I had stirred up the nest. There would be action resulting from it. Some of it might play my way. On the other hand I could just get badly stung. To death.
‘Get up. Start walking towards your pals. Don’t run. Don’t shout out, or I will put a bullet in your back.’
He stood up and backed away, still facing me, trying to gauge my mood and intention. A spark of triumph? Contempt? flitted across his face. Then he turned and began to walk towards the entry, his back stiffened in anticipation. I turned and ran. My leather soles slapped on the cobbles. That was enough for Slattery. I heard him break into a run in the opposite direction.
‘Here, you fuckers! I’m here!’ he shouted.
I stopped, turned and fired. Into the air. The bang reverberated among the tall buildings. Slattery flung himself to the ground and the two figures at the alley end dived to the side. I broke into a sprint, erupting from the alley and off down the quiet streets. I twisted and turned and slowed to a walk and found my way back on to the Byers Road. The sweat was pouring down my body under my good tweed suit. I pulled my cap off and rubbed my face dry on its rough surface. I wondered what I’d done.
THIRTY
‘You did what?! Are you absolutely stark, staring, raving bloody mad!’ Samantha Campbell was stomping up and down the dining room, pirouetting and waving her arms.
‘I take it you’re not impressed?’
I was in my shirtsleeves at the table, nursing a whisky and soaking up my punishment. I let her splutter to a halt. She stood facing me with her arms crossed like an irate wife who’d been waiting for her man to come home fu’ and hadn’t been disappointed. With hindsight it was a daft thing to do. The sort of thing that earns you the military cross. Posthumously. Sometimes I wondered if I could have been a role model for Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll with whisky as my transfiguring potion.
‘Sam, we’re stuck. You’re in the middle of an appeal case without any hard proof. I had to try something.’
‘And what did you do to help my legal action? You shot a man!’
‘In his foot.’
‘You shot him. Then you dragged Glasgow’s biggest gangster out by the scruff of his neck, at gunpoint! And made him beg for his life! The whole pack of criminals, murderers, drug pushers and God knows what else are out there right now, hunting for you! They want to skin you alive and put your head on a pole at the Trongate!’
I shrugged and smiled in as chastened a way as possible. Sam reached for her glass and took a big swig. She wiped her forehead with a trembling hand and stared at me. She grew calmer. She found her normal voice.
‘Monday’s too late. Even if they produced the Reids. The appeal starts then.’
‘I know, I know. Assuming they’re on Arran it’s going to take Sunday for Slattery’s crew to get over there and bring them back. And I wanted this done publicly with loads of people around. You’ll just have to stall, Sam. If they hand them over first thing Monday, and Mrs Reid will talk, you can spring the surprise Tuesday.
She shook her head. ‘You’re a madman, Brodie.’ She took another mouthful and regarded me for a long minute. A smile broke to the surface of her lips. ‘I wish I’d been there. To see Dermot Slattery’s hard wee face.’ Her mouth tightened and thinned again. ‘But we’re still in trouble!’
‘Not we, Sam. You’re fine. They don’t know I’m here. In fact I’d better leave. Find digs somewhere.’
‘You’re going nowhere. Stay in. Read some books.’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t expect Slattery will deliver Mrs Reid on Monday, but I need to follow it through. I’ll go to the meeting point and see. You never know.’
We laid low on Sunday, gathering our strength, pretending to read the papers. Sam made some last changes to her case and I heard her do some practice runs up in her library. I couldn’t make out the words but I liked the passion. I made a start on some of her leather-bound books. Sir Walter Scott always worked for me.
Come the morning, Sam piled her papers into a battered old briefcase and packed her robes and curly wig into a small suitcase. She looked every inch the professional. She would need to be. A car picked her up at nine and whisked her to the appeals court. I closed Ivanhoe and headed out into the warm streets.
At quarter to ten I was lounging by the street corner within view of the Townhead Library. There was no sign of Slattery and his crew, far less Mrs Reid. I chain smoked and changed my position. I walked past the library and stood looking up and down the road checking for cars or unusual movements. By quarter past, I had given up. I gave it till half past and wandered back to the library. I threw my butt into the gutter, and turned to walk home when I heard the clang of a police car.
It shot past me and shrieked to a halt in front of the library. Four men jumped out, two in uniform, two in plain clothes. The plain-clothes men ran into the library and the two uniforms took up position by the doors. A few moments later, people started flooding out. They looked distressed. A woman was crying. My stomach knotted and I walked back towards the front doors and up to the nearest copper. He was young, barely of shaving age.
‘What’s happening, officer?’
‘Can’t tell you, sir. You cannae go in. Bit of a problem inside.’
‘What sort of problem? Fire? An accident?’
‘Cannae tell you, sir.’
‘Look, constable, I’m a friend of Willie Silver. I was a detective sergeant before the war. Tobago Street.’
He looked me up and down, then he looked round to check his pal wasn’t within hearing. He was young enough and inexperienced enough to be bursting to tell someone. ‘Seems there’s somebody dead in the library. A woman.’
‘Why didn’t they call for an ambulance?’
His young face took on the thrill of encountering horror. ‘She seems to have been murdered.’
*
I walked away and kept walking till I was by the Clyde. By instinct I kept a lookout in case I was being followed, but otherwise I was numb. I stood staring at the turbid waters and tried to make sense of the nonsense that my life had become since Hugh Donovan phoned me just two short weeks ago. I thought he was guilty then but the murder of poor Mrs Reid finally pitched me over on to his side. My copper’s training said we were still short of incontestable proof, by some way. But I didn’t need an ounce more hard evidence to shift my gut belief that Hugh didn’t kill Rory, or either of the other missing kids. War had taught me to trust my instincts.
There was no doubt in my mind that the dead woman was Mrs Reid. Slattery’s revenge for his humiliation. I should have shot him when I had the chance. Instead, my moment of madness, my need for action, had resulted in the murder of an innocent woman. I felt revulsion well up in me. Revulsion for Slattery. Revulsion for me for provoking this, for being so egotistical, so stupid. No good blaming Mr Hyde; I had wanted to hit back at them, show them they weren’t winning. That Douglas Brodie wasn’t easily taken out of the picture. There was never any chance of them complying with my demands. The price of my vanity was a woman’s life.
The evening papers were full of it. Woman slaughtered in public library. Body found in the toilets. Stabbed several times and propped up in a cubicle. Her blood had pooled under the door. No one saw anything or anyone. The woman’s identity was not known, but she was thought to be mid-thirties, dark curly hair and of medium height. The public were asked to contact the police if they were aware of a missing person that matched the description.
I was staring out of the window, with the paper in front of me on the table, when Sam came in. She looked drained. Before I could open my mouth, she said, ‘I’ve heard.’
She flung her wig and briefcase on the table and pulled the paper to her. She read it and pushed it back to me.
‘It’s my fault, Sam. You were right. I pushed them too far.’
She looked me up and down, then shook her head. ‘Scum like that don’t need much provocation. Even by their base standards, this plumbs the depths. Have you been to the police?’
‘If I had, do you think I’d be sitting here now? This being the second murder I’ve been associated with in a week. They would have been interrogating me for a fortnight.’
‘But they need to know who she is.’ Then she added quietly, ‘And what about her children?’
