The Man with No Face

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘Ronnie.’ Montgomerie wrote the name on his pad. ‘Ronald Grenn.’

  ‘Aye.’ Iveson had a soft voice, sinister, with an attractive, easy-to-listen-to quality.

  ‘I gather he was a friend of yours?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘You know he’s dead?’

  ‘Been shot. I heard the news, I heard the gossip in the hall here. News like that travels fast. Be in the paper tomorrow. Be in the paper this evening.’

  ‘Spent a lot of time with him?’

  ‘Not much really.’

  ‘Did he ever express any fear of anyone?’

  ‘No.’

  Montgomerie doodled on his pad. He knew he was going to have to work hard at this interview. He pondered whether to allow Iveson a degree of eye contact. He felt he was able to play games so long as he retained ultimate control, he had to do that. Dangerous, this man is dangerous. But is he? The thoughts bounced inside Montgomerie’s head. The man is in an open prison, a soft bed, no need for a Vulnerable Prisoners Unit, nobody here will be doing anything to rock their boat, attacking other inmates or escaping is not on their agenda, they’ll all be working their ticket to an early release. So Iveson wouldn’t present a danger. It would be a gamble. He glanced at Iveson and said, ‘Tell me about him.’

  Iveson’s eyes slightly dilated. A signal of approval. Montgomerie again felt himself sliding into Iveson’s influence.

  ‘Just a wee guy.’

  ‘No more than that?’

  ‘He was pally with me, he chummed me about. See, I’m a beast, in any other pokey I’d been on the VPUs ‘cos the lags would be out to fill me in, but here there’s none of that, here they all want their porridge behind them so they make no waves. I get left alone, me and beasts like me, we don’t get attention, nobody wants to know us, we don’t get on the football team, they don’t want us in the showers and we know that it’s best not to join in the haggis hunts in the grounds, but Ronnie, wee man, he didn’t seem to mind. So we palled up.’

  ‘I see.’ Montgomerie broke eye contact and glanced out of the window. It was now dark, the window acted like a mirror, he saw his reflection, he saw Iveson’s reflection. The small room smelled of pine and creosote. ‘What do you know about him?’

  ‘He didn’t belong here.’

  ‘Innocent?’

  ‘No, he was guilty all right, not quite sure what of, but he was guilty. What I mean is that he was a ned out of his depth…people that come here are big timers, wee Ronnie Grenn, see him, wee man that he was, he’d think getting away without paying your bus fare was big time and then he’d spend a week planning it. Here he was out of his depth. Which might be why he spent time with me, none of the others would have anything to do with him, just not in their class. So I suppose we found each other in here. The main crew wouldn’t have anything to do with either of us. I reckon that was it, me I’m a beast and Ronald Grenn, well if they were tigers, he was a pussycat. I mean, if you put Ron Grenn in a room with two rabbits, the rabbits would attack him. He’d kind of glide up to you with a daft wee ‘please-like-me’ smile…ugh…I mean in other circumstances, he’d not be my choice of pal, but here…well, choice is limited and we all need human company. You know, when I was in the world, I used to subscribe to the notion that no company was better than the wrong company…but in here…after a while…I can spend time by myself but I found I changed my attitude…I found that loneliness is so vast that I came to think that any company is better than no company. Total inversion.’

  Montgomerie realized that the man who spoke lovingly of Tayside fairies’ was not without education. He asked Iveson what he was before being convicted.

  ‘Besides being a paedophile, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A teacher. Well, what else would attract a guy like me to teaching or social work with children? We don’t have a “danger to children” stamped on our foreheads, they’re desperate to fill the posts and if we present well at interview we’ll get in, eventually. I mean, all those after school sports clubs and camping trips in the summer. Lovely. It’s just the way it is; I mean, some people are sexually attracted to the elderly, they seek jobs in old people’s homes or geriatric hospitals. That is what happens out there. If you want in, you hide that gleam in your eye. It’s the first thing you learn how to do. I got caught. Eventually. Caught with my pants down. Literally.’

  Montgomerie closed his eyes and then looked down at his pad. It’s a further technique, he thought, another of Iveson’s tricks—telling people what they want to hear. He said, ‘You’re going back to Dundee?’

  ‘Aye,’ Iveson nodded, Til be back there by Easter.’

  ‘You’ll be watched.’

  ‘Aye, like a hawk.’

  ‘You’ll be going back to your old ways?’

  ‘If I can. There’s no cure, no therapy…just long spells of porridge if you get caught…so don’t get caught…I’ll use videos and magazines more than I did. Safer that way. Safer for me and that means it’s safer for the wee fairies.’

  ‘Visitors?’ Montgomerie looked away from Iveson.

  ‘None. No one visits me.’

  ‘I meant Ronald Grenn. Did he have any visitors?’

  ‘His mum. Frail old dear. He clearly doted on her. She came in a car driven by a charity. Twice.’

  ‘Just his mother?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. He was visited by a woman.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Aye…soon after he arrived here…she came to see him…couldn’t forget really, he was over the moon about her visit…you ever seen a dog beside itself with joy, running round in circles in excitement…Ronnie Grenn was a bit like that. Bit pathetic, really. A large lady with black teeth not at all connected with the world.’

  ‘You could tell that, could you? I mean from a distance, seeing her just the once?’

  ‘It was an impression I had. I still have it. She was well, a bit big, her hair was swept back, a lot of it but it was greying and the fact that she wore it like a mane made it even greyer. If she had cropped it short and made it more suited to her middle years, it would have been more appealing, and those teeth…oh…they’d rotted until they were black. Yet she carried herself as if she was a fashion model. And not only that but she said something else by her body language, she said, “I’m right! I’m right! I’m right!” You’ve probably met the type. Not at all attractive and invariably wrong all the time, but convinced otherwise on both counts.’

  ‘Name, perchance?’ Montgomerie allowed Iveson eye contact. Here was something he wanted. He had to trade.

  ‘Mary.’ Iveson held Montgomerie’s eye contact. And he held the pause. Then he said, ‘Carberrie.’

  Montgomerie wrote ‘Carberry’ and Iveson corrected the spelling. Montgomerie said thanks and crossed out ‘Carberry’ and wrote ‘Carberrie’ on his pad. It was a previously unknown name. A lead to be followed up. ‘Did Ron Grenn say anything about their relationship? I mean, what was she to him, do you know? Did he say?’

  ‘Hard to tell…’ Iveson once again caught Montgomerie’s eye. ‘I mean, when you think of the hoops that Ronnie was jumping through when he knew Carberrie was to visit him, you’d think they were lovers. Mind you, the thought of wee Ronnie and big Mary getting it off together would make anybody puke.’

  And that, thought Montgomerie, coming from you, Iveson, you and your ‘Tayside fairies’, is rich beyond richness. But he said nothing. He wanted information. He wanted Iveson’s cooperation.

  Iveson looked at Montgomerie. He wanted a smile, an approval of his humour. He got neither and his eyes narrowed slightly. He was used to getting what he wanted. He didn’t like it when he didn’t. Montgomerie suddenly saw that and he also felt the momentum of the interview failing. He said, ‘Did she seem keen on him?’

  ‘No. That’s what I was going to say. She visited once. Once only. If there was something between them she’d be down here weekly. She wasn’t short of doh-ray-
me. She dripped with rocks and bangles and squeezed herself into designer clothes. Had a fancy car, too. I watched Ronnie walk her back to it, Sierra Cosworth, no less, alloy wheels, metallic blue, personalized numberplate.’

  ‘Which you don’t recollect?’

  ‘Don’t I?’ Iveson smiled. ‘ME 2.’

  ‘Well…’ Montgomerie wrote the numberplate on his pad. ‘What can I say?’

  ‘I remember it because if the woman was as self-orientated as her body language telegraphed, then her numberplate was…well, accurate is just not the word.’

  ‘Me too,’ Montgomerie nodded, ‘sounds like a woman we ought to have a wee chat with. One visit only. Sounds like a business visit to me, and if that is the case then we want to know what it was about.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really.’ He said nothing else but silently pondered the implications of a woman clad in designer clothes, dripping with rocks and bangles visiting, just once, a man eating porridge for the theft of half a million pounds’ worth of gems. It stank like two-day-old fish. And the nice thing about the personalized numberplate was that she would still have it. The vehicle may well have been traded in and replaced, but the numberplate would be retained.

  ‘Did Ron Grenn talk about her?’

  ‘Aye, and that didn’t add up and deliver. I was watching them when she left, you know, and she smiled at him and he turned away looking like the cat that got the cream, but as soon as he was with his back towards her, her expression changed. Scowl…she had a face like a jar of frogs. Jumped into her metallic-blue Sierra and roared off. He did talk about her, in the manner of someone to return to, someone waiting for him. He said that she wouldn’t be visiting because she didn’t like prisons, but that didn’t mean that she wouldn’t be waiting for him when he got on the outside. I didn’t know what to make of it. I wondered whether he was trying to convince himself of a fantasy being a truth or whether he did believe it. He spoke like he believed it, but then he didn’t see the jar of frogs once his back was turned.’

  ‘I see.’ Montgomerie nodded his thanks and then pulled his eyes away. He sensed Iveson’s disappointment as he did so. ‘I have the impression of a man looking forward to getting out, not merely to come to the end of a period of imprisonment, but getting out to do something, be with someone. Would that be accurate?’

  ‘Of Ronald Grenn, yes…yes, I’d say that was accurate.’

  ‘So…did he tell you of his plans?’

  ‘Not in so many words…he said he was “finished with crooking”…said that a few times. Whether the issue of someone, Mary Carberrie or someone else, being there for him when he got out was a fantasy or a truth I couldn’t tell, but I did have the impression that he had come to the end of a life of crime. That did seem sincere. He mentioned a guy called “Saffer”.’

  ‘Saffer?’

  ‘Or Saffa, or Suffa, or Soffa…guy called Kit Saffer.’

  ‘Kit?’

  ‘A seventeenth-century nickname for Christopher. Today we say Chris, two hundred years ago the Christophers were known as Kit to their mates. As in the Island of St Kitts in the West Indies. It was named St Christopher by the Spanish and the English who had interests in the area always referred to it as St Kitts. They eventually relieved the Spanish of their property with a little help of a musket and shot and today, even as we speak, the island is still known as St Kitts. Sounds nicer than St Chris’s, though.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘So I’ve been of a little help?’

  ‘More than a little.’

  ‘You could perhaps put a word in for me? The close observation of the Tayside police is not something I look forward to. Been cooperative in a murder enquiry…reformed character…it’s not unreasonable is it?’ Said without expression, and Montgomerie could see why people flung themselves lemming-like to their own destruction following Iveson’s influence. But he said yes and nodded. ‘I’ll make a phone call as soon as I get back to Glasgow.’

  Iveson nodded and held eye contact. Montgomerie broke it to write ‘Kit Saffa/Saffer, Soffa, etc’ on his pad.

  ‘What—’ Montgomerie doodled on his pad—‘did Ronald Grenn say about Kit Saffa, specifically?’

  ‘Specifically nothing. He did indicate that this Kit guy had the right idea…he said, I’m going to look up Kit when I get out…he’s doing the right thing. Crookin’s behind Kit…I want to be like him. I’ll follow him.’

  Leaving the company of Iveson was difficult for Montgomerie. Strangely so. Not simply a closing of the notepad and a, ‘thanks, that’ll be all for now’, he felt anchored in some way by Iveson’s presence and he knew, he just knew, that Iveson knew he was holding him, preventing him from leaving. Montgomerie felt it was akin to a satellite leaving the gravitational pull of a planet, he knew that once he started moving he had to keep moving. He went through the scene in his head and found himself pumping up his muscles, mustering actual discernible strength as if about to move furniture and then he stood, closed his notepad and sensed disappointment on Iveson’s behalf that he was not able to hold Montgomerie. ‘Back to Glasgow.’ Montgomerie avoided eye contact, as though talking to himself.

  ‘You’ll make the phone call?’

  ‘Aye,’ Montgomerie nodded, reaching for the door handle, ‘I’ll make it…’

  Montgomerie stepped out of the hut which was one of a line of similar huts and which comprised the agent’s rooms of Traquair Brae. He walked away up the pathway between shrubs towards the main house. Behind him he heard Iveson leave the hut and walk softly away in the other direction, and he visualized the man melting into the shadows.

  Back in AG Laing’s office with the photograph of submarines, Montgomerie received details of the visitors Ronald Grenn had had whilst in Traquair Brae.

  ‘Just two.’ Laing looked at the file. ‘His mother and a woman called Carberrie. Mary.’ He smiled. ‘Interesting car numberplate.’

  ‘ME 2. Yes, I’ve heard about her. She sounds like an interesting woman, from a police point of view, that is, very uninteresting from every other point of view.’

  ‘Well, she was his only other visitor, just a week after he arrived here from Peterhead. Strange. Two visitors, comprising three visits in over two years, yet Ronald never gave the impression of being lonely or socially isolated. He always carried himself as if there was someone with him in spirit, as though he had someone on the outside waiting for him. But the statistics of his visits just don’t bear that out at all.’

  ‘How did you find Mr Iveson? Mad, bad and dangerous to know, eh?’

  ‘Couldn’t sum it up better. He wants me to put a word in for him, make a phone call to the Tayside police on his behalf and tell them about the assistance he gave and how reformed he is.’

  ‘Will you?’

  ‘I’ll phone them. Won’t be saying what he wants me to say. Anything but, in fact. But he gave me two names, the one you’ve just mentioned and someone called Kit Saffa, or a name like that, who appears to be a criminal associate and who has gone straight. It’s a question of asking Criminal Records to trace him…no numbers, but Kit is not a common name. It’s apparently…’

  ‘An old nickname for Christopher,’ Laing said. ‘Yes, I knew that.’

  ‘As in…’

  ‘Kit Marlowe…St Kitts in the Caribbean…knew that as well.’

  ‘I didn’t.’ Montgomerie stood. ‘I return to Glasgow a wiser man.’

  ‘And with two names to follow up. Not a wasted trip.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  The two men shook hands. Warmly.

  Returning to Glasgow, Montgomerie realized he’d met that use of intense eye contact and serious facial expression before. And before he’d encountered the way it induced him to do something he didn’t want to do. Then he remembered, of course, of course, of course…salesmen use it, they had employed the same technique while sitting in his living room eager for him to buy that shower fitting ‘that’s installed in all the hospitals’, or the
insurance he didn’t need.

  He glanced at the clock on the dashboard. 18.52.

  TUESDAY

  10.05—17.32 hrs

  Abernethy drove to Easterhouse. He drove out of Glasgow on the M8. He took the first exit to Easterhouse, left at the top of the ramp, in front of the grey angular Baptist church, left again after the fire station and first right opposite the health centre, left into Conisborough Road, a winding incline of four-storey tenements, as is the remainder of Easterhouse. Planted, attached to the extreme east of the city of Glasgow, Easterhouse has a population in excess of that of the city of Perth yet has only four pubs and one shopping centre. Abernethy drove to the brow of the hill, turned right into Balcurvie Street, and stopped outside 254. That stair, top left flat, being the discharge address of Ronald Grenn.

  He left his car and walked up the short path to the close mouth. Overgrown gardens littered with plastic bags and empty lager cans stood either side of the uneven pathway. The close had been fitted with a security door but, as Abernethy had found is often the case, it had been vandalized into uselessness. He pushed the door open and he was met with the smell of stale urine which hung in the close. Paper bags, hardened with dried glue, had collected in mounds, one mound scattered at the bottom of the stair, another he found at the turn of the stair, halfway up to the first landing. Here, Abernethy glanced out of the window and saw that the back court of this stair had been allowed to become a collecting point for black plastic bin liners full of domestic refuse, many not tied at the top, many torn, doubtless, thought Abernethy, by animals both domestic and feral. Here, he thought, be rats. Many rats. Beyond the back court was farmland, pastoral, he noted, black-and-white cattle grazed on the green. Beyond the field was a woodland, and above the trees stood the twin towers of Gartloch Psychiatric Hospital, a relic of the days when such hospitals were built on the very edge of cities. Each major city in the United Kingdom has at least one such building, dark, brooding, Gothic, set in generous grounds but far away from civic pride. In nearly all cases, the expanding cities groping for living space have ‘in filled’ the open places as with the schemes of Garthamlock and Easterhouse G32 and G34. Now, Abernethy pondered, in the little over one and a half lifetimes since Gartloch Hospital was built in gently rolling countryside on the edge of Bishoploch, being as far removed from the City Chambers and Royal Exchange Square as possible, it has become possible, almost, to walk between the two sites through a continuous belt of urban and suburban development.