Bitter Water (11 page)

‘Last question, Mr Stephens. I understand your company went bust. A hundred men laid off without a penny. But all the bosses walked off with fat pensions and bonuses. Do you think that’s what they meant about thieving?’

‘Ridiculous! We did everything by the book! And you can stick that in your rag of a paper! Now clear off before we call the police.’

I tracked down another name to a pawnbroker in the East End. The shop was dark and jammed with glass cases overfowing with baubles. People’s precious knick-knacks.

‘How can I help, sir?’ The man stood behind his counter with his hands behind his back.

‘Mr Gillespie? I’m from the
Gazette
. I hear you had some trouble.’

‘Trouble? Is this what you mean?’ He brought his hands round and held them out to me. His fingers were claws drawing the eye to the perfect raw circle at the centre of each palm. A scorch mark.

‘What happened?’

He nodded upwards at set of three balls, a miniature sign of his profession hanging above his head.

‘They dragged me roon the back. I’ve a wee kitchen there wi’ a gas stove. They heated them up. They made me haud two o’ them.’ His face creased in horror. ‘It was the smell that was the worst.’ His eyes lost focus and I thought for a moment he would faint. ‘I can still smell it.’ Then he staggered and came to. ‘Sorry, pal. Sorry. It was just a couple of weeks back. Ah still . . . ’

‘It’s OK, Mr Gillespie. Did they say anything?’

He drooped with weariness. ‘Oh aye. They said it was for playing wi’ the weights. That I was fiddling.’

‘And were you, Mr Gillespie?’

‘Who disnae? It’s the only way to make ony money these days.’

‘Did they take anything?’

‘A few quid. Funny that. I had a fair amount in the till but they just took about a fiver’s worth.’

I could only trace or interview ten of the nineteen on my list. Even fewer were prepared to talk about what had happened. Embarrassed? But a picture was emerging. A pattern of people being attacked, mainly in the scruffier parts of the city. No surprises in that. But these weren’t random. Nor were they happening just after the pubs closed on a Saturday. Nor because Rangers lost at home, or an Orange March had got out of hand. They seemed to be targeted on known bad boys. This made the attacks popular – unless of course you were on the receiving end. In the earlier attacks no one was robbed. Later, money was being taken. But they weren’t cleaning out their victims.

Someone was bypassing the tiresome bureaucracy of the courts and ministering punishment to the wayward. Just like the good old days when criminals and fornicators were branded with hot irons, these self-appointed judges, jury and executioners were leaving an indelible reminder of wickedness chastised. Some were being scarred. Some losing the end joint of the pinkie. With a cigar cutter. Neat job. I wondered if the mad cigar men kept them as souvenirs? Cannibal chiefs in grass skirts sporting a string of dried digits round their necks?

My doubts about the threats and portents in the Marshals
’
letters shaded into certainty. The timing fitted with Ishmael being at the heart of it. The big story started unfolding after Johnson’s trial. Then it accelerated following his suicide. Doubling up like an epidemic stirring. I could plead being the new boy for not reporting it sooner. Or not wanting to set the hounds after Ishmael without real proof; not to mention my guilt about Johnson. Alternatively, I’d ignored the signs because I wanted to. Bad guys were getting what was coming to them for a change. What was happening was too near my own cavalier sense of morality for comfort. In the opaque glasshouse of my soul, I wasn’t about to start throwing stones at anyone.

On Friday I took my street map, my interview notes and my deductions to Eddie. But I was worried. Once we gave publicity to an outbreak of vigilante acts, I could picture light bulbs going off in a thousand dumb heads across Glasgow:
Oh, that’s a good idea.
Before you know it, everybody would be at it. I could at least play down the finger-snipping and the face-marking. We’d then stand a chance of sifting the general score-settling from the specific acts of the Marshals. I was thinking more as a copper than a reporter, but that’s what you get when you jump careers.

‘Fuck me, Brodie! This is big! You think there’s more to come? ’

‘It’s likely, Eddie. I’ve identified nineteen cases that fit this profile.’ I showed him my list. ‘The guys who wrote these letters aren’t seeing things through normal eyes. They’re on a mission. I don’t know if I’ll be the recipient of the next letter but I’m sure there will be one.’

‘Brodie, it had effin’ better be you. This is the sort of thing that the public loves. A story they can follow every day. Like a Jane cartoon. It’s what sells!’

As I was talking through the material with Eddie, a theory presented itself. I should have spotted it sooner. I could have done the further research of this lead myself but why pass up an opportunity? I found myself seeking a second opinion – a legal opinion – late on Friday night.

TWELVE

T
hat evening I made beer patterns on the pub’s table to explain my findings to Wullie. I got his breezy agreement that we had a big story. Almost as big as the one he himself claimed to be unravelling about the savage death of Alec Morton. Not that he was ready to share the details yet . . .

Come closing time, Wullie and I fell out of Ross’s, did the usual hand-clasping brothers-in-ink vows, and stumbled on our separate ways. Creature of habit that I am, the siren smell of battered cod, deep fried in beef dripping, dragged me into the nearby Tallies. I asked for double salt and vinegar and shied off into the night clutching my hot poke, burning my fingers with every chip and sucking them for relief and for savour.

With an imp in charge of my brain I found myself steering a path directly away from my tenement flat in Dennistoun. Like a faulty homing pigeon I ploughed my way along Sauchiehall Street, on up the hill to the rarefied heights of the terraces of Kelvingrove Park. I took a final flight of stone stairs up on to a sweep of grand grey sandstone townhouses. I started counting them off until I was outside my target. There was a light on at the upstairs window. I wondered whether to try a halloo or hurl a chip at the window. I chose discretion.

I used the big brass knocker to echo my presence through the hallway. The echo died. A couple of lines from ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ came to mind: ‘Where sits our sulky sullen dame . . . Nursing her wrath to keep her warm
.
’ There was a long still spell. I swayed and reached for the knocker again, but just then I heard light feet descending the stairs and marching towards the door
.
Bolts were drawn and Tam’s nemesis stood there with arms folded. She cocked her head to one side.

‘It’s Friday night. The pubs have closed. Sweet Romeo calls.’

I stuck out the remnants of my fish supper. ‘Want a chip?’ I smiled encouragingly.

Sam Campbell looked at me in that way of hers. A parent permanently disappointed in her wayward offspring. She shook her head. ‘No,’ she sighed. ‘Come in, Brodie, and leave your poke outside. I don’t want the stink through the house.’

‘Fussy now, are we?’ I nevertheless carefully tucked the newspaper round the smelly repast and laid it gently on the step. For later. Just in case my visit was curtailed. ‘There was a time . . .’

‘. . . for everything under the heavens. Even fish suppers. I know, I know. I’ll make tea. Shut the door.’

I followed her downstairs. Soon the bellyful of starch and fat in a lake of sweet milky tea did its trick and I began to sober up fast at Sam’s kitchen table. I began to notice things about her. The red eyes. The paler-than-usual face. Chainsmoking. In turn, she eyed me warily across her own cup until she saw something approaching lucidity in my expression.

‘So, an early wake-up call, Brodie?’

‘Sorry, sorry, Sam. I didn’t mean to . . .’

‘You never do, Brodie.’

‘I just miss . . .’ – I fought back the word
you
– ‘. . . talking to you.’

Her face softened into the gentle shape that I’d once – just once – seen beside me on a pillow. Then it tightened again.

‘You’re drunk. Don’t start.’

I reined in the maudlin outburst before it got me thrown out. I never managed to hit the right tone with women. There was something about what I said or how I said it that made them wary. It had been a close-run thing with me and Samantha Campbell. Sam of the dirty blonde hair and freckles. My partner in the failed attempt to save Hugh Donovan from a hanging. My brave sidekick as we tracked down the real culprits: the Slattery gang aided by corrupt police and forsworn priests.

In so many ways, we’d failed to take at the flood this particular tide in the affairs of men – and women. Afterwards I told myself that Sam and I could still take up with each other romantically and properly. That we could still avoid the shallows and the miseries. But in the immediate aftermath of the murder and the newspaper frenzy, there had been too much between us and yet not enough. Contact stopped. Friday nights excepted, of course.

‘Was there a particular topic? Or did you just have random blethering in mind?’ she was asking me, not unkindly.

‘Do you read the
Gazette
?’

‘When I want the gossip.’ There was mischief in her reddened eyes.

‘I wasn’t fishing . . .’

‘Brodie, of
course
I read your wee column. I’m really pleased for you.’

I looked at her warily, searching for any hint of irony and finding none. She pushed her hair back behind her ears. I noticed her nails were bitten and ragged, not like the short, neat grooming when I first met her. I noticed, too, the dark rings under her sharp blue eyes. I’d also spotted a couple of empties under the sink.

‘OK, you’ll maybe have seen my article the other day about the guy—’

‘The tar and feathering! God almighty, that must have hurt.’

‘And the week before that I wrote about a fella who’d had his arms broken in umpteen places by an iron bar?’

She nodded and grimaced. ‘Connected?’

I told her about the knife scars and the letters.

‘Sam, this all started after Alan Johnson’s trial. It spread like chickenpox following his suicide.’

Her hand clasped her mouth. ‘Ishmael!’

‘I’m sure of it.’

We gazed at each other for a bit.

She said, ‘So, Ishmael and a pal?’

‘A lot more than one pal. Unless they’ve got bikes. These boys have been busy. I’ve identified seventeen similar cases. Nineteen including Docherty and Gibson.’

‘If it is him, how does he choose them?’

‘From the courts.’

‘You mean they’re punishing convicted criminals?’

‘I mean they’re punishing folk who
weren’t
convicted. Acquittals. The ones who
should
have been. The ones that got off.’

‘Thanks to lawyers like me, you mean!’

‘Sam. Samantha, I didn’t come here to accuse you. Or your fellow advocates. If there’s not enough evidence to convict, then your job is to get your client off.’

She was mollified. ‘You want me to do some checking?’

I smiled and pulled out a scruffy piece of paper with nineteen names on it. She grabbed it. She scanned it quickly then pushed it back. ‘None I recognise.’

There was relief in her voice. She meant
none of mine
.

She stood up. ‘This needs something stronger. Come on.’ She led the way up the stairs and into the hall, then on up a further flight to the drawing room. She left the room for a bit then came back with a writing pad under one arm and carrying two crystal tumblers and a bottle of something pale and wonderful. She saw me looking askance.

‘Or have you had enough for one night?’

I glanced at my watch. ‘It’s a new day. In fact it’s a Saturday. We’re on holiday.’

She went over to the gramophone. She lifted the lid and selected a record. She wound up the handle and placed the needle on the vinyl. The sound of Peggy Lee filled the room:

I wondered if it was deliberate. What was Sam’s game? Did she even know herself? She came back to the table and splashed some golden fluid in both glasses.

‘You can stop here the night. What’s left of it. But don’t get any ideas, Brodie. Your old room, OK? It might be dusty. Everything’s locked up . . . ’

I smiled. ‘
Sláinte
, Sam. To my old room, dusty or not.’

‘Cheers, Brodie. Now give me the list. Then you can tell me all the gossip about this job of yours . . .’

I woke Saturday morning unsure of where I was or who I was. Or whose head I’d borrowed. Sam was nursing a tea when I got down to the kitchen. I guess neither of us was a pretty sight.

‘I should have brought two fish suppers. To soak it up.’