I had to get my bearings.
Glasgow’s artery was the Clyde. And, like all arteries, it had a pulse. There was always loud activity on the river or along its shores. If I could get to it, I could get some kind of bearing.
I strained the smog for the sounds of the river. Nothing. Just the bleating of car and bus horns as drivers warned each other of their snail’s pace approach in the smog. Guessing that the sounds of traffic would indicate the city centre, I took it as a bearing and headed in the opposite direction, again dodging the sounds of footsteps in the fog. I still managed to scare an older couple when I nearly bumped into them. The old man drew his wife to him as they both took in my appearance with startled, terrified eyes. I mumbled an apology and stumbled on, leaving them shocked and puzzling as to whether I would turn back into Dr Jekyll before midnight.
I reckoned I must have been heading toward the Trongate, but when I found myself following the flank of a massive, ornate building, and could hear the rhythmic sounds of chugging locomotives, I realized that I must have staggered across the street without recognizing any landmarks and was now at the back side of the St Enoch Station. Again I paused, resting against the wall and massaging my feet, one by one. This was good and bad: I was nearer the river but also closer to Buchanan Street. More people. And more coppers.
I pushed off again, heading into the maze of streets and alleys behind the station. A sign told me I was in Dunlop Street. Now I could clearly hear the horns and claxons of barges and tugs navigating the smog-bound water. If I handled this right, I might even find the suspension footbridge near Custom Quay and get over to the south side of the Clyde, where I could either get lost in the warren of the Gorbals or trace my way along the river.
I paused at the end of the street, which opened out onto Clyde Street and the riverfront. I checked both ways as much as I could: the smog had gotten no denser but nor had it lifted; I guessed it had settled in for the night and that gave me some added comfort.
Down here, next to the river, the streets would be empty at this time of night, particularly on a night like this. All the sounds of activity came from the Clyde. I turned right and, after a few yards, ran across the street to the riverside, following it until I could make out the stone arch of the suspension footbridge. The suspension bridge across the Clyde was like a scaled down version of the Clifton Suspension Bridge, with two stone-built arches, one at either end, supporting the steel cables that held the bridge in place. Again I paused to listen out for the sounds of anyone about before passing through the arch and walking quickly across the bridge.
I saw the uniformed copper at the same time he saw me, when I was halfway across the river. It was the black silhouette of his high-crowned peaked cap in the grey-green smog that identified the approaching figure as a policeman. To him, I would have just been a shape in the gloom. But, as soon as he got close, even with my prisoner jacket hidden beneath the army coat, he would see my shoeless feet and generally disreputable mien. In Glasgow, ‘don’t like the look of you’ was grounds enough for a copper to feel your collar until something more substantial could be trumped up. In my case, no trumping-up would be needed. I turned on my heel so fast it was practically a pirouette; my thinking was that, in this miasma, the copper wouldn’t be sure if I had been heading towards him at all, or if he had simply caught up with someone walking in the same direction as him.
‘Hey… you…’ he called out and I picked up the pace, hunching my shoulders and pulling my coat collar up. My balletic skills had clearly not been up to scratch.
‘Hey you… I’m talking to you! Wait there a minute!’ I heard his hobnails match my pace. I didn’t look over my shoulder, instead breaking into a sprint, back the way I had come. More shouts and I could hear him running after me. I had to open enough distance for the smog to cloak me again, but the heavy greatcoat was holding me back.
I had to risk it: when I broke through the stone archway I turned sharp right, then jumped the railings on the riverside, hoping there was enough bank to stop me careering straight into the Clyde. There was, and I dropped flat into some foul-smelling, oily muck. It was all over my hands and, in a moment of desperate inspiration, I smeared my face with it. My hair was black and the mud on my face should make me less easy to spot. I lay low and listened as the copper ran past on the other side of the railings.
I was just about to congratulate myself on my quick thinking when I heard the metal segments in the soles of his boots grate as he came to a sudden halt.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The policeman was only feet away from me and, even in the smog, if he turned and looked down, he would see me. At that range, I doubted very much if my improvised camouflage would do much to conceal me. I tried to ease back and down the slope, but I was afraid that doing so would cause a sound, any sound, to attract the beat copper’s attention.
I watched him. He was a big lad, right enough, youngish, probably in his early twenties. He used a bicycle- type lamp to shine around him as he searched for me. He was too green to know that the only use a flashlight has in the smog is when it’s pointing at the ground; pointing it into the mist only served to make the smog more impenetrable. For some reason that only a physicist could explain, it reflected any light directed at it.
I could tell he was listening intently. But, as I had hoped, he was searching in the wrong direction, thinking I’d run off along Clyde Street. The big question was this: had he challenged me because he had been alerted to look out for me, or was it simply because he had seen a suspicious-looking character who clearly had tried to avoid him? If it was the first, then I had trouble; if it was the second, he would probably give up and go back to patrolling. The one thing that made me hopeful was that he hadn’t blown his police whistle to attract other coppers.
After what seemed an interminable time of peering into the smog and listening, he shook his head irritatedly and headed back towards the footbridge. I watched him until he was swallowed up again by the smog.
There was no point in trying to cross by the bridge, so I turned around and slid down the embankment on my backside, again trying to make sure I didn’t end up in the Clyde. As it turned out, there was a towpath running along close to the river. I guessed that it had been used at one time for horse-drawn barges, although it was elevated and separated from the waterline by a high, brick-reinforced embankment. I offered up a small prayer to whatever gods were looking after me: the towpath meant I could move without being spotted. Hopefully.
My feet didn’t hurt any more, something that caused me concern not relief. They didn’t hurt because they were numb. Sitting down on the towpath, I eased off my mud-caked sock and felt my right foot. Like the left, it had the body temperature of an iceberg and was insensitive to my massaging.
I needed to get sorted out. And quick.
I hobbled along the towpath, not encountering anyone or anything other than the occasional scuttling sound of rats scattering as I approached. As I approached the Jamaica Bridge, I was aware that I was right in the heart of Glasgow, but passing through below street level. I kept going along the path, trying to ignore the strange experience of walking on feet that couldn’t feel the ground beneath them; but the combination of physical numbness with the enclosure of my senses by the smog, the quiet fluid sounds of the river and the distant noises of the city above me all conspired to add to the feeling of unreality.
For some reason, the song You Take the High Road started running through my head. The song was about the ancient Celtic belief that while the living travel on the surface of the earth, the dead take the ‘Low Road’, passing underground; and only occasionally do the two paths meet, when the ‘Low Road’ travellers reappear as ghosts. As I walked smog-blinded and cold-numbed along the towpath, I started to wonder if this was what it was like to take the Low Road.
In a time of crisis, I sure knew how to cheer myself up.
As it happened, I had to come up to street level when the towpath ended, not passing under the bridge but leading back up to the main road. I crossed the road and tramway at Jamaica Bridge, but as soon as I was on the other side, I found my way back to the waterfront on the Broomielaw. I paused, questioning the logic of sticking to the river. This was no forgotten towpath anymore, but the point at which the Clyde became the factory floor of the city, and I found myself with quays to my left and grimy warehouses and store-yards to my right.
I had a decision to make: whether to take to the city streets and try to cross to the west side in as plain view as the smog afforded, or stick to the waterfront and risk running into nightshift workers on the Clyde. Of course, there was a limit to what I had to fear from Glaswegian dockside workers swinging hammers or swinging the lead on the backshift, and the smog was still a cloak I could hide behind, but there was another concern: the River Police.
