A nerve twitched in Bolton’s eye. ‘There is no cop. There are no photographs. The truth is, Donovan screwed up, pure and simple.’
‘The truth’s never pure, and seldom simple,’ said Knight. ‘Oscar Wilde said that. And he knew a lot about not being pure, didn’t he, Scotty?’
Irritation gave Bolton’s voice an edge. ‘What the fuck do you want here, Knight?’
‘Frankie boy didn’t steer any gen to the Jarvises, I know it, you know it. See this copper? He exists. He told them about Scratchy. He told them about that boy in Barlinnie who was about to burst. He steered the location of the knife to me, through one of my touts. The tout told me it came from a boy he knew who runs an ice cream van up in Lambhill. That boy, I recall, was a tout back in our time in ‘C’ Division, Scotty.’
‘So?’
‘So I think I’ll go see that icey owner, have a wee chat, shoot the breeze, maybe even enjoy a 99 with sprinkles. And see, during our wee chat, I think he’d tell me where he got the gen in the first place. You know how persuasive I can be.’
Bolton said nothing for a few moments. Knight gave him time to think, had a puff or two on his smoke, waited. Finally, Bolton said, ‘What exactly do you want, Knight?’
‘Nothing. Just wanted to let you know what I thought, keeping you posted, like I promised.’ He clamped the cigarillo between his teeth, flashed a grin. ‘Just so we understand each other.’
‘You’re not going to turn this cop in?’
Knight thought about it. ‘You know? I should, I really should. But then I think, why would I do that? What’s the benefit to me? After all, I may need him someday.’
‘And Donovan?’
‘He’s off to drink himself to death. Maybe even take a long walk off a short pier. I don’t owe him anything.’
‘I thought he was your friend?’
Knight laughed. ‘Scotty, blokes like you and me? We don’t have friends. Just people we can use and people we use up. That’s it for us…’
TUESDAY
The drugs just weren’t doing it for Scrapper Jarvis, not tonight. He’d tried sitting at home, snorted a couple of lines, knocked back some Jack Daniels, but it didn’t work. He was alone now – Maw was dead, Jerry was dead, Marko was dead. Andy was in the pokey. There was just him now, rattling around the house, trying hard to get doped out of his head.
He decided it was the house that was getting in the way, too many memories, too many ghosts, so he headed out. His mates were banged up, there was no-one else he wanted to spend time with, so he went solo. Let McClymont send someone after him, he didn’t care. He’d send them to hell. But he didn’t think Big Rab would send anyone. He was locked away in that fortress of his out Bothwell way, grieving for his wife and kiddie. That was a shame, way it turned out, but that dickhead Choccie Barr was to blame. He should’ve made sure that it was Rab in the car, not his woman and wean. Aye, it was a shame.
He ended up at the Club Corvus. He’d not been back since the night he’d done that wee bastard Himes. Brought that on himself, so he did. Should never have been punting gear in a Jarvis place, those were the rules. Someday he’d get Skooshie Thompson, too. Scrapper felt no guilt over what he’d done. In the back of his mind he knew he had been the cause the misery that followed, but that’s where he kept it – in the back of his mind. He forced it down, kept it locked away, surrounded now by a fog of narcotics and alcohol.
He did another couple of lines in the toilet, the same one he’d been in with Dickie Himes. He checked his face in the mirror, not good form to go out with coke all over his coupon, and then headed out. The place was busy and what he needed now was to pick up some lassie and get his wick dipped. He’d feel better after that – he always felt better after a shag.
The knife slid into his chest as soon as he opened the door to the Gents. He saw Skooshie Thompson standing right in front of him, his face tight and determined. The blade was shoved deeper and Skooshie breathed, ‘This is for Dickie, ya cunt.’
Scrapper tried to say something, but he died before the words came.
ONE WEEK LATER
The dog sat up in the passenger seat, ears pricked, eyes alert as he followed Davie’s gaze through the windscreen toward the house across the street. It was a terraced house in a street lined with identical houses, built between the World Wars. They were small and neat, only different coloured doors, styles of replacement windows and varying types of curtains betraying the individuality of their occupants. This one had a handkerchief-sized garden to the front, nestling behind a low wall and an iron grate. Davie couldn’t see the grass through what was left of the snow, but he knew come summer it would be cropped, as if someone had gone over it with scissors, and lined with bright flowers.
This was where Vari had been brought up. It was where she was now. In his hand Davie held the sketch he’d done the week before. He didn’t know why he’d brought it. With his other hand he absently stroked the dog who waited for him to do something.
He’d thought of a name, finally. He knew one would present itself. It had been sparked by Bobby’s comment about how the dog had flown like an arrow at Jarvis’s man in the church and by the white mark he’d found on its chest.
He’d call him Arrow.
He recalled a Harry Nilsson song from way back, something about a dog with that name. A cartoon on the telly. He’d been a kid then, early ’70s. His mum was still alive, his dad hadn’t yet turned into the man Davie feared and dreaded. Not at home, anyway. On the streets, in his work for Joe Klein, it was a different matter, but when young Davie was watching the cartoon with Harry Nilsson songs, Danny McCall was yet to bring that home.
So Arrow it was, and here he sat, still waiting for Davie to make a move.
He’d been sitting in the car for half an hour and it was beginning to grow dark. It hadn’t been the brightest of days and ominous clouds had gathered during the afternoon to bring the rain threatened by the bubbly weather girl on the morning news. It would wash what remained of the snow away, she said, as if that was a good thing. Davie liked the snow, liked the purity of it, although in the city that didn’t last. Nothing stayed pure for long, not in these streets. Not in his life, anyway.
He thought of Rab, at home, mourning his wife and daughter. He thought of young Joseph, probably sitting in his room alone, his face still the blank mask it had worn as he watched his mother and sister die.
He thought of Lassiter and Mannie. They had died together on the cold stone floor of his landing. A neighbour told Davie the big man had dragged himself up the stairs, they could tell by the blood trail from where Jerry Jarvis lay dead. They found him cradling the actor’s head in his lap.
The Jarvises were done. There was only the one brother now, and he was facing time. Scrapper was found dead in the alleyway outside the Corvus, which had a kind of symmetry to it, Davie supposed. A single knife blow to the heart. He’d been done inside and dragged out. The police were hunting for the killer, but when you boiled it down, no-one much cared that Scrapper Jarvis was gone. Davie suspected that Skooshie Thompson was responsible, but the boy had vanished. Cops had the same notion, so he hoped Thompson never resurfaced. They might not care that Scrapper was gone, but they’d still make an arrest if they could, justice being blind and all that.
Choccie Barr was gone, too, which was not surprising. If he was smart, he’d stay in whatever hole he’d crawled into.
Donovan had dropped off the radar, too. Davie had heard about his problems and had tried to find him. He’d even visited his home in Shawlands, spoke to his wife – pretty lady, even with the red eyes and the dark shadows – but she said Frank had left and would not be back. Davie was saddened by this, because Donovan, his wife, the teenage girl he’d glimpsed at the window of the flat as he’d left, were all victims of the city, too. The big, bad city. Joe the Tailor had been a student of Glasgow’s history and he’d told Davie something about it. For generations they’d come here, highlanders, lowlanders, the Irish, Poles like
Joe, Asians, all looking for a life and for hope. Most of them found it, some didn’t. They were folded into its cold embrace and were lost forever. They fell through the cracks in the pavement and were swallowed up. Drink and drugs, violence and vice. That was the world Davie was born into. He avoided drink and he didn’t take drugs. One man’s vice is another man’s Saturday night, Joe used to say, for Joe catered to the vices – sex, gambling, greed, corruption.
But the violence…
Davie embraced the violence and it embraced him. The dark thing, Sammy called it. The thing that had taken over his father and ultimately destroyed him. But not before he had destroyed others. Davie’s mother. Audrey. Audrey’s husband, who killed a man, lost his job and was now God knows where. Destroyed. Lost. Eaten up by the city.
Davie didn’t want to be eaten up. He didn’t want the dark thing to take over. He didn’t want to embrace the violence. He never had. Audrey had been a way out, he’d thought, but she was taken away from him. Vari was another. But he had let her walk away.
That was why he was here, he knew that now. Vari was his one chance to get out. That was what had drawn him here to this street, to that house across the way. He looked at the drawing again, saw her little half smile, her eyes. Did he love her? He still didn’t know. He just knew that if he let her go then the city – The Life – would have won. And he would be easy prey to the dark.
‘Stay here, boy,’ he said as he rubbed Arrow’s head. He climbed out, reached into the back and retrieved the brown paper bag that had been lying on the seat, walked across the road, his mind made up, his step purposeful. This was a game changer, right here. This is where he turned a corner.
He had his hand on the gate when he looked through the front window. Someone had switched on a standard lamp but not yet pulled the curtains. He could see in but they couldn’t see him in the gathering gloom of the street. Vari was in an armchair, smiling at a young man who was seated on a long couch facing the gas fire. He was talking, his face animated, his hands moving. And then Vari laughed. Davie couldn’t hear it through the double glazing, but he heard it in his mind. He’d liked her laugh. He’d liked her. And she looked so beautiful, her face bright and beaming, her blonde hair glowing, her eyes sparkling with her laugh. Davie felt something twinge inside him as he wondered who the young guy was. Whoever he was, Vari liked him and that made the pain pierce even deeper.
She was happy here. She could be happy with whoever this guy was.
He watched her through the glass. She was a few feet away, a few short feet. All it would take to bring her back was for him to knock on that door.
Vari had been thinking about Davie as she listened to her cousin, James, talk about his recent trip to New York. She had always wanted to visit the city, had said to Davie more than once that they should go, but his criminal record would’ve prevented it. She was playing a Gary Moore CD, which also brought him into her mind. Not that he was very far from it at the best of times. When she heard the knock at the door, she shouted to her dad in the kitchen that she’d get it. He didn’t answer, probably too intent on burning the dinner.
There was a brown paper bag on the doorstep but no one in sight, although the gate was open, as if someone had left in a hurry. She picked the bag up, felt its heft, opened it. The breath caught in her throat as she saw the money. She reached in, pulled out a handful – tens, twenties – glanced inside again. There must be thousands in there, she thought, a frown puckering her forehead.
The car starting up and pulling away from the other side of the road made her look up again.
And she saw him. Davie, staring straight ahead as he drove.
It was just a glimpse and he didn’t glance in her direction. She saw the dog, too, sitting in the passenger seat.
She moved to the gate, stepped onto the pavement and watched the car move away. Part of her wanted to chase after it, to catch it, stop it, to see him again, talk to him, hold him. But that was the silly, girly, romantic part of her. The grown-up, realistic Vari knew that could never be. Davie was alone now, the way he wanted to be, the way he was born to be. She looked at the money again. To the rest of the world Davie McCall was a brutal, callous thug. He was something different to her. He had been, still was, her man. The fact that he had left this money for her showed that she meant something to him. But not enough. It had taken five years, but she had come to terms with the fact that he could not have anyone else in his life, not a living, breathing person. He had too many ghosts to cope with.
The strains of Gary Moore picking out ‘The Loner’ on his guitar drifted from the open door behind her. Vari’s lips parted in a rueful, sad little smile.
She knew she loved him. She knew she always would, at least part of her anyway. There would be someone else, somewhere down the line, but she knew she would always hold something in reserve for Davie McCall.
After all, he was the father of her son.
As soon as the stick turned blue, she knew it was a boy. She had stared at it for a long time, taking it in. Davie’s son was inside her. She was going to be a mother. And right there and then, she reached a decision. She loved Davie McCall, but he wasn’t ready to be a boyfriend or a husband, let alone a father. And to stay with him would run the risk of their son being drawn into The Life, and touched by the darkness that came with it. Maybe someday she would tell him, maybe not. She might not risk their son’s future on a father with too much in his past.
It was a hard decision, the hardest she had ever made, but she’d made it. She couldn’t go back on it. She had to remain firm. But as she watched the car vanish in the gathering gloom of the evening, she felt tears sting at her eyes and she wished things had been different, wished Davie had been different, wished he could lay his ghosts to rest, wished he could find peace.
As she turned back towards the house, she didn’t see the sheet of paper being plucked from the ground by the slight breeze, the charcoal lines that made up her image already smudged by raindrops.
Author’s note
I HAVE NO IDEA whether there were heavy snowfalls in Glasgow in early January 1995. This is a work of fiction, so I simply made it up. I’ve taken liberties with some locations, too, in order to suit the needs of the story. Further, let me stress again that the characters here are not based on any real criminals, police officers or Hollywood actors. I made them all up too. That said, the two drug busts are very loosely based on actual incidents, the major arrest beside the canal inspired by a real-life case described by Joe Jackson in his book Chasing Killers (Mainstream Publishing).
As usual, there are lots of people to thank for their assistance, either in reading a draft, providing information or support, assisting with promotion or simply buying multiple copies (please keep that up). I won’t list the names, as I fear I may forget someone. I know who you are, you know who you are, and what you do for me is much appreciated.
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