The Low Road (11 page)

H
e arrived in Glasgow seven hours later and went straight to the
Herald.
Mary was at her desk.

“Oh, hello,” she said, looking up, “the editor wants you.” Then she continued typing.

Sandy Marshall was busy with proof pages, marking this, running a pencil through that. “Take a seat, I'll be with you in a sec.” He turned to the sub-editor. “This'll do, and make sure you up the font on the headline.”

When the sub left, Sandy turned back to McAllister. “Good to see you again.” He pushed the proof pages of an article towards McAllister. “This whole gang thing is blowing up, and you're our lead to Gerry Dochery. Can I second you for a week or so to work with Mary on the story?”

McAllister dropped into the chair across the desk from his old friend. They were more than colleagues, they had been cadets together, had grown up from full-of-themselves cocky young men to fully fledged journalists before their paths separated, McAllister to cover the Spanish Civil War, Sandy Marshall into some never quite explained position in the army dealing with information.

Misinformation, Sandy had once said. But that was all he'd ever shared.

“I know you have commitments up north,” Sandy started, “but this story is big. And Mary is convinced it goes beyond plain
old gangster territory disputes. Plus there is the mystery as to why your tinker friend's name keeps cropping up.”

“Mary suggested I become involved?”

“No, this is me asking for a favor.”

McAllister reached for a cigarette.
A favor
, he thought,
that's what brought me down here in the first place.
But he was interested. More than that, he was beginning to feel the thrill of a big story about to break. “How long will it take?”

Sandy laughed. “You know better than that . . . it takes as long as it takes.”

“A week. No more.” Elated at the opportunity, yet guilty,
how am I going to explain a week away?
McAllister couldn't believe he'd agreed so readily.

“Done.” The editor reached for the phone. “Mary, join us in my office, will you?” He lit a cigarette. “Don't say I said this, but keep an eye on her. She's mixing with some right evil souls and she . . .”

“And she—meaning me, I suppose—can look after herself.” Mary flopped into the chair next to McAllister.

He could see she was exhausted. He saw that her hair had lost its luster and her clothes were grubby.

She caught him looking. “I've been poking around the remains of the boxing gym and haven't been home. I need a bath, I need a hair wash—my clothes stink of fire—but later. You can sit across the room if you can't take the smell.” She reached across for her editor's cigarettes. McAllister offered his lighter. She accepted, then asked, “So, you on board?”

“He is,” Sandy answered.

“What do you want me to do?” McAllister asked.

“Talk to Wee Gerry Dochery,” Mary answered.

“Why would Gerry talk to me?”

It was a rhetorical question. He and Sandy Marshall understood the implications—if Gerry Dochery talked, he would be signing his own execution warrant. Mary understood, but in an intellectual sense. She'd walked the streets and alleyways; she'd stood in the sawdust and blood of a Saturday night at a pub in the slums. But her name gave her protection; connections as high up as advocates and chief constables and peers of the realm, not to mention her late father's regimental colleagues. The gangsters were not stupid; they knew what harming her would bring down on the community.

Mary was impatient. Her legs, not quite touching the floor, making her look like the shrunken Alice in Wonderland, were swinging in a steady rhythm. “I don't know, he's your pal. Can't you persuade him to talk for old times' sake? Blackmail him? You know the man, we don't. All I do know is that this fire was an attempt to kill your Highland friend. And it succeeded in killing his former coach, a harmless old boxer, a man who was minding his own business, running a decent club, and encouraging a lot o' the young lads to find a legitimate way of venting their violence—in the ring.”

“You know the Jimmy McPhee connection for certain?” McAllister saw her flush and look away. He recognized her ambition; he'd trained enough cadet reporters. He also knew that the training emphasized that speculation has no place in a journalist's repertoire. Facts, facts, and at least two sources to confirm those facts, were what he'd drummed into the overeager trainees.

“A very reliable source told me McPhee was hiding out in the gym, had been since he was released from Barlinnie . . .”

“So if someone is after him, why would Jimmy stay around the city?” McAllister was thinking aloud, not expecting an answer.

“Search me.” Mary had thought this over and had no answers, and that annoyed her.

“So someone set fire to the place to flush him out?”

“No, McAllister. Someone tied up Old Man Laird, removed what was left of his teeth, and some of his fingers, then they set fire to the gym, with him still in it, alive.” She saw the editor and McAllister look away; even they were distressed by the description, or perhaps distressed by the cold way she laid out the story. “The doctor who attended the deceased is hoping his heart gave out first, as they only removed three fingers. But . . .”

“If that's correct—the heart giving out first—it's manslaughter. If not, it's murder,” Sandy Marshall spoke quietly. This was the first he'd heard of the torture. “That's why we need to contact Gerry Dochery before more deaths occur.”

“More murders, you mean.” Mary was not one to let a euphemism pass.

McAllister sighed. “I said I'm in. I meant it. Let me go home first. Let my mother know I'm here. I'll be back in an hour or so.” McAllister stood. “See you.”

As he left, he heard Sandy asking Mary, “When will you hear if it was his heart or the fire?”

“Don't know. Everything's speculation and . . .”

McAllister left them to it. He knew what a front-page murder entailed. He knew the adrenaline rush of pursuing a story, composing it, fact-checking, subbing, checking with the lawyers if need be, and having everything finished before deadline—deadline in a big daily newspaper being absolute. He knew he wanted to be in on this, if only one more time, before the anonymity of life as editor in a local Highland newspaper swallowed him up.

Twenty past eight was nearing his mother's bedtime.

Mrs. McAllister gave no hint of surprise at his unannounced arrival—twice in two weeks, once more than in previous years. She made tea, saying little until fifteen minutes later he said he had to get back to the
Herald
.

“Does this have to do with Wee Gerry?” she asked.

“Indirectly.” He was fudging the truth, but she was not fooled. “I want to speak to him, that's all.”

“I'm right sorry I wrote you yon letter.” She shook her head, sadness leaking out from her voice into her shoulders. “John, Gerry is lost to us. Has been for a long while, poor soul. But I can see it must be important, if you've left your Joanne alone, not to say your job. I'll write to Mr. Dochery.
Maybe
he can help you with Wee Gerry.” The way she said “maybe,” full of doubt, said she was not hopeful.

He knew Mr. Gerry Dochery senior was a good man, but didn't think he would help; it would mean betraying his son. Then he realized he had no other way of finding Gerry. Out of contact with his previous informants, he wasn't certain he'd be welcome back in his old haunts in the Tollcross, and Maryhill, and some of less salubrious areas of the Gorbals—if there were any salubrious areas, which he doubted. He knew the inner-city areas of desolate streets, and back lanes, and poverty. The Broomielaw, stretching along the banks of the Clyde, better known for public houses than trees, was now almost foreign territory. But he had to find Jimmy. He'd promised.

“If you would write, I'd be grateful,” he told his mother.

“I'll ask him to come here on a visit. No more. The man has enough troubles, what with Gerry and . . . and all that. He needs to know he still has friends . . .” She was waving her hand around, encompassing the whole city.

“Thanks, Mother.”

“Aye, and the sooner this is sorted the sooner you can go home to your new family.”

“And you can come north. Meet Joanne and the girls.”

“Maybe.”

He left, knowing
maybe
was a fraction from a yes. He should
have been elated; he'd been trying for three years to persuade her to make the trip. Instead he felt his conscience settle in the pit of his stomach, reminding him of his misgivings.
A new life, a ready-made family, I hope I'm up to it.

“Get a grip, McAllister,” he muttered as he swung himself onto the bus platform, the pole sticky from previous passengers.

“If that's a prayer, I'll let you off at the cathedral, will I?” the clippie asked.

“The pub's mair likely to gie ye an answer,” an old wag said as he stood beside McAllister, waiting to alight at the next stop.

McAllister smiled. This was Glasgow, home to a thousand comedians, and counting. He was back.

He ran up the steps of the
Herald
building to the swing doors, looking and feeling like a man on a mission. On the news floor he settled in at the desk. Happy. Enthused. Everyone was busy, too busy to notice him, although one of the subs gave him a wave and the six months' pregnant man across the way glanced up, then ignored him.

Mary's desk was empty, and he didn't ask. He rolled in the copy paper, interlayered with carbon sheets, flexed his fingers, took a deep in-breath of newsprint-soaked air, and, with a cigarette drooping from left of center in his mouth, he squeezed his eyes half shut and started to type. No notes; he knew what he was doing.
Give me background, context,
was all Sandy had said.

The typewriter was newer than the ones at the
Gazette
, whose machines felt like they had been installed in the heyday of industrial Victorian Scotland. Ash dropped onto his lap unnoticed. Only when he felt his lips burn did he put out the cigarette, then review the article. Poverty, slums, empty bomb sites, drink, endless children, shared outside toilets . . .
No,
he thought,
delete that, who would believe the poor deserve to have indoor plumbing?

If someone from the
Gazette
could see him, they would not
recognize this man, a man possessed. At forty-six years of age, he felt the cozy job as editor of a local paper marked the twilight of a once illustrious career. Here, at this desk, on this newspaper, surrounded by the crème de la crème of the country's journalists, he was John McAllister, crime reporter, columnist. Somebody.

Writing the story, he could feel the pavements, the cobbled alleyways, smell the buses, the trams, the underground, hear the city, every element of it vibrating just below audible level. He felt like Lazarus as he relived, through his words, a night in the pubs around Tollcross with stumbling drunks at the “unco” stage, the hesitant, not quite ready for a fight stage, but with fists raised, dancing a drunken weave around your opponent, doing the “Glasgow jive.”

He could smell the centuries of spilt beer and whisky as he typed, see the walls and ceilings so discolored from tobacco and open fires that there was no telling the original shade, but he guessed white, as whitewash—“distemper,” in Scottish parlance—was the cheapest paint.

With every “ping” of the return carriage, the adrenaline surged. Half an hour to go and the article was almost finished. He knew it was good. He knew he was only revealing what everyone knew; the activities of the gangs accepted as much as the weather, causing comment and irate letters to the editor only when the violence was in plain sight of churchgoers of the smarter suburbs—the ones likely to write to the city councilors and the newspaper.

But to see it in print, spelt out for the rest of the country—even the English—to read, that was different, might require action from the city fathers, or at least a reaction. For a short while.

He glanced at the clock, a quick revision and it would be ready with ten minutes to spare. He smiled to himself as he edited the copy.

I'll never get away with “unco,”
he thought. Sub-editors everywhere, including Don McLeod back in the Highlands, would have their pencil through it. “Uncoordinated,” he was about to type. Mildly drunk was what he should have put.
No poetry to that
, he told himself. And left it in.

He called across the room for the copyboy, decided against another cigarette, putting on his hat and coat instead. He glanced around. No Mary.
Ah well, we won't know if it's murder or manslaughter until after the postmortem.
He left the newsroom to another night, another edition. Exhilarated.

Coming down the steps, he turned up his coat collar against an almost rain. Being Glaswegian, he did not classify the light spray of non-puddle-forming precipitation as rain, no matter how penetrating the soft mist. When he reached the entrance to the communal close of his boyhood home, he removed his hat to shake the moisture out, and discovered the rain for what it was: deceptive, hat- and coat-penetrating, typical of the west of Scotland. He was shaking his coat before going into the flat when a voice came out from the alcove below the stairs.

“Hey mister, 're you McAllister?”

In the dim of the forty-watt lightbulb the girl looked eight but was more likely to be twelve, with the stunted growth and rickets that still blighted the poor of the city.

“Who wants to know?”

“A man said ye'll gie me half a crown if I tell ye summut.”

McAllister knew that a sixpence would have been promised, perhaps a threepence. He gave her a half crown.