Welcome to the Heady Heights

by David F. Ross

  This confused the men, and Big Jamesie knew the words hadn’t come out clearly. Like he was blaming God, rather than purely reflecting on the impersonal nature of fate. He glanced over at Vince Hillcock, standing portside of Heady. He’d make sure that got edited out of any later broadcast clips.

  The politician refocused. ‘The working-class men ae Glasgow, down on their luck an’ destitute for reasons that are their own personal business, need this great hotel. Ah’m goin’ tae make sure it’s here for them, for another century!’

  Camera bulbs flashed, and applause rang out. Bobby Souness looked around nervously. Wullie Dunne had apparently left, possibly as keen to maintain anonymity as Bobby, although clearly for different reasons.

  ‘An’ now, Heady Hendricks…’

  ‘Thank you, Big Jamesie. I’m delighted to be here today, and I mean that most sincerely, fellas!’ More bulbs flashed at the precise moment Heady launched that million-dollar intercontinental ballistic smile towards them. ‘Many don’t know this, but I was once on my uppers too … just like you all.’

  It seemed impossible to conceive. This well-to-do gentleman, with his yellow tailored suit, his beige-and-maroon spats, his flowery cravat and a fat Havana cigar the size of one of Fanny Cradock’s rolling pins.

  ‘Although I was born in Montreal, my daddy, Hector, came from this very city. He sailed to Canada on an Allan Line steamship in 1911. He worked his passage as a boilerman.’ Heady Hendricks, the showman. He knew how to pace and deliver a line. Big Jamesie looked on enviously as Heady paused professionally. ‘I was only thirteen when my dear daddy was knifed to death in a brawl on the docks. It was over an unpaid gambling debt … amounting to the princely sum of four dollars.’

  There were gasps at this revelation. Bobby Souness glanced down at his bandaged hands. Was this a coincidence, or, given The Wigwam’s appearance, something more pointed?

  Heady pulled out a patterned handkerchief from an inside pocket with the sleight of hand of Houdini. He dabbed an eye with it. ‘I had to leave home at fourteen and find work to support my momma and my five brothers. I joined a travelling show, a circus … but many’s the time I was on my own. Sleeping rough, eating scraps out of bins in back alleys, seeking companionship anywhere I could find it.’

  Bobby Souness had heard enough. He edged backwards, aiming to disappear completely into the shadows.

  Someone saw though. His withdrawal had been noticed.

  ‘I’m honoured to have been asked to lend my name and personal support to this wonderful venture led by my close friend, Big Jamesie Campbell.’

  Heady leaned behind the dignitaries. A board was passed to him. He turned it over and held it up. Flashbulbs again. The board illustrated a painting of a building; like the one they were standing in but with clean, light-grey stone rather than its current black. Colourful curtains had been painted into the windows. Happy, young carefree people ‘boardwalked’ the frontage. And exotic-looking cars populated the foreground. More like Chicago than Glasgow.

  ‘I’m truly delighted to unveil…’ Heady paused ‘…The Heady Heights Hotel!’

  Arms full of pale ale cans and a large Scotch pie, Bobby Souness retreated to his tiny cell on the third floor. He heard the others bursting into song to rejoice their good fortune to have been homeless and here on this great day. Bobby lay back on the bed. The tiny window, bars on the outside to stop those who felt they had fallen to their lowest ebb from opening the window and deliberately falling even further. The brick wall of the adjoining building only six feet away, meaning the fluorescent strip light had to be on constantly. An incarceration of the mind. He thought of his wife, long gone and better off without him. Of young Joseph. Of how he’d fucked up their lives as certainly as he’d fucked up his own. And he thought of Wullie Dunne. Wullie fucking Wigwam, the architect of all his pain. The self-centred, thieving cunt who had virtually committed him to this life sentence as surely as if he’d been a High Court Judge. Bobby Souness wept as he weighed the only option now open to him.

  A voice from beyond the open door dislocated his sorrow. ‘Souness! Well, well, well. Almost didnae recognise ye. Cannae say ah’m surprised at this turn ae events.’

  Archie had spotted Bobby slinking out the back of the big room and, satisfied Heady was settled, he’d followed the sly waster. He’d waited a very long time to tell Souness what he thought of him. To be doing it here, with circumstances that allowed him to really rub it in, to make him suffer … well that was just too good an opportunity to miss.

  ‘Christ! What dae you want, eh? Ah thought that was you … in that fucken bingo-caller’s gear … at some cunt’s bufty-end, just like always.’

  ‘Still a wise-arse, eh Souness?’

  ‘What the fuck are you talkin’ about, pal? Look, if yer here tae stick the knife in, then fucken fire ahead. Water off a duck’s back tae me, now.’

  Archie looked at the squalor surrounding the defeated Bobby Souness. His hands heavily bandaged, a faint brownish-red stain in the same place on each. Archie wasn’t a bad man. Why couldn’t he forgive Bobby Souness? Deep down, Archie knew only too well that Bet’s death wasn’t Souness’s fault. But the man was a convenient outlet for the corrosive guilt Archie felt over not being at her side when the last breath left her body. The whole thing had been so sudden and shocking that fixating on Souness and his peripheral involvement had been a way of coping, of remaining sane.

  Archie was normally relaxed and laconic – by day, a day-dreaming optimist but at night, his subconscious tortured him, like a cat playing with a captured, stricken mouse. And Bobby Souness was present at these games – a lift-car attendant on Archie’s descent through the circles of Hell. More than five years of this now – of Archie inventing his own alternative reality with Jim Rockford, of indulging in dreams of escape, of a life somewhere else, doing anything else. A few minutes in the company of his old nemesis, though, and Archie Blunt felt nothing but pity – for himself and for Bobby too.

  Uninvited, he sat on the edge of the thin mattress. ‘Happened to yer hands, then?’

  ‘What the fuck dae you care?’

  ‘Looks painful.’

  ‘Aye, well. Gettin’ yer thumbs hacked off wi’ a butcher knife isnae exactly a night up the Locarno, eh?’

  Archie was shocked, but perhaps not surprised. Those who knew Bobby Souness knew about his walks on the wild side. Booze, drugs, the bookies; he was an addict, without the means to support his habits.

  ‘Who did that tae ye?’

  ‘A big boy. He did it … an’ then he fucken ran away!’ Bobby Souness smirked. ‘What is it tae you, eh? Why aw the fucken questions, Blunt?’

  ‘Look, ah just didnae expect tae find you in here.’ Archie sighed, as if he had just tracked down a long-lost relative. He was finding these complex and contradictory feelings confusing. ‘Ye’ve got a wee laddie, haven’t ye?’

  Bobby Souness jumped up and lurched towards Archie. Archie put up defensive hands.

  ‘What’s happened tae him? Are you workin’ for that Wigwam cunt?’ Swear tae God, if anythin’s happened tae my boy, ah’ll fucken kill ye!’ Bobby stood, shaking and leaning in like an old lightweight, hands bandaged and waiting for the gloves. One last comeback bout. But there was little fight left in him. His forced breathing betrayed his anxiety. He was a shell of his former self, only going through the motions of East End swagger. It was pitiful.

  He sat down again, exhausted. He couldn’t back up his threats. And he was now aware of his unwitting and peripheral part in the saddest moment of Archie Blunt’s life. For Bobby, it explained a lot about Archie’s attitude towards him these past few years.

  Bobby gestured towards the cans. He had taken them, but he couldn’t open them. Archie lifted the ring-pulls back for both and they drank. Not to anything or to anyone. And not really with each other, just reflecting. Separately remembering tormented times past and trying to make sense of a bewildering present.

  17

  August 197
6 – Wednesday

  ‘We’ll go into House of Fraser again, hen? I think I liked the purse I saw in there best.’

  Maude Campbell was a woman Barbara Sherman would now gladly strangle and serve time for. Five hours in her company meant a visit to virtually every department store in the city centre. Barbara was at her wits’ end. Chaperoning this vacuous shell around town weekly was testing her loyalty to the job to the absolute limit.

  That loyalty had been sorely tested in another way, too. Three months had now passed since she had made a request to travel back to Barra on official police business to reinterview Lachlan Wylie’s mum. She had been denied, and aggressively so by Davy Dodd – as if she was directly challenging his judgement. He’d left her in no doubt: ‘That fucken kid’s down in London, fingering some pin-striped banker’s arsehole for a ha’penny bag ae skag … ah’m bloody tellin’ ye! Now just leave that yin, Sherman. That case is dead, just like your time in here’ll be if ye raise it wi’ me again. Got it?’

  She’d been handed those boxes full of potential crimes, but instructed to do no more than sort them into alphabetical order. No one seemed interested in the people who lay within.

  A week after her sergeant refused her request, and six months since he had initially been reported missing, Lachlan Wylie’s missing persons’ file had been removed from the box. It had been removed because Lachlan Wylie’s body had been found. It had been recovered by George Parsonage.

  Barbara was in plain clothes on this interminable detail. It was yet another slap in the face. The uniform mattered. It was still remarkable to see WPCs on the beat. She liked that. But here, suffocating in perfumed aromas, the ludicrously expensive cashmere and the silk and the Egyptian cottons, she was merely a ghastly woman’s assistant. Ordinary people working the tills wouldn’t know the truth of the situation. She yearned to yell out. Laden down with branded hold-alls containing crocodile-skin bags, she struggled back to the car. Maude Campbell waited for the door to be opened for her, and then she slid in as if mounting a horse side-saddle. Barbara shut it behind her. She would return to the station, demanding to know how long this farce was going to continue. It wasn’t real policing; nowhere close to it. She knew deep down that circumstances about some of those missing persons cases hadn’t been properly investigated. She acknowledged the Barra boy preoccupied her more than the others, and perhaps that had been a failing. But she didn’t recognise the family name. And that was notable and suspicious.

  The car pulled out of the multi-storey car park. Barbara indicated left and nervously nosed out until someone – a woman – left a gap for her. Horns peeped aggressively. She ignored them, and moving up the gears with a crunch, headed for the Campbell family home.

  Archie Blunt manoeuvred slowly up the hill, suspicious about a small green car that seemed to be following them. But as he reached the summit, it disappeared from his wing mirror. Perhaps the strange conversation he’d been involved in earlier that day had made him imagine odd things. After all, these had been the weirdest few days of his life.

  The gates opened, and he accelerated through them, careful not to hit any of the low stone blocks that lined Big Jamesie Campbell’s Mount Vernon driveway. There were three passengers in the back; all well oiled and with the joyful abandon of the day’s celebrations potentially just beginning. The screen between front and back was open by perhaps quarter of an inch. The passengers hadn’t noticed. They talked warmly about a very good friend of theirs, repeating the phrase regularly. They referred to him as an investor; someone who might gain access to the founders. It all meant nothing to Archie; he listened only to hear mention of the auditions. There was none.

  Archie heard laughter over his left shoulder. It was the type of laughter heard on The Wheeltappers & Shunters Social Club; gruff, manly and loud. Not the natural sound of close pals having a laugh in the pub, more the demonstration of bloated ego and alpha-male tendencies. Humour used simultaneously as a weapon of attack and defence.

  Archie stopped the car and his cocked ear pricked up as the engine noise shut down. He heard, in a hushed, Scottish accent: ‘It’s aw fine. We’re untouchable. Fucken public would never believe it, anyway, the daft cunts.’

  More laughs, and then, in a different accent: ‘Well, in any case, there’s nothing Vince’s people can’t bury.’

  Archie found it difficult to concentrate. He was still processing the new information Bobby Souness had given him, which was making Archie reconsider his attitude to The Wigwam and his brawny henchman, Chib Charnley. Were they really capable of … mutilation … and more…?

  Vince Hillcock got out first, helping Heady Hendricks and then coming back to assist their host. All half-cut; not so much that it affected their progress, but lips had been loosened and speech patterns were undeniably slurred. They had stayed far longer at the Great Eastern than had been anticipated. Once the press corps left, more alcohol had been found and consumed. Private, individual visits to certain inhabitants’ rooms were undertaken. Big Jamesie Campbell knew all the nooks and crannies of the Great Eastern Hotel.

  The vast doors unlocked, the three went inside. Once again, Archie was asked to remain where he was. It was two days to the auditions. He could have done with the time to rehearse the boys, but abandoning his post now might put the kibosh on the whole thing. Especially now that The Wigwam’s ‘sleeping partner’ status had been revealed to him.

  In the small, cell-like room at the Great Eastern, Archie had heard the whole tale from Bobby Souness. Bobby actually didn’t owe The Wigwam the substantial funds of Shettleston folklore. Bobby had been driving odd night shifts for The Wigwam, but not the uppercrust talent that Archie was now working for. Bobby claimed he had been instructed to pick up homeless men from the city streets. Young men – exclusively. He offered them a hot meal. A few quid in their pockets. A bed for the night.

  A bed in the Great Eastern.

  18

  August 1976 – Wednesday

  ‘You a driver tae, love?’

  Archie Blunt had been sitting on the low circular wall surrounding the fountain, reflecting on Bobby Souness’s barely believable story when another car drew in. The headlights had blinded him. A young woman got out. She helped an older woman to the front doors, and then returned to the car for a further two journeys’ worth of shopping bags. Archie wandered over and offered to help carry them in. He was nosy. Keen to see what lay behind those intimidating barricades.

  ‘I’m not a driver, no.’ Barbara’s response was forceful.

  ‘Aw’right, hen. Nae need tae take my head off. Just askin’.’

  Barbara sighed. ‘Look, it’s been a long day. I’m sorry. Just not in the mood.’

  ‘Let me help ye anyways.’ Archie lifted the bags that Barbara couldn’t.

  She had lost the will to say no. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry about snapping.’

  ‘Don’t sweat it, hen,’ he said. ‘If she’s anythin’ like her man…’

  ‘You know her then?’

  ‘Naw. Bumped into her earlier in the week. She disnae seem the full shillin’.’ Archie’s eyes wandered as his forefinger circled his template.

  Barbara’s mood lightened. ‘Aye, well. You could say that,’ she agreed.

  ‘Ah’m Archie,’ said Archie offering a hand. ‘Archie Blunt. Ah’m a driver for a couple ae guys that are pals wi’ Mr Campbell.’

  Barbara took his hand. And the cigarette he had offered her with the other one. ‘Ah shouldn’t really … but…’

  ‘Ach away. Have a fag. Ye look like ye need one,’ Archie said. ‘Plus, that must be you off duty now?’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ Barbara’s guard went up again. She been told not to let anyone know she was in the force while on ‘Maude’ detail.

  ‘Eh … ah just meant yer woman’s in for the night. You’ll be clockin’ off, naw?’ Archie had little experience of casual chat with single women – he’d noticed she wasn’t wearing any rings – especially ones much younger t
han him. So much for being nice. She seemed tense. The fag would calm her. A whisky too, maybe. Archie reached into the back and opened the cabinet.

  ‘A wee dram?’ he offered. Barbara melted. She laughed.

  ‘No. I don’t … but thanks.’

  ‘Dinnae drink? Sure? Ye a wee Free, or somethin’?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘One ae Pastor Jack’s mob?’ He laughed. He was only kidding and told her so. Even the mad, minority religions had the right to ply their trade in Glasgow’s East End.

  ‘You were right,’ she said. ‘I am on duty.’

  Archie’s heart rate raced like Nijinsky winning the Derby as he looked at the card the young woman presented to him.

  Barbara shouldn’t have done it, but days of pounding the fashion floors had built up. ‘It’s fine. Don’t panic … but can I see your licence?’ It was her turn to laugh.

  Archie’s in return sounded like Elmer Fudd being strangled.

  ‘Relax, Archie … and thanks again. I mean it.’ She drew on the cigarette and leaned back on the black car.

  ‘Jeez. What for?’ asked Archie. He wasn’t sure what to say.

  ‘It’s been a really rotten day.’

  Archie was staring up at the diamond sky, trying to place Orion’s Belt and The Plough. Dreaming … his default night-time setting. He was wondering why Bobby Souness hadn’t gone to the cops. But few in the East End trusted them. The assault on – or removal of – his thumbs, did seem a cut above the usual batterings that occurred when the pubs spilled out. But that might have given the police more reason to ignore any complaint. If it looked like the work of the organised gangster, the cops rarely stepped in, unless it was part of a bigger initiative, or if a Sunday Mail exposé was in the offing.

  ‘Archie?’

  The voice rocked him. Not because he didn’t recognise it; he just didn’t expect it. ‘Hey … Archie, is it?’ It was Vince Hillcock. A greasy head peeking out from behind a door leaf. Given his stance, Archie wondered if he was naked. ‘We’re gonna be a while yet, fella. Important business. Just rest up in the back, son.’ Vince was drunk. It perhaps explained his less aggressive demeanour.