I eased the car down the long sloping road into the town and began to look for Bute Street. Finally I stopped and asked a road sweep. I took his directions and found myself passing through the town on a shore road that ran back towards Glasgow. The quiet road finally petered out into a farm track with grass down the middle. Ahead I could see a glimpse of water through the trees.
I paused. There were eight wooden huts slung along the lane – four either side – and peeping out from the trees and shrubs. Each had its own mud path running off the road up to the front door. They were more like wooden caravans than houses, with clapperboard walls and corrugated flat roofs. There was no smoke coming from any of the rickety chimneys. They seemed abandoned but were probably just holiday homes.
I parked the car on the tarmac road and got out. I slid my revolver into my waistband and closed my jacket. The Dickson was harder to hide but there was no one around to see it. I checked the new cartridges were sitting neatly in their chambers and clicked it closed. I stepped up to the entrance to the lane and looked down the tunnel of foliage, peering into the mint-fresh greenery. In front of each hut was a simple stake with a number on it. Some of them also had crude names hanging from them. According to Mrs Slattery I was looking for number 4. I just hoped she wasn’t lying. There was no sign of telephone cables linking the huts to civilisation so I assumed she had no way of contacting her brother-in-law. But I’d soon find out if I had a reception committee or not.
The hut to my left was number 1, the next number 2. Number 4 was at the end of one row. It sat at the river end of the glade and well back from all the others. It looked as if it had about double the land around it compared to the rest. The windows were blacked out and there was no sign of a car.
I flicked off the safety on the Dickson and slid into the trees behind the left-hand huts. I crept round through the patchy undergrowth until I was behind a tree within thirty feet of number 4.
No sign of life, but Gerrit could be in there with at least two of his thugs, and possibly Sam Campbell. I stood listening. Apart from spring birdsong it was quiet as a morgue. The hut had a front door square in the middle. I guessed it would also have a back door. I shuttled round until I could see. There was a little wooden porch and a door. I eyed it up. Standard panelled job, one big lock and a smaller Yale above it. No sign of reinforcing.
My old sergeant in initial training told me that when in doubt, just bleedin’ charge the bastards, shouting your bleedin’ head off. I skipped the battle cry but dashed across the open clearing, bounded once on the wood terracing and drove at the door with my shoulder.
There was a satisfying crunch, the wood splintered and tore, and the door half opened. I hit it again and crashed through, raising my shotgun as the door slammed back against the wall. I kept running straight through the kitchen into a front room. It was pitch dark and empty. I raced down a corridor kicking the doors back as I went. Nothing. I went back to the front room, chest heaving, and looked around me. It was too dark. No electricity, so no light switches. I fumbled my way across to the windows and pulled back the heavy blackout curtains and took in the room. Nondescript couch and a couple of easy chairs whose inners were spilling from cracked seams. A silent wireless and plenty of ashtrays. A couple of oil lamps.
I wandered back through the house. At the front a lounge, to the rear, the kitchen that I entered through. Off the short corridor, two bedrooms facing each other. But at the far end of the corridor was a locked door that I hadn’t noticed in the dark. The door wasn’t just locked but it was secured on the outside by heavy bolts top and bottom. To the right of the door a large key hung from a nail embedded in the wall. Below it an oil lamp hung from another nail. I listened again and could only hear the blood rushing in my ears.
I propped the shotgun against the wall and took down the lamp. It was there for a purpose. I shook it; plenty of paraffin. I struck a match and lit the wick. It caught quickly and I trimmed it and lowered the glass. I put it on the floor and took down the key. I slid the big bolts back and put the key in the lock. It groaned and turned. I took the lamp in my left hand and the shotgun in my right. I used my left hand to turn the handle, and kicked the door open. At first I could see only floor, then as I paced forward holding the lamp up before me, I could see and smell more than I wanted.
I knew this place. One of my interrogations had taken place in the SS commandant’s house outside the camp near Bremen. He’d made himself at home. It was a pretty house from the outside. Inside it had comfortable armchairs and Alpine pictures on the walls. The curtains were rich red to match the sweep of good carpets. It also had a cellar. They had unchained the young women by the time I got there.
*
This was no flashback. The stench hit me first. Foetid and heavy, the outpourings of bodies racked by pain and incontinence.
A mattress lay sprawled in one corner of a bare wood floor. Nameless brown stains mapped its filthy surface. I lifted the lamp higher. Two heavy hooks dangled from wooden beams of the ceiling. They weren’t for hanging game. Confirming my fears was a pile of coiled ropes and chains on a wooden table by the wall.
Completing the sordid picture was a contraption that looked like the wooden horse we used to jump over at PT in the Army. Two crude A frames joined by a horizontal spar about waist height. A thin mattress had been slung over it. It too was stained.
I backed out of the room gagging with nausea. I fled down the corridor and out into the back yard gasping for air. I stumbled over to the shrubbery and threw up. I fell to my knees and emptied my stomach on the grass until the dry heaving convulsions were past. My body was covered in sweat and I walked back to the wooden terrace and sat down till the perspiration cooled on my body. The pressure began lifting behind my eyes and I took out a cigarette and lit it.
All along I’d been wondering where they kept Rory before dumping his abused little body in Hugh’s house. This place fitted the bill. This was where he’d been violated and finally murdered. And if so, Rory wouldn’t have been the first. The setup of the room wasn’t a one-off. This was planned by Gerrit Slattery, who would have been just at home running a Nazi death camp, taking pleasure and pride in his work. Where he got his ‘dirty treats’ as Mrs Slattery so nicely put it.
It was handy having the Clyde at the back door; some rope, some weights and the evidence is gone. A way to get rid of opponents and have some fun in the process. A place to bring two missing buys and abuse them before dumping their tortured bodies in the river. Somewhere to bring an interfering advocate whose father had been a constant thorn in the side? To punish her, make her beg for mercy or death, before dumping her slim body in the grey water? I punched the ground.
But why not dispose of Rory’s body the same way? Why bring it out into the daylight? Maybe they’d been feeling the heat? Maybe even the Glasgow police force were getting interested? So Gerrit needed a scapegoat. Someone disposable to take the rap until things died down. He used Rory to frame poor old Hugh. Pitiless murdering bastard.
I had another fag and walked back to the car. I turned it round and headed back towards Glasgow and the Erskine ferry. En route I stopped at a call box and dialled 999. I told the police where to come and what to look for, and to bring a forensic scientist from Glasgow University to identify the stains and look for prints. They might also need a boat and a frogman.
I crossed the Clyde and headed west to Ardrossan and yet another ferry. I should have bought a season ticket, or a boat. Dumbarton had been a fruitless detour. It was always likely that Gerrit would have put as much distance and water between himself and retribution as possible. But I hadn’t wasted much time checking out the mainland den. If I’d started with Arran it would have cost me at least a day. This time I knew where I was going and what I had to do there. My clarity had returned. After what I’d seen I wasn’t expecting to find Sam Campbell alive. Either way, someone was going to die. I hoped it wasn’t going to be me.