Gallowglass (13 page)

TWENTY-SEVEN

N
ext morning, I asked Eric to put us into the yacht club at Gourock. His big face opened in a wide grin.

‘A pleasure. The
Lorne
could do with stretching her legs.’ He turned her head round to the open mouth of the Clyde and we began to haul up the sails. The fresh morning breeze filled them one by one until we had a full set and the ketch was jumping forward in the water like a salmon. We ran down the widening estuary and rounded the head at Gourock. We were out in mid-channel. Away in the distance, framed between the isles of Bute and Cumbrae, but much further south, was the grey hump of Arran. I could see Eric fight against the desire to keep on soaring with the wind to where his wife and children would be waiting. I wouldn’t have blamed him. I felt like running away myself.

But suddenly I saw him push on the tiller and felt the boat heel round on to a bearing that would bring us into the far-off yacht club. I walked up to Eric, clinging to the rail on the tipping deck, and clapped him on the shoulder. We exchanged looks and nodded in full understanding. How could I repay this man?

We began hauling down sails so that we were slipping forward on just the jib and mizzen as we cut across the wide bay towards the club. As we closed on the shore I could see the attraction of its position. It was a solid building perched on a promontory. Behind it passed the road that ran along the
Gourock coast. The club was framed by rows of sandstone houses set all along the foreshore. It gave convenient access by road from Glasgow while offering unparalleled views across the whole Firth, up Loch Long and to the Gareloch.

Apart from golf, I’d been told sailing had been one of Gibson’s passions – unless all he wanted was a private clubhouse and bar rather than pottering up and down the Firth getting cold and wet. We tied up to a visitor’s mooring and dragged the tender alongside. I was about to clamber down into it when Eric stopped me.

‘Are you going like that?’

I was in suit and glasses again.

‘Too formal?’

‘You look like a Revenue man. They’ll never talk to you. Try these.’ He flung a bundle at me. I caught them and the accompanying reek of smoke and fish and oily wool. I went down into the cabin and changed. I emerged wearing a worn pair of brown corduroys and an Arran sweater.

He nodded. ‘Better.’

‘I’m short of a fiddle.’

‘You’ll do. Just don’t go talking about bowlines and clove hitches.’

‘I know the difference.’

‘But not how to tie them.’

It was only a short row so we didn’t bother with the outboard. Despite this being my first outing I only missed a couple of strokes. I certainly felt more the sea-dog in my smelly sweater. I pulled on to the shallow beach and walked up to the clubhouse and into its corridors. I tracked down the club secretary – John Grant – to a corner of the small dining room. He seemed a different kettle of fish to the Whitecraigs’ smoothy. Grant was as blunt as his name, and more guarded. Even though we shared a taste for facial hair and smelly sweaters, Grant showed a clear preference for facing a force 10 off the Hebrides than an inquisition from an Edinburgh
policeman. We sat outside watching the yachts and stroking our beards at each other. He puffed on his pipe while I fired unanswered questions. I was getting nowhere and was tempted to call for Eric to see if he could exchange smoke signals with the dour Grant.

‘Well, I couldnae really say,’ was his standard response to most of my probes about Gibson. He finally opened up when I asked about Gibson’s sailing. Was he an expert helmsman, a brilliant man with a sextant?

‘Huh. A gin palace. A floating gin palace, that’s what he had.’

‘Did he take it out much?’

He almost spat. ‘Oh, he took her out. A complete waste of a fine yacht.’ He pointed with his pipe at the
Lorne
, rocking gently on the buoy. ‘Not like yours. Saw you coming in across the bay. Well handled. I love a gaff rig.’ Then he moved his pointer over. ‘Gibson moored just out there. He’d drive down at the weekend, load his poor craft up with booze and drinking cronies and fire up the engines. He’d anchor half a mile out in the Firth or maybe sail over to Dunoon. When I say sail, I don’t think he raised them once in the past two years.’

‘Who did he drink with? Club members?’

Grant shook his head. ‘He brought his pals with him. From Glasgow. Right bunch they were.’

‘How so?’

‘Not our sort. Loud, flashy. Cigars and directors’ box at Ibrox. Some wi’ fancy accents.’

‘Same bunch each time?’

‘Two mainly. Adams and Elliot. Sometimes they’d bring a couple of lassies. Tramps.’ He spat out a thick black gob on to the pebbles.

‘Not his wife?’

‘Ha!’

‘Catch any of
their
names?’

‘One of his favourite bits of stuff was a burd called Pamela. A right tart. It was Pam this, and Pam that. Often enough just
Sir
Fraser and his tart. You could see the boat rocking from a mile off.’

He paused, mulling.

‘There was another yin. Classier. A real beauty.’

‘Catch her name?’

‘Something like Candy. Too guid for him.’

‘Did his behaviour change much in the last – say – six months?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Still bringing his pals down for a boozy weekend? Still bringing Pam? Or Candy?’

‘Mostly. But they didnae seem to be having as much fun. Arguments. Him and his pals. You could hear them effing and blinding. Booze and women – a potent mix on a boat.’

‘Was it women they were arguing about?’

‘Gambling debts. Heard it all the time… fights over who’d lost at the races. They’d bet on which way the wind would blaw in the next half-hour.’

I used the phone in the club before re-embarking on the
Lorne
.

‘Harry, it’s me.’

‘You got the package?’

‘Perfect. And it works. So far.’

‘Don’t overdo it, old chap.’

‘Time’s running out. I need to take risks. It’s beginning to get results. I’ve got some names for you. Can you check them out? See what you might have on them?’

‘My pen is poised.’

‘First batch is from his golf club, the so-called Chanty Wrastlers. Two of the names that crop up are also associated with the yacht club: Frank Elliot and Roderick Adams. We should start with that pair. Sam knows Adams. He’s a bent lawyer. Sounds like a good lead.’

‘Leave it with me. Call me tonight. By the way, we’ve found your man Higgins.’

‘Wee Airchie? Alive, I hope. Not banged up?’

‘His last stretch finished four years ago. But we don’t think he’s learned his lesson. Just hasn’t been caught. He’s still consorting with the wrong people. Still in Glasgow.’

‘That’s a relief. It would be a pity to find he’d gone straight. Where can I find him?’

‘You’re going to blow your cover?’

‘I need a breakthrough. Or, more accurately, a break-in.’

‘When do you want to see him?’

‘As soon as poss. Tomorrow? Ten o’clock.’

‘Where?’

I didn’t want Eric McLeod to be dragged into illegalities any more than he already was. I wouldn’t use the boat.

‘Glasgow Green. Nelson’s Column. Tell him to find a seat and wait till he’s contacted. The forecast is sunny, so he’ll have to fight for a bench with sunbathing pensioners.’

‘Consider it done.’

TWENTY-EIGHT

E
ric took us back up the Firth to moor overnight at a cove near Rosneath up the Gareloch. It would be an easy sprint up the Clyde in the morning for my rendezvous.

I was curious to meet wee Airchie again. I’d last encountered him before the war when we’d rounded up a cartel of soft-fruit providers who’d been keeping prices high despite a glut of produce from a great summer. Airchie was the rate setter and central ‘banker’ for nine companies and had made them handsome profits at a time of rationing. He was one of those local legends, a man whose myths had long since eclipsed the reality. When it came to cooking the books Airchie Higgins was considered a master chef.

I knew that even the Scottish accountancy profession had a set of standards for practitioners of their black arts. Fall below them and you could be struck off. Airchie entered their hall of infamy for keeping too many parallel sets of books for his various crooked clients. But it was precisely such inventiveness and flexible morality that I needed.

He was also a likeable wee rogue. If he hadn’t yielded to temptation so often, he could have known esteem and financial security among the professional classes of Glasgow. I led the arresting team that picked up him and all his dodgy books, and even as I was cuffing him, he seemed more resigned than angry.

Normally – if I hadn’t been quite so personally constrained – I’d have been able to buy Airchie’s talents with a modest
cash offer. But to gag him about my existence, at least for a few weeks, would require more than just a bucketful of bawbees. That’s where Harry could help.

Next morning, Eric delivered me as neat as ninepence to the dockside at Anderston. I wore the specs and was in an opennecked shirt and Eric’s brown corduroys: a compromise between a Revenue man and a rum smuggler. As I walked along Clyde Street to the Green I stifled an urge to run past the corner with Saltmarket; just two hundred yards from my recent prison cell. A fast walk later and I was in the park and strolling towards Nelson’s Column at the centre of the great city green.

I spotted him from a good way off. Airchie was sitting in the sunshine perched on the end of a bench pretending to read a newspaper he’d probably found in a dustbin. He kept sticking his head above the pages to see who was coming. He looked older, fatter and shorter. But then none of us was wearing too well.

I didn’t head straight at him, but took a stroll round the monument and came at him out of the sun. Even when I sat down beside him he still didn’t recognise me. In fact he put down his paper and turned to me:

‘Excuse me, pal. Ah’m waitin’ for a couple of folk. We’re havin’ a bit of a confab about a new statue we’re putting up. So if you wouldnae mind…’

‘Airchie, I’m glad to see you haven’t lost your talent for telling fibs.’

Behind his wire-rimmed glasses, his small round face looked startled. Close up he looked nearer sixty than the fifty I understood him to be.

‘Ah’m sorry, pal. Ah don’t know who you are. Though the voice is kinda familiar. Am Ah supposed to be meeting you?’ He peered at me, struggling to bring his memories into focus.

‘You are, Airchie. But before I prompt your memory, let me say that what you will be asked to do will be very worth your while.’

‘Oh aye, how much worthwhile? And nae violent stuff, mind. Ah’ve got a low threshold for pain.’

‘Agreed. Answer me a couple of questions first. Are you going straight now?’

He looked affronted. ‘Here, you, Ah’m as straight as a die. Who do you think you are, asking me that?’

‘I mean, you’re legal, on the straight and narrow, reformed?’

He peered at me, wondering whether I was trying to trap him. ‘Aye, all legal, now what—?’

‘Let’s leave that. Who do you work for the now?’

‘Ah’m actually between jobs at the moment, but Ah huv a number of folk Ah’m having discussions with, wi’ a view to taking on an engagement. If the work and the remuneration are appropriate.’

‘Fair enough. OK, I’m going to tell you who I am and then we’ll talk. You can walk away from this job. No one will stop you, especially if you’re going straight. But you need to know that if word gets out about me and anything I’m going to say to you, not only will I personally come and rip your head off, I’ll hand over the bits to the British secret services to put through their mincer.’

‘Whit! You’re joking, right? C’mon, pal, naebody needs work as much as that. This is no’ for me. Ah’m away.’ He got up, folded his ragged paper under his arm and made to leave.

‘Airchie? I’m Douglas Brodie.’ I took off my specs.

He stopped, stared, went to say something, peered closer.

‘Fuck! Ah heard you were deid!’

‘I am. Sit down, Airchie. Let’s talk.’

He sank beside me on the bench, as much stunned as intrigued. I explained what I knew of the kidnap and murder, and how I’d been set up. He shook his head.

‘Christ, Brodie, who can you trust these days? Ony idea who’s behin’ it?’

‘Some, but not enough. And here’s the thing, Airchie, we think there’s some dirty goings on at Scottish Linen. But if you breathe a word of what I just told you, my pals will lock you away and lose the key.’

His wee face screwed up. ‘These pals o’ yours? Are you sayin’ they’re the fly boys, the spy boys?’

I nodded.

‘Fuck.’ Then he thought for a minute. ‘How did you end up working for them?’

‘Airchie, I see you read the paper. Were you reading it earlier this year when we were chasing Nazis in Glasgow?’

‘Oh aye. That was rare, so it was. Who’d’a thought it? And you did the reporting on that. Are you saying you were working with the spy boys at the time?’

‘I’m a sort of a part-time officer in the army and an even more part-time employee of the said outfit. So when I ran into this bit of trouble, my friends were concerned and helped me play dead. They’re helping me now and they are willing to pay you well for helping me.’

He fiddled with his fingers and pulled at his collar as his mind ticked over. He was calculating just how much to ask for.

‘Would Ah get a medal?’

I laughed. ‘Is that what would make you do this? What good’s a medal to you?’

‘You wouldnae un’erstaun’.’

I studied him. ‘Try me.’

He looked down at his hands and then out across the park. ‘See, it’s like this. Ah was inside for half the war. An’ when Ah came oot in ’43, they wouldnae huv me. Ah wanted to fight the bloody Hun but they wouldnae let me. This would kinda make up for it, would it no’?

I didn’t point out that even if his criminal record hadn’t excluded him, his age and health would have.

‘You wee patriot, you. I’ll have a word with them. But are you saying you’re up for this? I haven’t even told you what we want you to do.’

‘Ah guess it’s something sneaky and un’erhaun’. Something that uses ma talents?’

‘You and I, Archibald Higgins, are going to break into the Scottish Linen Bank and take a look at their books.’

‘Fuck.’

‘Fuck, indeed.’