Gallowglass (10 page)

TWENTY

I
t was two in the morning, and the night sky was darkened by cloud. Though the early July night was warm, I had my cap pulled down over my face and my jacket collar turned up. I clutched a small holdall. I took the byways and back streets and avoided the pools of light round the soft hissing gas lamps. Like a cat burglar, I slipped down the shadows and walked softly until I got to the Clyde. It seemed appropriate and ironic to rendezvous at the Kelvinhaugh Ferry. Only this time I’d arranged my own transport.

The ticket hut was in darkness and only a faint glow from a street lamp reached as far as the steps down to the water. I stared into the darkness. I thought I could make out the hull and rigging of a boat. A few steps nearer and I confirmed it. It wasn’t ferry-shaped but long and sleek. It had two masts, fore and aft, one taller than the other. I knew its make and its name, or rather its old name. It was a gaff-rigged ketch called the
Lorne
, though its present owner might have renamed it, given its shifty provenance. I began stepping down towards it. Still no lights from the boat. Then finally, just as I got to the foot of the steps, I saw a glimmer from behind a curtain, and made out the bulk of a man sitting outside on the deck. He’d seen me and was moving towards me, grinning. I stepped on to the gunwale and Eric McLeod’s big hand gripped mine to steady me down to the deck.

‘You’re a sight for sore eyes,’ I said.

‘And you’ve been causing trouble again.’

Neither of us spoke names out loud, just in case. We talked no more until Eric had cast off his moorings and let the river carry us out into the channel.

‘Where to, Brodie?’

‘Downriver, Eric. Find us a quiet spot.’

He nodded and raised the furled mizzen sail, then the jib. I remember him saying she handled just fine without needing to hoist the mainsail. The canvas picked up the breeze, filled, and pulled us sweetly down the black flow. I looked back to see a small tender slipping along in the silver wake. I smiled at the sensation of gliding along the deserted Clyde in the wee small hours. It tasted of freedom and I was permanently greedy for that these days. Insatiable.

I thought of the last time I’d been on board the
Lorne
. Over a year ago. Sam was lying battered and chloroformed on a bunk below. I’d freed her from hostage and was cack-handedly steering the ketch back to Arran. Its owners were both dead; one by his own hand, one by mine. The Slattery brothers, drug-running between Ireland and Arran and on to the mainland, had framed my childhood friend, Hugh Donovan, for murder and seen to his hanging despite the best efforts of Hugh’s advocate, a certain Samantha Campbell.

Big Eric – former Black Watch, and 51
^st
Highland Division like me – had lent me, a desperado with a shotgun, his motorboat. I’d chased down the
Lorne
and consigned Slattery to the depths. Him or me. It seemed only fair that Eric should acquire a new boat for his unquestioning help. Besides, I was no sailor and had no use for a yacht – until now. If I ever got out of this fix, I’d ask Eric to take Sam and me for a sail round the islands for old times’ sake.

We’d exchanged the odd letter over the past year. Eric’s were effusive with thanks. His small boat-hire business at Kildonan on the southern tip of Arran had been considerably augmented by the big ketch. As well as fishing for his family
and selling the catch locally, he skippered it out for day trips and longer through the sailing months. Business was growing and – luckily for me – had necessitated the installation of the phone.

We anchored by the south bank well down the estuary and beyond the lines of houses and shipyards. At last we could talk. Eric made us mugs of tea spiced with Navy Rum and we sat out under the warm clouds. He pulled out his pipe and I lit a companionable cigarette.

‘You’re beginning to look as much like an old seadog as me, Brodie.’

‘I’ve a way to go before I match your burning bush.’

I stroked my tufts. Barely two weeks’ growth, but already a solid mat. One of my meagre talents. The difference between Eric’s and mine – apart from the length – was that his beard and hair were in matching shades of fiery red. My whiskers honoured my mother’s once flaming locks, but my head kept to my father’s dark hue.

‘Is this your idea of camouflage?’ he asked.

‘I need all the help I can get.’

‘It seems you do.’

‘You’d heard about the Gibson murder?’ I hadn’t been able to tell him much in my brief phone call. But for Eric McLeod, it was enough that a pal was in trouble.

‘Oh aye. Almost sent you a postcard.’

‘To say?’

‘To wish you luck.’

‘Did it cross your mind I might have done it?’

‘Naw. Not your style, Brodie.’

I smiled at this big man. We’d barely met, yet here he was making judgements about whether or not I’d kidnapped and murdered a man. I’m not sure I could be that confident of my fellow man. Unless that man was Eric McLeod.

‘Thanks.’

‘And I was sorry to hear you were deid,’ he said solemnly.

‘So was I, Eric. So was I. But I had to get out.’

He nodded. ‘To find out who did do it.’ It wasn’t a question.

‘That, and why. There’s more to this.’

Sitting there rocking gently in the soft night, I would have told him my life story and every secret. I knew it would go no further than the hull of the ketch. So I told him about MI5 and what was at stake. He whistled when I told him of the deadline racing towards us for Britain avoiding bankruptcy via handouts from US Secretary of State George Marshall. Mostly he just listened, asking no questions, and occasionally sucking on his pipe. At the end, he asked:

‘How can I help?’

‘What are your commitments these days?’

‘Catch fish. Take trippers round the bay. Put up the wi’ wife and weans.’

I smiled at the last point; I knew Eric doted on his family, which made my request all the harder. He already had a daughter when I first bumped into him. In his last letter he had been bursting with pride at the safe delivery of a son. They called him Douglas, or just Dougie.

‘How’s wee Dougie?

‘Not so wee. I think he’s taking after his namesake.’ He grinned.

‘And Mairi? How’s she keeping? It must be a handful.’

‘She was made for this. She’s well.’

A big smile split his face at the mere thought of his magnificent wife. I’d met her when I brought the
Lorne
into harbour. A big capable woman with the blonde hair and blue eyes of her Norse ancestors. I was asking too much of him.

‘What do you need, Brodie?’

‘I needed a favour. But it’s too big.’

‘Go on. Ask.’

‘I need a base. A safe base.’

He nodded. ‘Moored or mobile?’

‘Mobile’s better. Safer if I keep moving.’

‘How long for?’

‘Couple of weeks at most. After that, it’s too late. It may already be too late.’

‘The Marshall plan deadline you were talking about?’

‘Exactly. And I could pay you for your loss of business. Or rather Harry Templeton will.’

‘No need.’

‘There is. You can’t fish and you can’t take day trippers out round the bay. But really – can your wife and weans spare you?’

His broad grin said it all. ‘I’ll be glad of the sleep. I’ll get her sister to stay. Tell her I’ve gone fishing.’

‘And that’s the truth, Eric. That’s the truth.’

I lay awake for a long time in one of the bunks, feeling the ketch stir and rock beneath me. It was the first time in days I’d felt truly safe. In Shimon’s storeroom I’d been on tenterhooks waiting for a police raid or one of Shimon’s men finding me lurking among the crates and giving me away. Partly, too, it was the feeling of claustrophobia, sealed in the dark among the boxes and smells of wood and textiles. Out here on the river, under the stars, I was free.

It gave me time to think, to wonder again about how life turns, how choices made long ago cascade down the years. All you can do is be true to yourself and take what happens on the chin. How could I have reacted any differently to Sheila Gibson’s request for help? It wasn’t the fifty quid. I’d forgotten to ask for it. It was how I was made, how I was shaped. I didn’t always like the results; often I wished I could react differently to events, offer a more measured response. But I would be a different man. I wasn’t so sure that Dr Andrew Baird had it right: that I’d become some sort of junkie for excitement. I suspected that ‘the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves’.

Whatever the cause, here I was, a vilified outcast floating in the Firth of Clyde, in some sort of metaphor for my life. Can a dead man be an outcast? The saving grace was that I was couched in a safe haven provided by a man I knew only a little, but who understood honour and core decency. A friend in need, prepared to throw his lot in with a man accused of murder, based solely on gut instinct and – as he saw it – repayment of a debt. He ignored the fact that my gift of the ketch was to repay
him
for the loan of one of his small boats and his best engine in the first place. It was a simple and clear strain of morality that I recognised for my own but which seemed all too rare these days. It gave me back hope. My life was in turmoil again, but this night, for the first time in weeks, rocked in Eric’s cradle, soothed by the clinking of the rigging, I slept like a baby.

Next morning we breakfasted on fried oatcakes and herring caught on lines trailed behind him as Eric sailed from Arran. It beat the hell out of prison bacon rolls. After, as we sat and enjoyed a cigarette:

‘Brodie? I’ve been thinking.’

I was half expecting this. ‘I’ve asked too much of you? Of course I have. Look, just drop me off and I’ll go to ground in Glasgow.’

He waved his big hand dismissively. ‘Not at a’, man. Look, we’re on a boat, right?’

I nodded.

‘She’s seaworthy enough to get us all the way down the west coast. Wales and England. All the way to France. It would take a good few days and it would depend on the weather. But if you don’t think you can pull this off… Or even if you thought, the hell with it, they all think I’m dead and I might as well disappear… You and your lady, Samantha of course.’

I looked at him. I could hardly reply. ‘A safety net, Eric. An escape route.
Moran taing
, Eric.
Moran taing
.’

‘I didn’t know you had the Gaelic.’

‘Some key phrases are useful when you’re in charge of a bunch of Highlanders. But thank you, Eric. It’s good to have options. Let’s see how things go.’

We put in at the pier at the Erskine Ferry and made some phone calls. Eric had already told his wife he might be gone for a few days; now he confirmed it and told her to get her sister over. I stayed out of hearing but could tell by his actions that he didn’t have to coax her but that he’d miss her like mad. I resolved to take her an armful of flowers if I got out of this mess in one piece.

My own calls were first to Sam to say all was well, then to Harry Templeton. During my days of planning and thinking ensconced in Shimon’s store, I concluded I needed to get to the heart of this whole sorry mess. All roads led to the Scottish Linen Bank. But though I had handled some basic bookkeeping in my army days, I wouldn’t know the workings of a retail bank from the workings of a Chinese laundry. I needed help. Preferably someone with a flexible grip on morality. From my pre-war days pounding the beat I knew just the man. If he wasn’t banged up. If he wasn’t dead.

‘Harry, I need you to find someone. A certain Archibald Higgins, a Glasgow accountant – until he was struck off. Which takes some doing for Glasgow accountants. Airchie’s also done time. Indeed, he may be doing a stretch currently. But if he’s available I’ll need cash to persuade him.’

‘We have funds to overcome most scruples.’

‘Scruples isn’t a word I’d associate with wee Airchie.’ I told Harry where to set up a meeting if he managed to track down Higgins. ‘I need to do my own research too. I know it’s risky but I need to get out and about. Can you fix me with some papers?’

‘What do you need?’

I told him. He wasn’t fazed.

‘They’ll be with you tomorrow. How will I get them to you?’

We agreed on the drop.

We hung up and I handed the phone to Eric. I had him call the
Gazette
and ask to speak to McAllister. When he was put through I took back the phone.

‘Wullie, it’s me. Have you got hold of Weasel?’

‘He’s on the payroll.’

‘Well done. How about your banking enquiries?’

‘A wee bit of progress. Some desk research and face to face. Shortly, in fact. I’m just on my way there now. I’ve a couple of interviews lined up.’

‘Could we meet this evening?’

‘Where?’

I told him.

TWENTY-ONE

J
ust as twilight eased into night, Eric steered the
Lorne
alongside the steps at Anderston Quay downstream of the Clyde Street Ferry. It was as far upriver as he could take her without chopping down the masts to get under the road and rail bridges running up to Central Station.

The sails were furled, and we were moving under power, the four-stroke marine diesel steadily throbbing throughout the hull. I was down below and peeking out from behind the curtain. I saw two figures waiting, one in a wheelchair, one behind. Wullie and Stewart.

Eric tied up and climbed the steps. With Stewart’s help they carried Wullie and then his wheelchair down on to the deck. Quickly, Eric brought the ketch round and out into the river. When it was dark enough and we were far enough out of plain sight, I came out of hiding. Wullie was perched as far forward on the deck as possible, by the forestay. Like an unbraw figurehead. He turned and waved at me, his lit fag carving a glowing scimitar against the night sky. His eyes gleamed in the light from the boat’s lamp. Stewart stepped towards me and shook my hand.

‘A fine night for a trip, Brodie.’

‘It surely is, Stewart. I hope you don’t mind being dragged into this cloak-and-dagger stuff.’

‘More fun than trying to get a class of Govan weans to learn their twelve times table.’

‘If this is fun, frankly, I could do with a wee bit less of it in my life.’

‘I bet.’

‘I assume you’re pleased and astonished at how the old rogue has recovered?’

‘In some ways. It was quieter there for a while.’

He peered forward at the old rascal and smiled fondly. Wullie just grinned and waved. They called themselves brothers for appearances’ sake. They’d been together most of their adult lives and exhibited all the best signs and symptoms of the long and happily married. I left Stewart to talk to Eric at the tiller and to enjoy the ride. I walked forward and hung over the bows on the other side to Wullie, and proceeded to probe him about what he’d learned. Not that Wullie ever needed much persuasion to talk. He was chuffed with how clever he’d been and how much he’d achieved.

‘You’ve got Weasel Watkins on the job?’

‘He was between jobs, so to speak, and seemed happy to get started. I told him it was for the paper. He didnae seem to care what it was for as long as he got his ten bob a day.’

‘Where’s he basing himself? Weasel’s a wee scruff – unless he’s had a makeover. He’d stand out in a nice neighbourhood.’

‘Scruff still, but he’s playing to his strengths. Camouflage. He’s got himself a big brush and wanders up and down the road pretending to be a sweep. They’ll have the cleanest street in Glesga.’

I laughed at the image. ‘But he knows the house and knows what to look out for?’

‘Ah took him there masel’ in a taxi. We went past a couple o’ times to make sure. Then Ah dropped him at the road end. Him and his brush. He knows he has to watch for comings and goings by the lady of the hoose, and any strangers.’

I nodded. It was a long shot but it was the best we could do for the moment.

‘What have you got on Gibson?’

‘Let’s start wi’ the public stuff. I asked our fount of all knowledge, the fair Elspeth, to trawl through the clippings. But she already had a load at her fingertips. Pure curiosity, she said, but facts seem to stick to the inside of her heid, like midges to a roll of flypaper.’

‘Let’s hear the basics. Where did he come from?’

‘Keep mind, this is all the public stuff, the stuff that Fraser would have allowed to come out. Great men are gie handy at managing their public images.’

‘Well, it’s a start.’

‘He’s a south Ayrshire boy. Down by Maybole. Nothing special about the family, except the mother died while the boys were young and the man took another wife. Younger model, I suppose. Other than that, jist ordinary working class, him and his younger brother.’

‘Not a privileged start? I thought he’d be part of the Gibson merchant clan. The tobacco barons.’

‘Far from it. Went to local schools, left at fourteen but Fraser managed to get a job in his local bank branch running messages. He made a big thing of the humble beginnings for the press. Then he just worked his way up, probably ower the dead bodies of the competition. No’ quite rags to riches but certainly a self-made man.’

‘Ambitious then. Anything untoward?’

‘Not that Elspeth knows of. But a strong impression of a man in a hurry. A streak of ruthlessness – more of which later. Anyway, as the money got better the houses got bigger. He married above himself if you like; Lady Gibson was Sheila McKechny, daughter of the owner of the big stores in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Private education, the whole bit. They’ve moved in charmed circles for some years now. Especially when he got knighted.’

‘Pals? Who does he hobnob with?’

‘He’s a gowfer. But then it goes wi’ the territory in the
upper echelons. A lot of business done on the nineteenth green. Gibson’s a member –
was
a member – of Whitecraigs Golf Club. Private, exclusive and very expensive.’

‘Of course he would be. You could swing a seven iron from his back garden and put a ball on the fairway. Any other clubs? Positions?’

‘A yacht club out by Gourock. Rangers. He’s on the board. His bank’s a supporter.’

‘You mentioned a ruthless streak. Tell me more.’

‘Elspeth says the papers over the years have oblique references to a man larger than life, disnae suffer fools gladly or otherwise, quick temper and always gets his way. Nae surprise there. You don’t get to be top dog without biting a few folk on your way up.’

‘But?’

‘But it’s more than normal pushiness and ambition. I said I’d lined up to interview a couple of folk at the bank, the day. One was his old private secretary; the other was the new boss, Colin Clarkson, formerly the number two.’

‘I wish I’d been there!’ I realised how much I meant that, how strongly I felt cut off from my normal life. From being able to carry out my own digging. ‘Did you have any difficulty? I mean in the circumstances?’

‘The circumstances in which a
Gazette
reporter bumped off the Managing Director?’

‘Exactly, Wullie.’

‘Eddie had to get his boss to put in a personal request. Director to director kinda thing.’

I nodded. ‘Good for Eddie. Who did you see first?’

‘Talking’s thirsty work, Brodie. Have ye anything that would wet a man’s thrapple?’

I went down into the cabin and came back with a bottle of Eric’s rum. I poured us both a large shot. Not Wullie’s usual tipple, but it tickled his fancy to be sipping a sailor’s ration. He’d want a parrot next.

‘Let’s start wi’ Clarkson. Ah telt him we were doing a kind of memorial piece for Gibson in the
Gazette
.’ Wullie described it so vividly I felt I was there beside him taking notes…