Bitter Water (8 page)

I was standing at the bar waiting for the barrel to be changed. Two old boozers were clinging to the brass rail next to me, ruminating.

‘If the polis cannae catch them, then Ah don’t care wha gi’es them a skelp.’

‘But you cannae have folk taking the law into their ain hands. Where will it a’ end?’

‘Why no’? It’s what Sillitoe’s Cossacks did afore the war. That sorted oot the Billy Boys. But things have slipped back. Ah don’t care wha does it, or how, if it gets thae scum aff the street . . .’

It was as if they were heralds for the letter-writer, the self-styled Marshals. Things were moving fast. The old boys rabbited on in this vein for a while, intimating that there was a new sheriff in town, a hard man, a crazy man, a potential folk hero of our times. Somewhere between Rob Roy McGregor and a Texas Ranger. I almost leaned over and said I might have met the man in question, and he was not the full shilling. Finally their conversation returned to the well-worn speculation that Celtic’s new goalie was a Protestant plant.

I looked across the fug-filled room to the table where my drinking pal was waiting, still thirsty after three pints of heavy and chasers. The belching roll-up jammed in the corner of his mouth scored a yellow streak in his grey moustache. McAllister was checking the racing pages of a rival, more sports-inclined rag. This was my king-maker, the man who was handing over his life’s work to me. As he kept telling me . . .

‘You’ve earned it, Brodie. I was gonna insist on them making a funeral pyre of my desk with a copy of every edition I featured in. Me laid out on top with a pint in one hand and a copy of the
Gazette
in the other as the flames licked my arse. But, what the hell. The show goes on. We are the voice of the people, the scourge of the villains. My work must continue.’

He’d finish his rhetoric with the passing of an imaginary torch to me and a far-off look in his smoke-red eyes. This self-promoting funeral oratory happened when he was in his cups and feeling the weight of ages pressing on his furrowed forehead. In other words, most nights. The more he lauded me, the more I felt like handing back the torch and accompanying laurel leaf and catching the first train back to the anonymity of London. Did I want to end up like him? On the other hand there were enough attractions. The job itself. Being with my ‘ain folk’. Being able to keep an eye on my mother. The West of Scotland weather? Hardly; this spell was a freak. Or just Samantha Campbell. Sam . . .

‘Half a crown.’

I was torn from my reverie of blonde hair and lie-detecting eyes by the arrival of my pints. I slid the half-dollar on to the sweating counter, scooped up my drinks and change and slopped back to the table. McAllister pushed the empties aside to make room. I put the two glasses down in the puddle.

‘You were in a dwam up at the bar. Thinking about that bint of yours?’

‘Two things, Wullie. She’s not a bint, and she’s not mine.’

‘Aw right, that burd you did the Sir Galahad thing for.’

I sighed. ‘Sam. Samantha Campbell. She’s not a
burd
. She’s an advocate. A top lawyer. Her dad was Procurator Fiscal.’

‘Aye, aye, her. Still shagging her?’ The old devil cackled. There was no sensible answer to that, though the word
still
was severely redundant.

I nodded my head backwards. ‘Wullie, see that pair at the bar? The old yins blethering away? They were talking about some bloke who’s making life difficult for our criminal readership. It fits with a daft couple of letters I got last week claiming they’re taking the law into their own hands. And I’ve seen proof up at the Royal these past two Sundays.’

Ace reporter William McAllister squinted through his own smoke signals. ‘We’re in a pub. It’s past seven o’clock. Folk talk shite. But funnily enough, it’s no’ the first time
I’ve
heard something this past week. Just a wee word here and there. Facts, however – in which we alone deal, Brodie, we recorders of mankind’s sins – facts are thin on the ground. My own wee gang of helpers – ye ken I have sources’ – he touched his nose – ‘have been intimating that folk are getting hurt out there. More than usual. The word I’m getting is that the treatment is being dished out to known desperadoes. But nobody’s been putting two and two thegither and making five. So far, it’s being put down to the work of a fellow villain, shark or all-round general miscreant. In such circumstances nobody cares, except the wans getting the hiding, of course. And their mammies, I suppose.’

‘Any mention of a gang calling themselves the Glasgow Marshals?’

‘The whit? Roy Rogers has a lot to answer for. Show me the letters.’

He read the notes slowly, once, twice, and handed them back to me. He sucked on his fag, then his pint, and sat back.

‘It’s yours if you want it.’

‘It’s sort of already mine, Wullie. I think I know who’s doing this. Or at least I know the leader.’ I told him the story of Ishmael.

He squinted at me. ‘You’ve got a rare talent for finding trouble, Brodie. Was it like this when you were in the polis?’

‘These letters, this warning. You’re saying we should take it seriously? And that I should run with it?’

‘Aye. There’s something going on. Could be big. And you’ve got an inside track by the sound of it. You’ve nothing to lose by following it up. Except a lie-in on Sunday.’

‘What are you up to that you can be so magnanimous? A new angle on Morton’s murder?’

‘I’ve a couple of leads.’ He tapped the side of his empty glass to signify it was none of my business. This was his scoop and he wasn’t about to share it. ‘Same again, laddie?’

NINE

N
ext morning, ignoring the pain between my eyes, I presented the letters to Big Eddie. I didn’t mention my suspicions who was behind it. Lack of proof still kept me back, but also a daft reluctance to betray the Highlander a second time. It was suspect logic, but Eddie was getting enough material for a story as it is.

Eddie eyed me up. ‘Next time you get an effin’ written confession from a nutter you bring it straight to me. Is this for real?’

‘That’s why I ran it past McAllister. He thinks there’s something in it. Especially after they followed through with their threat.’

I told him about the retribution dished out on Gibson but didn’t mention the loss of his wee finger, or that he shared the mutilation with Docherty. It was partly my police training kicking in. I was reluctant to make the whole story public.
Always keep something back when talking to the press
had been the advice of Duncan Todd ten years ago. You never know when it’ll come in handy. Even though I now
was
the press, it seemed as if I couldn’t quite shake the habit.

Besides, it wasn’t as though we didn’t have enough macabre details to titillate the unhealthy appetites of the
Gazette
readers. Or editors. By the end, Eddie was shaking his head with disapproval and rubbing his hands with glee.

‘Terrible, terrible. Write it up, Brodie, write it up.’

‘Can we say anything about the rape charge?’

‘
Alleged
. That’ll keep us clean. The dirty bastard deserves a’ he gets.’

‘So who’s side are we taking? The law or the Marshals?’

‘It’s a good question, Brodie. Let’s play both sides for a while.’

‘Terrible punishment but terrible
alleged
crime?’

‘You’re fair getting the hang o’ this. You’ve got the instincts of a newspaperman. You just need to learn how to write like one. Cut oot the big words and tell the story.’

‘How about inviting the loonies who did it to give up their evil ways?’

‘Christ, we don’t want them to stop now, Brodie! This is effin’ gold!’

He saw my look.

‘I mean of course we want them to stop. This is pure vigilantism – is that a word, Brodie? You’ve got the Latin. But maybe not quite yet. It’s not as if they don’t deserve it. I mean . . .’

I was in a similar quandary. My police training told me everything the Marshals were doing was plain wrong. My heart applauded.

‘I know what you mean, Eddie. But we don’t have any cast-iron proof that the likes of Docherty or Gibson earned their punishments. Even if they did, and even if we’re secretly pleased at their come-uppance, we surely can’t
publicly
condone eejits going round maiming folk until they see the light?’

‘No, no. You’re right, of course. It’s our duty to take the high moral ground.’ He dropped his voice. ‘So that we can shout
gardyloo
and chuck things doon on Labour about the crime rate rising since they got in.’

‘Is that relevant? Is it even true?’

‘The truth is what the readers think it is. They think the politicians are useless. No point getting them confused.’

‘What about the police? Should we be chastising them for failing to nick the baddies or stop the vigilantes?’ It was as if I’d insulted his mother.

‘Do you have any idea how much shit hit the fan back in April with your last set of calumnies about our boys in blue?’

‘They weren’t calumnies! They were the truth. Chief Superintendent Muncie and pals were guilty as sin. In cahoots with the Slattery gang. Protection rackets, drug-running, prostitutes. Not to mention Gerrit Slattery’s taste for buggering and murdering wee boys. You name it. I just helped Wullie expose them.’

‘Well, for your information, Mr Ace Reporter Brodie, I had everyone from the Chief Constable himself down to the traffic polis at George Square shouting at me for dragging their good name through the mud. Do I make myself clear, Brodie?’

He had. Crystal. I left his fuming presence, shoved a new sheaf of foolscap and carbon in my Imperial and bashed out a draft column which omitted mention of the finger-nabbing or any link to an angry Teuchter.

As it was, it made a good spread on the inside back page. A bit of conspiracy theory gets lapped up by the readership. I had the crime columns to myself as McAllister was digging away at the Morton murder and council contract corruption and hadn’t yet got anything to show for it. Or not that he was telling me.

Throughout the week other papers failed to catch up. None of them referred to any letters
they’d
received. Why was I being singled out? And no one mentioned missing fingers. I needed some corroboration of my own theories. I decided to take a leaf out of McAllister’s notepad and get myself some helpers, as he put it. All I had was a false name for the Teuchter, and I hadn’t a clue where to find him.

I already had a list of contacts, but they were long shots. I was casting back at least seven years to my days on the force dealing with shady characters working the wrong side of the line. A lot can happen to such folk in seven years. Mortality levels were high in the badlands: those that had lived by the razor had probably died by it by now. Others would be taking their ease at His Majesty’s pleasure. Conceivably a few might have gone straight, only to be buried a hero in some corner of a foreign field that is forever Scotland.

I’d also had solid citizens in my network. But that didn’t mean they were trained SOE agents. Just folk wanting to do their bit in the hope that they could keep the barbarians at the gate till they’d had their tea. Or plain old nosy parkers. They kept their eyes and ears open and gave me snippets of information that I pieced together into a map of comings and goings in the principality of the Eastern Division. Shopkeepers and publicans, newspaper-sellers and street sweeps, tram conductors and school janitors. Everyone who met the great Glasgow public on a daily basis. It was amazing just how much they observed and just how much they enjoyed gossiping about it. But I thought I should start with someone nearer the action. I made a call.

Duncan Todd had risen fast to detective sergeant in Glasgow’s Marine Division before the war. Then his career had stalled. I met him in ’35 when I was a green officer at detective training school and he was a lecturer. He was sharp, funny and keen as a Mountie to get his man. Destined for the top. He only faced two barriers: being a Catholic and having an aversion to joining the Masons. Either one was a career-limiting handicap anywhere in the West of Scotland. Duncan took this anti-Freemason stance not simply because he’d have been excommunicated on the spot, but because he despised all the rituals and job stitch-ups. We were of the same naive persuasion, he and I, that talent would out, regardless of whether you could do funny handshakes or not. We were wrong.

I’d phoned him back in April from London to get the scuttlebutt on the trial of Hugh Donovan. He’d sounded weary then. He’d been transferred to Central Division – HQ – in Turnbull Street and been buried away in some dark corner and forgotten about.

We met down by the Clyde in the Victoria Bar. A place of mean measures and mean habits. He looked wearier than ever. He was still in Turnbull Street and still a sergeant. We eyed each other up speculatively across our pints. I wondered if he was viewing me as pityingly as I was him.

His hair was still thick but grey as fag ash. It matched his complexion. Lines ran down the side of his nose and past his mouth. His eyes were lustreless and heavy. Nicotine stained the fingers on both hands. Ambidextrous.

‘You’re lookin’ well, Brodie.’

‘So are you, Duncan.’

‘You’re a liar. But that’s OK. I see masel’ in the mirror each morning. Though I don’t need a reflection to tell me I’m knackered. I’m just hoping to get oot wi’ ma pension before they find me collapsed in ma harness and have tae shoot me.’