by James Green
‘Bloody weather,’ he muttered.
‘Get used to it, pal, this is Scotland.’
The Glasgow voice belonged to a smiling young man in a smart, black overcoat who was carrying a small suitcase. Jimmy stood still against the stainless steel handrail and watched the man’s back. It was nothing, it couldn’t be. Why would anyone be put on the plane? Anyway no one knew which plane he would be on. I’m getting paranoid, he thought. Then he remembered the old joke, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. He came out of the stairway into a wide, well-lit walkway that led towards the baggage hall. He had nothing in the hold of the plane so he walked through Nothing to Declare and on until he went through the doors into Arrivals.
Crossing the Arrivals hall he tried to make his mind find the old routine.
Be careful but not so careful that you’re slow. See what’s there but only take notice of what matters. Don’t get noticed, don’t … don’t … He heaved a heavy sigh then said, ‘I’m getting too bloody old and tired for this crap.’
He was passing an elderly lady in tweeds. She gave him a sharp look and moved quickly away.
Talking out loud to myself. Yes, I really am getting too bloody old and tired for this crap.
But this time he upset nobody because he said it to himself. He tried again to remember the rules. Don’t make mistakes but know when mistakes have been made, your own or anybody else’s …
He left the main terminal and bought a ticket for the City Shuttle, the double-decker bus which ferried people to and from Edinburgh. One was waiting so he got on and asked the driver if the bus passed the railway station.
‘Haymarket or Waverley?’
‘I’m going to Glasgow.’
‘Then you need Haymarket. You can’t miss it.’
Sitting in the bus looking at the window and watching the rain drops running down, Jimmy went over things.
Ricci got angry when he wouldn’t tell him what he planned to do, thought it meant he didn’t trust him. He wasn’t altogether wrong. But the truth was, when he’d set up the meeting he didn’t know himself how he would handle it. Now he had arrived he still wasn’t sure.
Another couple of passengers got on the bus, showed their tickets to the driver, stowed their big cases in the luggage rack, and sat down. Jimmy looked at his watch, three o’clock. He looked out of the window. Everything was blurred by the rain and it was dark enough for early evening.
Tomorrow was Tuesday. He should have plenty of time to get settled into a B&B or hotel, find out where the church was, and give it a walk-by to get the layout sorted in his mind. Another passenger got onto the bus, pushed a suitcase onto the luggage rack, and sat down. The driver closed the doors and the bus moved away. Once clear of the airport roads it went up the slip road onto the main dual carriageway and headed for the city.
The driver was right. You couldn’t miss Haymarket station, the bus stopped right outside it. Jimmy bought a ticket, went down to the platform and waited. When the train came, he got on, put his holdall on the seat beside him and watched Edinburgh slip by as the train picked up speed.
How rusty am I, he wondered? Well, it was too late now to change his plans. He’d committed himself. He just hoped he hadn’t committed himself too far.
TEN
Jimmy found somewhere to stay near the station and then took a taxi out to the church. St Peter the Apostle was a modern church on a quiet road of well-established detached houses standing in their own substantial gardens. This was where post-war Glasgow money had come to live in their architect-designed homes, a leafy suburb for like-minded people with incomes that meant they could afford the best.
He asked the taxi to wait while he went and checked Mass times. The church’s side door was unlocked even though it was half-past seven in the evening. If people round here stole they didn’t do it on the cheap by sneaking into churches and raiding the poor box. There were better ways to steal from the poor. Jimmy gave the surrounds to the church a once over and chose a couple of places where he could look at the front of the church without attracting too much attention. Then he went back to his taxi and asked to be taken to a decent Italian restaurant somewhere near the station. Once he’d had a good meal and a couple of beers he went back to his room. Everything he could do he’d done. Now it would all be down to Bridie. It had been a long day and almost as soon as his head hit the pillow he slept.
The heavy, main double doors were shut and the few people who went in to morning Mass used the same side door that Jimmy had checked the previous evening. He’d seen Bridie arrive in a black Mercedes driven by a middle-aged woman. The car had disappeared behind the church and a few minutes later Bridie and her driver had both reappeared, talking. They were a couple of well-off, pious, Catholic biddies going to week-day morning Mass, except they weren’t dressed like biddies. The driver was smart and sombre in a well-cut suit. Bridie was expensive and brassy, her skirt still too short for her age and legs. Both carried thick prayer books.
Jimmy waited until the Mass was under way then walked across the road, went behind the church and into the car park. The Mercedes was there with a few other cars. Morning Mass, unless the priest was a zealot, would last no more than half an hour, maybe only twenty minutes. There was nothing to do but wait so he put his hands in his pockets, leaned his backside against the front wing, and waited.
After twenty minutes the first person came into the car park, a young woman. She gave Jimmy a look which said, “and what do you think you’re hanging about for?” but didn’t take it further. She got into a snappy little red sports car and drove off. Soon after that a husband and wife came out and walked past the car park, then a single middle-aged woman. Mass was over. Bridie and her driver came round the corner; they couldn’t miss him but neither bothered to look. They were talking and before they got to the car Jimmy could make out what Bridie was saying. She had a carrying voice.
‘… so I said to Father Leahy, Father, I’ve done the White Elephant stall for ten years and if you want Mrs Mac to help me you can have Mrs Mac do the whole thing because I don’t need her help or anyone else’s.’
The driver pulled her door open.
‘The cheek, telling you that you need help to do your stall.’
Bridie opened the passenger side door, got in, and pulled it shut. The engine started and Bridie’s window slid down.
‘What the fuck are you standing there for, Jimmy Costello? If you came to see me get in unless you’re thinking of running alongside.’ Jimmy opened the back door and got in. ‘I’ll take you back to your hotel and you can tell me what this is about on the way.’
‘We could talk here, Bridie. I don’t need a lift and it won’t take long.’
‘You’re getting a lift and it had better not take long. Where to?’ Jimmy gave the name and address of a B&B. The car slid away across the car park and out onto the road.
‘Know the way, Norah?’
‘Where’s it near?’ The question was for Jimmy. She looked at him in the mirror.
‘The station.’
‘Which one?’
‘Is there more than one?’
Bridie turned round.
‘Stop fucking about. Which station?’
‘I don’t know. I just got somewhere near the station when I came in from Edinburgh.’ Norah nodded and Bridie turned away. Jimmy had felt uncomfortable about this meeting ever since he’d decided to arrange it. Now, with Bridie at close range, he knew he was right to be uncomfortable, in fact he was right to be bloody shit scared. Norah looked at him in the mirror again.
‘I’ll take you to Queen Street station and drop you there.’
‘Queen Street. Fine.’
The car turned onto another, busier road and headed towards the city centre.
‘OK, Jimmy Costello, what do you want?’
Bridie didn’t turn round when she spoke so Jimmy talked to the back of her head.
‘A factory out at Cumbernauld got
a petrol bomb thrown through the window recently. It was an ice-cream factory owned by …’
‘Johnny Fabrizzi. I heard about it, a bunch of young hooligans pissing about. It was nothing.’
‘Maybe, maybe not, and if not I need to know where the idea originated.’
‘That’s a fucking queer way of putting it. Why not just say you want to know who did it?’
‘Because I don’t want to know who did it?’
‘No?’
‘No. I don’t care who did it.’
Bridie paused for a moment.
‘OK, so now I know what you don’t care about. What is it you do care about?’
‘Who wanted it done?’
‘Why do you care, are you trying to get whoever it is off Johnny Fabrizzi’s back? Is that it?’
‘No. If Johnny Fabrizzi does business in this town he takes the chances that go with it same as everybody else. He’ll have to look after himself as best he can. If somebody’s putting the arm on him, let them get on with it. It’s nothing to do with me.’
‘So what is to do with you?’
‘That’s something new since my time, Bridie, something for nothing, free information. I didn’t know the Freedom of Information Act applied to your kind of business.’
The driver looked in the mirror and Jimmy gave her his best smile. She looked away and would never know what that casual-looking smile had cost him in effort. Thank God he’d practised.
‘Still a smart fucker. No one knocked that out of you yet?’
‘Not yet. Look, I’m just calling in a favour. When I gave you Jamie to take home you told me to ask when I wanted something. Now I want something so I’m asking. Why I want it is my business.’
‘Like fuck I told you to ask.’
‘OK, a man in a pub said the actual words. But it was the same pub I used to let you know I’d got Jamie’s body and it was the same pub that set up this meeting. As far as I’m concerned the words came from you. If I’m wrong stop the car and I’ll get out and you won’t see me again.’
‘I can make fucking sure I don’t see you again any time I like.’
She wasn’t joking and she wasn’t boasting, she was stating the simple truth. Jimmy felt the knot of tension tighten in his stomach and knew he had to stop it creeping into his voice. If Bridie got a whiff of weakness he was dead. She didn’t work with weaklings, she stamped on them. All the old fear was right back with him now. He remembered how he had ridden with her in her Mercedes those years ago in London, how he had got out and she’d told him to kneel down. Then her man Colin had shot him in the back of the head. This time, if the same thing happened, it really would be the gun at the back of his head that went off, not some other gun. This time he wouldn’t wake up with only his trousers soiled. He wouldn’t wake up at all because what would be left of his face would be on the floor in bits of his own brains.
‘Well, Bridie, what’s it to be?’ were the words he said, ‘Oh God of mercy keep my bloody voice calm,’ was what he was praying. Bridie turned and looked at him.
‘I’ll see what I can do. If I can do anything you’ll have it tomorrow at the latest. What’s your number?’
Jimmy gave it to her.
‘Want to write it down?’
She ignored him and turned to the driver.
‘What stall did Mrs Mac do last year?’
‘The bottle stall, remember? She helped Molly O’Dowd. It didn’t make nearly as much as it usually does. Molly couldn’t understand it, it seemed to go as well as she expected.’
Bridie laughed.
‘The devious young bugger. He wants her on my stall because he knows I’ll spot her if she dips into the takings. Well, Norah, maybe our young Fr Leahy’s not as green as he’s cabbage-looking after all.’
‘What do you think, take her on and see what happens?’
‘No, what’s the point? If she lifts some cash and I catch her he won’t do anything. Her husband does the parish accounts so Fr Leahy can’t risk offending him by accusing his wife of being a thief. And I can hardly have her legs broken, can I? No, if she’s light-fingered let her get on with it somewhere else.’
‘If her husband’s an accountant why does she do it? She can’t need the money. Is it an illness, do you think?’
‘If stealing’s an illness then Glasgow’s been in an epidemic for as long as I can remember.’
They both laughed. Jimmy sat back and stopped listening as the two women continued discussing the forthcoming parish bazaar.
I’m no bloody good at this any more, he thought; it’s got to be done properly or not all. A half-hard bastard is no bastard at all. If I get by with Bridie it will be on the back of what she remembers, the man I was, not the man I am now. I’m just too fucking old and tired. Who the hell does Ricci think I am, James bloody Bond? If his uncle’s in trouble let him sort it out himself. I’m going to have my hands full just staying alive.
The car turned into George Square and pulled up in front of the station. Jimmy leaned forward.
‘I’ll hear from you then?’
‘Fuck off.’
Jimmy got out and the car pulled away. He went into the first bar he came to and ordered a double whisky. He didn’t like whisky but just now beer wouldn’t do what was needed.
He drank the whisky as soon as it came, waited until the harshness had settled from his throat, then ordered another. With the second he took his time.
Why am I part of it? That was what made no sense. What sort of Alice in Wonderland scenario put a trainee priest, even one that used to be a copper, alongside the suspicious death of an archbishop?
If Bridie came across and it turned out the ice-cream factory got torched on someone’s orders then … then what? He took another long sip. It had to be London. Or maybe it would turn out to be just some hooligans like Bridie said, nothing more than young tearaways trying their hand at extortion. Why not? Everyone has to begin somewhere. He finished the last drops of his drink, got off his stool, and left the bar.
Outside he felt better, the meeting with Bridie had gone well after all. Now it was time for a late breakfast. Jimmy headed to his hotel which was not so very near the B&B whose name and address he had given to Bridie. Yes, he’d managed to stay careful. Maybe he wasn’t such a tired old has-been after all.
ELEVEN
It was about eight o’clock that night when the phone in his hotel room rang. Jimmy went across and picked it up. The message was brief and to the point, there was no introduction, no preamble of any sort.
‘It was ordered. They were told to fire-bomb the place then make the call. They were given the number and told what to say.’
‘So who ordered it?’
‘They don’t know and they were asked thoroughly. The best they could come up with was that the man was English, fiftyish, and seemed official, like the police.’
‘The police?’
‘Like the police. Kids like that only know two kinds of people, their own and the police.’
‘What about the local force?’
‘What about them?’
‘Did they get involved?’
‘No, they wrote it off as hooligans.’
‘But it was an out-of-town job farmed to local nobodies.’
‘Yes, and that’s it, that’s all of it. Understood?’
Jimmy understood.
‘Yeah.’
Whoever it was rang off. Jimmy slowly put the phone down.
‘Shit.’
He’d suspected the fire was ordered and now he knew for certain. Ricci had been caught looking and the petrol bomb was London’s way of telling him to take his nose out. That left his mate who’d suddenly been invited to America. They wouldn’t have done both even if they had that sort of pull which he doubted. So who arranged that little stunt? Well, he’d done what he came to do. Ricci wasn’t going to do any more digging into old files so his uncle would be left alone. The bad news was the call had come to the hotel, not the mobile number he’d given
her. Did that matter? She’d come across with the information so maybe it didn’t, but with Bridie you never could tell. He sat down heavily on his bed. He should have stayed in Rome. Ricci’s family troubles weren’t anything to do with him, he’d pretty much guessed what it was all about. He hadn’t really needed to come and make certain. But he knew that wasn’t the real reason he’d come, not all of it anyway. A petrol-bomb with a threatening call alongside his mate getting taken out of the frame had set his mind working like it used to and he’d liked the feeling it gave him. The idea of coming back and taking on Bridie had given him the old adrenaline rush. It was maybe a last chance to … Then the phone rang again.
‘Your lift to the airport is here, Mr Costello. I’m afraid I’ll have to charge you for the two nights even though you’ll not be staying after all. Your bill will be ready when you come down.’
‘Thanks, I’ll be down in a few minutes.’
Jimmy began to gather his things and stuff them into his holdall. He hadn’t ordered a car so it had to be Bridie’s people waiting for him downstairs. There was no point in running. Even if he got past whoever was down there how long would he last in Glasgow with Bridie looking for him? It was her turf and she knew it like she knew the inside of her handbag. He finished pushing his stuff into the holdall. What choices had he got? The answer came at once, none. All the choices were Bridie’s now, she was the one who’d decide if he’d finish up as a permanent Glasgow resident, maybe in the same cemetery as two of her sons, more probably dumped on some derelict site. He went to the door, switched the light out, and left.
Downstairs Bridie’s driver from church was waiting, still wearing the same smart suit. Jimmy paid his bill and followed her out of the hotel to where the black Mercedes was parked. There was no one else in it. Jimmy looked around. What was there to see, why look? What’s the point of being careful at the wrong time?
‘Get in.’
He threw his holdall onto the back seat and got in beside the driver. It wasn’t a long journey and it wasn’t to the airport. She took him to Queen Street Station.
