The Low Road

by A. D. Scott

  A horse and cart delivering coal stopped on his side of the street, blocking the way. He could not overtake it for a few minutes. When he did he saw that they were only a few streets from Mr. Dochery’s flat.

  Once again, it was a tall, soot-blackened tenement block, one that had survived the carpet bombing of Clydeside. They parked in front of an empty block, bright with fireweed and broken glass, which had not been so lucky. Shipyard cranes filled the skyline to the right. And litter and dust and empty dreams tumbled in a wind coming off the river. The bright sun made it all the more drab.

  The shipyards were silent, it being late on a Saturday, none of the usual pulse of industrial noise echoing between buildings. And there were few men around, most being at the pub, celebrating a win or recovering from the loss of their football team. Whichever it was, the public houses would be full.

  There were no numbers on the buildings. Jimmy asked a wee boy, and the boy asked for sixpence. McAllister gave it to him. Then another boy asked for sixpence to “mind the car.” Jimmy was about to refuse, but McAllister handed over the silver coin.

  The old man lived in a single end unit on the top floor. It took awhile for him to answer the door. McAllister could see that the worn steps and the four flights would discourage anyone, especially a man in his seventies, from going out much.

  “I’ve been expecting you,” he said when he eventually answered the door. He nodded to Jimmy. They had not been introduced, but Mr. Dochery could guess who the man with the red hair was.

  “I read about your troubles,” Mr. Dochery said after the men had refused a cup of tea.

  “That’s not what this is about,” McAllister began. “My mother’s flat was broken into. Your Gerry was there, questioning the neighbors, whilst his friends were smashing up the place.”

  “That’s no’ right . . . no’ right at all.” The old man was shaking his head slowly, his eyes swimming with old people’s tears.

  McAllister wanted to comfort him. But didn’t. “They smashed her best china, they tore up all her pictures of ma dad, ma brother, even their wedding photos were ripped in half.” McAllister felt sick at being so relentless. “He tried to pin a murder on me. He might have . . .” This was going too far; it was only a guess that Gerry Docherty was involved in the lad’s death. “I want this ended so I need to talk to your Gerry.”

  “Is your mother safe?”

  McAllister could see the old man’s eyes filling up again. “She’s away on a wee holiday.” He was reluctant to name the place his mother was; there was no safety anywhere until this was over.

  The old man started muttering, “Why? Why?” He looked like a puff of wind would break him in half.

  McAllister remembered the strong laughing man in his fireman’s uniform, lifting him up into the driver’s seat of the bright red engine. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s no’ your fault.”

  “Why Mrs. McAllister? She always looked out for Gerry. She was always right good to him.”

  McAllister could barely hear the words, but Jimmy did. “Was your Gerry working for them bookies that ran the boxing before the war?” he asked.

  It was McAllister’s turn to be surprised. Did this whole saga go that far back? And he noted that Jimmy did not specify what type of boxing.

  “Bookies?” Mr. Dochery was shaking his head as though this might shake loose a memory. “Aa’ve no idea.”

  They saw he needed to talk, and they listened.

  “After he turned eleven, maybe twelve, our Gerry was always in trouble.” It began not long after his son started secondary school. The truant officer was always at the door. His son always had cash in his pocket, a florin here, a ten-shilling note there—a lot of money in those days. “Gerry never knew his mother. An’ I was always working. Then his granny, ma mother, she died, ’n’ there was no one to look out for him, except Mrs. McAllister . . . so for our Gerry to hurt her? That’s no’ right.” He sighed long and slow; years of accumulated sadness were in that breath. Years of disappointment. And helplessness.

  “Women, their wee bits o’ things meant so much to them . . .” Mr. Dochery looked up at the shelf above the china cabinet. There was a china shepherdess, the kind bought at the Barrows or won at the fairground. There was a mug saying Souvenir of Largs, and three framed photographs. One was a small faded wedding portrait, the bride in a simple tailored dress, looking away from the camera at the man in uniform perhaps a foot taller than his bride. The second picture was of a group of men in uniform posed in front of a fire engine, a replica of the one McAllister’s mother had in a similar silver frame, now destroyed. The third was a holiday snap in a cheap wooden frame, the varnish cracked and peeling. It was taken at the seaside. McAllister looked at it again. It was a picture of McAllister, his mother, his father, his brother, and Wee Gerry. They were all smiling.

  Millport, that summer I won my scholarship and everything changed. The thought hurt. The old man muttered again, “Poor Mrs. McAllister, that’s no’ right.” McAllister thought, He’s right, Gerry’s abandoned all decency and honor.

  With a turn of his head, Jimmy gestured to the door, Time to go.

  McAllister nodded. “Mr. Dochery, if you can tell us where we might find Gerry, we’ll be gone.”

  “There’s this warehouse across the river, he says he works in a building business there.” The old man sounded skeptical; nothing he knew of his son’s affairs was as harmless as a building business. “If you open yon drawer, third one down, pass me paper and a pencil, I’ll draw a map.” He drew the map. In a simple drawing he betrayed his son.

  • • •

  The warehouse was off South Street in Whiteinch at the far end of the Broomielaw, an area of stone-built warehouses and demolition yards, and run-down wharves, unattractive and dirty. They took the ferry from Linthouse across the Clyde. The giant cranes and gantries of Fairfield shipyard hung over the thick dark water of the river, dwarfing the small vehicular drive-on drive-off boat.

  It had been years since McAllister had been in Partick, the original home of Partick Thistle football club, and a district he remembered well from his time as a cadet reporter.

  On an early evening on a Saturday, it should have been shut. But through the iron railings and across the large cobbled yard in front of the long low warehouse, Jimmy and McAllister could see men loading and unloading two lorries, one van, and a horse and cart with bricks, planks of timber, and other building materials.

  They stayed in the car, watching the scene for about five minutes. McAllister said, “No use making ourselves obvious.” He started the car and began to drive off towards the city center. “We can come back after dark.”

  Jimmy grunted. He’d been thinking the same, but he had been planning to visit without an amateur like McAllister in tow, or in such an obviously expensive car. “Sure you’re up for it? Your night in the lock-up was hardly a doddle.”

  “The sooner I have it out with Gerry Dochery, the sooner I get home.”

  They didn’t take the car. After leaving it outside the house on Blythswood Square they returned by bus, then went to a pub near the warehouse to wait for darkness, hoping whoever had been at the yard earlier would be long gone. When the warning bell rang signaling five minutes to closing time, Jimmy McPhee and McAllister finished their beer and walked around the back streets, waiting for the last of the drinkers to stumble home. Then they went to work.

  The high stone wall around the property was old, the mortar crumbling, but Jimmy was up and astride the wall with ease. McAllister was balanced halfway up, unable to find further toeholds. With surprising strength for such a small man, Jimmy put a hand down, gripped McAllister, and hauled him up the last two feet. The drop to the other side was into soft ground but thick with stinging nettles. McAllister hissed on an in-breath, trying not to curse, as he felt the sharp pain on the palms of his hands.

  In front of the warehouse, the cobblestoned area the size of a narrow football pitch was open and empty and anyone cros
sing it would be easily seen. They snuck around to the riverside at the back of the building. On this side, the warehouse doors were large enough to admit cargoes of cotton or coal or timber or iron girders. Overhead three gantries reached out over the dock. At the end of them hung a block and tackle. Resembling an oversized scaffold, the dangling noose was high-tension wire, not hemp rope, and the hook—a huge curve silhouetted against the night sky—looked large enough to execute an elephant.

  The dock was empty; likewise the short jetty. No sign of movement, no craft alongside, nothing tied to the substantial pylons large enough to accommodate a coastal tramp or sailing ship or a barge or three. The flow of the Clyde was imperceptible. On the flat surface a mirror image of winking red lights at the top of the high gantries of the shipyard looked romantic. But it was all a deception; the menace of that oily black stretch of water, now underused and overpolluted, but still deep enough to launch an ocean liner, was branded into McAllister’s psyche. This was the river that had claimed his brother.

  Jimmy was examining an outside stone staircase leading to the level first floor, then up to a door leading to the attic space above, looking for access. They tried the door. A substantial wooden affair with iron crossbraces, it wouldn’t budge. Jimmy looked up at a long line of dormers, about seven feet apart, running the length of the steep slate-tiled roof. Some were windows, some doors leading out onto gantries. He gestured upwards and murmured, “You wait below. If anyone should come along, do nothing.” He saw McAllister shake his head. “I can look out for maself.”

  McAllister had to acknowledge the truth of that. Never had he felt so clumsy as after the climb over the wall when he had skinned his knuckles and torn fingernails. The nettle stings were throbbing, his right hand swollen as the poison spread.

  He was edgy. He dared not pace. He dared not smoke. It was a long wait.

  A scrabbling sound from above alerted him. He stepped out of the shadow of the staircase but could see nothing. Around the riverside, indeed in the entire city, rats as big as the proverbial cat were rife. So he stepped back into the shadows again. A minute later he heard a creak directly above him, a rubbing sound, timber on timber. He looked up. Out on the end of a gantry a figure—it could have been a monkey if they were on the Hooghly, not the Clyde—was clinging to the beam, lying as low as possible, inching its way to the end.

  It had to be Jimmy.

  The sound of metal hitting metal at high velocity rang out, the sound amplified by the water. Ping, ping. And a phut sound.

  An air rifle. McAllister remembered a neighbor shooting at rats with the gun. Ping. He ran out. “Jimmy,” he yelled, and instantly knew his mistake. But his yell distracted the shooter. He heard a patter of shots hit the cobblestones next to him. He ran back into the shadows of the warehouse wall. Shocked, scared, he could not think how to help Jimmy. All he could do was hide and watch.

  The creature, definitely Jimmy, McAllister thought as he watched him clamber over the edge of the wooden arm and cling to the wire. The shooter was firing again, aiming for the dangling figure, maybe missing him, maybe not, as Jimmy made no sound. His feet on the hook, he was trying to swing the wire to give himself momentum so as to reach the water.

  The wire moved, but not enough. At the high point of the arc, Jimmy launched himself into midair. There was a sharp crack as his body hit the edge of the jetty. A piercing yell cut through the night air, cut off by a splash.

  McAllister began to run. “Jimmy! Jimmy! Over here!”

  Not caring who was shooting, not caring he would surely be seen, he dropped to his knees at the edge of the jetty, one kneecap hitting a piece of metal bolted to the timber. Pain shot up his leg. He lay flat and peered underneath, searching amongst the wooden pillars and crossbeams for Jimmy’s face. For his grin.

  “Jimmy!” he was screaming. The name echoed back at him. Mocking him. Jimmy! He tried again. Same taunting echo. He pushed himself up and stumbled some yards further down. Shouted again. No one. Nothing. Except the gurgle of water sucking around the pilings. Except the hum of a sleeping city.

  The tide had turned and was retreating. Now the river was running fast. Black night merged with black water. In the rain that had begun a few minutes earlier, a hard steady rain arriving with no warning, no thunder, no lightning, drumming on the water, and visibility was down to a fraction above zero.

  McAllister patrolled the riverbank until stopped by a wall with a protruding iron security railing covered in barbed wire. His breathing harsh, his chest tight, he whispered Jimmy’s name. He sank down, falling on the painful knee. He didn’t care. He put a hand up to his face, finger and thumb into his eyelids, holding back the choking sobs racking his body. To lose another person, another brother of sorts, to this river, that he was unable to bear.

  The man above the gantry was watching. He, too, was waiting for Jimmy to surface. When he could no longer see through the dark and the rain, he pulled the door shut, walked down the stairs, let himself out by a small door cut into a main door, and snuck into the empty streets of Whiteinch, confident he had done the job, confident McAllister would not follow him. Nor find him. Or find Jimmy McPhee.

  • • •

  Mary heard the scrabbling at the door. She was scared, but not too scared to take a keek through a chink in the curtains, the windows being securely barred.

  McAllister. She sighed. What is it about drunk men that they can’t manage to put a key in the lock and turn it?

  “I am not your mother but I feel like saying, two o’clock in the morning, what time’s this to be out?” She was talking as she walked down the hallway, turned the key, and opened the door.

  He stumbled in. He leaned against the wall and slid down.

  Not that she wanted to—she felt like leaving him to sleep it off in a heap in the hallway—but she bent over him to pull him upright in case he choked. He was soaking wet. There was no smell of alcohol. She felt the heaving of his chest and thought he might be crying. She stepped back and switched on the light. He brought an arm up to cover his eyes but not before she saw the red rims, and a pain in his eyes that shocked her.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He sobbed.

  “McAllister! What’s happened?”

  “Jimmy’s gone. He’s gone.”

  She turned out the light, then sat on the floor beside him. She pulled him towards her.

  “Jimmy. He fell . . .” He was shaking, his teeth chattering. “I couldn’t help.”

  She was worried about his wet clothes. But he needed to talk. She listened. The sequence of the story confused her. It started with his brother, went via his childhood, his father, his mother, and Gerry Dochery. It started and ended in the Clyde.

  She forced him to stand and helped him to bed. Her bed. And for the rest of the night, all four hours of it, she held him close, spooning into his back, warming him, whispering into his ear when he wrestled with the bedcovers and nightmares.

  And in the morning, when the noise of the milkman delivering the bottles to her mother above, and the buses, and the cars, and the early pedestrians, filtered through the window and curtains into her dim lit room and her big bed, he turned to her. He pulled her to him. She did not want this to happen. But knew it was inevitable. They barely kissed. He penetrated her. And it felt right. But wrong. They made love with a ferocity that astonished them. Breathless, they lay conjoined just long enough to understand it was a mistake. Then he rolled over. Exhaustion, and release, and the heat of her coursed through his veins. And he fell asleep.

  She didn’t. Later she went to work, leaving him still asleep.

  When reason returned they would acknowledge it shouldn’t have happened but accepted it for what it was—comfort, love even. Neither of them ever mentioned it. And they would never forget.

  EIGHTEEN

  How many times do I have to say it? There is no story. You and the McPhee fellow were on private property. Around midnight. You heard an air rifle. But you saw no one. With Mc
Phee gone, you have no witnesses.” Sandy Marshall held up a hand when he saw McAllister about to interrupt. “And, not half a day earlier, you were in lockup on suspicion of murder. So, who’s going to believe you and a tinker?”

  Mary added, “You can’t go to the police. DI Willkie holds a grudge. He could still be out to get you.”

  “You too, Mary. And the Herald,” Sandy added. “I’m not unsympathetic, but I’m not about to publish an article on the illegal activities of one of our journalists.”

  It had been three days since Jimmy had fallen into the Clyde. There were no sightings of him, alive or dead. McAllister had contacted the river police, the ferrymen, shipyard workers, asking the likely whereabouts of a man coming ashore—dead or alive—with no result. He’d hunted throughout the Broomielaw, he’d been into pubs and shops, he’d questioned the tramps congregating under the railways arches. Not even the offer of cash had worked; no one had seen anyone or anything.

  He’s fine, he kept telling himself. He’s Jimmy McPhee, a man with nine lives. He hadn’t yet told Jenny McPhee her son was missing. The only ones who knew of that night were himself, Mary, Sandy, Jimmy, and whoever fired the rifle.