The bar staff had looked at me with the sort of blank expression reserved for non locals and people who weren’t buying. The two customers I quizzed gave me even less than that. If I’d had a mobile in my pocket I could have given directory enquiries a pop but I could hardly afford the bus fare, never mind a mobile phone.
I wandered back up the main drag and headed towards the shops the bus had passed as it had entered the village. On my left I found a Chinese restaurant and a light bulb went on. Martin was big on his Chinese food. His tastes might have changed but I didn’t think so.
The restaurant was small but welcoming. It was too early in the day for a crowd but there were still a few tables buzzing with chat. A matronly looking Chinese woman appeared to take my order and I had to disappoint her. I explained that I was a friend of Martin’s just back from the big smoke and that I’d had my bag stolen on the train north. I knew he lived in Eaglesham but I didn’t have his address — could they help?
She drew me a blank and I thought I was out on my backside but one of the diners had ear wigged the conversation, and beckoned me over. The Chinese lady threw him a look of disdain but he either missed it or didn’t give a rats. He told me that Martin didn’t live in Eaglesham but in a smaller village up the road called Jackton. He didn’t know the address but he described the house and with thanks I was gone.
Jackton turned out to be a fair walk but its size made finding Martin’s house easy and I stared at the front door for an age.
A decade earlier I would have envisaged myself kicking the door in and confronting him. I had envisaged myself beating him within an inch of his life. Dark night after dark night I dreamed of this moment — and then some — but now I just wondered what the hell I was doing here. Did I really need his help to crack the Credit Union? After all wasn’t it just a toy town bank? The answer was no — it wasn’t and I was scraping the bottom of a fairly deep barrel. One that had given up everything but Martin. After this I was a busted flush.
I stared at the door and thought — this is the bastard that had put me away for the best part of fifteen years. This is the man that had hung me out in a way that was hard to fathom.
I could still see him in the dock spouting forth — me open-mouthed as he spat out every tiny detail. He never looked at me once. Not even the swiftest of glances. He fixed his eyes on a spot behind the prosecuting lawyer and kept them there.
Not that he couldn’t feel my gaze. It was a laser burning into his head — a laser loaded with all the hate I could muster. Yet he was an unblocked dam of information that flooded across the courtroom and drowned me.
As I stood at the door and looked at my watch I thought about all the time that the bastard had taken away. Every single second that could never be handed back. How he had walked free from the court and I had walked away in handcuffs. Him to a future outside prison walls. Me to one inside. And what would this visit achieve? After all he had sent the letter. Whatever lay in the safety deposit box was surely known to him. Yet there lay the intrigue. If he did know, then why give it to me? Bad news seemed the most logical conclusion. I was to be set up again. Was that it? Am I supposed to open the box and the contents lead me straight back to prison — or worse? Why else would he lead me to the key?
I know the bastard well. Is this his back up plan? His security blanket. Send me right back in. Go straight to jail — do not pass go. But why? He must have known I would look for him now I was out.
Before the Castlemilk and Easterhouse jobs I’d considered tracking him down, but it chewed my gut like cancer to think about it. Now I had no choice. Whatever lay in that box was going to be revealed. Either right now, right here or, with Martin’s help, after I did Drumchapel.
I kicked the door. One way or another the mystery ended here. At least that’s what I thought at that moment. As it turned out life is far from that simple.
The door flew open and Martin stood before me. Less hair, stooped and a good four stone heavier but it was Martin. If I expected shock at my presence it wasn’t to be. He smiled as recognition took hold and, standing back, asked if I still took two sugar and milk. It was far from the response I had been expecting.
I walked into the house and was swallowed by an idyllic cottage — layout replete with large open hearth fire, overstuffed armchair and bright chintzy curtains over lattice windows. The floor was stone with a large rug dead centre and a couple of two seat sofas sat at right angles to each other. The ceiling was low and stripped with beams that made ducking a necessity for anyone over two feet tall. The walls were rough hewn sandstone and, opposite the fire, was a monumental sideboard and display cabinet. Just at that moment a grandfather clock chimed.
All of this would have been perfectly normal if it wasn’t for the fact that I was standing in one of a small row of ex-council nineteen sixties, breezeblock homes. It was hard to fathom the dichotomy of exterior and interior but Martin resolved it in seconds.
‘I bought it like this. The previous owners were in their eighties. They always wanted a farmhouse but couldn’t afford it. So they did this. You should see the bedrooms. Drink?’
I almost missed the offer but the sound of glass on glass as Martin whipped two tumblers from the drinks cabinet meant we had moved on from tea to something stronger. I nodded my head. Martin waved at one of the sofas and I sat down. He chinked and clinked until a four-finger measure of whisky and ice appeared over my shoulder.
‘ Highland Park. Or have you changed.’
I hadn’t had a glass of Highland Park malt whisky since the day before I was arrested. I gave a non- committal grunt and took a slug. Nectar slid down my throat and I realised how far I had fallen.
Martin sat down in the other sofa and sipped at a whisky that was half the size of mine. He kicked out his feet and let rip with a sigh that would have brought a tear to a glass eye.
‘I’m surprised you didn’t start off by kicking my head in,’ he said.
‘So am I.’
‘A lot of questions?’
‘Sorry.’
‘You’ll have a lot of questions?’
‘No shit.’
‘Fire on.’
This was not going in any shape or form the way I had planned it. For a start Martin was supposed to be quaking in his boots at my reappearance. At the moment the only quaking going on was the rumble of the double decker buses and trucks that occasionally went past his front door. I took another swallow and realised I had drained the glass. Martin pulled in his feet, stood up and took the glass from me. Clink, chink and it was full again.
‘You must have been thirsty?’
I ignored the jibe.
I wasn’t sure where to start. Did I get into the whole trial and betrayal thing? Did I ask how he had survived the coming to power of Dupree? Would an opening gambit be to ask about the key? Did I ask him if Partick Thistle were doing well or did I ask after his other love — rugby?
‘How’s Clarkston RFC doing?’ I said.
‘They aren’t. They vanished years ago. Merged and changed names a few times and are now known as GHA. Still in the same place but a health club bought some land off them and, as part of the deal, they had a new stand and clubhouse built for them. Good deal really.’
‘Do you still go to see them?’
‘Most weekends when they are at home. Occasionally on the road but only if they are close by.’
‘Any of the old school still there.’
‘A couple. Jimmy Naismith still pulls the odd stint on coaching but he has a place in Spain and is more there than here. Donald Grier is club secretary but I am a bit persona non gratis with him. What with me and his daughter.’
I couldn’t help laughing. Mary Grier had been an on/off girlfriend of Martin’s for the last few years before I was sent down. Although she lived in Glasgow, Martin would fly her down for long weekends and then some. This seriously pissed of her dad — a lay preacher of the fire and brimstone variety. Donald was none to happy at his ‘takeaway’ daughter. His phrase not mine — ‘You’re like a bloody Indian takeaway. He calls and you deliver.’
Inevitably it had ended in tears when Martin, tired of the old man’s complaints, found that Donald was badmouthing him to anyone that would listen. Donald had even been known to bring Martin’s name into some of
