‘Your next question is your last.’
I could see he meant it. I decided to ginger things up a bit.
‘What will you do if another child goes missing, Silver? How will you explain that to the press? While an innocent man is rotting in prison or dangling from a rope? What then?’
Frowns rolled down his minions’ faces. Silver didn’t blink but he started turning his fag packet over on the desk. He shook his head. ‘You’ll always get a copycat out there, trying to make his name. You know that, Brodie.’
My anger boiled up. ‘So you’d find some other innocent fella and hang him! You’d go on hanging them one after the other till eventually it stopped!’
‘If need be, Brodie. If need be. And that’s the truth. Now will you be so good as to fuck off. See him out, sergeant.’
Punching his lights out wasn’t an option. Not yet. The two oafs were smirking again as I walked to the door. But I turned and looked back at Silver. His expression had sagged, become introspective. I hope – but doubted – I’d caused him a sleepless night or two. As the door closed behind me, I heard the distinctive sound of a bottle clinking against a glass. Celebration or steadying of nerves?
SEVENTEEN
I looked at my watch. Half past three. I had time for one more visit. Tobago Street runs north to south towards the river. Walking south I crossed Canning Street with its double tram tracks and pressed on into Glasgow Green, scene of many a violent gang battle and less violent romantic encounter. Though I suspect neither activity had featured in the original design by the genteel Victorians.
I walked past the deserted bandstand and along the Clyde path to the St Andrew’s Suspension Bridge. It connects with the eastern side of the Gorbals. I paused in the middle and lit up. I had two addresses in the Gorbals. One was Hugh’s, the other Fiona’s. I hung over the balustrade and watched the brown water rush underneath. The symbolism didn’t escape me. It was half my lifetime ago that I’d last seen her. What was she like now? Was her hair still as long and black? Had she kept her figure? Was there still an ember? I took a last drag then pinged the end into the river.
A ten-minute stroll through the regimented grid of run-down Victorian tenements and I was in Florence Street. Hugh’s old close was no different to any other I’d passed. Four storeys high and one entry serving eight flats, or houses, as they called them. Outside, a group of girls in grubby frocks and bare feet were playing peevers. They’d marked out the grid on the broken paving slabs and were using an old boot polish can as their marker. For a while I watched their agile young limbs hopping round the grid. A tableau of normality to draw on, to balance things out. It’s what we fought for wasn’t it? But nobody told us the price. The terror-filled nights. The three-day headaches, vomiting till your body felt like a jellyfish. The flashbacks: the landing craft door crashing down into the water, the heavy calibre shells ricocheting round the open tin coffin making mincemeat of your pals before they’d even got a shot off. The sound of bullets smacking into flesh. Of hard men sobbing with fear as a barrage continued for two days and nights without pause. And now this, now another image to be added to the stinking pile: a small naked body, sheet-white and gashed, abandoned like trash on a midden…
The entry was dark and fetid, the smell from a choked toilet filling the hall and wending up the tight stone staircase. I climbed up and up, checking the view out of the broken windows to the back green at each full turn of the spiral. I got to the top and stood quietly till my breathing calmed. There were two doors. Number 8, Hugh’s single-end, was straight ahead. Number 7 would be the room and kitchen of the other family, the missing family. Someone was in. I could hear a child screaming in a temper tantrum behind the door of number 7. I stepped towards it and gave it a good bash. The noise stopped and then started again. I heard footsteps and the door opened. A young woman with a hectic face stood there with a tartan shawl wrapped round her, a baby rolled inside it. A snotty lad of four or five keeked out behind her pinny. His face was red with rage and greeting.
‘What has he done noo?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know who you think I am, missus, but I’m just here to ask a couple of questions.’
‘You the polis?’
‘No, I’m…’
But she was already shutting the door. ‘We don’t want anythin’…’ she was saying. I stuck my foot in the door.
‘If you don’t clear off, pal, I’ll scream blue murder and the neighbours will fling you oot, so they will!’
‘All I want is to ask you what happened to the other family, the ones before you,’ I called desperately through the closing door.
Slowly the door began to open again. ‘Why?’
I looked at her sharp face with its suspicious eyes. Honesty seemed best. And my old accent. ‘Because they’re gonna hang an auld pal of mine for something he didnae dae.’
She appraised me up and down and we both looked towards the other door, Hugh’s door.
‘Him?’
‘Hugh Donovan.’
‘I’ll tell you this. We wouldnae have ta’en this hoose if we knew who was next door. Murderin’ sod. You say he didnae do it? How do you ken? Have you got a fag?’
I gave her one, took one myself and lit us both. We both took a sociable drag and I told her I was working for Advocate Campbell on the appeal. That I thought it was a police set-up under pressure to find the real murderer.
‘Ah’m no’ surprised at anythin’ the polis dae. They took ma man in and gave him a gid hiding the other week. He was a bit fu’, right enough, but it was the other fella that started it.’
I smiled sympathetically. ‘Is there anybody living there now?’ I nodded towards number 8.
‘You must be jokin’! The factor says he’ll no’ be able to rent it for at least a year. Who wants to sleep in there wi’ a’ that blood and grief? And ghosts, like enough.’ She shuddered and wrapped her shawl tighter round her. Her son wiped his nose on her pinny and she cuffed him absentmindedly, raising another howl.
‘Did you know the family before you?’
‘Reid, they were ca’d. But we never met them.’
The boy chipped in, ‘Yon wee boy came back, mither.’
She was about to clip him again but stayed her hand. ‘You’re right enough, Jim.’ She turned to me, reluctantly. ‘One of Mrs Reid’s weans came by about twa months ago. They were here for their granny’s funeral over at Townhead. Said his mammy had left some bits of washin’ on the line, they were that much in a hurry to go.’
‘Why the hurry, do you know?’
She looked around her as if the stairs had sprouted ears. ‘Ah heard from the factor that they’d come into a bit of money. Something about an aunt doon the Clyde. Arran way.’
Arran? Off the west coast of Ayrshire. A perfect place to lose an inconvenient witness. It was a big island, with villages and isolated houses scattered all round its shoreline. Where would you start?
‘Do you have an address on Arran?’
She shook her head. But at the same time, wee Jim tugged at her skirt and looked up at her.
‘Whit is it noo, son?’
‘The wee boy said he could watch the boats come in every day, so he could. Said it was amazing. So it was. Can we go doon the water at the fair, mither?’
‘Maybe. If your faither’s no’ in the jail. And if you stop gien’ me a headache. Ma lugs are fair bleedin’, so they are.’
I dug in my pocket and found a threepenny bit. I held it out to the boy. ‘Well done, Jim. You’ll make a good detective when you grow up.’
The boy looked at my hand and then at his mum. She nodded and his hand took the coin like a striking cobra.
I turned to go. ‘Apart from the factor, has anyone been in the house since Donovan left?’
