The Man with No Face

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘Paisley College?’

  ‘Aye…you pick it up.’

  ‘Well, that’s what you’re there for.’

  ‘Aye, right enough, but it’s the thought of going to a life of poverty that keeps guys crookin’. And there’s another reason, it’s exciting, it’s thrilling, it’s sexy…it has all those mixed together…so it seems…and life on the broo in the schemes has none of that.’

  ‘But Ronnie?’

  ‘Aye…one day he said that he really wanted to go straight but he needed cash to do it, so I said that it doesn’t work like that. Going straight is not easy. It’s hard, and the first thing you accept is that there’s no money in it. Well, that bit didn’t appeal to Ronnie…he came from poverty, both his parents were alkies, and both in a big way. The drink took his dad and last I heard, it was taking his mother. She’s not a well woman, Mrs Grenn, not a well woman at all, and poor wee Ronnie, he was a weird-looking boy at school…small, odd, not put together right

  ‘Foetal alcohol syndrome?’

  ‘Possibly, maybe. Didn’t know it existed till I was reading a book in Paisley College Library, and when I read it the one person I thought of was sickly wee Ronnie Grenn. A wee stick insect of a guy, but he was a pal of mine. Lopsided as well, left shoulder always higher than the right.’

  ‘So you think he was lured into putting up his hand to the Bath Street job in return for cash?’

  I know so. I mean, without being told, without inside knowledge, knowing what Ronnie could do, knowing what he couldn’t do, knowing what he wanted…a nice little stash of dosh to go straight with. He was offered money to put up his hand for the job. Has to be the script. Has to be. Someone who knew him as a petty ned says to him, “See you, Ronnie, will you just look at yourself, wee man, you’re middle aged, no money, no prospects, you’ll never amount to anything, you’ll be bouncing in and out of Barlinnie like a ping-pong ball, you’ll be collecting your sixty days twice a year until you drop and still have nothing to show for it. Now here’s a wee proposition…we’re going to do a job and it’s a big job. We want you to put your hand up for it…and you might collect ten years…” And Ronnie would have said, “Ten years, in the name of…” but these guys, being serious about this matter, sayeth, “Listen up, wee man. If you get a ten-year stretch, don’t panic, right? Join the Christian Union. Get in with the chaplain, volunteer for the dirty jobs…keep your nose squeaky clean, get a transfer to a lower-category prison, you’ll be out in five years. That’s five years’ free board and lodging that doesn’t come out of your pocket, and when you do breathe free air again, there’ll be a serious wedge waiting for you. More than you’ll ever get in five years’ ducking and diving, ten times more than you’ll ever earn in five years, even if you could get a job. And all you have to do is let us put your fingerprints on something that we know will be found, or by some other means finger you to the law, and at the trial you say ‘not guilty’ but go down anyway.” In the event he got seven years and if you ask me, the lenient sentence was the judge transmitting a message to you guys, the polis, that you’ve been offered a patsy and you’ve fallen for it for the sake of a quick and easy conviction.’

  Sensing Montgomerie’s discomfort, Mrs Saffa sneered at him. She allowed him to see it, letting it linger deliberately long on her face.

  ‘So boy Ronnie does his time,’ Kit Saffa, well into his stride, continued. ‘He does four and a bit years, half of which being in an open prison is a pleasant and gentle ride, and then he goes up the West End for purpose or purposes unknown but which we can assume, safely assume, is for the purpose of collecting a large quantity of folding green. But instead of getting what he expects, he gets the Pied Piper treatment. He is offered fifty guilders instead of the promised one thousand. So now boy Ronnie, being totally scunnered at this prospect, does a foolish thing. Ronnie, see, is not known for his foresight and clarity of thought and he throws a blue one, a real wobbly, and instead of walking out when he can and going to the police to make a statement implicating the real culprits, he tells the real culprits what he is going to do unless his one thousand guilders becomes rapidly forthcoming, and so the real culprits say, “Oh no, Ronald, this we truly cannot allow,” and the rest is written in this morning’s Daily Record.’

  Montgomerie smiled. He found himself liking Kit Saffa, liking his wit, his style, his patter. ‘You and I are on the same wavelength, Mr Saffa. I wouldn’t disagree with that as an assumption. It holds water. It hangs together. The question is, who, who, who, who…did he go and see in the West End on Sunday evening last? Could you help us there?’

  ‘Made mention of a lassie once. About that time. A name like Cranberrie, except it wasn’t Cranberrie, but a name like that. Mary by given name. He seemed taken up by her, but Ronnie did not have a great success with the ladies. Och, he was my pal but he had no success in that area, none at all, even to the point of telling me all about the women he’d pulled at one time or another. He was deluding himself, fantasizing. Tell you the truth, I didn’t think he’d got himself off the ground at all. See, wee Ronnie would be quite taken by anyone who cast him a second glance, and so if something other than many shekels was also promised, and which was also not forthcoming, then wee Ronnie would not be a happy chappie.’

  ‘Wouldn’t be, would he? And likely to say something he would have cause to regret, if he was allowed to live to regret it.’

  Saffa nodded. ‘Aye.’

  ‘And the name which is like Cranberrie. Could that perchance be Carberrie? Mary Carberrie?’

  Again Saffa nodded. ‘Perchance it could. That in fact was it. Mary Carberrie. We talked about her that day he was hopping up and down with excitement, he was like a wean with a new toy to go home to. Aye, Mary Carberrie.’

  ‘Did you meet her at all?’

  ‘I did not. We were drifting apart by this time. He seemed to disappear about that time as well, away for a week or two, I recall. But I didn’t take a lot of notice because I was restacking my shelves then. Ronnie belonged to the time gone before and he didn’t seem so interested in adult education and opportunities for volunteers as I was. Drifting apart, aye, drifting apart. Still mates. But only just.’

  ‘He was excited by her, though, it would appear? Did he tell you anything about her?’

  ‘Hard to say. I mean you’re going back eight years. He was…’ Saffa seemed to struggle. ‘My vocabulary has increased since I started studying, you know, but…hey…wee Ronnie…see, he was excited by this wee Carberrie female…but it was like he was more taken by what she did, than what they were to each other…see, Ronnie, he had fantasies…’

  ‘You said.’

  ‘Aye, but he had fantasies about being a master criminal, in between times he had fantasies about doing one last job and then straightening out but only if he had enough cash. But they were never more than fantasies. He never turned his fantasies into a hard-nosed realistic ambition. They were never more than pleasant thoughts to keep him going through the day, so they were.’

  ‘But then he met Mary Carberrie?’

  ‘Aye, and look what happened to him. You know, I get the impression that it wasn’t as though he’d got a relationship for the first time in his life, but it was more like he’d been taken into a club. He started to swagger, like he was really somebody…had a kind of gleam in his eye that I hadn’t seen before but…you know, come to think of it, we were not drifting apart at all, we were racing apart at a rate of knots and we just didn’t see it.’

  ‘And this was about eight years ago?’

  ‘Uh huh. It was my fortieth birthday and me and him were going for a bevvy and I called round to his father’s flat in Balcurvie Street in Easterhouse and the most I could get out of the wheezing drunken old fool was that Ronnie was north of the city, Kilsyth, Kirkintilloch, some place like that. I remember that because his old dad was leaning in the doorframe in his vest and saying, “Kirk…Kirk…Kirk…” then he changed and said, “Naw Kirk, Kil…Kil…Kil…” trying to get the p
lace name out. Eventually I got the message that wee Ronnie wasn’t in, he’d gone to a place called “Kil” or “Kirk” something and he’d forgotten my big four-oh bevvy.’

  ‘Kil or Kirk.’

  ‘Plenty to choose from. Kilsyth, Kilmarnock, Kilkenny.’

  ‘That’s in Ireland.’

  ‘So it is’—Saffa grinned—‘but you see what I mean. Kilbirnie, Kilbrannen…I’ve heard that name.’

  ‘Well, he won’t have gone there, it’s a stretch of very deep water between Arran and the Mull of Kintyre…but I take your point. I can think of Kilmalcolm, Kilbride…’

  ‘Killiecranckie. The list can go on a long way. And if he was right the first time and he was in Kirk something, that makes the list even longer. So the where we leave out for the time being

  ‘Kirkcudbright…Kirkcaldy…Kirkmichael…’ Saffa offered, really, thought Montgomerie, less than helpfully.

  ‘Let’s look at the why of it. I take it that because you mention him being away, then it was quite unusual for him to be away?’

  ‘Unless he was in the pokey, yes, it was unusual. Ronnie was an Easterhouse guy, never left the scheme, hardly ever, hardly even left Provanhall, that’s his part of Easterhouse.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘So when wee Ronnie Grenn goes to “Kil” or “Kirk” something, well it wouldn’t be bigger news if he went to Australia.’

  ‘I see. So what is your birth date?’

  That you could get from CR.’

  ‘We could, I could wait until I got back to the town and ask our collator to put your details on the computer screen, but you wouldn’t want me to do that.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No…you see, every time we pull a name out of Criminal Records it’s automatically dated. It’s a way of being able to tell which particular felon is of interest to various and sundry police officers. So if I was to go back to the town and put your details on the computer screen and find that another officer in another division accessed your file two weeks ago, I would phone him and ask him what interest he had in you. It’s a way of finding which felons are still bubbling away and drawing attention to themselves, if not actually being huckled.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘It’s the way it works. It’s in your interest not just to keep out of trouble but also to prevent your file being accessed.’

  ‘First of July.’

  ‘Thanks. So eight years ago on or about the first of July, Ronnie Grenn very uncharacteristically left the city of Glasgow. He was noticed to look pleased with himself and enthusiastic about things in general, again, not being wholly in character. At the same time he is known to start associating with a woman called Mary Carberrie. He was also making noises about going straight after one last job which would give him enough dosh to see him out.’

  ‘Yes.’ Saffa nodded. He had been paled by Montgomerie’s disclosure of the practice of registering each access to files held by Criminal Records. Montgomery, wondered if Saffa was as clean as he claimed.

  ‘Then three or four years after that, he puts his hand up to a crime, serious in nature, which those who knew him believe he couldn’t have committed?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Then four and a half years after that he’s shot in the head.’

  ‘You think his going away has some connection?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know. Like I said, we were drifting apart by then.’

  ‘Just a couple more questions, Mr Saffa. Firstly, how long was Ronnie away that time?’

  ‘A week or two. I don’t know when he went, I don’t know when he arrived back in Glasgow but I saw him before he went. We fixed up to have a drink on my fortieth which was a week later…then he came back, I saw him…I used to live in Easterhouse then myself, saw him in the scheme and he looked pleased with himself and said he’d been in the country. He had a wedge and so we went for a bevvy. I reckon it was about three weeks between the time I saw him before my birthday and the time I saw him in the scheme with a wedge.’

  ‘Did he say how he got the wedge.’

  ‘No. See, that’s one thing you could say for Ronnie. He knew how to keep his mouth shut. He knew to do that all right. He knew how to do that.’

  ‘He said he’d been in the country?’

  ‘Aye. That’s a wee bit strange too, looking back. He’s a city kid. He’s scared of the countryside. But he looked pleased with himself. So he hadn’t had a hard time wherever he went.’

  ‘Right…now, milady Carberrie. How did they meet each other?’

  ‘I really couldn’t tell you, Mr Montgomerie. I really don’t know.’

  Montgomerie sank back in his chair. He looked at the glowering Mrs Saffa and held her gimlet-like stare and then looked back at the smiling Mr Saffa and now saw only false good humour. Saffa had by all indications been fully cooperative with Montgomerie, but he was also scared of something. Probably nothing connected with the murder of Ronald Grenn, but he was frightened of something and Montgomerie raised his eyebrows and said to himself, ‘If you’re going straight, wee man, then I’m a Dutchman’. He asked, ‘What did Ronnie say, if anything, about his future plans when you had that drink?’

  ‘Not in so many words, you know, but the angle was towards getting out of crooking for good.’

  ‘But he’d only do that if he had the dosh to see him out?’

  ‘Aye,’ Saffa nodded, ‘that was his thinking. He also seemed to be serious. Not having one of his fantasies.’

  ‘Interesting.’ Montgomerie nodded. ‘Interesting.’

  Tony Abernethy walked home. He turned right as he left the police station building, turning his back on the roar of the traffic as it thundered on the sunken motorway at Charing Cross, and walked down Sauchiehall Street, past the Eye Hospital on his left and a gracious curve of Victorian town houses, now offices and basement wine bars, into the area of tenement development as Sauchiehall Street gave way to Argyle Street at the bowling greens of Kelvingrove Park. He continued walking past the imposing edifice of the Art Gallery and Museum, not, he knew, really built back to front as local myth has it, and entered the bustle of Dumbarton Road at Partick Cross, narrow streets, more crowded pavements, more tenements of smaller size than those nearer the city centre, with shops along the pavement length from Partick Cross to Thornwood, one mile distant. If it wasn’t a shop front it was a pub. Narrow frontage, long and deep inside.

  Abernethy walked on. He had a home to go to at the bottom of Thornwood Drive.

  It had not, he thought, been a bad shift. A quiet four hours until he had gone out to Easterhouse to call on the derelict Mrs Grenn, from whom he had received some information, most notably a collection of intriguing press cuttings relating to a kidnap incident of some eight years previously, about which he began to recover memories of media reports. These he had drawn to the attention of Fabian Donoghue who scanned them with a deeply furrowed brow, occasionally muttering, ‘Well done, well done, indeed…this could very well be highly significant.’

  It pleased him. He still felt gauche about being seen the day previous misusing office hours. He felt now that he had recovered some credibility in Donoghue’s eyes. He lunched rapidly in the too small canteen, then added his recording to the growing Ron Grenn (Code 41) file. He closed the file and handed it to Montgomerie when he came in to start the back shift. Then he decided to walk home. It was a fresh and blustery day, but dry. No rain at all. A good day for a walk from Charing Cross to Thornwood Drive.

  He turned up Thornwood Drive and pushed open a street door and entered a ‘wally’ close of lovingly cleaned and cared-for porcelain tiles, of windows of stained glass, of wrought-iron banisters topped with darkly stained hardwood in which brass studs had been placed at intervals to prevent children sliding down them and perhaps losing their balance and falling anything up to fifty feet. The contrast with the stair at Balcurvie Street was extreme, heightened by the smell. Here was not the place of stairs which humme
d of stale urine, but here was the place of stairs swept daily, and cleaned thoroughly with bleach and disinfectant and brass polish. Here was Glasgow Pride.

  He walked slowly up the stairs, not rushing at them, but methodically climbing, settling into a rhythm, one step at a time, Alpine guide-like, covering ground with minimal effort, conserving energy. He reached the top landing and opened a heavy pair of storm doors with a huge key and then unlocked a flat door of solid black-painted wood, inset with a pane of decorative glass. He shut the door softly behind him and walked down the threadbare carpet, the carpet he used to run up and down on as a child. He entered the living room. A grey-haired man sat in a chair specifically designed for the frail ambulant; comfortably upholstered in green leather, it was essentially upright with wide, deep arms and a seat which sprang up to an angle of thirty degrees to assist the occupant to his or her feet when vacating the chair.

  ‘Is that you, son?’ The occupant of the chair spoke without turning his head.

  ‘Yes, Dad.’ Abernethy looked at the dwindling flame in the grate in front of which the elderly man sat. ‘I’ll build up the fire a wee bit.’

  ‘Aye…that you, son?’ But Abernethy was already in the kitchen of old, heavy original fittings and fixtures, placing smokeless coke from a bunker under the sink on to a handheld shovel.

  ‘That you, son?’ asked the old man as Abernethy reentered the room and began to place the lumps of coke on the fire.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘What time is it, son?’

  ‘Two-thirty, about.’

  ‘What’s it like out?’

  ‘Windy, dry though.’

  ‘You in now, son?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Good. Margaret will like that. She doesn’t like you out at night.’

  Tony Abernethy said nothing. Mrs Margaret Abernethy, who had given birth only once in life, and then very, very late to a husband who was ten years her senior, had died peacefully after a long illness some years earlier.