Everett’s eyes bulged as he stared at me. ‘He what!?’ he roared.
Dylan took him by the arm. ‘Quiet just now, big fella,’ he said, as if he was soothing an elephant.
Jack Gantry ignored them both and stared at me. ‘You have to ask me that?’ he retorted. There was no show; his anger was as quick and genuine as that of Everett. ‘You really have to ask me that? Don’t you understand me at all? Don’t you appreciate what I stand for?
‘Man, I loathe and detest everything his tawdry, paltry organisation stands for. I am the First Citizen of a great European cultural capital, yet I have to put up with these freaks, with their human circus, cheapening its very name, and making it a laughing stock all over Europe.
‘They’re worse than the footballers; at least there’s some spurious cultural heritage there. Mr Davis’s stuff has no substance. It’s a disgrace to my city.’
‘So why did you allow it to happen in the first place?’ I asked.
He scowled at me. ‘It was forced upon me,’ he said. ‘By the national level of my Party. Some fool of a Scottish Office Minister decided that it would be a Good Thing For Glasgow to have a European organisation based here. I had personally negotiated that the Turin Symphony Orchestra would relocate to Glasgow. I had personally arranged the deal through Locate In Scotland. Then Everett appeared with his prancing pantomime Sports Entertainment nonsense.’ His voice rose, then fell back to its normal level.
‘I tried to tell the Secretary of State that it was totally unsuitable, but he’s from an Edinburgh constituency. He laughed in my face and said that it was a money-maker, and that no one ever made a profit from a symphony orchestra, so the GWA deal would go ahead.
‘Those people ignored my wishes, Everett, but I determined that I would not tolerate your presence in the city for one minute longer than was necessary. So I made enquiries, and I worked out how you could be driven out. Like any other businessman, you are reliant entirely on the goodwill of your customers. I reasoned that if I could destroy that, I would destroy the Global Wrestling Alliance.’ He laced the words with contempt.
‘So, as soon as I heard that there was a vacancy in your ranks, I sent my nephew Gary along to apply for it. I never had any doubt that he would get it. I didn’t even have to give him a personal recommendation, although I would have, if it had come to that.
‘Best that I didn’t though. No connection between Gary and me; no case to answer, see.’
‘And Diane,’ muttered Everett, slowly, ‘was she in on it?’
‘Good God no. She might betray you between the sheets, my friend, but she couldn’t stand it if anything happened to you. If she’d known what I was up to, she’d have told you right away.’
‘O’Rourke,’ I asked suddenly. ‘Where is he now? We saw his bike in your garage.’
‘Ahh,’ said Gantry. ‘Yes. Gary.Yes. I might as well tell you. He’s in a freezer in the basement, as a matter of fact.’
Cold as my anger was I still felt a chill run through me.
‘Greedy boy,’ the Lord Provost exclaimed. ‘He turned up last night wanting two hundred thousand for his trouble, so that he could get out of the country for a while. I told him that he’d blown it, so he was getting nothing. He became difficult, aggressive, so I stabbed him in the chest with a Kitchen Devil. Bloody sharp, those things are, you know.
‘I know I should have called your chaps in there and then, Mike, but I just panicked. I was in shock, couldn’t think straight; so I stuck him in my old freezer while I gathered myself together.’
Something went out of me then. I was taking immense, if perverse, satisfaction out of confronting Gantry, but beyond him there had lain O’Rourke. My game plan had been to have him lead me to O’Rourke, so that I could do for him myself. Now this man — this madman, as we could all now see he was — who had robbed Everett and me of our wives in different ways, had stolen that prospect from me too.
But I regrouped, repaired the crack in my cold armour and pressed on.
‘And Jan,’ I asked him, quietly. ‘What about Jan?’
He looked at me with his first show of regret. Not remorse, that’s different; this was only regret.
‘Aye son,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry about that, but it was necessary. Thanks to my hot-headed daughter, and to her own skill as an accountant, your lass was about to find out about Gary’s wee sideline, and to tell Susie. I had to stop her from doing that, at all costs, I’m afraid.’
‘Gary’s wee sideline,’ I repeated. ‘So you did know about it.’
‘Oh yes. Almost from the start. I was still running the business when he dreamed it up, so I spotted it within the first two months.’
‘So why didn’t you turn him in?’ asked Dylan, incredulity written all over his face. ‘Why did you cover it up?’
Gantry laughed at him, and shook his head. ‘Michael, Michael, Michael, I am a politician, first and last. The job of the politician is to give the people what they want; not to tell them what they want — that’s the real, patronising, Old Labour way — but to give it to them.
‘And what you and those like you must know but are afraid to admit is that the poor, ordinary underprivileged folk in all big inner city areas want Temazepam and the like, and they want heroin. For good or evil those things have become part of their culture and they want them: more than that, they will have them, come what may.
‘So, as a good politician, what’s my responsibility? That’s right, it’s to give it to them.’
He looked at the policeman, blandly, as if lecturing a child. ‘Which would you rather see happen, Michael? You know my views on the danger of criminalising drugs.
‘I ask you what’s more desirable; to see the housing schemes bled dry to pay for all sorts of uncontrolled poisons — all to make some local criminals, and ultimately some Colombian, or some Burmese, even richer — or to turn a blind eye, as I did, while my nephew gave them a quality supply at prices that let them feed their kids?’
‘For fuck’s sake, man,’ Dylan screamed at him. ‘In these schemes, it’s the kids who are on smack!’
The Lord Provost stared at him, genuinely astonished by his reaction. ‘In every walk of life, Michael, there are good parents and bad.’
He gathered his jacket around him. ‘Listen, I’ve really had enough of this now. Call your people, Inspector, and have Gary taken out of my freezer. I’ll give you a full statement. My nephew came to my house and asked for money to get out of the country. I turned him down and he attacked me. It was self-defence.
‘As for everything else we’ve discussed, you must realise that was off the record. I will never repeat it, either informally, or under caution. You three may allege that I said it all, of course, but it’ll be your word against mine.’ He paused and beamed at us.
‘And remember, I’m Jack Gantry.’
That was it for me. He stood there, and I knew that it had been him I’d really wanted to kill all along, even more than I had wanted O’Rourke. All of a sudden that became the most important thing in my life. I went for him with nothing but my bare hands, to finish him if I could. My first punch, a right hander, staggered him, but the second, a shorter blow, stunned him and knocked him down. I was on top of him then, my left hand tight round his throat squeezing the life out of him, my right fist punching, punching, punching; trying to smash that bland, benign, calm, unspeakably awful face.
All the time, Dylan stood transfixed above me, watching me killing the Lord Provost. It was Everett, eventually, who prised my hand from his throat, and very gently, his great arm wound round my waist, lifted me up and off him.
‘That’s enough, buddy,’ he said. ‘You mustn’t let the man ruin your life any more than he has already.’
He sat me down in an armchair, and everything left me; my strength, my anger, and the last of the restraints which my mind had placed upon my grief. I was back on top of that old Greek wall once more, but this time, there was nothing held back.