The Low Road

by A. D. Scott

  “Thanks for bringing me over,” Mrs. Crawford said as she sat staring at the front door but not moving.

  Mary sensed her reluctance. She pulled out her notebook. Scribbled two numbers. “If you need anything, call me. This is work, this is home.”

  “I’ll make sure I have pennies for the phone—just in case.” The old woman nodded and reached for the door handle.

  “I was thinking of going to see old Mr. Dochery, but I don’t have an address for him.”

  “He should have disciplined thon son o’ his years ago, but he didn’t have the heart.” The old lady tutted, then explained. “The wife died in childbirth, leaving him to bring up the bairn wi’ the help of his old mother. Mr. and Mrs. McAllister, they were the soul o’ kindness to Wee Gerry and look where that got them.” With the look of a thunderhead about to burst, she turned to Mary. “Lend me yon wee book an’ the pencil.” She wrote down an address. “He’s living in Govan. I’m not sure he’ll help, Gerry’s his only bairn, after all.”

  “Thank you,” Mary said. “And if anyone threatens you . . .”

  “I’m too old to be feart o’ the likes o’ Wee Gerry Dochery. And if I can help Mrs. McAllister, I will.” She was out of the car, carrying what looked like a full laundry bag. She paused on the steps and gave a wave before ringing the doorbell.

  Mary sat thinking over what Mrs. Crawford had told her, scribbling down notes as the questions piled up.

  The absence of a full police search, especially in a murder case, was odd. What was most strange was the nonappearance of the full panoply of photographers, fingerprint team, detectives, and constables on door-to-door inquiries—all the paraphernalia of a murder scene was missing. Plus there was no indication of a body. She thought about the neighbor taken in for questioning and his subsequent disappearance.

  “Something not right about all this,” Mary muttered as she did a three-point turn to take her back to the Herald office. And to herself only, she could not hide the satisfaction, and the thrill, of chasing another potential front-page scoop.

  • • •

  In a cell, in a row of cells filled with the night’s refuse gathered up from the streets and the tenements and the public houses of Glasgow, McAllister considered how he would survive if it all went wrong and he was convicted. Thinking about the deprivations of prison, he knew what he could not tolerate: sharing a cell. Bad food, constant noise, the smell, the despair, he could cope with. No books? He lived inside his own head for much of the time, he knew he could endure that. Lack of solitude, that was his idea of hell. Ah, well, I could always punch DI Willkie, that might earn me time in solitary.

  It was seventeen hours from his arrival at the police station before the Herald lawyers achieved his release. When the door of the custody cell was unlocked and he was told to go, he asked, “What’s happening?”

  “Just go,” said a large round sergeant with the complexion of a man who’d eaten one too many pies. “Think yourself lucky.”

  McAllister made straight for the newspaper. There was nowhere else he could think to go.

  Even though it was Saturday afternoon, Mary was at her desk. She looked up when he came in, grinned, but didn’t look surprised.

  “I’ll call our esteemed editor. You look in need of good feed, so go down to the canteen.” She waved him away and picked up the phone.

  They had to wait nearly an hour, as the editor was at home. He had been looking for an excuse to escape, since his wife’s brother and family were visiting and they had four children, all boys. Sandy’s wife had a soft spot for McAllister, so all she said was, “Give him my best.”

  The whole argument for McAllister’s release had hinged on the time of death.

  Even Sandy Marshall was amazed. “Our solicitors were tipped off that even though the postmortem has yet to be done, the time of death was at the earliest five in the morning . . .”

  “And I can prove I was on a train,” McAllister said.

  “So why on earth did Willkie, and the procurator fiscal, charge you?” Mary asked.

  “They say they have witnesses,” McAllister said.

  “DI Willkie must have known the time of death. It’s the first thing you ask.” The editor was so puzzled by the police actions, and nonactions, he hadn’t noticed that McAllister bore a close resemblance to a gentleman of the road. But Mary did.

  “Phew! McAllister! You stink,” she said, fanning herself with her notebook.

  “Thanks.” McAllister smiled. He didn’t care. He was out.

  “How did you know the estimated time of death?” Sandy was pointing a finger at Mary.

  She shrugged. “Contacts.”

  Sandy left it at that; he knew how unreasonable she became when anyone tried to discover her sources of information. She would never tell the whole truth, never admit to using her late father’s circle of friends and relatives in what she referred to as the Auld Boy’s Club, emphasis on Boys, too conscious of her rival Keith’s accusations that that was what helped her get ahead. If you have the contacts, use them—discreetly, was her motto.

  “Thank Mrs. Crawford for tipping me off . . .” Mary started.

  “Mary, what happened?” Sandy was exasperated. It was his day off. He wanted a drink. He wanted to hear the football results. “How did you find out?”

  Mary ignored him; she would tell the story her own way. “Mrs. Crawford, Mrs. McAllister’s friend and neighbor, it was something she said.” She moved her chair away from McAllister. “She said she’d heard scuffling, and shouting, in the close around ten that night. So I asked the other neighbors in the close, and the newsagent—a nice man—and they had no idea there’d been a fight, or a commotion of any kind, and no police came around asking questions. The man had been reported dead in the early morning, according to Willkie, so how come the circus of a murder inquiry didn’t start until the next day?” She tossed two packets at McAllister. “Here, the newsagent gave me the cigarettes you ordered.”

  “Thanks.” Exhaustion had descended and he was hearing the conversation as though the voices were coming from inside an old-fashioned record player’s horn. And for the first time he was scared; if DI Willkie could behave so arbitrarily, locking up a journalist with no good cause, what else might he do?

  “The story was leaked to our rivals, probably by Willkie, minutes after your interview ended and you were taken into custody.”

  “What do you mean?” McAllister didn’t yet know about the front-page splash.

  “A story ran saying you were being held for questioning over the suspicious death of the man,” Sandy explained. “And it was on the wireless and the telly news.

  “God in heaven.” Exhaustion drained out, replaced by fury. “Does Joanne know?”

  “Aye, I spoke to her and to your deputy, Don McLeod,” Sandy said. “He called around to your house and said to give him a bell as soon as you can.”

  “I spoke to Joanne,” Mary said. “She was calm.” Joanne Ross is stronger than McAllister realizes. “The lawyers are on the case, making certain there is no reason for Willkie to interview you again. Then you can go home.”

  McAllister looked down at his hands. Seeing the grime on his shirt cuffs, remembering the smell of vomit and fear in the cells, going home was tempting. But he knew this had to end—lest it come back to haunt them. “The man who was killed, what did you find out about him?”

  “Not much,” Mary answered. “Maybe you should ask Wee Gerry.”

  McAllister shook his head. “The lad was fine when—”

  Two separate hands shot into the air. “Don’t want to know!” Sandy said for both of them.

  “I found the name of the examining police doctor . . .” Mary didn’t say that he was a retired military doctor in the same regiment as her father. “I asked for an estimated time of death. He wouldn’t tell me, so I watched him closely and gave out times . . . One a.m.? Three a.m.? On six a.m., he looked away. Then . . . nah, I won’t tell you the rest, might compromise you
both.” Her shoulders shook—a tiny shudder. “Anyhow, there is no way this Smith character was killed before three in the morning.”

  “And I have an alibi for three a.m.,” McAllister added. “How did the lad die?”

  “This person you never met, remember? He was beaten to death. Won’t know until after the official postmortem report which of his multiple injuries killed him.” She wasn’t going to elaborate on the visit to the mortuary, next door to the High Court, in the Saltmarket area, which had been gruesome.

  She paid five pounds to see the body plus a keek at the attending doctor’s report—a very expensive bribe in a city where five shillings went a long way. The man had been beaten so badly he was unrecognizable. She also read that a prison tattoo—MUM, with roses around the letters, badly inked in red and purple—was noticed by a constable who had arrested the young man numerous times. This led to an interim identification, later confirmed by his mother.

  When Mary left the mortuary, she had focused on inventive ways to invoice the Herald for the five pounds, the accounts department being wise to Mary’s sometimes bizarre expense claims. But it was hard to put the horror of the broken, twisted body behind her.

  “So who killed him?” Sandy Marshall brought her back to the here and now.

  “Or ordered him killed?” Mary threw out the question, knowing they were all thinking the same thing. Gerry Dochery. Mary shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “I can’t run a story on guesses. Anything else?”

  “Last night, I saw Jimmy McPhee,” Mary replied. “He’s not saying much. But he looks frightened. Coming from him, that’s scary. The reward Gerry Dochery offered for information on Jimmy is still out there. Then there’s the puzzle as to why McAllister was attacked—Gerry said he wouldn’t come after him, only Jimmy. So we’re back to the same question—who killed the man?”

  “And why, and how, was McAllister set up?”

  They were silent for a second or so thinking through the question. Finally Mary said, “Let’s hope we find out before someone else dies.”

  At Mary’s last sentence, McAllister rocked back in his chair and looked upwards in a silent plea to the Wee Man or one of His ministering angels. If you discount the stone angels in the Necropolis, he thought, in Glasgow it’s mostly fallen angels.

  Mary asked, “Boss, can we ask the paper’s legal eagle about raising a malicious prosecution charge against the police at Central? ‘Harmed the reputation of one of our journalists, hence the newspaper.’ That would make a good story.”

  “Maybe.”

  “There is one piece of good news . . .”

  McAllister was looking like he’d lost a sovereign and found a sixpence. “Good news? I doubt that’s possible.”

  “Listen to this. The Herald lawyers dragged a sheriff away from a game of golf. He was not happy. He took it out on DI Willkie, made him look an idiot at the bail hearing. He told him there was no case against you. He reprimanded him for wasting police resources, and the sheriff’s time, and said he was submitting a report to Willkie’s superiors.” Her informant was the custody sergeant who had had scant time for DI Willkie.

  She put her hands together in prayer and said, “So please, Mr. Editor, can I write that up?”

  Sandy laughed. “Discreetly. I don’t want our solicitor having to bail you out an’ all.”

  She was swinging her legs beneath the too-high chair, enjoying herself. “Me?”

  “And be careful.” The way she rolled her eyes reminded Sandy of his eight-year-old daughter.

  “I’ll need help with the research,” she continued, “a bright young cadet, preferably one who is street-smart . . . No, don’t even suggest Mr. Sleazy.” The very thought of Keith, her colleague on the crime desk, a man she described as “an all-round sleaze,” gave her goose bumps.

  “Anything else?” Sandy asked, glancing up at the clock.

  “Him. McAllister. I can’t stand it a minute longer.” Mary handed over a set of keys. “Go to my place and have a bath.”

  “Okay, okay, I’ll be off.” McAllister stood.

  “Phone Joanne first,” Mary said.

  “Yes, Mother,” McAllister replied.

  “Looks like he had a hell of an ordeal,” Sandy said when they were alone.

  “Aye,” was all Mary could say. Being jailed was something that terrified her; she knew how fellow inmates would treat a woman of her class. But it didn’t stop her from taking liberties with the law if she thought it might lead to a story.

  Sandy could see she was furious. Mary’s anger had many shades: loud-shouting-gesticulating-racecourse-bookie anger; fast-talking-multiple-cursing-unladylike anger; cold-white-eye-piercing anger that he had witnessed only once when she was told by a relic-from-the-Jurassic-age journalist that the crime desk was no place for a woman—and this after he’d stolen her story and written it under his own byline.

  The editor was equally angry, but he would channel his anger into protecting his journalists by legal means. He finished the conversation with, “I have to get back to the family. See you tomorrow afternoon?”

  “I’ll be in early. I have a potential story for Monday and I need it to be watertight.”

  The editor, aware of how much she hated being treated differently from the males, knew not to tell her again to be careful. He sent up a prayer instead.

  SEVENTEEN

  McAllister was exhausted. And dirty. And distressed. And he hadn’t called home.

  Opening the gate to Mary’s basement flat, he noted that the drop from the trefoil-topped iron railings was just right if you should feel like hanging yourself.

  A flicker of movement in the upstairs bay window made him glance up, then look down. He hadn’t the patience for a confrontation with Mary’s mother.

  He stood in the hallway, undecided whether to have a bath first, or a drink, when the decision was made for him.

  “I’ve poured you a dram.”

  Jimmy McPhee.

  McAllister remembered Mary had given him a spare key, but Jimmy had vanished that same night. When was it? Thursday? Friday? Whenever it was, it seemed a lifetime ago.

  “I stayed here last night,” Jimmy said, handing him a crystal tumbler of amber liquid. “Mary told me what was going on.” He was looking as tired as McAllister, and thinner than his usual skinny self.

  They held their glasses up in a silent toast. McAllister saw the tremor in his hand. Jimmy didn’t ask about his night in the Glasgow Central Police cells, about the hours of questions and verbal abuse. McAllister was grateful and felt a bond with Jimmy, understanding that here was a man who surely knew what those hours had been like, hours when time seemed suspended.

  “I need a bath,” McAllister said after he had downed the whisky in one gulp, “then we need to talk.”

  “Aye,” was all Jimmy said.

  When McAllister emerged, he was cleaner, but no matter how much he had scrubbed himself, he felt the reek of the police cell lingering in his hair and skin and under his nails.

  Jimmy was in the kitchen. He pushed a plate with two pies towards McAllister. His plate had the same, except his pies were covered in bright red tomato sauce. McAllister felt queasy at the sight, but the smell of the lamb mincemeat and a taste of the crust reminded him how hungry he was. They finished their meal with a cigarette. Then talked.

  Jimmy began, “You know Gerry Dochery might have had this lad killed.”

  “I can’t believe that.”

  “Suit yerself. But who else knows where you live? Who else would have sent the lad round?”

  “And buy off DI Willkie.”

  “Aye. I hear thon bastard can be bought easily, but no’ cheaply. And Dochery is flush.”

  They talked, but not for long. McAllister didn’t ask the question that was eating him up. He knew there would be no answer. Perhaps not even a lie. What is this about, Jimmy McPhee?

  “Joanne gave me one week,” he said, leaving out that the week was to clear up the
so-called burglary at his mother’s flat. “So . . .”

  Jimmy interrupted. “You’re on the night train back. This is my fight.”

  “Wrecking my mother’s place . . . it’s personal now.” He ignored the growl coming from Jimmy’s throat. “Besides, I can probably find Wee Gerry and . . .”

  “And what? Remind him of holidays in Millport? Appeal to his decency? Involve his father?”

  McAllister knew it was about living with himself if he did nothing. “Old Mr. Dochery lives in Govan. I’m paying him a visit.”

  Jimmy knew McAllister would do just that, with or without him. “I’ve the keys to Mary’s mother’s car.”

  McAllister gave a half grin. After two pies and tea and whisky, and with Jimmy on his side, optimism had returned. “We should ask Mrs. Ballantyne if it’s okay.”

  “You do it. She’d have me hanged, drawn, and quartered, if she could.”

  Ten minutes later McAllister was ringing the doorbell of the main house. When she answered he gave her no time to speak. “Mrs. Ballantyne, I’m letting you know Mary has given us the keys to the car. We’d like to borrow it for a day or so.”

  “Have I a choice?” She was hugging herself as though a nonexistent north wind was attacking her bones. She had an aristocratic thinness that reminded McAllister of a highly bred whippet: wrists that he could wrap a forefinger and thumb around; collarbones prominent above the vee of a bone-colored silk blouse with a shade lighter strand of pearls; hair an indeterminate shade of gray-blond and so thin that even a spectacularly expensive haircut could not hide the pink scalp. Her long thin nose reminded him of a whippet, and of another of his mother’s sayings, “Who does she think she is—looking down her nose at folk?”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Ballantyne. We need the car.”

  “And I need my daughter, Mr. McAllister. She is all I have left.” She shut the door, leaving him standing on the step. Feeling guilty, again, he reminded himself, She is a widow. Mary is her only child.

  McAllister drove. Jimmy slumped down in the passenger seat, a flat-cap disguise working well; he looked like any other Glasgow man, small, defeated, and if anyone caught his eye, ready for a fight. McAllister was wondering what it was about Jimmy McPhee that made him risk his own, and now his mother’s, safety. Friends was too shallow and too intimate a word to explain their relationship. Yet their oft-times-wordless communication was something McAllister had with no other—not even Joanne. And Jenny McPhee? Why did he come when she called? He had no answer. But the Traveling people, enigmatic, outsiders, remnants of a Celtic past that was sometimes romanticized when the reality was hardship and prejudice, fascinated him. Perhaps it is the bonds that tie them, bonds I’m scared of, especially with women. He didn’t want to think this was true. He was a man who thought his inability to engage emotionally was a mark of intellect. Wee Gerry said my going to the high school cut me off forever from ordinary folk. Maybe he was right.