The Low Road (39 page)

“That explains why you look so peely-wally.”

They laughed.

“Look at the bottom line.”
No-holds-barred contest to follow the main events.
It was in bold but small type. Mary knew what that meant.

“Bare-knuckle boxing,” she said. “Again, where does it get us?”

“It establishes a connection.”

“So?” Mary shook her long hair in frustration.

Calum had no answer to that, so he quickly turned to the next page in his notebook. “The youngest Gordon brother, I
have
found information on him. His name is on many of the contracts and accounts, and he's surprisingly well educated.” There was no need to tell Mary why it was surprising that a man coming from a family like the Gordons, had an education. “He's a qualified chartered accountant.”

“That explains why the books were so well kept. Calum, this is great research, but where is the story?”

“No idea,” Calum said.

She later thought that the research on the brothers Gordon
was
interesting and definitely a good career move on Calum's part, but what next?

With no ideas of her own, Mary decided to ask her mother's cousin, another stuffed shirt. Mary remembered him from family gatherings. His redeeming feature was his obsession with the American War of Independence and most things American. As she picked up the phone, she had the good grace to smile, knowing she was doing what Sleazy Derrick had accused her of,
using yer friends and family in high places.

“Taxes,” her second cousin said over the telephone after she explained her quest. “That's how they got Al Capone.”

“If I send you a copy of the second set of accounts, could you give me an opinion?”

“Only if you promise to come to dinner; it's been so long, my children refuse to believe they are related to the famous Mary Ballantyne.”

She laughed. “Infamous, according to my mother.”

Dinner agreed to, she sent over the accounts books. A day
later he called. “Plenty to intrigue Her Majesty's Inspector of Taxes,” he said. “I've written a brief overview, and whoever did the accounts, I'd offer him a position in my firm if he'd turn legitimate. A real Meyer Lansky.”

A phone call the next afternoon cheered her immensely.

“I believe the tax man has made a surprise visit to Gordon & Sons. And to Councilor Gordon,” her second cousin told her. “I've no idea if they will be able to prosecute, but it will certainly be uncomfortable for them.”

“That was quick,” she replied, meaning the move by the notoriously slow tax department, except when they were collecting money.

“I did hear that someone else has come forward with information.”

“Who?”

“First, promise you'll come to Sunday luncheon? And bring your mother?”

“Promise.”

When he told her, her jaw dropped.
Catching flies
, her housemistress at her former smart school for girls had called it.

“And Councilor Gordon?”

“No doubt he will be asked to answer, and pay, and probably be charged with fraud and tax evasion. I told you he was our very own version of Al Capone.” The smugness of his voice reminded Mary how excruciatingly painful Sunday lunch was going to be.

When she put down the phone, Mary knew that in leaving this city, she would be out on her own for the first time in her career, no longer able to pick up a telephone and inveigle distant and not-so-distant relatives, and friends of her late father, to help her winkle out information, by legal means, or otherwise.

Then she remembered the poster. And she thought of another friend of her father's, a fellow boxing aficionado.
He will
know surely
, she thought as she leafed through her “wee black book,” her contact bible.

“Shuggy? It's Mary Ballantyne. How about I buy you a drink?” She listened. Then laughed. “Aye. You know me too well. But it will be great to see you and, aye, you're right, I need to pick your brain. Six? Thon pub at the bottom of Garnethill? You're on.”

“Aye, I kent him,” Shuggy said when Mary showed him the poster. “A right maniac, but no boxing brain. In fact no brain at all.” He chortled into his pint.

Mary had noted the past tense—
kent
. “So what happened? I can't find any trace of the man.”

“Adding a wee bit o' color to your Councilor Gordon story, are ye?” Not much went past Shuggy. He might have cauliflower ears and a nose that resembled a volcanic eruption, but
his
brain was all working. “See, I'd like to tell you, you being your father's daughter, but with thon tink still around it's best I keep ma mouth shut.”

“Jimmy McPhee?”

“From what I heard, you're right good pals wi' him.” He winked. She didn't mind. Her being single, being teased about any man she came into contact with was fair game. “Anyhow, thon Gordon twin, last I knew he was in the loony bin out at Gartnavel. You know, indeterminate sentence ‘at Her Majesty's pleasure.' ”

“Thanks, Shuggy.”

Mary ordered and paid for more drinks. She was comfortable in the pub, one of many in Glasgow with the long dark wood bar-counter, brass rail along the bottom, spittoons still positioned at intervals. Hopefully no longer in use, she thought, but avoided them nonetheless.

As he sipped carefully on his beer, careful not to disturb the sediment on the bottom of the lukewarm hop-scented Bass stout, she listened to the reminiscences of his and her father's
outings to boxing matches at the Kelvin Hall. Shuggy was more than a contact; he was formerly Corporal Hugh McPherson, inveterate fighter, and proud soldier in her father's regiment.
A fine fellow to have on your side in a dark corner
was her father's description of him.

They parted with Mary promising to meet up again but as friends, not journalist and informant.

“Maybe we could go to the boxing, like auld times,” he said.

She wasn't sure she liked boxing anymore but said, “I'd like that.”

As she walked home, thinking through the whole debacle, Mary became convinced that the brother who was incarcerated in the Glasgow Mental Hospital, the section for the criminally insane, was important. How, she didn't know.
Maybe he was released. Jimmy will know
. But she had no idea where to find him. When she and Jimmy had parted, she assumed he went back to his Highland home.

It's unlikely he'll come to Gerry Dochery's funeral,
she thought.
But McAllister will surely return for the service. He might know how to contact Jimmy.

McAllister
. She asked herself if she cared for him as more than a friend.
No,
she decided.
He was—is—a friend. But also a distraction. An about-to-be-married distraction.

• • •

Early evening the next day, Mary was at home. Two men came to the flat. When she keeked through the curtains to see who it was, she recognized Shuggy. The other man she didn't know.

“You're coming wi' us,” the stranger told her when she opened the door to see Shuggy, shuffling on the doorstep, cap twisting and turning in his hands.

“Who's goin' make me?” She stepped back, ready to slam the door shut on his foot.

“You'll be safe. You're under the protection o' your wee tinker friend.”

“Jimmy asked for me?”

“No skin aff o' ma nose if you don't come.” He climbed the steps.

She grabbed her bag and locked up. In the car she could feel Shuggy's agitation and knew he was scared.

“I'm right sorry about this,” he whispered as they sat in the back of the car.

“Jimmy sent for me, we'll be fine,” she whispered back. She was scared. But never scared enough. Her position on the newspaper, her upbringing as daughter of an illustrious soldier and ancient family, had bred into her a sense of invincibility.

The drive went through the streets along the north side of the Clyde, an area of warehouses and elaborate buildings with statues and cornices and mock Greek columns, former counting houses of the nineteenth-century “tobacco lairds” of the Merchant City. Other buildings, no longer holding the tea and cotton and plunder of empire, were dark dirty and desolate, echoing Mary's feeling that this outing was not about to turn pleasant.

At first Mary had thought their destination might be the warehouse McAllister had told her about. But a few miles further on, the car turned northwest towards countryside, and after another four or so miles, turned in to a track leading to a farmyard. Parked along the lane, making passing difficult, were cars and vans; in the farmyard itself, more parked vehicles.

Quite a crowd
, she thought.

Low stone byres surrounded a cobblestoned square, with grass and weeds sprouting around the perimeter. Only one of the buildings seemed to be in use. The driver pulled up alongside open doors wide enough and high enough to accommodate a laden hay cart, and turned off the engine. She could hear the
grumble of a crowd waiting for a spectacle, preferably bloody, to begin.

It was dusk—the gloaming, in Scottish parlance. Across the yard, Mary's eye was drawn to a circle of men, seeing and feeling an anticipation in the swaying bodies.

The man turned. He pointed a finger at her. His almost joined-up eyebrows remained steady, his voice calm.

“You've been asked to be here as a witness. When it's over, someone will take you home. If it goes wrong for the Highlander, you're to get news back to his mother. And however it works out, there's to be no more bad blood. Understood?”

She nodded. “Aye, understood.”

He continued, “If you write one word 'bout this, someone might come for you. Or your mother. Same goes if you tell the police.” He looked at her carefully.

Again she said, “Understood.”

“I'm here to make sure it's a fair fight, an' Ah'm about to do ma best, so let's get this over wi'.” He was clearly not happy about the bout as he strode towards the cleared area.

She did not doubt the man's integrity, but if, as she suspected, it involved the Gordons, nothing was guaranteed. And the man had made it clear that this could be a fight to the death.

“He's the referee,” Shuggy explained.

“Aye, I gathered that,” Mary said. “So was it you who told them where to find me?”

“Never.” He sounded aggrieved that she had even suggested it. “They picked me up, said I wiz to look out for you, and yer man over there, I know him. And he already knew where to find you.”

“Sorry.”

Mary followed behind Shuggy. When the men turned to see who was trying to push their way through the crowd and saw
Shuggy with what looked like a wee girl in his wake, they parted like the biblical Red Sea.

Once at the edge of the circle, Mary could see Jimmy and the Neanderthal she knew to be James Gordon's brother. But no sign of Councilor Gordon, or any Gordon other than one of the twins—Alexander or Alasdair, she didn't know.

The light was low, and on the horizon Mary spotted the evening star. Its appearance seemed to be a signal for the fight to step up.

Both contestants wore ordinary trousers and were stripped down to their vests; Jimmy's was new white, Gordon's unwashed and stained. Both men had their knuckles and wrists wrapped in white bandages. No gloves.

Jimmy looked across the open space towards her and Shuggy and nodded. She nodded back. The driver walked into the middle. At his side were two men, both in shirtsleeves. One took his place at Jimmy's side. The other stood near but not too near the Gordon brother, obviously a reluctant second.

They were waiting for nothing Mary could see. Shuggy explained, “No' all the bets are in yet.”

“Never knew they'd let him out o' the asylum,” a spectator behind them said to his friends.

“It's no' him, it's his twin,” another added.

“The other wan, he wiz detained at Her Majesty's pleasure, as they ca' it, but I heard he wiz dead,” someone behind said.

“Good riddance if he is, he wiz a right maniac.”

Another spectator cautioned, “Dinny let any o' Gordon's lot hear you say that.”

There were nods and murmurs of agreement.

A man in a wide-brimmed hat appeared at the opposite edge of the circle. He held up a handful of papers.

The driver cum referee nodded. Then he stepped forward. “Boys, we need a fair fight,” he called out.

“Aye, that'll be right wi' thon nutcase,” the same voice, coming from behind Mary, muttered.

“No holding, no biting, no kicking. When I say break, you break, else I stop the fight.” Then the referee blew the whistle.

Jimmy stepped forward. In his sand shoes, compared to Gordon, who was lumbering towards him like a man about to toss the caber, it was clear how much shorter and skinnier Jimmy was. And with much less of a reach. But after they'd circled each other a few times, and as he danced inwards and outwards, it was obvious the Traveler was quicker.

Jimmy got in the first two lightning-quick left-right jabs. His blows landed on his opponent's substantial belly. It was as though he was attacking blubber. Gordon was aiming for the head. His arms were swinging. Jimmy's hands kept jabbing. So far Gordon kept missing his target. Jimmy found his, and it made no impact.

A man yelled out, “C'mon, Jimmy!”

Mary looked across and could see a group of men apart from the rest of the crowd.

“Tinkers,” Shuggy explained. Unnecessarily. Mary would never have been able to say exactly why, but she too had been certain they were Traveling people and was glad Jimmy had support.

The dancing, the jiving, went on for a fast-slow twenty minutes or so. But a blow landed here and there. A clinch or two was broken up. But no damage was done.

Jimmy let off a flurry of punches to the big man's guts. A blow landed on his left ear sending him staggering backwards, almost losing his footing on the still-dry cobblestones. Mary was worried; as the temperature dropped, she knew the dew could leave them as slippery as black ice.