The House_Dark Urban Scottish Crime Story

by John Mayer

  Usually the only question on every man’s mind would be whether their horse would get off to a good start. However, today was no ordinary day. Today they were worried. Worried about their old mother and where she would spend her dying days. Worried about whether they could afford to live somewhere else. Worried about losing contact with a grandchild they saw rarely enough as it was. Worried about … and worried about … and worried about. Today there was no point in everyone posing their own flurry of questions. The same single question was on everyone’s mind: ‘Where is he?’

  In the bustle of Glasgow Airport, quite a few people had recognised him and done a quick double take. Swerving through the crowd and out into the car park, McLane strongly felt the need for fresh air. All the way from the Supreme Court to Heathrow and all during the flight, he’d taken very shallow breaths. As though fearing that to feel strong and invigorated would trigger the moment. The moment when this mighty battle would begin. The moment when more than a thousand families would - as in ancient times - hail him as their champion. They would part into two crowds, while he, standing alone would beat his breast plate with his short sword before striding out to fight the enemy’s best man on the dusty plain between the armies. Although it had been a short appearance in court, it had been a 4am rise to catch the first plane down to London and McLane was now beginning to feel tired. With the plane’s stale air still circulating in his blood and the weight of what lay ahead for the rest of the day at the front of his mind, McLane felt as though his brain was locked in a vice. Air! Fresh air was needed.

  Getting into the Range Rover, McLane docked his phone and quickly jabbed the ‘Silent’ button. Ever since he’d landed, it had buzzed and rung and vibrated till the message box was almost full. Driving with all the windows down, he kept to the slow lane of the motorway, trying to concentrate on what he’d say when he reached the Calton Bar. Checking the time and then checking the seconds ticking by, he hoped against hope that the traffic on the Kingston Bridge over the river Clyde wouldn’t be blocked; but of course, it was. Stuck high on the bridge, he tried not to look east. But his efforts to turn away from the sight of his boyhood home just brought wave upon wave of guilt. Guilty: that he hadn’t headed this off before it got started. Guilty: that he’d been in London when the letters came. Guilty: that his old aunt Bella would be inwardly worried sick but outwardly assuring the neighbours with a wave of her old hand that young Brogan would fix this. ‘He’s now Baron McLane of Calton, you know! Imagine! Wee Brogan’s a bloody Baron. I’m tellin’ ye, we’ve got nuthin’ to worry aboot.’

  At length, the vision of his aunt Bella boasting about him in the streets, rung so loudly in his head that he had to drop his forehead onto the wheel. As he lifted it, he couldn’t keep his eyes straight ahead any longer. Slowly he turned and looked. In the straight line between himself and the Calton, it was true that many parts of the city had been ‘remodelled’ to the point that they were unrecognisable to the older folk. Some had been bulldozed to make way for this very bridge. Other districts had been demolished to allow some foreign architect to experiment on the people of Glasgow before putting some variation of the same plan into action in another country. Suddenly, the blast of twin air horns coming from the articulated Polish truck behind him brought him out of his fugue.

  Putting his foot down, McLane changed lanes once and then again. Out in the fast lane, he ignored the sign for ‘City - East - Calton - Parkhead’ and flew on under the sign saying ‘Edinburgh 50 miles’.

  Putting his key in his own front door felt like betrayal. He knew they’d be packed into the Calton Bar. Some would by now be speculating what he’d say. Tucker had sent over a dozen messages wanting to know his ETA. Big Joe probably wasn’t far away now and he’d want to know what time they were sitting down to convene the war council. By chance, it was Ababuo whom McLane saw first:

  ‘Hello sweetheart. Come here and gimme a hug.’

  Ababuo seemed to grow every day now. She was filling out and getting quite tall, but of course, they had no way of knowing if that was a family trait or not:

  ‘Hi Dad! Welcome home. How’d it go in the Supreme Court?’

  ‘OK. Good. Yeah. Where’s Mum?’

  ‘She’s gone to the supermarket to complain. They keep sending her the wrong Pinot Grigio or something. She tried calling and they blew her off, so she’s angry and might be a while. We thought you were staying in Glasgow tonight. Why are you home?’

  Letting go of his beautiful daughter, McLane played an old card: ‘Oh I just need to look up some law before I see them. I might go over later.’

  Stopping on the stairs, Ababuo halted, as though in mid-air, and looked over the bannister: ‘You might go over later. What do you mean you might go over later? Isn’t everybody waiting for you over there?’

  Their eyes locked. He knew she’d had ‘the talk’ about boys with Joanne, but despite her figure, McLane still couldn’t see her as anything but his little girl and didn’t answer.

  ‘Dad! I’m not a kid any more. What’s wrong? I heard about the letters. Mum spoke to Molly this morning. It’s awful.’

  Ababuo had never seen her father so two-dimensional. He seemed deflated, his eyes were red and tired and his speech was far from his usual confident self. Coming down the few steps, Ababuo picked up her father’s court bags and dropped them at his study door. Taking him by the hand, she led him to the kitchen. Pulling out a chair, she offered:

  ‘Sit down. Have you eaten since this morning? D’you want a sandwich or something?’

  Slumping down into one of six hand-carved Japanese chairs, McLane could only nod.

  As she flung together a triple-decker, Ababuo kept flicking her eyes at him. Staring out of the window to the trees lining the back garden wall, he was miles away. Dropping the plate in front of him seemed to break his spell. Reaching out her hand to cover his, Ababuo’s dark chocolate brown eyes drew him in:

  ‘Dad, tell me. It isn’t Mum, or anything. Is it?’

  Shaking his head vigorously, McLane told her the truth: ‘Mum? No. No. Nothing like that sweetheart. No. It’s just …’

  Squeezing the back of his hand ever so gently, it was Ababuo’s eyes that asked the question ‘Just … what?’:

  ‘It’s … It’s just …Maybe you won’t understand.’

  Clasping both her hands around one of his was Ababuo’s way of demanding an answer:

  ‘Look darling. They’re all over there in the Calton Bar, waiting for me to arrive and wave my magic wand. Come out with some legalese to trump what it says in those letters. And I don’t know if I can. I really don’t.’

  Looking away from her, McLane tried the sandwich as his distraction, but Ababuo was onto that in a flash:

  ‘Of course, you can. You can …’

  Before she got out the next word, McLane dropped his hand over her two as though winning a game with a child:

  ‘Look darling. I can’t win every case. No-one can. And this one? Well! There’s … There’s thousands of people who … You’ve probably never heard the phrase ‘You can’t win against City Hall.’ It’s an American saying. They use it to mean …’

  Pulling her hands out from under his, Ababuo took her father by both wrists:

  ‘Well, I don’t know who ‘they’ are, but they’re not you. I don’t know this saying but it sounds pretty defeatist to me. Look Dad, what I do know is that if there’s one man who can beat anybody in a court, it’s you. Now, you look really tired. No! Make that ‘You look like death warmed up’. So why don’t you eat that sandwich and go and lie down. Mum was flaming mad when she left and shouting about seeing some General Manager, so I have a feeling that she won’t be home for quite a while.’

  This had been the very first time since she’d come to them that Ababuo had been the adult and he’d been the one being told what to do; and today of all days, that felt good. Very good. Tearing into his sandwich like a man who lived on the streets and who’d been given his first food in a week, for
the first time in many hours, McLane felt the weary weight of responsibility lift a hairs-breadth from his shoulders. When he’d forced in the last mouthful and swallowed the last of the beer Ababuo had nonchalantly put down in front of him, McLane hugged his daughter so tight that she had to gulp for breath:

  ‘Oh my darling. Stay with me on this. I have a feeling I’m going to need quite a lot of help. OK?’

  Drawing in enough breath for one sentence, Ababuo spoke with a steely resolve which could only have arisen from her childhood experience in Africa:

  ‘I’m so glad you asked, Dad, because I do want to help. I’ll help you all I can; if necessary all the way back to the Supreme Court.’

  ~~~o~~~

  Chapter 4

  The gold leaf in the ceiling always caught the first of the morning light that bounced at a surprising angle from the Loggia Gallery on the third floor below, right across the courtyard, through the stained glass windows and into his office. This odd phenomenon of upward morning light had given rise to the whispers that the rising sun itself bowed to the occupant of this office. Immediately after the building’s completion in 1888 when the phenomenon was noticed, it was said that Mr Young, the architect of these Glasgow City Chambers, had, with the approval of Queen Victoria, designed this office for occupation by his old friend and fellow Freemason. And those who claimed to know, said the brotherhood had vowed that this office would be occupied by a fellow Mason: for ever.

  The story was quite believable that it had taken four stout men and a boy drawing on pulley ropes to place the vast Spanish mahogany desk just on the right spot to catch the first ray of morning sun every day in the month of June. On the wall adjacent to the apologetic sunlight hung the four metre square tapestry which pronounced that this was the city where the tree never grew, the bird never sang, the river didn’t flow nor the bell ring without the permission of the occupant of this office.

  In the old public houses and lodging taverns around the dockside, it was often argued that in Edinburgh, the Lord Justice General in Parliament House wielded legal authority over the whole nation. However, without anyone ever explicitly saying so, on the opposite side of this small country, Glasgow City Chambers had been built as the protestant counterbalance to the catholic built Parliament House. Most of Scotland’s working people lived under Glasgow City Council’s jurisdiction and in times gone by, most of the country’s trade went up and down the river Clyde. In the political world, it was certain that where Glasgow City Council went, so did many other local authorities around Scotland. In the newcomer building itself, there were nearly as many whispered old stories as were told in Parliament House. There were officers of the council whose titles now sounded just as archaic. And, the political decisions made in huddles behind the Carrera white marble statues and over dinner in the Grand Banqueting Hall which could match any in Europe, rivalled many legal decisions made in Parliament House.

  Although adjacent to his marble floored office there was a well-proportioned room capable of accommodating a couple of secretaries, filing cabinets around the walls and even a modern-day water cooler in the corner, no-one had been employed in that room for longer than most who worked in ‘The Chambers’ could remember. This ante-room had a frosted glass panelled door onto the main corridor; but it had been locked for well over ten years now and no-one could remember where the key to open it might be. Everyone knew that first thing every weekday morning, he stood alone in the old goods lift going up to his office; which was positioned right below ‘The Gift’. By that, they meant the gift of a Statue of Liberty from the French which stood firmly dead centre at the top of the building overlooking the passing masses below in George Square. Although much smaller than the one presented by the French Government to the United States for use in welcoming the tired, the poor and the huddled masses, it nevertheless represented that fire in the belly which the 18th century proletariat had to govern themselves.

  Those who claimed to know someone who’d spoken to someone who worked beside someone who’d once seen an old file, said he lived alone, worked alone, ate a home-made lunch alone at his desk and had never taken a drop of alcohol in his life. He never went networking at dinners. Nor did he attend meetings, regarding such time spent as a waste; when all that would happen was an affirmation of what he’d decided in the first place. Meetings were of course scheduled and people did attend them. In accordance with Council Procedures and By-Laws, agendas were debated and formal Minutes were always kept. But whenever his name appeared it was always accompanied by the diminutive ‘i.a.’ in absentia. When his father had occupied this room, down in the servitors’ quarters and in the kitchens, despite his initials being WR, he’d been given the nickname ‘C’ after ‘Control’ in the big hit TV series Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. But now that the son was in this room, they thought it best, just in case he ever heard it mentioned, that they call him ‘Mr C'.

  Only one remaining old servitor remembered him on his first day after being elected a City Councillor. He’d walked in stony-faced through a cheering crowd as though he owned the place and within three months had become chairman of the Parks and Recreation committee. Only two months after that he’d worked all his father’s old friends to get his hands on the chairmanship of the influential ‘Transportation’ committee. But those seats of power were as nothing when he successfully grabbed the chair of the hugely important ‘Finance and Administration’ committee. It was no surprise therefore that with his ruthless cunning and silent steely ambition, it was only a matter of another year before he won the chairmanship of the one place through which vast amounts of UK central government money flowed every year: Glasgow City Council’s Department of Urban Development.

  That had been almost twenty years before: and with an iron fist in a cold steel glove, Mr C had held the reins of power over those committees ever since.

  ~~~o~~~

  Chapter 5

  Young Father Flaherty had come over from County Dublin, Ireland to serve the good people of Saint Mary Magdalene’s in the Calton only thirty three years before. He was so-called because, purely by chance, his predecessor, who was no immediate relation, had also been called Father Flaherty. In his early years, some still referred to ‘the real Father Flaherty’ but that tag had fallen away as the Young Father had proved himself again and again in time of need. A cheery teenager in Dublin in the late 1970s he was still fond of playing an eclectic mix of Emerson Lake and Palmer, Jethro Tull and The Incredible String Band; all of whom could be heard in the back lane coming through the thick stained glass window of his study before Services on weekday evenings. But tonight, no happy Sounds of the Seventies filled the air. The brick walled lane behind the church was in pitch darkness and the few people using it as a short cut were walking with their heads down as though God Himself had deserted them.

  Filing in to their pews, some knew exactly where they wanted to sit while others had to remember where they last sat; several years ago. When he emerged, Young Father Flaherty could hardly believe his eyes. Not even on Christmas Eve, had his church been so full. A veritable sea of heads stretched out before him. Almost on automatic pilot, Young Father Flaherty nearly stumbled in the Greeting because he was trying to count heads at the same time. Even when sprinkling through the Penitential Rite and during the Confiteor, he couldn’t help himself from trying to remember when he’d last addressed so many of his flock. The Kyrie and the Gloria went more smoothly. Only when he invited the collective to join the Opening Prayer did he notice that many had already begun.

  Some had immediately thrown their letter onto their kitchen coal fire. Others had in anger squeezed theirs into their fist and thrown it into the bin. Only a few had kept theirs in a drawer. In truth, they hadn’t quite known what to do with them. There had been a suggestion that they all be kept in the basement of the Calton Bar; but that had been rejected for want of his opinion. Another suggestion was that they return them all en masse, but the sting had gone out of that tactic since some had already
been burned. Only perhaps one seemed pristine and intact and it sat on the marble mantelpiece behind the big white faced clock in Young Father Flaherty’s study.

  The murmur of the faithful deep in prayer was lifting to High Heaven when Young Father Flaherty suddenly stopped. With the momentum of two thousand years behind them, the faithful took several seconds to realise what had happened and come to a halt. Some were elbowing their neighbour. Others were wide eyed, never having experienced this in all their days.

  Standing with his hands folded across his chest, Young Father Flaherty took a moment to allow himself to become their collective focus. Only when every eye was fixed on himself did he speak:

  ‘My dear friends and neighbours. As I look over you, I see some I’ve baptised, many of those I’ve married and more than a few whom I haven’t seen here in church for quite a wee while. But friends, it’s not my eyes that are compelling me to stop in the middle of prayer: it’s my heart. I want to tell you that I can feel something in the air tonight that I’ve seldom felt before. Amongst your fears and concerns, worries and wonders, I can feel the presence of God more strongly than I’ve ever felt Him in my life. I feel no need to plead for Him to come to our aid. He is here tonight and will, I assure you, watch over you by day and by night. For you are His, body and soul, for ever. Friends, I want you to take a few moments to really open your fearful hearts and allow the Holy Spirit to enter. And once in, hold that faith as privately as the blood in your veins pulses to your every extremity. But whilst experiencing your glorious joy, I want you to remember that He and He alone is our Saviour and Protector. For He is the everlasting Life. Amen.’