beating the fuck out of troublesome prisoners, sticking them in cages in freezing wet basements. Far as he could see it just made those nutters worse; all the more determined to stab or batter any screw that looked at them the wrong way.

  Mullen and McCoy left the main building and ran across the prison yard, coats over their heads, heading for a red d
oor in the far wall. Weather was getting worse again, icy sleet, wind whipping leaves and rubbish across the yard. Mullen pulled the red door open and they were in.

  McCoy just stood there looking, taking it in. Alice through the looking glass.

  There were two greenhouses in front of them, full of flowers and tomato plants. Beds had been dug out the concrete, planted with neat rows of vegetables. A fenced-off area at the side was full of huge lumps of stone with half-finished faces or bodies carved into them, granite glistening in the wet. The door of a wee shed beside them opened and a thin bloke stepped out, long blond hair, chisel in his hand, dusty leather apron. He lifted up his safety goggles.

  ‘All right, Tommy?’ he asked. ‘No seen you for a while.’

  Took a couple of seconds for McCoy to realise who he was. Bobby Munro. Couldn’t help but smile. Bobby ‘Razor’ Munro standing in Barlinnie with a chisel in his hand? No wonder the papers were going mental. Must be the first time he’d used one for its real purpose; normally he’d have had it at someone’s throat.

  ‘Aye, all good,’ said Mullen. ‘Looking for Howie.’

  ‘He’ll be stuck in front of the TV as per.’ He pointed to a door. ‘Through there.’

  ‘So you’re Tommy now, are you?’ asked McCoy, as they went in. ‘All best pals. That how it works?’

  ‘Don’t fucking start me,’ said Mullen, as they walked through the door. ‘That took a lot of getting used to, I’ll tell you. “The use of surnames is demeaning and depersonalising and must be phased out,”’ he recited in a posh voice. ‘Load of fucking pish.’

  Last time McCoy had been in the washing block it was full of big industrial machines churning away, men standing behind big electric presses, half hidden in the clammy steam. Not now. Now it was almost empty, painted white, framed pictures and posters on the walls, huge iron sculpture in the middle of the floor. As far as McCoy could make out it seemed to be two dogs with human faces fighting each other, or maybe fucking each other, couldn’t quite tell. Mullen pointed at a door in the corner.

  ‘Lounge is over there.’

  McCoy stepped through. He didn’t know what he was expecting, but whatever it was it wasn’t this. It was like stepping into your auntie’s cosy front room. Geometric wallpaper, two-bar fire going full blast and a three-piece suite with wooden arms positioned round a colour TV. Didn’t even smell of slop buckets. Only one thing was spoiling the cheery atmosphere: Howie Nairn. He was sitting slumped on the couch. No denims and white sandshoes for the prisoners in the Special Unit. They got to wear their own clothes. In Nairn’s case that wasn’t much of an improvement. A dirty Che Guevara T-shirt, a tartan scarf round his neck, flared denims and long, wavy auburn hair tied back in a ponytail. Even had his slippers on. He was a bit thinner but looked much the same as last time McCoy had seen him. Was one thing hadn’t changed: still had the raised criss-cross of scars running across his neck, disappearing down into the collar of his T-shirt.

  ‘Get that screw to fuck,’ Nairn said, eyes not leaving the TV. ‘He’s no allowed to be in here.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ said Mullen. ‘McCoy?’

  He nodded an okay and Mullen backed out the door. ‘I’ll leave you boys to it, give us a shout when you’re done.’

  McCoy sat down on the arm of the couch, put a packet of Regal on the wee tile-covered coffee table. Waited. Was sure he could smell dope from somewhere. Wouldn’t surprise him. Nothing about here could any more. Nairn didn’t say anything, eyes stayed firmly fixed on the TV. Up to him then.

  ‘I got the message. Supposed to be honoured, am I?’

  Nairn grunted. ‘Don’t flatter yourself, McCoy. You were the only fucking polis whose name I could remember.’

  McCoy looked at the posters taped up on the wall. Not the usual girls with their legs apart, not in here. A map of Middle Earth, picture of Chairman Mao. Books on the shelf were as bad. The autobiography of Malcolm X. Stranger in a Strange Land. The Bhagavad Gita.

  ‘All this hippie stuff working, is it?’ he asked. ‘No feeling the need to open the warden’s face any more?’ No response. He sighed, tried again. ‘So is this about Garvie, then?’

  Nairn finally looked away from Zebedee and Dougal. ‘Who?’

  ‘Stan Garvie. Stuffed in a tea chest and chucked in the Clyde with some iron weights for company. Believe it was your doing. Staying in this holiday home made you want to confess all, that it?’

  Nairn smiled, looked very pleased with himself. ‘So that was the cunt’s name, was it?’ He shook his head. ‘Naw, don’t know nothing about that, Detective McCoy.’

  McCoy raised his eyebrows. ‘News travels fast.’

  Nairn sat up, stuffed his hand down his jeans, scratched at his balls then sniffed his hand. ‘Aye well, I’ve got some more news for you. Someone’s gonnae get killed tomorrow.’

  ‘What, you going to knife someone in the showers? Giving me a heads-up?’

  Nairn smiled again, revealing a row of small yellow teeth. ‘Always think you’re the funny cunt, McCoy. About as funny as fucking cancer. Up the town, girl called Lorna.’

  McCoy waited but nothing else was forthcoming. He realised he was going to have to play along. ‘Who’s going to kill this Lorna, then?’

  Nairn looked disgusted. ‘Fuck off. I’m no a grass.’

  McCoy laughed. ‘You’re no a grass? Fuck am I doing sitting here, then?’

  ‘You’re sitting here because I’m stuck in this shitehole. I cannae do anything about it so you’re gonnae have to.’

  ‘How am I going to do that, then? Get on the radio and tell every girl called Lorna to stay in her bed all day? Away and shite, Nairn, you’re wasting my time.’

  He stood up. He’d been on since five this morning, was tired, wasn’t in the mood. All he wanted was a pint and to be as far away from this prison and from Howie Nairn and his shite as possible. He leant forward to pick the cigarettes up off the table and Nairn’s hand shot out, grabbed his arm. He pulled him close, face leaning into his.

  ‘You start paying attention to what I’m telling you, McCoy, or you’re going to make me awful fucking angry. Right?’

  McCoy looked down at Nairn’s tattooed fingers wrapped round his arm, knuckles white already. He was a prisoner and McCoy was a polis. There were lines and he’d just crossed them. Game was off.

  ‘Get your fucking hand off me, Nairn,’ he said quietly. ‘Now. And don’t you ever fucking touch me again. Got it?’

  Nairn held on for another few seconds, then let McCoy’s arm go, pushed it back towards him. McCoy sat back down. ‘Either you start talking sense or I’m off. Last chance.’ He waited. Nairn stared back at him, watery blue eyes fixed on his. If he was trying to intimidate him, it wasn’t working. He’d been stared at by far worse than him. He shrugged and stood up. ‘Time over.’

  He walked over to the door, shouted on Mullen. He heard his boots coming down the corridor, segs clicking against the lino floor. Voice came from behind him.

  ‘She’s called Lorna, don’t know her second name. Works in town. One of they posh restaurants. Malmaison or Whitehall’s. Don’t know who, but someone’s gonnae do her tomorrow.’

  McCoy turned. ‘That it?’

  Nairn was staring at the TV again. ‘That’s enough.’

  ‘Just say I believe you and just say I stop it. You’ll tell me what the fuck you’re playing at?’

  Nairn nodded. ‘Now get to fuck. You’re stinking up my living room.’

  *

  ‘What was all that about, then?’ asked Mullen when they were back in the main building. Lock-up was starting. McCoy had to raise his voice to be heard over the catcalls and clanging cell doors.

  ‘Fuck knows. Telling me someone’s going to get murdered tomorrow.’

  ‘No in here?’

  McCoy shook his head. ‘The town.’

  Mullen looked relieved. ‘Thank fuck for that. I’m on tomorrow. How come laughing boy knows about it anyway?’

  ‘Christ knows. Think h
e’s just pulling my string.’

  They waited as a prisoner with a black eye and a bleeding lip was walked past them; hands cuffed behind his back, officer either side, still shouting the odds.

  ‘That’s the funny thing,’ continued McCoy. ‘I was there when he got done, but it was Brody’s deal, no mine. Don’t know why he wanted to speak to me.’

  ‘Brody. Christ, nae cunt would want to speak to him. He fit him up?’

  He shook his head. ‘Nope, whole thing was straight for once. Nairn was as guilty as they come. Caught with a hold-all with three sawn-off shotguns in it.’

  Mullen left him at reception, told him he’d let him know where his leaving do was. McCoy liked Mullen well enough but no way was he spending a night in the pub with a load of moaning-faced prison officers telling war stories.

  A girl called Lorna. Maybe he would call the restaurants just in case. Couldn’t be that many Lornas working there. Still couldn’t think why Nairn had told him, he’d barely looked at him when he was arrested, too busy trying to kick out at Brody, calling him every filthy name in the book. His eyes drifted up to the calendar on the back wall of the turnkey’s wee office, topless girl draped over a car trying to look like she was fulfilling her life’s desire to hold a big spanner. Didn’t realise it was Thursday. Maybe he wouldn’t bother with Nairn’s shite; maybe he’d go and see Janey instead. He was owed after all. The buzzer went and the lock shifted back with a loud clang. The turnkey opened the door, held on to it as the wind rattled it in its runners. McCoy peered out at the trees surrounding the car park whipping back and forth.

  Turnkey grimaced. ‘Rather you than me, pal. Rather you than me.’

  He made a run for it, got in the unmarked Viva and slammed the door. He started the engine up and the radio came on. ‘Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep’ suddenly filling the steamed-up car. He swore, turned the dial, Rod Stewart, ‘Maggie May’. Much better. He jammed the heater to full and pulled out onto Cumbernauld Road, heading for town. If he was going to see Janey, he needed to go and see Robbie first.

  TWO

  ‘How long have we got?’ he asked.