Bitter Water (21 page)
Authors: Ferris Gordon
The club was down Sauchiehall Lane, the rambling tradesman’s alley that runs for a mile between its broader namesake and Bath Street. The club had been a drinking den back in the thirties and lived up to the image of such establishments: a plunging fight of stairs to a subterranean metal door with an anonymous face plate and a buzzer. There was no indication of purpose. The door was open. I pushed at it.
‘Wullie, are you there?’
‘Come ben, Brodie.’
I walked forward through a gloomy tunnel. The ripe smell of years of fags and booze wafted at me. I pushed through another door and into a cavern. It was starkly lit and filled with tables covered by upturned chairs. A bar ran across one side. Wullie was standing behind it, smoking. He had a glass of whisky in his hand. Another man, his back to me and his wide buttocks overflowing a bar stool, lay across the counter. His head was in his arms. He was sobbing, his head and shoulders rippling and lifting like a sounding whale.
Wullie nodded a greeting to me. ‘We’ve got maybe five minutes. The polis are on their way. In there.’ He jerked his head towards the toilet door. ‘Ah hope you’re no’ squeamish, Brodie.’
TWENTY-SIX
I
walked to the toilet and pushed the door open. Inside, on the floor, lay a man. He was motionless, on his back, his face in a rictus of pain. His mouth was frozen wide in a scream. Mascara was smeared round his bulging eyes. Ripe red lipstick smudged his thin face. He was wearing a bra, a garter belt and torn stockings. Otherwise he was naked.
His hands were lashed in front of him at the wrist. He was grasping his genitals. Blood flowed from the junction of his thighs. Flowed from around the protruding pole of a floor brush. The brush-head lay obscenely between his knees.
I gagged, swallowed and walked over to look down on him. He didn’t look better close up. But I could now see the blond wig which pooled round his head. He also had a piece of paper stuffed in his mouth. But his face was unmarked. I looked closely at the bound hands. No fingers missing. The smell was overwhelming. I didn’t envy the police doctor. I went back into the bar. Wullie had a second glass on the counter and was filling it. He pushed it towards me. I took it and gulped down half the contents. It stung but it couldn’t cauterise the wound in my mind’s eye.
‘Who’s he?’ I asked indicating the sobbing fat man.
‘Bertie. Dead man’s boyfriend. He manages this place. Came in this morning to get the bar cleaned and found our friend, Connie, next door.’
‘Connie?’
‘Conrad Jamieson. Bar tender and singer. Better behind the bar.’
There was a great whoosh and the chief mourner sat up, eyes streaming. ‘That’s no’ true! Connie was a marvel! He was gonna make it big! And now, look at him!’ He burst into tears and flung himself back on the counter.
I drank the rest of my Scotch. ‘Why did you say this was one of mine? He’s had a terrible time but all his fingers are accounted for. No letters carved on his face.’
‘Did you look at the paper in his mouth?’
‘No. Someone clyping to the Marshals? You read it?’
He nodded.
‘So, are you writing this up, or am I?’ I asked.
‘It’s your story. That’s why I called you.’
I dug out my notebook. ‘I’m not so sure. Tell me what you know.’
There was little to tell. Connie and Bertie ran a private drinking den that catered for the more exotic end of the broad spectrum of sexuality. We used to shut clubs like this down before the war then decided they at least kept the weirdos off the street. They were harmless except to each other. And it made it easier to keep track of them. During the war, homosexuality seemed the least of anyone’s worries and the club had flourished. Connie had been left – as usual, apparently – to lock up, sometime in the wee small hours. He should have been safely home tucked up with Bertie by two or three o’clock. Instead, Bertie had found him cold and dead when he came in an hour ago. Bertie phoned Wullie first rather than the coppers. He thought he’d get more sympathy from a reporter.
‘When did you phone the police?’
‘About quarter of an hour ago now. After I called you.’
I turned and walked back into the toilet. I took out my hankie. I bent over Connie and tugged at the slip of paper using the corner of my hankie. I opened it up. It was as McAllister had suggested:
Conrad Jamieson, the Monkey Club.
He’s a dirty homo. He buggers wee boys.
He needs putting down! Like the rest of them. Filth!
Still avoiding touching the slip with my bare hands – though the chances of a fingerprint on the soggy paper were slim – I stuffed it back in Connie’s mouth. He didn’t seem to mind. I’d just got back to the bar when there was the sound of a crashing door and heavy feet. Wullie turned to me.
‘That’ll be the milkman then.’
The inner door burst open and Detective Chief Inspector Sangster erupted into the bar, closely followed by the rosy-cheeked Sergeant Murdoch.
‘What the fuck is going on, Brodie? What are
you
doing here?’
Wullie cut across Sangster’s burning-eyed inquisition. ‘Walter, Walter. Chief Inspector.
I
called you. Bertie here called
me
. He’s feart of the polis. Brodie and I are here to take notes.’
And keep an eye on you, Mr Polis
.
Sangster opened his mouth, shut it, fired his venomous glance at all three of us, then: ‘The message we got was that you’d found a body. Where?’
McAllister pointed at the toilet. Sangster and Murdoch hustled over and through the toilet door. There was a brief pause.
‘Fuck! Christ almighty!’
Murdoch backed out and turned to show an ashen face. His eyes were wild. He stared at us as though we were strangers and stumbled out of the door. We heard the outside metal door clang followed by the sound of the dry boke.
Sangster walked slowly out of the toilet, his face set. Beside me, Wullie poured another glass and pushed it over. Without a word, Sangster picked it up and drained it. He stood leaning against the counter for a moment waiting for the fire to hit his stomach. His voice was quiet: ‘Will one of you tell me what the fuck is going on?’
McAllister told him. Bertie corroborated it between sobs. Wullie mentioned he’d seen a bit of paper in Connie’s mouth; had the chief inspector looked at it?
Sangster sighed. He turned and went back into the toilet. He came out holding the much-inspected scrap of paper in a pair of tweezers. He placed it on the bar and carefully opened it. I was close enough to read it again. Sangster didn’t try to shield it. He turned to me.
‘Is this what you’re writing about, Brodie?’ His voice was still low key. The anger had gone out of it. Weariness had taken over.
I chose to stifle my doubts. ‘It’s like the public’s being invited to take out contracts,’ I said. ‘Remember before the war, Sangster? Glasgow had a rotten reputation. But it was all run of the mill: domestic assaults, illicit stills in a wash-house, gang fights on the Green with axes and razors. Brainless violence. Over in New York, they were having shootouts with the Feds, Tommy-gun massacres on St Valentine’s Day, Prohibition and Humphrey Bogart.’
‘He was in the movies,’ said Sangster. ‘He wisnae real.’
‘Picky, picky. I’m just saying it was a wee bit more professional over there.’
‘Professional? What the hell are you talking about, Brodie?’ Sangster helped himself to another shot of whisky.
‘Organised crime. Glasgow criminals couldn’t organise salt and vinegar on a fish supper. If a New York gang wanted rid of someone, they did it professionally. They commissioned an independent hit man from Murder Incorporated to do the dirty work
.
Contract killers.’
‘That’s what this is?’ Sangster nodded to the toilet.
‘Sort of. For Murder Incorporated, read the self-appointed Glasgow Marshals. For the commissioners, read the great Glasgow public. Though the Marshals are happy to do it for free. Fed up with a noisy neighbour? Disagree with someone’s morals? Drop us a note and we’ll take care of it. Free revenge. That’s an offer you can’t refuse.’
Murdoch came back in, looking grey. He stood, holding his helmet, sweat beading his brow, looking at the three of us. Bertie didn’t count.
‘For fuck’s sake, Murdoch, tak’ a drink and pu’ yersel’ thegither,’ said his boss.
Wullie and I left them to it, and walked to a tram shelter together.
‘A bad business, Wullie.’
‘It is that. There’ll be mair, I expect.’
‘It doesn’t fit though. The calling card of the Marshals is the finger snip or the face carving.’
‘Maybe they thought they’d leave a bigger mark. Get more attention.’
‘Could be. But the other difference is that the others were criminals or bad folk in some way. What did Connie do?’
Wullie considered me from the side of his eyes. ‘Besides being a poof?’
We walked on for a bit in silence.
‘How’s the Morton murder going? Anything new?’ I asked.
‘Connections. Making connections. More papers. Contract copies in fact. Stewart has them in safe keeping. If anything happens . . . Look, you’d better get going, Brodie. File that story before anyone else gets it.’
I watched him walk off into the gloomy morning. ‘Scoop’ McAllister still keeping the story tight to his chest. I wanted to say he was being melodramatic. But after what we’d just seen?
TWENTY-SEVEN
I
headed into the
Gazette
to write it up. I didn’t know where to start. It seemed too ugly a scene to commit to paper and serve up to the masses. Folk would be reading it through their fingers if I spelled out the details. Old ladies would be fainting into their porridge. Yet it was the details that mattered. The fact that Connie – Conrad – was killed solely because he was a homosexual. The way he’d died. How he’d been dressed. Where he’d been killed. The scrap of paper stuffed in his lipsticked mouth by a hysteric with a prissy view of others’ behaviour. Condemning him to die just for being different.
And who was to blame? The Marshals, presumably. It fitted with their new pattern of victim selection, and it was the escalation that both Duncan Todd and I expected. Given the biblical righteousness of the Marshals’ warning letters, it was in keeping for the Holy Willies of this world to want to kill someone whose sex life was different to theirs. Who
had
a sex life. As Wullie suggested, the absence of their now familiar and bloody signatures could simply indicate an escalation in violence. And a further departure from sanity.
I tried to sneak through the newsroom to my desk for a bit of quiet contemplation of how to frame my story but Eddie was soon on the scent. His colour rose as I told him the details. ‘Fuck me! This is front page, Brodie. We’ll get a late edition out. Scoop the
Record
and the
Scotsman
! Don’t sit there talking, get on with it!’
I flipped the back of my hands at him to shoo him away and began hitting the keys.
A man died today. He was murdered by the vigilante gang who call themselves the Marshals. His crime? There was no crime. A man died today because of what he was, not for what he’d done.
Conrad Jamieson – Connie to his pals – was brutally murdered in a private drinking den called the Monkey Club. It’s not the sort of place you would go for a quiet pint after a football match. The Monkey Club clientele have different standards to you and me. They have different tastes. They keep their interests and allegiances to themselves. They don’t, as far as this reporter knows, harm others or try to recruit anyone to their choice of lifestyle.
A man died today because he was a homosexual. You may not like the fact that such people exist. You may not want to mix with them or even share a room with them. But that doesn’t mean that they should be tortured and murdered. Oscar Wilde was one of our greatest poets and wits. He was also a homosexual. Should he too have been murdered out of hand? The law is clear. Sodomy is illegal. But it is not a capital offence. And, God help us, never will be.
A man died today. He was a singer. He had a lover. He wore women’s clothes. Do these things add up to punishable crimes, far less crimes punishable by death?
These cowboys who style themselves ‘Marshals’ have gone too far. As we always knew they would. If you set barbarism in motion you need strong reins to keep the madness in check.
A man died today. Another will die tomorrow. And tomorrow and tomorrow while this ignominious crew of anarchists are allowed to walk the streets. We urge all our readers to reject the invitations for petty revenge that are being scrawled on our city walls. Such actions are not only cowardly, they make the citizen who nominates someone for punishment an accessory to crime.
A man died today and the accessory to such a crime will surely share a scaffold with the perpetrators.
‘You’re bloody joking, Brodie! Who do ye think you are? Tommy Handley? We cannae print this! It makes the
Gazette
sound like we support bum boys!