Donoghue tapped ash from his pipe bowl in the large black ashtray which stood on his desk.
‘My guess is,’ continued King, ‘that Bill McGarrigle was too overt in his approach, probably even tried to interview Spicer. Spicer by this time was ingratiating himself with the Jardines and had hired his own hit man, Neutron John McCusker. He probably asked McCusker to have a few words with McGarrigle and warn him off.’
Donoghue nodded, he could picture the scene. Bill McGarrigle walking up and down Rutherglen Main Street at nearly midnight and still naively waiting for Samantha Simonds to show. He was approached by a stocky character in a cloak: Excuse me, sir, are you the gentleman asking about Mr Spicer?…Well there’s someone wants to meet you, this way, sir, in the back court, just through this close here, sir, after you, sir. Maybe, thought Donoghue, maybe it was like that. Or maybe McCusker got a message to McGarrigle: Be in these particular backs at midnight for information about Spicer. Just wait there, you’ll be contacted. Whichever trick McCusker had used he’d come out of the incident a murderer.
‘Well,’ said Donoghue, holding his pipe in both hands, ‘for my part I have spoken to the pathologist who informs me that Anne McDonald’s injuries could have been inflicted by a person who has use only of his left arm and hand. Given this information and the information dug up by DC King which provides a motive, we have to assume that Spicer is the prime subject in the McDonald killing.’
‘It’s looking nice and black for Spicer,’ said Montgomerie.
‘It’s looking black for the police force,’ mumbled Sussock, but nobody heard him, or if they did, nobody responded.
‘Not black enough,’ replied Donoghue. ‘Remember he’s a lawyer. If we confront him now he’ll wriggle away.’
‘We’ve got enough on him to give grounds on a fraud charge,’ said King.
‘We’ll not get a murder conviction out of that.’ Donoghue put his pipe between his teeth. ‘No, we have to watch him further. I like DC Montgomerie’s idea. Montgomerie, you’ll spend the rest of the day in the West End, Ray and King you’ll take an unmarked car and wait at the Wemyss Bay ferry terminal and pick up Spicer when and if he comes to the mainland. If he comes today he won’t be going to his office, so Montgomerie’s guess about him going to the safe house is likely to be right. If we haven’t made any progress by midnight we’ll have to alert the bank and wait for them in Maryhill tomorrow morning.’
‘If we do that,’ said King, ‘we’ll only collar the neds. Again.’
‘Right.’ Donoghue nodded. ‘So we need action this day if we’re going to pull in Spicer and the Jardines.’
Montgomerie walked up to the West End, along Sauchiehall Street, through Kelvingrove Park, and reached Byres Road from University Avenue. He knew the pattern followed by Jardine’s thugs, drinking late into the night, rising late in the morning, usually about opening time. Montgomerie reached the West End of the city at 10.30 a.m. He bought a coffee and a bun in a cafe. He reckoned he had an hour in hand before he need start looking for anyone he recognized.
King enjoyed the drive down the banks of the Clyde and round the tail of the bank to Wemyss Bay. He saw it as one of the perks of the job, and there were damn few of those, piloting an unmarked Granada by the side of the river on a summer’s morning, windows and sun roof open, driving in shirtsleeves and shades. King parked outside the railway station at Wemyss Bay and went to the buffet and bought teas and scones for himself and Sussock. Ray Sussock declined to leave the car, so King stood alone at the wall by the ferry terminal, drinking tea, eating his scone, enjoying the sea breeze and watching the shipping in the estuary. It was 10.48 a.m.
Donoghue sat at his desk and read over the file on Spicer. It wasn’t yet in any form of order, just a jumble of handwritten reports, duplications, recordings of interviews, newspaper cuttings, an extract from a post mortem report, all sandwiched between two stiff manilla sheets. Donoghue’s curiosity was drawn to the source of Spicer’s financial problems, his pub, the Fleur de Lys. It was 11.10, it was hot and windless, the city was baking. Usually a man who liked shorts, this day Donoghue fancied a lager, served stingingly cold.
The Fleur de Lys was in the centre of the city, south of the river, near Bridge Street subway station. It was an old building surrounded by demolition sites, shabbily done up to attract the punter who spends, spends, spends; the adolescents trying to be twelve pints a night men, hard men. But the whole place was phoney and cheap, too near waste ground to be trendy, too near the rumbling elevated rails of Glasgow Central to offer escape, and on the wrong side of the river to be fashionable. There were only one or two people in the bar when Donoghue walked in, mostly they were old, some very old. Spicer’s clients seemed to be drawn mainly from the isolated elderly who still live in this decaying part of the city and maybe the odd lorry-driver taking a lunch-time pint before going on to the docks to pick up a load. In the bar Donoghue could smell the drains and there was a wide crack running across the length of the ceiling which, with four storeys of stonebuilt tenement above, didn’t make Donoghue feel too secure. He ordered a larger and the barman hit him for fifty per cent over inner city prices and even then the drink was flat and warm. It wasn’t too difficult to see why Spicer’s goldmine was, as McNulty said, haemorrhaging badly.
‘Looking for a wee guy called McCusker,’ said Donoghue, putting the glass back on the gantry and having no intention of picking it up again.
The barman was bending down washing glasses and he looked up at Donoghue with a go to hell expression and said he didn’t know of any wee guy called McCusker.
‘Sometimes called Neutron John.’
The man went on washing glasses in a manner which said very loudly that he knew McCusker alias Neutron John very well.
‘The headman in, aye?’ persisted Donoghue.
The man looked up again, he had hard eyes in a hard face, a moustache and a beard cut close. He began to look at Donoghue like Glaswegians do when you turn down their offer of a drink: like they’re going to eat you whole. ‘You’re looking at him,’ growled the man.
‘That right? Well, I was really wanting Spicer—your boss, the head man.’
‘He’s not around. Who’s asking?’
‘A friend.’
‘All right, friend, when you find Spicer you tell him his manager wants money.’
‘He’s not paying up, aye?’
‘He’s not paying nobody, bar staff, suppliers, decorators, brewery, nobody.’
‘How long has he had the bar?’
‘Thought you said you were a friend of him?’
‘I’m a recent acquaintance,’ said Donoghue.
‘Two years, good as. The place is falling down. You need to spend money to make money. Spicer, he bought this place for a song and he put a bit of plastic here and there, a space invader machine in one corner and a jukebox in the other, then he reckoned he’d sit back and watch the till fill. You can’t do that.’
‘No?’
‘No. If I had a bit of money I’d get a place and I’d spend on it, really spend, I’d be printing money in a few years but I’d work at it. Spicer needs to do that but he won’t; this place takes nothing, even on a Friday it takes nothing. I don’t know how he’s kept it open. I tell you, it’s the wrong guys which get the breaks.’
‘Last thing life is, is fair.’ Donoghue nodded in agreement.
‘You don’t need to tell me. I’m quitting soon. Who was it who called?’
‘Don’t bother,’ said Donoghue. ‘I’ll be seeing Spicer before the day’s out.’
He left the Fleur de Lys, walked into the city and grabbed some lunch at a fast food joint.
Montgomerie didn’t see any action until 3.00 p.m. He was standing in a lane off Byres Road when Steamroller Forbes lumbered past. Montgomerie’s heart missed a beat, he could have reached out and touched him, but Steamroller Forbes went right past. Montgomerie let him go and stepped out after him.
The big man was suffering in the heat. Th
e back of his shirt was saturated, he was dragging one foot in front of the other and barely making headway. His general direction was north, but Montgomerie felt it was touch and go whether Forbes reached Great Western Road before his heart gave out.
But he did make it and hung a right, eastwards towards the city, moving easier in the shade of the buildings. He walked up to the brow of the road and turned into a dark close between a Chinese takeaway and an Indian grocers. Montgomerie noted the close number and walked on. He crossed the road and walked on the elevated terrace on the north side of Great Western Road, from which he could look into the first-floor windows of the tenements on the south side of the road. He identified the close into which Steamroller Forbes had walked. The first-floor right flat of that close had the curtains drawn shut. The other flats in that close had the curtains open and were airing their stuffy rooms with the windows flung wide.
Montgomerie walked down to the phone-box outside the Botanical Gardens and dialled through to Donoghue. I think I’ve located the safe house, sir,’ he said when Donoghue answered. Then he gave details.
‘Right, stick with it. I’ll be contacting you but probably not for a while.’
Donoghue replaced the receiver without waiting for Montgomerie’s reply and then dialled a three-figure internal number. ‘Armoury? DI Donoghue. I’ll be wanting to draw firearms later today, please…four .38s and six rounds apiece. Thank you.’ He replaced the receiver and sat back in his chair. He was trying to stop his heart from pounding. It was 3.45 p.m.
At Wemyss Bay King and Sussock sat in the Granada. Over the last six hours they had discovered that the action at Wemyss Bay consists solely of a throughput of people, arriving by road or rail’ for the ferry to Rothesay, or arriving on the ferry and leaving by road or rail. Wemyss Bay comprises a ferry terminus, a rail terminus, a small string of shops, a hotel and a caravan site. After six hours in Wemyss Bay, King’s perk had turned into an imposition.
Sussock had spent the entire time sitting in the passenger seat, hardly moving, hardly talking. He knew his behaviour was making King curious and was impressed that the young man had resisted the temptation to pry. He’d been sustained by food which King bought from the railway buffet, the scone this morning, a meat pie at midday, latterly a packet of crisps and, so far, five cups of tea. He felt he was beginning to put upon people, something he wanted to avoid, but now the end was in sight; the rest of the afternoon, the evening, one night and through until 10.00 a.m. in the morning. Eighteen hours, if he could just hang in there.
The radio crackled. ‘Control to Tango Two Four.’
Sussock reached forward and snatched the microphone. He pressed the ‘send’ button and said, ‘Tango Two Four receiving.’
‘Tango Two Four. Information received from Isle of Bute police. Suspect John Spicer has embarked on the 4.00 p.m. ferry, arriving your location approx. 4.45 p.m.
‘Suspect is driving white Mercedes estate…’ the crackling female voice went on to give the car’s registration number and to inform that Spicer was the sole occupant. Sussock wrote down the details on his pad and pressed the car’s horn. King turned away from reading the names on the war memorial and walked over to the car.
‘He’s on the next boat,’ said Sussock.
They picked up Spicer without difficulty and trailed three cars behind as he drove towards Glasgow. Spicer drove slowly and carefully, an easy suspect to follow in a distinctive car and not giving the slightest impression that he knew he was being watched. He crossed the Clyde on the Erskine Bridge, drove down Dumbarton Road into Great Western Road. He turned into Byres Road and parked his car in a side-street. King slowed down and Sussock left the car. King reached forward for the radio transmitter microphone and pressed the ‘send’ button.
‘Tango Two Four to control.’
‘Control speaking.’ The interference was unusually heavy but the female voice was still easily heard.
‘Tango Two Four, suspect now on foot in Byres Road area. Being followed on foot by Detective-Sergeant Sussock.’
‘Control. Understood Tango Two Four. Please rendezvous with DC Montgomerie on Buckingham Terrace.’
King turned a neat U and drove back up Byres Road and on to Buckingham Terrace. He saw Montgomerie standing between two Bentleys and in the shade of a tree. King drove on until he found a hole for the Granada at the kerbside and then walked back to join Montgomerie.
‘What news, my son?’ he said.
‘See the flat with the curtains shut, behind me, first floor?’ Montgomerie took his cigarettes from his jacket pocket and offered one to King and took one himself. ‘That, old pal, is a safe house.’
‘You’ve been up the close?’
‘You must be joking. I want to live to collect my pension!’ Then he fell silent.
‘Something wrong, Mai?’ asked King. ‘You’ve gone pale.’
‘No, nothing,’ said Montgomerie, forcing a smile. ‘No, I followed Steamroller Forbes to the closemouth. It’s got to be their safe house, the one that Cleopatra McCusker told us about, it’s the only flat on the close, on the whole of the terrace in fact, with the curtains shut and on a day like this. It must be like an oven in there.’
‘You seen anybody at the window?’
‘No. They’re being careful.’
‘You’re sure they’re in there?’
‘Aye, I’m sure. Well, pretty sure anyway.’ Montgomerie inhaled, he looked at the houses and hotels on Buckingham Terrace, at the tall angular buildings in the middle distance to the east, at the blue hills on the western sky line. He looked anywhere but directly across Great Western Road at the flat with the drawn curtains.
‘Anyway, we’ll find out soon enough,’ said King. ‘Me and Ray Sussock followed Spicer into the city, he dumped his swish heap on Byres Road and started hoofing it. Ray’s following. Have you noticed how Ray’s been quiet these last couple of days?’
‘He’s upset at sending the wrong guy down the line.’
‘Maybe. He sat in the car all day, didn’t move an eyebrow or say a word. He’s not off his grub though, bought him a meat pie and he wolfed it. Licked the crumbs off his hands. Same with the crisps. You know what he did to the bag…’ King stopped talking and then said, ‘That’s him.’
Montgomerie turned. He located Spicer without difficulty, white shirt, slacks, carrying a canvas bag, thinly built, a long face locked in a grin, and with a small right arm hanging down. Twenty feet behind him was Ray Sussock.
Spicer turned into the same close that Steamroller Forbes had entered. Ray Sussock walked on past, noting the number as he did so.
‘I’ll go down and intercept Ray,’ said King.
‘OK. Take a look around the back of the close,’ replied Montgomerie, dogging his cigarette. ‘Where’s the car?’
King pointed to it and walked briskly to the end of the terrace and down on to Great Western Road. Montgomerie slid into the driving seat and reached for the radio. He called up ‘P’ Division and reported the arrival of Spicer at the safe house. He was ordered to remain on station and await the arrival of the detective-inspector.
‘Aye,’ he said with resignation as he replaced the microphone.
Donoghue’s Rover drew up beside him while he was on his second cigarette. Donoghue left his car in the middle of the terrace road and joined Montgomerie. Donoghue stared silently at Montgomerie.
‘First-floor right flat directly opposite, curtains shut, sir,’ said Montgomerie finally, not very quick on the uptake that his senior officer was awaiting a report. ‘Spicer and Jardine’s thug Steamroller Forbes have been seen to go into the close. That flat seems to be the most likely place for them to be.’ He paused. ‘No sign of anybody at the window, sir. No other person has been seen to enter or leave the close.’ He paused again and then said, DS Sussock and DC King are reconnoitering the rear of the premises, sir.’
Donoghue said, ‘Thank you, Montgomerie. Will you please take my car and put it somewhere legal and then rejoin me?�
��
‘I think you’re right,’ said Donoghue when Montgomerie rejoined him. The other flats on that stair seem all right. I think the first-floor flat with the curtains shut is looking more and more sinister with each second that passes.’
‘A right nest of thieves,’ said Montgomerie.
‘It’s the two murderers in there, McCusker and Spicer, that I’m most interested in,’ replied Donoghue. ‘Anyway let’s get back to my car, they’ll smell a rat if they see us hovering here.’
They sat in Donoghue’s Rover and were joined by Sussock and King. Donoghue noticed Sussock to be walking slowly with his head hanging: like a Jesuit receiving a solemn Mass.
‘There’s a flat stretch of concrete at the back,’ said King. ‘I can’t quite make out what it is but it seems to be the roof of an old wash house and trash can alley. Access is easy, down a lane from a side-street, over some backs, over a railing, on to the concrete roof, and the next thing is the kitchen window, big, wide and unbarred. Just waiting for a boot.’
‘See anybody?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Hear anything?’
‘Not a dicky-bird.’
‘Looks inhabited?’
‘Aye. All the curtains of the back rooms are open, so are some of the windows. There’s a bottle of milk half full standing on the kitchen table. It looked fresh enough but I didn’t get too close.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Donoghue. ‘The next question is, when do we invite ourselves to the party?’
‘Right now?’ said Montgomerie.
Donoghue turned sideways and looked at him, dragging his eyebrows a millimetre higher as he did so.
‘Well,’ stumbled Montgomerie, ‘I mean they’re in there, all of them. They could disperse…’ Eventually he fell silent.
‘I certainly want them all,’ conceded Donoghue, ‘Spicer especially.’ He looked forward again. ‘Any advances on immediate action?’
Fair Friday Page 15
