The Low Road (28 page)

She paid five pounds to see the body plus a keek at the attending doctor's report—a very expensive bribe in a city where five shillings went a long way. The man had been beaten so badly he was unrecognizable. She also read that a prison tattoo—MUM, with roses around the letters, badly inked in red and purple—was noticed by a constable who had arrested the young man numerous times. This led to an interim identification, later confirmed by his mother.

When Mary left the mortuary, she had focused on inventive ways to invoice the
Herald
for the five pounds, the accounts department being wise to Mary's sometimes bizarre expense claims. But it was hard to put the horror of the broken, twisted body behind her.

“So who killed him?” Sandy Marshall brought her back to the here and now.

“Or ordered him killed?” Mary threw out the question, knowing they were all thinking the same thing. Gerry Dochery. Mary shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

“I can't run a story on guesses. Anything else?”

“Last night, I saw Jimmy McPhee,” Mary replied. “He's not saying much. But he looks frightened. Coming from him, that's scary. The reward Gerry Dochery offered for information on Jimmy is still out there. Then there's the puzzle as to why McAllister was attacked—Gerry said he wouldn't come after
him
, only Jimmy. So we're back to the same question—who killed the man?”

“And why, and how, was McAllister set up?”

They were silent for a second or so thinking through the question. Finally Mary said, “Let's hope we find out before someone else dies.”

At Mary's last sentence, McAllister rocked back in his chair and looked upwards in a silent plea to the Wee Man or one of His ministering angels.
If you discount the stone angels in the Necropolis,
he thought,
in Glasgow it's mostly fallen angels.

Mary asked, “Boss, can we ask the paper's legal eagle about raising a malicious prosecution charge against the police at Central? ‘Harmed the reputation of one of our journalists, hence the newspaper.' That would make a good story.”

“Maybe.”

“There is one piece of good news . . .”

McAllister was looking like he'd lost a sovereign and found a sixpence. “Good news? I doubt that's possible.”

“Listen to this. The
Herald
lawyers dragged a sheriff away from a game of golf. He was not happy. He took it out on DI Willkie, made him look an idiot at the bail hearing. He told him there was no case against you. He reprimanded him for wasting police resources, and the sheriff's time, and said he was submitting a report to Willkie's superiors.” Her informant was the custody sergeant who had had scant time for DI Willkie.

She put her hands together in prayer and said, “So please, Mr. Editor, can I write that up?”

Sandy laughed. “Discreetly. I don't want our solicitor having to bail you out an' all.”

She was swinging her legs beneath the too-high chair, enjoying herself. “Me?”

“And be careful.” The way she rolled her eyes reminded Sandy of his eight-year-old daughter.

“I'll need help with the research,” she continued, “a bright
young cadet, preferably one who is street-smart . . . No, don't even suggest Mr. Sleazy.” The very thought of Keith, her colleague on the crime desk, a man she described as “an all-round sleaze,” gave her goose bumps.

“Anything else?” Sandy asked, glancing up at the clock.

“Him. McAllister. I can't stand it a minute longer.” Mary handed over a set of keys. “Go to my place and have a bath.”

“Okay, okay, I'll be off.” McAllister stood.

“Phone Joanne first,” Mary said.

“Yes, Mother,” McAllister replied.

“Looks like he had a hell of an ordeal,” Sandy said when they were alone.

“Aye,” was all Mary could say. Being jailed was something that terrified her; she knew how fellow inmates would treat a woman of her class. But it didn't stop her from taking liberties with the law if she thought it might lead to a story.

Sandy could see she was furious. Mary's anger had many shades: loud-shouting-gesticulating-racecourse-bookie anger; fast-talking-multiple-cursing-unladylike anger; cold-white-eye-piercing anger that he had witnessed only once when she was told by a relic-from-the-Jurassic-age journalist that the crime desk was no place for a woman—and this after he'd stolen her story and written it under his own byline.

The editor was equally angry, but he would channel his anger into protecting his journalists by legal means. He finished the conversation with, “I have to get back to the family. See you tomorrow afternoon?”

“I'll be in early. I have a potential story for Monday and I need it to be watertight.”

The editor, aware of how much she hated being treated differently from the males, knew not to tell her again to be careful. He sent up a prayer instead.

M
cAllister was exhausted. And dirty. And distressed. And he hadn't called home.

Opening the gate to Mary's basement flat, he noted that the drop from the trefoil-topped iron railings was just right if you should feel like hanging yourself.

A flicker of movement in the upstairs bay window made him glance up, then look down. He hadn't the patience for a confrontation with Mary's mother.

He stood in the hallway, undecided whether to have a bath first, or a drink, when the decision was made for him.

“I've poured you a dram.”

Jimmy McPhee.

McAllister remembered Mary had given him a spare key, but Jimmy had vanished that same night. When was it? Thursday? Friday?
Whenever it was, it seemed a lifetime ago.

“I stayed here last night,” Jimmy said, handing him a crystal tumbler of amber liquid. “Mary told me what was going on.” He was looking as tired as McAllister, and thinner than his usual skinny self.

They held their glasses up in a silent toast. McAllister saw the tremor in his hand. Jimmy didn't ask about his night in the Glasgow Central Police cells, about the hours of questions and verbal abuse. McAllister was grateful and felt a bond with Jimmy, understanding that here was a man who surely knew what those hours had been like, hours when time seemed suspended.

“I need a bath,” McAllister said after he had downed the whisky in one gulp, “then we need to talk.”

“Aye,” was all Jimmy said.

When McAllister emerged, he was cleaner, but no matter how much he had scrubbed himself, he felt the reek of the police cell lingering in his hair and skin and under his nails.

Jimmy was in the kitchen. He pushed a plate with two pies towards McAllister. His plate had the same, except his pies were covered in bright red tomato sauce. McAllister felt queasy at the sight, but the smell of the lamb mincemeat and a taste of the crust reminded him how hungry he was. They finished their meal with a cigarette. Then talked.

Jimmy began, “You know Gerry Dochery might have had this lad killed.”

“I can't believe that.”

“Suit yerself. But who else knows where you live? Who else would have sent the lad round?”

“And buy off DI Willkie.”

“Aye. I hear thon bastard can be bought easily, but no' cheaply. And Dochery is flush.”

They talked, but not for long. McAllister didn't ask the question that was eating him up. He knew there would be no answer. Perhaps not even a lie.
What is this about, Jimmy McPhee?

“Joanne gave me one week,” he said, leaving out that the week was to clear up the so-called burglary at his mother's flat. “So . . .”

Jimmy interrupted. “You're on the night train back. This is my fight.”

“Wrecking my mother's place . . . it's personal now.” He ignored the growl coming from Jimmy's throat. “Besides, I can probably find Wee Gerry and . . .”

“And what? Remind him of holidays in Millport? Appeal to his decency? Involve his father?”

McAllister knew it was about living with himself if he did nothing. “Old Mr. Dochery lives in Govan. I'm paying him a visit.”

Jimmy knew McAllister would do just that, with or without him. “I've the keys to Mary's mother's car.”

McAllister gave a half grin. After two pies and tea and whisky, and with Jimmy on his side, optimism had returned. “We should ask Mrs. Ballantyne if it's okay.”

“You do it. She'd have me hanged, drawn, and quartered, if she could.”

Ten minutes later McAllister was ringing the doorbell of the main house. When she answered he gave her no time to speak. “Mrs. Ballantyne, I'm letting you know Mary has given us the keys to the car. We'd like to borrow it for a day or so.”

“Have I a choice?” She was hugging herself as though a nonexistent north wind was attacking her bones. She had an aristocratic thinness that reminded McAllister of a highly bred whippet: wrists that he could wrap a forefinger and thumb around; collarbones prominent above the vee of a bone-colored silk blouse with a shade lighter strand of pearls; hair an indeterminate shade of gray-blond and so thin that even a spectacularly expensive haircut could not hide the pink scalp. Her long thin nose reminded him of a whippet, and of another of his mother's sayings, “Who does she think she is—looking down her nose at folk?”

“I'm sorry, Mrs. Ballantyne. We need the car.”

“And I need my daughter, Mr. McAllister. She is all I have left.” She shut the door, leaving him standing on the step. Feeling guilty, again, he reminded himself,
She is a widow. Mary is her only child
.

McAllister drove. Jimmy slumped down in the passenger seat, a flat-cap disguise working well; he looked like any other Glasgow man, small, defeated, and if anyone caught his eye, ready for a fight. McAllister was wondering what it was about Jimmy McPhee that made him risk his own, and now his mother's, safety.
Friends
was
too shallow and too intimate a word to explain their relationship. Yet their oft-times-wordless communication was something McAllister had with no other—not even Joanne. And Jenny McPhee? Why did he come when she called? He had no answer. But the Traveling people, enigmatic, outsiders, remnants of a Celtic past that was sometimes romanticized when the reality was hardship and prejudice, fascinated him.
Perhaps it is the bonds that tie them, bonds I'm scared of, especially with women.
He didn't want to think this was true. He was a man who thought his inability to engage emotionally was a mark of intellect.
Wee Gerry said my going to the high school cut me off forever from ordinary folk. Maybe he was right.

A horse and cart delivering coal stopped on his side of the street, blocking the way. He could not overtake it for a few minutes. When he did he saw that they were only a few streets from Mr. Dochery's flat.

Once again, it was a tall, soot-blackened tenement block, one that had survived the carpet bombing of Clydeside. They parked in front of an empty block, bright with fireweed and broken glass, which had not been so lucky. Shipyard cranes filled the skyline to the right. And litter and dust and empty dreams tumbled in a wind coming off the river. The bright sun made it all the more drab.

The shipyards were silent, it being late on a Saturday, none of the usual pulse of industrial noise echoing between buildings. And there were few men around, most being at the pub, celebrating a win or recovering from the loss of their football team. Whichever it was, the public houses would be full.

There were no numbers on the buildings. Jimmy asked a wee boy, and the boy asked for sixpence. McAllister gave it to him. Then another boy asked for sixpence to “mind the car.” Jimmy was about to refuse, but McAllister handed over the silver coin.

The old man lived in a single end unit on the top floor. It took awhile for him to answer the door. McAllister could see that
the worn steps and the four flights would discourage anyone, especially a man in his seventies, from going out much.

“I've been expecting you,” he said when he eventually answered the door. He nodded to Jimmy. They had not been introduced, but Mr. Dochery could guess who the man with the red hair was.

“I read about your troubles,” Mr. Dochery said after the men had refused a cup of tea.

“That's not what this is about,” McAllister began. “My mother's flat was broken into. Your Gerry was there, questioning the neighbors, whilst his friends were smashing up the place.”

“That's no' right . . . no' right at all.” The old man was shaking his head slowly, his eyes swimming with old people's tears.

McAllister wanted to comfort him. But didn't. “They smashed her best china, they tore up all her pictures of ma dad, ma brother, even their wedding photos were ripped in half.” McAllister felt sick at being so relentless. “He tried to pin a murder on me. He might have . . .” This was going too far; it was only a guess that Gerry Docherty was involved in the lad's death. “I want this ended so I need to talk to your Gerry.”