Bitter Water
Authors: Ferris Gordon
Also by Gordon Ferris
DREAMING OF A SONG
TRUTH DARE KILL
THE UNQUIET HEART
THE HANGING SHED
First published in Great Britain in 2012
by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.
Copyright © Gordon Ferris 2012.
The moral right of Gordon Ferris to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-0-85789-604-9 (Hardback)
ISBN: 978-0-85789-605-6 (Trade paperback)
ISBN: 978-0-85789-606-3 (eBook)
Printed in Great Britain.
Corvus
An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd
Ormond House
26-27 Boswell Street
London WC1N 3JZ
‘Shall there be evil in a city, and the
Lord hath not done it?’
Amos 3:6
For Jenny Ferris
(1929–2011)
CONTENTS
ONE
B
ubonic plague starts with one flea bite. Spanish flu with one sneeze. Glasgow’s outbreak of murder and mayhem began simply enough and, like a flea bite, hardly registered at the time. In a volatile city of hair-trigger egos one savage beating goes unnoticed, a single knife wound is nothing special. Fighting goes with the Celtic territory, runs with the Scottish grain, is indeed fuelled by the grain, distilled to 40 proof. These belligerent tendencies explain my countrymen’s disproportionate occupation of war graves across the Empire.
So it’s just as well Glasgow’s a
northern
outpost of civilisation. The cold and damp keep tempers in check for much of the year. It’s just too dispiriting to have a rammy in the rain. But even Glasgow knows the taste of summer. When the tarmac bubbles, and the tenement windows bounce back the light. When only the great green parks can absorb and dissipate the rays. When the women bare their legs and the men bow their bald pates to the frying sun. When lust boils up and tempers fray.
When suddenly, it’s
bring out your dead
. . .
For the moment, in blithe ignorance, Glasgow was enjoying a hot July and I was enjoying Glasgow. It had been seven long years since I’d last stomped its checkerboard streets and bathed my ears in the tortured melodies of my countrymen. Six years of fighting across North Africa and Europe and one year trying to get over it.
What had I to show for it? They’d taken back the officer crowns and my life-and-death authority over a company of Seaforth Highlanders. A burden removed but my heart went with it. Now I queued with the housewives and the gap-toothed old fellas for a loaf of bread and a tin of Spam. I hated Spam. I had no more ration coupons than the wide-boy who’d spent the war dodging the call-up and pestering the lonely lassies. I had no wife to set my tea on the table or light the fire in the grate. I had no children to cuddle or skelp, read to or protect.
On the credit side, I had the clothes I stood up in – secondhand, having discarded my Burton’s demob suit in the Firth of Clyde. Not a sartorial statement, merely a choice between wearing it or drowning. My officer’s Omega had survived the dip as it had survived bombardments, desert dust and machine-gun vibrations. In a box in my digs, wrapped in a bit of velvet, lay the bronze stars of action in Africa, France and Germany. But they were common enough currency these days. Even the silver cross with its purple and white ribbon had little rarity value; not after Normandy.
I had a degree in languages; my French now sprinkled with the accents and oaths of the folk whose homes we razed in our liberation blitzkrieg; my German salted with the vocabulary of the tormented and the tormentors in the concentration camps I’d worked in after VE Day last year.
Outweighing all the negatives, I had a job. Not any old job. The job I was meant for after too many years of detours through academia and law enforcement. I was the newest and no doubt worst-paid journalist on the
Glasgow Gazette, the voice of the people, by the people, for the people
. Understudy and cup-bearer to Wullie McAllister, Chief Crime Reporter. The stories I’d fed him back in April about the wrongful hanging of my old pal Hugh Donovan had given him a spectacular series of scoops which had axed the inglorious careers of several prominent policemen. In return, when I came looking for a job on the
Gazette
, he’d opened doors for me. Mostly saloon doors, but that was part and parcel of the job.
It was another man’s death that called me to witness this morning. Big Eddie Paton, my editor, scuttled up to my desk in the far corner of the newsroom.
‘Get your hat, Brodie. McAllister’s no’ around. They’ve found a body.
Foul play
. Go take a look and bring me back a’ the details . . .’
Big Eddie rolled the words ‘foul play’ over his tongue as though he was savouring a single malt. I’d only been on the job a fortnight but I knew that when he said ‘details’ he meant as grisly as possible. Yet I liked Eddie. Beneath his rants and rages he was a newspaperman right down to the ink in his varicose veins. He could turn a run-of-the-mill tale of council overspend into a blood-boiling account of official corruption and incompetence.
The ‘big’ in front of Eddie was of course ironic. If you put a ruler alongside Big Eddie toe to top, you’d run out of Eddie about the 5’ 2” mark. He earned his name from his girth. And his mouth. His office attire was braces, tartan waistcoat and armbands. He was fast on his feet and could materialise by your desk like a genie, fat hands tucked into his waistcoat pockets or fingering his pocket watch. Time was always running out for Eddie.
‘How did you hear?’
Eddie tapped his pug nose. ‘Ah’m surprised at you, Brodie. One of your ex-comrades tipped us the wink.’
In my time in the police I’d been aware of a cosy arrangement between a few of my fellow coppers and the press. For a couple of quid they’d make a call to an editor to leak some newsworthy bit of criminality, such as a prominent citizen being arrested for drunken or obscene behaviour. I’d tried to stamp it out, but now I was on the other side, my scruples seemed a wee bit quaint. It could be seen as a useful public service. Is that what six years of war does to you? You lose your moral footing?
I assumed Eddie’s instruction about my hat was figurative. It was broiling outside. I’d have left my jacket too if I’d had more confidence in the office protocol for greeting the dead. I grabbed my notebook and a couple of sharp pencils and set off into the sweltering streets of Glasgow. I hopped on a tram on Union Street and got off down by the dockside at the Broomielaw. I walked past the shuttered faces of corrugated iron and wood till I spotted the police car parked askew outside a shattered goods shed. The warehouse had taken a pasting in the blitz of ’41, and Glasgow weather and hooligans had been putting the boot in ever since. The big sliding door was jammed open with rust and distortion. There was a gap wide enough to slide through into a great echoing furnace. And there was a stench.
On the far side, in a shaft of sunlight slicing through the torn roof, stood a clutch of mourners. Two uniformed policemen and one civvie, presumably a detective, but all with their jackets over their arms and braces on show. They were gazing at a long pale lump that lay between their feet. They were arguing.
‘Should we no’ wait for the doctor, sir? And the forensics?’ said a uniform. His pale young face and the sergeant’s stripes on his jacket glowed white in the gloom.
The detective bristled. ‘And what’s that gonna tell us? That he’s deid? Ah can see he’s deid. Would you no’ be deid if you’d had that done to you? Ah just want to know
who
he is!’