‘It’s a while ago now.’
‘I know, but I’m desperate.’
He rubbed his chin. ‘It was a difficult week. Fiona was distraught. I spent most of my time with her or out looking for the boy. Like everybody else.’
‘You knew Fiona too?’
He smiled. ‘There are not so many chapels round here. Yes, I’ve known her – and Rory of course – for years. She lost her husband and now this.’
‘God’s will, eh, Patrick?’
The smile hardened. ‘God gave us the freedom to choose our own path. It means we take responsibility for our actions and answer to Him later.’
‘How does that help the innocent, like Fiona MacAuslan? Sorry, Fiona Hutchinson. It wasn’t her fault her husband died in the war. Not her fault that her son was murdered.’
He pulled himself upright and clasped his left hand round his cross. ‘We cannot know the mind of God. Sometimes from great grief a stronger faith grows.’
‘That will be a great comfort to Hugh Donovan when they hang him!’
I hadn’t realised how angry I was over this whole damn business. I was angry at being dragged up here away from the new life I was trying to construct in London. I was angry at having to rake over the past. I was angry at the mirror being held up to me here in my old stamping ground. Angry at reaching thirty four with a great education and nothing to show for it. No wife, no children, no career, no peace. Angry at being so pathetic. We sat in awkward silence for a few seconds.
‘I will help you in any way I can, Brodie. But I’m not sure how…’
‘This drug dealer. The one that hooked Hugh. Do you have any idea where I might run into him?’
‘I don’t have a name. But I suppose you could try Hugh’s haunts. The pubs he frequented. Doyle’s at Gorbals Cross. Or the Mally Arms.’
‘What about the neighbours? The ones who mysteriously vanished after the murder. Do you know where they went?’
He shook his head. ‘They weren’t of my faith. I never knew them. But I’m afraid it’s typical of life here. I hear they fell behind with rent.’
Ripples. Drop a pebble in a pond and watch the effect. It doesn’t take much to snap the thin anchor chain of some people’s lives, capsizing them, sending them tumbling and twisting off into the murk. I glanced at my watch. There was nothing else for me here except more platitudes. Whereas the bars were open in half an hour, and I had a legitimate reason for a pub crawl.
TWELVE
In one sense I was looking forward to a drink. The day’s revelations had taken their toll on my equilibrium. In another sense I was wary of entering one of Hugh’s watering holes. Before the war when I did my five-year stint at Tobago Street nick, drink was the blight of every evening shift. It wasn’t so much in the pubs we had trouble but in the parks and walkways by the Clyde. Gangs of broken men getting tanked up on their own special brew: a mix of meths and cheap red wine that they called ‘Jake’ or ‘Johnnie Jump Up’. It was hard to say which of the two ingredients was the real poison. I reckoned it was a recipe handed down from the Viking invasions. It would certainly account for the berserkers roaming the streets on a Saturday night.
Those that could afford to drink the real stuff – a half-gill of Bell’s chased down by a half-pint of Tennent’s – blew their pay packets at the weekend in pubs that were little more than tiled caves for garrulous drunks. Glasgow’s East End and the Gorbals itself were littered with dingy wee hostelries that refused to serve women, as much from embarrassment as from sensitivity to the gentler sex. Not that any self-respecting woman would have demeaned herself by standing ankle deep in soggy sawdust amidst a jabbering crowd of flush-faced men in flat caps. A woman’s role in the Friday-night revels was to stand at the shipyard gate, ready when the whistle went, to tackle her man and extract enough cash from his pay packet to feed her and her ragged weans for another week. I’ve seen six-footers reduced to shame-faced mumbling at the factory gate by a tiny wee fury wanting to know where he’d hidden the ten-shilling overtime she knew he’d worked that week.
So it was with some trepidation that I approached the bunker-like Mally Arms off Gorbals Cross. It was just past opening time but already there were a few old soaks at the bar. There was fresh sawdust on the floor and fresh tobacco smoke wreathing the air. There was nothing else fresh. Dark rings surrounded the corroded spittoons while a fireplace gasped out a thin trail of smoke from glowing dross. The chairs and tables had only recently been recovered from the wreck of the Titanic.
The bar itself was horseshoe shaped with a partition dividing the public from the saloon bar. The lounge had chairs with arms and lacked spittoons. The public had a dartboard and a snooker table whose green baize looked as if it had hosted the final Somme offensive.
I chose to pay a penny extra for a pint in the comparative luxury of the saloon and pushed through the dividing door. It was empty. I ordered a stout and picked up the Racing Mirror to see what I might have lost at Ayr. Not that I ever put a bet on a nag or a dog. Not since I’d heard from my dad about the tricks of the trade such as making a whippet swallow a packet of ten Woodbine before a race. I can’t recall whether it slowed the poor beast down or fired him up. But it did seem to make a nonsense of the form guides. The paper was only of use as camouflage. I glanced at it long enough for appearances then called the barman over. I was taken aback to hear my accent dropping back into the nasal grooves of my boyhood. Self-preservation behind enemy lines.
‘Got anything to eat here, pal?’
‘Pies. The wife heats them up. Be ready in about ten minutes.’
‘That’ll do the job, fine. I’ll start wi’ the one and see how it goes.’
I whiled away the time with the racing horoscopes until a steaming plate came over the counter. It held a round mutton pie, sweating and drowning in its own juices. Its sides sagged under its own internal conflict.
‘Sauce?’ the barman asked and plonked down a bottle of brown.
Surprisingly the pie tasted better than it had any right to. Maybe it was the sauce. Maybe it was nostalgia. I even contemplated a second one; this could be a long night and it was better to have some ballast on board, even at half a pint a time. I didn’t want to be rolling into Sam Campbell’s house singing ‘Glasgow belongs to me’. Not the first night. Instead I got the man in conversation while the pub was still quiet. This was going to be delicate. I was relying on people’s relish for discussing a hanging.
‘Did you know this fella Donovan, the one that’s to hang for killing that wean?’
He stopped wiping some smears on to his glass. ‘Who’s asking?’
‘I used to know him. He ran about with a pal of mine.’
‘Does that make him a pal o’ yours?’ There was an edge to his voice.
‘Naw. No way. I just saw him about.’ I wondered if tonight I’d beat St Pete’s record for denying his friend.
The barman didn’t look convinced. ‘See if he was, then yon’s the last drink you’ll taste in here. I’ll no serve any pal of that murdering bastard in this establishment.’
‘I don’t blame you. The guy was obviously a bampot. Did he look the type? I mean were you surprised?’
‘You’re not the polis, are you? Ah thought all this was by?’
I wondered if the smell of the uniform ever leaves you?
‘No. But you’ve got a good eye. I used to be. Here in Glasgow before the war. Now I work in London. Reporter.’
‘Christ, no’ another one! They’ve been round here a dozen times.’
‘This is personal. I’m just up visiting my mother. I was curious. He looked a normal sort of fella when I last saw him. They say he was badly burnt?’
The barman looked around and then leaned over the bar at me. ‘Like a horror show. Poor sod. I suppose it turned him. Nae excuse, mind.’