Gallowglass (7 page)

FOURTEEN

F
rom then onwards, the days dragged by. I’d check my watch and find that only ten minutes had passed instead of the two hours I thought. I sank further into myself, into a despondency about my character shortfalls. I seemed condemned to repeat my mistakes, climbing a ladder and slithering down the snake. Was this what Nick Carraway was talking about? ‘So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.’

Could I just blame the war or had I always carried this flaw? Either way there seemed no way of ridding myself of this self-destructive tendency. I couldn’t resist a challenge. I was always the first to volunteer. An impetuous child who had to feed his addiction to thrills and spills. If this was all I’d become, there seemed little point going on.

Sometimes I stirred myself. My mood would change and I’d engage in a sweaty bout of press-ups, star jumps and running on the spot until I fell on my bunk exhausted. Other times I tried burrowing my way deep into the canon of Alexandre Dumas. But where were the four musketeers when you needed them?

My only visitors, apart from the constable who brought me grub and water, were Sam and Dalziel. And I was doing a fine job of encouraging them to pop in and keep me company.

‘Speak to Lady Gibson! You
must
be able to get hold of her.’

‘How do you suggest we do that, Douglas? Grab her as she
leaves the graveside of her husband? It’s the funeral today. They expect a big crowd. But I’m sure Sheila Gibson will have time to stop and chat.’

Oh, bugger. I buried my head in my hands.

‘Sorry, Sam. Sorry. I forgot. I’ve no idea of time. But why did she lie?’

‘Confusion? Grief? Maybe she actually thinks you killed him. By accident, of course.’

‘That’s really encouraging. But what about Cammie the chauffeur? Can’t Dalziel summon him? Can’t you speak to Janice, the terrified maid?’

She sighed. We’d been round this a dozen times.

‘Douglas, we can’t get near them. It would be harassment. It’s exactly why the Sheriff wouldn’t give you bail.’

I was pacing the interview room, wearing a groove in the concrete. Sam sat with her face between her hands waiting for me to calm down. It was impossible. My brain was racing with frustration. I wanted action!

‘Are you sure you didn’t mention being waylaid by Lady Gibson to anyone at the
Gazette
? Eddie? Wullie? Any of the secretaries?’ she asked, not for the first time.

‘Not one of them. It all happened in less than twenty-four hours. I didn’t have the full story, so I kept quiet.’

‘And you didn’t want to share your scoop.’ It wasn’t a question.

I stopped and leaned against the wall letting its cold hard surface grate my face.

‘No, I didn’t,’ I said softly.

‘And you can’t account for where you were at lunchtime on the day of the kidnapping.’

‘No, I can’t,’ I whispered. ‘Unless you can find an old tramp called Sticky I slipped a couple of bob to. But you couldn’t exactly call him a character witness. And don’t tell me: the two ferrymen don’t remember a thing.’

Dalziel said quietly, ‘The police got there first. They took
statements in which they claim to have no recollection of you and your briefcase. The police also told them not to say anything to the press or defence team. Said it would prejudice the case.’

‘That’s bloody convenient! What about the kids who passed me the notes for the treasure hunt?’

He shook his head. ‘Do you know how many kids there are in Govan?
Thoosands
. There’s only me, they all look alike, and the police won’t help.’

I sat down at the table and reached out to touch Sam’s hands.

‘I’m sorry, Sam. I’m growing desperate. Sangster thinks he’s got his man and can sit back. Is he even trying to trace the others? If I’m the so-called ringleader where are the rest of my gang?’

She shook her head and squeezed my fingers.

‘All I get from them is that
enquiries are continuing
.’

‘But they’re not, are they?’

‘I don’t think so, Douglas. No.’

The eight days stretched to an interminable ten because of weekends, so that it was mid-June before I had my next change of scenery. It was more than enough time to go mad or slit my wrists. It brought back the boiling desperation of being corralled in a foxhole for a week outside Caen, pinned down by a line of Panzers and their chattering machine guns. But at least back then I had occasional sun on my face, and the option of going down fighting with a gun in my hand. This airless cube was squeezing the life out of me. I thought longingly of the cool depths of the Western Baths.

When I at last stepped back into the dock I felt a brief and stupid sense of release – surely justice would out – until the dead weight of hopelessness crushed me again. It was a rerun of the first petition. If anything, the prosecution case had hardened, while my defence arguments sounded more and
more hollow.
My
gun,
my
bullet, and
I
were placed at the scene of the crime without an alibi. Furthermore, the prosecutor smugly offered a motive for my heinous acts:

‘My lord, we would like to submit this letter from the defendant’s bank, the Scottish Linen Bank.’

He handed two pages to the Sheriff who passed them to Dalziel.

‘Continue with your point,’ the Sheriff requested.

‘For the record, my lord, the first letter states that the defendant had two accounts with the St Vincent Street branch – a current account and a savings account – and both were overdrawn on the sixteenth day of May, some three weeks before the murder. The second letter is a copy of a letter notifying the defendant of this state of affairs.’

I couldn’t hold back.

‘That’s impossible!’ I leaped to my feet. ‘I didn’t have much but I was in the black. I got no letter! They’ve got the wrong account!’

The Sheriff leaned over. ‘The defendant will take his seat and be quiet. Mr Dalziel, please ensure we hear no more from your client.’

‘Yes, my lord.’ Dalziel turned to me and flapped his hands up and down to get me to sit. The prosecutor tried to look grave but I could just tell the smug bastard was holding in a smile.

‘It seems clear from these bank statements that the defendant had financial problems. We also understand that he had a drink problem.’

Dalziel shot up. ‘I protest, my lord. That’s hearsay.’

‘I withdraw the last point. But leaving aside the drinking, the facts are clear about the state of the defendant’s finances. That alone would provide motive enough for the kidnap of a senior banker and the associated demand for a ransom. And it is probably no coincidence that the banker in question was the chief of the very bank used by the defendant.’ He paused for effect. ‘Financial gain
and
revenge.’

I was flabbergasted, but all I could do was sit openmouthed. How can you argue against the rectitude of a Scottish retail bank? The prosecutor piled it on, accusing me of living beyond my means and turning to crime instead of doing an honest day’s work. Crime reporting clearly didn’t count as such, and perhaps contributed to my going off the rails; all those bad examples turning my head.

Hammering home their case, they’d got Lady Gibson’s staff to add to her own sworn testimony that they’d never seen hide nor hair of Douglas Brodie. They still didn’t have to testify in person so I couldn’t confront them. But their statements were written with such damning certainty that even I was beginning to doubt my own evidence – not to mention my sanity. How bad had my concussion been? Had it left me doolally and imagining things? The fragments of memory surrounding my entrance to the flat and waking up next to Gibson’s body still refused to join up. The more I tried to fill in the blanks the more elusive the memories seemed to become.

But apart from that brief interlude, everything else was crystal clear in my mind. The fact that so many key people were denying ever meeting me, and that Sangster had miraculously and inexplicably arrived on the murder scene just after me, convinced me I was being framed. Conveniently for the framers, my memory was blank at the crucial moment; it just made it easier for them to make their case. But why? Why
me
?

Unsurprisingly the hearing had the same outcome as the first, except this time the Sheriff committed me to full trial. For fear of witness harassment –
you bet your life I would
– I was again remanded in custody pending the next stage of the proceedings. The saving grace was that my former life as a Glasgow copper and my present MI5 affiliation kept me from being transferred to Barlinnie. The Sheriff accepted that old lags would take a dim view of cops and spies.

When they escorted me back to my cell I found it had shrunk to coffin size. Sam and Dalziel squeezed in with me and I pressed them for the details I’d refused to hear about, until now.

‘The next thing is a preliminary hearing?’

‘In the High Court, Douglas. Yes.’ Sam said it in such a downbeat way that my already crushed heart sank like a stone. It lodged somewhere in my bowels.

‘When? How long before we get to it?’ I had a rough idea from my police days but I was stupidly hoping the court system would have speeded up in the last eight or so years. Seems it hadn’t. Sam and Dalziel glanced at each other.

Dalziel ventured, ‘Well, the maximum wait is a hundred and ten days.’

‘One hundred and ten! That’s nearly four months!’

‘That’s the maximum, Douglas. It could be sooner.’ Sam reached for my hand.

‘How do we make it happen quicker?’

‘By getting our case together, but it depends on the other side. They will want as long as they can. It puts pressure on us.’

‘To do what?’

Again they exchanged glances.

‘To plead.’

‘Guilty? You’re kidding me. They’d hang me.’

There. I’d said it. The unthinkable. At the back of my mind, buried as deep as I could dig it, was that single thought: I could be hanged if convicted.

‘No, no, Douglas! That won’t happen. You could plead manslaughter. Say it was an accident. The gun went off. Your pals slugged you and made a run for it.’

I looked at her, astonished. She’d actually been thinking about it. Trying to come up with a story that would fit. That would let me off with life in prison instead of having my neck stretched. Perhaps buy time to find out what really happened.
And maybe she actually believed I did it? Why wouldn’t she? It was possible that in some series of supremely clumsy events – a fight? a wrestling match? – I’d shot poor Fraser right between the eyes. It didn’t add up, but I couldn’t prove it. I squeezed her hand back.

‘I’d rather be found innocent or face the drop, if it’s all the same to you, Sam.’

Her face screwed up and I thought the tears would come.
That
would set me off. I hate being pitied. I was providing enough for myself as it was. I hugged her and patted her until she got control. Then I pushed her gently away from me and examined her reddened eyes.

‘Sam,
no plea
. Do you understand? No. Plea. I’m innocent.’

She nodded, and sniffed. ‘Of course you are. We’ll prove it.’

‘That’s the spirit. Once we get Lady Gibson in the dock at the hearing it won’t run to full trial.’

Sam winced and shook her head. ‘The hearing will be in public but any witnesses we might want to call at the full trial will be asked not to attend. It might prejudice the case. That would certainly cover Lady Gibson and her staff.’

‘Bugger. All right, we’ll have to wait for the full trial. What’s the maximum delay between the preliminary hearing and trial?’

‘A hundred and forty days,’ she said.

I did the sums and clenched my fists. ‘So including the wait for a preliminary hearing it could take about eight sodding months just to come to trial!’

She nodded unconvincingly. ‘In theory. But…’

‘But?’

‘Even when we get to the preliminary hearing the prosecution could say – or
we
could – that they’re not ready for trial and seek a continuation. We’ll only get a trial date set when both sides say they’re ready.’

‘What’s the
average
delay between preliminary hearing and trial?’

She bit her lip. ‘It could be up to a year.’

A
year
? Plus four months for the hearing?

I couldn’t take sixteen months in this concrete tomb.

I looked at them both. Pictures of concern. If I told them what I was thinking they’d be even more concerned. I bluffed some heartiness into my voice.

‘Well, Sam, good job you’ve got a big library. After Dumas, we can move straight on to Dickens. Or maybe just start with A and see how far we get? But we’ll skip the Ks if you don’t mind. Kafka’s too close for comfort.’

FIFTEEN

T
hat was the day I stopped shaving. What was the point? I wasn’t going to be seen in public for months. Besides, they never left me alone with the safety razor. They handed it over with the blade already locked in. There wasn’t enough time to unscrew the handle, pull out the blade and slice an artery before a minder grabbed me or got me to hospital. I’d have to think of something else.

As my brain ran through the permutations it was as though I was watching myself from outside, a disinterested observer of my last days. Until the hearing I hadn’t thought I could go lower. Seems I was wrong. Some part of me – the last sliver of optimism – had been hoping for a different outcome.

Over the weekend, that last hope was excised, ground underfoot and swept away. I had a visitor. He snuck into my cell like a thief. I stirred from my fugue as the door creaked open. I sat up.

‘Well, if it isnae my old pal Detective Inspector Duncan Todd. At last.’

‘Wheesht, Brodie. If Sangster found out Ah was here Ah’d be back wearing ma boots oot on the streets as a constable. That’s if Ah still had a job at a’.’

‘You care more about a bloody pension than a friend?’

He coloured and I was glad it stung.

‘It’s no’ like that, Brodie. If Ah could’ve done anything, Ah would’ve.’

‘So what have you brought me? A decent meal? A bottle of Red Label? Some good news that it’s all been a stupid mistake and Sangster will be apologising to me in person? Just before he commits hara-kiri in George Square?’

‘Sadly old pal, nane of the above. Can Ah sit?’

I shrugged and he pulled over the small stool and sat facing me.

‘Fag?’

I took one and we both lit up.

‘I like the whiskers, Brodie. A new look?’

‘It gives me something to do. So tell me, why is Sangster doing this?’

‘Ah don’t think you realise how much you upset him. Now’s his chance.’

‘To frame me?’

Duncan shook his head. ‘He disnae see it that way. He actually thinks you did it.’

‘Why? Why the hell would I have done something like that?’

‘He disnae need to know. He disnae care much why folk do things. He thinks everybody’s capable of foul deeds. And Ah suppose he’s right. But he’s got a particular automatic suspicion about folk that are smarter than him. Ca’ it an inferiority complex, but he jist assumes clever dicks are up to something.’

‘So he’s going to try and nail me for being a clever dick?’

‘Sort of. For making him look stupid.’

‘It’s not hard.’

‘See whit Ah mean?’

I sucked on my fag. Duncan might be my last chance. I needed to calm down, see how I could use him. I spoke steadily.

‘Sangster’s case is full of holes. I’m being set up.’

‘Ye think so? That’s no’ the way it looks. Christ, Brodie, it was a bullet from your gun they dug oot o’ Gibson’s heid. No
one else’s prints on the gun. That’s a fairly compelling argument, is it no’?’

‘So
you
think I did it, too!’

‘No, no. Not at a’, Brodie. Ah’m just telling you how it looks. Tae the casual observer.’

‘I’m more concerned about the casual jurist. What about Sheila Gibson? Is she changing her tune yet? She’s going to have to face us at trial.’

‘She refuses to say anything more to a soul, including the press. Too grief-stricken apparently.’

‘She gave me twenty thousand pounds in ransom money, Duncan!’

‘That’s no’ what she says.’

‘Has Sangster checked with her bank?’

‘Ah could get into real trouble wi’ this, Brodie.’

‘Well, has he?’

‘Aye, apparently. And her bank says no money was handed over.’

My attempt at calm wasn’t going to last long.

‘The lying bastards! Let’s not forget that it was
his
bank! Gibson’s. The Scottish Linen. Whose side would
they
be on, do you think? They even emptied my own accounts. Bloody crooks!’

‘Calm doon, old pal. Ah believe you. But what’s in it for them? Why would they lie aboot losing twenty thousand quid?’

‘Maybe they’re embarrassed. Or don’t want to encourage other kidnappers?’

‘Who knows, Brodie. Ah just know how a bank manager would come across in the witness box. Swollen wi’ righteousness. Wi’ his fingers crossed ahint his back and his tongue going black.’

I tried a different tack. ‘Do you know the coppers working for Sangster on this?’

‘Aye, sure. But Ah cannae go near them. Cannae interfere.’

‘All I’m asking is that you have a quiet word with one of them. Ask him to talk to the ticket collectors at the ferry booths of Kelvinhaugh and Govan. Ask them if they remembering talking to me. I mean why would I be charging backwards and forwards across the Clyde if I was a kidnapper?’

‘It disnae prove anything, Brodie. You could be laying a false trail or something. There’s nothing there that would get you aff the hook.’

‘What about the weans?’

‘What weans?’

‘The ones that gave me directions. It was like a treasure hunt. I was sent round and round like a dafty, following instructions. The last one was a phone call at the Govan Ferry booth. He told me to go to the tenement in Marr Street. How else would I have got there?’

Duncan raised his eyebrows. He almost had no need to say it out loud.

‘As Sangster will put it – has put it –
because you were one of the kidnappers
.’

Duncan’s visit simply underlined the strength of the case they’d rigged against me. I’d be held in custody for a year, have my name and reputation – such as it was – dragged through the papers, and be found guilty. I’d either be locked away for good or face the gallows. I was determined to do neither. The first would be a living hell. The second… Years ago as a trainee copper we’d been sent to Barlinnie to have a ghoulish tour of the hanging shed. Not a separate building, far less a shed; simply a room on the third floor of D Hall with a rope dangling from the room above and a trapdoor through to the second floor. The thought of it froze my marrow.

It wasn’t so much the moment of death I feared – I’d seen how efficient the hangman was and knew my neck would break in a trice. Ending it all. It was the dread of it, the waiting and the build-up with all the ceremony and para
phernalia of ritual execution. The short walk from the condemned cell across the landing and through the white door. Guided into position on that hinged hatch. The bag pulled over my head so I couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. The noose tightening about my neck. Like the end for my old pal, Hugh Donovan.

I didn’t want to be unmanned.

So why wait? Only the occasional visit by Sam kept me from tying a sheet to the high bars and round my neck. But even her presence was provoking smaller and smaller sparks of interest. It’s hard to go on loving someone who thinks you’re guilty – of something. The arguments inside me had resolved themselves. I’d become numb. It was no longer a question of would I or wouldn’t I. It was a case of how and when.