The Wind Chill Factor

by Thomas Gifford

  He gave me the name of a pub which sounded vaguely familiar and told me directions. “And, a word of advice.” He fixed me with those bright ferret’s eyes. “Be careful, very careful. Take a taxi to your digs, lay low until it’s time.” He winked a beady eye, avuncular, and squeezed my arm. “Word to the wise, eh?”

  Campbell’s melodramatic warning brought on a nervous stomach.

  Be careful of what, for Christ’s sake? It sounded as if he knew how violent my life had become. Yet he obviously hadn’t known of Cyril’s death or any of what had happened.

  Finally the hour came and I stood at the polished bar in the appointed tavern. I was a few minutes early, fussing with my pipe and matches, watching the door with its leaded glass when he came in. He stood inside the doorway, in the smoky haze, wearing the foulest mackintosh I’d ever seen. Recognizing me, he elbowed his way up to the bar and ordered two pints of bitter, knocked the bowl of the corncob into an ashtray.

  He frowned and sucked foam from his bitter. At last he said: “The kind of thing I’ve got to tell you”—he shook his head—“I don’t know. …”

  “Did you tell my brother what you’re going to tell me?”

  “Aye, I did that—and come to think of it why don’t you ask him?” The eyes glittered cannily past the smoke.

  “He’s dead. Murdered.”

  He blanched, what had been pink about his face turned a dirty gray, his tongue wetted his cracked lips.

  I explained briefly and he listened, subdued, as if a bad headache had got the better of him. I told him how I’d learned his name, why I’d come. He eventually recovered his composure and lit the corncob.

  “It’s dangerous people you’re fussing with, laddie.” He kept on repeating it. “You’ve no idea. …” He stared at me across the pints of bitter and jerked his freckled hand at the doorway of the tavern as it swung open for a moment. Outside, the mist and fog were thick, erasing for a moment the dirt which was Glasgow’s trademark.

  “It’s dangerous out there.” It was his theme. His bushy eyebrows drew together in a scowl. He sucked at the pipe. The tavern was thick with smoke and smelled of soaked Dundee woolens.

  “Your brother,” he resumed, “wanted to know about Brendel, Frau Brendel, whatever I knew about them—and I knew a good deal, most of which I’d come upon by sheer chance, things I’d pieced together … things I’ve never mentioned to anyone but your brother.” He sniffed. “Mainly because I’d just figured them out. The stuff of nightmares, laddie.” He squinted up from his bitter. “But who’d believe me?”

  He peered into the pipe’s dead ashes, drew the sleeve of his mac beneath his nose, and drained the last of his pint. He snuffled, cupped his hands around the hot stained bowl of his pipe. He spoke very quietly, staring straight ahead past the barman into the steamy mirror. “Now, listen carefully. Buy a ticket on the midnight train bound for London. Check out of your hotel and leave your bag at the railway station. Get yourself some supper, eat hearty. Then meet me and we’ll go over it.”

  He gave me an address scribbled on a greasy scrap of paper: a tenement in the area called the Gorbals. He told me that Glaswegians insisted with perverse pride that it was the worst slum in all Europe. “Ten o’clock, exactly,” he said, getting his scarf straightened, turning his pipe upside down. He jammed his soiled tweed hat down on his ears, shoved the folded newspaper into the pocket of his mac, and disappeared in the crowd arguing soccer near the door, a small and wet and grim figure.

  I finished my own pint feeling weighed down by the residue Campbell had left. “The stuff of nightmares,” he’d said. I swallowed the last bitterness and pushed past some brawny lads between me and the door. A hand grasped my arm, a voice spoke my name, “I say, Mr. Cooper—” It was MacDonald, the nervous man from the airplane the previous night. His red face, flushed in the heat, split with a Clara Bow smile. His eyes watered and he dug a fist at them like a small child.

  “MacDonald,” I said. We shook hands.

  “I see you took my advice.” He beamed.

  “I beg your pardon?” His voice was too soft. Everything about him was soft but the wiry Harris tweed.

  “This pub,” he said as I bent to listen. “The one I recommended and here you are, first night in Glasgow and we meet here. Join me in a pint before you go, won’t you? Can’t leave me to drink alone, can you?”

  I was sweating and so was he. The mirror behind the bar was steamed. MacDonald’s head gleamed. We had the pint at the bar and I strained to hear: he seemed to be talking about insurance, the calls he’d made during that day. “And how’s your stay going?” He loosened his tie.

  “All right, it’s all right.”

  He offered up the bitter. “Well, happy days!” He smiled. “How did you find the pub, for heaven’s sake? It’s off the beaten track.”

  “A friend brought me here.”

  “The little reddish man? Looked like a monkey?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Ah, well, then—he’s a good friend, bringing you here. I like the smell of the place.” He chatted on. We had another pint, drowning in our own sweat.

  MacDonald finally bade me goodnight with the hope that we’d meet again what with things coming in threes and all.

  The rain had turned to snow, had slowed traffic, and that was why I was late for Alistair Campbell. The taxi driver gave a curious snort. “Gorbals,” he muttered and pulled away from the curb, but immediately we were trapped in a series of minor traffic jams, wheels spinning on the cold wet streets. Two automobiles with dented fenders sat at odd angles to the curbstones. Without uttering a sound, he was regarding the inconvenience with a singularly dour Scot’s gaze.

  Darkness overtook us. The buildings were dense and dark behind a thick curtain of snow.

  “I have an appointment—” I began. My throat was sore from the abrupt change in climate, jet lag was creeping up on me with a mallet, I was cold and tired, and the bitter left a rank aftertaste.

  “Aye, you’ve an appointment and you saw the traffic, as well, din’t you?” he said and I slumped back on the seat and shut up.

  The tenement was indistinguishable from the rest. Standing on the sidewalk when the taxi was gone, I felt awesomely alone. It was dark, the snow hung like tinsel scarves in the dim glow of a streetlamp at the end of the block. There was no welcome here. My footsteps were muffled in the snowfall. It was colder.

  The low doorway opened two steps up off the entryway, which smelled like a sewer, like urine and garbage and poverty. Water dripped at the end of the entryway. Odd, low shapes loomed in the courtyard beyond. I opened the door which squeaked shrilly in its warp and rust, went inside, and stood in the silent hallway. One bare light dangling from the tip of a frayed black cord burned halfway along the hall’s length. It swung in the draft I made. My shadow leaped, enormous, against the wall. Upstairs, rear, Campbell had said.

  My flesh felt clammy inside my clothing and I had a stitch in my side, under my heart. I felt feverish behind my eyes.

  I made my way in the half-light down the hall toward the stairway. Who lived in such a place? Whispers came, then silence, a horn honking, the squeal of a cat tracking in the new snow. I smelled cooking and beer and I went up the stairs, which creaked angrily.

  As I reached the top of the stairway, the door at the rear of the dim hallway swung open with a bang and the short figure of Alistair Campbell appeared half in shadow, arm raised in welcome. I waved and stepped toward him.

  Slowly he seemed to collapse, clinging to the wall as if it were the facing of a cliff. I stopped and he lunged forward. As he came into the light I saw that his hand was red, leaving a trail along the wall like a bleeding, wounded slug inching its way toward a safe hole.

  My breathing had stopped. My knees and thighs clenched weakly. His breath rasped in the quiet. The front of his mac was soaked with blood. His eyes stared through me, the glitter and gleam long gone.

  “Stains,” he gasped with tremendous effort.
“Find stains. …”

  A figure blurred out of the shadowy stairwell at the back of the hall, an arm was raised, and there was a sound like the sucking of air, twice, and Alistair Campbell leaped jerkily forward, his wet red hand just reaching my raincoat, clutching the belt, clamping it in his hand. The back of his mac was blown open in two places and the sucking sound came again and the plastered wall beside me exploded, showered me in chips, filling my eyes with gritty dust—

  I lost my footing going backward down the steps and, before his grip loosened, Alistair Campbell’s body slid partly down on top of me. The smell of blood covered me like a sheet in a morgue. The sucking sound came again, a rush of hot air past my hand as I fell, plummeting back down the stairs into the dark.

  I could hear the man in the upstairs hall fumbling to get past the body, which lay crossways in the narrow stairway. A door opened a few feet away from me as I struggled to my feet, an unshaven man in a dirty undershirt stuck his head out and told me to fuck off, and I ran the length of the hallway, ducked through a doorway into the entryway, turned right away from the street, and headed into the courtyard.

  I could hear him pounding down the stairs, charging along the hall. He was coming after me; he’d shot Campbell full of holes and taken a couple of hurried shots at me. Adrenaline surged, my heart skipped, my side ached.

  The courtyard’s looming shapes became a junked automobile, a rusting truck with a flatbed carrier, stacks of tires, trashcans, and I dived among them, felt a bit of wire slice my cheek. Snow sprinkled my face; it was turning back to rain and the wind was blowing. I tried not to make any noise. This was the third time they’d tried to kill me.

  Feeling my way along the length of the truck, I heard him reach the entryway. He was undecided. Kneeling, I saw his legs and feet dimly from between the undercarriage. He turned away finally and walked toward the street. I crouched there, waiting. He did not reappear. At last, I made my way back past the tires and trashcans looking for an exit. I opened a metal door and stepped into a dark corridor, ill-lit, with water standing in puddles on a dirt and gravel floor. A broken wooden door swung open at the other end: rain and snow glistened in the lamplight. There was the smell of engine oil and gasoline.

  I pushed past the broken door and was back in the real world: a wet street, loud boys at the corner swearing nastily. I walked the other way: my face burned and ached, I kept imagining I heard the sucking sound of the silencer and the meaningless cry of stains, stains as he fell smearing the wall, my coat, with his blood. I wiped cold rain across my cheekbone and felt the ridge of the wire cut. My hairline was sticky and I pulled my tweed cap down, brushed plaster dust away.

  Twice I asked directions. It took me a long time to reach the railway station on foot. I missed a couple of cabs, zig-zagged in an inefficient attempt to avoid any would-be pursuers. Obviously they hadn’t followed me. They were making a bad job of it again.

  I took my bag from the locker. It was 11:14. I went to the men’s room, feeling weak-kneed and faint. My eyes burned intolerably from the plaster dust and my head had begun to ache. In the mirror over the washstand my face looked back at me like something from a set of atrocity photographs: haggard, worn, pale yellow. My cap was stuck to my head and when I peeled it away I saw that one of the puffs of air I’d felt go past my head must actually have just caressed it. Christ. They were getting closer … and it was always my head. The soggy beginnings of a scab came away, stuck to the cap’s silk lining, and the blood began to seep down out of my hair. I dabbed at it with watersoaked paper, prayed that no one would come in and find me.

  Nausea flooded me suddenly, and I vomited into a toilet, sank to my knees, and fainted across the seat.

  I was still alone when I blinked my eyes open, and after sitting there with my head hung down between my knees for a few more minutes I felt well enough to finish cleaning up my face. It was a ridiculous job, patting and drying, and I finally stuck a piece of toilet tissue in the gouge and held it in place by pulling my cap down over it. My head throbbed like a Buddy Rich riff, drowning out other sounds. All I wanted was to get on the train, collapse in my compartment. Eventually, I would have to think over what had happened and mourn Alistair Campbell along with the others. But I was too tired just then, too hurt.

  There weren’t many people on the platform. It was cold and the chill felt good, cleansed my pain. I leaned against a pillar. A few feet away a family waited, middle-aged and tweedy, with a little blond girl holding her mother’s hand. She was smiling with the expectancy and excitement of the very young who are up long after their normal bedtime. She let go of her mother’s hand and began to pace ever-widening circles around her parents, until she came close enough for me to see her cornflower-blue eyes. She smiled up at me and I smiled back. She was well dressed: her coat had a velvet collar.

  Tentatively she came closer, staring up at me in a child’s unrelenting manner, her smile fading. Again I caught her eye through the pain and weariness engulfing me and tried to smile. She reminded me of pictures of my little sister Lee taken many years ago.

  Finally, somewhat discomfited by her staring, I leaned forward to say hello. That was when she began a high-pitched screaming, a wail, as if I’d attacked her. I felt myself toppling forward, no strength in my legs, and I gripped the pillar. I was befuddled: why was she screaming? Her mouth, a cavern into which I seemed about to fall, reminded me of the wound in Alistair Campbell’s forehead.

  Her parents turned to stare, her father rushed forward saying, “Here, here,” and reaching for his daughter. The woman came closer, her face scowling and full of reproaches, and then she stopped short, covered her mouth with a gloved hand, and I heard her say: “Oh, God, Henry, look at his face, he’s all bloody. …”

  I wiped my hand across my face and it was sticky and my stomach turned; there was blood smeared on my fingers. I tried to hold fast to the pillar but everything was slanting and voices came to me as if from a distant echo chamber. The little girl had stopped screaming and I could see that the rain falling on the railroad tracks had turned to snow drifting down.

  A voice near my ear said tiredly: “Jesus, Cooper, look at yourself, another fine mess. …”

  The voice was familiar, but when I turned, my sight was going quickly and I could see only a shape, a pinpoint of light, a face in the pinpoint but it was too late and I saw only the snow blowing in great soft gusts, heard only the dim sounds of trains very far away, and I was falling and I simply didn’t give a damn. …

  London

  THE VOICE I HEARD WHEN I came to was the same I’d heard as I passed out, but it took a moment for my eyes to focus.

  “Cooper,” it said. I felt a gentle tug on my shoulder. “Cooper, can you hear me?”

  It was Olaf Peterson.

  I had been more or less unconscious since I had fainted into Peterson’s arms at the railway station. He’d got me to a police medical aid station for repairs and then to a private clinic for some sleep. When I saw him it was three o’clock in the afternoon and he needed a shave. I asked him why the hell he was in Glasgow. He smirked with characteristic self-satisfaction and told me there would be plenty of time to discuss that later.

  We were ticketed on the sleeper train to London, one day behind my schedule. We would talk then. In the meantime a short man with fuzzy gray hair and gold-rimmed spectacles appeared, a doctor giving my poor aching head a once-over.

  I winced at the probing of his fingers.

  “Lucky,” he said tersely beside my ear. “Scratch. No dressing required. Let the air get at it. No comparison to what I usually get.” He looked over at Peterson. “You should see the lads I patch up after a football punch-up.” He looked back at me as if I were a severe disappointment.

  In the early evening we went to police headquarters, where I explained my connection with Alistair Campbell. A newspaper lay on the desk with a picture of Campbell taken years before, a story of the shooting, a picture of the man who’d stepped into the hallway
and told me to fuck off.

  I went through the story several times. The detective’s name was MacGregor and he looked like a carnival pitchman and spoke like a funeral director. Finally, having got the facts straight, he shook his head, frowned. He could make nothing out of the Gunter Brendel part of it; he clearly didn’t want to open it up in all its complexities, at least not until he’d made the most of sheer facts.

  He thanked me for my trouble and I was taken into an anteroom where I waited. Eventually Peterson came out and told me we were free to catch our train. One cop to another, Peterson could apparently work wonders.

  He looked at me as if deciding to keep me or throw me back. “Jesus, what disgusting sandwiches,” was all he said.

  The night train traversing the four hundred-odd miles to London was extraordinarily luxurious and once we settled back in the compartment I began to feel something like my normal self. Granted, my head had taken far more punishment than was good for it, but the pills helped. So did Peterson: he was as ironic as ever but it felt good not to be alone. It was almost as if his broad, thickset body was a shield for me, as if he could protect me.

  Peterson produced a bottle of scotch, summoned ice and squat tumblers, and lit a cigar. Through the smoke he regarded me with a faint, tolerant smile.

  “All right,” I said, “what are you doing here?”

  “The room clerk at the hotel told me you’d bought a ticket on the midnight sleeper to London. I went to the station and found you covered in blood, scaring small children, learned to my chagrin that you continue to be involved in murder wherever you go, and of course found you in desperate need of someone—anyone—to keep you from disgracing yourself.” His voice trailed off; he shook his dark head. Some sort of plaid hat with a gaudy feather in the band lay beside him, beneath it a pearl-gray cashmere topcoat.

  “But why did you come to Glasgow at all?”

  “Because something very strange is going on, because I’m curious, because I feel this peculiar need to keep you alive. Because I should never have let you go to Buenos Aires. Because I wanted to have a vacation from my wife.