impart all right, son. I’ll impart the name of the man who did it. How’s that?’
‘On you go, then.’
‘Michael Ferris. Michael Ferris is the bastard you want. F-E-R-R-I-S, 12 Dollar Terrace, Maryhill. Are you writing this down?’
‘Thank you for your help.’
McCormack put the phone down and turned to see a shape in the doorway, broad shoulders blocking the light. Big shaggy head of blond hair. Goldie was the detective’s name. McCormack had pegged him early as a loudmouth. Blowhard. Also, he thought he knew the guy from somewhere.
‘Christ, mate. I never heard you come in.’
Goldie rocked on his heels. ‘Michael Ferris?’
‘How did you know?’
Goldie shrugged. ‘It’s the same nutjob. Phones every three or four days.’
‘Right.’ McCormack nodded. He smiled his crooked smile. ‘Look, I don’t think we’ve met properly. I’m Duncan McCormack.’
‘You think we don’t know your name?’ Goldie didn’t appear to see the proffered hand. ‘You think we don’t know who you are?’
‘Should I take that as a compliment?’
‘Well, it’s the closest you’re gonnae get in this room, buddy.’
‘Fair enough. It’s fucked up, this whole situation. I get it. But look, mate. We all want the same thing here.’
‘Really?’ Goldie chewed his lip. His fists were plunged in the pockets of his raincoat and he spread his arms. ‘You want to get on with catching bad guys? Like, you know, proper police work? Because I thought you wanted something else.’
You could rise to it, McCormack thought. Or you could take a breath, see the job through, write your report and be done with this shit. File this fucker’s face for future reference. Make sure he gets what’s coming at some point down the line.
‘I want what we all want.’
‘Right. My mistake,’ Goldie was saying. ‘I thought you were here to grass us up. Do your wee spy number.’
McCormack smiled tightly. Do you know James Kane? he wanted to ask. James Arthur Kane, the man who ran Dennistoun for John McGlashan? The man who just landed a twelve-stretch at Peterhead? That James Kane? I put him away. I did the police work that nailed him. He’s the fourth of McGlashan’s boys that I’ve nailed in the past year, while you’ve been shuffling your lardy arse in this shitty room. Filing papers. Sticking pins in a corkboard.
But he said nothing and now Goldie was smiling. ‘You don’t even know, do you?’
McCormack tried to keep the tightness out of his voice. ‘Don’t know what, Detective?’
‘Where you know me from? Jesus Christ. We worked the first one together. Jacquilyn Keevins.’
‘Right. Right. Of course.’
It was true. That’s where he’d seen him. How had he missed it? McCormack cursed his own stupidity. It was as if one lapse of memory proved Goldie’s point – there was only one detective present.
Goldie jabbed himself in the chest with a stubby finger. ‘And I’m still working it. Me and the others. What are you doing?’
‘I’m doing my job, Detective. Police work. Same as you are.’
‘Naw, Inspector. Naw.’ Goldie’s teeth were bared in a sneer, eyes bright with scorn above the bunched cheeks. ‘Naw. See, you cannae be the brass’s nark and do good police work. Know why? Because good police work doesnae get done on its own. You need your neighbours to help you. And who’s gonnae help you after this?’
He was using ‘neighbours’ in the special polis sense, meaning your partners, the guys you shared a station with. McCormack watched as Goldie tugged his cigarettes and lighter from his raincoat pocket, tossed them on the desk. Goldie was whistling under his breath and fuck this, McCormack decided, enough was enough.
‘You know a guy called James Kane?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, yeah.’ Goldie was hanging his raincoat on the hat-rack. ‘You put one of Glash’s soldiers away. And that gets you a pass? Maybe in your book. In mine, you need to turn up every day. Be a polis. Earn it all again.’
McCormack shook his head. Be a polis. The fuck would you know about that? McCormack had his finger raised to jab it at Goldie when he heard the smart rap of heels in the corridor.
‘What’s the score here?’ The boss, DCI George Cochrane, was on the threshold, tall and thin and oddly boyish in his belted gabardine. He read the battle stance of Goldie and McCormack. ‘The hell’s going on, DS Goldie?’
‘Friendly discussion, sir.’ Goldie smiled, still looking at McCormack. ‘We’re all friends here.’
‘Fine. Let’s keep it that way.’ Cochrane bustled through to his own office, spreading the cherry scent of pipe tobacco. At the ribbed glass door he paused. ‘And Goldie? We’ll be doing some parades with Nancy Scullion over the coming week. Drop by her flat this evening, would you? Check what times she’ll be free.’
‘Sir.’
Goldie took his seat. McCormack crossed to one of the big sash windows, unsnibbed it, hooked his fingers in the metal lifts and tugged it open. The smell of the river came in on the breeze; the Clyde met the Kelvin just south of the office. He thought about Nancy Scullion. He’d heard the name a lot around the office. If the Murder Room was a cult, its High Priestess, the Delphic Oracle of the Marine Police Station, was Nancy Scullion. Sister of the third victim, she had spent the evening of 25 January in Barrowland Ballroom with her sister and the killer. He sat between them in the taxi on the way back to Scotstoun, where the sisters lived just a few streets apart. Nancy was drunk, blootered, smashed on gin and Babycham, but she’d heard him banging on about caravan holidays in Irvine, growing up in a foster home, getting verses of the Bible off by heart.
Nancy’s description was holy writ. It was the tablets of the law for the men at these desks. They parsed it and probed it, took apart its description of a well-dressed modern man, with his short fair hair and his neat raincoat, his gallantry and his hair-trigger temper. Good manners. Nice diction. A cut above the common ruck of East End hoodlums and toughs. A golfer, no less, whose cousin had recently scored a hole in one. Polite but masterful, a man of strong views, who called for the manager when the cigarette machine malfunctioned and forced him to refund Nancy’s money. A man who spoke darkly about sinful women in the taxi back to Scotstoun. Who professed to spend his New Year’s Eves in prayer while the rest of the world gave itself over to drink and hilarity.
McCormack knew it all. After barely a week he knew the details about as well as if he’d been here all along.
Brown chalkstripe suit, regimental tie. Thick watchstrap. Embassy Filter. Overlapping two front teeth. Suede boots. Dens of iniquity. Woman taken in adultery. Hole in one.
This was the litany and these men blitzed it. Every man on the squad had criss-crossed the city, chasing these leads. In a hundred barber-shops these detectives had traded nods in the mirror with
