So it’s just as well Glasgow’s a
northern
outpost of civilisation. The cold and damp keep tempers in check for much of the year. It’s just too dispiriting to have a rammy in the rain. But even Glasgow knows the taste of summer. When the tarmac bubbles, and the tenement windows bounce back the light. When only the great green parks can absorb and dissipate the rays. When the women bare their legs and the men bow their bald pates to the frying sun. When lust boils up and tempers fray.
When suddenly, it’s
bring out your dead
. . .
For the moment, in blithe ignorance, Glasgow was enjoying a hot July and I was enjoying Glasgow. It had been seven long years since I’d last stomped its checkerboard streets and bathed my ears in the tortured melodies of my countrymen. Six years of fighting across North Africa and Europe and one year trying to get over it.
What had I to show for it? They’d taken back the officer crowns and my life-and-death authority over a company of Seaforth Highlanders. A burden removed but my heart went with it. Now I queued with the housewives and the gap-toothed old fellas for a loaf of bread and a tin of Spam. I hated Spam. I had no more ration coupons than the wide-boy who’d spent the war dodging the call-up and pestering the lonely lassies. I had no wife to set my tea on the table or light the fire in the grate. I had no children to cuddle or skelp, read to or protect.
On the credit side, I had the clothes I stood up in – secondhand, having discarded my Burton’s demob suit in the Firth of Clyde. Not a sartorial statement, merely a choice between wearing it or drowning. My officer’s Omega had survived the dip as it had survived bombardments, desert dust and machine-gun vibrations. In a box in my digs, wrapped in a bit of velvet, lay the bronze stars of action in Africa, France and Germany. But they were common enough currency these days. Even the silver cross with its purple and white ribbon had little rarity value; not after Normandy.
I had a degree in languages; my French now sprinkled with the accents and oaths of the folk whose homes we razed in our liberation blitzkrieg; my German salted with the vocabulary of the tormented and the tormentors in the concentration camps I’d worked in after VE Day last year.
Outweighing all the negatives, I had a job. Not any old job. The job I was meant for after too many years of detours through academia and law enforcement. I was the newest and no doubt worst-paid journalist on the
Glasgow Gazette, the voice of the people, by the people, for the people
. Understudy and cup-bearer to Wullie McAllister, Chief Crime Reporter. The stories I’d fed him back in April about the wrongful hanging of my old pal Hugh Donovan had given him a spectacular series of scoops which had axed the inglorious careers of several prominent policemen. In return, when I came looking for a job on the
Gazette
, he’d opened doors for me. Mostly saloon doors, but that was part and parcel of the job.
It was another man’s death that called me to witness this morning. Big Eddie Paton, my editor, scuttled up to my desk in the far corner of the newsroom.
‘Get your hat, Brodie. McAllister’s no’ around. They’ve found a body.
Foul play
. Go take a look and bring me back a’ the details . . .’
Big Eddie rolled the words ‘foul play’ over his tongue as though he was savouring a single malt. I’d only been on the job a fortnight but I knew that when he said ‘details’ he meant as grisly as possible. Yet I liked Eddie. Beneath his rants and rages he was a newspaperman right down to the ink in his varicose veins. He could turn a run-of-the-mill tale of council overspend into a blood-boiling account of official corruption and incompetence.
The ‘big’ in front of Eddie was of course ironic. If you put a ruler alongside Big Eddie toe to top, you’d run out of Eddie about the 5’ 2” mark. He earned his name from his girth. And his mouth. His office attire was braces, tartan waistcoat and armbands. He was fast on his feet and could materialise by your desk like a genie, fat hands tucked into his waistcoat pockets or fingering his pocket watch. Time was always running out for Eddie.
‘How did you hear?’
Eddie tapped his pug nose. ‘Ah’m surprised at you, Brodie. One of your ex-comrades tipped us the wink.’
In my time in the police I’d been aware of a cosy arrangement between a few of my fellow coppers and the press. For a couple of quid they’d make a call to an editor to leak some newsworthy bit of criminality, such as a prominent citizen being arrested for drunken or obscene behaviour. I’d tried to stamp it out, but now I was on the other side, my scruples seemed a wee bit quaint. It could be seen as a useful public service. Is that what six years of war does to you? You lose your moral footing?
I assumed Eddie’s instruction about my hat was figurative. It was broiling outside. I’d have left my jacket too if I’d had more confidence in the office protocol for greeting the dead. I grabbed my notebook and a couple of sharp pencils and set off into the sweltering streets of Glasgow. I hopped on a tram on Union Street and got off down by the dockside at the Broomielaw. I walked past the shuttered faces of corrugated iron and wood till I spotted the police car parked askew outside a shattered goods shed. The warehouse had taken a pasting in the blitz of ’41, and Glasgow weather and hooligans had been putting the boot in ever since. The big sliding door was jammed open with rust and distortion. There was a gap wide enough to slide through into a great echoing furnace. And there was a stench.
On the far side, in a shaft of sunlight slicing through the torn roof, stood a clutch of mourners. Two uniformed policemen and one civvie, presumably a detective, but all with their jackets over their arms and braces on show. They were gazing at a long pale lump that lay between their feet. They were arguing.
‘Should we no’ wait for the doctor, sir? And the forensics?’ said a uniform. His pale young face and the sergeant’s stripes on his jacket glowed white in the gloom.
The detective bristled. ‘And what’s that gonna tell us? That he’s deid? Ah can see he’s deid. Would you no’ be deid if you’d had that done to you? Ah just want to know
who
he is!’
I walked nearer and could see the dilemma. It was a body all right. A man’s. Podgy with skinny white legs. Shockingly naked apart from a pair of fouled pants. His mother would have ticked him off. His hands were tied behind him and his feet strapped together, with his own belt. But no matter where you looked, your eyes were always dragged back to the head. Or where the head should be. For the moment it was merely a presumption. It reminded me of a curious kid at the infirmary with its head stuck in a pot. To see if it would fit. But this very dead man-child had chosen a bucket. A grey knobbly bucket.
As I joined the crowd the officers turned their eyes to me. The impatient one snapped: ‘Who the fuck are you?’
‘Brodie. From the
Gazette
.’ Our eyes met in a spark of mutual recognition. And dislike. His name would come to me.
‘Brodie, is it? Aye well, here’s something to wake up your readers, Brodie.’
‘Who is it?’ Then I realised what a stupid question that was. ‘I mean any identification? Anyone reported missing?’
I cast my eyes around the shadows looking for a pile of clothes. There was just a shovel and a small mound of grey. The sergeant cut in: ‘We’re just waiting for the man wi’ the Xray machine to come by.’
That earned some guffaws. The detective tried to trump the witticism.
‘Are you like this on Christmas Day, Brodie? Desperate to open your presents?’
Now I could see properly. The body wasn’t
wearing
a bucket. He was wearing the contents of the bucket. I could also see the long rope trailing away from his ankle strap. I looked up. Sure enough there was a beam above us. I guessed this poor sod had been hung upside down by his ankles and then lowered until his head was fully in the bucket. Then they would have poured in the concrete. Whoever did it must have waited patiently until it set, and hauled the dead man up a couple of feet to get the bucket off. Prudence? Meanness – was it their only coal scuttle? Or to remove all evidence? Then why dump the shovel? Maybe it was as simple as wanting to leave as brutal a message as possible. This man had to be silenced and that’s what they’d done. I shuddered at the horror of his last moments.
I glanced again at the detective: rheumy-eyed and meanmouthed, long broken-veined nose. Hat pushed back on his head. The name came back. Sangster. Detective Inspector Walter Sangster. I’d run into Sangster before the war when I was a sergeant with the Tobago Street detectives. By reputation he was volatile, someone with a short temper and an even shorter concentration span. I had taken an instant dislike to him in ’37 and found no reason to change my mind on renewing our acquaintance today.
Sangster turned to his fresh-faced sergeant, whose forehead was sheened in sweat. ‘Get me something heavy.’
The sergeant flicked his head at his even younger constable. The lad handed his uniform jacket to his sergeant and set off into the piles of rubble. He eventually came back with a silly grin and a torn strip of steel girder.
Sangster sized it up. ‘What are you waiting for, man? Hit it!’
The constable raised the girder in both hands and swung it at the dead man’s thick head. A lump of concrete broke off. Encouraged, the young officer swung again and more cracks appeared.
‘Go canny, now. Don’t smash the face up or we’re back to square one.’
The officer began delicately jabbing at his target using the steel like a spear. Suddenly the bucket-shaped lump broke in two. Too much sand in the mix. The constable used his boot to push aside the two halves of the concrete death mask and revealed the face itself. The tortured skin was bleached and burned by the lime. The nose and cheekbones were blue where the sadists had beaten him before drowning him in cement. His last moments had contorted his face in terror and anguish.
‘Jesus Christ!’
‘In the name of the wee man!’
‘You ken who
that
is?’
I’d been otherwise engaged for the last seven years, so I asked the dumb question. ‘Who?’
Sangster curled his lips. ‘Ah thought you were a reporter? Do you no’ recognise Councillor Alec Morton?’
I stared down at the man. He looked worse with a name. My spirit revolted at this latest addition to my mental gallery of violent deaths. Was there no end to it? Then, behind us, came steps and a familiar cigarette-and booze-roughened rasp.
‘Did I hear you right, Chief Inspector?’ he called out.
I turned to see Wullie McAllister, doyen of crime reporting at the
Gazette
, strolling towards us. He was able to pose his question despite the fag jammed in the corner of his mouth. He had his jacket slung over his shoulder and his sleeves rolled up. His thin scalp shone in the greasy light. The years of mutton pies and booze had not been kind, nor had his choice of profession. He would be lucky to draw his pension for a year beyond retirement. Glasgow statistics were against him, against all of us. Was he my ghost of years to come?
I assumed Wullie’s query was aimed at Sangster. Seems Sangster had taken advantage of the war to get himself promoted.
Sangster turned to me. ‘The organ grinder’s arrived. You don’t have to rack your brains coming up wi’ penetrating questions any more, eh, Brodie?’ The remark garnered some sycophantic chuckles from his cronies.
‘Your sense of humour hasn’t kept up with your promotions, Sangster.’
I had the satisfaction of wiping the grin off his sallow face.
Wullie got between us. ‘I see you two are getting on like a hoose on fire.’ Then he saw what – who – lay at our feet.
‘Alas, pair Alec! I knew him, Brodie: a fellow of infinite jest, who liked his pint. That’s an awfu’ way to go.’
Wullie and I didn’t stay long. No one knew anything. No one had any idea why Morton had been murdered, far less why it had been so brutal. Sangster had run out of sarcasm. We left them to ruminate and walked out into the blinding light.
‘You knew Sangster, then?’ he asked me.
‘I knew
of
him. Saw him about. But never had the pleasure of working with him.’
‘He’s a hard bastard, but fairly clean. Relatively speaking, of course. Not the sharpest truncheon on the beat. More low cunning than great deductive brain. Watch your back, Brodie.’