CHAPTER 1
Two seconds after Bill McGarrigle realized he wasn’t alone in the back court three of his ribs were busted. By the time he had rolled off the dustbins and on to the pile of garbage both his legs were broken, his skull was smashed and his attacker was in the street: just another guy going home.
He lay among the bricks and broken glass and tufts of stubborn grass until eleven o’clock the next morning when a wifie thought he was taking a bit long to sleep it off and so she went up to the corner and dialled three nines. He came to in Glasgow’s Victoria Infirmary just before midnight, Thursday, nearly twenty-four hours after the sudden realization that the scraping noise wasn’t made by any rat.
He opened his eyes and wished he hadn’t: his head felt like what he reckoned Pearl Harbor must have felt like as the last Jap plane turned for home. He saw a dark figure rise and walk past him in the gloom, he couldn’t feel his body, the only sensation was pain, big pain, sharp and penetrating, bursting from the middle of his head like a constantly exploding grenade. He couldn’t hear anything: not even his own agonized groaning. Then another figure came and leant over him; he thought the second figure was very close but he couldn’t see properly. He reckoned he was dead. He reckoned it had all come to this, gloom and fleeting figures and pain; the pain. It wasn’t like they said it would be; it would be different from this, they said, different, fields and sun, happiness and green fields and different from this, not this, different from this, different…
‘I should think he’ll be out for another twelve hours,’ said nursing sister, withdrawing the syringe and wiping the swab across Bill McGarrigle’s forearm.
‘I really have to talk with him,’ said Phil Hamilton.
‘No way.’ She smiled. ‘That uniform doesn’t hold any sway in here. Anyway, you wouldn’t have got anything from him, you heard him as well as me, he was rambling and in pain. He’s better under sedation.’
‘Will he ever be able to talk?’
‘Brain damage, you mean?’ The sister looked down at the man on the bed, legs suspended on pulleys, head swathed in bandages. ‘Well, it’s far too early to tell, he’s certainly taken a crack across the side of his head, it’s a messy fracture and there may well be bits of bone working into the grey stuff and that could cause complications. Most of the damage would have been done at the moment of impact and we won’t know the extent of haemorrhaging for a few days. That will have to be soon enough for you.’
‘Aye,’ sighed Hamilton, and sank back on to the chair.
‘What do you know about him?’
‘I think he’s a reporter, a newspaper man, on the Clarion. I don’t know anything else.’
‘Well, somebody’s got it in for him,’ she said in a nursing-sisterly voice, thin and clinical. ‘Smashed skull, broken legs, three broken ribs. There’s more here than a regular closing-time square go.’
‘Looks like,’ replied Hamilton. ‘Reckon that’s why I’m here. Wouldn’t mind some more of your lovely hospital coffee in one of those lovely plastic cups.’
‘You know where the machine is, pal,’ she said, turning away. ‘Like I said, he’s not going to say much for another twelve hours.’
Thirteen hours later Bill McGarrigle started murmuring in his sleep. Constable Piper rose from the chair at the side of the bed and beckoned a nurse. He then went to the ward sister’s cubicle and picked up the phone.
‘He’s coming round, sir,’ he said when he had negotiated the strange switchboard and was put through to D.I. Donoghue.
‘Stay with him,’ replied Donoghue. ‘Someone will be right over. Take a note of anything he says.’ Donoghue put his phone down and walked smartly out of his office.
It took Richard King twenty-five minutes to negotiate the 1.00 p.m. Fair Friday rush hour and over to the south side. By the time he reached the hospital Bill McGarrigle was semi-conscious, he was groaning loudly, moving his head from side to side, swallowing hard yet still breathing shallowly. King sat on the chair next to the bed.
‘Bill,’ he said. ‘Can you hear me, Bill?’
Bill McGarrigle nodded.
‘Careful not to tire him,’ said the ward sister.
The day ward sister was a good-looking woman of about thirty, fetching in a crisp blue and white uniform.
‘I’ll try not to,’ agreed King. ‘Is he with us, do you think?’
‘Hard to tell,’ replied the sister. ‘Ask him his name or something but stop when I say so.’
King turned to Bill McGarrigle. ‘Do you know your name?’ he asked. Bill McGarrigle nodded but he remained silent.
Your address, Bill,’ King pressed him. ‘What is your address?’
Bill McGarrigle’s head was bandaged, he kept his eyes shut and swallowed hard, then whispered, ‘Langside, Cartside Street.’
‘Good man,’ said King. ‘Do you know where you are, Bill?
‘Flowers,’ whispered Bill McGarrigle. ‘No…flowers…no fields…sun…’
‘He’s rambling again,’ said the ward sister. ‘You’ll have to stop.’
‘Possibly,’ replied King. ‘Possibly he’s trying to communicate.’ He leaned forward. ‘You’re in hospital, Bill,’ he said.
‘Hospital,’ croaked Bill McGarrigle. ‘Alive?’
‘Yes, Bill, you’re alive, you’re going to be OK.’
Bill McGarrigle made a long low groaning sound and moved his head from side to side.
‘I don’t think he’s ready for this,’ said the ward sister. ‘I’ll have to ask you to stop now, immediately.’
‘Yes,’ nodded King. ‘Maybe we’d better leave it until he comes round properly.’ He sat back in the chair. ‘Whenever that’s going to be. He could be out for days and the trail gets colder by the minute.’
‘He could be out for weeks,’ said the sister. ‘It’s not unknown. And then he’ll probably have a memory block.’
‘Comforting sort of person for a copper to have around, aren’t you?’ said King with a smile.
Just don’t want to build up your expectations of us being able to deliver you a perfect witness,’ replied the sister. ‘Now if you don’t mind I’ve got work to do and I’m sure you have as well.’
‘Gilheaney,’ said Bill McGarrigle in a voice like broken glass being swept up. ‘Gilheaney…’
‘Gilheaney who, Bill?’ King leant forward. ‘Gilheaney who?’
‘Gilheaney,’ said Bill McGarrigle again. Then his head sagged backwards.
The sister leant forward and lifted Bill McGarrigle’s eyelid and then took his pulse. ‘He’s unconscious again. You couldn’t have gone any further anyway, he wasn’t up to it.’
King stood. ‘Nobody’s made any attempt to see him or enquire after him?’
‘Only his wife,’ said the ward sister. ‘Why?’
Just a thought,’ King said. ‘Somebody certainly wanted to harm him. I thought they might callously check on their handiwork or else come and finish the job.’
‘Well, no. Just his wife, like I said.’
‘Get-well cards already?’ King nodded to the cabinet on the opposite side of the bed.
‘Birthday cards,’ corrected the ward sister. ‘Brought up by his wife last night. He’s forty-seven today.’
‘Many happy returns, Bill,’ said King.
King drove the short distance from the Victoria Infirmary to Langside. It was a snug part of the city, squat, solid-packed tenements, respectable working-class folk, aspiring middle classes, single people at the bottom of the housing ladder with a room and kitchen. There were corner shops run by industrious Asian families, but a two-mile hike to the nearest bar.
Mary McGarrigle was an ashen-faced woman. She sank back deeply into an armchair by the fireplace after having insisted on standing when King entered
the room.
‘Police, Mother,’ said the second woman in the room. King thought she was nineteen, she had mousy hair, was on the plump side of a full figure, and King reckoned she thought she was attractive. Mary McGarrigle stared at the fireplace, the brass ornaments, the decorative tiles, the picture of the Queen, summer holiday postcards sent from friends and relatives.
She doesn’t know where she is,’ said the younger woman to King.
‘Uh-huh,’ King grunted. ‘Has she said anything about where your dad was going on Wednesday night, love?’
The girl shook her head.
‘And you don’t know what he was doing?’
The girl sank to her knees by the side of her mother’s chair and grasped her mother’s arm. ‘Mum, can you hear me, Mum?’
Mary McGarrigle nodded.
‘Where did dad say he was away to Wednesday night? Can you remember, Mum?’
The woman shook her head slightly. Her eyes were wide, and she didn’t blink. She just stared into the hearth, zombie-like, watching some drama played out on the tiles.
‘Do you know, love?’ asked King. ‘Any indication would help.’
‘No.’ The girl shook her head and stood, but kept a hand on her mother’s shoulder. ‘Sometimes Dad can be out late at night, working. He’s a reporter, you know.’ There was pride in the girl’s voice. ‘But he shouldn’t have been out late. They were to be packing last night.’
‘Packing?’
‘For their holiday. They had the two weeks booked at Rimini. Dad can take his leave at any time, but Mum likes to go away during the Fair. Her family go back a long way in Glasgow and to go on holiday any time but the last fortnight in July doesn’t seem right to her.’
‘Reckon I feel the same,’ said King, more to himself than her. Then: ‘You’re not going with them?’
‘They aren’t going either now, but no, I wasn’t to go with them. They wanted me to right enough, but we spend enough time arguing at home without doing it in Italy as well.’
‘Who, you and your dad?’
‘No, me and her.’ She nodded down at her mother.
‘Can’t quite see that.’
‘Well, it’s a bit different the now, isn’t it?’ She patted her mother’s shoulder. ‘Sometimes, most times, we scream at each other enough to raise the roof.’
‘You got on all right with your dad, aye?’
‘Aye, he’s dead quiet in the house. When me and her start up he just pulls on his carpet slippers and pads into the kitchen.’
‘Quiet sort of bloke, is he?’
‘Och, aye. He takes a pint now and again, but most of his free time is spent in the house. He has a wee study where he writes his articles or reads his books.’
‘So it was unusual for him to be out late at night?’
‘Unless he was working. Then he’d phone and tell us.’
‘But he didn’t phone you on Wednesday night?’
‘No. We expected him back at seven to start the packing. They always pack two days before the flight.’
‘You didn’t report him missing until Thursday morning, though.’
‘Well, what do you think the police would have said if we told them a middle-aged, intelligent, responsible man hadn’t come home for his tea and it’s nine o’clock already. Come on!’
‘Nine o’clock was when you started to worry, aye?’
‘Nine o’clock was when we knew something was up. You could set your watch by him. He didn’t do any—what’s it called?— ‘ she waved a fleshy hand in circles—‘investigative journalism, the sort that keeps reporters out all night. He worked late hours sometimes but they were predictably late, if you see what I mean.’
‘Was he working on anything at the moment?’
‘I don’t know. He didn’t talk a deal about his work.’
‘Never mentioned anybody called Gilheaney?’
‘Gil…?’
‘Heaney, Gilheaney, ever heard him mention that name?’
The girl shook her head.
‘And you’ve no idea what he was doing in Rutherglen?’
‘None. Like I said, Mr King, he never talked much about his day-to-day work. But it must have been his job that took him then ‘How’s that?’
‘Well, we have no relatives in Rutherglen and he has no friends who live there. None that I know of, anyway.’
‘OK,’ said King, edging towards the door. ‘If you think of anything that you think may be important, you’ll let us know?’
The girl nodded.
‘Be visiting him tonight, hen?’
‘Yes. We’ve got some gifts to take, and some more birthday cards arrived this morning.’ She nodded at the table on which were two gift-wrapped parcels and a small pile of envelopes. ‘We’d be going anyway, of course.’
‘Best drink of the day, this one.’ The man drained the glass and ordered another drink. ‘Make it a double, chief,’ he shouted at the barman in the red shirt and black bow tie. ‘You were lucky to catch me, son. Sure you won’t have one?’
‘Sure,’ said King.
‘Yeah, I can usually knock off at five-thirty, got kept back late by that derailment. We wrote it up and processed the pics and it’ll be in the early edition, hit the streets at midnight. You heard our slogan: “Buy tomorrow’s Clarion today”? You know what our circulation is, son? Close on a million. Not bad, not bad at all, that figure, all over Scotland and Northern England and a big batch to Corby. Do you know Corby, Northants? It’s a little Scottish town right in the middle of England? Sort of an outpost.’
‘It’s not so little,’ said King.
‘You’ve been there?’
‘Once or twice.’
‘So that’s why this is the best drink of the day. Our work is fast, blood pressure way up there, so at five-thirty I drink a shot or two of whisky to unwind. More if it’s been a busy day. I’m killing myself, forty-nine already, overweight, don’t take exercise, smoke like a decayed taxi-cab, but what a way to go. Newspapers, son, can’t beat it as a way of life. Smoke, son?’
King shook his head. He had been standing at the commissionaire’s desk in the foyer of the six-storey concrete and glass Clarion building. The commissionaire, a long thin man, picked up the phone and dialled. He stopped as the lift doors opened at the side of his desk. ‘Here he is, sir,’ he said in a high-pitched voice. ‘Mr Ralston, Detective-Constable King to speak to you, sir.’
Outside it was a muggy afternoon, a light grey blanket of high cloud covered the city and wouldn’t let it breathe properly. Ralston jerked his tie knot loose and unbuttoned his shirt collar. He carried his jacket under his arm. They gave a couple of drunks a wide berth.
‘First of the many,’ said Ralston, stepping into the gutter. King noticed fat rippling across the man’s stomach under his silk shirt. ‘Reckon you boys will be busy tonight?’
‘Usually are,’ said King.
‘Going away for the Fair, son?’
‘No.’
Ralston took him to the Big Deal near Charing Cross. ‘Makes me feel young,’ he said, ‘these new bars, bright colours, bright lights, and the girls, the girls, you should see the girls that come in here. I don’t get on in the old bars, son, take themselves too seriously, just wine and spirit and no women. They haven’t any spirit, if you see what I mean. Two whiskies, chief. Big ones.’
‘Tomato juice,’ said King.
Ralston grunted a grudging concession, but insisted they stay near the bar. ‘Something to lean on,’ he explained.
‘Bill McGarrigle,’ King prompted as Ralston took delivery of his second hit.
Oh yes, Bill McGarrigle. cheers, son. Nice bloke, Bill McGarrigle, been with the paper for ten, twelve years. Sort of makes up the numbers on the office outing rather than being an ace reporter. That’s his problem.
‘In what way?’
‘Times are hard, son, the paper’s cutting back on costs. We’re losing sales. We even put our topless lovelies in colour and clawed back a few sales, then
lost them again, so we made them as near bottomless as we dared—that worked for a bit but sales are dropping again. We print a lot of paper but we also carry a lot of overheads and we aren’t making a lot of profit. I don’t know the ins and outs, I’m just a sub-editor, but the Clarion has a wee bit put by to enable it to sail through the lean periods, only this lean period is going on a bit too long. That’s where Bill McGarrigle comes in, or goes out.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘Simple, son. If the paper can’t survive by boosting sales it’s got to survive by cutting costs. The Board’s been laying down some heavy restrictions, you should see my car mileage allowance, it’s now half of what it was last year. Another whisky, chief, one for the Fair, and a tomato juice. Hurts me to order a fit young man a drink like that.’
‘Duty,’ said King.
‘Or diet, eh, son. Could do with losing a couple of pounds here and there, couldn’t you? Don’t tell me I can talk, son, I’m not bothered. Here we are, one tomato juice, uh!’
‘Bill McGarrigle,’ said King drily. ‘You were saying?’
‘About Bill, yes, hell of a nice bloke, Bill. Family man. I’m a family man, but not like Bill, always for his family, Bill is. You know the type, don’t give a sod about promotion, offer him overtime and it’s like you’re offering him a dose of clap. But being a nice bloke doesn’t keep you in work. Bill has no nose for a story. He has to be told what to do like he was a trainee. I’d say go out and cover the Bathgate Beautiful Baby competition and away he’d go, happy as a sandboy because he’d got something to do. He’d take all day over it, would Bill, and come back and write his two hundred words and then putter off home in his VW. See, son, there’s another reporter on my staff, a whizz kid, he’s not just high flying, he’s in the stratosphere already, he sniffed out a real scandal: some building being closed down by the Local Authority, boarded up, I mean, locked and shuttered. Nothing wrong with that, you might think, but it turns out that the mindless neds in the city hall are shelling out thirty thousand quid to redecorate the place before turning the final key. Can you believe it, son? That’s ratepayers’ money, our pennies. We exposed it and they shut the place without a paint and paper job. Anyway, the bright boy hunted that story down by himself and brought me the complete piece before I even knew what he was working on. Some kid. We got good mileage out of it, you know: “Where does our money go?” And we found a big hall in the south side packed to the rafters with sports equipment and enough musical instruments to equip three orchestras, all good stuff, violins, harps, thousands of pounds’ worth. Turns out it has all been accumulated over the years as one department spent up in order to get its full whack each April. And guess what?’
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