Douglas Brodie 03 - Pilgrim Soul

by Ferris, Gordon

  My first draft of the article spelling out Dragan’s foul background and impersonation of the real Galdakis prompted a meeting in Eddie’s office. Sandy stood gangly in the corner with his arms folded. I sat in front of Eddie’s desk and Eddie glowered at me over the top of his paper piles.

  ‘Ah mean it’s good stuff, Brodie. Don’t get me wrong. It’s just awfie . . . ?’

  ‘Awfully what, Eddie?’

  ‘Dreich. Can we no’ get a bit o’ cheer in? Ah mean it’s Ne’erday the morn. Nothing to look forward to?’

  ‘I hear Iron Brew’s going back on the shelves.’

  ‘Ah never missed it. But a’ this stuff about the concentration camps again. There’s enough o’ that on Pathé News, is there no’? When will it a’ stop?’

  ‘When there’s no more horrors coming out of the woodwork, I suppose. Until then, what should we do about it? Just ignore it? Stick some photos of pretty girls on your front page and hope it all goes away?’

  ‘It’s no’ such a bad idea at that, Brodie.’ Eddie sought and got an answering chortle from Sandy. ‘But look, oor readers will be getting confused wi’ all these murders. I mean, who’s killing whom? An’ why?’

  ‘We don’t know everything yet. We’ve got four deaths. Craven, McGill, Ellen Jacobs and Draganski. We know that Dragan killed Paddy Craven. At the time it was a householder protecting himself against a burglar. Then Dragan found out about Craven’s accomplices: McGill the pawnbroker and Ellen Jacobs the jeweller. And he killed them. The police have matched the prints found at both murders with Dragan’s. What we don’t know is why Dragan did it. Or who killed Dragan. We’re pretty sure the link is the ingots made from tooth fillings.’

  ‘But you’ve nae actual proof? Not even that the gold comes from – well – ye ken – the camps,’ said Sandy.

  Eddie sighed. ‘OK, have another go at this. We’ll run it after the holidays. Don’t mention the Nazi stuff. We’re just guessin’ and we don’t want the good burghers of Glesga panicking in the streets.’

  Sandy chimed in. ‘Keep it simple. Make it understandable to the average man in the Govan tram. In other words, me.’

  I simplified and sanitised the story for the Gazette readership but couldn’t make sense of the reality of it. Sometimes there’s no solution to a problem and you just have to put it aside and let it simmer, wait for something to turn up. Besides, Hogmanay rolled across Scotland like a minor Black Death, leaving bodies strewn in its wake.

  Sam and I were in no mood for revels. We repelled all first footers and simply toasted each other in single malt before sliding into bed. Outside, even in smart Parkside, we could hear the shouts and singing from drunks and optimists until the wee hours. We fell asleep clutching each other like castaways, full of foreboding for tomorrow.

  The day after Ne’erday, the phone rang in the hall.

  ‘Brodie? It’s Maurice Silver.’

  ‘Yes, Rabbi?’

  ‘Maurice, Maurice. My man is ready to meet you.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘He’ll explain when you meet.’

  ‘He’s going to talk about Dragan and Ellen Jacobs?

  ‘Let’s say it’s about murder.’

  ‘OK, murder interests me.’ God help me. ‘Where and when?’

  ‘Tomorrow. At Brown’s Bar in the Gallowgate. Twelve o’clock.’

  It was just before noon on Friday. My tram was ploughing through rain-sodden streets. I sat oozing water on the top deck. I peered through the rivulets on the windscreen at the long stretch of the Gallowgate. Between bomb damage and neglect it was a journey into a dystopia of decay and misery.

  I shook myself. I needed to snap out of this mood before it took proper hold and dragged me into the glums. All I needed was a ray of sunshine in January in Glasgow. Which was like hoping for a ray of sunshine in January in Glasgow. The memory of a hot summer was like a child’s dream.

  In theory Hogmanay was over; double bank holiday on Wednesday and Thursday and then back to pit clothes and porridge on Friday. Fat chance. Alba was nursing a sore head and planning on getting a line from the doctor should any foreman be around to request it. But some hardy editors had managed to get a few skimpy newspapers out. Maybe the Fourth Estate was better practised at revelry. However, the headlines had turned gloomy again. A US Flying Fortress was overdue at Prestwick. The coal crisis was mounting. And in terms of ill omens, it was hard to beat the news that in Palestine the Jewish terrorist brigades had found a new way of suggesting we’d outstayed our welcome: flame-throwers.

  I wondered about the choice of venue: Brown’s Bar in the badlands of the Gallowgate. A Catholic bar. But then I couldn’t think of a Jewish pub – per se – in Glasgow. Brown’s reputation surrounded it like a grubby halo. If you knew a couple of verses of ‘The Fields of Athenry’, or fancied sporting the green on a Saturday before an Old Firm game, this was the place to muster. Get tanked up on a few pints of heavy with your green and white scarved pals. Rev up the vocal cords. And march off with flutes playing to face the old enemy. It depressed the hell out of me.

  I’d thought about taking Duncan Todd along for protection. Not as a policeman, but as a card-carrying left-footer. But I was still in the huff with Todd over Ellen Jacobs. Which was silly; I was just as guilty. If only I’d taken that phone call. So I travelled alone, feeling like Gary Cooper wondering for whom the bell was tolling, but lacking an Ingrid Bergman to soothe my worried brow.

  I was asking myself why I was doing this. For Ellen? I owed her something. Or for the news story? Really? The rabbi had made it clear that anything that was said by whoever it was I met would be, must be, off the record. Curiosity? It’s not a good reason to get killed. No one was paying me for this, either. Occasionally I felt someone else was in charge of my mind. Freud’s conflict between Id and Ego no doubt, though I couldn’t now remember which was which. I just felt hijacked.

  I got off within sight of Brown’s. The pub sat squat and ugly just round the corner from Barrowland, the ‘Barras’. I pulled my collar tight up round my neck, jammed my hat further down and set off into the east wind. Captain Oates heading into oblivion. Was Brown’s preferable? It was closer. And I presumed it was providing a hair-of-the-dog service for its loyal clientele.

  I pushed in the door and was instantly minded to step back out and take my chances in the filthy weather. At least the rain was fresh. The sour smell of Hogmanay beer and fags hung in the air like mist from a midden. I looked round. A few old boys cheating at dominoes. Others propped at the bar gazing into their pints, wondering where the last three days had gone. In the corner, some young lads you wouldn’t want to mess with after a few pints on a Saturday night. Especially if Celtic had lost. Or if they’d won. No sign of anyone in a skullcap or tugging at his prayer shawl.

  I ploughed my way through the damp sawdust to the bar, getting taller as I walked on clogged-up shoes. The man behind the bar was unwavering in his intent to polish his pump handle before noticing me. I waited, feeling the eyes of regulars feast on my back. They knew the game and wanted to see who would break first. I had a ridiculous impulse to cross myself but worried I’d be considered to be taking the piss. Finally the barman feigned surprise and drifted over.

  ‘Yes, pal?’

  ‘A Bell’s. Double please.’

  He measured two shots into a glass and set it down. I splashed the same amount of water into it. I placed half a crown on the bar and waited for my tanner change. I should have brought a paper to hide behind. A little later I heard the door bang. Steps scuffing towards me. A man in a cloth cap and an eye patch appeared alongside me. The barman moved to greet him.

  ‘Usual, Mal?’

  ‘Same as the big fella here. He is paying.’ The transaction complete, Mal turned his one good eye to me. ‘Over there.’

  He set off and I followed, under the contemplative gaze of the barman.

  SEVENTEEN

  We sat facing each other over a shoogly table. It was like drinking
with a pirate. Someone out of the cast of Treasure Island. One-eyed, scar-faced and grinning like a madman, Mal – if that was his name – had a face for the gibbet. Had leaped off a gibbet just as the noose was coming his way.

  ‘Mal?’ I queried.

  ‘Malachi. Mal’s what they call me round here.’ The accent was Yiddish-Scots, but the grammar precise.

  ‘Blending in, then?’

  ‘It helps. That and the face.’ He grinned and his face didn’t get any less piratical. ‘Salut.’ He downed the glass of whisky in a oner.

  ‘Did Rabbi Silver explain who I am?’ I asked.

  ‘That you are a reporter? Or a detective? He told me you were a little of both. He did not say why you are still investigating these matters.’

  ‘What matters?’

  ‘Life and death, Mr Brodie.’

  ‘Just Brodie is fine. Let’s get to the point, Malachi. You were shadowing Ellen Jacobs. You know who killed her. A former SS guard in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Draganski, or just Dragan to his many victims.’

  Malachi sat grinning as I reeled off the facts, as though I was talking about how I’d put up some shelves at the weekend. I ploughed on.

  ‘Ellen Jacobs confessed to her rabbi about her activities. In particular she told him that the small ingots Paddy had stolen were made from gold fillings. Tooth fillings. There’s a connection. This is where you pick up the story, Malachi.’

  ‘Rabbi Silver said you were also a soldier.’ He made it sound like vampire.

  ‘So?’

  ‘We want to go home. To Israel. You and your buddies are throwing us back into the sea.’

  ‘And your buddies are using flame-throwers on our boys.’ I laid the paper on the table. He glanced at it and shrugged. I planned to hit him on the next shrug.

  ‘Mal, Israel doesn’t exist yet. Until the UN agrees, Britain has a mandate to enforce. Oh, bugger this. I didn’t come here for a lecture. If you want to play games set up the dominoes.’ I got up and grabbed my hat.

  ‘OK, OK. Sit down.’

  I sat back down, slowly. He went on. ‘I heard you were an interrogator? After the war. You met some bad people?’

  ‘The worst.’

  ‘So, you put these bastards away?’

  ‘I did the first sift. Picking out the rotten fruit. Then sent them for trial.’

  He nodded. ‘Did they hang? Like the last lot? At Nuremberg?’

  ‘Some. I was at the Belsen trials.’

  He grinned. ‘I wish I could have seen them swing.’ Then he frowned. ‘Some got away.’

  ‘Like Dragan, you mean?’

  ‘Him. Others.’

  ‘Small fry slip through the net.’

  ‘Landing in Glasgow.’

  ‘Where they come to a bad end. Tell me what happened to Dragan.’

  ‘My throat is dry.’

  I stared at him. I got in two more doubles and sat back down. I held his glass back. ‘Let’s hear it.’

  ‘OK, OK. I will talk.’

  I slid the glass over. He held it between his hands and gazed into the honeyed depths. He went on.

  ‘How many gold pieces did Ellen tell you about?’

  ‘She mentioned eight.’

  He shook his head. ‘There was more. Much more.’

  Light began to dawn. Ellen hadn’t quite made a full confession.

  ‘There was more than one robbery?’

  He grinned. ‘Three. Dragan would have been the fourth.’

  Malachi put his hand inside his jacket and pulled out a dirty hankie. He opened it enough for me to see the dull glitter of several small slabs. Then he put it away.

  ‘From Dragan’s safe?’ I asked.

  He nodded.

  ‘Did you find the pawn slip in it or plant it?’

  ‘It was there. I left it for the police. So that even stupid coppers would make the connection.’

  ‘But you’re saying there are three others like Dragan out there? Nazis? From the camps?

  He nodded. My brain was racing.

  ‘Is that what Dragan was after at McGill’s? The other gold? He was trying to get the gold back for his pals?’

  ‘We think so.’

  I digested this for a while. ‘Why did she lie to me?’

  ‘She thought she’d said enough.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this? Why not tell the police?’

  He shook his head. ‘It was police that did this.’ He pointed at his eye and the long scar that ran down from his ear.

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Warsaw.’

  ‘You were in the ghetto?’

  He nodded.

  I said, ‘It’s different here. They’re different here.’

  ‘Are they? They have uniforms. It changes them. Who can we trust?’

  ‘Why do you think you can trust me? I’m not of your tribe.’

  ‘You were in Germany. At the camps.’

  ‘I was doing my job.’

  He leaned close to me and fixed me with his good eye. It’s amazing how concentrated a glare you can achieve with one eye.

  ‘You saw, Brodie. Didn’t you? You saw. I think you are on our side, Brodie.’

  I shook my head. ‘A number of people have reached that conclusion. They’re wrong. I’m on my own side. If our objectives cross, or our views coincide, then fine. But it’s coincidence.’

  ‘So tell me: fascism or communism?’

  ‘Don’t start. One’s as bad as the other. It’s just a matter of timing.’

  ‘Timing?’

  ‘Whoever’s winning. Both are vile. Both end up with dictators.’

  ‘Pah! It is unthinkable to compare them. Marx makes it clear. Communism is the resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man. It is the riddle of history solved.’

  ‘Mal, if I’d known this was the quality of chat in a Celtic pub, I’d have changed allegiance. Between Marx and Trotsky, Sinoviev and the rest, Jewish intellectuals seem to have a lot of blood on their hands in your great Bolshevik experiment.’

  ‘Well, let us agree that fascism is currently the one in the doghouse. We need help to find Dragan’s cronies. Agreed?’

  ‘To stick pitchforks into them? A peasant’s tool against the oppressor? Marx would approve.’

  His face went hard. ‘With whatever we have! With bare hands. You know what this man did at Ravensbrück and Treblinka!’

  I shook my head. ‘We have laws here. They must get a trial. I won’t help you unless you agree to hand them over to our police. We took care of them at Nuremberg.’

  He sat and considered for a while. Finally: ‘OK. We will do this. You will start now?’

  That was too easy. ‘We haven’t discussed price. My services don’t come free.’

  ‘Sure. The rabbi said you work for money.’

  ‘Why sneer? Marx defines me as a wage labourer. I sell my services in order to live.’

  He eyed me up, looking miffed that I’d been reading his hero. ‘They will pay you the same as before. OK?’

  I hesitated. It wasn’t that the money was insufficient. It was the job that was different. Very different. Before, it was to catch a thief. Now there’d been four murders and they wanted me to help catch escaped Nazi cut-throats and to deliver them to . . . whom exactly?

  ‘I’m not sure, Malachi. You’re talking about a manhunt. That needs men, lots of men. These guys will have gone to ground, especially now Dragan’s been killed. One man – me – won’t make much of a difference.’

  ‘Brodie, you are a local. You know this city. You have contacts, can ask questions as a reporter. Also, we have men. I have men. Others like me. Keen to find Nazis.’

  ‘Still . . .’

  He leaned close again. ‘Brodie, we have documents. From Dragan’s house. I can show you.’

  ‘What sort of documents?’

  ‘Official documents. Red Cross. There is a . . . Netz?

  ‘A network?’

  ‘Yes. They call them Rattenl
inien.’

  ‘Rat lines?’

  ‘They say that there are well-established rat lines from Germany through Italy and Spain to South America.’

  ‘And you think they run to Scotland too?’

  ‘Sure. You see the boats in the Clyde? Next stop America.’

  ‘Show me!’

  ‘I don’t have them with me. I can bring them. You will be surprised.’

  He didn’t know me.

  EIGHTEEN

  ‘They’re coming here? Sunday night!’

  ‘Well, they couldn’t come on Saturday, could they?’

  She threw the dishtowel at me.

  ‘Sam, they’re part of the same crew that Shimon Belsinger brought to inveigle me into getting involved. You were happy to invite them then.’

  We squared off across the kitchen table that evening after my meeting with Malachi. The notion of Rattenlinien through Glasgow chilled me to the marrow. It felt like a personal invasion. My past hunting me down.

  ‘It’s hardly the same business any longer! Shimon and his pals just wanted you to track down a thief. Not mass murderers! The stakes are far higher, Douglas. Too high!’

  ‘You’re the one who tells me I shouldn’t walk away from trouble. It’s what I’m good at – so you tell me.’

  ‘This is four murders, Douglas! You could be next!’

  ‘I intend standing aloof. Giving orders. Setting Malachi’s army on them.’

  ‘You? Aloof? I’d like to see that. And why would you trust this man – this communist – who stuck a pitchfork into someone?’

  ‘It saved a trial.’

  ‘So now the pair of you want to do me out of a job?’

  ‘The only way I’d lead this manhunt is if our goal is to hand these scum over to the polis.’

  ‘Why don’t you just hand it over to them now?’

  It was a good question. I only had irrational answers tied into personal vengeance and guilt.

  So I said, ‘The wages are good. Let’s hear them out. Shimon and Isaac are coming too. To represent their synagogues.’

  On Sunday night, Shimon Belsinger, Isaac and Malachi took seats at Sam’s table. The three men were cut from very different cloth. Alongside the solid upright bulk of Shimon and the tailored trimness of Isaac, Malachi looked shifty and lean. His patch and scars spoke of back alleys and dirty deeds. Sam wasn’t intimidated by his piratical stares and sneers for the bourgeois trappings. Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned his politics to her.