Gallowglass (14 page)

TWENTY-NINE

U
sually it’s best to be bold. I told Airchie when and where to meet me that night. Then – with my beard and specs to protect me – I strolled as casually as I could up through the city centre to St Vincent Street, the business centre. Halfway along stood the Scottish Linen Bank, its solid red sandstone façade proclaiming rectitude and propriety.
Your money is safe with us and we might let you have some of it back if you ask politely and do a bit of grovelling
.

That’s what I’d thought when I opened an account there last year. I’d liked its air of permanence and liked walking into its banking hall knowing I was also walking into the headquarters. I liked it right up to the point a couple of weeks ago when I found out in court that the tiny sum in my savings account had disappeared and my current account was in deficit.

From the front the building was impregnable unless you had a battering ram for the massive central doors and a really big fretsaw for the barred windows.

Inside, up a set of marble stairs, the banking hall opened up, wood-panelled, high-ceilinged and patrolled by doormen and clerks with neck-strangling hard collars. They polished their Dickensian image. I’d been inside it a few times in the past year to set up my accounts, change my address and withdraw cash that had barely spent the night in my savings
account. The last time I’d visited was to change a fiver and had been treated as if I’d come to deposit a barrow-load of gold ingots.

If I recalled right, a short side corridor led to the back offices where the bulk of the clerks worked and where the books would be kept. That was the target for Airchie and me.

I walked round the corner and headed uphill. Within twenty paces I turned sharply into St Vincent Lane. Like most of the great arteries of Glasgow, the main street was customer-facing and very smart. But running in parallel, all along the back of the grand buildings, is a service lane, the tradesman’s lane. Rough and cobbled, the lanes give access to the storerooms and staff quarters.

Scottish Linen was no exception. A ten-foot-high lane wall protected its rear but I could see that there was a small yard between the lane wall and the rear of the bank itself. I could clamber over the lane wall but I’d then be facing heavy locked doors and barred windows into the bank. I saw holds in the rough lane wall where I could get a grip and scramble up and over, but wee Airchie would need a full set of steps either side. Preferably with a handrail. For a moment I was daunted. This was never going to work.

The lane was quiet but it wouldn’t do to be found loitering outside the back door of a major bank eyeing up the walls and entrances. I started to walk along the lane, as though simply using it as a convenient passage to the next street. As I walked I studied the layout of the neighbouring buildings. Each shared the dividing wall with the next, and though the heights varied, there was more or less a continuous roofline right down the row. On my return trip I confirmed that the building next to Scottish Linen – a multi-level department store called Faulds – had a lower wall by the lane and, more interestingly, on the back wall of the building itself, a fire escape zigzagging from the roof to the ground.

I made one last pass down the lane to check what I was seeing. It was hard to tell from the ground, but it looked like the angled roofs of the Scottish Linen Bank and its neighbour fell to a gulley and parapet. Each roof had tall chimneys. Each seemed to have skylights. It might be possible to reach the roof of Faulds via the fire escape and then to climb over the short dividing wall on to Scottish Linen’s roof. And then to penetrate the bank through one of the skylights. It was a lot of ifs.

I made my way out of the lane and, as pre-arranged, met a very nervous Archibald Higgins at the corner of Argyle Street and North Street.

‘You can relax tonight, Airchie. We’re not raiding the bank. Well,
you’re
not. I just need some quick lessons from you about bookkeeping.’

His head lifted. ‘It took years of training, Brodie.’

‘To get where you are?’ I saw his look and was immediately sorry for my sarcasm. ‘I just need some basics. Some distilled wisdom.’

‘You’ve come to the right man.’

‘I know. Come on, let’s find a seat.’

I walked us up North Street and into the little graveyard behind the church. It was twilight and warm enough to sit on one of the benches scattered among the paths between the rows of headstones. We took a seat and lit cigarettes.

‘Right, Airchie, you worked for one of the banks years ago. Correct?’

‘Correct. The Royal.’ Said with pride.

‘But you left under a bit of a cloud, if I recall?’

His brow puckered and he took off his specs to give them a rub against his worn jacket.

‘You micht say that. Ah got nicked for trying to take a wee bit on the side. Hell, naebody would have missed it. Loose change for them. But there you go.’

‘Tell me about the bank books. How do they keep records?’

‘Simple, really. You go into a bank, go up to the counter and ask to take oot your money or put some in. You provide some identification unless they really ken you, and the guy behind the counter makes a note of it on a chit and puts it in his basket.’

‘That’s the start of it, the customer transaction.’

‘Aye, then throughout the day, and especially at three o’clock when they close the doors, they collect a’ the baskets and take them into the back office. The place is fu’ o’ clerks – maistly girls – who sort the transactions and then record them in their ledgers. Double entry, of course. So it all balances.’

‘So they keep accounts for each customer? But presumably they need to add it all up? To know what a branch has taken or given out each day?’

‘That’s right. That’s where the accountants come in. The two sides of the ledgers need to add up. Double entry. They copy the ledger information into branch ledgers and do their calculations. At the end of every day, each branch has to make sure the books balance. They summarise the results and send their messenger to head office with them. Then head office consolidates the lot of them either once a week or once a month.’

‘So Scottish Linen head office – up the road here – would keep all the summary details of all their branches. You could look at the books and see how much money has come in and how much has gone out, and to whom? Every day?’

‘They’d only have the summary information from the branches. You wouldnae know about individuals unless there were big amounts or very important folk.’

‘What about if you banked at head office, like I do.
Did
. I suppose they closed my account after stealing my money.’

‘It would be like they were a branch but within head office. They’d have the individual accounts’ details and chits. And
every week we – the accountants – would consolidate the books and report to the treasurer how the bank was doing.’

‘If we got our hands on the Scottish Linen ledgers could we see if there were any holes in the accounts?’

‘Wi’ a bit of digging, sure.’

‘Could we also see where the money was going? For example, if a company or individual was getting sizeable amounts each month from the bank but without any corresponding deposits?’

‘You mean pay-offs? Back-handers? That kinda thing?’

‘That kinda thing.’

I spent some more time questioning Airchie until my head was throbbing with numbers and procedures. He seemed to know what he was talking about. It might become clearer to me when I actually saw the ledgers in front of me. Maybe. But first I had to get my hands on them. It was finally dark enough for nefarious activities. I left Higgins sitting among the graves contemplating his own mortality and set off towards St Vincent Street and its back lane.

THIRTY

I
t looked very different by night, away from the soft-hissing street lamps lining the main streets. I gazed up from the lane. The fire escape zigzagging up the neighbouring department store and the step across the two roofs looked even more challenging in the dark. And who knew what lay under the skylight in the pitch dark? If I could even open it. A fifty-foot drop into a stairwell?

I scaled the Faulds’ wall and lay on its rounded top for a moment to peer into the small courtyard. To see what I was getting into. No mad dogs with glittering jaws waiting for me and no pointed railings. No night-watchman that I could spot. I slid over and into the yard and waited till I had better night vision. When I had, I could see that the fire escape stopped at the level of the first floor. There was a pull-down segment of ladder. Just out of reach. Damn.

I looked around and saw a couple of packing crates. I edged them over until I was under the ladder and climbed up on my shoogly base. I stretched and grabbed the bottom rung and started pulling. It screeched. I stopped and waited to hear running feet. Nothing. I had no choice. I yanked firmly and pulled it all the way down in one long tortured grind until the legs hit the ground with a bang. My heart was hammering. All I could do was wait and hope. I counted slowly to sixty. Then another sixty. No pounding feet. No shouts. No whistles. No dog barking. I started climbing.

It was easy enough. When I reached the roofline, I stepped over the parapet and into the two-foot wide gutter between it and the slate roof. I looked back down into the darkness and could see nothing of note, and certainly nothing moving. I edged along the gutter and reached the brick barrier between the two roofs. It was topped with a glazed curved tile which followed the roofline at a height of about four feet; low enough to scramble over, high and slippery enough to set the blood pounding. I pictured myself as a kid sliding down the long polished bannister of the central stairs in the Dick Institute, housing Kilmarnock’s library, and sprawling on the tiles. Painful enough. But this time I’d simply sail off the end into the abyss.

This wasn’t the time to think. In one wild, heart-hammering moment I put my hands on the rounded top and jumped up. As I gained height I swung my leg up and over so that I was astride the rounded top. An uncertain cowboy clinging on with fingernails to the rougher bricks below the smooth top. I could feel sweat oozing from the pores on my hands. The inexorable pull of gravity was winning against the smooth rounded surface. I was being tugging backwards and downwards. I had no time to check where I might land on the Scottish Linen side. I flung my other leg round and dropped.

It seemed a long way but only in my head. My feet hit and skidded and jarred my spine. But it was the same height on the bank’s side. I fell on to my side and lay clutching the tiles shaking and panting. Not relishing the return trip. And without any clue as to how I’d get wee Airchie over this hurdle. Maybe I could just tie a rope round his middle and fling him over.

When I’d got my heart rate down, I rose to my feet and began to sidle along the inner gutter, hugely conscious of the great space to my right. Conscious too that I would be in profile against the grey sky to anyone walking down the lane.

My army training about avoiding such ridges and my primal instinct for self-preservation screamed at me to cower
against the roof tiles, but I kept pushing on to a point below the first skylight. When I reached it, I found a small maintenance ladder fixed to the roof running up from the gutter past the skylight and on up to the chimney breast. I climbed up the first rungs and lay flat, peering down through the glass. It was like looking into a coal mine. I gave my eyes a long while to get used to the dark but I still couldn’t see any floor.

I began feeling around the rim of the skylight, pushing and pulling as I went. There was some movement and, at the top, I found hinges. It was designed to be pushed up and back from the inside so that it sat against the roof. I half stood, half knelt, and tugged. Something gave inside. It came up with a jerk and I almost fell into the gap. I steadied myself and gently lowered it backwards on to the roof.

An updraught of stale air swept over me as I peered into the depths. Now I began to make out objects. I was about fifteen feet directly above a bannister, which meant I was halfway over a stairwell. Underneath me would be the landing. If I could clamber into the hole and hang by my hands and swing my body, my momentum should carry me safely beyond the railing and on to the landing. Getting back was the bigger test. I had to hope that the maintenance crew normally left a ladder nearby. And didn’t bring one with them and take it away afterwards.

By now I was beyond fear. In full attack mode, the adrenalin pushing me onward. I got my legs into the hole, swivelled round on my belly and slid my body inside. My legs now dangled in space and my stomach rested on the ledge. I eased off my perch and slid down into the darkness until I was dangling at full stretch from the frame. There was no going back. Then I began to swing, commending my shoulder muscles for the hours spent ploughing up and down the pool of the Western Baths Club. Not to mention all the press-ups in my prison cell. After a couple of to and fros I let go on the forward swing and dropped, praying I’d avoid breaking my back on the bannister.

I sailed forever through the air and wondered briefly if I’d let go on the wrong swing. Then my feet hit ground and I tumbled forward in an ungainly sprawl. I flattened out on the cool lino and got my breathing under control again. I looked up and around me and smiled. Facing me was a ladder hooked horizontally on the wall. On the underside of the rim of the skylight, above the void, was a curved metal hook to hold the ladder in place above the drop. I got to my feet and began to pick my way down the staircase into the body of the Scottish Linen Bank.

Did money smell? I was stepping down the wide wood staircase into the heart of the bank and was aware of a growing mustiness. Paper certainly, like a library. But banknotes? All tainted by a thousand hands shuffling and fingering, rubbing and pocketing. Or polish on wood panelling and parquet floors? Mixed with the cloying aroma of generations of clerks toiling over great ledgers.

The staircase wheeled round in a great descending spiral with a void in the centre, plunging four floors down to the level of, but behind the banking hall. Off each level I could see corridors. On each of the top two floors, set in one of the walls, a single barred window peered out into the back yard. The lower floors were blanked for security. I assumed there would be a locked and reinforced basement where they kept the cash and gold sovereigns. I imagined a great safe with fancy locks and tumblers. I wasn’t interested in the money. Where would they keep the ledgers? Would they be as protected as the cash?

I kept my eyes and ears sharp for signs of a night-watchman. But I was gambling that with all the heavy doors, locks and barred windows, they saw no need.

My eyes grew sharper now as they drew in the light from the rear windows. I descended to the first-floor landing and peered down. Desks. Rows of them. All cleared and ready for the start of business. Along every side were rack upon rack of
open wood shelves, all filled with tall books. The books of records. The bank’s ledgers.

I followed the staircase down. It opened out on to the floor of the hall and I began to wander between the desks. The fustiness crowded round me, as though I’d stuck my head in an ancient book and was inhaling dead words.

I walked to the sides and started to peer at the spines of the books. This was it. Bank ledgers, some by branch, some by customer, some by period. Inside, pages filled with neat script, carefully blotted, numbers carefully transposed from one ledger to another, carrying the details of Mr McKay’s five-pound deposit on 20 June in Paisley through to the weekly balance of a million pounds in and a million pounds out. Telling the fortunes of the bank and its customers, day by day, month on month, year by year. In turn, telling a story to shareholders of how well the bank had used their money, and how much dividend they would be receiving.

Somewhere in here, among these yards of inked-in volumes, were clues about what Fraser Gibson was doing with his own money, the bank’s money and Government and USA loans. But I didn’t know where to start. I could only hope that Archibald Higgins, crook and swindler, struck-off accountant and former jailbird, was better equipped. My daunting challenge was to get his creaky middle-aged body over the wall, up a ladder, over a roof and into this bank without breaking his neck. Or mine.

I reversed my steps. At the top of the stairs I looked longingly at the ladder on the wall, but how would that look in the morning propped against the skylight? I could kick it back and let it fall on the landing, so that people would think it had simply dropped off its hooks. But it might just tumble into the void. How would you explain that? When I next came with Airchie I didn’t want to find a grinning man with a slavering Alsatian waiting for us. But there was a simpler answer.

I brought the ladder down and placed it against the skylight rim. I climbed up and out. Then I pulled the ladder up behind me, through the skylight, and laid it against the roof. I carefully closed the skylight, moved down the fixed rungs and manoeuvred the ladder down into the gutter. For at least a day or two no one from the bank other than a maintenance man would notice the ladder was missing. Or if they did, they’d think it was in use elsewhere. And it would solve at least one of the barriers to getting Airchie into the bank.

Getting out was another matter.