‘Shit.’
‘Shit, indeed.’
‘I suppose it’s an occupational hazard.’
‘You might say that. It’s a mess round there.’
‘A fight?’
‘Not exactly. More like an accident wi’ a mincing machine. The owner got a bit carried away. Says he went off to work but returned home because he forgot something. Disturbed Craven in the act. The man says he was terrified. Not as terrified as Paddy Craven must have been when he got a carving knife in his belly.’
‘Carried away?’
‘Six stab wounds, then kicked Paddy’s teeth in. Or maybe the other way about.’
‘Good God! Who was this bloke? Sweeney Todd?’
‘One of yer Jewish fraternity. Maybe they’ve stopped turning the other cheek.’
‘Are you charging him?’
‘With what? He finds a burglar in his own hoose and he defends himself.’
‘Six times?’
‘Anyway, that’s the end of that. Rough justice. Rougher for Craven’s wife and weans, even if he was an old rogue.’
‘For the record, who was this knifeman?’
‘Victor Galdakis.’
‘Polish Jew?’
‘Lithuanian, he says. At least Ah think that’s what he said. English bad. Scots even worse. Runs a couple of stalls in Barrowland, he says.’
‘What about our pawnbroker pal, McGill? Are you going to bring him in?’
‘No point. He’s mair use to me where he is. Ah know how to get hold of him. Besides, Ah might need a wee borrow . . .’
I put the phone down and walked back to my desk. I was breathing fast, as though I’d done forty press-ups. My forehead was wet. I opened the window to let chill air in. It was as if Duncan’s news had set something off. Maybe I was getting squeamish in my old age.
I called Shimon Belsinger and arranged to see him and tell him how conclusively the case had been closed. One week, from start to finish, perpetrator found, justice meted out, payment on result.
Late morning we met in a café on the Byres Road. Shimon hunched over a milky tea, listening intently, stroking his great beard.
‘You’ve done well, Brodie. My colleagues will be pleased.’ He reached inside his overcoat and pulled out an envelope. ‘This is your fee and your bonus.’ He smiled. ‘You should have taken your time. Earned a bit more.’
‘Miss Campbell made the same point. But that’s how it goes at times.’
‘This man. The Jew who killed the thief. Do you know his name? Is he at Garnethill?’
‘Galdakis, Victor Galdakis. DI Todd says he’s Lithuanian. He has a flat in the Gorbals. So maybe he goes to Isaac’s synagogue.’
‘His business?’
‘Stallholder. That’s all I know.’
‘We should find him. We should thank him.’
‘I suppose so.’ It seemed a wee bit tasteless to applaud a frenzied killing, but I understood the broad sentiment.
‘Dr Tomas will know him. Tomas studied at Vilnius. He knows all the Lithuanian Jews. The ones that made it here.’
‘Just warn Tomas not to creep up on him.’
EIGHT
In the afternoon I went back to the day job with plenty of material. This would please Sandy Logan, my temporary editor standing in for the injured Big Eddie Paton.
Eddie was out of hospital now and convalescing at home, but when I’d visited him last week I’d found him threatening a part-time return. It was a remarkable turnaround. I’d doubted we’d ever see him back. He’d lost several stone in weight and, with it, his bounce. And nom de plume:
Wee
Eddie from now on, bless his ink-stained heart.
I felt irrationally guilty; the self-styled Glasgow Marshals had been after me that day, back in September. The Marshals were a wild gang of vigilantes recruited from the ranks of jobless and homeless demobbed soldiers. Fizzing with a sense of injustice, they’d been framed for several vile murders and thought I held the key to proving their innocence. But I’d been elsewhere the day they stormed the newsroom and took it out on Eddie Paton’s poor wee head.
Ever since, I’d done my best to support Sandy and Eddie by cranking out a decent crime column every edition. All the time in the absence of my mentor, the doyen of crime journalism, Wullie McAllister. Wullie was another casualty of the summer of madness; he’d got too close to the wicked creatures who’d committed the murders and framed the Marshals. He’d been abducted and beaten to within an inch of his life and lay, mouldering and vacant, in the Erskine convalescent home.
It had been a torrid summer, right enough.
At my desk I bashed out an article on the violent death of a thief. At breakfast tables all over Glasgow, it would raise a chorus of sanctimonious variations on
that’s what ye get for
. . . It might take their minds off the front page about the Jewish refugee ship
Lochita
off the coast of Palestine. I wondered if Isaac and his son had come to verbal blows over it. Some four thousand rioting illegal immigrants had set upon our poor bloody soldiers, and one of our boys had died. How would the War Office explain that to his mum?
I slid carbon copies into Sandy Logan’s hands. A short while later he wandered over to drape his long limbs over the filing cabinet by my desk and peer down at me. He took his pipe out of his mouth and pointed at my draft.
‘A thoughtful piece, Brodie. Even-handed. One might say equivocal.’
I nodded. ‘I hoped our readers would be similarly torn. But I doubt it. It seemed harsh punishment for nicking some trinkets.’
‘The ultimate price. I think this needs a follow-up.’
‘How?’
‘Go and interview the man, this Lithuanian. Bring us remorse, rage, sorrow, pride . . . bring us
emotion
, Brodie. We’ll run this tomorrow and say there’ll be a second piece on Thursday. Human interest.’
‘I’ll drop by on my way in tomorrow, Sandy. Catch Mr Galdakis before he leaves for work.’
Come Wednesday, I wrapped my coat round me, pulled down my hat and set off into driving rain. Last week’s gales were heralds. We were in that suicidal period between autumn and full winter when the Westerlies just sweep over Glasgow each day and dump the Atlantic on us. Galdakis lived on Bedford Street, south of the river. I would have hailed a taxi but Sandy said the paper was economising. I found a tram to get over Glasgow Bridge and then trudged through the puddles across Laurieston. I was curious to meet a man so handy with a knife. I also had one niggling thought that kept cropping up: why was Galdakis robbed in the week, and not on the Sabbath like all the rest?
Early morning and the broad streets were cleansed of people. Some sheltered under shop awnings in the forlorn hope of the rain easing off for just five minutes. The house I was looking for was above a haberdashery. I found the door and walked into the dank entry, shaking the rain off like a terrier. Galdakis was on the first floor. I left wet footprints and a trail of drips all the way up the stairs. I took off my hat, bashed it against my coat, put it back on and rapped on his door. It took a couple of knocks before I heard movement. The door edged open. A thickset face peered at me, the eyes wary and on a level with mine.
‘Mr Galdakis?’
‘Police? I seen police.’
I took a gamble. ‘I work with Inspector Todd.’ Which was almost true.
The eyes kept flicking at me and behind me. ‘What you want?’
‘A few more questions, please. Just five minutes.’
The door swung open and he stood back to let me in, framed in the open door of the room he’d just left. I caught a glimpse of tossed bedding. He wore a stained singlet and trousers. His belly bulged above and below a broad leather belt. Ahead was a short dingy corridor leading to a closed door. ‘Go in front,’ he said. I stepped past him, my nostrils twitching at the heavy smell of sweat and boozy breath. He followed me. I felt my shoulders hunch as he marched close behind me, his heavy boots clumping on the lino.
‘In here?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
I pushed at the door and entered an icy sitting room. I stood dripping and shivering on the lino. A wooden chair lay against the wall, its legs snapped and twisted. A pair of sagging armchairs had been pushed to one side against a small sideboard. A chunky metal safe had pride of place on it. Temptation enough for a ‘gasman’ to break his habit and come calling during the week, thinking Galdakis was at his market stalls. He must have been watching the house.
The dark-patterned wallpaper was stained along one side as though a bucket of water had been thrown at it. The fireplace was barren and cold. There was one grimy window with half-pulled curtains. Through the dirt and the gap I could see a desolate back green.
Suddenly I didn’t want to be in this space. I moved closer to the wall. My heart was racing again. Flu?
I turned to Galdakis and inspected him properly. A big man, about my height but heavier. A sullen Slav face in which the eyes glittered and probed. Though his paunch strained at the broad brown belt, it was clear that he was no fat pushover. The shoulders and chest spoke of hurling bales of hay high up on to wagons or wrestling yaks. I took off my hat and perched it on the mantelpiece to drip. I pulled out my notebook and pencil. He looked at them warily as if they were guns.
‘This is where you fought the intruder?’
A grin crept over his broad face. He nodded.
‘What time was this?’
‘I told Inspector. ’Bout nine in morning.’
‘You’d gone to work?’
‘I come back. Forgot keys for chain on my stalls.’ He was slowly pacing past me, examining the wall, glancing round the room, as though he was thinking of buying it. Or enjoying the reminiscence. He was moving silently now, his big feet seeking out each step like a bad actor in a pantomime.
Behind you! cry the kids.
‘Did you know the man? Had you seen him before?’
‘He come before. He say: Look at gas. I not think so.’
‘You were suspicious?’
‘I not fool.’ His mouth twisted in a malevolent grin.
‘Where did you get the knife?’
‘Always have knife.’ He patted his chest where his jacket pocket would be. Suddenly I was glad to meet him in just his grubby vest.
‘You live alone?’
He nodded.
‘Were you afraid, Mr Galdakis?’
He stopped pacing and looked at me, puzzled by the question. He shook his head and grinned at me again.
‘I see you broke a chair. Was it a big fight?’
He shrugged. ‘Not so big.’
‘Can you describe what happened?’
He shrugged again. ‘I come home. Door not locked. I come in quiet. I hear him try numbers.’ He pointed at the dial of the safe. ‘He come out. I hit him.’
‘With the knife?’
‘Yes.’
I imagined how Paddy Craven must have felt stepping into the dim hall and feeling the hammer blow of a knife to his stomach. He would have been thrown back into this room with the force of it.
‘He fell in here? Then what? What did you do?’
‘I come in. I kick him. I angry.’
‘Of course. But why did you use the knife again?’
‘My house.’ He pointed at his chest. ‘He thief.’
‘You stabbed him
six
times. Did you know that?’
‘I angry.’
‘Mad.’
‘Mad as hell.’
‘Did he fight back?’
He pursed his lips in contempt and shook his head. I stared at him, his bulk and his bad breath filling the room. Anger would take you only so far. After a few stabs you would be operating on some different emotion. I remembered Sandy’s request.
‘Are you sorry you killed a man?’
‘Thief!’
‘Are you sorry you killed a thief?’
‘No.’ He mimicked spitting on the floor. ‘Pig.’ I scribbled a shorthand note.
‘You are from Lithuania?’
He examined the question. ‘Yes.’
‘Jewish?’
He nodded.
‘Which synagogue.’
‘I no like going.’
Fair enough. I’m a lapsed Protestant.
‘When did you leave Lithuania?’
‘When Russians come.’
‘At the end of the war?’
He nodded.
‘What was your job? In Lithuania? What did you do for a living?’
He shrugged. ‘Farm.’
‘Now you have two stalls in Glasgow? At the market. Where did you get the money?’
His broad face creased in thought. ‘I bring little money.’
‘Lithuanian money?’
‘Gold.’
‘Where did you get the gold?’
Now his brows were corrugated. His response was truculent. ‘Why you ask? I save money. All my life. What this mean? Why police ask this?’
‘Did I say I was police, Mr Galdakis? I’m not.’
As his brain absorbed this he stepped towards me. He moved fast for a big man. ‘Who are you?’
‘I’m from the
Glasgow Gazette
. My readers want to know all about you.’
‘No! You not tell! You not write ’bout me.’
His face was a foot from mine, his mouth contorted in anger, his breath a blowtorch. He knocked the notebook from my hands and grabbed the lapels of my coat. My hands were down by my sides. It left me only one alternative. My head was already pulled back as far as I could from his stench. I jabbed forward. The ridge of my brow caught him full in the nose. He staggered back and fell over one of the armchairs. He went crashing into the valley between the two chairs and flailed around until he dragged himself upright. Blood was pouring from his nose.
‘I kill you! I fucking kill you, bastard!’
He jumped on to the chair, roaring and screaming. He leaped down at me swinging his meaty fist towards my face. Maybe my head-butt had dazed him. Maybe he was just slow, but I seemed to have plenty of time to step to one side and punch him on his big fat cheekbone as he blundered past. This time he crashed to the bare floor and lay groaning. I curbed my urge to kick him. When had that become my instinct? I waited, rubbing my knuckles. He got on to his hands and knees and then sat back against the stained wall. He held his face and nose with one hand and leaned on the other.
‘You bloody bastard. You bastard you.’
I picked up my notebook and pencil and put them away. I remembered my hat. I put it on and touched the brim to him.
‘Don’t worry about getting up. I’ll see myself out. Good morning, Mr Galdakis.’
As I walked down the stairs and out into the fresh air I felt the familiar aftershock of the adrenalin. My heart rate slowed as if I’d got something out my system. I sucked in the oxygen and decided to walk back to the newsroom to clear my thoughts, the first of which was how to explain to my readers that an interview had turned into a rammy. The second of which was to wonder exactly what emotions Galdakis had revealed in this piece commissioned by Sandy. Remorse wasn’t one of them. Just raw, thuggish anger. Some men are born mean, some achieve meanness, some have meanness thrust upon them. Galdakis ticked all three.