The Long Drop

by Denise Mina

  On the second floor they come to black storm doors with a brass plaque announcing ‘The Gordon’. Shifty opens the doors with another key, ushers them inside and locks it carefully behind them.

  The hallway is red and pink, softly lit and filled with a smog of fresh cigar smoke and whisky smell. From a side room they can hear laughing and a high voice struggling to deliver a punchline through chortles.

  The uniformed cloakroom boy stands to attention. His eyes are red.

  ‘Right, son?’ asks Shifty.

  ‘Yes, sir, Mr Thomson.’

  Everyone looks at Shifty, surprised that he can evoke respect from anyone.

  Shifty leads them down the back corridor. They pass the open double doors to the main room and catch sight of two catatonically drunk men in leather armchairs. It’s the tail end of a long night. One man is asleep, his chin collapsed onto his chest, drooling. The other is facing them and lifts a glass of whisky to his mouth but his eyes look panicked, as if the hand is holding him to drunken ransom. Pinned to his lapel is a sprig of mistletoe. He is a Glasgow Corporation councilman.

  Shifty leads them down the dark corridor to the very furthest door. He knocks twice, listens and opens it.

  Maurice Dickov is at his large desk. He is in his shirtsleeves, working on a set of books. Dandy McKay is standing next to him. Dandy wears a suit, double-breasted with a broad stripe in blue and pink. He looks like a settee. He has a red carnation in his buttonhole, wilted, denoting the hour. His tie is purple and green.

  When the door shuts behind them, Watt, Manuel, O’Neil and Thomson line up against the far wall.

  Dickov stands up. He slaps the accounts book shut. He looks at the men.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he says softly, ‘this is terribly awkward.’

  13

  Friday 16 May 1958

  AFTER LUNCH THEY HEAR the history of the Beretta. It is similar but less classy. The original source of the gun was a soldier in a pub, again. No one paid for the gun or asked if they could buy it, again. And again unrelated money is exchanged during time frames contemporaneous with the gifting. The first person to be gifted the Beretta is Billy Fullerton, a famous hard case and leader of the Billy Boys of Brig’ton Razor Gang.

  In a city that reveres angry men Billy Fullerton is a god. He walks across the stuffy courtroom in the late afternoon, trailing a reputation that sparkles with spite and absolutes. The stillness in the room is profound. Everyone watches him walk, in their heads rerunning whichever story they’ve heard about him.

  Billy leading his boys into nearby Catholic neighbourhoods on their holy days of obligation.

  The Billy Boys wielding razors, and knives and broken bottles, playing penny whistles and drums, calling out the Irish to meet them.

  Catholic mothers flattened to the inside of front doors, begging their boys not to leave the house.

  Catholic mothers putting knives in their hands and ordering them to go.

  Billy Fullerton has been angry all of his life. When young, he joined the British Union of Fascists. He got a medal for strike-breaking during the General Strike. As he grew older, disillusioned by the liberalism he encountered among the Fascists, he established one of the first chapters of the Ku Klux Klan on British soil. Retired from street fighting now, he beats his wife every night. His children’s backs stiffen at the sound of his first footfall in the close. He has served time for wife-beating which, in the 1950s, means he nearly killed her. She doesn’t leave the house without his permission and her face is as scarred as her husband’s.

  Fullerton mounts the witness stand heavily. He is flat-footed and can’t help this, but it sounds as if he is trying to smash his foot through each step.

  When he turns to face the court the lawyers avert their eyes. His face is scarred, a map of vicious encounters with other angry men.

  Billy takes in the room. He sees the lawyers in their funny costumes, posh boys. He sees the women on the balcony, all sitting back, heads tipped, looking down on him. He lifts his chin to challenge them. They’ve annoyed him just by being there.

  M.G. Gillies, gentleman, stands up reluctantly and clears his throat. Fullerton nods permission to speak.

  Gillies lifts production 72, the Beretta gun used to kill the Smart family, and asks him to identify it. Fullerton says he owned that gun briefly.

  ‘Mr Fullerton, would you mind telling the court where you first encountered this Beretta?’

  So, Fullerton explains: a man called John Totten approached him a couple of years ago and asked Billy to find a gun for him.

  ‘To what purpose?’

  The question is phrased in a way that makes its meaning obscure. Fullerton hesitates before answering. He is annoyed by this enforced pause. He thinks it makes him look stupid. Blood rises to his neck and he struggles to stay calm.

  ‘Totten has ran a pitch-and-toss school out at Glasgow Green. It was a big school, two hundred, three hundred men sometimes. Totten said he’d been hearing a rival gang were meaning to take it over.’

  ‘A “pitch-and-toss” school?’

  ‘A gambling school. On the Green. Totten was after a gun for to protect hissel’.’

  ‘And did you furnish him with a gun?’

  ‘I did, aye. I got offered a Beretta from a soldier in a pub.’

  The whole of Britain is awash with guns bought from a-soldier-in-a-pub. At the end of the First War soldiers were allowed to take their Webley service revolvers home, as a memento. The Second War is thirteen years ago and mandatory national service means that everyone is near guns or has guns or can steal a gun. A soldier in a pub with a gun doesn’t elicit any further questioning.

  ‘How much did Totten pay you for it?’

  ‘Five quid.’

  ‘How much did you pay for it?’

  ‘Nothing. I loaned the soldier a fiver though and Totten paid us the fiver back and gaed us another quid for a finder’s fee.’

  ‘Why would Mr Totten ask you to get him a gun, Mr Fullerton?’

  Fullerton swells. His scarred face crumples into an approximation of a grin. ‘A few year ago I was a wee bit famous for fighting.’

  ‘With guns?’ asks Gillies innocently.

  Fullerton is insulted. Fighting with guns is not manly. It is cowardly, a thing done by jilted women and Frenchmen. His lips tighten. His blood pressure rises. His cheeks turn a deep furious red but the scar tissue, capillary-less, remains white, vivid against his mottled red face.

  Fullerton lifts his tight fists to the court. They are swollen and scarred.

  ‘Never wi’ guns,’ he growls. ‘Wi’ ma hands!’

  As he says this he jabs at the gallery of women.

  Fullerton is thanked and asked if he wouldn’t mind getting down now.

  John Totten is called. Totten has matinee-idol good looks, a coiffed pompadour and is dressed in a shimmering blue Italian-cut silk suit. He wears a Celtic FC tie, a green kerchief tucked nattily into his breast pocket and a Celtic FC tiepin. After he has taken his oath he turns to the court with a shoulder sway and a Frankie Vaughan smile. You just know the guy can dance.

  Totten is a surprise to the court. Billy Fullerton is so fervently anti-Irish Republican that he is the subject of a sectarian song that celebrates him being up to his ‘knees in Fenian blood’. The song will live on long after Fullerton. Come the digital age, football directors will lose jobs because they were filmed singing this song. The song is so incendiary that men will be hounded out of public office when other people sing it in their company. It will be forbidden, rewritten, bowdlerised. Fullerton’s anger will live on in legend because of that song. But Fullerton the man is not above finding frightened Catholics guns it seems, so maybe he wasn’t who they said he was at all. Maybe he was just an angry man with nothing to be but his reputation.

  ‘Yes,’ Totten admits, ‘I did used to run a pitch-and-toss school.’

  And yes, it did run to two or three hundred participants at one time. It was out on the Green. He points through
the wall because Glasgow Green is just out there and across the road.

  Two or three hundred is vast for a gambling school. The room is wondering why the police allowed an open-air gathering of that size for the purposes of gambling, how much they got as a bung to allow that and how much Totten got as his cut. The profits must have been huge.

  Did Mr Totten ever use the gun?

  Yes, he did, but not on anyone. He just kept it in a shed nearby and took it out sometimes, firing it into the ground at the start of a game. It was a way of fending off trouble. The rival gang he was worried about never materialised and Totten had, unfortunately, to give up the school because he got a four-year stretch for a ‘wee bit of fighting’. Then the gun was left in a cupboard in his house, along with a Luger he had as well. It worried him, guns in the house. While he was in Barlinnie a guy called Tony Lowe was asking for a gun and Totten was happy to oblige, to get rid, basically. Totten is excused and leaves the stand, smiling up to the balcony as if he is sorry to leave without doing an encore, but has another engagement.

  Tony Lowe has been brought from Wandsworth Prison to give his evidence. Tony is as grey as fag ash. He is dressed in badly laundered clothes that are too big. No one wants to look at him because he is depressing after the colour of the other witnesses. Lowe mumbles that he asked Totten for a gun because he was ‘in a bit of trouble’ at that time. Even this threat to his life sounds dreary and down at heel. Totten said he had a gun and Lowe was welcome to go and get it from Totten’s home as soon as he was released. Lowe would be out well before Totten. The problem was Mrs Totten, who wouldn’t allow any of Mr Totten’s disreputable friends near the family home. Because of this, Lowe had to contact Dandy McKay, co-owner of the Gordon Club, to come with him to Mrs Totten’s house. Mr McKay duly escorted Lowe to the house and they got the guns from Mrs Totten who was glad to give them away. Then, for safe keeping, they took the guns to Shifty Thomson’s house, which happened to be in Florence Street.

  Shifty Thomson is sweating even before he turns to face the court from the dock. He covers his mouth with his hand, he mumbles, he obfuscates. No one can hear him and everyone is annoyed. Thomson is such a poor liar that everyone listening feels insulted but Shifty doesn’t give a stuff. He serves other masters.

  Shifty Thomson says he was given the gun by Lowe and Mr McKay to hold. He had the gun in his house for about a year. Then Mr McKay came with Peter Manuel to pick up the Beretta. Shifty always says ‘Mr McKay’, never ‘Dandy McKay’. Mr McKay this, Mr McKay that. Mr McKay took the gun down. Mr McKay said it was all right. Mr McKay left and that’s about all he knows about that.

  Thomson describes the activities of the Gordon Club as, ‘you know, bit a’ horse racing and that’. He describes his own role at the club as a bookmaker’s clerk. Do you have an office? Not as such. Yes or no? I suppose, not really. Do you conduct your accounts in the street, Mr Thomson? Maybe, sometimes, I dunno. You’re a bookie’s runner, aren’t you? Not really, always.

  Of all the liars in court that day Lord Cameron finds Shifty Thomson the least convincing. He interjects forcefully during Shifty’s evidence.

  ‘Mr Thomson. You are here to do two things: speak clearly and tell the truth. You are not doing the first one and I have severe reservations about whether or not you are doing the second.’

  This doesn’t incline Shifty to either honesty or clarity, it just makes him more nervous.

  He is asked, ‘If you weren’t selling the gun why did you take the five pounds Mr Manuel offered you?’

  Shifty shrugs and mumbles, ‘Dunno. He’s just only gave it to me. Would you no ha’ took it?’

  ‘Do you see Mr Manuel in court today, Mr Thomson?’

  He looks at Lord Cameron and the jury for a good long while. Then he looks around. Finally he takes a stab at it: is that him? No, Mr Thomson, that’s not him, that’s the stenographer.

  Maurice Dickov takes the stand. Dickov is an underworld gentleman of the old-fashioned kind. He doesn’t want to be in a golf club or have a semi in the suburbs or a bigger car than his neighbour. What Dickov wants is for everyone to be comfortable and have a pleasant evening and give him their money. He knows everyone worth knowing, their foibles and what they’re good for. In court he openly admits to co-owning the Gordon Club with Dandy McKay.

  ‘And what sort of private members’ club is it?’

  ‘Well, it’s a bridge club,’ Dickov says. ‘Gentlemen can play cards and relax there among like-minded chaps.’

  He smiles. It does sound nice, the way he says it.

  ‘A social club?’

  ‘Yes, a private members’ club. Pleasant surroundings, well-stocked bar and good company. Splendid fellows. A way for gentlemen from all over to meet each other. Mingling.’

  ‘Do they all play bridge?’

  The public gallery laugh a little, not because it was a funny joke or because they’re being facetious, really just to tell Dickov that they know he is lying.

  But Dickov frowns at them. He isn’t lying. That is what he thinks his business is. ‘Yes, for men who like congenial company and playing cards.’

  ‘Do most of the members play bridge?’

  He shrugs and drops his voice. ‘Well, it’s not an essential condition of membership but certainly some of them do.’

  ‘What proportion of the members might be playing bridge on any given night?’

  ‘It’s hard to say really.’

  ‘Is it hard to say because none of them are playing bridge, Mr Dickov?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I suppose some of the gentlemen like to make their card games more interesting? Perhaps they wager on the outcome of certain games?’

  ‘I don’t know, I don’t watch them playing bridge.’

  ‘Please answer with either yes or no: the Gordon Club is a place where men can bet with each other on the outcome of card games.’

  Dickov doesn’t answer. They have missed the point of the club entirely. Just yes or no please, Mr Dickov. After prompting he says perhaps, maybe, sometimes.

  Mr Dickov was brought up by his grandparents, refugees from Bulgaria. Mr Dickov is Glaswegian but has retained some of their accent and conversational conventions. He calls children ‘darling’, pronouncing it ‘darlink’. Once he has made his fortune, which will be very soon, he will move to Florida and talk about how much he loves Scotland for the rest of his life. He will never come back. Maurice has inherited his grandparents’ habit of being from somewhere else.

  Maurice is dismissed from the dock. In ten days’ time the police will raid the Gordon Club and find roulette wheels and blackjack tables. They’ll find eight thousand pounds in the safe, all in small bills, quite a lot of jewellery, stolen chequebooks and a number of blank passports. They’ll also find stag films and a projector in a box, under a folded bed sheet which had been pinned up to act as a screen. They will shut the club down for good, confiscate the money and passports and gambling equipment. The stag films will remain in the possession of a series of unmarried police officers until the films shred or melt from age. They’ve missed the point of the Gordon. Those senior police officers who were secretly members will know that. They could not confiscate the net of friendships and contacts made there. Dickov will be sad at the demise of the Gordon Club in some ways, but in others not. It has run its course, he feels, served its purpose. He is a pragmatist and he’s moving on.

  When Dandy McKay, Dickov’s co-owner, comes into the court everyone cranes to see what he is wearing.

  Dandy is small and chubby, clean-shaven, with a neat Tony Curtis haircut and very small eyes. His suit is a herringbone check in black and white, double-breasted, the old style. His shirt is a strange shimmery orangey-red colour. He sports a puce handkerchief in his pocket and has a small green carnation in his buttonhole. But the main event is the tie. The tie is a swirl of what to Dandy appears to be muted shades of blue and yellow. It is actually red and blue with flecks of green. Dandy is colour-blind but no one has ever d
ared to tell him. Dandy McKay runs Glasgow and he can wear whatever the fuck he likes. And this is what he likes. Hence the nickname.

  Dandy turns in the witness box and sees the look he always sees on the faces of strangers: surprised and then averted eyes. The only people who ever ask him why he is dressed like that are children. Poor children, because that’s the only kind he ever meets, and what do they know about style? Dandy tells them he dresses like that because he is rich. Should they chance a supplementary question Dandy slaps them hard and tells them to fuck off back to their whore o’ a mother.

  He is sworn in. He admits that he is the co-owner of the Gordon Club but if, as Grieve suggests, it is a gambling club, this is certainly news to him. He doesn’t take a lot do with the floor. He’s in the office mostly.

  Dandy admits driving Lowe to Totten’s house. They picked the guns up from Mrs Totten and took them to Shifty Thomson’s house in Florence Street. They left them there for safe keeping. In what way was that safe? Well, says McKay, Mrs Totten has eleven children. You can’t very well leave guns in a two-apartment with eleven children. The men in the court think well of him for this. It’s very responsible and they’re not even his children. The women in the public gallery are too distracted by the thought of eleven children in a two-apartment to be impressed by Dandy’s civic-mindedness. They’re wondering how much Totten’s silk suit cost and where the pitch-and-toss money went. The statement distracts everyone so that the narrative disconnect between grey-faced Tony Lowe getting a gun to protect himself and then leaving it with Shifty Thomson is left unexplored.

  McKay says that about a year or so later he drove Manuel to Thomson’s to pick up the Beretta. Manuel said he needed it for personal protection. No, Dandy never asked Manuel from whom or for why. He had a car and Manuel needed a lift so he took him there and back. Dandy doesn’t seem like a man who drives underlings around to be nice and M.G. Gillies delves for a motive. No, no money exchanged hands. Not even a fiver? asks Gillies, tired of being lied to about the money. McKay smiles and says he drove Manuel there in his Alvis Grey Lady. This is a huge luxury car, brand new. It is clear that McKay doesn’t need to chase grubby fivers for stolen guns. McKay’s inexplicable kindness is left unexplored.