Big Joe's Fan Club

"His name was Joe, big Joe McCabe. Bastard, just a horrible prick of a man. Nowadays, he’d be dealin’ tenner bags for somebody better organised, but there was none of that back then. So, he hung around with other hard men – or, if you like, real hard men – and got his screw when anythin’ was on the go. Reset...that’d be sellin’ stolen goods to you...stuff ripped off from the docks, cases of whisky, tobacco was a big favourite. And strange stuff for our neighborhood, sometimes. Cuban cigars, I remember. Was how I learned what a cohiba was, how about that? And he did the occasional wee robbery...I think. Ripped off shops, broke into offices, stole tools, whatever they could lay their hands on. And if the big man – Shuggy Devlin, he was called, needed a face striped, big Joe would do that, too, once or twice. Never worked, never had a job, just drew his dole and spent his whole time crooked. And he wisny even that good at it. Small-time, never had any ambition. Take away his back-up, take away Shuggy and his boys, and he could only hit women and kids.”

“Jack and your mama, you said.”

“Aye. He was every bully you ever heard about. My sister...she was older, never seemed to wind him up. Kinna got on his good side, agreed with him or somethin’, dunno. Just made ma look bad by comparison, I always thought, not that she ever talked back, anyway – but how do you figure the way a guy like that ‘hinks? He only hit Frances once or twice – me, more’n that, but not often, and only when I was younger.”

“You got on his good side, too?”

“Not hardly. More the opposite. See, I’m not Johnny, I’m not Frances...with me, he was, I dunno, different. Careful, after a while. Wary. You can get out your dime-store psychology book now, cuz that’s where we’re at. Seemed like he could sense a weakness in people, like – listen to me talk, jeez – like an animal can. Just somethin’ basic, fundamental. He went for the weaker ones, Johnny – he was the youngest – and my mother, some people would call her a doormat. I’d be one of them.”

“Christ, Steve.”

“Well, you asked. See, Johnny, now, in his own way...whatever bullshit he broadcasts, he likes strong women. Always been the same – not CEOs and senators, okay, but not doormats, definitely. He doesny know it, but he’s desperate for his woman not to be like his mother, cuz he’s -”

“- never gonna act like your papa. I can see that. I can see what you say abou’ John. Yeah...I can see he don’t know it, too...where they now, your mama and papa, gone?”

“Aye, long gone.”

“Just...gone?”

“Not ‘just’, not really. It’s the usual story, pretty much. Never mind the psychology, you’ve seen a hundred movies where the victim fights back – that was what happened. Only it wisny the big victims, not him and ma, it was me. He hadny actually touched me for a coupla years...longer, mibbe, thinkin’ about it...and I just watched big Joe hit him and her. Drunk or sober, he just...he had this fuckin meanness in him. Find somebody weaker’n him and lay it on them. Bastard, dirty bastard. And, like I say, it’s the usual story. I began to lip him up – you do that again, I’ll no fuckin stand for it, I’d tell him, and he’d laugh. But he never hit me, just laughed and said ‘come ahead’ and then he called me a big poof when I never actually did anythin’... happened a few times, until, y’know, the time I did do what I said and went over the line.”

“How far over?”

“Far enough. Plenty far...fuckin miles. He skelped ma cuz his tea wisny ready. Punched her on the jaw, decked her in the living room. She got up and he hit her again, I says ‘quit it’. He goes ‘aye, who’re you, ya big prick?’ and I just lamped him. End of.”

“That simple?”

“Yes and no. He howled and he looked at me so I clattered him again and he goes down...it got ugly, have to say, Jesus, was it ugly...but I’m still proud. Aye...proud’s the word. Cuz I booted him where he lay, kicked fuck out of him, over and over again and he’s shoutin’ ‘ahh’ and ‘I’m dyin’’, so I toed him again and he’s...he’s shrieking like a pig and I dragged him up and pulled him out the door by his hair – some head of hair on him, big Joe. Hah. And he’s yowlin’ away...Then I booted him down the stairs in the close and he rolled over himself, scuddin’ his way down those stone steps, two flights, big stairs they were an’ all, kept kickin’ him until he was down on the ground floor, and he’s in tears by that point. He gets half up on his knees and I booted him again in the stomach and told him to fuck off and never come back...he says nothin’ , just staggers out into the street. He ran down the road, one shoe on, blood for skin, howlin’ like livestock. I broke his jaw and five ribs, right there. Like I say – ugly. But it got the job done. I was fourteen, big as I am now, but fourteen, still. Kinna big night for me, that.”

“Madre. He come back?”

“Sure he did, when he could, when I was out. My ma wanted him back, y’see? He wheedled his way in the door and it was easy, cuz she actually wanted to say yes. I told him to fuck off but he apologised and said that anyway, I was outvoted.  Ma said okay, Johnny was just a kid and Frances would just go along. So, somehow, it was me was causin’ the trouble. And that was him, back in the house, back in her bed.”

“He still the same?”

“No...he was a lot more careful. Kinna creepy, in a way, bein’ nicer-than-nice and it’s all ‘aw-right-son, how’re ye doin the day’?’ every five minutes. But people don’t change, not like that, was a matter of time and that was the drink, that time, the time he went back to bein’ how he was. See, he’d lost a lot of his swagger after what happened when I gave him a doing and chucked him out. He never reported it to the polis – how embarrassin’ was that for a hard man, given a tanking by a fourteen-year-old? – and anyway, what did they care if somebody like him got bleached? But Shuggy Devlin and them, they knew, and he never got his face back. Plus, he was gettin’ older anyway, and soon he just gets to be a hanger-on. He never was high up the pole in the first place, and when a soldier loses it...he was nobody. I knew, eventually, he’d take it out the old way, and it’d be ma, cuz she’d complain least. Johnny was on my side by then, if you’d call it that.  And then he did it. One night, I was out, he came home early, steamin’, and he raised his hands to her.

“I came in, saw what’d happened and just told him to get off his mark and never come back, else he’d get a leathering that’d’ve made the first one look like a fuckin massage. He just went, hardly said anythin’ and I never had to touch him. My ma never said a word to me, just looked at me, like...I was the bad guy.”

Florida Fried Lawyer

“Mr O’Donovan can see you now.”

We could see him, too – hard to miss, with a white bouffant wig wafting around his skull as if he’d scalped a fashion-depleted snowman, violet-flecked red face like a pre-schooler’s Ritalin-fuelled mad monster painting. His handshake said sincerity and the sweep of his arm said yew’re welcome. Florida Fried Lawyer.

“Come on in, y’must be Stephen – welcome to the great state of Florida, sorry about the weather!”

“Oh, we get rain in Glasgow...although we’re short on hurricanes.”

“Ah, well, we might still be spared – Dixie’s movin’ slow and unpredictable, could be she just creeps up the coast, kicks them in the ass ‘bama way, serve ‘em right. We’ll see. Now, to business - I guess John has expressed to you his predicament?”

“Sure, a lot of predicament-expressing lately in our company.”

“All right. Now, the police wish him to go undercover on their behalf, at his own risk, which would expose him to significant jeopardy, you follow?”

“Uh-huh – no jeopardy worse than significant jeopardy. That’s pretty much the king of jeopardies, right there.”

“Most assuredly! So, my counsel thus far to John has been to face the unpalatable possibility of jail time. Incarceration’s not what anybody wants in their future but most likely he’ll spend a little time in one of our more white-collar corrections institutions – hey, he din’t rape a busload’a missionaries, did he? – and then prolly get kicked back home to bonnie Scot-land to finish his bit. Maybe even, God willin’, your legal people say ‘okay, time served, you can jest go’. And John’s a free man.”

“I hear a lot of what-ifs in there, Tiresias.”

“Oh, call me Ty! And yeah, the law is a capricious mistress. You can’t say for sure what hat she’s gonna wanna wear, any given day. But you...let me put it this way... you can try to determine what the weather’s gonna be like and you can select your own finery on the back of that. Dress the way you think she’ll like. Yeah?”

“I canny see the question for the metaphor, Ty, but here’s a straight one back – what advice are you givin’ to Brady Pike? What suit’s he gonny wear?”

“What what now? My dear friend Brady is lost to us. Such a tragedy. His family din’t even have the comfort of sayin’ goodbye to him. Lovin’ daddy, much missed by all.”

“Mm. I think that exact phrase was in the papers. Loving daddy, much missed. Must be true.”

“Undoubtedly. He made some, uh...some errors of judgment in some a’ his business dealin’s, just like your brother John, but he was a fine man. Not jest his family’ll miss him, the wider community has lost a real committed citizen. A good Christian. And, me personally, a friend.”

“I only wish I’d’a been able to meet him. He sounds like what we call a roaster in Glasgow. But what I asked – what advice are you givin’...did you give...to Brady Pike? Same as for Johnny – suck it up and do the time?”

“Wait along a minute, now. Do I hear somethin’ a little untoward in your tone? Whyncha come out and say it, you think there’s some malfeasance here?”

“How long did you know Brady Pike? Ten, twenty years? I don’t know that kind of detail, y’see.”

“Well, I’m sure I dunno where you’re goin’ with this, but yeah, musta known Brady a good while. His daddy was a friend a’ mine, so mosta his life, y’might say.”

“Whereas you met Johnny only...when?”

“Your brother could tell you that much, Mr McCabe, you ast him. When he and Brady set up their business together, that’s when. I did some a’ the paperwork on the legal side...and nothin’ financial, case you got a mind to spread some more’a that shit you got goin’ on there.”

“No need to be defensive, Ty. Think how this looks from my side – I’m jist a simple guy, but I see my brother here in trouble, his own fault, no doubt, but the only legal advice he’s gettin’ is ‘you’re beat, take the medicine’? Now, I could say that to him, but he’s not payin’ me to be his lawyer.”

“O-ho, he’s not payin’ me neither, how’d’ya like that? On account, he’s got no money! He’s livin’ in a north-east St Pete condo with a waitress and – whaddya know? – that’s not the lifestyle of the rich and famous in the Bay area. Where’s your theory now?”

“Actually, that’s very interestin’. Why are you doin’ charity work? Guy you hardly know, complete loser to hear you tell it, can’t pay you, and he’s got no case. So why are you takin’ out his garbage? It’s not as if you’re actually fighting it – you’re just makin’ sure his wee slot car never leaves that groove. That’s bland legal advice. You’d probably call it a-no-dyne.”

“Here, now...I’m gonna give you a little headroom, on ‘count you maybe don’t have the unnerstannin’ to grasp the idea of pro-bono, nor neither the manners to cover your lack...but I haveta say, your attitude here since you walked in my door kinda stinks. ‘fact, you strike me as a real classless motherfucker. And I’m thinkin’, why are you wastin’ your billable hours, Ty, on this hillbilly Loch Ness Monster bullshit? This one, he jest sits on his ass like some fuckin ba-boon, lets his big brother wipe his ass ‘cept there’s no cleanin’ gets done, cuz bro don’t know shit in this town. I reckon we’re done, wuntcha say?”

“You seem to have lost your dictionary, Ty. All those twenty-dollar words didn’t make it past the first question mark, huh? Anyhow, you can send your bill for no dollars at all to that condo you mentioned and we won’t trespass on your hospitality again.”

“Oh, you’re welcome. Hope you don’t spend too long in Raiford, regrettin’ this conversation, John McCabe. Y’all have a good one.”

Tonight, Tonight, Could Be Just Any Night

I parked the Sonata behind Johnny’s jeep and stepped from the car into the hibiscus-scented heat. The night was clammy with moisture rising out of the damp land and drifting from the tropical storm that still lurked out to sea. Cicadas clicked and whirred their abdominal song somewhere in the dark.

“When do I get to meet...Lola?”

“You don’t need to snigger every time you say that, it’s her real name.”

“I know, I know. I just hope she’s got a hat made out of fruit – serious fruit, pineapples and that, never mind grapes and berries.”

“You’re headin’ for a disappointment, then. I’m up here, on the second floor, it’s a walk-up.”

“Well, there’s plenty plants growin’ in these gardens, she could always pick some flowers if she’s in a hurry, wee vine or two...Is this technically a condo? Or is it just...apartments? Or efficiencies? I could never sort out the words from the places.”

“Okay, I get your point. I’ve lived fancier places, but I’ve lived a helluva lot worse. So have you, Stevie. So have we. I used to have this great place over by Boca Ciega, but that’s a thing of the past now. This is okay – can still see the sea...water, anyway. And aye, it’s a condo. I think.”

The movement was barely perceptible, a shiver off to the right among the bougainvillea that trailed up the sides of the apartment block. Something... someone...shifted weight and the plant trembled.

Johnny was fumbling for keys, head down, as the shiver became a shudder and a flickering figure stepped sideways, half out of the shadow. No possible way to see that except as a threat. I lurched forward, yelling.

“Johnny! Down! Down!”

Instinct fought orders and instead of diving he turned towards the source of the noise – me. I caught Johnny full in the chest, arms wrapping around him and hauling him down below the level of the hedge.

Noise, now, to the right. Scuffling feet, a gasp in the silence. Then, shots.

One, two, three...then a fourth, hesitant. Around us, vegetation sings and earth thuds as the shots flail harmlessly by, velocity spent.

The sound of feet clacking on floor-tile, receding. Somewhere in the middle distance a car door open, closes, and an engine barks to life, wheels skidding on parking lot tarmac as it rips away onto the street and into the night.

Cicadas still trilled and resonated in the echoing silence left marooned after the gunshots’ passing. I eased myself off the huddling form of my brother and inhaled.

“Y’okay, not hit?”

“Nah, I don’t...no. I’m okay.”

“Good. Take a breath. They’re gone – he’s gone. Shhhiiiiit. Listen, is this the kinna neighbourhood where that was a normal night out? Or will your condo buddies be dialling 911?”

“S’fine, it’ll be fine. If the 5-0 don’t show in a coupla minutes, I’ll call them.”

“If they don’t show up in a coupla minutes? What? You worried what the neighbors might think if you called? More worried about that than gettin’ dead?”

“It’ll be okay. I dunno, I’m too...fuck, Stevie, I’m scared. I never expected that.”

“I know you’re scared. The old Johnny would’ve been kiddin’ on he was hit, just to wind me up. Christ, I’m scared...I never signed on to be target practice. Seems like you’re in even deeper shit than you thought.”

“Aye...and I thought it was already pretty deep.”

We scrambled unsteadily to our feet and breathed deeply, shivering still in the humid night.

Prologue - Only Dangerous In The Breeding Season

Prologue - Only Dangerous In The Breeding Season

A night so black.

Running, scrambling, along a sodden swamp pathway hemmed on both sides by swaying vegetation I could barely see.

Somewhere in the dark behind me, I could hear voices, barking to each other in garbled syllables, the whistling sound of flails, flattening reeds and thrashing among the underbrush. Under the staccato human yelps, the constant quaking rhythm of the swamp at night...frogs, beetles, crickets, grackles, possums, alligators, nameless slithering things, all clicking, buzzing, hissing, creaking, whistling, croaking out there, somewhere in the limitless black.

I scrambled on across the damp, yielding soil. Out here, the pinewoods only a memory, the trail was bolt-straight and fringed with bulrushes, tangled soaking weeds and arching palmettos that reached out to flick the face. I had a clear path, but it ran only in one inescapable line – beyond the straggly mat of vegetation lay the water, still, viscous and so endlessly dark. The voices were still a distance away, but the overgrown dykes that split the swamp into parallel-edged rectangles guided them inescapably closer, even in the blackness, to their quarry.

Me.

I breathed in, controlled as I could, strangling any loud gasp that could draw them forward even quicker. They had no flashlights, no narrow beams lancing the dark, my one comfort in the doomed task of escaping them on the swamp railroad that let me, and the pursuers, travel only in straight lines. Now, they couldn’t be sure where I had gone, but eventually...they couldn’t miss on this unbending path. Suddenly, I had half-stumbled into a clammy thicket of reeds blocking my progress...reeds slapping me in the face meant I’d hit a T-junction in the path. Left? Right? Left!

I skidded left and the path continued at 90 degrees, clear enough for me to manage a half-jog but still with towering foliage close on both sides, rank-scented vegetation I could more sense than see. Wait...the voices were receding, or, better yet, no longer following. Maybe they were no happier in the dark than me? I stopped to listen.

I bent over and used the breathing space...literally, to breathe harder and quell the dull pounding in my chest. Voices, further away now, merging with the natural squeaks, groans and trills of the night swamp, pulsing cadences unceasing. A shout...no, more a guffaw. Why? I strained in the dark to identify shadows, to delineate earth from sky, movement from stillness. Then I saw it – a tracer of light lacing through the swamp undergrowth where none had been before. They hadn’t abandoned the chase, just waited for somebody to arrive who could send the piercing flashlight beam arcing along the pathways, animating the dark stage. I drew a deep breath and stumbled onward along the one path, the true path, the only path I could, my straight line through the swamp.

There were more voices now – four, five? Too many, far too many, and they were armed. To defend myself, I had the wet clothes I stood up in and a sharp tongue.

I lose.

They hadn’t made the turn into my left branch of the path yet – maybe they’d go right at the junction. Was there a right? I didn’t truly know but they’d see quickly enough. In the thin glow of dead cloud under muted stars, I could see another bank of dense foliage dead ahead – another junction in the network. I turned left – an interlocking tangle. To the right, then – the same. The path had come to a full stop and the maze was at an end. There was no other way to turn. Behind me, closing as they must, the hunters.

Fatal.

There was only one way to go – straight ahead...beyond the path and through the vegetation, to the swamp itself, plunging into the terminal uncertainty of what lay beyond. I peeled apart two toppling bulrushes and inserted myself into the knotted jumble of plant-life, sharp-edged reeds nicking at my face and hands. One step inside the tangle, my feet sank into ooze. Forward, thrashing my way into the foliage, no longer caring about the noise, one fragment of my brain saying ‘it’s okay, they’re shouting themselves, they’ll never hear this above their own noise’...other fragments too scared to form thoughts at all. Four more steps and I was through the band of marginal vegetation and I was treading out into deeper water of the swamp, sinking slowly into the blank, shapeless, formless dark. Two feet deep, three feet, further yet...my feet touched bottom, water sluggishly ebbing around my chest now, feet half-sunk into a morass of muck. Here, I would be invisible from the path, no doubt.

Beneath me, around me, things moved and swirled in the black water.

Things.

My head rang with a piece of information somebody had told me once, half-remembered, half-digested.

Alligators, it went, are only dangerous in the breeding season.

When was that, exactly, the alligator breeding season...?

Final extract from No Shadow In The City

Jakey, MP

She went straight to the point, while seeming never to go anywhere near it. Only a very clever lawyer can do that, or a very clever woman. Bernie, of course, was both.

“Welcome back to the farm, Stevie.  I’m quite surprised you developed that much passion, that quick, for poor wee Murray Gilchrist.”

“There’s no answer to that one, counsellor. Although you forgot to add the number 24 to your client’s name.”

“I know, and anyway, it wasn’t even a question. And maybe I lied, maybe I’m not surprised.”

“So tell me why I should be excited about your KKK boy. Assuming there is a reason.”

“I told you on the phone, there’s no way he did what he’s in the Bar-L for. We’re getting an independent forensic report on the second firebomb cuz we wouldn’t necessarily trust the police version and we’re comparing it to the official report on the first one – they wouldn’t’ve obscured anything there. If it’s exactly the same MO…”

“Then mibbe Gilchrist and one of his buddies just have very similar habits, they learned their trade off the same how-to website. Bombers-R-Us. Or Gilchrist left some old stock and his mates got a buzz on one night and thought, fuck it, ‘mon we’ll lob a sparkler up in there? We’ll use one’a Gilly’s specials, might even give him a hand up wi’ his appeal, nice win double.”

“If you’d seen any of Murray’s mates, you’d know how very unlikely that kinda thinking is. Opening a tin of beans would be an evolutionary leap. Or if you’d seen Gilly – which you need to. You know where to find him, right? And it’s not Gilly, it’s Muz or EmGee.”

“Okay – so I brace him in the jail, he denies it, says naw, I dunno if any of my mates coulda done this…Okay, if you never dropped the first bomb, who did? Cuz that’ll be the same guy, right? That’s yer ticket out, Muz, so who was it, if not you?...Uh, dunno, I really fuckin don’t, man. Wisny me done it, gen up, but I don’t fuckin know who did, that’s the pure heavy truth, man...Give us some hope, EmGee, drop a name or two on me….uh, Weezy, Scud, Herman the German, Big Cheesy, Haunless, Gammy, yon Geraldine wi’ the teeth, Kyle – no’ Irish Kyle, the other wan – Leishy, Jagga, big Linda ‘n’ mibbe Moorsy. And by then, EmGee’s given me the name of every imbecile in his street. Pointless. So, even if this bomb is identical to your boy’s, so what? Guilty! Next?”

“Do your best, Stevie. And you’ll likely not spend long at the Bar-L. I think you just previewed the whole conversation, right there.”

“One thing botherin’ me…”

“What is it, Lieutenant Columbo?”

“Dornoch Textiles. You get firebombed, you get more threats after that, you’re an obvious target to these kinna guys…why no CCTV outside the factory? It’s basic, so why not?”

“You won’t believe why…they had CCTV, but the unions complained it was surveillance against their members, so they took it down again. They regret it now, as it happens. Not just cuz of this other firebomb, but now there’s a picket line outside the factory – dispute about Dornoch using non-union labour, saying that includes illegals, but nobody’s proved that. So, they might as well have carried on surveilling their members, or whatever they were doing. Or just having a security camera, could be.”

“If they’re havin’ a square go with the union, why the hell did they bother to pally up to them about the cameras?”

“Allan Dornoch, as in ’Dornoch Textiles’? Remember the name? Friend of the unions cuz…”

“…aw, Dornoch? He used to be a Labour MP. Not another one...”

“That’s it, till he got his arse toed in favour of Vijay Chavan, so he’s now just an ex-MP, but still a good union man. Didn’t help Dornoch’s public image that he spends his days suckin’ on a Chivas Regal bottle – always did – and he had himself a reputation for letting his hands wander when he got a drink in him.  Nothing ever official, but shit sticks.”

“Right...same question in reverse, then. If they’re buddied up, how come there’s a picket line outside?”

“Cuz Allan Dornoch is just a name, he doesn’t actually run the company. Ayleen does, his wife, and she’s not sentimental about traditional skills and craftsmen’s guilds.”

“Christ. You couldny make a worse job of it, all snakes and no ladders.”

“But Dornoch Textiles aren’t my problem, unless you tell me different, Stevie. Murray Gilchrist is the client.”

“And who’s paying for all this, to keep a junior Nazi out of jail?”

“You pay taxes? Well then, you are. Them’s the rules, we all get to play.”

*** *** ***

Even with all the windows of the bus open, my shirt was stuck to my back by the time I climbed out of the humid metal box into the harsh shimmer of the street. Air-conditioned public service vehicles in Glasgow? What use would they be? Dornoch Textiles stood one half a block off Eglinton Toll, a Victorian-school-turned-enterprise-centre separating it from the main road. The fire-blackened section I recognised from before was still there, but now it was balanced by a second, different area of scorched brick, as if a pyromancer obsessed with symmetry had corrected some offensive artistic imbalance. Still visible beneath the newer fire-damage was a two-foot high slogan, crudely sketched in block letters: WHITE PRIDE, WHITE JOBS. Across the narrow street, in the full blaze of sun, stood a desultory picket line, six or seven Asian women and one white man in a suit. They were presumably keeping some court-ordered distance that also ensured they could find no shelter from the heat. Even allowing for the wilt-factor of the sun, they looked a worn-down, demoralised crew. Two of the women were wearing black armbands. The factory entrance, by comparison, stood in cool shadow.

I waved to everyone and no-one on the picket line. “’mornin’. Hot day to be standin’ here – you must really mean it.”

It was the white-man-in-suit who answered. “I don’t recognise you, my friend, but I’m Danny Galloway, United Union of Garment Manufacturers and Allied Trades. UUGMAT, to people with short attention spans.”

“Stephen McCabe, jist an innocent bystander as far as all this goes. I’m actually here to talk to the Dornochs and I saw your picket here…obviously. Thought I’d have a word, see what the problem is.”

“You workin’ for Dornoch Textiles then?”

“Christ, no, never met them. Somethin’ totally different, no unions harmed in the makin’ of this picture, old news in fact. Now…these ladies would be your members?”

“Aye, but if you want to ask anythin’, I speak for them.”

“Really? Disny seem the most equal opps arrangement I’ve ever heard but I’ll have a shy anyway – speak for them about why they’ve got black armbands on.”

“If ye don’t know already, ye don’t need to. And I don’t care about how anythin’ seems to you…I do speak for them, aye.”

“What if I want to comment on the weather? Or compliment their choice of dress? You’d still speak for them? Does UUGMAT really offer that kinna representation? Some service. Except the only thing I actually want to ask, somehow ye don’t speak for them on that? I’d want my dues back, I was them.”

“Chuck bein’ a wide-o and do one, Mister McCabe. This is serious union business here and you’re jist in the way.”

“Well, Mister Galloway, this is a free country and I reckon if I wanted to have a wee chat with your members, then I would, don’t you? As it happens, this is none of my business, far as I know, so I won’t bother. But a wee bit advice? Doesny look good, big ginger white man frontin’ up this kinna deal, looking like you actually ‘represent’ nobody. Bad PR, is the best ‘hing you could call it….but good luck in your dispute anyway, assuming righteousness is on your side…Ladies…sorry I couldny speak to you there, Mr Galloway has an opinion about that. I don’t share it, but I have to go inside now…mibbe we can chat some other time? Have a good one.”

*** *** ***

Both the Dornochs were waiting for me, each keen to give me pieces of their respective minds. Me, I didn’t necessarily think I wanted to be given either of them.

And Mister Dornoch was already well refreshed, flush-faced and beady. Mrs Dornoch, however, looked almost chilly, despite a turtleneck sweater that fought against common sense in the heat.

“Mister McCabe, your phone call said you were ‘investigating’ this latest attack on our business, but Calder Street police station says they’ve never heard of you – care to put us in the picture?”

“Well, Mrs Dornoch, it probably isny true that they’ve never heard of me there, not literally, unless you spoke to somebody particularly dense, cuz they have; I’m practically related to some of them. But no, I don’t work for the police, never claimed to you I did. And I am investigating the incident, on behalf of Murray Gilchrist.”

“Good God – that soap-dodger has a private eye? Strange days. And why would we want to waste any of our busy day on behalf of the reptile who tried to burn us down? And I’m sure you know the reasons why he did it – because we employ people whose skin he doesn’t like and we have connections to the Labour movement. My husband used to -”

“- he probably knows what I used to be, Ayleen. Cuz I know who Mister McCabe is. This McCabe put a friend of mine in jail.”

“Did I? That could be quite a few different people…aw, hold up – Billy Hutton? You would’ve been an MP same time as him, sure. That never occurred to me, but now you mention it…you must’ve been. You and him buddies then?”

“Well, I had to step down one term before he did. I had my own local difficulties to sort out, but Billy was elected again. A very hard-working MP, a good man. Until the likes of you torpedoed him.”

“Your man Hutton needed no help, but if he did there would’ve been a queue. He was a crooked bastard, bent to the bone. He couldny tell up from down, but I don’t know if he was ever a jakey as well. You any idea?”

“Fuck off out of our premises, you slimy prick!”

“Well, if you put it like that…”

“Mister McCabe, Allan…please! I don’t think anybody needs the conversation to go this way…Allan, could you go and see whether Parveen has finished the new online pricing pages?”

“What? I’m not fuckin -”

“Allan? Please. We need that to be finalised before the relaunch. Now.”

Dornoch (Mister) turned and…no…no…I can’t resist the word…he flounced from the room. Dornoch (Mrs) looked at me like a Great White Shark who had just shooed away an eel from her prey.

“I won’t apologise for that. My husband can be a prick but I have to say diplomacy lost nothing when you never turned up for the exam.”

“No, but that’s not what my card says anyway, so nobody should be disappointed. And Billy Hutton…sorry Billy Hutton MP…was so crooked he wouldny fall straight. Whether he was your husband’s mucker or not.”

“I met him, and you’re right. Problem is, what I said was true – this company has always had good relations with the unions and the Labour Party. My husband’s grandfather founded the company and he was Lord Provost of Glasgow. He fought for the right of Indian and Pakistani workers to bring their families here. We’re a community company and we’ve got a lot of connections, so when one of those connections goes up in flames – I mean Billy Hutton now – then we’re suspicious of anybody who had a hand in that. We question their motives, especially when they claim to be police when they’re not.”

“First up, we covered that point – if you chew up what I say and put it in the wrong dress, not my problem. I am investigating this, and that’s all I said. And second…are you really suggestin’ that this is political? That Barclay Hutchison Skivington – or me, personally – has some kinna hard-on for…for what? You? Your company? Or your…all due respect, now…your has-been, disgraced jakey husband? Is that your theory? Nobody gives a shit.”

“I should tell you to fuck off.”

“That’d be two of you in the last five minutes. Your call.”

Sighs, low whistles. The Great White was sagging and seeming weary, never much-sought-after in a shark.

“Mister McCabe…Stevie, isn’t it? - why do you think I agreed to see you today, at short notice? And it’s true, I did call Calder Street station, but whatever they said – or didn’t say – you can take it I know perfectly well who you are. So, why?”

“Off the cuff…you’re not convinced that Murray Gilchrist bombed you the first time. I don’t know why you think that, but this second firebomb made you think it double, so if somebody like me bowls up – and yes, you just said you know who I am – you think to yourself, okay, let’s see what he dredges up. Cuz you know as well as me that the polis have got no reason to pick Gilchrist out of the fire and this’ll be the only way any stones get turned over. And I do it for free – far as you’re concerned.”

“Half right.”

“Okay…you make this big song-and-dance about your company being founded by Lenin himself, and how you’re all one big happy family with all the nations of the earth...and yet, when I walk down this street, the first thing I see is an official union picket line, and Asian women on it, foreby the snider that’s got the suit. Somethin’ is very wrong with this picture. And…Ayleen, yes? – I think you’re not really sure how the hell this all happened. You’re a determined woman, running this company – even though it’s not your own family name on the wall – and you’re just fuckin mystified how it all came to this. Is that the second half of your why?”

“It is. I can’t see how we got to this stage. My husband’s the MP…ex-MP…so he sometimes doesn’t see the need to run the business in a business-like way; I do. If that means different working methods, then it does. We still have a recognised union, we still pay industry rates, we still check everybody is entitled to work here, we pay taxes, and the union takes a dump on us because we don’t employ as many people as we used to. Allan’s kinda caught in the middle, he actually convinced me to take down the security cameras after the union complained. Bastards are picketing us and we do that! It’s a bit pathetic, the way he wants to be the workers’ friend -”

“That was in the mix for his wee local difficulty as well, it seems. Too friendly.”

“I’d leave that, Stevie. You said it once, no need to go again. You think I want to sit in my office and listen to a stranger snigger at my husband? And – not that you give a fuck – nobody got hurt apart from him. Allan paid for that in politics, and you can take it to the bank that’s he still paying for it within these walls. But, like you said, it’s his family name on the wall, not mine, so we do what we have to. All right?”

“Understood. Very clearly. On-topic…my question about your problem is that, if Dornoch Textiles is totally kosher, what does the UUGMAT guy say is the reason for the picket line?”

“He’s got his facts wrong. He says we use illegal immigrants, non-union labour – and if some of our workers don’t join, that’s up to them, doesn’t mean we stop them doing it – don’t pay PAYE, insurance, etc. If he was right, he’d be right, but he’s not.”

“So, you don’t know a thing about who firebombed your factory the first or the second time?”

“No clue. But I know when that slogan – white pride, white jobs? – went up on the wall. The night after the cameras came down. We wiped it off and it went back up again, so…you tell me. And we had stickers on the front door – Scotland: White Pride, with a nice local address for their office, just down the road, where all the fun and games has been kicking off these last few nights. How’d’ you like that?”

“I needed to be heading down that way sometime soon, I reckoned. You’ve jist confirmed that. Nice day for a walk, after all… Listen, ‘fore I go, some of the women in the picket line are wearin’ black armbands – do you know if that’s for some real reason, or is it some symbolic ‘death of workers’ rights’ thing?”

“Oh, Christ, no, that’s real. It’ll be for Rani, Rani Jadeja. She used to work here, she’d know a lot of the women. Maybe all of them, cuz she works for the union now. Worked.”

“That’s not the woman got attacked with the acid? Her name was Uzma...”

“No, worse…Rani…Rani’s dead. She was killed a few days ago, that case…her husband killed her and her kids. In was in all the papers, TV. Awful…awful.”

“Over in Govan, in Elder Park? Ah, stupid question, ‘course she’s the same one…did you know her well?”

“Used to, when we weren’t fighting the union. Went to her place, once, over by Albert Drive? She stayed there when she split up with her husband, kept the kids. She was killed there, I think, although some of the papers said it was at his house. He moved away…well, like you said, Govan. Where he….”

“Aye. Listen…I’ll let you know what I find out. If there’s somethin’ wrong here, it’s not just Gilchrist’s lawyers need to know. And sorry if, y’know, I started somethin’ there, between you and your husband.”

“I wouldn’t lose sleep over it, but you could use better manners.”

“Sometimes, mibbe. Other times, I really, really need the manners I’ve got.”

Back outside, I crossed to the picket line and ignored Galloway, addressing the women directly. “I’ve learned more from Ayleen Dornoch about what’s happenin’ here and I heard the awful news about Rani. I’m very sorry to hear that and please accept my sympathies for your friend. She must have been quite a lady. Please take my card, anybody who wants it, my number’s on there if you want to talk. I hope this all works out the way you want it to.”

Each of the women took a card; Danny Galloway glared at me. 

No Shadow In The City Part 4 (note -some chapters omitted for spoilers)

The Boys…Boy… Are Is Back In Town

Glasgow Central station, Victorian glass roof and vaulting arches, had gathered the heat as it seeped from the streets, night falling breathless and sticky. No current stirred in the dead air as I stepped from the train, footsteps clattering with others’ like an inept round of applause rattling along the platform. I felt the keys in my hand, their dull jangle of metal and plastic sounding a flat tinkle of welcome. You’re home, Stevie.

A slender scatter of commuters scanned destination boards, waiting for their trains to the southern suburbs; fewer long-distance travellers on this midweek night sat with heavy baggage, slumped in the heat, destined for Manchester, Birmingham… some for London. Why they drooped out here in the accumulated warmth of the day, instead of on the air-conditioned carriages…? Maybe they were just too wabbit not to, or maybe they knew something I didn’t.

The Bat-signal had blazed in the sky for me, but here, nobody had noticed.

“Haw, mate? Bung us a pound bit for my fare? Coupla quid’d be good, ye got it.”

My new ‘mate” had eyes like hunted animals – not, you understand, eyes like those of hunted animals, but eyes which in themselves were like animals. It made quite the impact.

“Where is it you’re goin’…mate?”

“Uh…hame, know? Uh…” – eyes darting to the destination boards – “over by Whifflet.”

“Christ, bud – you ever been near Whifflet? Can ye spell Whifflet? Listen, what’s a pint cost over in the Toby Jug?”

“Eh…three-forty. How?”

“Right, show us yer kitty...c’mon, what’re ye up to so far? Right…all of it…okay…let’s see…one, one-fifty, sixty, eighty…Christ, eighty-two…ninety-two…two pound two, two pound seven. Right, here’s a quid. Away and tap somebody else for 33p, my pleasure, you’re welcome.”

My time at St Mungo’s hostel hadn’t been in vain. I’d just used the ‘skills’ I learned there to befriend somebody, venture into some basic economics and encourage some personal enterprise, all for the cost of a pound, albeit it would end in drink. Glasgow was already the richer for my five minutes in town, even if I was marginally poorer.

*** ***

My key turned in the lock, and the build-up of solar gain that had pumped into the apartment through my undrawn curtains rushed out to meet me. I took a moment to let some of the wave of heat dissipate and stepped inside. Everything was the same, of course, because I hadn’t been that long away and there was nobody else to change anything. No mail piled behind the door, which meant my re-direction had been successful…which also meant that I’d have to especially pleasant to Joanna at Centrus, where my “business” was nowadays located. It was strictly an anonymous cubicle-and-mailbox accommodation address and they won’t have been too impressed to see all of McCabe’s mail suddenly clog up my doocot. My buddy Joanna on the front desk probably wouldn’t mind, I told myself. She was sharp and sassy, she’d be happy to be bending the rules. Maybe…

I slid up all the sash windows to let some of the heat escape and there was a pressure-change as the night air – cooling now that darkness had fallen – seeped in and sent the trapped Fahrenheit thermalling up and away.

I left the flat to cool for a moment and went downstairs and into the street, then back up the exterior stoop to the separate tiny property that had once been my office, two rooms – well, one of those was really a small lobby. I’d given it up when Mrs Mac robbed me, legally and illegally, and I found myself in a new/old world of hand-to-mouth, both glad that my Bernie was a lawyer and depressed that I needed her income, however indirectly. The office still stood empty, the way I’d left it. A strange, awkward space, it was eagerly available for lease. And it would be cheap.

I went back upstairs, the flat now exhaling, and looked out at my part of what I called home.

It wasn’t London and I didn’t have much of a view from the flat. Audio, I had...the buzz of Byres Road and further distant streets drifting across rooftops to me in an indecipherable pattern, the scat singing of the city. But visuals, no. Just an occluded half-vista of gables and roofs, windows and back-courts. No dizzying heights, only an array of flickering lights in the dark, and definitely no romantic river far below.

No river to ponder, just reflections on the overlapping sheets of glass in my raised window, the twin images not quite aligning, overlaid and distorting, reflecting versions of me and the future. We both looked okay.

There would be something out there tomorrow and I would be ready for it.

But who am I to judge?

(I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea

The National Gallery sits on the edge on Trafalgar Square, right where every tourist thinks everything in London is located, including the Tower of London, Big Ben, BuckingHAM Palace and Madame Tussaud’s. And Shakespeare’s house, Windsor Castle and Oxford University.

I was transfixed by Jan Van Eyck’s masterpiece, the Arnolfini Portrait, all darting light and reflection, humour and narrative, texture and shadow, painted in 1434…1434, Christ, hundreds of years ahead of its time and yes, we all got the memo that the scene it portrays isn’t actually a wedding – well, duh, that’s what all the old guys thought, we know better now…

…when my phone vibrated, ringtone switched off but still active. I spoke quietly into it, giving my name, still staring at the happy Arnolfinis...

“Hello, mister McCabe, I used to call you Stevie, is that okay still? This is Della Maguire, did ye get my message?”

“I did, Della…you’ll have to forgive me, has it been a while? I don’t remember your name, sorry.”

“Ah, right, no problem. I used to stay up the next close to you in McCulloch Street, mind? I used to work in the wee dairy at the foot of the close, know?”

“Oh, Jesus, Della? Della! Christ, that was a lifetime ago. Sure, I remember you, you were always in there in the mornings when I got my rolls…I used to be in there most days, s’pose.”

“Aye, we used to get in that Guardian for you. ‘Course, that was afore the Pakis bought it off Mister Fulton.”

Giovanni Arnolfini, hand half raised as if in welcome, looks towards two figures reflected in the mirror behind him on the back wall, one of them – surely – the artist, the other a mystery. His wife, Giovanna Cenami, lays her hand on a swelling belly but, no, they tell us she isn’t pregnant, merely posing fashionably…well, those might have been their names, and that might have been what they were doing, but we don’t really know. The picture retains its tease, its suggestion.

“See, it’s my daughter, Mel? You mind her? She would be only wee when you lived by Cully, wee blonde one? I had the three daughters, and wee Brandon. Dana’s married onto one of those…ach, would you listen to me now? I’m talkin’ shite. It’s no’ aboot Dana, it’s aboot Mel. She…”

“Aye, you said in the message. I’m awful sorry to hear that.”

“I warned her, you do, don’t ye? Warned her about who she hung aboot wi’, but ye canny tell them, aw naw, they know best, right? Aye, right. So, she goes out the other night, cuz there’s been trouble round about here, riot this, riot that, she went to see whit’s goin’ on.”

“Hold on a second Della, why are you tellin’ me all this?”

The couple were Italian, but lived in what we now call Belgium, rich merchants garbed in velvet, sable and damask, fabrics in which they traded and made their fortunes. Well, somebody had to pay Van Eyck for his work and the mere bargees of Bruges lacked the coin. And they lacked much 15^th century bling, the type of thing merchants and nobility would drench themselves in.

“Well, I saw your name in the paper, the Daily Banner, right?”

…not again. That rag and its payoff were riding me down.

“So, I thinks to mysel’ at the time, I know him, that’s Stevie used to live over by us, aye says Tam – that’s ma husban’ – so it is. So when, y’know, this ‘hing happened, your name was right there, in my mind. I’m thinkin’…he’s in the papers, Stevie McCabe, top ‘tec they called ye in the Banner. You must be some kinna big shot, jist the man to help us out, so I phones up the paper -”

“-The Banner?”

“Uh-huh, and the guy there gives us this number.”

“Aw, for fuck’s sake. Ogilvie, him?”

The artist’s name was emblazoned right there, like high graffiti, and – right next to the name - that date so long ago, and a flurry of symbolic messages to ponder today. Cherries, signifying love…oranges signifying purity…a wee dog, a bizarre squirt of a canine with a pirate’s facial hair, signifying…that the Arnolfinis owned an ugly wee dog (interpretation my own).

“Thing is, Della, I know you saw me in the papers and everythin’, but I’m jist a one-man band, I don’t…I can’t…investigate things like…I can’t just say I’m gonny take on a rape case. Anyhow, I’m not in Glasgow, I’m in London the now.”

“Ah, it’s like that, is it? The bright lights? Made yer fortune and doon to the smoke?”

“Della, I hardly know ye. I haveny lived in McCulloch Street for, I dunno, a wheen of years. I don’t need you gettin’ on my case. How can you not just get the coppers to do their job?”

“Well, that jist it, they willny. Jist point-blank refused, said…whit did they say?...said it wid be bad for community relations, they said that. Could inflame tensions, that was another one. Cuz of these riots and that. All cuz it was one of they Pakis raped her.”

Oh, no…

Light, all light, true light, daring techniques nobody had dreamt of, searing back off a  chandelier, a mirror, a brass frame, a golden chain, the whole scene reflected perfectly in the image-within-the-image, subtly insinuating from the convex glass of the mirror, a perfect non-Euclidean transposition of the objects…the guide said.

“Della, I really don’t need to be hearin’ this. I’m awful sorry to hear about your daughter, about Mel, and I wish you well, I do, but I’m not your guy. It’s not about bein’ mister-high-and-mighty, it’s just…you don’t ask a fireman to bake you bread, you ask a baker. Jist not my job.”

“Wis it cuz I said ‘Paki’?”

“Naw…it’s…well, that’s not the reason, really not, but tell the truth, I’m not comfortable hearin’ that, no. I know ye’re upset and that….”

“Okay, well, one of they Asians done it, how’d’ye like that? Mel was out on Albert Drive and it was all kickin’ off. She’s doin’ her nosey, mibbe had a wee drink, and this is whit happens? She comes home to me, comes home in some state, says mum, somethin’ terrible’s happened…”

“Listen, Della…if I could do somethin’, I would, but like I say, here’s me in London and that’s no good to you and Mel. You need to get the polis to do their job right. Sorry I canny do anythin’ more, but that’s jist how…”

I was speaking to empty space; Della was gone.

None of the other paintings in the room, mainly facial portraits with a scattering of devotional scenes, interested me at all, but Jan Van Eyck’s creations gazed at me from half a millennium away and spoke of status, hopes, vanity and the transitory nature of it all, the Arnolfinis puckish compatriots to Shelley’s Ozymandias and Fitzgerald’s Gatsby.

Or, at least, that what my exam answer would have said.

I left the gallery educated, provoked, perplexed…disappointed, dismayed and feeling several different brands of shabby. It seemed like some kind of bait had been cast and I was the quarry.

*** *** ***