Say An Ave There For Me, part 2

Grief I : Denial

Of course he couldn’t be dead. Not my Stevie. This was a mistake, a lie, a misunderstanding, the world’s shittiest joke. Everything was normal, and it was going to stay normal, always. Nothing had changed. How could it? Not now, of all times.

This whole nightmare was a midnight-black error – it was some other Stevie McCabe found bleeding on Glasgow Green, dead on the gravel under the wilting horse chestnut trees. Some other woman should have had that doorstep epiphany, whey-faced police burbling out inadequate sympathies. Christ, how will it be for her when her own bell eventually sounds and she meets a moment she never imagined, what yawning black pit will open up when the truth snaps her by the throat, at some bleak hour of the grey tomorrow?

I weep for you and your pain, unknown sister, but oh, I hope you exist. You must. You must be real, because this is a cruel mistake - my Stevie was fireproof. I know that’s true…he told me that himself.

It was just that business was slow, he said, and if that meant you had to waste time listening to the woes of pound-shop mobsters…well, so what, he said.

The fact they were threatening to kill you, that’s what.

Maybe they did.

*** *** ***

“So, what d’ye ‘hink I’m sayin’ here?”

“I’m pish at quizzes, Bobby – just say what you mean, then we both know for sure. Doubt’s a bastard, I’m sure ye’ve found that to be a fact.”

“Aye, okay…it’s like this…what’d they call it, back in the day, when the Russians and the yanks had all those atomic bombs pointin’ at each other? Durin’ the Cold War and that?”

“Dunno, before my time. But don’t knock the 60s - I liked the Flintstones.”

“There ye go - so smart, Stevie. All they words, jist tumblin’ out…and where’d’s’it leave ye? Ye still don’t know what I’m gettin’ at– so ye tell me, anyhow. So, what is my point here? Stalin and Reagan, whatever, right? They both of them knew…if the one kicks off, the other does an’ all. Fuckin’ kaput, everybody, right? So that’s it, you and me, we’re like that.”

“Eh? You and me doin’ what? Nobody asked me to take sides, not in any’hin I can recognise. This’s only inside your head.”

“Disny matter, this‘s how it is. You and me, we don’t get to pick and choose. Point is, the Russians and the Americans actually put all that shite to one side, when it mattered, cuz a Hitler. They joined forces. Deadly enemies – so long as they have respect – could end up workin’ together. You follow me?”

“Not sayin’ I love your…er…analogy, or even understand it, but…if that’s ‘how it is’…can I be Stalin?”

“Ach. Sounds like more words to me, Stevie. Nothin’ but words, no answers to my question. D’ye want the work? Or don’t ye?”

“Sure it’s words. When every’hin else is busted, there’s always words. Still and all, here’s me, about to walk out that door and reckon you’re jist a dick, unless you make some kinna case that I should stay. Not that I’m askin’ you to convince me…”

“…‘balance of terror’, that’s what they cried it. When the Russians and Uncle Sam got right up in each other’s gubs. Haw you? Come ahead and I’ll fuckin get in among ye, ya Russki bastard! Aw that stuff, love it. Two guys, playin’ for the biggest stakes and everybody else is jist like this…mammy daddy, the fuck’s gonny happen? Pure drama, Lenin and that. But co-operation’s better, aye?”

“Chrissake, Bobby. Are you trollin’ me here? Your story is mince. I can see the door, I can work the handle, that means I’m done. See ye.”

“But if ye go now, that leaves me here on my lonesome, still wonderin’. That’s never how this works, never.”

“Aye, right. Me? Door? Done deal. Catch ye later.”

“What I’m thinkin’? What if we canny ignore our differences? If – hear me out, now – despite this wee conversation, we still couldny reach any kinna agreement? How’d’s that go, at the end-up? See, there’s always the old way of doin’ business. I could do this and I could do that…”

“See you around.”

“– two more minutes of yer time! Ye know it’s true, and anyway….I said ‘could’, right? But – here’s my problem – if I started on that nonsense…I know you’d be a load a fuckin trouble. A real load – I respect that, seriously, I do. But…chances are, I do you quick, some night, no warning. Six-nothin’ to me, away goals do not count double. Hoo-fuckin-ray. But what a waste, eh? Still, why would I not do that? Matter a fact, I could get it done – takin’ care of your good self, I mean - right here, right now….but that’s a pure waste. Pointless. And all of it would jist be, like…a problem for me down the road, hassle I don’t need, right? Cuz there’d be blowback. But – cracker of a ‘but’ right here, Stevie – I need to threaten, even if it’s jist to keep your attention. And you? You could say the same – you could mibbe do me right now, up to you. I don’t doubt that. But if you did, I can guarantee your family would be the ones paid the price, no’ you. And there it is, your dilemma – if you come heavy, the very minute ye win, ye lose. Game, set and the other ‘hing, know? So…there’s your problem ye canny solve. You and me, we kinna cancel each other out. Ye still want to be Stalin? Disny matter to me.”

“Spell it out for me – cuz, if you just said what I ‘hink you said, that’s you comin’ at my kids? Seriously? Did you just say that? If you did…”

“Not at all, big man. Never any kinna threat from this quarter. I’m not that kinna man. I’m jist sayin’…anythin’ happens to me, somethin’ that you did….somebody’ll mibbe get over-excited and that’s how it’ll go, is my guess. Somebody. Not me.” 

“Aye? Well, somebody disny exist and so everybody’s happy, then, cuz here’s me gonny catch my bus and there’s you, your normal cheerful self.”

“What about what I said? Forget the pissin’ contest. We don’t need to be enemies, you and me. How about the other way? You’d be great for business, I know it. Win-win. What say you?”

“I heard you, Bobby. And…hear me say this as well, now…that’s some strategic thinking you laid on the table there. Caught me short, tell the truth. Never thought big picture was where you’d shine. But all I really hear is: why disny everybody mind their own business and we can all live happily ever after? That’s the best way, cuz we’re not Batman and Robin, you and me, not while that yella sun shines. So what’s the point of this conversation?”

“What I said – somethin’ needs to get done. Why not try an’ figure out whit that would be – takin’ it all into account, I mean. Okay? Now, we’re done. Catch ye another time round the block, big man – hope yer bus isny late.”

*** *** ***

“You’re best just taking this straight to the police, Stevie. If one of your own buddies won’t deal with it, then talk to Mick. It’s a clear threat to your own life and to others. That’s a crime – you know that, right?”

“Oh, aye. I’m sure the polis will give it plenty tut-tuts, especially Mick, especially cuz his sister’s one of the ones in the firing line, seems like. But you know their favourite song – that’s not evidence, tra-la-fuckin-la.”      

“Get them evidence, then. Get Petrie to repeat what he said and tape him or something.”

“And when I’m done with that, why don’t I get a chimp to fake a moon landing? You know he never made a direct threat anyway, just ‘we don’t want to fall out’ and ‘I see your kids are back in the country’. That kinna stuff. There’s nothing in the words, it’s all in the way he said it.”

“Well, get the coppers to lean on them. Tell Petrie they know what’s been said and if anything happens, he’ll be deep in the shitter.”

“Strathclyde Police – sorry, Police Scotland – have never been the biggest fans of me tellin’ them how to do their job. That won’t be changing any time soon.”

“Is this a macho thing? It is, isn’t it? You’re scared you’ll lose face with the uniforms if you put your hand up and say ‘over here’? Once you do that, you’re never going to be a tough guy again – that it?”

“Christ, Bernie…gimme a wee bit credit for not lettin’ ego get in the way of other people’s safety.”

“I do, I just don’t know how wee that bit of credit should be.”

“What difference would it make? Say I went to Mick, or Paddy Haldane, or Annie Simpson? Or some other copper that’s got a reason to give the Agnew crew a boot in the baws?”

“Are they not calling it the Petrie crew now? Jimmy Agnew’s never comin’ back from his fun time in the everglades and if he did, he’ll hardly make it off the plane. He’ll be a puddle on the runway, if he’s lucky. Even if he made it to dry land, he’d hardly make any kind of trouble for Petrie and the rest. The thing he got sent away for is an extinction event in his line of work.”

“Doesny matter what they call the crew, everybody should have realised by now it’s JP Docherty really runs it.”

“Really? Docherty really runs that business, does he? What’s ‘really’ mean there?”

“It’s the oldest song there is – follow the money. Petrie’s got the goons and the connections, but it’s his boys pick up the convictions, too. And who’s got most of the money? John-Paul Docherty. I’d say that means he really runs that business.”

“Petrie’s not short a few bob.”

“Aye, he’ll have plenty money in moody stashes and he’ll own houses and businesses, but compared to Docherty, he’s a swamp-dweller. And there might be the vague chance he’ll get huckled and make like his old boss Agnew, but none of that is in John-Paul’s travel plans. No jail time, ever. He’s an arm’s-length away from anything pure illegal – in fact, he’s somebody else’s arm’s length away from it.”

“Right. So, he’s a businessman – a smart businessman knows when something’s too much hassle to keep doing it. That’s how come he’s kept himself clean this far. All that business with the Arab money, he was making sure he wasn’t eating out of the same slop bucket as the likes of Agnew and Petrie? That’s his style. If the police show him there’s gonny be grief if he doesn’t back off you, he’ll see sense, too. He’ll go ‘fuck it, I don’t like McCabe, but I don’t like grief even more’. He won’t let his ego get in the way – there’s that word again - and he won’t confuse business with what’s just personal. That’s the smart move, for you and for him.”

“Aye…that all sounds like wisdom.”

“Right, then. Hit the speed dial to Stewart Street. If you won’t, I will. I’ll talk to Mick.”

“But he knows what Petrie’s sayin’ to me already, right? If he doesny know from you, he knows cuz he’s a good copper.”

“Aye, he does. What were you expecting? Marked cars parked outside your flat? He only knows, nobody’s asked him to do anything. That’s your job.”

“It’s not only a question of protectin’ my place, the way Petrie thinks. Or Docherty. There’s this place, and all. And my kids’ house, too. He made a song and dance about that, a while back.”

“Stop finding reasons why this is difficult, Stevie. Get on the offensive. If you don’t do that, you’re just a cork on the water.”

“There’s always plan B, where me and Petrie make like Butch and Sundance.”

“That? If that means anything at all, it’s him trying to take a step out from under Docherty.”

“Ach, in the end, it’s all just talk, anyway. These wee fuds, it’s the only way they know how to behave. Hot air and pish.”

“Is that where you leave it, really and truly? Hot air? So, you’re about to ignore Bobby Petrie’s phone calls, and him poking his finger in your eye, like he was some ned in the street, just blowing smoke? This guy kills people. He’s about as serious as it gets.”

“Mibbe he kills people, mibbe he -”

“The Agnew crew killed people. That’s for sure. They won’t have stopped cuz they changed the name of the company.”

“Okay – what I was gonny say was, the people they kill don’t include people like me.”

“What? Who’re you, now? How come you’re different? You sayin’ you can walk across the battlefield untouched, unless they’re packing Kryptonite? No – these people do harm.There was that accountant guy over Pollok way, the Agnews made him disappear.”

“He was a jumped-up moneylender. Just cuz he had a book with numbers in it, never made him an accountant.”

“The woman used to work at the Clydesdale Bank? Her body washed up at Dalmarnock, she was buying businesses for the Agnews.”

“The reason why she -”

“- I’m only saying the ones I can think of, right off the bat, white-collar types. Not everybody the Agnews send on trips to the tin table is some scummy corner-boy or a hopeless junkie – although, granted, there’s plenty of those. You’re not bulletproof, you daft bastard!”

“Her from the bank? Her mistake was workin’ with these people, goin’ over to their side. Once you cross the tracks, they own you and then…then…one foot out of place and you’re swimming minus your limbs. And that’s exactly what Petrie wants me to do, put on the black hat.”

“Christ, Stevie, I never said you should do it, obviously. I just want you to find the best way to make sure they get off your back when you say no. I mean, if  they ever ask you again. They might not.”

“See? That’s right, might never happen. That’s what this is – ‘what if’ and ‘just in case’.”

“Ach, I shouldn’t have said that, should’ve known you’d throw it right back at me. Aye, they might never come back at you, but you need to act like they will.”

“Don’t over-think it.”

“Don’t you under-think it either, McCabe. You make mistakes, I’ve seen them.”

“I know I do. But I try not to make the same one more than once.”

“Maybe that’s where you go wrong. Everything ends up being 50-50.”

“I’ve seen worse odds. Listen, don’t you have a mother to get to an airport?”

“No. She called it off again.”

“That’ll be getting expensive.”

“She’s good for it – and don’t change the subject.”

*** *** ***

It was them, wasn’t it, Stevie? Petrie and the gangsters you disdained, and in the end, they swatted you and then went out to dinner, entertained their families, caught a movie, gazed into the lambent depths of a VSOP, slept the sleep of the just. You were never more than a distraction, an irritation to those men, and irritations get dispatched.

You never meant anything to them.

You did to me.

Say An Ave There For Me

Chapter 1 - An Ending

I didn’t think that I was in harm’s way when I walked out to meet Bobby Petrie.

I didn’t think it was strange that he was on his own when he parked his Porsche by the banks of the Clyde, half-draped in the shadow of the trees by the Ballater Street bridge, still speckled by street-light glimmer.

I didn’t think anything of the way he lit his cigarette as he unkinked himself from the driver’s seat, nor how left his jacket hanging open when he slid the Marlboros back into his inside pocket.

I began to wonder, simply, why he wasn’t saying anything to me.

But I still didn’t think he was going to shoot me dead, there, on the spot.

You’d think by that point that I’d have seen it coming, right? If not the homicidal detail, then at least some kind of…danger.

But no, right up until his first and last word to me, there was no more threat in the air than on any given night.

That word, muttered over the barrel of the gun he drew from that inside pocket, was “cheerio”.

That’s when he killed me.

My name is Stevie McCabe…

Well….my name was Stevie McCabe, and this is the last you’ll be hearing from me.

Obviously.

Chapter 2 - Next of Kin

The day was crawling unwillingly towards midnight and even a half dozen Tunnock’s teacakes had failed to make wrestling with forty pages of appellant declarations seem like a rewarding way to spend this sharp-whittled night – or morning, soon.  I glared at the empty yellow box as if I had been somehow let down by the chocolate-coated marshmallows with their tasty biscuit base, the feckless bastards.

Sitting in a feeble pool of mood lighting and laptop glow, mind drifting from declarations to more urgent matters that jostled for attention, I was startled to hear the buzzing ring of the doorbell, this late, this dark. Stevie had his own keys, and anyway, he was far away, so…

Through the frosted glass of the front door, I could see the silhouettes of two dark figures wearing…hats. Hats? I clicked the outside light into life.

The blurred headgear remained monochrome in the bulb’s illumination and there was no mistaking the black and white checks of the Sillitoe Tartan on the police hat bands.  At the moment I moved to open the door, the land line began to ring – glancing, I could see the readout telling me it was my brother on the line; well, he could wait until I found out why two coppers - two coppers besides him, that was - were at my door at this hour.

The female half of the duo tipped her brim as she asked me my name and I confirmed I was who she thought. She had some very bad news, she said.

“I’m awful sorry, Mrs Feeney, it’s about a Stephen McCabe…”

“It’s not Mrs Feeney, it’s…What? Aw no…what’s happened to Stevie? What is it? Tell me! How bad is this news? Tell me now! ”

“Well, I am awful sorry….but a man was found at Glasgow Green tonight, critically injured.”

“Not him, he’s not in Glasgow at all – he’s out of town, so…”

“The man was taken to the Royal, but…like I say, it’s awful bad news. He was dead when he got there. Sorry. Sorry to bring you this, as I said, uh…unfortunate information.”

“Whoa, hang on now, let me understand you right. Are you telling me Stevie McCabe’s dead? Seriously? Dead…tonight? That can’t be right.  No. No way, no how. Listen to me – he’s not even in the city, so he cant’ve been at Glasgow Green tonight. It must be somebody else and you’ve made a mistake. This isn’t true. You follow me? Check your facts.”

“I’m afraid it’s true. He was found at the Ballater Street bridge. Like I say, awful sorry to have to -”

“Listen to me, you stupid woman! I don’t give a shit how sorry you are cuz it’s not true – why are you saying it is?”

“He’s been identified. Superintendent Walker knows Mr McCabe and he confirmed the identification. It’ll be done formally later, but there’s no doubt. All his personal documents back that up. I know this must be an awful shock for you. Do you want to call somebody? Or get us to call somebody for you?”

“Oh…uh. What? Well. I don’t know. Somebody…somebody else should’ve called me and…the phone was going off there just now, when you were just coming to the door? So, uh…right? It was ringing? Was it? Is that right?”

“Uh-huh. We heard it go.”

“I could see it was my brother – he’s a superintendent at Calder Street. He must have been phoning to….he must have heard what happened just when you were walking up the path there…and he called me so he could…so it would be him and not you that told me.  Not…strangers.”

“Can we come in and sit with you for a bit? Until you can call somebody?”

“Well, I need to, uh, think about this and…you’re sure? Definitely? I mean, now I must sound crazy to you, but…I can’t believe this.”

“Everybody reacts to it differently. We can spend some time with you…”

“No….no thank you. I need to…I want to go and see Stevie, see if this thing is real. Can you take me to the Royal, could you do that? I don’t want to drive myself just now, I don’t think.”

“Superintendent Walker’s in charge of the case – he did say he didn’t want anybody coming to the hospital tonight.”

“Case? Why is this a case?”

“Mr McCabe had gunshot wounds – we’re treating it as murder.”

“Jesus…this couldn’t’ve happened, we made sure it couldn’t. This is the biggest mistake…listen, I know Cammy Walker – let me talk to him. I just want to -”

“I’m sorry, Mrs Feeney - Superintendent Walker was very definite. He mentioned you by name, said you shouldn’t be up there tonight. Mr McCabe’s brother and sister have been contacted, or people are trying to contact them now. To make arrangements, you know?”

“But I’m his next of kin.”

“No, you’re not. Superintendent Walker knew who Mr McCabe was and made arrangements for you to be contacted, but his brother and sister are on record.”

“Record? What bloody record? How do you know who his ‘next of kin’ would be? His so-called family? Well, one of them’s on the run in America and I’ve never even met his sister, she’s a stranger to him. I think Stevie might be in need of something a bit more human than that tonight, whatever’s happened…thanks for your offer to help, but that’s okay, I can make some calls myself. And I can get to the Royal myself, too, since it seems I have to.”

I shut the door on them, the gangly male half having never actually opened his mouth. I hit “delete” on the telephone to erase my brother’s message. I could talk to him later, but right at the minute I didn’t need another police officer telling me Stevie was dead.

Just me, in my hallway, spinning and staggering.

Shaking, quivering, stumbling.

Stunned, numb, blank.

Roaring, howling, shrieking.

Stevie McCabe was dead. My Stevie.

Jesus fucking Christ, Stevie. What have you done now? 

Just Your Usual Bleak Midwinter

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan, 

Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone 

Midwinter? How does December 24th suit you? Bleak? Glasgow, solstice-blasted, locked in a frozen embrace that would not yield, shivered and trembled, choked and constricted by its relentless sheen of white. And yet, here we stood on the silent street in a midnight dark, breath billowing in sinuous coils around our faces, subsiding slow and cold into the depths of shadow. Me and Linda Guthrie, the two of us wrapped and bumfled against the bitter cold, looking everywhere, saying nothing.

Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow, 

In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Well, not snow, in fact, because Glasgow would never be party to anything so heart-warming, rosy-cheeked and delightful as a white Christmas. It wasn’t the sentimentality we resisted – no, we loved that, properly calibrated. Try to pry a Glaswegian from a jukebox howling with the high-lonesome country wail of loss, prison, divorce, deceit and death – you can’t. But that is a different beast entirely. Tonight, there was no snow, just the hard bite of frost and ice, a spear of cold to the core. Long ago? Yes. How long? Try this: so long ago that I was still police constable Stephen McCabe, based at the old Orkney Street station, and Linda Guthrie was not a lover (not that night, not ever), she was another copper like me, exhaling great gouts of cloud into the still of midnight.

Linda Guthrie and I, in plain clothes, motionless in the cold, working a night-shift on Christmas Eve. Well, bad men didn’t (all) take the day off, and we were junior, so junior we still had damp patches; there was no doubt who would pull this shift, and this job.

“I don’t mind workin’ with a Catholic.”

“That’s awful fuckin big of ye, Linda. And I’m not, not so you’d notice.”

“The Pope’d still claim ye.”

“He’d claim a pawn ticket for a chocolate watch. Times are tough, over Rome way. Crowds are down. You have to count everythin’ you can.”

“How d’ye figure you’re not a Catholic anyhow? Thought that was you for life?”

“Well, that’s you and the Pope on the same page then. I beg to differ. You were a kid once, Linda, right? And you had no say in it? Nobody asked you, you couldny help it, it was just how it was? Ye’re a kid. Bein’ a Catholic is like that to me. Somethin’ somebody else made me without askin’ when I had no say in it. Now, you’re not a kid any more...you get me?”

“Whatever you say – but it sounds like big MacPhee wasted his time sendin’ you down here the night then?”

“Sorry, don’t follow you – wasted his time how?”

“Well, he says to me, you’re on the night, aye? So I goes, aye, and he says we need to get a hold of Franny Meara, he’s been out of sight for a while. But...and here’s your bit, Stevie...we’ve got the nod off one of the CID’s wee narks that Meara always take his wee ma to midnight mass at Lourdes chapel. And...tonight’s Christmas Eve, so he’ll be above ground and we can take him. Who’s the biggest fenian on the night shift?”

“Whit? Me? That’d be Jackie Driscoll, no’ me! Christ...”

“Eh? Is he?”

“’course he is – you seen his tattoos? Fuckin sacred heart, virgin Mary...”

“Er, excuse me? How’d I see Jackie Driscoll’s tattoos? No’ my type. Nor my age, neither.”

“...right. Well, don’t be holdin’ yer breath waitin’ on detective, Linda. You’ve got a wee gap in your observation skills there.”

“Aye well, fuck you anyway, McCabe, but here we are all the same, eh?”

“And I’m here cuz I’ve got specialist skills in standin’ outside midnight mass? Big McPhee’s at it. Any tube could stand here and freeze their haw-maws off.”

“He said...he said mibbe we could do it at his ma’s house – Meara’s ma, that is. Cuz he’s got to go there to pick her up, like? But it could’ve kicked off, mibbe his brothers are there an’ all, mibbe we don’t see him go in and out, cuz she lives in they high flats over behind the college and there’s four lifts...anyhow, McPhee thought Meara would be less likely to get rowdy at the chapel. So, here we are. Here you are.”

“The other way to have played it would be to have sent a bunch of coppers over to the flats mob-handed, got Meara when he walked out the front – enough people, cover all the exits and also you’ve got enough bodies to stop any trouble. Stops all this drama outside the chapel.”

“No way, not tonight. McPhee’s got everybody else sweepin’ up all usual Friday night shite, plus your extra Christmas knob-ends. Only reason we’re here and not doin’ a tango through the puke at Govan Cross is that Meara’s show-up is one-time only. Jist cuz it’s Christmas and jist cuz it’s midnight mass. And give big McPhee credit for one thing – he knew that you’d know it started at half-eleven. Me mysel’, I’d’a shown up and wondered how I missed them all goin’ in.”

“Well, Sherlock, you coulda phoned up the chapel, or just made a big mistake. Modern police work. Fuckin great.”

“Well, would you rather be at Govan Cross or outside Lourdes chapel? Them’s yer choices, cowboy. How long’s it last, anyway, midnight mass?”

“A bit longer than usual. Kinna like a greatest hits.”

“Or a special on TV, like you get at...at Christmas. Here, is this them comin’ out now?”

“No, just the early leavers. You have to laugh, they turn out in the middle of the night and don’t stay until the end. It’s not like they’ve got a bus to catch, or they need to beat the traffic rush.”

“One or two of they guys look pished.”

“Traditional. Bit of guilt, bit of a laugh, bit of Christmas spirit, bit of confusion. Plus, it does save them havin’ to go tomorrow, when they might be sober.”

“D’ye know what Meara looks like? I’ve just got his file picture. McPhee thought you might know him. Personal, like?”

“He’s not wrong. I do know him. He’s older’n me, obviously, but he used to be a face, y’know, around?...he knew my da, definitely. He should know me an’ all, in yon roundabout kinna way. I’ll clock him, don’t worry. He’ll not be movin’ that fast, if he’s got a pensioner in tow.”

“Here, see that women, nickin’ out early, is that...her off the telly?”

“Dunno, who?”

“Y’know, her, the...she reads the news.”

“Dunno, could be – they let Catholics do just about anythin’ nowadays.”

“See, there ye go – the Pope’d definitely claim you.”

“Okay, get ready. Sounds like the mass is about over. The music’ll start and they’ll be comin’ out in big numbers. Canny imagine Meara’ll be out early, but just in case they were sittin’ at the back, get your picture out and I’ll get up next to the door. Watch me. If they get past me in the crowd, I’ll point and you clock them. Go and talk to his mother. Just babble – ‘hello, Mrs Meara, long time no see, d’ye not remember me?’ Stop them for a second and I’ll be there.”

“Who gave you the stripes?”

“Fine, then. Hook him on the jaw and drag him to Orkney Street behind your chariot, I don’t care. Right, here everybody comes, arse in gear...”

The crowd ebbed out of the church, as if reluctant to leave its candle-infused glow and undulating shadows for the uncertainty of a chill midnight. The side doors had not been opened, so the worshippers were funnelled into one snaking exit rope, stepping gingerly down the stairway, easy for me to observe and discern, despite their dark, muffled overcoatage. One or two faces I recognised – was that Lorna McGunnigle, almond features easing awkwardly into a premature middle-age, rumpled and stretched by those prams she seemed always to be pushing and by the men she turned the lights out with? And Andy McGovern, his feet crunching on the stair-spread grit, stepping lightly down for a fat man, no resistance to the doughnuts and steak bakes of the shop he worked in.

The flow slackened, thinned and drained almost to a halt, a sprinkle of slow movers and priest-chatters finally ambling through the doors, bye Father and happy Christmas to you cast over shoulders into the warm yellow-glowing chapel. Last of all, arms linked, were Franny Meara and an old woman who was owning the role of Franny Meara’s old ma. They were oblivious to me, or anything else, as they tiptoed down the salty steps, the least icy square feet in the neighbourhood, but still, that underfoot bite warned ‘be careful’. I waited until they negotiated the last stair and stepped forward, warrant card proffered and laid my hand on Franny Meara’s arm. I felt him tense and then slacken as he saw, first, the card and then my face.

“Francis Meara, you’re under arrest. You do not have to say anything -”

“Fuck, man, you serious? Right in front of my wee ma? At midnight mass? That’s no’ for real.”

“How’d ye prefer it? Gunfight at the livery stables? Five in the mornin’, drag you out yer kip in the scud, bounce yer arse down three flights and never mind the skidmarks? This way is good, Franny, this is wise.”

“Hey, it was that Wee Pedro grassed us up, right? Wee Pedro the wanker.”

“’mon we’ll get into this motor here and you can worry about who you’re blamin’...come with us, Mrs Meara, we’ve got some business with your Francis here. We’ll give you a run home, eh?”

“Are you...are you the polis?”

“Aye. Who else’d have business with him?”

“Huh. Fuckin typical. Ye can stick yer run.”

“Long walk home. Franny’ll not be with you. Dangerous town, this, they tell me. Long walk home.”

“Aye, well, if I get raped and murdered, you’ll be to blame.”

“Mibbe, but it’ll be you gets raped and murdered. I’d rather be me.”

“Bastards.”

“Car’ll be warmer. And we know where you live, sure.”

Franny Meara had no interest in the conversation; he knew his mother could hold her own in a row with coppers. Instead, he was looking at me – or, as he would probably regard it, looking into my face.

“Whoa, hold up there...I know you. You’re Joe McCabe’s boy. Aw aye, that’s who you are. Whit a fuckin gyp. Lifted by Joe McCabe’s wee snotter.”

“My name’s on the card I showed you, so aye. Mrs Kerr’d be that happy you kept up with yer readin’.”

“...ah, how is he, yer old da? Aw, that’s right, faithful departed intit? Heard he came second in a wee bit metalwork. That right?”

“No secret, that. But the world’s doin’ okay, all the same, eh? Funny how that goes...not for you, obviously, not this minute, but...big picture? S’okay. Eb’dy’s happy, foreby Franny Meara. What’s that tell you?”

“Look at me, takin’ my ma to midnight mass, and you, pishin’ on yer da’s memory, and I’m the bad guy?”

“Correct again. You are the bad guy. But since I never finished the caution, that won’t count as a confession.”

Linda, standing next to Mrs Meara without touching her, clapped her gloved hands together. I expected her to say “abracadabra!” She didn’t.

“...if you two are finished showin’ your dicks? I’m freezin’ and, much as I like the OT, there’s a fridge fulla chardonnay at home I’d like better. In the motor? Now?”

I manoeuvred Meara over to the car and Linda, scrambling quickly out of the cold, kicked the Mondeo into life. She opened the back doors to let Mrs Meara climb in; she couldn’t, not unaided, and I was not letting go of her son until she was inside. 

“Linda, a hand? To get the lady into her taxi?” Grunting, she clambered back out of the vehicle and opened both the rear doors, easing the old woman in, without thanks but also without reproach. Handcuffed, her son followed.

“If you see that wee fud Pedro, tell him his card’s marked.”

“I dunno who it was put the word on you, Franny, but don’t blame him. Or her, whoever it might’ve been. We caught you at the chapel. I was you, I’d blame God.”

I locked the car door on Franny Meara and his bradawl-eyed mother, muttering low words of bad intent at me.

Peace on earth, or something.


In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone

Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,

In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

The Undertones Stole My Title

…a brown-complected volume called Teenage Rage, How A Golden Boy Became A Child Killer, written by one Bruce P Mackenzie. I guess he would have called it Teenage Kicks, but the Undertones got there first.

It wasn’t a bulky volume, 160 pages of fonts on steroids with generous line-spacing, but who needed Dostoyevsky for the tragedy of Nicole Clancy? Not that she was the major player in the tale, rather she was a by-the-way in the tabloid breathlessness – and Bruce P Mackenzie was red-top to the bone, no less than the chief crime reporter for the Daily Banner, according to the author’s bio. Christ, the Daily Banner…

Nicole Clancy was just the same as any other six-year-old girl that sunny December morning, skipping on her way to school, chatting with her chums about all the presents that Santa would be bringing her in a couple of weeks. She loved Christmas and her mum Linda was planning to make it an occasion to remember for the whole family. Linda and Nicole had moved a few months before to a flat in Barlanark, along with Nicole’s big sister Gemma…

Hold on there, Bruce – Barlanark? That scheme was the best part of ten miles from Levenhall. What was thirteen-year-old Lachlan doing over there? Or six-year-old Nicole doing in Levenhall? What happened to you, Gemma? You’d be around thirty now, at a guess.

…although Nicole was still getting to know her new school friends, she was already a popular pupil at St Aidan’s Primary and her teacher remembers her as a cheerful and bright girl. “Nicole always had a wee smile for me in the morning” said tall brunette Mrs Wendy O’Hara…

Well, call me and all my descendants shallow, but I for one was starkly gripped by the apparent hair colour of Nicole Clancy’s former teacher, twenty-odd years ago. What if “Mrs” O’Hara had been ginger? Oh, the drama…

The background narrative waltzed on, in regulation brazen blandness.

Times were tough for single parent Linda and her two girls, but the single mum was getting used to life without her children’s dad since he had been sent to Barlinnie prison six months before. That was a blessing in disguise, since hard-man Anthony Clancy had never been slow to leave bruises on the tall blonde.

Christ, more hair colour – did no editor notice you used “single” twice in the same sentence, Bruce? And, reluctant as I was to treat Linda’s many-years-later vague recollections as “true”, I think the man’s name was Charlie, not Anthony, and I doubt he was Gemma’s father, since Linda said he gave her the child. Then again, she also said his name wasn’t Clancy, either.

Now, talking to Linda, there are lines of sadness etched in her face as she wonders if there was anything she could have done differently that would have prevented what happened to Nicole. But, back in that cold December, no-one could have imagined the horror that was to befall the chatty six-year-old.

I touched my ear to check if any brain was dribbling out, melted by Mackenzie’s weapons-grade prose; everything seemed in order, so I skimmed through irrelevant detail and verbal upholstery to the start of the next chapter, a sketch of Lachlan Doune. Or, if you prefer, The Child Who Became A Monster.

Nobody knows when Lachlan Doune turned into the murderous killer who took the life of six-year-old Nicole Clancy. Nobody knows what went through his head that fateful night. We can only guess and shake our heads at the horror that came out of nowhere.

Lachlan was the youngest of a wealthy family, the Dounes of Airdlaggan – family motto Stand Up And Fight What The World Throws – and always seemed to be the favourite of his elderly father, Abercrombie Doune, a fierce businessman with dark moods and (to his older children) a distant and unloving father. Did this attention spoil the growing boy as he wandered on his own around the former mining country that had been turned into grouse and pheasant shooting land for the Dounes’ rich friends?

Well, Bruce P Mackenzie, you are as bad a psychologist as you are a journalist, so you are at least consistent. Nice, though, to paraphrase that verbose family motto for your readers, even if you made such a bad job of it. But…‘dark moods’?

…Abercrombie had several business interests in his life, but it was the sale of his mines at the time of nationalisation that made his biggest fortune. Later, when the mining industry declined and the mines were closed, he bought the land back for next to nothing and used the rolling acres for farming, shooting and Glenbarrie Safari Park…

And on he babbled. This was old-school tabloid boilerplate, simplistic and mock-serious, bloating pages until Mackenzie could deliver the money shot. Conversations and interviews with “friends” and “local people” added no information that any random passer-by could not have provided, or invented; either would suffice. I flicked through observations that Lachlan was “a bit of an outsider” and “kind of funny, not that anybody was laughing” and made few notes. Lachlan’s siblings were dismissed as a “playboy” and a “mysterious recluse”, which seemed to be a highly impressionistic (but lawyer-approved) way to say “unmarried alcoholic woman”. There was nothing more about the Doune parents, nor anybody else. Well, what was I expecting, research?

I meandered through more empty recollections of Nicole as a “happy wee soul” who “always had a smile for everybody”. None, though, were directly attributed to mother Linda who, Mackenzie recorded had had “her life torn apart by the tragedy” and was “shattered” by the experience. Okay, Bruce P, take me to what would surely be described, again, as ‘that fateful day’…

…which he did - although it turned out, specifically, to be “that fateful Wednesday”, for which I gave myself a silver medal.

Nobody knows how Lachlan Doune came to meet Nicole that fateful Wednesday…

Whoa, hold it right there! How can nobody know? Explain that remark, Bruce…but he didn’t. There followed – slowly and awkwardly – a wander through the various paths that Nicole might have taken towards Levenhall or Airdlaggan, or the reasons that the thirteen-year-old Lachlan (“perhaps playing truant from his expensive private school, although records show that he was present that day”) might have had to find himself in Barlanark, but nothing was clear and no questions were answered.

Whatever the mystery, one thing remains horribly, undeniably clear – after darkness fell on that cold December day, residents of the Levenhall scheme heard a commotion in the street. When concerned neighbours went to see what was causing the noise, they found Lachlan Doune dancing around a fire on a piece of waste ground, strewn with empty bottles and garbage. While they remonstrated with the agitated youth, barmaid Patricia McLean noticed there was what seemed to be a small human body in the fire. She was right – it was the remains of Nicole Clancy. When scaffolder Archie Bannerman asked Doune what was going on, the youth – seemingly in a trance, or a deranged state – mysteriously said “I can’t explain me to myself”.

At last, Bruce, you managed an accurate quote.  Idly, I checked Amazon on my phone – this book was out of print and unavailable, not even as a “used” version, however much this particular copy had interested somebody. I flicked to the book’s frontispiece – no old-fashioned sheet there with dates of issue, just a barcode. I went to the issue desk and waved the book at the neckbeard tickling his keyboard there, as if I’d discovered it...

Calling Jesus

There was no name on the door, but there were on the others, and none of them was Clancy. I chapped the splintery surface and waited.

No answer. Inside, I could hear the television, canned laughter and whooping. I knocked again, the door juddering under the rap….the TV was still the only sound. I bent down and shouted through the letterbox. “Taxi for Clancy!” Inside, vague bumps and clicks. The door was opened in slow-motion by a woman with no outline, a shape you couldn’t pour custard into. She spoke in the same halting freeze-frame style.

“I never phoned a taxi. Must be a mistake.”

“You answered to Clancy, but.”

“I’m no’ goin’ anywhere.”

“Aye, I know. My name’s Stephen McCabe, by the way. Here’s a letter from a lawyer, says why I’m really here. Can I come in?”

“Eh? I canny…whit is it ye want?”

“Somebody left you money in their will, except the money seems to have taken a walk. I want to talk to you about that.”

“Canny be arsed.”

“Are you listening to me? I said, there could be money in this for you – a lot of money, actually.”

“Whit do I have to do?”

“Let me come in and talk to you – deal?”

Linda Clancy’s living room was definitely well on the upside of average for a single woman presumably living on welfare benefits, absent the junkie hallmarks of no carpet, two weeks’ worth of takeaway containers piled askew, drug paraphernalia, grim odours and unfathomable dirt. It was, in fact, clean, tidy and decorated sometime this century, furnished with Sweden’s finest flatpacks and Scotland’s tartan-est fabrics. The one startling item was a 54-inch Samsung plasma, but that was hardly uncommon and it didn’t constitute evidence that Linda was wallowing in the delights of a Cayman bank account.

Sad to say, she didn’t offer tea, a dismal reflection on her manners, although I would have declined if she had, a dismal reflection on mine.

“I’m readin’ this letter, but you’ll have to tell me whit it means.”

“It says…in a sentence, that Lachlan Doune left you his money. Pretty much all of it.”

“Who’s Lachlan Doune?”

“Lachlan Doune. He…you don’t recognise the name?”

“Who is he? Funny kinna name. Sounds stuck-up. Or some kinna teuchter.”

“Sorry to bring this up…I think. He’s the man that killed your daughter.”

“Whit? My daughter’s fine. She was up here yesterday. She’s up here aw the time. Ye’re talkin’ mince.”

“No, this was years ago – Nicole.”

“Aw…awww. Wee Nicole? Aw, no. Aye, I remember her, I…”

“You remember her? She was six and -”

“- aye, with ye now. Some guy kilt her. Aye, right enough. Awful sad. Sad for me, that is, no’ for him – ach, I suppose it was jist sad all round, eh?”

“Linda, I’m not gettin’ the normal signals from you here. You do remember Nicole?”

“Aye. Was an awful long time ago, but. Cuz, see me? I had this drug problem, awful bad, for a lotta years. A load of stuff is…hazy. I canny remember everythin’. See, even now? I canny remember ‘hings. Names? Your name? Did ye tell me it? I dunno. I couldny tell you your own name. My daughter’s awful good to me, right enough. Leanne, that is, no wee Nicole. She’s…”

“Do you have any other family now? Husband?”

“That’s a laugh. I’m Teflon to men, nothin’ sticks. It’s jist me and Leanne, no’ like she lives here, that’s only me. But she comes by regular.”

“And you’re sure the name Lachlan Doune means nothin’ to you?”

“Well, now you’ve told me, aye. He was the fuckin paedo weirdo that killed my Nicole. Mad bastard, huge but he was only twelve or sum’hin. Aye, now you say his name, I remember him. Hated him. For whit he did, know?”

“You ever meet him?”

“Meet? Naw, don’t ‘hink so. Saw him, s’pose.”

“Twenty years ago? Or since?”

“Dunno, don’t ‘hink I ever met him, like I say. Look, I told you, I didny know what day it wis, back then - it wis aw they drugs. My brain’s fucked. If I ever met that guy, I don’t remember.”

“Never got a letter, phone call from him? Or anybody else, talkin’ about him? Nobody mentioned money?”

“Money? That’s a good yin. ‘hink I’d be sittin’ here if I had money? I canny tell ye any’hin, mister. Well, actually, the one ‘hing I can tell ye is ‘jist say no, kids’, that’s right enough, cuz they drugs are bad news. S’obvious, int’it? Look at me, I’m a zombie…here, whit was that ye said about a will?”

“You were named in Lachlan’s will, but there’s no money anyway.”

“Ha! That’s typical, jist ma luck.”

“Why’d he do that, name you in his will, if he never met you?”

“That’ll be the sixty-four million dollar question, eh? Cept it isny, it’s the no-dollar question, accordin’ to you.”

“Am I wastin’ my time to ask you what you remember about the time Nicole went missing?”

“What d’you ‘hink? Fuck all, is the answer. It was an awful long time ago, and I was -”

“I know. Full of the smack and that. Somebody else told me the same thing.”

“I wisny always like that, sometimes I’ve been okay. Like now? Been clean enough for a good long time. But back then? Naw. And your memory jist gets gubbed after a while. So when do I get the money?”

“The what? The nothing, you mean? Never, seems like. Or, put it another way, you can have it right now, since there’s nothing to give you anyway. Mind you, there’s a lawyer that’s payin’ me to chase after that nothing, jist because it’s the right thing to do. How d’you like that?”

“Well, a mad bastard like that – what’s his name, Lachlan? – wouldny have any money anyway, would he?”

“Turns out he should’ve, cuz he got all the Doune cash. Families are strange, they tell me.”

“Very bastard strange, aye. Still, what’s mine’s mine, right? If that will says I should have the money, then somebody has to give me it. Aye? And if that freak doesny have it, get it off Malcolm or one of them.”

“Malcolm? You don’t remember the name of the guy that killed your six-year-old, but you remember his brother?”

“Is that his name? Good guess. I’m like one of those old guys, them that’s got that dementia? Wee ‘hings from a hunnert years ago? Clear as day. Your own address? Not a clue. Don’t mean that exactly – I know my address, but some a’ they guys don’t. Some ‘hings jist jump out, like ‘Malcolm’. If you’d gone and asked me that name, I’d go ‘whit brother?’, but there ye are, it jumped out…seems sum’hin stuck somewhere. Funny how the mind works.”

“When Nicole went missing, when she was six years old, what were you doin’ then? You have a job?”

“I was…a mother. I’ve never worked, since I had my kids…well, Nicole was the only one, back then. Aw, naw, wait a minute - there was Gemma, too, aye…but Nicole’s da was a bad bastard, in and out the jail, only good ‘hing he ever did was give me the wean. And I had my troubles, like I said, but I was a mother, that was my job.”

“The guy in jail – you marry him? Was he Clancy?”

“Whit ye gettin’ at? Why’s my name matter? Naw, we never got married, Clancy’s my name. I could tell ye his, but it’d take me a minute to mind it - Charlie was his first name, how’s that?”

“Reason I’m askin’…if he was your legal husband, he’d be entitled to some of your inheritance. Not the biggest disaster in the world, half of fuck-all is still nothin’, but if we get a hold of any of the money, well…”

“Would he? Is that true? Well, that’s…doesny matter anyhow, cuz I never got married.”

“No? Well, hardly matters, like you say. Listen, if you think of anything else, call me? Here’s my card.”

“If I ‘hink of anythin’ else, I’ll be callin’ Jesus, cuz it’ll be a miracle.” 

Dookin In Ribena

“Long way from Govan down to here on a sunny morning, doctor.”

“Jesus, Stevie! What are you...no, forget I said that, stupid question...”

“Talk to PC Wright – he needs to recognise what a stupid question sounds like.”

“Answer it, anyway. Dead body in a tree, why’re you on the spot?”

“I found it...him. Called it in.”

“That’s a funny -”

“- don’t say coincidence. Just don’t. Anyhow, seems a kinna entry-level suicide to call the chief pathologist all this way.”

“We take our turns, keeps us honest.”

“Nothin’ to do with the fact that this is the Doune family residence?”

“Is it? I don’t know. And how do you know? Although, I guess…why you’re out here this morning, that’ll also be because it’s the Doune family residence, one way or another.”

“Aye, man called Lachlan Doune called me here, arranged a 10 o’clock meeting. I’m hopin’ that’s not him in the rowan tree.”

“Well, it’s somebody. Let’s see...actually, since you’re here, might as well ask you now – you touch the body? No? Not at all? Not even to check if he was still alive?”

“Look at the colour of him. Either dead or he went dookin’ in Ribena. And he soiled himself, but it’s long dried-in. He’s been up there a good few hours. Even from down here, looks like there might’ve been magpies or crows havin’ a wee look-see. So, no, I never checked if he was alive.”

“And you didn’t touch anything else?”

“Only the front door of the house. Knocked it, rang the bell, that’s all. Never touched or moved any objects. If you’re thinkin’...that branch is, what, ten, twelve feet up there...and there’s no ladder or anything. Aye, I thought that myself. Mibbe he could loop a rope up and over, but...”

“...but there’s a ladder lying on its side next to the front door of the house. Eighty feet away.”

“I did notice that, aye. Quite interesting, I’d call it. But you must want to get on and do your job now.”

“Aye – I’ll get back to you after. Always keen to see what the reviews say...and everybody’s a critic.”

It was then that the front door of Airdlaggan House creaked open.

*** *** ***

A dishevelled, but fully clothed, woman blinked bleary at the people meandering around in front of the house and pointed, unsteady but determined.  “Who the fuck are all you people here? Are you...is that police? What are you doing here? You need to get off...Lachlan! Lachlaaaaaaaannnnnn!”

Using sophisticated detection techniques, it was around that point I determined my new client, Mr Lachlan Doune, would likely prove unresponsive to invoices.

*** *** ***

“What’s your thoughts?”

“My first thought would be that I’ll be telling DI Simpson what my thoughts are, not you.”

“Just in general, I mean. I’m curious why this guy calls me up yesterday and when I show up, he’s a Christmas ornament.”

“Well, I’d say he wanted you to see this. But I thought you didn’t know him?”

“Never said that, although, no, I didny know him. And my theory about why’d he’d call me and do this’d be better told -”

“- to DI Simpson. Aye, call that one quits. As it happens, first look says this is suicide. No defence wounds, no signs of restraint or a struggle, obvious injuries are just what you’d expect from a strangulation...”

“Slow, then?”

“Not quick. In this light, I can see the petechial haemorrhage already. We’ll need to see what we find in the bloodstream to determine if he was awake and sober when he got up there. And see what’s under his fingernails – looks like there might be some of that nylon rope in there.”

“Suggests he was awake, if he was pulling at the rope while he strangled.”

“Aye. Second thoughts, panic, pain, whatever. Or mibbe he just pulled it really tight.”

“While he fired that ladder thirty yards away?”

“Yes. My report will note the absence of an obvious way for the deceased to have found himself in that position.”

“Hope you use that exact phrase. It’ll amuse some court clerk somewhere.”

“Aye, that’s always the audience you have in mind with a post-mortem. Anyhow, I think that’s the end of this conversation, Stevie...you can read the report along with the great Glaswegian public. You can count on this bein’ all over the tabs, one way or the other. Y’might find some of your old buddies on the phone tonight – could be headline news - ‘city private eye’s horror find at mansion of secrets’...‘troubled heir was jist hangin’ there like a saggy bag a’ plums, says rugged local ‘tec McCabe, age undisclosed...’. Unless you’re still on a retainer with the Daily Banner?”

“The Banner’s ancient history and...‘heir’? What’s Lachlan Doune heir to?”

“Whit? C’mon, Stevie – sharpen up! This isn’t some smackhead’s gurned their last up a stairwell in the multis. Do your homework – it’s your first-ever country house mystery. This is pure Poirot here.”

That was when Baws Wilson ruined the atmosphere, corrupting the Golden Age of the Country House Mystery, silencing the string quartet and sending the waiters scuttling back below-stairs.

“The fuck’s aw this? How come aw these cunts is aw ower the shop? Polis, is it? Haw, that’s fuckin Lachie! Is he deid?”

“My name’s McCabe – who’d you be?”

“Eh? Billy Wilson. Baws. Whit’s happened here?”

“You got a reason to be here?”

“’Course I fuckin have. I work here. Whit d’ye ‘hink the shotgun’s fur? I’m the fuckin gamekeeper. Now, whit’s the score? He’s deid, right? Lachie? Stupid bastard that he is...what’s he done? Jesus, canny believe this. Is Deborah in? I’m gonny see whit’s the score.”

“You might find that a wee bit tricky. I think Deborah might actually be in the house, aye, but the polis baggsied first go.”

“Polis? You’re no’ polis? Ye can fuck right off then. This gun’s broke the now, but it’s fuckin loaded and it goes right back the-gether again. Out my road!”

Baws Wilson might score some points for determination and (maybe) loyalty, but the diplomatic service missed nothing when his application got lost in the post and only a very particular circle could ever accommodate his bouquet of fuck-ye’s – which probably played better in Levenhall, the forgotten stalag of Glasgow Corporation post-war social failure whose roofs distantly half-nudged their way over the sheep-pocked fields that surrounded Airdlaggan House. If Baws didn’t live in Levenhall, then the one pub that “served” its mean streets wasn’t called The Fort Apache Bar. And it definitely was. 

If A Body Meet A Body

Airdlaggan House was in Glasgow, just. I discovered that fact to my surprise and discomfort when the bus dropped me off on what looked to me like a Discover Scotland advert, all drystane dykes and bewildered sheep.

The surprise came as I walked back down the winding lane towards the roadside nameplate I’d seen from the bus, the house title scrolled across its width in Copperplate Gothic Bold. Thirty yards before I reached that sign, I came upon another, embedded in the verge, which whispered rather than shouted a quasi-welcome that read “City of Glasgow”. Still? Out here, in damp tartan fields populated by Harry Lauders and scrawny trees whose branches grew bannocks?

Apparently, yes. Airdlaggan House itself nestled in an unlikely crook of the seemingly far-distant city, even if its fields and livestock were located across an invisible border, enjoying the rustic scenery of Inver-aber-bala-strath-sneckie or whatever lay in the great beyond.

The discomfort was more a function of realising that – city address or not – the path from the road wound (uphill, naturally) a long way before it reached Airdlaggan House itself, half-visible on a tree-bound hilltop. The electronic vehicle access was closed and locked but a kissing gate let me onto the property and up the gravel roadway that split a sprawling treeless field. I climbed the hill in an artless slalom, swaying this way, that, and more, to avoid the generous dollops of sheep shit that speckled the gravel, while the perpetrators glared idly at me.

The house, as I gradually began to see, was as faux-grand as I’d hoped. A manor where a farmhouse should be, Queen Anne, neo-classical and mock-Tudor styles collided and disputed, an architectural train wreck from another country that – carpers, take note – would still cost any buyer an even number of millions. Three cars sat outside on the terminal sweep of the drive that led to the porticoed front entrance, all of them late-model with vanity plates. I became so idly preoccupied with attempting to decipher the meaning of HI2 DLD that I almost missed it.

The body.

It was the sound that caught me short, a sharp creak of rope straining in the wind, clutching against a middle branch of the mountain ash by the side of the drive. Twisting in the fatal clutch of a noose hidden now, biting into his purpling flesh, a man dangled, limbs a-droop, bobbing in a marionette dance of indecision, head turning like he was saying no to a question nobody had asked him.