Bitter Water (32 page)

I hurried past Eddie’s office but he hadn’t got in yet. Sunday evenings were tough on a family man and he liked to have breakfast with his kids on Monday mornings. I got to my desk and pulled out a sheet of paper and a pencil. I had thinking to do and needed to scribble out my thoughts. It always seemed easier to work through things if I wrote them down.

I had a column to write about the meeting yesterday with Fergus Drummond, former military policeman and now leader of a vigilante gang being hunted by the police for a triple murder. He thought that if the
Gazette
printed an article that mentioned their unique and painful calling card and highlighted the fact that the dead homosexuals had lost a great deal but not their fingers, he’d be in the clear. It was almost certainly a futile throw. The Marshals had solicited naming and shaming slips and that was now seen to be their method of business. The homosexuals died with their ‘crimes’ on their tongues. Not proof of guilt, but it added more weight to that side of the scales.

I only had Fergus Drummond’s word for his army record and what he’d done. I’d better put in some calls to my old regiment’s staff unit. See if they could corroborate his claims. They might even have a photo of the former subaltern. If so, we’d have a helluva scoop. Not just a name but ‘Face of the vigilante chief’!

Why did that seem like a betrayal?

I picked up today’s paper again. For the first time I took in the name of the poor dead woman: Sally Geddies. The name of an ordinary girl. The daughter of some ordinary mum and dad. A rotten ending. I hoped for her sake that she’d been unconscious when they pushed the car into the loch. From Sheridan’s expression of horror, he’d been very much awake but unable to do anything about it.

Wullie had also managed to get a phone call in to Elsie Sheridan. She’d been shocked rigid, I imagine, but through the prism of Wullie’s reported interview and her moderated language, it was pretty hard to interpret exactly how she’d taken it personally.

Jimmie’s
secretary
? Even now, if this was a true transcript, Elsie had to keep face, keep up appearances. Is that all we are, finally? The sum of our lives is other people’s perceptions of us? What would that make me? And what should I make of Fergus Drummond? The man was daft as a brush, but how would I have survived five years as a prisoner of war? How would I have coped on my return to this dreary landscape, without a job, without a roof over my head, without honour. And I suspected – for Drummond – it was the loss of honour that cut deepest. Mix in the Wee Free over-zealous interpretation of the Bible and you get a vengeful old prophet: St Fergus the Pain-giver unleashing his own apocalypse on the sinners and evil-doers of Glasgow.

It was clear his men were intensely loyal to him. He’d ripped off his pips and slogged alongside them as a noncommissioned prisoner. No doubt it was his faith that had kept them going, had kept them alive though the soul-racking years, through the long sub-zero march fleeing the advancing Russians. Now they were following him blindly for the lack of anything better to do. Cornered rats. Ignored by the society they’d gone to war for. Jobless, homeless and unloved except by Drummond. Four Sancho Panzas on a righteous quest led by their very own Don Quixote.

I wrote it up as a diatribe against a society that could let this happen to the men who’d suffered for their country. Then I binned it. Sandy’s blue pencil would have sliced right through it.

I tried again with the emphasis on the revelation that the Marshals had been leaving a brutal calling card on their victims. That the
Gazette
had deliberately kept quiet about it to avoid encouraging copycat punishments. That in doing so, we’d now uncovered a new seam of wickedness using the Marshals’ modus operandi to deceive and mislead. The question was who, and why?

Was it just a vendetta against homosexuals? Did it really madden someone so much that they were prepared to eradicate anyone with that tendency? From what I’d seen of human nature – if we count Nazis in that – the answer was a simple yes. There seemed to be no divergence from the true path that the self-righteous wouldn’t punish. They took it as a personal affront that someone thought or acted differently. That it undermined everything the
true
believer stood for. That his or her very soul was at risk if one heresy was allowed to flourish.

Which brought me back to Drummond. He was just as bad. He was the sort they used to burn at the stake, his eyes raised to heaven and rapture on his face as the flames ate his bones.

A martyr.

FORTY-THREE

I
t took three drafts to get the column in a fit state for publishing. Sandy kept sending it back with scrawled admonitions to ‘leave out the hearts and flowers’; ‘drop the cod philosophy’; and ‘we’re selling newspapers, not sermons’.

I wasn’t happy with the end result, but I understood the need to appeal to our loyal readers’ preference for a good story over a lecture about morality.

It went to press for Tuesday’s edition but was confined to the inside back page, overshadowed – in truth obliterated – by the ongoing frenzy of salacious gossip over Sheridan’s suspicious death. The other papers were in full outrage mode, trying desperately to catch up with Monday’s scoop by the
Gazette
. No one wanted to read that the Marshals might be innocent of murder. Readers were just as capable as the vigilantes of jumping to unfounded conclusions.

I was pretty sure the Marshals would be on the phone to the
Gazette
within minutes of the first edition hitting the news stands. I told Morag and the other girls just to take a message. I couldn’t face getting my ear bent about failing to write something that fully exonerated them. Twice during the day I got signals that I was wanted on the phone. I waved back to indicate I was out.

Wullie wandered in and out of the newsroom, managing to look quietly smug and serious at the same time. Eddie seemed to be on roller skates, darting in and out of his office every five minutes and revelling in the cacophony of phone calls. In the midst of the hubbub, Wullie stopped at my desk and quietly asked, ‘Any chance of corroborating that chloroform thing, Brodie?’

‘As it happens, I’m having a drink with Jamie Frew this evening.’

We stood in the Horseshoe between two of the glass and wood swivel panels at the bar. It gave us some privacy. We covered the missing six years in the first five minutes. Jamie was planning an early retirement in a year’s time, to allow his passion for fly-fishing on the Spey to consume him. A part of me envied him that certainty, that simple goal. My father and I had stood on many a fast brown burn casting and casting. Some thought it a strange way of passing a day but we found it immensely calming. I learned patience – some, anyway – on the banks of the Afton down by Cumnock.

We finally and reluctantly left the debate about the respective merits of dry and wet flies if a river’s in spate.

‘I thought this story about Sheridan was yours, Dougie?’

‘I’m working it with McAllister. It crosses both our patches.’

‘Your lady friend was gie upset when I mentioned the chloroform smell. Was it that bad for her?’

I told him a little of it. He sucked his teeth. ‘Bastards,’ he said.

‘Aye, they were. So you can imagine her delight on finding that some of the old Slattery gang had found new employment but were using their old skills.’

‘She knows Sir Colin Maxwell?’

‘Old family friend. She was of an age with the son. A total tadger, she says. Likes hurting things. Dogs, horses, humans. According to Sam he doesn’t distinguish.’

Jamie was nodding. ‘There’s a type there. Well, I can confirm that chloroform was used on both Sheridan and his woman. Enough to knock out a horse. Though it seems, from the torn nails and the bruises on his knuckles, Sheridan was awake when the car sank. Tough wee fella. He tried to get out, but with that amount of the drug inside him, and the water pressure, it would have been like fighting in quicksand.’

‘Can we use it?’

‘Aye, why no’? I’d be happy enough getting my books a year earlier. My pension’s no’ bad as it is.’

‘Thanks, Jamie.’ I noticed he was looking into his pint and his mouth was twisting. ‘What else?’

‘I’m really, really no’ supposed to say this.’

‘But?’

‘You know these poofters? The wans that were murdered at the Winter Gardens ?’

‘You’re not saying . . .!’

He nodded. ‘Same thing. Blood full of chloroform. They must have caught them, dosed them – a pad soaked in the stuff probably; there’s indication of slight burning in the nostrils – then stripped them, mutilated them and left them to bleed to death. Poor wee bastards.’

‘The first one? Connie at the Monkey Club? Him too?’

Frew shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t see him. There was no mention in the report. After I found the stuff in Sheridan and the other two I had a look. Nothing.’

‘Can you do another post-mortem?’

‘We’re too late. His pal picked up the body. It would be a struggle to get an exhumation, if he’s not already cremated.’

We supped silently for a while, our imagination trying to reject the images swirling through our heads. It took a special depth of depravity to do that to another human being. But I’d seen enough barbarism to know it wasn’t rare. Not nearly enough. You just don’t expect it on Glasgow Green.

I left Jamie to it and headed back to Sam’s house, my mind swirling with the implications. I had no doubt this was the work of the Slattery boys: Curly and Fitz. But why? Just keeping their hand in with a couple of random homosexual slaughters? That didn’t make sense. But what the hell was the connection with Maxwell and Sheridan? If any? They’d made the three murders seem like the work of the Marshals, which suggested they didn’t want to be linked to them. Apart from the sex angle, there was nothing I knew of that linked the three killings . . . and that’s where I’d been going wrong.

If someone had murdered three heterosexuals would I have stopped at that? Hardly. Perhaps the bedroom preferences of the three dead men were incidental? I hadn’t done much digging into their backgrounds. I cursed my sloppiness. Just because I was a reporter and not a policeman didn’t mean I could get away with shallow investigation. It made me wonder again about the usefulness of this new observer role I’d taken on. I determined to do some real backtracking on each of the victims first thing tomorrow. I wasn’t seeing the bigger picture, and that worried the life out of me. What would the killers do next?
Who
would be next?

FORTY-FOUR

T
he house was quiet when I woke at my now usual time of six. I’d not seen Sam the night before. She was still burrowed in her room. I heard her moving about, so at least she was still alive. Maybe tonight I could coax her out to the pictures.

It was an hour before dawn but already the darkness was edging to grey. I decided to slip in a quick morning swim before Sam rose. I’d take her a cup of tea and some toast, and we’d try to work up some enthusiasm for life.

I set off in the grey light. The skies were clear, making it chilly, but it signalled another perfect day for mid-September. A smell of proper autumn in the air but the promise of a warm day ahead. I knocked on the side door to the club and was let in by Robert. I changed and dived into the green depths, my splash echoing round the vaulted chamber of the pool.

As I swam I planned the set of questions I’d pose to people like Duncan Todd and Wullie about the background of the three murdered boys. Did they know each other? Did the dead pair in the People’s Palace frequent the Monkey Club? What about their jobs? Where did they work?

I climbed out of the pool and padded through the quiet corridors to the showers. There was no sign of Robert. Probably brewing up his morning tea or checking the boilers.

My wet skin felt chilled as though there was a draught blowing through. As though someone had left an outside door open. I picked up a towel, rubbed my hair and torso and wrapped it round my waist. I stopped just inside the shower room and listened. I could hear the faint noise of a tram. I couldn’t normally. I felt distinctly naked and vulnerable in just my red bathing trunks and towel. I looked around me. There were eight wooden shower cubicles in a big white-tiled room. Wooden slatted benches lined the opposite wall to the cubicles. One side wall was taken up with built-in sinks. Above each hung a mirror. No obvious weapons. No hiding place. No place to get trapped.

I decided to skip a shower and cut through to the changing room. As I altered direction I caught a movement in the mirror. It wasn’t Robert Campbell. The movement became two men. Carrying knives. They suddenly saw themselves in the mirror and saw me making a break for it. One hissed and charged after me. My wet feet skidded on the tiles and I bounced off the door frame into the anteroom. I leaped across the cold plunge, fell and lost my towel. I scrambled into the dry room. I had enough time to yank one of the loungers across the doorway before the men piled through.