Bitter Water (5 page)

He snorted. ‘Of course Ah did. Ah’m no’ a sponger. But there was nothin’. The yards are no’ up and running yet. Ah’ve been down to the brew a hunner times, so Ah have, looking for work.’

‘Where do you live?’

‘Here and there.’

‘No home to come back to?’

He squared his shoulders. ‘No, ma’am.’

‘Why? You had a home before you joined up?’

‘Aye, and a wife.’

‘What happened, Sergeant Johnson?’

The prosecutor was back on his feet. ‘With due respect, my lord, the defendant is no longer a sergeant.’

‘I think we can extend the man some respect for his war service.’

Sam gave a little smile to the jury. ‘Thank you, my lord.
Sergeant
Johnson . . .?’

‘Ah came hame. She had a fancy man in ma place. And a wean.’

This time I heard intakes of breath and the word ‘shame’.

‘So you’re living rough? Why did you break into this house?’

‘Ah was hungry.’

‘What were you trying to steal?’

‘Food. Or if I couldnae find food, maybe something to flog for food.’

‘Sergeant Johnson, why did the dog attack you?

His face screwed up. ‘Ah suppose it was angry.’

‘Why was it angry?’

His head dropped. ‘Ah don’t know,’ he mumbled.

‘Sergeant Johnson, why was the dog angry?’

There was a long pause, then his head came up. ‘Ah stole its food.’

Hands were at mouths among the jury now. Sam pressed her advantage.

‘But you shot the dog.’

‘No really.’

‘What do you mean,
not really
? Either you shot the dog or you didn’t?’

‘The gun. It was just a starting pistol. Nae bullets in it.’

‘But the dog died?’

‘It was an auld dug. A
fat
dug. Maybe it had a heart attack.’

A giggle broke out, from relief more than anything.

The jury was back in an hour. There was no way Johnson could be found innocent of the attempted burglary. But he won a ‘not proven’ on the armed burglary.

The Sheriff looked disappointed at not being able to send Johnson on to the High Court. But he knew the case didn’t stack up high enough. He made the best of it: ‘I sentence you, Alan Johnson, to five years at His Majesty’s pleasure. Take him away.’

In front of me, Ishmael shot to his feet. ‘Nooo! This is not justice! This cannot stand!’

Johnson swayed and called to his pal, ‘I cannae dae this. I cannae face this again! I swear to God, I cannae take it! No’ again!’

Hands dropped among the jury. They couldn’t look at each other. One woman was in tears and shaking her head. The judge stood.

‘Take him down, and clear the court! Any more outbreaks from you, sir, and you will be joining your friend here!’ He aimed his finger directly at Ishmael. Ushers leaped in at the sound of raised voices. Two burly men pinioned Ishmael till the judge had left the court.

I got out as quickly as I could and into the corridor. I was just in time. Ishmael was being escorted past me in the clutch of the two big men. He was no longer struggling. His face was set. Tears were pouring down the bones and channels of his face. He caught sight of me and stopped. The ushers tugged at him but his wiry determination held them in check for long enough. His red eyes fixed on mine.

‘It’s the same crew, Brodie. The same dirty crew that did for
your
pal! The same rotten system. This is justice?’ He spat on the flagstones. ‘I’m damned if it is!’

‘I’m sorry! It could have been worse.’

‘How could it have been worse?’ he spat. ‘Five years? Five months will be enough to kill that man!’ His voice dropped and he leaned towards me. ‘A good man goes down. And all the time, the rapists and thieves, the gangsters and drug runners get away with it. It willnae do, Brodie. It willnae do. You of all folk must see that. So help me God, I will show this twice-damned city what true justice is!’

Me of all folk? Had the April newspapers painted me as some kind of flag-waver for the common man against an unfair justice system? I suppose so. But that was a one-off. There would be no more taking up of arms against a sea of troubles by yours truly.

As for Ishmael’s oath, with hindsight it wasn’t so much a warning as a prophecy. And in the event it didn’t take five years or months. It took five days for retribution to begin.

FIVE

B
ut first there came a more distant rumble of
national
retribution. The news started filtering through on Monday that a bomb had gone off in Jerusalem. By the afternoon the numbers of British dead were mounting. Some ninety staff of the British Mandate based in the King David Hotel died in the callous attack by Zionist terrorists. The
Gazette
’s front page was taken up for the rest of the week with photos and outrage.

It meant that the news about one man’s death in Barlinnie Prison barely registered. Had we known what it heralded we might have given it more attention. The grapevine in the form of Big Eddie coughed up the news on Wednesday morning. Eddie crept up on me at my desk. There was none of his normal bounce. By Eddie’s standards he was almost tentative.

‘That fella that got sent down? The one your girlfriend defended?’

‘She’s not my girlfriend. Johnson? What about him?’

‘Found dead in his cell this morning. Hanged.’

It shocked me like a cold shower. ‘Shit!’

‘Aye, it is. Suicide. Used a sheet from the top bunk.’

I shook my head. ‘I never thought he meant it.’

‘What?’

‘That he couldn’t face it. Couldn’t face another prison.’

Eddie was watching my face. ‘Do you want someone else to write it?’

‘No. I owe him that.’

I wrote the story of how Sergeant Alan Johnson, formerly of the Black Watch, hanged himself in Barlinnie Prison just five days into his sentence. And how society had failed the man. How we’d demanded too much of him and those like him. Was that a personal plea? Then I called Sam. She’d already heard. Her voice was dull.

‘I’m not covering myself in glory these days, am I, Brodie?’

‘Sam, if it wasn’t for you, he’d have got
ten
years! You were brilliant!’

‘Five, ten? What does it matter? He went down. Now he’s dead.’

We hung up, each in our way clinging to the rational argument that we’d done the best we could, but each troubled by guilt. We hadn’t imagined he was serious. It was a lesson I was slow to learn; I’d forgotten about Ishmael’s oath. The first hint came on the Sabbath.

It was work that got me up bright and early on this Sunday morning and out the door. Not for the kirk: God had mislaid me, or maybe it was the other way about. Anyway, we weren’t on speaking terms. I was off to the hospital, as was my habit these past three weeks. It was McAllister’s idea, a routine he’d followed for years and which had led to a number of roaring pieces in the
Gazette
on a Monday morning. Not that he was now having a lie-in. Wullie had his pick of hospitals and access to the sergeant’s desk of most of the central nicks. Spoiled for choice.

I didn’t mind on a morning like this. The day was crisp and sweetened by the westerly blowing up the Clyde. I left my digs in Dennistoun whistling ‘Stardust’
.
Tommy Dorsey had just been belting it out on the wireless. I decided to walk along Duke Street and then up the hill to the infirmary. I was in shirtsleeves and feeling virtuous, my head as clear as the sky. Instead of the usual pain between the eyes and churning stomach – no wonder we called the beer
heavy
– I’d gone to the pictures with Morag Duffy, a lassie from the typing pool. Nothing serious, just a pleasant evening with a bonnie smiling girl with red curls and a cheeky swing of the hips. I’d walked Morag home, stolen a kiss or three in her tenement close and fallen into my own cold bed, alone and sober as a Salvation Army major. It did me good. I should do it more often. Except for the cold lone bed. And except for the teensiest tug of guilt, as though I was being unfaithful. Which was ridiculous given how things stood with Samantha Campbell.

I strode up the now familiar hospital steps and headed down the shining brown lino floors towards the accident ward.

As I pushed at the ward door, the Sister slid out from under her stone.

‘
Mister
Brodie.’

‘Good morning, Sister. A fine morning it is.’

She lifted her bosoms up and aimed them at me. ‘And who are you visiting this morning,
Mister
Brodie?’

She’d made it clear last week that she didn’t like her sanctified ward being cluttered up with riffraff like journalists. Unless of course they’d earned bed and nursing by dint of an injury, preferably serious. At the same time she was a staunch reader of the
Gazette
and as glad as the next to see the sins of her more wayward patients exposed. Salutary reminders of what happens when you fall from grace.

‘Think of me as a church visitor, Sister. Bringing solace and comfort to the sick and injured.’

She crossed her beefy arms and gave me the look that said
If ever you find yourself in my clutches, laddie, I’ll give you solace all right
.

‘You might see what comfort you can bring to Mr Docherty. Bed three on the left. Though whether he deserves it, I’ll leave to you to decide,’ she said meaningfully and stood aside.

Jimmie Docherty wasn’t expecting a visitor. His dented face – duelling scars from a hundred pub fights – screwed up at the sight of me sitting down on the chair by his bed. He would have pushed me away if he could. Indeed, with his heavy physique, flung me across the ward. But the job is that much harder when both arms are in stookie up to the shoulder.

‘How’s it going, Jimmie?’

His eyes scuttled around the room. ‘Aye fine. As ye can see. Who’s askin’?’

‘Brodie. From the
Gazette
. I’m the crime reporter.’

‘Crime? Whit’s that to dae with me?’ he growled.

I wished I had a pound of butter to see what would happen if I shoved it into his innocent big gub. It wouldn’t so much melt as steam. From the look of him, Docherty had been inside Barlinnie more times than its governor.

‘Jimmie, it’s Sunday morning. After Saturday night. The big night out for hard men in Glasgow. They get drunk, they fight, they end up here, and I come along and get some material for the first edition of the
Glasgow Gazette
on Monday morning.’ I took my pencil out and pointed at his plastered hands and arms. There wasn’t an inch of skin showing from fingertip to shoulder. ‘What happened?’ I held the pencil poised above a clean page in my notebook.

‘Ah’m no’ a clype!’

‘I’m not asking you to tell me
who
did it. I just want to know
how
you managed to break both arms. In several places. That takes talent. Or extreme carelessness.’

‘Ah fell.’

‘Where from? Ben Nevis?’

Jimmie stared at me for a while, his cogs grinding away. Then he embarrassed himself and me by letting his piggy eyes fill.

‘There was two of the bastards. Ah admit Ah’d had a few. Saturday night as you say. And Ah was kinda stottin’ doon the road when they jumped me. Twa big fellas. Big as me. Wan grabbed ma heid. The other tied a rope roon ma wrists, then flung the rope up ower a lamppost. They strung me up, so they did. A drunk man. That’s no fair, neither it is.’ His eyes moistened again at this failure to play by the street rules.

I pointed at the arms, queasily reluctant now to know the details.

‘So how . . .?’

‘They had a crowbar, so they did. Ah was on ma tiptoes, ma airms up in the air. And then they started bashin’ them. Great big swings. Ah tell you they made me yelp. Ah was greetin’ Ah don’t mind telling you. Ah might have had a skinfu’ but they bastards fair sobered me up. Ah could hear the bones going, so help me God.’

There was a sucking in of teeth from the beds on either side. I felt my own arms wince in sympathy. I’ve seen bad things, heard terrible tales, but rarely such cold-blooded brutality. Except in the camps, of course.

‘Good God, Jimmie! What did you do? Forget to buy your round?’

Jimmie was quiet for a bit. ‘They kept saying this is what you get.’

‘For what? Get for what?’

He spat it out. ‘They said Ah was a collector. For a shark. And that this was to stop me collecting for a while. Anybody that can dae that to somebody else . . .’ He shook his head.

‘And were they right? You’re a –
were
– a collector, Jimmie?’

‘The judge didnae think so.’

‘But you were accused?’

‘There was nae proof. Naebody would talk.’ Said with all the pride and arrogance of the professional muscle-man.

‘You’re a scary guy, Jimmie.’

It was hard to preen flat on your back with your arms plastered and hauled above your head but Docherty managed it fine. He lowered his voice.