Thoroughgood was ready to go, the X-rays revealing that his cranium was fully intact, something Thoroughgood thought was sure to disappoint Divisional Commander John Brown when he made the regulation welfare visit to his wounded-in-action officer.
Materialising at Hardie’s bedside, the DS radiated sarcastic concern:
“You’ll be okay, faither, just take it easy and let them do their stuff. Fancy a small wager on who gets here first, Tomachek or old ‘Grizzly’ Brown? They’ll be falling over themselves to get here and check on their injured hero.”
Hardie was unimpressed. “It’s always the fuckin’ same. The minute you do anything good, the uniform want to pat you on the back as well as the CID brass. For ninety per cent of the rest of the time they treat you like a leper, unless they get the chance to boot you in the balls. I’ll need to get the nurse to put a sign up on the ward door: ‘Out to tea or unavailable for comment.’”
The rising voices alerted Hardie’s nurse, a burly red-headed sister who Thoroughgood thought should have had three stripes on her shoulder. The sister didn’t disappoint: “How, I ask, is Mr Hardie to recuperate with you raising his blood pressure by encouraging him to lay bets, DS Thoroughgood? You know where the door is.”
The DS nodded sheepishly at the fiery sister and winked at his colleague: “I’ll look in tomorrow sometime, Kenny. Hopefully a few days off the sauce will see you come out of here good as new, probably better.”
“Fuck off, arse!” was the mild-mannered reply from the poorly patient, and as Thoroughgood headed off he could already hear the admonishment from the sister.
Thankful to be making his way down one of the GRI’S grimy corridors, Thoroughgood tried not to dwell on the events of a shift that had been anything but just another day at the office. Sure, it had been a close call, but then he’d had plenty of those during his service. It was at times like these that he wondered what might have been if he’d managed to pursue his preferred career as a historian.
Thoroughgood’s entry into the police had been a distant second choice, but one borne of necessity after a youthful mistake had seen him almost leave Glasgow University without a degree or a future, back in 1988.
The previous summer, Thoroughgood had worked as a bartender when the city enjoyed its year as one of the UK's five national Garden Festivals. With licensing laws permitting the hostelries of the West End to open until two a.m., Thoroughgood had found himself regularly spilling in the front door of his student flat in Lawrence Street as dawn broke. This had a disastrous effect on his degree and, in particular, the dissertation he was attempting to write for the start of the new term in October. The simple answer had been plagiarism.
Great wads of Thoroughgood’s paper on the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 were lifted from existing books. The naïve nineteen-year-old was hauled up in front of the University Senate and humbly accepted his punishment. The dissertation had third class slapped on it: in layman’s terms a fail, and Thoroughgood’s dream of a PhD spent studying private archives in France was to be no more than that. His failure meant that within twenty-one days of his graduation, with the world at his feet, he found himself on the end of the drill sergeant’s Doc Martens at Tulliallan.
And the rest was indeed history.
What a fuckin’ day! Kenny was right, I could do with a beer, thought the DS.
Home for Gus Thoroughgood was a large ground-floor tenement flat in Partickhill Road in the West End. But that could wait a while. First he had to get back to Stewart Street nick and uniform were, for once, only too happy to give him a lift.
Jumping into his pride and joy, a gleaming blue RX-8 Mazda, one of the few luxuries he allowed himself, Thoroughgood switched on the ignition and switched off one of the more frantic days he could remember in his service. The voice of Fish sprang to life on the CD player. Sometimes Thoroughgood thought he’d been caught in an Eighties time warp when it came to music. The music of Marillion provided a comforting security blanket of happy teenage memories.
Parking his car outside the flat he headed across Highburgh Road and up the steps of his local, the Rock. One pint of Kronenburg later and the world already seemed a better place. The DS fingered his mobile and placed his delivery order with the local Chinese, the Amber, down in Byres Road.
“Forty minute,” said an Oriental accent at the other end of the phone.
Time to finger the sports pages of his favourite paper, the Telegraph, unwind a bit and then enjoy the delights of a weekend off before nightshift. Maybe a visit to Firhill to watch the latest torturous instalment of Partick Thistle’s quest for promotion from the Scottish Second Division. Perhaps a game of squash and then a hospital visit to check on Hardie’s progress.
Thoroughgood thought ten to one his portly sidekick would be back in harness for the ten p.m. start on Wednesday night. Not that much to look forward to, he mused, for the events of the last twelve hours had planted a seed of doubt that his life was indeed arse for elbow. The old cop’s saying “You don’t live to work, you work to live” was, Gus Thoroughgood admitted to himself, all too true. But maybe at the age of thirty-seven he was starting to get it the wrong way round.
Chapter 3
Wednesday nightshift, 2200 hours: Thoroughgood watched the ambling shape of Kenny Hardie framed in the doorway of the DS’ room at Stewart Street nick. Sure enough, Hardie had discharged himself from the GRI on Saturday, leaving half an hour after Detective Super Tomachek had made the second senior officer visit that afternoon, to check on his welfare.
The first evening on the nightshift was always a hard one to call. Quieter than the weekend for obvious reasons, sometimes dead, but at times surprisingly explosive. Thoroughgood finished trawling the notes left for him on the crime management computer system by the backshift, but looked up long enough to nod in the direction of the kettle. Hardie’s eyebrows shot up.
“You’re supposed to be looking after me, rather than me nursemaiding you. What is it anyway, one lump or two in yer coffee?”
“That dip in the Clyde addled your brains where all that Stella Artois failed? You know damn fine, you old jake, now get on with it and then we can take a look at an enquiry left for us by these lazy gits in Group One CID,” said Thoroughgood.
As he considered the back of his burly partner, Thoroughgood admitted to himself that hats had to be taken off to Hardie. The DS was well aware he had been paired up with Hardie in order to benefit from the forty-something’s considerable experience and the gut-instinct approach which had brought Hardie an erratic stream of spectacular successes over his twenty-three years of service.
Okay, Hardie might not be in the best of shape, but he made up for it with a brain that was alert to the slightest clue. The problem with Hardie was a loose tongue which landed him in hot water with a growing regularity.
They both knew that was exactly the reason why Thoroughgood was the superior ranking officer.
While Hardie looked at the world with a cynical gaze, Thoroughgood followed a much more measured and almost analytical approach which in turn had irritated some of the dinosaurs above him in the CID chain of command. However, after eighteen months of working together, the two had smoothed out the kinks in their relationship, at work and at play. In short, they were comfortable in each other’s company.
Top of the agenda tonight was an enquiry over a serious assault outside one of Glasgow’s ever-increasing number of pubs. Happy now his coffee had been slammed down in front of him, Thoroughgood briefed his colleague.
“This is one of Declan Meechan’s boozers. Some kid went and got bevvied up on the cheap booze on students’ night, then picked a fight with one of the doormen, or according to the backshift note, the lot of them.”
“The boy, an eighteen year old called Terry Devlin, went outside to continue his altercation and ended up with a fractured skull. The CCTV tape shows him getting laid into by one doorman in particular, a Franny Hillkirk. Unfortunately, he did one before uniform got to the scene. So far address c
hecks have come up with hee-haw. The boy had a knife in his possession but one of the witness statements from another student says he saw Hillkirk punting Devlin drugs earlier in the evening. We need to get a hold of Hillkirk, and that won’t be easy. Meechan won’t want one of his boys doing time or, more like it, the adverse publicity that would attract. Meechan’s whole operation is as slick as tanker spill and this might be a way in. So, let’s just go for a nice little chat with the management and see where that takes us.”
The red CID Focus pulled up outside Babylon, in Sauchiehall Street. The market Meechan was catering for was obviously young. Cheap booze nights for students during the week, then the kids from the city’s schemes at the weekend. Assaults at places like Babylon were ten-a-penny, especially at the weekend when they acted as a release for all the testosterone that had built up over the week. Babylon catered for all the needs of its young clientele, drink or drugs, and was the perfect launchpad for a night’s clubbing.
Thoroughgood was forced to admit to himself that Declan Meechan had done pretty well for a young ned from Belfast, graduating from teenage gang member to all-too-efficient steward on the doors of some of the toughest pubs in the area. And now he was number two to Jimmy Gray, the Partick and West End crime overlord.
Gray had been particularly grateful for the way his young lieutenant had ruthlessly cleared up a small outbreak of trouble with a Maryhill mobster called Archie Gallagher. He had subsequently been found minus his limbs floating down the Clyde last October. The reward for Meechan’s clean-up job was control of Gray’s burgeoning city centre pub and club operation.
All very cosy, thought Thoroughgood, but how long would it take Meechan to turn on the hand that had fed him so generously?
As the two detectives made their way past one of Meechan’s stewards, both officers found their attention drawn to the bar where a dark-haired young woman was holding court with the staff.
Celine Lynott was a real looker, as Hardie might describe her: thirty-three years old, of mixed parentage with coffee-coloured skin that glowed in the fluorescent lighting of the bar. Her luxuriant hair was curled in a series of unruly tresses cascading over her shoulders, and her chestnut eyes could burn a hole in you. She may have run Meechan’s three toughest city centre bars, but Celine Lynott’s style of management was almost regal. She had been brought up in Hayburn Street, Partick, and then found herself a place as a croupier at Jimmy Gray’s Riverboat Casino before being snapped up by Meechan as the extremely glamorous face of his club empire.
Meechan trusted her implicitly and knew everything about her, or so he thought. Everything but the fact she’d been one of Thoroughgood’s informants years back in his early days as a Detective Constable, that and a little bit more besides. Kenny Hardie, aware of the undercurrents that would soon be at work, arched his left eyebrow in (he thought) a fine impersonation of his hero, spaghetti Western star Lee Van Cleef.
There may be trouble ahead, thought the DC.
“Good evening, officers. We don’t usually welcome gentlemen as distinguished as yourselves to Babylon on a Monday night. I assume you are here on business, not pleasure?” asked Celine. Playing to her audience of staff and hangers-on, Celine failed to betray the slightest acknowledgement, either in her expression or in the timbre of her voice, that she had any familiarity with Thoroughgood.
Ten years can pass so quickly, he thought.
Thoroughgood was keenly aware there would always be some way that Celine Lynott could get to him. It was a chapter in his life he had found all too hard to close.
“Hi Celine.”
Unusually for him, Kenny Hardie, perhaps sensing his gaffer’s reticence, took the lead.
“We’re here to see Declan Meechan, you know, about that business of your over-enthusiastic door policy. We hate to disturb him, but—”
“I’m sorry, Declan isn’t here tonight. In fact, he’s out of the city, but if you’d like to come up to the office we can discuss things there.”
Celine gestured at one of the staff.
“Jimmy, make sure this bar is sparkling and keep the security on their toes. I don’t think our guests would appreciate being disturbed. Okay, officers, if you’d like to follow me …”
Thoroughgood shot his sidekick a glance. After almost two years of working together the two detectives could operate without the use of words, and Hardie was aware his boss was telling him to button it. But the burly DC couldn’t help indulging in a mischievous wink as the pair made their way up the stairs behind the curvaceous shape of Celine Lynott.
Upstairs in her office Celine wasted no time.
“So, how can I help you? You’ve got the whole incident on one of our CCTV tapes, which were taken by the officers who were first here last night. And I guess half a dozen witness statements from a group of drunken students. You’ll be hoping the student fails to pull through and then you’ll go after our licence. I hear he’s in intensive care?” Her eyes never left Thoroughgood’s.
“What if the young guy pulls through? I reckon you’re struggling to make anything stick. Why the visit, Gus? Just for old times’ sake?”
“Look, Celine, I’m not here to play games. The bloody gorillas you keep on the doors are the worst in the city; every weekend the streets outside your pubs are a war zone. Outside your pubs means it’s on our streets, and that’s gotta stop. When a kid is lying in hospital with a fractured skull and a head covered in boot prints, something has to be done. How convenient your doorman Franny Hillkirk has gone walkabout and you don’t seem to have a current address for him. Either that, or your chargehand gave the uniform boys a bummer.
“So why don’t we start with a current address for Hillkirk. Did you know that we’ve also got a witness statement saying Hillkirk was seen supplying the kid with ecstasy an hour before the assault? How do you like running a pub staffed by thugs and drug dealers?”
Celine’s lips curled almost into a sneer. “I don’t know what you mean. All our staff are hired in accordance with the company policy of Gray’s Leisure. Mr Meechan takes a personal interest in their suitability.”
Her forthright delivery brought a surge of anger through Hardie’s veins, and before he could stop himself the DC butted in. “Well, that’s a real endorsement of your door staff. What about you, Celine? Did Meechan take a personal interest in your suitability?”
There was no reaction on her features, but the temperature in the office seemed to have dropped five degrees.
“Perhaps it’s time you left, gentlemen. As I said, Mr Meechan is unavailable and he has instructed me to tell you that he has provided all the co-operation he needs to through our lawyer, Charles Coyle.
“You’ve been very quiet, DS Thoroughgood, and I’d prefer it if your colleague also stayed that way until he has left the premises.”
Thoroughgood decided the best form of defence was attack.
“Listen Celine, the bottom line is that we have an out-of-date address, and a check with the council housing office shows Hillkirk hasn’t stayed in Springburn Way for over a year. So you are either wasting police time or attempting to pervert the course of justice. Have it your way. Do you want to come down to the station to help us with our enquiries? Then we can get Mr Coyle to join us and it will all be quite cosy. It’s your call but I’ve got a search warrant for Hillkirk’s address here.”
The DS produced the legal document and laid it out on the desk. “So why give yourself grief over the home address of a jumped-up thug?”
Celine seared Thoroughgood with a stare of unrelenting ferocity, but her hands dropped to the PC keyboard and she brought up the employee details for Franny Hillkirk. “Springburn Way is the home address we have for him but there’s a second address for his mother, an Iris Hillkirk, at flat 21c, 12 Eccles Street, Springburn. That’s all we have. You can look at the computer for yourself if you don’t believe me.”
“That wasn’t so painful, was it? If your chargehand had been more cooperative in the first place it wou
ld have been unnecessary; seems like your staffing problems aren’t just on the door, Celine. See you around.”
As an afterthought Thoroughgood added, and instantly wished he hadn’t: “Oh, and tell Declan I was asking for him, would you?”
Celine said nothing, but her eyes met Thoroughgood’s, holding his gaze in a moment that said more than any words ever could. And again, Thoroughgood found his emotions going through the mixer.
The two officers headed back out to the Focus. The silence between the two was almost deafening: it was Hardie who was first to break it.
“Look gaffer, I’m sorry about back there. The words came out before I could help myself.”
“Listen, faither, this business can be used to make life extremely difficult for Meechan. It doesn’t help matters, you upsetting his staff with your throwaway lines. Let’s just see if we can get a hold of this Hillkirk character. Eccles Street, that’s up opposite Springburn office, isn’t it? Let’s go and see if Franny’s home.”
The Focus swung off onto the M8 before taking the Springburn turnoff and there was silence once again, except for the sound of the pouring rain which seemed to provide a continual soundtrack for life in Glasgow.
Thankfully the lifts at 12 Eccles Street were working, much to Hardie’s relief. Four flats on the level. As they scanned their way round each one the officers’ attention was immediately drawn to the doorway of flat 21c, which lay open. Thoroughgood turned to Hardie and signalled to his mate to draw his baton. The DS took a step into the doorway and reached for the light switch, flicking it on, but the hall remained in darkness. Fortunately, the light from the landing offered some help. Thoroughgood gave the whistle that had been the universal warning used by neds in the city ever since he had joined the cops. A simple three-note shrill, first up and then down and up once again.
Still silence.
By this time Thoroughgood had reached bedroom one, Hardie right behind him. The DS turned on his mini-Maglite and poured the torchlight over the walls of the room. The bed was smashed against a wall and there were obvious signs of a disturbance. A cup of coffee lay half drunk on the table next to the bed. Thoroughgood shook his head as he reached Hardie in the hallway. Bedroom two empty. The kitchen showed signs of use, although the fridge had milk dated from two days ago.
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