The Low Road

by A. D. Scott

  She then went to a corner shop near the Renfrew Street bus station where they sold everything from groceries to hardware to small bags of coal. Next stop was the Herald stationery cupboard. She then took the purchases to the toilet and prepared a large heavy-duty envelope, one that closed by wrapping string around a circle of cardboard. For the next step she put on the pink rubber gloves she’d bought at the general store. Working over the toilet bowl, she tipped the contents of a mimeograph machine ink refill into a small plastic bag, and tied it loosely with an elastic band.

  Her desk was within talking distance of the sub-editors’ table, if you raised your voice, and definitely within hearing range of Derrick Keith—formally known as Mr. Sleazy.

  “Hey, Lachie,” she called out, “those documents I showed you earlier, surely there’s something there we can use to get Gordon.”

  “You heard what the editor said, he’s off the hook. Printing something now would seem like sour grapes.” The man was busy, but looking up at Mary he gave her a fierce glare. “Weren’t you supposed to hand them documents in to the polis? Don’t want you up on a charge of withholding evidence.”

  Mary had briefed the cadet earlier. He had no idea what she was up to, only that she was out to get Derrick, a man he had no time for.

  “They’re in my locker. I’ll take it over to Central when I’ve finished this.” She started to type furiously. Ten minutes later she rolled the article out of the typewriter, saying, loudly to Lachie on the subs’ desk, “Right, better get this to the editor to approve before I waste your time.”

  As she left she winked at the cadet. He was as baffled as Lachie but, intrigued, he was ready to play his part in Mary’s scheme.

  She waited fifteen minutes. When she came back, she was told Derrick had left on a break.

  The cadet said, “I followed him like you asked. I saw him go into your locker—” He saw the question on her face. “No, he didn’t see me.” He started to laugh. “He’s in the gents’, scrubbing his hands wi’ the lavvy brush.”

  Mary marched down the corridor, ran down one flight of stairs, and went into the gents’. The cadet followed.

  “Hey, you can’t come in here!” a man shouted as he turned his back to her to button up his fly.

  She ignored him, marching up to the washbasins, where Derrick, seeing her in the mirror, snarled, “I’ll get you for this!”

  She looked at the ink-stained basin, looked at his blue-black hands, and said, “So are you going to tell me what you were doing in my locker? Or do you want to complain about me to the editor?”

  In the mirror she could see the cadet with the borrowed camera.

  “Watch the birdie,” he called out.

  Derrick Keith half turned, giving a clear view of the ink-stained sink, the right hand dark to the wrist, the left hand also marked. A flash bounced off the mirror. A second flash followed. Derrick rushed towards him, inky water dripping over the black and white tiles. He was grabbing at the young man, at the camera, shouting, “Give me that! You’ve no right—”

  “You had no right to go into my locker.” Mary was leaning against the wall, grinning. “I can guess what you were up to—stealing the documents to pass on to your pal Councilor Gordon.”

  “They were stolen from him in the first place.”

  Mary grinned. “No denials? No excuses?”

  A man came in, saw her, did a double take worthy of a music hall comedian, and said, “Whatever’s going on will you please finish coz I’m desperate.” And he held his knees together miming a wee boy about to pee his pants.

  “He’s desperate too.” Mary pointed at Derrick. “And finished.”

  Later the cadet reporter confessed to Mary that there was no film in the camera. “I didn’t have time to load it,” he apologized.

  “Never mind,” she said. “It did the trick.”

  “What about the documents I typed up?” the cadet asked.

  “Sorry, I didn’t give you the real ones, I . . .” She didn’t want to say she trusted no one. “They were my mother’s estate accounts for nineteen forty-seven to forty-eight,” she told him.

  “It’s okay, I get it.”

  That did it. He was now, at least in Mary’s mind, the new journalist on the crime desk.

  “D’you fancy a job on the crime desk to replace Mr. Sleazy?”

  “You’re kidding. I want nothing more.” His grin was as wide as a basking shark’s, basking. “But what about Derrick?”

  “He’s resigned, apparently to take up a senior post on the Kirkudbright Courier.”

  And they laughed. More than necessary. He said, “A drink later?” and she looked at him. Saw a good-looking bright man maybe a couple of years younger than her and was tempted. “Aye, a drink. But colleagues.”

  She took in the flash of disappointment and was flattered. And pleased. Then told herself, Good decision, no episodes with colleagues. Ever.

  That night, alone in the flat—Jimmy having disappeared yet again—Mary considered her alternatives. More and more, even one of the best newspapers in the country was beginning to feel parochial. She was twenty-eight. Her birthday had passed, forgotten by her but not by her mother, ten days ago.

  I vowed I’d be an internationally respected journalist by thirty, she reminded herself. Maybe it’s time to make a move.

  Six months back, she’d sent her curriculum vitae to one newspaper only. She knew where she wanted to be; it was either the Manchester Guardian or else she’d take time off, go abroad for a year. France, she was thinking, a complete change of scene, but she wanted to be there on assignment, with a salary.

  Next morning the reporter newly on the crime desk unearthed a new twist in the brothers Gordon saga. Trying to impress Mary and the editor, he’d come in early to study the documents bequeathed by Gerry Docherty via Sheena his girlfriend.

  Calum—his name was Calum Sangster of the Oban Sangsters two generations back—told her. “Those documents you came across” (he hadn’t been told how they came into the Herald’s possession). “It shows here . . .” He held up two or three sheets of aging paper, as the Herald had kept the originals and sent copies to the police. Just in case they get lost, Mary had argued.

  “The Gordon & Sons company,” Calum continued, “was started by one Mr. James Gordon, grandfather of Councilor Gordon. There’s not much information because it was a wee family operation. Then his son, father of the Gordon brothers, joined the firm, developed the business, and turned Gordon & Sons into a limited liability company. That was when they bought the warehouse in Whiteinch.” He laid down a separate document detailing the purchase.

  He was being pedantic. Mary didn’t mind. It showed he was good at research and careful with the facts.

  “Then he, the father of Councilor Gordon, was killed in the war, a bomb landed on his house, and the business went to his four sons.”

  “Four sons?” She got it instantly. “So where is number four?”

  “Actually he was a twin—to Alasdair Gordon . . .”

  “The psycho?”

  “Aye, but we canny call him that in the Herald.” He grinned at her through a thick lock of hair falling over his left eye, and she saw again how attractive he was. No more men, right? She chided herself. Besides, he’s far too young. A few years was no age difference when it was the man who was older. But if it’s a woman? It was another of those prejudices that infuriated her.

  “I searched ‘Births, Deaths and Marriages.’ It seems he is still alive. But I can find no trace of him, which is strange, as he’s registered as a director of the building company, and his name and signature are on most of the documents. Then I found this. It was on the wall of a boxing club I visited.”

  He unrolled a small poster, the type that would have been mimeographed and stuck on lampposts. She knew the format, had seen them often enough around the city. It was for a match in a small venue in Paisley, a formerly prosperous town, southwest of Glasgow, now a shabby place, the Victorian Era weav
ing mills long since closed down.

  “A fight between Jimmy McPhee and Smart Alec Gordon? Right. But what does this have to do with anything?” Mary asked as she studied the poster.

  He caught Mary’s look of inquiry. “I don’t follow boxing. I’m a film buff.”

  “That explains why you look so peely-wally.”

  They laughed.

  “Look at the bottom line.” No-holds-barred contest to follow the main events. It was in bold but small type. Mary knew what that meant.

  “Bare-knuckle boxing,” she said. “Again, where does it get us?”

  “It establishes a connection.”

  “So?” Mary shook her long hair in frustration.

  Calum had no answer to that, so he quickly turned to the next page in his notebook. “The youngest Gordon brother, I have found information on him. His name is on many of the contracts and accounts, and he’s surprisingly well educated.” There was no need to tell Mary why it was surprising that a man coming from a family like the Gordons, had an education. “He’s a qualified chartered accountant.”

  “That explains why the books were so well kept. Calum, this is great research, but where is the story?”

  “No idea,” Calum said.

  She later thought that the research on the brothers Gordon was interesting and definitely a good career move on Calum’s part, but what next?

  With no ideas of her own, Mary decided to ask her mother’s cousin, another stuffed shirt. Mary remembered him from family gatherings. His redeeming feature was his obsession with the American War of Independence and most things American. As she picked up the phone, she had the good grace to smile, knowing she was doing what Sleazy Derrick had accused her of, using yer friends and family in high places.

  “Taxes,” her second cousin said over the telephone after she explained her quest. “That’s how they got Al Capone.”

  “If I send you a copy of the second set of accounts, could you give me an opinion?”

  “Only if you promise to come to dinner; it’s been so long, my children refuse to believe they are related to the famous Mary Ballantyne.”

  She laughed. “Infamous, according to my mother.”

  Dinner agreed to, she sent over the accounts books. A day later he called. “Plenty to intrigue Her Majesty’s Inspector of Taxes,” he said. “I’ve written a brief overview, and whoever did the accounts, I’d offer him a position in my firm if he’d turn legitimate. A real Meyer Lansky.”

  A phone call the next afternoon cheered her immensely.

  “I believe the tax man has made a surprise visit to Gordon & Sons. And to Councilor Gordon,” her second cousin told her. “I’ve no idea if they will be able to prosecute, but it will certainly be uncomfortable for them.”

  “That was quick,” she replied, meaning the move by the notoriously slow tax department, except when they were collecting money.

  “I did hear that someone else has come forward with information.”

  “Who?”

  “First, promise you’ll come to Sunday luncheon? And bring your mother?”

  “Promise.”

  When he told her, her jaw dropped. Catching flies, her housemistress at her former smart school for girls had called it.

  “And Councilor Gordon?”

  “No doubt he will be asked to answer, and pay, and probably be charged with fraud and tax evasion. I told you he was our very own version of Al Capone.” The smugness of his voice reminded Mary how excruciatingly painful Sunday lunch was going to be.

  When she put down the phone, Mary knew that in leaving this city, she would be out on her own for the first time in her career, no longer able to pick up a telephone and inveigle distant and not-so-distant relatives, and friends of her late father, to help her winkle out information, by legal means, or otherwise.

  Then she remembered the poster. And she thought of another friend of her father’s, a fellow boxing aficionado. He will know surely, she thought as she leafed through her “wee black book,” her contact bible.

  “Shuggy? It’s Mary Ballantyne. How about I buy you a drink?” She listened. Then laughed. “Aye. You know me too well. But it will be great to see you and, aye, you’re right, I need to pick your brain. Six? Thon pub at the bottom of Garnethill? You’re on.”

  “Aye, I kent him,” Shuggy said when Mary showed him the poster. “A right maniac, but no boxing brain. In fact no brain at all.” He chortled into his pint.

  Mary had noted the past tense—kent. “So what happened? I can’t find any trace of the man.”

  “Adding a wee bit o’ color to your Councilor Gordon story, are ye?” Not much went past Shuggy. He might have cauliflower ears and a nose that resembled a volcanic eruption, but his brain was all working. “See, I’d like to tell you, you being your father’s daughter, but with thon tink still around it’s best I keep ma mouth shut.”

  “Jimmy McPhee?”

  “From what I heard, you’re right good pals wi’ him.” He winked. She didn’t mind. Her being single, being teased about any man she came into contact with was fair game. “Anyhow, thon Gordon twin, last I knew he was in the loony bin out at Gartnavel. You know, indeterminate sentence ‘at Her Majesty’s pleasure.’ ”

  “Thanks, Shuggy.”

  Mary ordered and paid for more drinks. She was comfortable in the pub, one of many in Glasgow with the long dark wood bar-counter, brass rail along the bottom, spittoons still positioned at intervals. Hopefully no longer in use, she thought, but avoided them nonetheless.

  As he sipped carefully on his beer, careful not to disturb the sediment on the bottom of the lukewarm hop-scented Bass stout, she listened to the reminiscences of his and her father’s outings to boxing matches at the Kelvin Hall. Shuggy was more than a contact; he was formerly Corporal Hugh McPherson, inveterate fighter, and proud soldier in her father’s regiment. A fine fellow to have on your side in a dark corner was her father’s description of him.

  They parted with Mary promising to meet up again but as friends, not journalist and informant.

  “Maybe we could go to the boxing, like auld times,” he said.

  She wasn’t sure she liked boxing anymore but said, “I’d like that.”

  As she walked home, thinking through the whole debacle, Mary became convinced that the brother who was incarcerated in the Glasgow Mental Hospital, the section for the criminally insane, was important. How, she didn’t know. Maybe he was released. Jimmy will know. But she had no idea where to find him. When she and Jimmy had parted, she assumed he went back to his Highland home.

  It’s unlikely he’ll come to Gerry Dochery’s funeral, she thought. But McAllister will surely return for the service. He might know how to contact Jimmy.

  McAllister. She asked herself if she cared for him as more than a friend. No, she decided. He was—is—a friend. But also a distraction. An about-to-be-married distraction.

  • • •

  Early evening the next day, Mary was at home. Two men came to the flat. When she keeked through the curtains to see who it was, she recognized Shuggy. The other man she didn’t know.

  “You’re coming wi’ us,” the stranger told her when she opened the door to see Shuggy, shuffling on the doorstep, cap twisting and turning in his hands.

  “Who’s goin’ make me?” She stepped back, ready to slam the door shut on his foot.

  “You’ll be safe. You’re under the protection o’ your wee tinker friend.”

  “Jimmy asked for me?”

  “No skin aff o’ ma nose if you don’t come.” He climbed the steps.

  She grabbed her bag and locked up. In the car she could feel Shuggy’s agitation and knew he was scared.

  “I’m right sorry about this,” he whispered as they sat in the back of the car.

  “Jimmy sent for me, we’ll be fine,” she whispered back. She was scared. But never scared enough. Her position on the newspaper, her upbringing as daughter of an illustrious soldier and ancient family, had bred into her a sense
of invincibility.

  The drive went through the streets along the north side of the Clyde, an area of warehouses and elaborate buildings with statues and cornices and mock Greek columns, former counting houses of the nineteenth-century “tobacco lairds” of the Merchant City. Other buildings, no longer holding the tea and cotton and plunder of empire, were dark dirty and desolate, echoing Mary’s feeling that this outing was not about to turn pleasant.

  At first Mary had thought their destination might be the warehouse McAllister had told her about. But a few miles further on, the car turned northwest towards countryside, and after another four or so miles, turned in to a track leading to a farmyard. Parked along the lane, making passing difficult, were cars and vans; in the farmyard itself, more parked vehicles.

  Quite a crowd, she thought.

  Low stone byres surrounded a cobblestoned square, with grass and weeds sprouting around the perimeter. Only one of the buildings seemed to be in use. The driver pulled up alongside open doors wide enough and high enough to accommodate a laden hay cart, and turned off the engine. She could hear the grumble of a crowd waiting for a spectacle, preferably bloody, to begin.

  It was dusk—the gloaming, in Scottish parlance. Across the yard, Mary’s eye was drawn to a circle of men, seeing and feeling an anticipation in the swaying bodies.

  The man turned. He pointed a finger at her. His almost joined-up eyebrows remained steady, his voice calm.

  “You’ve been asked to be here as a witness. When it’s over, someone will take you home. If it goes wrong for the Highlander, you’re to get news back to his mother. And however it works out, there’s to be no more bad blood. Understood?”

  She nodded. “Aye, understood.”

  He continued, “If you write one word ’bout this, someone might come for you. Or your mother. Same goes if you tell the police.” He looked at her carefully.

  Again she said, “Understood.”