by Val McDermid
‘Tonight? We’re doing this tonight?’ His eyebrows rose.
‘Well, that’s when it’s going to happen, so, yes, we’ll be doing it tonight.’ She spread her hands. ‘It’s not like we’re doing anything else. It’s got to be more interesting than sitting around in a dump like this.’
‘But we need to be on the end of a phone. In case there’s any last-minute queries. Or problems with the copy.’
He had a point. But Allie was convinced she had a story in her sights and she wasn’t going to let go. ‘They’ve had all day to pick over every word. The Razor has been through every little niggle. We’ll be fine, Danny. Angus goes home at seven. We’ll check in with the desk just before then. And I’ll ring in every half hour, to be on the safe side. There’s a phone box near the meeting room, I spotted it last week.’
‘And what if there is a problem? What if they need to talk to me? We’ll have to break cover then. And it’ll be all over.’
Allie was nonplussed for a moment. But only for a moment. ‘Simple,’ she said sweetly. ‘I’ll set off the fire alarm.’
25
Danny insisted on splashing out on a cab to the university. ‘It’s raining, Allie. I’m not sitting in a meeting with wet feet.’
‘OK, but let me out at the top of Kelvin Way. We don’t want to be spotted arriving together.’ Allie had to hide a growing anxiety about Danny’s state of mind. He’d swung from the pit of despair over his mother’s rejection to a fervid excitement about the task ahead. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes bright, and he’d made her run through her descriptions of their targets three times. ‘Are you sure you’re up for this?’ she asked.
‘If we don’t do it tonight, we might miss the boat. We put down a marker with the Paragon story – this one could get us a seat at the top table. Maybe even a slot in Fleet Street.’
‘Is that what you want?’
Danny took a deep breath. ‘If you’d asked me that a week ago, I’d have swithered about it. Any reporter with an ounce of ambition wants to work for one of the big boys. I mean, don’t you?’
‘Honestly? Of course I do. The Clarion’s just a stepping stone. At least I hope that’s what it is.’
‘I get that. But what would have held me back was the thought of leaving my family. My friends too, but definitely my family. They’ve always been my anchor.’ A bitter laugh. ‘Now they’ve cut me adrift. So I need to take my chances where I can now.’
Allie felt a niggle of concern that she was exploiting his emotional state. But she reminded herself that she’d given him something to stop him brooding. Now she had to keep him focused. ‘We need to go shopping,’ she said firmly. ‘Neither of us can turn up in our work suits. You need to get yourself a jumper or something, maybe even a pair of jeans. And I need to sort out a more casual look. Not to mention some clean underwear.’ She caught his startled look. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to drag you round the ladies’ lingerie department. We can’t go out together in case the office rings, remember?’
Since Danny had already been outside, he insisted Allie go first. It was a relief to be free of the bedroom and she savoured the wintry air as she walked down Buchanan Street. The bookshop first; and the surprise of a Ruth Rendell paperback she’d not read before. A Judgement in Stone sounded suitably ominous for her mood and the first sentence was provocative enough to drive her to the till. ‘Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write,’ was irresistible, she thought.
She cut across the grey expanse of George Square and down to Marks and Spencer. Because she knew her size in the store’s styles, it was a whistlestop shop. A pack of three pairs of pants; flared trousers in wine-coloured needlecord and a simple dark grey crew-neck jumper. At least they were items she could happily add to her wardrobe afterwards.
After she’d released Danny from his hotel room, she changed into her new outfit and found the residents’ lounge. It was a retirement home for shabby armchairs and faded prints of Highland scenery, but it was marginally less grim than her room. She left a message for Danny and settled down with her book.
In spite of its gripping qualities, she couldn’t help noticing the passage of time. How long did it take to buy a pair of jeans and a sweater? What was taking him so long? He eventually appeared almost two hours after he’d left, dressed in flatteringly cut flared jeans and a fitted tank top over a black shirt. Allie raised her eyebrows. ‘You look like you’re all set for a night out, not a political meeting.’
‘Oh, I’m not wearing these tonight,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a boring pair of Levis and a very dull lambswool pullover for that. But I couldn’t resist these. I thought I deserved a treat.’
‘You look good,’ she said.
‘Thank you, that was the general idea.’ His smile was infectious. ‘Look, do you mind holding the fort for a bit longer? We don’t have to make a move for a couple of hours yet and this place is driving me mad. I’m not like you, I can’t lose myself in a book. I need to get out.’
Allie hid her disappointment. She’d hoped they could talk; learn more about each other, grow closer. ‘OK, but you owe me. What are you going to do?’
He shrugged. ‘Mooch round the shops? Gee myself up for tonight? Back here at seven?’
‘Don’t be late. I hate being kept waiting. And Danny?’ She caught his eye and winked. ‘Don’t take any sweeties from strangers.’
They’d agreed Allie would give Danny a ten-minute start to get settled in to the meeting. He hurried from the taxi to the shelter of the quadrangles, his heart thudding. Apprehension growled in his stomach. Everything depended on his performance now. There was even more at stake here than when he’d reeled in Bill Maclay in Southampton. It wasn’t just his future as a journalist that was on the line. It was his future as a member of his own family.
He owed Allie too. She’d helped to make his story have impact. And now it was his turn to help her land a story with her name first in the credits. Somehow, he had to worm his way into the confidence of a potentially dangerous trio of strangers and win them over. He’d had plenty of experience of risking the trust of strangers, but this time, it wasn’t all about him, and that made the pressure all the worse. All he had for an in was Allie’s recollection that the one called Deke supported Partick Thistle FC. Not much of a start, but better than nothing.
He walked in, scanning the room as fast as he could take it in. He thought he’d spotted Allie’s targets, except there were only two of them. There was nothing special about them, nothing that would stand out in a crowd. But that would be an advantage if you were planning direct action of the loud and explosive kind. And nobody else came close to the descriptions. Maybe the third man had been held up. Or maybe he’d found something better to do.
Danny crossed the room, injecting a bit of swagger into his walk. He pulled up a chair next to the two men and dropped his chin in acknowledgement. ‘Good evening,’ he began, voice full of confidence.
‘Aye,’ one of them said cautiously. The other just nodded.
‘Am I in the right place?’
‘Depends what you’re looking for.’
Danny gave him a calculating look. ‘I was told this was the place to find men who were really serious.’
‘I don’t know about that, I like a laugh as much as the next man.’ He smirked.
‘Serious about this country’s future. Serious enough to do something about it,’ Danny said. ‘If I got a bum steer—’ He held up his hands, palms out. ‘I’ll be out of your way. No hard feelings, no harm done.’
‘And what if this was the place?’ The other man chipped in.
Danny gave a broad smile, all the sincerity he could muster. ‘Then I’m among friends. And I am a good friend to have in these matters.’ He extended a hand. ‘Paul Reilly.’ No qualms about using his dead uncle’s name, not in a good cause.
The first
man took the handshake. ‘Derek Malloch. Deke to my friends and fellow travellers.’
Danny did a low-level double-take. He pointed a finger at Deke. ‘I’ve met you before. In a bar on Maryhill Road, after a Jags game. A couple of my pals are big Partick Thistle boys, they dragged me along to a game a couple of seasons back. We all got talking over a few beers.’
Malloch looked blank. Danny continued with a wee shrug. ‘You’ll probably not remember me. I’m a Jambo, so I try to keep a low profile in other folk’s pubs.’ He grinned. ‘You know how it is.’
Deke fell for the lingua franca of football. ‘Just as well, we don’t love the Hearts at Firhill.’
Danny laughed. ‘At least we don’t let the rugby players wreck our pitch. So who’s your pal, Deke?’ He extended his hand.
More slowly, the other man took it. ‘Gary Bell,’ he said.
‘Ding-dong to his mates,’ Malloch said.
‘Who sent you our way?’ Bell asked.
Danny smiled and shook his head. ‘I always protect my people. Start bandying names round and the next thing you know is the wrong people hear them.’
‘How do we know you’re not the wrong people?’ Bell’s chin jutted aggressively. One of these days, Danny thought, somebody was going to accept that invitation.
‘You don’t. But even Jambos can have their hearts in the right place. Glasgow doesn’t have dibs on serious players. You can judge me by what I say and what I do. If you don’t like it, just tell me to fuck off, and off I will duly fuck. Now, where’s the third musketeer? I was told there were three of you.’
Bell gave Malloch a twitchy look that landed on stony ground. ‘He’s joining us later,’ Malloch said, jovial and apparently relaxed.
Danny was spared further conversation by Maggie McNab taking the floor and giving them the pep talk. The meeting rumbled on, and Danny took every chance to interject. He was playing a finely judged game of a man passionate about independence, yet backing away from making any specific threats. He met Malloch’s eyes more than once and earned an approving nod. It was working; they were starting to relax. But he couldn’t afford to.
At last it was over. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Allie slip out of the room. He leaned forward so the other two had to draw close. ‘So much for the talking shop. How do we make this happen, boys? What’s next?’
Bell sat back. ‘Next we go and get something to eat and hook up with our pal Roddy. Then you can maybe tell us what you think should happen next.’ His smile held no sincerity.
Danny rubbed his hands together in a mimicry of glee. ‘Now that’s what I call a plan. My treat, boys. Just to show we’re all on the same side. Lead the way, gentlemen.’
Their destination was no surprise. They walked down the hill, Malloch passing easy judgement on the failure of everyone else at the meeting to grasp the bull by the horns. ‘Or should I say, by the balls,’ he laughed. ‘They’ve got no idea how to wake up the sleeping giant that is Scotland.’
‘I agree,’ Danny said. ‘I’m interested to hear your ideas about how we do that.’
‘We need something spectacular,’ Malloch said. ‘Something nobody can ignore.’
‘But it has to be something that doesn’t put people’s lives at risk,’ Bell cut in. ‘We want people to be impressed, not horrified.’
‘Naturally,’ Malloch said, breezy as a summer evening on Loch Lomond.
They walked quickly, keen to get out of the sleet. The Spaghetti Factory was their destination again. As they entered, an arm waved at them from the farthest booth. ‘That’s Roddy. Roddy Farquhar,’ Malloch said, waving away the waitress who was heading towards them. ‘We’re sorted, darling.’
Drawing closer, Danny realised with a sudden constriction of his heart that Roddy Farquhar was no stranger.
26
For the second week running, Allie slipped unnoticed into the back table at the Spaghetti Factory. The place was half-empty; there were some advantages to the wintry blasts keeping people huddled round their own firesides. She’d followed Danny and the other two at a discreet distance and she was relieved to see they’d hooked up in the booth with the third member of the original trio. Already Malloch, Bell (aka Ding-dong) and Farquhar were talking to Danny as if they’d been pals for ever.
Danny was facing the door, but he completely ignored her arrival. Not even a momentary flick of the eyes to give away an interest in her. He was in the thick of an animated exchange about football with Ding-dong. One of the many advantages of working for a paper like the Clarion was that you inevitably picked up a gallimaufry of information on all sorts of things in which you had no interest whatsoever. Even Allie now knew enough about Scottish football to fall back on Scotland’s disastrous World Cup campaign in Argentina the previous summer. That was guaranteed to impose a gloomy silence in any company.
Once the quartet had placed their order, they settled on what they had come there to discuss. ‘So we set each other a wee challenge last week,’ Malloch said. ‘Mibbes you can join in, Paul.’
‘I’m always up for a challenge, Deke.’ Danny sounded more expansive than she’d ever heard him in the office. Playing a part seemed to suit him. ‘Lay it on me, man.’
‘We don’t want devo, Paul. We want full-fat indy. And we want to make people pay attention to how much better that would be for Scotland. The politicians are useless. They go with their begging bowls. “Please, Mr Prime Minister, give us a wee bit of fake power so we can pretend we run our own affairs,”’ Malloch said.
‘So how do you do that?’ Danny asked.
Farquhar said, ‘We agreed to spend this week going to meetings and talking to folk and seeing whether we could come up with any ideas.’
‘Interesting. So did you?’
‘We might have,’ Ding-dong said. ‘What about you, Paul? You’re the fresh blood round the table, what do you think?’
He wasn’t the only one interested in the answer. Allie wondered what on earth Danny would come up with. She didn’t have long to wait. ‘A two-pronged attack,’ he said. ‘All these strikes that have been grabbing the headlines? Why are they news?’ A pause. ‘Because they inconvenience people. So you need to organise actions that grab attention because they put folk out. Blockade the bus station. Stage a sit down on the rails at Queen Street station.’
‘That’s not a bad idea,’ Farquhar said. ‘I bet we could get Maggie McNab and her crowd on board with that.’
‘You just have fantasies about getting on board with Maggie McNab,’ Ding-dong said, and they guffawed.
‘Fuck off,’ Farquhar whined. ‘She’s got a lot of support.’
‘She needs it, with those tits. So, Paul, what’s the second prong?’ Malloch made the word sound ridiculous.
‘Get celebrities on board to endorse what you’re doing. Guys like Billy Connolly. Actors from Garnock Way. Magnus Magnusson. Sean Connery. When the big names get behind you, you get attention in the papers and on the telly.’ Danny made it sound easy.
‘And pop stars. The Bay City Rollers,’ Farquhar said.
‘Don’t be daft. Twelve-year-olds dinnae vote,’ Ding-dong scoffed. Farquhar yelped and Allie assumed one of them had landed him a friendly punch.
‘What do you say, Ding-dong?’ Malloch said. ‘Any of those guys in your address book? Because they’re not in mine. Nice idea, Paul, but I say we go back to what I was talking about last week. I say we learn the lesson from Northern Ireland. How did they get the politicians to take them seriously? Not with the ballot box. They blew the bloody doors off!’
Farquhar looked at Deke, apprehension obvious. ‘They kill people. They’re terrorists. That’s not how you get support. I’m having nothing to do with murder.’
Ding-dong laughed. ‘Get a grip, Roddy. Nobody’s talking about killing folk. But Deke’s right. A big bang’s the way to get attention. You just have to pick your
targets. Set your timer for when there’s nobody there. And bingo. You get the message across and nobody gets hurt.’
‘That’s quite the ambition, boys,’ Danny weighed in. ‘And I’m not saying it’s not a good idea. Because it is. It’s a brilliant idea. There’s just one small problem that I can see. Because none of youse looks like you’re in charge of a quarry or a pit.’
It was a killer point, Allie thought as the silence drew out among them.
Then Ding-dong spoke. His voice was lowered but it still carried. ‘I know a man.’
‘What do you mean, you know a man?’ There was a derisive note in Malloch’s response.
Ding-dong elaborated. ‘You said, this is the time for direct action. I know a man who has access to what we need.’
‘And what exactly is that, Gary?’ Malloch’s sarcasm was unmistakable.
‘An arsenal.’
The shock of his words hit Allie so hard the sounds of the restaurant seemed to disappear.
‘Are you serious?’ Farquhar exclaimed, his voice a mixture of awe and delight.
‘Never more so, my man.’
‘Who is this guy?’ Malloch demanded.
‘And how come you know a man with an arsenal?’ Danny chipped in.
‘I never said he had an arsenal. I said he had access to one. There’s a difference.’ Ding-dong on the defensive now.
‘Like I said, who the fuck is he?’ Malloch hit back.
‘Terry. That’s all you need to know. He’s from Belfast. He’s in an IRA Active Service Unit.’
‘Get tae fuck,’ Malloch scoffed. ‘And we’re only hearing about this guy now?’
‘He’s having you on,’ Danny said calmly. ‘If he was really in an IRA unit, he’d be sworn to secrecy. He wouldn’t be mouthing off to somebody in the pub.’
Ding-dong wasn’t giving ground. ‘That’s not how it went. I’ve known Terry since we were twelve. He came over that summer with his Boys’ Brigade football team to play a tournament and he got put up with us.’
