by Jay Stringer
‘Apology accepted, Fran, but I’m not twelve, and I’m not just playing at this. It’s my job now, and I’m going to get it done. Where will I find her?’
There was a pause on the line. I could almost hear the face he must have been pulling, the tussle that went on before he spoke. ‘She runs the laundrette on High Street, across from McChuills.’
‘I know the place.’
McChuills was a fun little pub. It was often full of Celtic fans and had a pirate flag flying outside. I’d been in there a few times, but I doubted the welcome was going to be as warm across the road in the laundrette.
‘Sam, it’s great to see you so fired up. Your dad would be proud of you. But if you keep talking to these people, you’re not going to like some of the answers.’
He hung up, maybe to avoid my next question.
What did he mean?
Twenty-Four
Back in my father’s time, High Street had been a dangerous place, all crumbling tenements and football pubs. The kind of place he didn’t like me going to on my own. Another street that had suffered from accidental fires.
More recently, though, it had been taken over by the creeping gentrification that was changing the face of my hometown. The university had built new student accommodation on one side of the street, which had brought in supermarkets and fast food shops to cater for the kids.
The opposite side of the street was still living in the past, with a row of tenements and small businesses on the ground floor all along the block: a grotto, a hairdresser’s, two cafés, two eastern European food shops, and a laundrette.
The laundrette perched at the far end of the block. The front was mostly taken up by windows with green and white paint around the frames. Mesh covered the windows, protecting the glass from a non-existent riot. The windows were large, and even with the mesh covering they still let a lot of light into the interior. I told Phil to stay outside and keep an eye on me through the window; he would only come in if I stepped out of sight.
I pushed through the door. The inside was full of noise, with washing machines lining one wall and tumble dryers lining the opposite side. The back wall was taken up by hangers full of clothes. There was the smell of damp and warm clothes in the air, and the line of machines were creating a loud rumble on either side of me. A short woman stepped from between the hangers to greet me. She was solid and square, with a face that was set into a scowl. Her age could have been anywhere between fifty and a million.
‘How I help?’ she asked.
Her accent was heavy, and she seemed to think about every word.
‘I’m looking for Neda Tenac?’
She looked me up and down, tilting her head back as she did. ‘Who ask?’
‘My name’s Sam. I’d like to talk about Rab Anderson.’
‘I not know Neda—or he.’
I pulled one of the letters I’d lifted at Rab’s flat out of my pocket. One that had Tenac’s name and address. I handed it to her. Her expression changed while she read it—lightening a little, with the hint of a smile tugging at the edges of her lips.
‘Well, you’re good, aren’t you?’ Her accent shifted. It still carried traces of eastern Europe, but now it showed signs of having been corrupted and eased by a long time living in Glasgow. She took on a conspiratorial tone. ‘The gorilla outside, hen, is he with you?’
‘He is.’
‘Wise. A lot of people’re looking for Rab today. Most of them scarier than you.’
I needed to think on my feet. I decided to play dumb, to still be thinking Rab was alive. ‘I’m working for his publisher. We want to talk to him about his manuscript, but I can’t find him.’
‘Girl, are you a bad liar. Everyone who’s looking for Rab? They’re all talking. You’re the private investigator, Sam Ireland, and you’re looking for him for a solicitor who works in the town. You lie to me again, and I may be not so nice to you.’
That last line carried all manner of threat and promise. I started to notice how large her hands were, calluses on her knuckles like an old boxer.
‘You’re right. I’m the PI.’ I hit back with something I knew, revealing one of my cards to up the ante. ‘The house in Copland Road—you work for Rab, or do the two of you run it together?’
Despite the heat from the dryers, I felt the temperature drop in the space between us. Her eyes grew hard. ‘Tread lightly, hen. You’re getting noticed today and not by people who are nice or patient. You’re getting noticed by people like me, and it’s a mistake you only get to make once. This isn’t your world.’
That was the last time I was going to be patted on the head. I went all in.
‘You don’t know what my world is, but I know yours. You and Rab, you work together. You sell women’s bodies, and you pocket the money. I’ve already tipped off the police about Copland Road and all the blood they’re going to find in the bedroom. If you really want to play the game of who has the scariest friends in town, then how about I call them again and tell them you run the house?’
She blinked. Lost her grip on the situation for a moment. I’d thrown something at her that she hadn’t known before.
‘Blood?’
I pushed the advantage with a smirk. ‘Oh, you’ve not been told? Someone’s donated a lot of blood to the walls in the front bedroom. Enough to make me think the person who lost it isn’t walking around any more. Someone was trying to clean up the mess, but the cops will be there by now, and he’s probably in custody.’
‘Describe this man.’
‘Like a smaller version of the Easter Island statues. Accent like yours. Carries a hammer, but he’s not as cute as Thor.’
‘Nick,’ she said, more to herself than me. She nodded. ‘One of Gilbert’s boys. For them to keep that secret is bad. It means a lot of people, everyone who was there, is staying silent.’
‘Why would they force you out?’
I asked that without knowing what she actually did, but I figured one thing at a time.
‘Business. People are useful until they’re not. They are scary until they’re not. When they’re not,’ she stuck her bottom lip out and nodded her head to the side, like she was talking about a bad game from her favourite sports team, ‘they go away.’
‘Has Rab gone away?’
‘Maybe.’
‘But you do work with him?’
She looked like I’d spat in her face. ‘Again you push. All the insults. I wouldn’t work with Rab. He’s an arsehole. Or was.’ She enjoyed her own joke. ‘We share interest in one house. It’s the one he wouldn’t sell to me. He wanted to keep a stake in Copland Road, but we do not work together.’
‘So what do you do?’
‘I keep peace. This town? Divided. It’s like West Side Story here. People want to talk, negotiate, they come to me. I give safe ground to both sides. Nobody moves on anyone when they’re with me.’
‘And the house in Copland Road?’
‘Okay, I also run a few whores. There’s a recession on—you have to take profit where you get it. Losing that house will be unfortunate, but it will be a minor problem. Even better, you’ve just given me this letter, shown me a few other tracks I need to cover. Rab has a way of annoying people. He causes too much trouble, and it was always a matter of time before he annoyed the wrong person.’
I became very aware of my own position. I was closer to Tenac than the door, and she was telling me things she had no reason to share. Was she going to let me walk out the door knowing all of this? The thrill of the chase gave way to a very basic fear, and for the first time since leaving Copland Road, I thought about my own well-being.
Tenac peered into my eyes. She clapped her hands. Two other women stepped out from behind the clothes. They looked like Tenac’s older sisters, wiry and hard. Both carried knives.
‘Know this, hen. I’m answering your questions be
cause I think maybe I like you and because you’ve given me important information. But it could have gone the other way, and if you ever cross me, or if you tell any of this to the cops, it can still go that way. And I would know if you talked to the cops.’
I swallowed and nodded.
‘There are people in this city not to be messed with. People I won’t mess with. Rab, he forgot that; he’s gone. I think maybe these people have decided to ignore their deal with me, so I have to go and make some phone calls now. So this is the favour I’m going to do for you. Walk away now. You’ve done enough. You’ve done more than any of the other lazy investigators would have done. They would have walked away at the mention of Rab’s name. Your fancy lawyers probably came to you because you didn’t know enough to say no. They used you, so use them.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I have to do your job for you now? Write a report, pad it out, tell a few lies and make it look like you’re owed some expenses. Go and get paid for the day’s work. Then go home, forget the names you’ve heard today and hope they forget you. Do what your father would have done.’
It was her turn to throw something new at me. My mouth opened before I found the words to fill it. ‘You know him?’
‘Of course. That’s why I let you talk to me.’
Twenty-Five
I visited my dad most days around 4.00 p.m. This time I was half an hour late. Everyone I spoke to on the job always talked about him in the past tense, as if he was already dead. I think for most people it was easier that way. It meant they could seal off Jim Ireland as a memory and not think of him as he was now.
I hated to admit it, but I was jealous of them. I didn’t get that luxury. I was going to be with him until the end, and I didn’t know if I would be able to remember him the way he used to be, by the time that end came. And today had only made it worse. Tenac knew my dad. Was that what Fran had meant? Was that why Andy had tried to warn me off the case? I don’t know why it came as a shock. Dad was a cop in the city for over a decade, and then he worked as a private investigator through an era when Glasgow was a lot rougher than it is now. It was only natural he’d be on terms with some of the darker and scarier people. It made sense that he’d had to walk away from a few interesting cases to save his own skin.
But no matter how much my brain rationalised it, my heart felt a little broken. Nobody wanted to see their parents as human beings, not really. We wanted them to be the same mythical figures they used to be when we were kids, as solid and dependable. Human beings were the people we met out in real life, at our jobs and our pubs and our nightclubs. But parents? They were archetypes. They were meant to stay the same.
Phil drove me out to the home but didn’t want to come in. He hated seeing our father as he was now, and he’d been scared of hospitals and care homes ever since he was a child. Some people coped with it, some didn’t. I never judged him for it, but it was something else I was jealous of. He got to choose when to play family and when to ignore obligations. I didn’t have that choice in me. I had to hold the family together in whatever broken form it took.
The home was in an old private school building on the road to Paisley. It had been heavily modified and rebuilt over the years, but the front still looked like a budget version of a castle, with large brown bricks and turrets on the corners. Inside it smelled like any other care home. Air freshener and humidity covered the smell of old age, medicine and surrender. There was a constant babble of televisions in the background, and the nurses always did their best to smile and not let the stress show. The fees were expensive, but it was better than any of the NHS places we’d looked at, and they’d been willing to negotiate on the figures.
Dad was watching a rerun of a Jim Garner film, laughing along at the bits he remembered. He looked up at me blankly for a second as I pulled a chair alongside him. His cheeks were paler than the last time I’d visited, and stretched tighter across his jawline. He was slowing sinking into himself. Not the superhero he’d been when I was younger: Jim Ireland, policeman turned private investigator. Square jaw and fast mouth.
‘My daughter used to love this one,’ he said to me with a wink.
‘Aye, she told me.’
His eyes lit up. ‘Is she here?’
‘She will be in a minute.’
He nodded and leant back in his chair, eyes drifting back to the screen. The film went to the ad break, and he leant in to talk to me again. There was a different look in his eyes this time. The lights were on again. ‘Where’s your brother?’
‘He’s working.’
‘Uh-huh, sat out in the car, right? Aye. That’s okay; I could never stand these places either. Still can’t, but on the bright side I’m only here part of the time.’ He chuckled. I didn’t. I couldn’t find the humour. ‘How’s the office?’ he asked.
Closed.
Working from home.
Bailiffs are scum.
‘Aye, it’s doing good. We’ll take you out for a visit one of these days, let you sit behind your desk again, if you want.’
He smiled, happy again. ‘Aye, aye. Can we do that?’
‘Course. I’ll talk to the nurses about it. You still giving them hell?’
He practically glowed. ‘There’s a new one, think she’s got a thing for me. Always tells me off during the bath. Aye, it’s the old Ireland charm—I’ve still got it. How about you—got a man yet?’
‘Too busy at work.’
He gave me another of his intense looks, the ones that told me he knew I was leaving things out and that he knew what they were. He’d always had that ability and not just with me. If it hadn’t been for old prejudices running deep, he would have gone all the way in the police force. Maybe he’d still be well.
‘Daddy, I’m working a big one. Maybe the big one. Get the family name in the paper again; let the world see it like in the old days. You remember Rab Anderson? I was hired to find him, but it looks like he’s been taken out, like a proper gang hit or something.’ I looked into his eyes when he didn’t answer, and I wasn’t sure if he was in there. I didn’t want to think about that, so I carried on. ‘There’s some guy called Gilbert Neil—he’s involved—and I was just talking to Neda Tenac. Says she knows you. She said you’d have dropped the case, left it alone. I don’t believe that.’
The film started again, and he focused back on the screen. A couple of minutes went by, and he turned to me. ‘My daughter used to love this one,’ he said.
I kissed him on the forehead. He smiled and nodded at me. ‘Careful, it’s not bath time.’
I told him I’d see him later and left before he saw me upset.
We didn’t talk for most of the drive back. Phil never asked how Dad was. He didn’t want the truth, and he didn’t want to turn me into a liar. It wasn’t until we were on the edge of the city that he asked where I wanted to go.
‘Home,’ I said.
I didn’t say any more. I was ready to take Tenac’s advice, although I didn’t want to say so out loud. I could file the report, collect a day’s pay. Rab was dead, and I had no need to find him. But now I had another itch, one that was even more dangerous. Dad’s case files were in my spare room. I wanted to go through them, see what connections he had to Tenac and Anderson. Even worse, see if Gilbert Neil’s name came up. How many times had my dad walked away?
Andy had known my dad. Worked with him a few times. He’d have a good take on what I needed to know. I sent him a text asking for a call when he was awake.
Phil dropped me at the door and honked the horn as he pulled away. I fumbled in my bag for the keys and let myself in. I opened the door to the living room.
The old man from the Pit was sitting on my sofa, smiling at me.
The dinner lady from hell was beside the door, waiting for me.
She raised a gun and waggled it, motioning me further into the room.
I
t was only as I shut the door behind me that I remembered my missing purse.
‘Hi, Sam,’ the old man said. ‘There’s someone who wants to talk to you.’
Twenty-Six
Lambert
Lambert remembered the name of the law firm, but not the address. He hadn’t been able to look at the documents for long before handing them back to Sam. It only took a quick Internet search on his phone to find the location. He left the car where it was and walked. Driving into the city could be hell, especially once you were locked into the one-way system at the heart of the grid, and it was only twenty minutes on foot.
The firm was in one of the large grey stone buildings that never went out of fashion for rich people. Lambert got a bad feeling straight away, and the directory inside the main door confirmed it: the firm had the building to themselves. Nobody got a building like that to themselves any more. Even the larger firms shared with telecommunications companies and debt collectors.
These guys had too much money.
It raised questions.
The reception was painted in light shades of brown and tan, cut through with black. The furniture matched the colour scheme, and Lambert had to wonder which came first. Was the room decorated to match the furniture, or was the furniture made to order? There was no scent of any kind in the reception. Not even a nice one. It takes epic amounts of money to remove every single smell from a space used by humans.
Sam didn’t have as much experience with the larger firms, Lambert knew. She was used to rubbing shoulders with the storefront companies down on Saltmarket. She wouldn’t have noticed all the warning signs when she’d visited the office that morning, but Lambert couldn’t fail to miss them.
Companies with a bit of money liked to show off. They would have their own magazine in the reception area, or personalised music. Companies that wanted to seem like they had money would buy stupid features that served no use, like a piano or a metal moose head. This was a different league. This was a company that had a lot of money and no need to show it off. They were in total control of their own space.
