normal. But Singer had this talent. He got it from his Ma. He had a cracking wee voice on him. Or so people tell me. Never heard it myself. Anyways, at weddings and shite like that Singer and his Ma was always asked to stand up and give a song. Not that he took much asking, did you, Singer? He used to sing all the time. The only thing the wee bastard had…’
I looked at Singer who returned my stare emptily. He was obviously used to Sneddon discussing his most intimate personal history with a complete stranger. Either that or he just didn’t care.
‘But it used to wind up his Da no end. He’d come home drunk and no one was allowed to make a sound. Any peep out of Singer and his Da would kick the shite out of him. Literally, sometimes. Then one day Singer’s old man comes back with a really black one on. Wee Singer is innocently chirping away with his Ma in the kitchen, but his Da gets the idea that there should be a meal on the table for him. He goes fucking mental. He grabs Singer and starts to beat the shite out of him. So his Ma comes to try to defend the wee fella. So do you know what he does?’
I shrugged. I looked at Singer: I had a good four inches on him, but he was a hard-looking bastard. Vicious- looking. But I didn’t like listening to Sneddon rejoicing in his misery.
‘He cut Singer’s Ma’s throat,’ Sneddon answered his own question. There was a hint of awe in his voice. ‘Took a penknife — a penknife mind — and cut her throat from ear to ear, right in front of the wee fella. So Singer’s never sung — or spoken — since.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said to Singer because it was the only thing I could think to say. He looked at me expressionlessly.
‘Aye… a bad bastard was Singer’s Da. They hung the fucker at Duke Street and Singer was put into an orphanage. Then a kind of funny farm because of him not talking and that.’ Sneddon looked at Singer knowingly. ‘But you’re not mad, are you, Singer? Just bad… all the way through. I found out about him because Tam, one of my boys, did time with Singer. Shared a cell. Will I tell him what your speciality was, Singer?’
Singer, unsurprisingly, said nothing. But he didn’t nod or move or blink.
‘Someone grassed him up to the police for a robbery he did. But without the witness there was no evidence. But Singer didn’t kill the bastard. He cut his fucking tongue out. All of it. Kind of poetic, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah…’ I said. Singer’s face was still impassive. ‘Positively Audenesque.’
‘Anyway,’ said Sneddon. ‘I like having Singer around. D’you know the ancient Greeks liked to have mutes around at funerals? Professional mourners. Anyway, I look after Singer now, don’t I, Singer?’
Singer nodded.
‘And Singer looks after me. And my interests.’
I was acutely aware of Twinkletoes’ absence in the car on the way back into town, as if he had left twin voids of space and silence. I took a Player’s Navy Blue and offered the packet to Singer, who shook his head without taking his eyes off the road. He was that kind of guy. Focussed. I had forgotten exactly where I’d left the car, but Singer found his way to it first shot.
‘Thanks,’ I said as I got out of the car. Singer was about to drive off when, on an impulse, I tapped on his window. He rolled it down.
‘Listen, I just wanted to say…’ What? What the hell was it I wanted to say? ‘I just wanted to say that I’m sorry about the wisecracks I made… you know, about you not talking. I didn’t know about… well, you know… that was a shitty break…’ I fell silent. It seemed best considering I seemed to have lost the ability to string a coherent sentence together.
Singer looked at me for a moment, in that cold, expressionless way he had, then gave a nod. He drove off. I stood and watched the Humber disappear around the corner, wondering why the hell, after all of the other shit I had done and seen in my life, I had felt the need to apologize to a cheap Glasgow hoodlum. Maybe it was because what had happened to Singer had happened when he was a kid. It was the one thing I found tough to take: the crap that happens to kids. In war. In their own homes.
Not for the first time, I considered the colourful life I had forged for myself here in Glasgow. And the interesting people I got to meet.
CHAPTER THREE
It’s funny: at the time, I didn’t think of the week after Small Change’s murder as ‘the week after Small Change’s murder’. I had other things to think about, other things to do. It’s often only in retrospect that you see the significance of a particular moment in your life. At the time it’s just the same old crap, and you just stumble along oblivious to the fact that you should be keeping a scrapbook, or a diary, or photographing the minutiae of your life; that at some time in the future you would look back and think, if only I’d known what the fuck was going on.
Obviously, I saw Lorna every day that week. And obviously I kept my hands out of her underwear — I am nothing if not a gentleman — and, anyway, experience had told me that the ardour of even the most enthusiastic of mattress companions diminishes with grief. Not with death; with grief. I’d learned during the war that death and violence tend to be powerful aphrodisiacs for both genders. Suffice it to say, I became the most solicitous and least lecherous of suitors.
To be honest, I had other distractions.
They say Eskimos have a hundred words for snow. Glaswegians must have twice that many for the different kinds of rain that batters down on the city year-round. In winter, Glasgow lies under an assault of chilled wet bullets; in summer, the rain falls in greasy, tepid globs, like the sky sweating on the city. Completely atypically, Glasgow was experiencing a dry and searingly hot summer. Half of the city’s population spent most of that summer looking up, squinting at the sky and trying to form the word blue.
I found the hot weather disconcerting. Usually any sunlight in Glasgow was mitigated by a sooty veil thrown up by the factories and tenement chimneys; but that summer there were disorientating moments when the sky cleared and the heat and the light reminded me of summers back home in New Brunswick. It was only ever a fleeting illusion, though, repeatedly shattered by the fuming, dark-billowing reality of the city around me.
At least I got to wear lightweight suits that hung better. When it came to material, the Scots had a year- round preference for tweed, the scratchier and denser the better. A Scottish acquaintance had once tried to reassure me that tweed from the Isle of Harris was less scratchy, explaining that this was because it was traditionally soaked in human urine. I could have been accused of being picky, but I preferred couture that hadn’t been pissed on by an inbred crofter.
I had spent three days getting all the gen I could on Sneddon’s fighter. Bobby Kirkcaldy had been born in Glasgow but raised in Lanarkshire, first in an orphanage and then by an aunt. Both his parents had died prematurely from heart attacks when Kirkcaldy was a child. Tragic, but not unusual: if cardiac disease had been a sport, then the entire British Olympic team would have been made up of Glaswegians.
Young Bobby Kirkcaldy had used his fists to fight his way up and out of the Motherwell slum that had been his adoptive home. To put his success in context, Motherwell was the kind of place anyone would fight like hell to get out of. I’d been able to track down a couple of businesses that Kirkcaldy had invested in and it was clear he was getting good advice on cashing in on his success when he eventually hung up his gloves. Either that, or he was as nifty with investment as he was in the ring. In fact, for someone approaching the height of his boxing career, he seemed to have his mind, and money, on other things.
My office was three floors up, across Gordon Street from Central Station, and by Thursday I had done just about all I could do on the ’phone and was going to take an afternoon trip out to see young Mr Kirkcaldy. I decided to drink a coffee and read the newspaper before I left. I like to keep up with things. I never knew when Rab Butler or Tony Eden would ask for my advice.
All the news was gloomy. Britain wasn’t the only nation struggling with the loss of an empire: the French were having the stuffing kicked out of them in Indochina by the Vietminh. There had been a clash of razor gangs in the Gorbals. A man had been run over by a train on the outskirts of the city. The police hadn’t issued a name. The only thing that cheered me up was an advertised assurance that, apparently, taking an Amplex chlorophyll tablet each day guaranteed breath and body freshness; obviously an attempt to break into an underexploited market.
I was in the middle of Rip Kirby when I got a pleasant surprise. A very pleasant, five-foot-three, blonde surprise. I recognized her as soon as she walked into my office, despite the fact that we had never met before. She dressed with an elegance that Glasgow didn’t stretch to. Cream silk blouse, figure-hugging powder blue pencil skirt,
