Where the Dead Men Go (15 page)

‘Yes!’

If she’d seen the tatt, maybe she’d been with him too. Had he hurt her too?

‘Is OK.’ A mind-reader. She gripped my wrist. ‘I’m OK.’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘I’m glad. The tattoo. What was it?’

She put her hand out like a traffic policeman: Halt.

I waited. She did it again, held the hand out, fingers together, in front of my face, watching my reaction. I shook my head, shrugged, I didn’t get it.

‘A hand,’ she said. ‘Red.’ She tapped one of the roses on the tablecloth. Held the palm up again: ‘Like this.’

I nodded. The Red Hand of Ulster. Good. Not the most unique of emblems in the West of Scotland, not the kind of design one could show around the tattoo parlours, hoping to trace your man. But something.

‘And words,’ she said. Her fingers traced a smiley mouth on her shoulder. ‘Other language.’ She shrugged.

I took her napkin, flattened it out, clicked my biro, drew the hand, the shield, the crown on top, the curved scroll underneath, filled in the words:
Quis Separabit
.

‘Yes!’ She patted the napkin. That was it.

Quis Separabit
: Who Will Separate Us? He had a tattoo of the crest of the Ulster Defence Association. He was a UDA sympathiser, possibly a member – the UDA had a Scottish Brigade. She gripped my wrist again, frowning, pointed at the napkin. She wanted an explanation. How to explain to a Slovakian Catholic the allegiance of a lowland Scot to an outlawed Ulster Protestant paramilitary force? I didn’t try.

‘Politics,’ I said.

She gave me her number, the address of a flat in Battlefield. She was flying to Prague next Friday but was happy to talk to the police before then.

We shook hands on the pavement outside the café. I told her I would be in touch. I looked for something else to say, mark the occasion.

‘You’re brave,’ I told her, stating the bloody obvious. I patted my heart – where I thought my heart would be – but she knew the word, she was shaking her head, looking at the pavement.

‘If I’m brave,’ she said, ‘Helen Friel still here.’

I phoned Lewicki from the car.

‘It’s a start,’ he said.

‘Right. Don’t go overboard, Jan.’

‘That’s the point, though, isn’t it? What did she actually see? She saw Helen Friel leaving the room with this ginger charmer. Did she even see them go into another room together? It’s supposition, Ger. Plus, a case like this, there’s the character of the witness. A whore, basically. She a user too?’

‘I don’t know.’ I pictured her clear eyes and skin, thought back to the damp bedroom with the two-bar fire. Would I have noticed track-marks? There were no marks on the arm she had bared in the café. ‘I don’t think so. Maybe. Wouldn’t you be a user if you lived like that?’

‘It’s what they’ll argue. Prostitute, drug-user. Person of low moral character.’

‘For fuck’s sake, Jan. She’s going to risk her life to testify against Packy Walsh. How much moral character do you want?’

‘That’s a commendably enlightened point of view,’ Lewicki said. ‘It would be nice to think that everyone will share it.’

‘So we’ve got fuck all?’

‘No. We’ve got a start. Now we have an idea what happened we can go back and talk to the other girls, prompt them, give them the hard word. But we need corroboration.’ He paused. ‘The fucking UDA?’

‘I know. It makes no sense. The Walshes are Tims. And it’s a Celtic game, not Rangers? Plus, it’s the Neils who’ve got the Ulster connection, not the Walshes.’

‘Aye but that was different. Maitland’s thing was with the UVF. The UDA’s a whole different ballgame.’

My mind flashed back to the phone call, the number on Moir’s Post-it, the Ulster voice at the end of the line. Lewicki’s trace had got nowhere but maybe this was connected.

‘A Loyalist feud? Maybe he’s Belfast, not Glasgow. He’s over helping the Walshes. Is he hitting the Neils to hurt the other mob, the UVF?’

‘Jesus, Gerry, who knows? The key at this stage is the girls. We get even one of them to confirm this story, then we can move. If nothing else, we can charge Walsh for the assault.’ He sniffed, cleared his throat. ‘You writing this up?’

‘Sensitively,’ I said. ‘With the tact and discretion that have come to be my hallmarks.’

Lewicki sighed, a long low sound that carried no hint of forbearance. ‘Just don’t fuck it up,’ he said.

I bought a roll and square sausage at the baker’s beside the Cope, a caramel latte from the Starbucks at the
Trib
, put my iPhone onto silent, unhooked my office phone. Half an hour later I filed it to Driscoll:

The last sentence would probably go – Driscoll would strike it, or Maguire would – but I chanced it anyway. I wanted Walsh to know that his card was marked, that another
Tribune
journo was on his case. Then I wrote up the press conference, the one we would splash with, the Rangers fan murdered off Great Western Road.

‘Is this an interview?’

Mari was watching from the kitchen doorway. I frowned at the mirror. Paul Smith suit. Lemon shirt, oxblood tie. Tan Loake brogues.

‘It’s called a suit. Type of men’s apparel. Not sure you have them in New Zealand.’

‘Oh I think I’ve seen them.’ She slipped her arms under mine and tightened the knot of my tie. ‘Yeah. Guy sold me a Holden, he was wearing one.’

‘Aye? We’ll all be selling cars if the paper doesn’t pick up.’

The Jarvie Club was on Great Western Road, a terrace set back from the traffic, up on the hill with its own strip of road. The blonde sandstone portico was crumbling a little but the brass plate shone wet in the white sunless day. The door opened before I could ring the bell and a porter asked me to sign in, pointed to the stairs.

I climbed slowly, my leather soles slipping on the carpet, and thought about Haining. The first time I heard him speak was in 2005. The city was selling off council land, punting gap sites to developers at throwaway rates. Most council leaders would have kept this quiet; Haining held a press conference. He brought us to an empty lot behind the Gallowgate on a blustery June morning. A lectern stood in the rubble, amid the wagging thistles and torn johnnies, the turds and the used syringes, and Haining gripped its sides with his big fists and glared out at the press pack, a wind from the river lifting his hair.

‘At the start of the twentieth century,’ he told us, ‘this was the most densely populated urban area in Europe. This plot of land. Seven hundred thousand people lived in three square miles of Glasgow city centre. Families of five, six, seven, living in a single room. Worst rate of infant mortality in the developed world.’

He clamped his mouth shut, nodded slowly, scanned the heads.

‘That’s the challenge this city faced,’ he said. ‘A challenge with no parallel in this country, few in any others. Did we meet it?’ He shrugged. ‘We tried. We knocked down whole districts, put up a hundred thousand homes, shifted whole communities out of the slums. But a process on this scale, it’s not neat and tidy. It’s messy. It’s piecemeal. You end up with places like this. Places where the slums were cleared and nothing went up in their place. Gap sites. Wastelands. Eyesores. And we know what happens then. The gangs take over. The junkies. Another bit of Glasgow gone to the dogs. But so what?’ He spread his hands, hunched his shoulders. ‘So what? We can’t afford to build on them. It’s out of our hands.’

He shook his head, studied the lectern. ‘Not good enough,’ he said, looking up. ‘Not. Good. Enough.
We
can’t afford to build. But—’ tapping the lectern with a stubby finger – ‘we know people who can. And if they undertake to build something useful, if they build houses or shops or businesses, this city will sell them the land. We’ll bloody
give
them the land. Will we make money? No. Will we make this city a better place?’ He looked around at the rubbled lot, the detritus of coke cans and smashed half-bottles, the dead bonfires, charred scuddy-mags. He leaned forward on one elbow, his lip curled in scorn. ‘What do you think?’

It was classic Haining. Fluent bullshit, for the most part, but something winning in the delivery. No front pages came from that speech, it didn’t make
Reporting Scotland
at half past six that evening. But that wasn’t the point. He’d killed it as a story. There would be no exposés, no hostile headlines about the city flogging the family silver. He’d painted a quick fix as a moral crusade and stopped the Scottish press pack doing its job.

At the top of the stairs I straightened my tie, checked my fly. A shoelace working loose. Kneeling on the fleur-de-lis carpet I listened to the buzz from the Glasgow Room, through the double doors. People who knew what they were doing. People who belonged. I straightened up and pushed the door.

The room was packed, suits and dresses in loose groups, white-shirted waiting staff weaving between them. I faltered a moment, wavered, like someone who’d stepped off the kerb into oncoming traffic, scanned around for the drink, the bar, the waiters.

‘Gerry!’

Haining was plunging through the bodies, burly, bearish, the big teeth bared in a chummy growl.

‘Glad you could come.’ The moist palm, meaty.

A girl appeared with a tray of champagne. For a moment I thought it was the girl from Temora Street, Gina; she had the same shade of hair, the same purple hollows under her eyes. I plucked a flute and tipped it back. Haining leaned towards me. His bulk created a private space, a little alcove in the busy room.

‘I meant to say, Gerry. The piece in Sunday’s paper: just the ticket. Get the facts down. Straight bat. No hysterics.’

‘We aim to please, Councillor.’

‘“Gavin”, please! Councillor!’ He laughed and steered me into the crowd. ‘I mean it, though. Enough shit with these fuckwits without blowing it out of proportion.’

A trio opened up at our approach. Two men and a woman.

‘This man writes for the
Trib
,’ Haining announced. ‘Watch what you say!’

Three broad smiles.

‘Gerry Conway. Anna Vallance. Alan Goldie. Lewis Rush.’

‘Pleasure.’

The woman was early thirties, flirty, flushed, she held her glass up at her shoulder, head cocked to one side. Her glass caught the sunlight; deep red print of her lips on the rim. I wondered which of the men was fucking her.

‘Not bad,’ she said, staring. ‘About time we had some new blood. Any blood, in fact.’

The thin one shot his cuffs, frowned, flexed his shoulders. I stopped wondering.

The other man, Goldie, was in telly, head of current affairs at Baird. I’d known him when he was election officer for Labour’s Scottish leader in the Nineties.

There were thirty people round the table. I knew some of them by sight. The bassist for a local band, just back from playing South by Southwest. A novelist with heavily gelled hair and a cream blazer with thick black pinstripes. I recognised the blazer – he was wearing it on the cover of his latest novel,
Heavy Sex
, which made it onto the Booker longlist. I spotted McMillan from the
Scotsman
, a best-selling historian, the presenter of a TV makeover show.

I was seated between the tipsy woman and an old gent in a dark suit and striped tie. The strip of marbled card at his place-mat said ‘John Patullo’. He leaned across to read my own before clasping a massive hand round mine.

‘Conway.’ He settled his napkin. ‘You’re the newspaperman.’

‘I’m a journalist, yes.’

He nodded. Above the blue checked shirt his wattled neck wavered.

‘I was sorry to hear about your colleague.’

Had he known Moir?

‘A capable man,’ he said. ‘I liked him a lot. Here.’ He took a card from his top pocket and placed it on the table beside me:
John Patullo, OBE. Kentigern Consortium.

The sound of pewter on glass. Conversations faltering, stalling, dying out around the table. Haining on his feet, smiling. He put down his spoon.

‘Ladies. Gentlemen.’ He spread his arms. ‘Friends. I nearly said
Comrades
.’ Little rip of laughter. ‘As ever, pleasure, real pleasure to see you. As you know, I like to mix things up in these little gatherings and we have two new faces with us this afternoon. Lauren, could you give us a wave, please?’ A smoky, cadaverous blonde across the table raised her hand like someone swearing the oath of allegiance. ‘Lauren Trevelyan from Burnbank Media. Moved up from London last year. And we have our own Gerry Conway of the
Tribune on Sunday
.’ I raised my hand. ‘Gerry moved up from – where was it, Gerry? Mureton?’ Laughter. ‘You’re both very welcome.’

He smoothed his tie with a fat hand.

‘For the benefit of the newcomers, these events are social. There’s no discussion paper, no agenda. Just bringing you guys together, in my opinion, is good for the city. Things will happen, ideas will emerge, if artists talk to bankers. If CEOs talk to filmmakers. If lawyers talk to journalists. Hang on, scratch that – say fuck all to journalists.’ More laughter. ‘Gerry, Brian: only joking.

‘I think of these gatherings as a little investment in the future of our great city. I’m fortunate that my position allows me to bring talented people together. Sadly, one very modestly talented person has to be leaving—’ he looked at his watch, ‘right about now. Watch
Reporting Scotland
tonight and you’ll see why. Enjoy your dessert. Enjoy the wine, the company. Talk to each other. And I’ll catch you next time.’

And then he was off, patting shoulders, shaking hands, on his way to the exit. Light smatter of applause and the conversations started up again.

After the meal, we moved to the side tables for coffee. Gold-rimmed cups and dice-sized cubes of tablet.

‘Gerry.’

Allan Goldie at my shoulder, tight smile, eyebrows raised.

‘You got a minute? You’re not heading off?’

‘No, it’s fine.’

‘Great.’ He ushered me over to a table in the corner where we sank in the brown padded club chairs.

‘I’m glad I caught you. Look, I’ll get straight to the point, Gerry. We’re commissioning a series of programmes about the referendum. Explore the issues, explain the process. Profile the key players. Leaders’ debates, studio audience of five hundred people.’

 I nodded. ‘Sounds impressive.’

‘It might be. That depends on the talent. Talent’s you, Gerry. We want you to front the series.’

I looked away down the long high room, the sun in the tall windows catching the nap of a blue suit, a sheaf of feather-cut hair, a bright plug of gold in a long-stemmed glass.

‘What about Dennis?’

Dennis Garvaghy was the channel’s political editor. He’d fronted their coverage of every election since 1992. I’d sat up into the small hours more often than I could remember, watching his stern jowls announce Labour holds in Aberdeen North or Hamilton South.

Goldie grimaced. ‘Oh, Dennis is Dennis. Dennis is great. He’s going through some
issues
just now, working things out. We’re planning some changes at the channel. Look,’ he held his hands up; ‘I don’t need a decision right away. The programmes won’t be starting till the spring. Meantime, let’s get you on
Spectrum
again, get the viewers used to that handsome mug.’

Spectrum
was the Sunday-lunchtime politics show that Dennis had fronted for the past ten years and on which I irregularly – and to my mind ineptly – guested during my first stint at the
Trib
.

‘OK.’ He was on his feet now. ‘We’ll start the profiles with the “No” camp leader. Better the devil you know!’

He was grinning.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Who’s leading the “No” campaign?’

The grin fell. He looked puzzled, gave a short laugh.

‘He is.’ He jabbed his thumb over his shoulder to where Haining had been sitting. ‘I thought – I mean, Jesus, you’re sitting here.’

I looked at the vacant chair, the napkin that had still to be removed.

‘But he’s not even in parliament. He’s not an MSP.’

‘All the better. He’s not tainted. You’ve seen them, Gerry, the Party’s Scottish emissaries. It’s not the brains trust. They’re not in government, they know fuck all about opposition.’ He opened his arms. ‘Meantime Haining’s running a city with a budget of ten billion.’

‘So the plan is, what? He leads it from outside parliament?’

‘He runs the “No” campaign. Saves the Union. Hosts the Games. Stands for Holyrood in 2015. They win, great – he’s in the cabinet, he gets the big job in a couple of years. They don’t win, McKay stands down, Haining’s in the big chair, wins next time. Look—’ he checked his watch, ‘we’ll cover all this when we do the briefing. Keep in touch.’

I took the hand he offered, watched him slip back into the fray.