Douglas Brodie 03 - Pilgrim Soul

by Ferris, Gordon

  ‘I suppose so.’ It seemed a wee bit tasteless to applaud a frenzied killing, but I understood the broad sentiment.

  ‘Dr Tomas will know him. Tomas studied at Vilnius. He knows all the Lithuanian Jews. The ones that made it here.’

  ‘Just warn Tomas not to creep up on him.’

  EIGHT

  In the afternoon I went back to the day job with plenty of material. This would please Sandy Logan, my temporary editor standing in for the injured Big Eddie Paton.

  Eddie was out of hospital now and convalescing at home, but when I’d visited him last week I’d found him threatening a part-time return. It was a remarkable turnaround. I’d doubted we’d ever see him back. He’d lost several stone in weight and, with it, his bounce. And nom de plume: Wee Eddie from now on, bless his ink-stained heart.

  I felt irrationally guilty; the self-styled Glasgow Marshals had been after me that day, back in September. The Marshals were a wild gang of vigilantes recruited from the ranks of jobless and homeless demobbed soldiers. Fizzing with a sense of injustice, they’d been framed for several vile murders and thought I held the key to proving their innocence. But I’d been elsewhere the day they stormed the newsroom and took it out on Eddie Paton’s poor wee head.

  Ever since, I’d done my best to support Sandy and Eddie by cranking out a decent crime column every edition. All the time in the absence of my mentor, the doyen of crime journalism, Wullie McAllister. Wullie was another casualty of the summer of madness; he’d got too close to the wicked creatures who’d committed the murders and framed the Marshals. He’d been abducted and beaten to within an inch of his life and lay, mouldering and vacant, in the Erskine convalescent home.

  It had been a torrid summer, right enough.

  At my desk I bashed out an article on the violent death of a thief. At breakfast tables all over Glasgow, it would raise a chorus of sanctimonious variations on that’s what ye get for . . . It might take their minds off the front page about the Jewish refugee ship Lochita off the coast of Palestine. I wondered if Isaac and his son had come to verbal blows over it. Some four thousand rioting illegal immigrants had set upon our poor bloody soldiers, and one of our boys had died. How would the War Office explain that to his mum?

  I slid carbon copies into Sandy Logan’s hands. A short while later he wandered over to drape his long limbs over the filing cabinet by my desk and peer down at me. He took his pipe out of his mouth and pointed at my draft.

  ‘A thoughtful piece, Brodie. Even-handed. One might say equivocal.’

  I nodded. ‘I hoped our readers would be similarly torn. But I doubt it. It seemed harsh punishment for nicking some trinkets.’

  ‘The ultimate price. I think this needs a follow-up.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Go and interview the man, this Lithuanian. Bring us remorse, rage, sorrow, pride . . . bring us emotion, Brodie. We’ll run this tomorrow and say there’ll be a second piece on Thursday. Human interest.’

  ‘I’ll drop by on my way in tomorrow, Sandy. Catch Mr Galdakis before he leaves for work.’

  Come Wednesday, I wrapped my coat round me, pulled down my hat and set off into driving rain. Last week’s gales were heralds. We were in that suicidal period between autumn and full winter when the Westerlies just sweep over Glasgow each day and dump the Atlantic on us. Galdakis lived on Bedford Street, south of the river. I would have hailed a taxi but Sandy said the paper was economising. I found a tram to get over Glasgow Bridge and then trudged through the puddles across Laurieston. I was curious to meet a man so handy with a knife. I also had one niggling thought that kept cropping up: why was Galdakis robbed in the week, and not on the Sabbath like all the rest?

  Early morning and the broad streets were cleansed of people. Some sheltered under shop awnings in the forlorn hope of the rain easing off for just five minutes. The house I was looking for was above a haberdashery. I found the door and walked into the dank entry, shaking the rain off like a terrier. Galdakis was on the first floor. I left wet footprints and a trail of drips all the way up the stairs. I took off my hat, bashed it against my coat, put it back on and rapped on his door. It took a couple of knocks before I heard movement. The door edged open. A thickset face peered at me, the eyes wary and on a level with mine.

  ‘Mr Galdakis?’

  ‘Police? I seen police.’

  I took a gamble. ‘I work with Inspector Todd.’ Which was almost true.

  The eyes kept flicking at me and behind me. ‘What you want?’

  ‘A few more questions, please. Just five minutes.’

  The door swung open and he stood back to let me in, framed in the open door of the room he’d just left. I caught a glimpse of tossed bedding. He wore a stained singlet and trousers. His belly bulged above and below a broad leather belt. Ahead was a short dingy corridor leading to a closed door. ‘Go in front,’ he said. I stepped past him, my nostrils twitching at the heavy smell of sweat and boozy breath. He followed me. I felt my shoulders hunch as he marched close behind me, his heavy boots clumping on the lino.

  ‘In here?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  I pushed at the door and entered an icy sitting room. I stood dripping and shivering on the lino. A wooden chair lay against the wall, its legs snapped and twisted. A pair of sagging armchairs had been pushed to one side against a small sideboard. A chunky metal safe had pride of place on it. Temptation enough for a ‘gasman’ to break his habit and come calling during the week, thinking Galdakis was at his market stalls. He must have been watching the house.

  The dark-patterned wallpaper was stained along one side as though a bucket of water had been thrown at it. The fireplace was barren and cold. There was one grimy window with half-pulled curtains. Through the dirt and the gap I could see a desolate back green.

  Suddenly I didn’t want to be in this space. I moved closer to the wall. My heart was racing again. Flu?

  I turned to Galdakis and inspected him properly. A big man, about my height but heavier. A sullen Slav face in which the eyes glittered and probed. Though his paunch strained at the broad brown belt, it was clear that he was no fat pushover. The shoulders and chest spoke of hurling bales of hay high up on to wagons or wrestling yaks. I took off my hat and perched it on the mantelpiece to drip. I pulled out my notebook and pencil. He looked at them warily as if they were guns.

  ‘This is where you fought the intruder?’

  A grin crept over his broad face. He nodded.

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘I told Inspector. ’Bout nine in morning.’

  ‘You’d gone to work?’

  ‘I come back. Forgot keys for chain on my stalls.’ He was slowly pacing past me, examining the wall, glancing round the room, as though he was thinking of buying it. Or enjoying the reminiscence. He was moving silently now, his big feet seeking out each step like a bad actor in a pantomime. Behind you! cry the kids.

  ‘Did you know the man? Had you seen him before?’

  ‘He come before. He say: Look at gas. I not think so.’

  ‘You were suspicious?’

  ‘I not fool.’ His mouth twisted in a malevolent grin.

  ‘Where did you get the knife?’

  ‘Always have knife.’ He patted his chest where his jacket pocket would be. Suddenly I was glad to meet him in just his grubby vest.

  ‘You live alone?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Were you afraid, Mr Galdakis?’

  He stopped pacing and looked at me, puzzled by the question. He shook his head and grinned at me again.

  ‘I see you broke a chair. Was it a big fight?’

  He shrugged. ‘Not so big.’

  ‘Can you describe what happened?’

  He shrugged again. ‘I come home. Door not locked. I come in quiet. I hear him try numbers.’ He pointed at the dial of the safe. ‘He come out. I hit him.’

  ‘With the knife?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I imagined how Paddy Craven must have felt ste
pping into the dim hall and feeling the hammer blow of a knife to his stomach. He would have been thrown back into this room with the force of it.

  ‘He fell in here? Then what? What did you do?’

  ‘I come in. I kick him. I angry.’

  ‘Of course. But why did you use the knife again?’

  ‘My house.’ He pointed at his chest. ‘He thief.’

  ‘You stabbed him six times. Did you know that?’

  ‘I angry.’

  ‘Mad.’

  ‘Mad as hell.’

  ‘Did he fight back?’

  He pursed his lips in contempt and shook his head. I stared at him, his bulk and his bad breath filling the room. Anger would take you only so far. After a few stabs you would be operating on some different emotion. I remembered Sandy’s request.

  ‘Are you sorry you killed a man?’

  ‘Thief!’

  ‘Are you sorry you killed a thief?’

  ‘No.’ He mimicked spitting on the floor. ‘Pig.’ I scribbled a shorthand note.

  ‘You are from Lithuania?’

  He examined the question. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Jewish?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Which synagogue.’

  ‘I no like going.’

  Fair enough. I’m a lapsed Protestant.

  ‘When did you leave Lithuania?’

  ‘When Russians come.’

  ‘At the end of the war?’

  He nodded.

  ‘What was your job? In Lithuania? What did you do for a living?’

  He shrugged. ‘Farm.’

  ‘Now you have two stalls in Glasgow? At the market. Where did you get the money?’

  His broad face creased in thought. ‘I bring little money.’

  ‘Lithuanian money?’

  ‘Gold.’

  ‘Where did you get the gold?’

  Now his brows were corrugated. His response was truculent. ‘Why you ask? I save money. All my life. What this mean? Why police ask this?’

  ‘Did I say I was police, Mr Galdakis? I’m not.’

  As his brain absorbed this he stepped towards me. He moved fast for a big man. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m from the Glasgow Gazette. My readers want to know all about you.’

  ‘No! You not tell! You not write ’bout me.’

  His face was a foot from mine, his mouth contorted in anger, his breath a blowtorch. He knocked the notebook from my hands and grabbed the lapels of my coat. My hands were down by my sides. It left me only one alternative. My head was already pulled back as far as I could from his stench. I jabbed forward. The ridge of my brow caught him full in the nose. He staggered back and fell over one of the armchairs. He went crashing into the valley between the two chairs and flailed around until he dragged himself upright. Blood was pouring from his nose.

  ‘I kill you! I fucking kill you, bastard!’

  He jumped on to the chair, roaring and screaming. He leaped down at me swinging his meaty fist towards my face. Maybe my head-butt had dazed him. Maybe he was just slow, but I seemed to have plenty of time to step to one side and punch him on his big fat cheekbone as he blundered past. This time he crashed to the bare floor and lay groaning. I curbed my urge to kick him. When had that become my instinct? I waited, rubbing my knuckles. He got on to his hands and knees and then sat back against the stained wall. He held his face and nose with one hand and leaned on the other.

  ‘You bloody bastard. You bastard you.’

  I picked up my notebook and pencil and put them away. I remembered my hat. I put it on and touched the brim to him.

  ‘Don’t worry about getting up. I’ll see myself out. Good morning, Mr Galdakis.’

  As I walked down the stairs and out into the fresh air I felt the familiar aftershock of the adrenalin. My heart rate slowed as if I’d got something out my system. I sucked in the oxygen and decided to walk back to the newsroom to clear my thoughts, the first of which was how to explain to my readers that an interview had turned into a rammy. The second of which was to wonder exactly what emotions Galdakis had revealed in this piece commissioned by Sandy. Remorse wasn’t one of them. Just raw, thuggish anger. Some men are born mean, some achieve meanness, some have meanness thrust upon them. Galdakis ticked all three.

  My third thought was to wonder what Galdakis was hiding.

  NINE

  Sandy nabbed me as I walked past his glass-windowed office at the entrance to the newsroom. It faced Eddie Paton’s office, so that between them they could cudgel or caress the reporters as we came and went. Sending us over the top in search of a scoop and bandaging us up on our return, mauled from the front line.

  ‘How did it go, Brodie?’ Sandy asked me.

  I told him. He looked at me for a while and shook his head.

  ‘I think we’ll not mention the small fact that you put the heid on him, Brodie. Ever since you joined us – and I’m not necessarily saying you’re the cause – it’s been mayhem around here.’

  ‘It’s the nature of the job. If you want a crime column you’re going to have to consort with criminals. They’re not nice people.’

  ‘Are you saying this fella, Galdakis, is a criminal?’

  ‘He killed a man. OK, it was a thief. But this wasn’t self-defence. He butchered him.’

  Sandy nodded. ‘Look, write it up and we’ll see what we can make of it. Drop it in, and I’ll peruse it. Then finish off the story by having a wee chat with the pawnbroker.’

  ‘McGill?’

  ‘It started with him. It should end with him.’

  ‘That’s tricky, Sandy. Duncan Todd isn’t pressing charges. He prefers McGill on the outside. Finds him useful.’

  ‘Go and see him anyway. We want colour. Maybe he’s feeling remorse. Somebody should.’ He shook his long head. ‘Aboot something.’

  I wrote up my encounter with the angry knifeman without mentioning that the author had given the interviewee a Gorbals kiss. It might put off other people from being interviewed by me in future. My reputation was colourful enough.

  I decided to leave my interview with McGill to the following day. It turned out to be a day too late.

  I had a restless night and was glad Sam had opted for her own room. My nightmares were bad enough company for me. Sam’s announcement that she was off to the Hamburg trials had picked the scab off some of my more troubling memories.

  I woke groggy. Thursday morning began in confusion and descended into chaos. Sam had packed the night before and was ready for the taxi that would take her to Central Station and then down to Euston. From there she’d be taken to RAF Hendon for the military flight to Hamburg.

  ‘I’ll be back in no time.’

  ‘For Christmas.’

  ‘You can start getting the decorations up.’

  There was a knock at the door.

  ‘Your taxi’s early,’ I said. Why was my heart suddenly pounding? It wasn’t me going. I opened the door. A woman stood on the step.

  ‘Hello,’ she said.

  Sam called from behind. ‘Oh, Isobel, it’s you! It’s lovely to see you again. Come in, come in. Douglas, this is Isobel Dunlop.’

  I’d forgotten about the new cleaner. Jutting shoulders on a wiry frame, a hook for a nose. A sparrowhawk whose piercing grey eyes were already taking X-rays of my guilty relationship with Sam.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Campbell. And this would be your lodger, Mr Brodie?’ Her accent was Highland. Tomintoul indeed. I now knew her mother had worked for Sam’s parents and the two girls had played together as they grew up.

  ‘Och, Izzie, don’t you go all formal on me. I’m still Sam. Give me a hug.’ The two embraced. ‘It’s been ages. I’m so sorry about your mum,’ Sam said.

  ‘Aye, well. We all have our time. You’re looking well, Sam. A bit skinny for my liking, but otherwise . . .’

  ‘You’re a fine one to talk. There’s not a pick on you. I’m going to commission some of your famous broths for the pair of us. When I get back, that is. I’m
sorry about rushing off like this.’

  ‘Never you worry. I’ll have the place sparkling for when you get back.’

  They’d edged into the hall so that when the doorknocker clacked again, the three of us jumped.

  ‘That’ll be the taxi this time. Oh, goodness. I’m not ready for this.’ Sam’s face was red. Mine felt hot too. I wasn’t ready for this either. And how were we to say farewell? A big kiss from the lodger in front of the housekeeper?

  We fumbled through goodbyes by my carrying her case out to the waiting taxi and handing her into it. Her eyes registered something like panic. Mine should have shown a manly determination to be bright and breezy. But she saw the anxiety behind it.

  ‘It’ll be all right, Douglas.’

  ‘Of course it will. Phone me when you get there.’

  She leaned forward before I closed the door and kissed me lightly.

  ‘Be nice to Izzie,’ were her last words.

  I went back inside and could hear Isobel Dunlop already attacking the top floor with a hoover. It was fine. We needed some curb on the dust piles. And Sam would only be gone for just over three weeks. Three weeks, three days. I’d survive, though I might have come down with the flu if my hot flushes were any indication.

  I went up to my room. I sat on the edge of my bed until the sweating stopped and my breath came more easily. This wouldn’t do. I flannelled my face and body, put on a tie and gathered my jacket. A notion struck me. I went over to the sideboard. I pulled aside my socks and took out a box. I pushed aside my campaign medals and picked up my old cap badge of the Seaforths. I rubbed it against my lapel and thrust it into my left jacket pocket.

  I set off for the Western. I swam my morning lengths and, rejuvenated, headed towards the Gazette. Might as well call in on McGill’s on my way. It was just past nine as I turned into Bath Street. There was already a crowd round the pawnbroker’s. A bit early to be needing a wee borrow, surely? Then I realised that a number of the crowd were wearing uniforms. A squad car stood outside. My mouth went dry. I quickened my pace, feeling my stomach muscles tense.

  A constable was blocking the door, and I could see others milling about inside. A familiar head turned round and saw me. A spasm warped his face. He raised his eyebrows and shook his head as if in weariness. He came to the door.