Gallowglass (28 page)

SIXTY

A
s Duncan and I walked down the long corridors, the smell instantly evoked the memories of meeting Hugh for the first time here. I hadn’t seen him since we were both seventeen, half my lifetime ago. Not since he’d waltzed off with my first love. Back then, he was black-haired and dashing, the epitome of the Celtic poet and soldier. He’d torn my heart out by taking my girl. Our ways had parted and then came the war. I’d heard he was dead. Until I got a call from him, from here, from the condemned cell. Four weeks before his appointed date with the hangman for the abuse and murder of a wee boy.

I’d grudgingly answered the call and met the stuck-up but desperate advocate Samantha Campbell, Hugh’s defence counsel. I was her last throw. My first sight of Hugh in his prison grey erased every image I had of my handsome rival. It expunged all my hatred too. Hugh had been a rear gunner in a Lancaster. The death rate was atrocious. So was the wound rate and the wound type. Like many airmen fighting beneath canopies of Perspex, when the plane caught fire he’d been horribly burnt. As the plastic had melted, so had his face.

Four weeks hadn’t been long enough for Sam and me to find out the truth. Hugh died an innocent man, and I had gone after the real killers and the policemen who’d conspired with them. Including the senior officer we were about to interview: former Chief Superintendent George Muncie.

Duncan and I marched along the corridor behind the new deputy governor himself. We were in step, a guard of honour.

‘Brodie, you get me into some helluva situations, so you do.’

‘Keeps life interesting, Duncan.’

‘How do you think he’ll react?’

‘Depends if word has reached him about the events of the last couple of days.’

‘With any luck we banged up all his contacts before they knew what was happening: his pal Gus Fulton and his old bodyguard from Turnbull Street.’

We’d stopped outside a metal door. The Deputy Governor nodded to the guard and he began opening it.

‘We’ll soon find out. After you, Inspector.’

‘Ah think it’s your privilege,
Colonel
.’

It was a small room, not like the huge airless vault in which I used to meet Hugh. That chamber was for all visitor contact and there was a wire mesh running across the room separating prisoners from visitors.

This room was just as airless but about twelve feet square. There was a metal table screwed to the floor and two chairs facing each other across the table. A guard stood in one corner, his eyes on the prisoner sitting at the table. For an instant I thought they’d brought the wrong man. George Muncie had been big-bellied and florid, with red hair and a temper to match. This man’s hair was white and his skin matched the colour and texture of the grey walls. But there was no gut. The shoulders and chest were heavy with muscle. I was glad of the short chain linking the metal cuffs round each wrist.

Then the stranger looked up and the loose wet lips and the big hooked nose were unmistakeable. Though now the nose had a scar and a new kink, like a careless boxer’s. The eyes were still heavy-lashed but were now veined and bulging.

‘Hello, George. It’s been a while.’

He squinted at me like a malevolent bear woken too early from its hibernation. No recognition.

‘Whit’s the army doin’ here? Am Ah being ca’d up?’

‘Called to account, certainly.’

‘Ah don’t know you. Who ur you?’

‘Maybe you remember my colleague here?’ I stood to one side to let him see Inspector Duncan Todd. Duncan stared at him and waited.

‘Wait a minute, wait a wee minute. You’re Todd, are ye no’? Sergeant Todd.’

‘Detective Inspector Duncan Todd. Hello, George. You’ve lost some weight.’

He stared at us both before finding a reply. ‘Prison porridge. Prison gym.’ He flexed his shoulders to show the effects.
Look at me. I can take this shit. Nae bother
.

Duncan replied, ‘Ah’ll remember that, next time I need to lose a few pounds. Talking of remembering, do ye no’ remember this man?’

Muncie shook his head, and the anger surged in me. After what he’d done to me, he didn’t even know me. Maybe he couldn’t see past the uniform. I sat down at the table and looked at him. I saw light beginning to dawn in his bloodshot eyes.

‘That’s right, George. Douglas Brodie. The man who put you in here. The man you arranged to frame for the murder of Sir Fraser Gibson.’

Muncie rose out of his seat. A rumbling volcano. Was he planning to jump over the table at me? The prison guard called out sharply.

‘Sit doon, Muncie!’

He subsided. ‘But you’re…’

‘Dead? Everybody says that. Not yet, George. And I’m here with Detective Inspector Todd to tell you that you will soon be back in court charged with conspiracy to murder.’

His lined cheeks flushed. Some of the old choler gave it life.

‘You cunt.’

‘I see you’ve expanded your vocabulary in here, as well as your jacket size. Have you anything more witty to say before Inspector Todd reads you your rights?’

A sneer curled his wet lips. ‘Ye cannae prove a thing. How am Ah supposed to have tried to frame you when Ah’m banged up here? Eh?’

‘Your pal Gus. He’s in a cell down at Turnbull Street, writing out his life story, including the time he spent here. Sharing a cell with you. Planning the kidnap, the murder and setting me up for it.’

‘Gus isnae a squealer.’

‘Everybody’s a squealer if they think it’ll save their neck. He might just get away with it. Might. He claims his nephew Cammie Millar shot Fraser Gibson. But as Cammie himself is dead it’s going to be hard to prove either way. Bad car accident on Saturday.’

Muncie’s eyes were now avoiding mine. The sneer had gone. He was rubbing his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘It’s his word against mine. There’s nae proof. Nae connection.’

I leaned across the table and said quietly, ‘We’ve also got Sangster, George. And a few more of your old team. You’re going to have company soon. Just like old times. Without the whisky, but the same bum boys.’

He roared and leaped at me, kicking his chair back and into the path of the guard. I lurched back and up to my feet. My chair crashed behind me. Muncie dived round the table, both fists wrapped round the two-foot chain. He’d done this before. If he got the chain round my throat they’d have to club him off me. By then it might be too late.

I ducked right and swung my left fist up and into his midriff. It bounced off. But he staggered and then he came at me again, roaring, his yellow teeth wide. He flung his arms up to swing the chain over my head and drag me to him. It gave me the split second I needed. I drove a right
straight into his gaping maw with all my pent-up rage. His head snapped back and he crashed over the chair. He got on to his hands and knees and started spitting blood and teeth on the floor. My fist hurt. My knuckles were cut and bruised. But I hoped he’d get back up so I could hit him again.

He was too slow. The guard had kicked aside the chair and had his truncheon out. He pushed past me and brought it down on the back of Muncie’s head. Muncie went down. The guard stepped forward to hit him again and I caught his arm.

‘Enough! You’ll kill him!’

The guard turned to me with wild eyes. We were both panting. He nodded. Duncan was already kneeling next to Muncie. There was a groan. Duncan and the guard dragged Muncie to his feet and stuck him on a chair. He placed his chained forearms on the table and sat, head bent, dripping blood from his mouth. The back of his white skull had a thick weal across it.

I picked up my beret and screwed it back on my head. I pulled down my tunic and let the adrenalin begin to seep away. I stepped forward and leaned down on the table.

‘Thanks, George. I enjoyed that. One last question.’

He brought his head up. His eyes were dulled. Gore and saliva coated his chin.

‘If you wanted revenge it would have been easier to have me shot or knifed. Why go to all this trouble?’

He opened his mouth and I saw at least two bloody gaps. He fought for words.

‘Ah wanted you inside. In here. Wi’ me.’

He tried to look menacing but it’s hard when you’ve lost your front teeth.

‘Wrong choice. As you’ve just seen.’

‘Fuck off,’ he slurred.

‘Glad to. Which is more than you’ll be able to do, George.
You would have been up for parole in six months.’ I leaned closer so we were almost nose to nose. ‘I wouldn’t count on it.’

The rage died in his old man’s face. Even as I said it I wished I could pull it back. It’s more unkind to take away a man’s hope than his life. I left him and stood outside while Duncan read him his rights. When he came out he was shaking his head.

‘You promised you wouldnae hit him.’

‘What was I supposed to do? Keep dancing?’

‘You provoked him.’

‘I provoked
him
!’

We marched through the metal gates side by side. Duncan was shaking his head again.

‘What a bloody waste,’ he said.

‘Of a good copper? He was never that, Duncan. He was a drunken bully. He sent my pal to the gallows. And then he tried to do the same to me.’

‘Ah didnae mean that. It’s a waste of a life. Nursing a’ that spleen.’

‘You know what they say, “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.”’

‘Who said that?’

‘Confucius.’

‘He wid.’

We walked on through the clanging doors until we were out in the sunshine of the courtyard again.

‘This revenge thing, Brodie?’

‘Yes?’

‘You wouldnae say that’s why
you’re
here, would you? Ah mean, no’ to the same extent of course.’

‘Are you thinking of training for the priesthood, Duncan?’

‘Jist askin’. That’s all.’

We stepped through the outer door and heard it slam shut and the bolts get thrown as we walked to the car. We stopped either side of the car and pulled out cigarettes. We took our
hats off and rubbed our scalps. I licked my knuckles. We leaned over the car’s roof and looked at each other and back at the high walls.

‘Don’t think I haven’t thought of it, Duncan. Just now. In there. What was I doing? I didn’t have to come. I didn’t have to see Muncie’s face fall. You could have gone yourself.’

Duncan didn’t say anything. A good priest.

I went on: ‘I admit it. I goaded him deliberately. It was pure and simple retribution. If it’s any consolation I don’t feel any better for it.’

He nodded and waited.

‘I’ve been like this all my days, Duncan. Harm me or mine and I’ll harm you. It carried me through the war. It made me pursue the Slattery brothers and put Muncie and co. away. Same with the Nazis here in Glasgow. I don’t know any way of changing me. Do you?’

He thought for minute.

‘Ah huvnae been tested like you, Brodie. Ah’ve nae right tae comment.’

‘But…?’

‘The war’s over. We won. The boys have been demobbed. They’ve handed in their uniforms and their guns. By any standards, Douglas Brodie,
you’ve
won.’

‘I can hand back my uniform – if Sillitoe lets me. But what about this?’ I tapped my skull.

‘You need to draw a line, Brodie.’

‘Is that it? I think I knew that. How?’

‘Ah know you’re no’ a believer. And a’ that Protestant brainwashing that went on—’

‘That’s rich from a left-footer!’

‘Exactly. Ma church is fu’ o’ ceremonies. The Latin, the incense, the wafer and the wine. But they have a use. Humans need symbols.’

‘You want me to go to confession? The booth would explode.’

‘Naw, naw. But we need a ceremony.’

I gazed at him, thoughtfully. ‘“A ceremony of innocence”?’

‘Who said
that
?’

‘Yeats. “The Second Coming”.’

‘That sounds about right.’

SIXTY-ONE

I
t was the perfect morning. A few soft clouds and a gentle westerly. A day to savour. I started it with a stroll though Kelvingrove Park and a swim. Sam had the day off and we took breakfast together. We smiled a lot.

The drive down to Kilmarnock was smooth and easy. Sam was humming away and looking pleased with herself, as well she might. She’d steered a brilliant and dogged path through the legal contortions surrounding my case, and as of yesterday, I was officially exonerated. It was helped by Gus Fulton’s full confession and a series of witnesses being found. Stewart had showed up at Turnbull Street police station with a pack of grubby boys, one stumping in wearing callipers. Through his teacher contacts Stewart had tracked them down and the wee ruffians were clamouring to tell their story. They were still excited about the sweets and silver sixpences they’d got from the man in the big car. Just for playing a game of hide and seek with the silly man with a briefcase.

At the same time, Duncan found the memories of the ticket men at the ferry booths were pinpoint clear. Of course they remembered a hot sweaty man with a briefcase running around like a dafty. That’s what they’d have said – if anyone had bothered to ask them. Another charge against Sangster and his crew. Duncan even found Sticky, plying his trade back on George Square. Sure, he remembered the soldier laddie who always saluted him and overpaid for his mushy apple.
I’d given him enough extra to let him catch the subway and see the Govan Fair the next day.

A public apology was made by Malcolm McCulloch. He announced at the same time that a number of members of his force would stand trial for everything from drinking on duty to conspiracy to commit murder. Sangster’s name headed the list.

I took the Dean Castle turn-off just outside Kilmarnock. A trickle of brown water ran across the ford and we bumped over and took the back road past the Kay Park to the cemetery. I glanced over to the right at the lake – big pond, really – and remembered as a wee boy being taken on the rowing boats by my dad. A million years ago. Now my father lay under the green grass on the hill ahead, just one of the lines of headstones marching away over the rise. Continuity.

We drove towards the small crowd gathered nattering at the gate. A coach was parked just along from them. A singledecker with the roof off. Later – at my request – there would be streamers fluttering from the windows, like a Sunday-school jaunt. The trippers were dressed for summer, the women in bright frocks and the men in shirtsleeves or gaudy ties with hankies drooping from breast pockets.

Duncan was the first to see us and got the others’ heads turning round. Shimon Belsinger grinned and waved from among a small group of men sporting yarmulkes. Shimon had his big arm round his shy wife, whom I’d last seen at another cemetery when we were burying Isaac Feldmann, a mere five months ago. In the worst winter in memory, they’d had to build fires on the ground to get a shovel into the frozen earth. Today, Isaac’s daughter had come, but not his son. Amos and his family were on a kibbutz in Palestine holding the land until it became theirs – if the UN ever agreed.

Wullie, ensconced in his wheelchair, raised a languid hand with a fag in it. I was surprised he wasn’t sipping from a celebratory half-bottle. Behind him, Stewart grinned. Gathered
round them were my friends from the
Gazette
: Big Eddie, Sandy, two of the secretaries, and brainy Elspeth peeping shyly through her glasses and the thicket of strawberry-blond hair.

My new pal Harry Templeton gave a nod and a smile. Alongside him and looking like he’d robbed a bank and spent the lot on a bespoke tailor, an optician and a barber, was a beaming Archibald Higgins. Even from a distance I could see the ribbon and medal dangling from his breast pocket. He shoogled it at me as I approached.

There was also a big blonde woman sheltering among them, carrying a baby in a shawl and holding a small girl by the hand. Mairi McLeod, Eric’s much put-upon wife. I owed her a huge apology and a million thanks for giving me so much of her husband’s precious time.

But best of all was the beaming smile I got from the small white-haired woman who stepped towards us. She wore a blue summer frock with big flowers on it and a bonnet that would have won the Kilmarnock Easter parade. If they had one. I lifted my mother up and gave her a birl.

‘Put me down this minute, you big silly man.’

But she didn’t mean it. There were no neighbours around. Sam and I were hugged and our hands shaken off until we’d done the rounds. We got to Mairi.

‘Where’s Eric?’ asked Sam of the blushing Mrs McLeod. Sam had lifted the wee girl in her arms and they were inspecting each other.

Mairi raised her brows at me. I smiled.

‘He’s waiting inside, Sam,’ I said.

‘Shall we go?’ asked Duncan.

We filed through and I walked slowly enough that I could keep my arm round Sam and my mother. It had been a while – too long – since I’d walked with Mum and laid flowers on my father’s grave. I was relieved to see we were nowhere near his. She must have read my thoughts.

‘It just wouldn’t have been right to have put you next to him, Douglas. I mean it’s no’ as if…’

‘Not as if it
was
me.’

‘Besides, the space left beside him is for me.’

‘Och, Mum, don’t talk like that. You’ve a few miles left in you yet.’

We were making our smiling procession up the slope to the newest and unfinished line of gravestones when the sounds of a lone piper filling his bag came shrilling over the far hillside. Wullie would say it was a decent distance for the ear. Quickly, the piper had enough air and broke into a fast jaunty tune. As the melody took shape Sam burst out laughing. I smiled at her.

‘He’s playing your song, Sam.’

My mother tugged at my arm. ‘I ken that tune, son. What is it?’

‘“The Campbells Are Coming”.’

It set the lot of them off and we marched arm in arm up the slope. Eric McLeod, sometime soldier and pipe major, got there before us from the opposite direction. He stood there in all the finery of the Black Watch – kilt and sporran and great buckled belt – sending the blood pounding through us.

No one except Sam knew the other verses so we repeated the lines in high good humour until we stood breathless in front of Eric. His pipes droned flat and then fell silent. I walked over and pumped his hand. His family joined him.

We all turned to face a polished black stone. The ground in front had been recently dug over and now dipped in a six-foot
hollow. Duncan told me that after the exhumation they’d carted away ‘my’ coffin as evidence. Well, we wouldn’t be asking for it back. I had other plans today.