Where the Dead Men Go (13 page)

The school was tall, Victorian, a barracks in sandstone. High, square and cold; a building designed to terrorise kids. Carved in imperative capitals at one end of the façade was the word ‘boys’. At the other end, as distant as symmetry would permit, ‘girls’.

I locked the car. It was Sunday afternoon, a thin rain sweeping the playground. A trio of jacketless boys stroked a ball back and forth on the netball court. As I crossed the road, one of them sprang onto the railings and hung there grinning, thin brown fists and sparky black eyes, a patterned jumper with fraying cuffs.

The building I wanted was next to the school. I’d got the address from Doug Prentice, the snapper who’d worked on it with Moir, the Govanhill sex story. I stopped at the path. Two smashed windows on the ground floor, squares of cardboard taped to the glass. A big splotch of damp on the building’s façade, a mossy green track where the downpipe had been.

The boy on the railings was watching. The front door gave at my push but slammed shut again. I shouldered it open and squeezed through. The big landing window was glassless and a gale was blowing through the close. But the cold wind couldn’t mask the stench. Rubbish was piled at the foot of the stairwell, black bags burst and torn, their innards spilling on the dark concrete – glinting tin cans, buckled two-litre coke bottles, a streaked sanitary towel, a blue translucent nappy-sack. The paint in the hallway was flaking, there were holes in the ceiling, thin ribs of light-coloured wood where the plaster had fallen away.

I stood in the wind and the smell and half-closed my eyes. It came unbidden, the image, a grainy tableau. A girl on a crate amid strewn garbage, a man’s shoulders rising, his breath short, trousers bunched at his ankles.

I picked my way through the rubbish to the back door and slid the bolt. The back green had a cold, abandoned look. A carousel stood like a broken tree, baby clothes limp in the rain, a line of white vests pinned by the shoulders. A black cat stepped from a washing machine that lay canted on its side, a foundered hulk in the uncut grass. A single mattress flopped against the back wall. The wall between the garden and the school had a yard-high metal fence along its top. One end had been worked loose and pulled back, so the schoolboys could squeeze through to get their ball back. Take a shit, too, by the looks of the grass.

‘Hey!’

I turned and craned up. A man at a second-floor window, Asian, his hand raised. A woman at his back, flash of orange, baby on her arm. He stabbed his finger on the pane.

‘You stay!’

Back in the close I could hear him rattling down the stairs. He caught me at the front door, grabbed my shoulder, hauled me round.

‘You police?’

He was small, slim, his teeth bared under a thin moustache. He was wearing a tank-top over a white shirt. Stain at the shoulder, birdshit white.

‘No.’

‘No.’ He was nodding. ‘No. Why you come here?’

He was moving a lot, his head bobbing like a boxer’s.

I shrugged, looked at the front door. He leaned across me to place his palm on the door, holding it shut. I could smell the stain now, not birdshit but curdled milk, a little splash of baby vomit.

‘It finish.’ He pointed at the floor. ‘It finish here. All finish. No more here. OK?’ His hand was on my shoulder again. A sort of anguished smile spreading as he stared into my eyes like a man scanning for signs of life.

‘OK,’ I said. I moved his hand from my shoulder. ‘It’s finished. Fine. I get it.’

‘No come back,’ he said. He took his hand off the door.

Back in the street I gulped the cold air. A passing car sprayed slush on my jeans. I crossed the road and leaned on the Forester, reaching for my keys.

‘Big man.’ The Glasgow accent. ‘Mister.’ A boy’s footsteps crossing the road. ‘Mister, I can help you.’

I turned. The boy from the railings. The refugee pullover. Dirty blue joggers. New white trainers.

‘Help me with what?’

He smiled.

‘What you want.’

‘Yeah? What do I want?’

The smile broadened. The rain was beading his black hair. He was smiling at the trick question. I was a man, I had a cock, I wanted what everyone wanted.

He jerked his thumb at the tenement. ‘They had to move. Too near the school. I know where it is.’ He nodded. ‘I’ll take you.’

I looked across the street. The Asian man had gone back inside.

‘Two minutes’ walk, chief. No problem.’

I jerked my chin at the boy.

He held both hands up, fingers spread.

I nodded, dug into my jeans pocket for a tenner, watched him fold it into a tight tab and tuck it into a spotless trainer.

‘Don’t walk beside me. Stay on the other side of the street. The door when I stop to tie my laces? That’s the close. Second floor left.’

I trailed him through the sandstone streets, keeping pace on the opposite pavement. When he stood up from tying his laces he turned and walked back, didn’t glance in my direction.

 Second floor left. The door had a spyhole, no nameplate.

‘Yeah?’

A woman in her forties, heavy but holding it well, in a straight black skirt and a tight red sleeveless blouse. Her blonde hair hung in a shortish bob.

‘The boy,’ I said finally. ‘The boy sent me.’

‘What boy?’

The hallway behind her gave nothing away: a tasselled lamp, a mirror. What kind of hall would a brothel have?

‘The boy at the school.’ I gestured towards the stairs as if the boy was at my shoulder. ‘I went to the old place. A boy in the playground brought me here.’

‘Who told you?’

‘What?’

‘Who told you about the old place?’

‘I don’t know. A friend.’

She shook her head.

‘I don’t remember,’ I said.

‘Yeah, well when your memory comes back you can come and see us again, love. OK?’

The door was closing.

‘I’ve got money.’

‘That’s handy. Have a good day.’

‘Walsh!’ I almost shouted as the door clicked shut.

‘What’s that?’

The door was open.

‘It was Packy Walsh. OK?’

‘You know Packy Walsh? Packy Walsh told you about this place?’

‘Uh-huh.’

She stood aside and held the door but as I stepped through it she placed her hand on my chest. I looked down at the painted nails, the plump fingers puckered with rings.

‘What’s your name, sweetheart?’

A sour guff below her perfume, a spoor of meaty armpits.

‘Gary.’

‘Well it’s nice to meet you, Gary. I’m Carol. No rough stuff, no excitement. We’re through here.’

The living room was dark, the curtains closed. A yellow dancing glare from the telly. Three girls were on the sofa and they straightened as we entered, tossing their heads. I stood there, adjusting to the light, Carol at my elbow. The three girls smiled, heads up, backs straight. Carol snapped a lamp on and turned off the telly.

Two of them were veterans. Late thirties. Plucked and burnished, eyes like garnets. The third was trying to look hard but the eyes said something else. I nodded at her.

‘Gina,’ said Carol.

The girl rose awkwardly on her heels and I followed her down the hall.

The bedroom was cold. It smelled of damp, an earthy, underground musk. She crouched to flick the switch on a two-bar electric fire. She stood up and smiled.

‘Sixty,’ she said. The accent was thick, guttural. East European.

‘Right. Sorry.’ I dug out my wallet and took out three twenties.

‘Thank you.’ She put them in a box on the mantelpiece.

When she turned round she was already loosening the belt on her dress. There were buttons big as jam-jar lids all down the front and she snapped them open. I had the sense you have in dreams, of things moving out of your control, events proceeding at a pace of their own.

‘There.’

The dress landed on the armchair.

‘Brrr!’

She laughed, hugging herself and rubbing the backs of her arms. Her body in its flesh-tone underwear was skinny and pale, gooseflesh-grey. I noticed her collarbones, the hollows at the pelvis where the fabric of her knickers stood away from the skin.

She stepped out of her heels and sort of skipped across the carpet and gripped the lapels of my jacket.

Her shoulders were stippled with cold. I ran my hands down the backs of her arms, traced with my thumb the little white hollow on her upper arm.

She pulled my jacket off my shoulders and tugged it down, pinioning my arms. I had to fight and wriggle to work it loose. It thumped onto the floor. She touched me then, cupping me lightly and I looked away.

‘Don’t worry. She smiled. ‘Take your time.’

She pushed me onto the bed but when her hands started working on my belt I reached down and gripped them.

‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s not – I’m a journalist.’

I struggled up and stepped away, buckling my belt. She was kneeling by the bed like a child at prayer.

‘I’m a journalist.’

She shook her head. I mimed fingers hitting a keyboard. ‘A reporter. For a paper.’

The girl shrugged, her breasts moving in the pallid bra. I sat on the bed.

‘A man saw something. A few weeks ago. Not here but in the old place. On Temora Street. Temora Street?’

She nodded. She said the words, ‘Temora Street.’

‘He saw a young girl. Very young. A man was with her. There are young girls here?’

‘Young.’ She was nodding, she knew the word. ‘You like young?’

‘No! No. It was in the paper.’ I mimed opening a newspaper. ‘A news story. A man saw a girl. She is too young.’ I pressed my palm down on the empty air, measuring the height of a child. ‘A kid. A girl. With a man.’ I pointed at the door. ‘Is she here? Do you know her?’

I had lost her. She smiled uncertainly, waiting for me to go on, waiting for it to make sense. I could hear a door closing, movement in the hall. I had the ridiculous notion that the door would burst open and I’d be caught not fucking, caught with my pants up. The girl shrugged and smiled.

It was useless. I got her dress from the armchair and tossed it to her. She put it on slowly, still confused, rising from her knees, working the buttons. She was wary, now, something was wrong, she had failed, it was her fault.

I picked up my jacket. There were cards in the top pocket and I fished one out and passed it to the girl. She closed her fist round it.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, though I couldn’t have said what I was sorry about.

In the hallway the woman called Carol was waiting.

‘Enjoy yourself, love?’

‘Great,’ I said, but she didn’t buy it and I knew that the girl would be getting a hard time. Whatever I might have looked like walking down that hall, it wasn’t like a man who’d just had sex.

‘She works Tuesday to Saturday, afternoons. Friday nights too.’

‘I’ll bear it in mind.’

That evening I was flicking through the channels when Mari came through, pointing the phone at me like a TV remote, mouthing the word ‘Lewicki’. He never gave his name when he called but she knew his voice by now. I killed the sound on the telly.

‘Moir’s story,’ he said. ‘Govanhill.’ I’d emailed the cut to him. Lewicki had an email address in a bogus name; he checked it daily in an internet café.

‘The lassie in the close. What about it?’

Angus was playing at my feet, moving his cars around on the carpet, running them up the leg of the coffee table.

‘Well there’s a reason it came to nothing.’

‘Yeah?’

‘The witness. Grant McClymont. Bit of history.’

‘Not just a dog walker?’

‘Assault. Couple of breaches. Intent to supply. Not a celebrity but he’s done time.’

Angus looked up from his toys: ‘Dog!’

‘Doesn’t mean he’s lying, Jan. Doesn’t mean he didn’t see it.’

‘No, but it means you ca’ canny. Exercise a degree of caution. Plus, the dog – it’s some fucking walker. It likes a walk that dog.’

‘He’s not local?’

‘His
sister
’s local. She lives the other side of Queen’s Park. He says he was visiting her. But McClymont’s from Cranhill.’

A little stress on the last word, a rising inflection.

‘Cranhill,’ I repeated. Angus was running a car across my shoe, up my shin.

Lewicki sighed. ‘Who’s who in Cranhill, Gerry? You’re the fucking journo.’

‘You mean he’s one of Neil’s? He’s working for Neil?’

‘He
drives
for Hamish Neil.’

The guy at the Goldberry, standing at the fire door, the big bloke in the crombie.

‘He’s a person of interest, number of enquiries. We’ve interviewed him more than once. Blood from a stone. Suddenly he’s down Aikenhead Road giving a statement. He’s falling over himself to cooperate. He can name the pimp, he tells them. A Roma guy. Slovak. And the guy he names? He’s a known associate of Packy Walsh.’

The old tactic. Grassing to settle scores.

‘It could still be true,’ I said. Angus had scrambled onto the couch and was running his car up my arm.

‘It could still be true. Except the Slovak’s got a decent alibi. He was in the Western on the morning in question. Recovering from stab wounds. Not discharged till the following day.’

The car was on my head now, catching hairs in its tiny wheels. I set Angus down on the carpet, passed him his car, leaned across to snatch a pen from my computer table.

 ‘This Slovak.’

‘Radislav Gombar.’

‘Say it again.’

‘Radislav Gombar. Just as it sounds.’

I wrote the name on the pad. The guy McClymont fingered for the incident in Govanhill was in hospital when it happened. Expect that was the point, wasn’t it? The girl in the close, the milk crate, the child sex ring: it was bullshit. None of it happened. It was Neil’s man setting up Walsh’s man, a porky for the porkies, a fairytale Moir had reported as fact. I was suddenly angry, angry at Moir for writing the story, making me see what had never been, mad at myself for getting suckered.

‘So Moir got stitched up.’

Lewicki sniffed. ‘That’s one way to put it.’

‘She expecting you?’

The desk-sergeant had a boss eye. It gave him a bitter, incredulous look, as if life kept finding new ways to provoke him.

‘She’ll see me.’ I pushed my card across the desk. ‘Tell her it’s to do with Martin Moir.’

I waited on the blue bench-seats, under the public-information posters in four languages, the Crimestoppers number, the announcement of a knife amnesty. There was a box of toys against the wall, a stunted Christmas tree in the corner under the telly. The desk-sergeant looked too old for his uniform. I didn’t like him. The grin he kept for the bantering officers who passed in and out faded as soon as their backs were turned.

Twenty minutes passed. Half an hour. A buzzer sounded. Gunn came through the inner doors, shrugging into a grey pinstripe jacket. We didn’t shake hands. She looked harassed. There were flakes of pastry on her black shiny blouse.

I signed in and followed her up the stairs. At the first-floor landing a thin man in a blue suit passed us on his way down and Gunn turned, spoke to him over my head.

‘Derek! Can I use your room? Ten minutes.’

The man looked neutrally at me. ‘Fine, Sheena.’ He tossed a bunch of keys and she caught them right in front of my face.

The desk took up most of the cubicle. She squeezed behind it and frowned at me.

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I appreciate this. Seeing me, taking the time.’

She nodded, said nothing.

‘Look. He didn’t do it.’ I told her. ‘He never killed himself.’

‘Sit down, Mr Conway.’ She rubbed her thumb and forefinger over her eyelids, looked at the wall beside her. A map of the city was tacked to a corkboard. Thick black lines carved the districts into unfamiliar wedges, operational divisions.

‘I think he was murdered. You were right all along.’

She leaned back. A tiny skylight window threw its square of light in her face. She shielded her eyes.

‘Slow news day?’

‘Slow?’ I snorted. ‘Look in a mirror, you want to see slow. You’ve been sitting on this for bloody weeks.’

‘Yeah. Okay. You’re looking for a story, Mr Conway. Don’t ask the police to help you.’

‘Yeah, you’re right. I’ve just dreamed this up in an idle moment. It never crossed anyone else’s mind that Moir was murdered.’

Gunn’s eyes closed briefly. When she opened them she was looking past me, sucking her top lip.

‘We kept an open mind, Mr Conway. We considered the possibility, yes. But it was your evidence. It was your phone that gave us the suicide note.’

‘But you were right the first time. That’s what I’m saying. He didn’t send the text.’

She was looking at a spot on the wall beside my head.

I moved my head to catch her gaze. ‘Look, it’s simple, he always wrote things out in full. He never used text language. Never. He had a thing about it.’

She plumped her elbows on the desk, rested her chin on her clasped hands. She was tired and riled and unbelieving, and the set of her mouth drained all conviction from my words. We sat there in silence.

‘Why don’t you ask me who killed him?’

‘Because I don’t believe he was killed.’

‘I think you do. I think you’re scared of the answer.’

She looked down at the desk, brushed the pastry from her blouse. Folded her arms.

‘You know what I ought to be doing right now?’

I shrugged. She was looking at me now.

‘A wee girl’s been attacked,’ she said. ‘Eight years old. I won’t tell you what’s been done to her. I’m working through the known offenders. That’s what I should be doing right now. That’s what you took me away from. So. Now that you’ve got my full attention, Mr Conway. Now that you’ve held up another investigation. Who killed Martin Moir?’

She gave it the sing-song lilt of a rote question. My answer sounded hollow, even to me.

‘Packy Walsh killed him.’
‘I’ said the sparrow, with my bow and arrow.

‘That’s good.’ She nodded and tapped the desk twice as she got to her feet. ‘Thanks for sharing that, Mr Conway. The clearance rate’s going to look a lot healthier.’

‘That’s it?’

She held the door.

‘Well unless you’ve got a slightly stronger card to play than the intuition of Gerard Conway I’d say we’re finished here, wouldn’t you?’

Back at the office an A4 envelope with an Ayrshire postmark was sitting on my desk: the PM report, with a note from Clare. It was nearly lunchtime so I took it to the Cope. It was a two-doctor autopsy. One doctor would mean they’d already decided it was suicide. Where the Fiscal suspects murder, where a prosecution is likely to follow, he stipulates two doctors. It’s a question of corroboration.

I took a sup of Deuchars, started scanning through the pages. The report noted water in the lungs. There were abrasions on the wrists, consistent with the deceased thrashing around while drowning, and both wrists had been broken, possibly by the deployment of the air bag. The rope had been examined. The configuration of the knots was such that the deceased could readily have tied them himself. No indication of serious head trauma. Some bruising and contusions to the right temple, probably sustained at the moment of impact. No trace of controlled substances or toxins in the blood but very high levels of alcohol. The conclusion – suicide by drowning – had that air of judicious finality common to all PM reports. I folded it into my
Tribune
and finished my pint.

So that was that. As ever, it was the things that weren’t mentioned that bothered you. No word of torn shoulder muscles or abrasions on the chest. And if Moir had been drinking, why had he seemed sober in the canalside hotel? The report hadn’t settled anything. We knew in advance that it might have ruled out suicide, though in the event it hadn’t. But despite the pathologists’ conclusions, it hadn’t ruled out murder either.

Back at my desk I was reading Moir’s cuts when the phone rang loud, seemed to bounce at my elbow.

‘Gerry, a word.’

‘Fiona, give me five minutes. I’m onto—’

‘Now.’

I looked up from my screen. She was framed in her doorway, a vengeful silhouette, then the doorway was clear. I got to my feet.

‘Sit down, Gerry. Shut the door.’ She went behind her desk and stood at the window. ‘I give you a few days to get this out of your system. Now, what, you’re visiting brothels?’

‘What?’

The daylight haloed her. I couldn’t see the expression on her face. I thought maybe that was a good thing.

‘You’re visiting brothels. On company time.’

‘On a story, Fiona, I was on a story. Who told you this?’

‘What story?’

‘Moir. Govanhill.’

I told her about Moir’s child sex piece, my visit to the tenement, the boy who took me to the new place.

‘You went with one of the girls.’

‘Who told you this?’

‘A call was made. Anonymous call. You denying it?’

‘Anonymous! Packy fucking Walsh, Fiona. Wanting me stopped. “Call off your boy.” And that’s what you’re doing.’

‘Did you go with a girl?’

I shielded my eyes. Her perfume was choking me, burning my nostrils.

‘Well that was kind of the idea. Difficult to talk when there’s a half a dozen people in the room.’

‘Talk,’ she said. ‘Talk, that’s good. Did you pay her?’

‘What?’

‘You heard.’

‘Yes I paid her. Of course I paid her.’

‘Your own money?’

‘My own fucking money, Fiona. I’m not claiming it on eccies. I’m not putting it in my tax return.’

She stepped away from the window and sat on her desk. She crossed her arms and uncrossed them.

‘Did you have sex with her?’

‘Fuck this.’ I stood up. ‘I’m going to HR and I’m going to MacLaurin.’ Hugh MacLaurin was our union rep, Father of the Chapel. ‘You better have a good reason for carrying on like this. It’s not illegal. In case you didn’t know. Even if I paid her for sex, it’s not illegal.’

‘Well that’s fine then. Knock yourself out. Top
Trib
journo tours the brothels. That’s a great look for the paper.’

‘I don’t know. Might put a few hundred on the Sunday.’

‘Don’t fucking push it, Gerry.’

I stopped in the doorway. Our eyes were locked, the stand-off stare.

‘Tell me you got something then. At least tell me that.’

I held her gaze for another few seconds and slammed out into the newsroom.

When I got back to the flat Mari was crashed out on the sofa with Angus on her chest. I hoped there was still a beer in the fridge. Mari’s
Christmas Crooners
CD was playing in the empty kitchen, a lot of swooping strings and festive suavity. I opened the last Sol and slumped onto a kitchen chair. According to Bing it was beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

I took a long pull on the bottle.

‘You fucking think so?’ I said.