Gallowglass (24 page)

FIFTY

I
turned the car round and headed back into the city praying the word wasn’t yet out to the patrol bikes and cars. I took the long way round avoiding the centre and was soon climbing Thistle Street. I crested on to Hill Street, drove along it and turned into the side street that served Garnethill Synagogue. Shimon Belsinger was waiting along with Rabbi Leveson. As I stepped out of the car the two men threw a tarpaulin over it and tied it down.

‘Welcome, Douglas,’ said the rabbi. ‘Come in and take tea with us. Or maybe something stronger, eh? I imagine you need it.’

As they shepherded me before them, I was thanking them.

‘This is good of you both. I am indebted.’

‘Ach, it is nothing compared to the debts we owe you. This barely makes a dent. Come in, come in.’

They fed me and watered me, and even found a welcome glass of brandy for me. They told me the wireless was full of the news of the drama enacted at Scottish Linen Bank. A Government spokesman was playing it down; but how do you play down the violent loss of two managing directors in a month? Or explain how a dead man is suddenly on the run again suspected of everything from bank robbery to double murder? It wasn’t the outcome Harry or Sir Percy had hoped for. Far less their political masters. But when the flack is exploding
all round you, all you can do is grit your teeth and fly through it. Ducking and diving was just as likely to put you in harm’s way.

I asked Shimon to do one last thing: let Harry Templeton know where I was. Then I retired for the night in a makeshift bed in the rabbi’s robing room under the great hall of the synagogue. It was a Friday, and up above they were holding prayers and singing. It sounded jolly.

Eventually it grew quiet. Shimon and the rabbi came by with a towel, soap, a toothbrush and a razor. They wished me goodnight and left me lying in the light from a guttering candle. I lay far from sleep, trying to plan my next steps. But I kept coming back to poor Clarkson’s face: the look of utter desolation. I should have seen it coming. I’d recognised that look on soldiers who’d been pushed one battle too far. They knew the next bullet was for them, or the next shell. It tended to be self-fulfilling.

And still I hadn’t unlocked the full story. Clarkson had taken us most of the way there but there were still too many missing pieces. We didn’t know what Roddie Adams’s role was, for instance, or what the company Gulf Stream did other than suck in large sums of money from Gibson’s accounts. As I lay there, my frustration boiled. So close to an answer, but it had been snatched away from me with Clarkson’s plunge. But Adams’s office might hold the key.

Just then, I heard a noise. An outside door opened and I felt the movement of air. Someone was padding towards me down the corridor. I rolled out from under my blankets and got silently to my feet. I stood behind the partly open door. It wasn’t Shimon or the rabbi. They had no reason to be furtive. As the door eased open, I readied myself.

‘Brodie?’ he hissed.

‘McLeod! What the bloody hell are you doing here?’

I faced Eric in the faint light from my candle. His big grin was catching. I grinned back and we shook hands.

‘I’m here to help.’

‘No, no. I sent the message out for you to go home. To your wife and weans.’

‘Brodie, I’ve been sailing up and down the Clyde for a fortnight. Your personal taxi service. And I’ve been proud to help. But I heard on the boat’s wireless what was going on. And I got the message from McAllister. You were in trouble. Again.’

‘And I don’t want anyone else to be.’

‘Listen, a year past, you were in bother. Deep bother. I found you trying to steal one of my boats so you could sail off and save your girlfriend.’

‘And you helped, Eric.’

He waved his hand dismissively. ‘I gave you a better engine. In return you gave me the
Lorne
. It’s transformed my life.
Our
lives.’

‘What would I have done with a yacht? I’d have sunk it by now. You know me and boats.’

‘That’s no’ the point. I wished then I’d gone with you. I’ve regretted it since. Well, this time, I’m coming. And that’s an end to it. You’ll be going after that Roddie Adams fella?’

‘How did you know that?’

‘We’ve talked enough about it all. Adams was the last bit to look at. I figured you’d have a go.’

I shook my head. ‘You seem to know me better than I know myself, Eric.’

‘Good. What’s the plan?’

I gazed at him. He was unbending. I smiled.

‘A plan? Not much of one. But I’m always happy to have the Black Watch on my flank.’

We shook hands again, and I outlined what we needed to do. The objective was vague and we’d have to make it up as we went along. But as Eric realised, it might fill in the last missing piece.

‘Are you armed?’ I asked.

‘Just this.’ Eric drew out his hefty knife from the boat. It could slice through a tangled rope in a second. Or a man’s heart.

‘Leave it. Breaking and entering is bad enough. Armed robbery adds ten years.’

I reached for my jacket and felt the inside pocket. The bent nails I’d used to get into the yard behind the bank were still there. The luminous dial of my army Omega said one thirty. We slipped out of the side door of the synagogue and headed down through the silent streets, taking back alleys where we could. In some ways the dangers had multiplied: we were more conspicuous. Two big men wandering the streets in the middle of the night carrying house-breaking tools. But it felt good not to be alone.

FIFTY-ONE

A
dams & Co. Solicitors were housed in a smart former mansion on Blythswood Square. Each property had three or four storeys above ground and a basement with stairs leading down from the pavement. We did one casual circuit of the central gardens and then tiptoed down the stone steps to Roddie Adams’s lower office.

I soon found I lacked Danny McRae’s expertise with a rusty nail. I jabbed away at the Yale lock and the bigger bolt, getting nowhere. I was also making too much noise scrabbling away in the dark. Eric was keeping lookout from halfway up the steps, his head jutting out over the square. I waved at him and touched my ear. He signalled all was quiet. So far.

I summoned him down and indicated what we had to do. The pair of us put out shoulders to the door and braced. I raised three fingers. I lowered one after the other, at one-second intervals. When the last finger dropped, we both heaved. The door cracked open.

We let the noise die away and waited for shouts or lights to come on. Nothing. We pushed open the splintered door and walked in. It was pitch dark but we couldn’t risk putting lights on. The basement was a storage area. Great shelves of files filled the rooms. We moved up to the ground floor. Here, some light filtered through dusty windows from the street lamps and the moon. We ghosted through the reception area and checked the names on doors. Secretaries and junior clerks.

We took to the stairs again, kneeling in front of every door looking for one name. Not this floor. We climbed to the top floor. Eric found the gold lettering proclaiming which was the office of ‘Roderick Adams Esq.’ and how many qualifications he had. It was bolted, but I was past caring about the niceties of lock-picking. We did the double shoulder trick and barged into a grand office overlooking Blythswood Square. Very nice. All wood and fine books and leather. The shelves held exquisite vases and glass ornaments. The wages of sin.

We looked around. Against one wall was a run of cupboards. On the desk sat a couple of framed photos and a desk light. Also a brass pencil holder, a paper spike like mine in the
Gazette
newsroom, and a letter opener in the shape of a dagger. I chose the dagger and plunged it into the door locks on the cupboard. They splintered and sprang open. Eric started one end, I the other. We could easily read the file names in the moonlight. But we couldn’t find what we were looking for. As Eric did some final checks of the shelves I walked round the huge wooden desk and sat in the leather chair. Its cool depths sucked me in.

I looked down. The desk sat on two pedestals either side of my legs. I switched on the desk light. Using the now bent letter opener I broke open the locks and started rifling through the folders. I found two of interest, considerable interest. One was simply marked ‘Gibson F.’, the other ‘Gulf Stream’. I waved them at Eric and gave the thumbs-up sign. I placed them on the desktop, gave the Gibson file to Eric and we began sifting through them in the pool of yellow light.

From the Gulf Stream folder I took out a set of papers for a property. There was a deed of sale dated eighteen months ago, registering the house in the name of one Fraser Bell. The house had a name – surprise, surprise: Gulf Stream. The accompanying photograph showed why: a white bungalow with a full-width veranda framed by exotic trees and shrubs.
Palm trees. Tropical shrubs. This wasn’t a house that backed on to Glasgow’s Botanical Gardens. Gulf Stream was in Martinique. I showed them to Eric. His eyes and teeth gleamed. It looked like he too was finding gold in his folder.

I kept laying out the papers from my file. Banks statements in the name of Bell going back over the same period. The headed notepaper on the statements showed a palm tree either side of the bank’s name: Bank of Martinique. This chap Bell was in clover; at the last statement date in June his account held £657,000. Enough to keep anyone in coconuts and rum punch for the rest of their lives.

Eric began passing me documents from the Gibson folder. Letters between Fraser Gibson and Roddie Adams confirming arrangements for cash transfers between them. There were also two passports: one for a man, one for his wife. Mr and Mrs Fraser Bell. Their black and white photos gazed unblinking and unsmiling at me. Unsurprisingly, Mr Bell looked just like the oil painting of Sir Fraser hanging in Clarkson’s office. Fraser clearly thought he didn’t have to change his Christian name for his Caribbean hideaway.

And Mrs Bell had chosen to keep her first name. Pamela was trying to keep to Foreign Office rules by not smiling in her passport photo. But it was hard to hide the delight and anticipation in her large, made-up eyes. Even though she’d cleaned out my bank accounts, I felt a small pang of sympathy for Pam. She’d so nearly had it all.

They sure do, Rabbie. They sure do. We gathered up the whole set of wonderfully incriminating papers and passports and stuffed them in our jacket pockets. It was time to go.

Then a door crashed. Downstairs. The front door. Voices and running feet.

‘Upstairs! The light’s upstairs!’

I motioned to Eric. We walked over to the heavy office door and crowded behind it. I pulled it back on us so that we were mostly shielded behind it. I left the light on over the desk. It should draw their attention. Moths. The feet thumped up the stairs. It sounded like three of them. I hoped one was Roddie. Next thing a figure ran into the room followed closely by two others.

‘Shite! He’s got the papers!’

‘He’s gone, sir!’

‘I can see that, ya eejit!’

They would turn round any second. One of them was close enough to the door. I took a deep breath and gave a mighty shove. It smashed into him and sent him flying against the second man. Eric and I leaped out and we followed through with a banshee scream and a charge. It was the style of the 51
^st
. Minus the bayonets. And the kilts.

The man I’d struck with the door was tangled up with his pal and both were floundering across the desk, flailing pickaxe handles. The third man was standing by the desk brandishing the empty folders in his left hand. He held a gun in his right. By his glasses I assumed this was Roddie.

I hit him with my shoulder and we crashed over the corner of the desk and on to the floor. The folders and the gun went flying. He was wriggling like an eel until I lifted my head up and smashed my forehead down on his nose. I rolled off his limp body just as the club descended. It missed my head and caught poor Roddie on the chest. He bellowed and I rolled once more and shot to my feet. On the other side of the desk, Eric was in a wrestling match with one of them.

Roddie’s bully boy, the one who’d tried to decapitate me, lunged at me – his boxer’s face contorted with rage – with another mighty swing that would have staved in my skull if
I hadn’t wrenched a standard lamp between us. He roared as the club splintered the wood and caught in the cable and material. It gave me enough time to reach for the nearest ornament on the glass shelves. It took two hands to grab the tall vase and sweep it across the shaven skull. It shattered with a satisfying bang and the man collapsed.

I glanced up in time to see Eric administering his own nutting. A Black Watch speciality honed in every pub in every garrison town in the world. The first strike distracts the opponent; it’s impossible to ignore the pain of a broken nose. It opens up the defences to a couple of fast stomach punches. As he doubled up, winded, Eric’s kneecap drove up and into his head. He went down with a quiet oof.

I turned to my own growling opponent, rising from the debris clutching his club. I pretended I was taking a penalty to win the match for Scotland, and drove my boot into his head, just under the jaw. His head snapped up, his eyes looked surprised, and he went back and over. He lay still among the splintered porcelain.

Beyond him, Adams had got to his knees. His face was a mass of blood and he was picking broken glass out of his cheeks with his left hand. But the gun was in the right. He brought it up and tried to steady it on the corner of the desk. He was blinking and wiping at his eyes to clear them. To take aim.

I took one step and grabbed the spike glinting provocatively on the desk. I slammed it down, skewering his hand deeply to the wood. He shrieked. I knocked the gun out of his reach and put my face down to his.

‘Roddie? Roddie Adams?’

‘Yes! Yes! For the love of God! Take it out! Take it out!’

‘We haven’t been introduced. And it appears we can’t shake hands. I’m Douglas Brodie. It’s been a pleasure.’

I nodded to Eric. We turned and walked out, leaving Roddie trying to free his nailed hand without ripping it apart.
His unconscious minions were in no shape to help for quite a while. This time we left through the front door, pockets full of evidence of plans that had gone awry. We walked smartly away, adrenalin pumping through our bodies.

‘I enjoyed that, Brodie.’

I didn’t want to agree with him, to admit that I felt the same. Too much. What had come over me? It was like a switch being thrown in my head. Was this how the war left the pair of us?

‘You shouldn’t. It could get you the jile.’

‘Worth it.’ He rubbed his forehead, savouring the memory.

I patted my pockets. ‘Worth it indeed. Fraser established a lush wee bolthole in the sun for himself and Pamela. His bank account filled to the brim. Shangri-La.’

‘Poor bugger’ll never get to enjoy it.’

‘I guess Lady Gibson found out. Then arranged for his dream to be punctured. A woman scorned, eh?’

‘What will Roddie do after he frees his hand, do you think? Call the police?’

‘And say what? Maybe I shouldn’t have given him my name. But I’m fed up with folk I’ve never met trying to wreck my life.’

‘Do you have all you need now?

‘To prove my innocence? Just about, Eric. We can prove Gibson was a baddie and that Adams was helping him. But we haven’t got proof of who killed him. It’s time I had a wee chat with Sheila.’

‘I’ll join you.’

I stopped. I shook my head. ‘You’ve done wonders, Eric. Just what I needed. But the next bit isn’t going to need the heavy mob. We’ll try the legal route. I’ll get Duncan to join me at Lady Gibson’s house in the morning. We’ll do this bit by the book.’

‘Shame.’

‘And you should go back to the
Lorne
. Head for Arran. You’ve done a good night’s work.’

He agreed, reluctantly. He handed me all the documents we’d snaffled. We separated, and I made it back to Garnethill without incident.

Surprisingly, I fell asleep as though I’d been felled, exhausted by the day’s events and my nocturnal adventures. But I woke before dawn, staring into the dark.

I’d been stupid. Everything had happened too fast. I’d missed two vital clues. First: everything about Clarkson’s partial confession rang true. He’d been the puppet of Fraser Gibson. So if the strings had been cut by Fraser’s murder, why pay off High Times three days later? More important, why arrange to clean out my account?

Second: in my mind’s eye I saw clearly the lifelike colour oil painting of Sir Fraser Gibson in his former office. Saw his intense blue eyes staring at me. Taunting me.