I was discharged with a supply of painkillers and an appointment to come back in a week.
The strange thing about the whole affair was not the beating. I’m more intrigued by the fact they knew my name.
Chapter 25
Monday January 7 th 2008
Stevie is in sight. I worked my way through the black hole that is local authority bureaucracy and discovered that the licensee for The Lame Duck was one Stephen Mailer. He may or may not be the owner but there was an address for him and I scraped enough to jump a bus and pay a visit.
He lives in Bishopbriggs on the north of the City. It is a real two day camel ride by bus and when I got there he wasn’t in. His home is a terraced house that doesn’t suggest he is a pub entrepreneur of note. I hung around for an hour or so but to no avail.
I decided to try again in the early evening in case he was working — so I duly stretched a cup of coffee to breaking point in the nearby ASDA and went for a walk — in the main to take my mind off the fact that I had no money for food.
Around seven I headed back to Stevie’s house but it still showed no signs of life. I thought about leaving a note but decided against it. The beating has sparked up my warning radar.
I headed back to the hostel and got the young internet geek to find me Stevie’s phone number on the web. This was done for free — no cigarettes — just the threat of bodily violence.
Gordon Brown
59 Minutes
Thursday January 10 ^th 2008
So Stevie exists, is alive and well and running a pub in the nether regions of Easterhouse. I phoned him two days ago and he agreed to meet in town. I suggested the Mitchell Library — to avoid the embarrassment of meeting in a pub or cafe and not having the cash to buy a drink.
I’m not big on libraries. My reading tends to be The Sun and the Daily Record and if I’m in the mood for intelligent debate I dip into the Herald. I’ve probably read six books in my entire life and most of them were forced down my throat at school. As such the ‘Mitchell’ was a bit of a wonder to me.
I waited for Stevie in the old section — a grand Victorian affair that was built when libraries were almost places of worship. High vaulted ceilings, grandiose frontage and an entrance to grace a palace.
Stevie arrived bang on time. A tall slim man with hair that looked like it had gone by the time he was thirty. He wore a pair of battered jeans and a sweat top with the words Strathclyde University emblazoned across the front. It looked old. A university degree and he was a career puller of pints. That doesn’t make him a bad person but university was a whole world away from my upbringing and I always envisaged it churning out the future leaders of the free world — people who rarely say — ‘Will that be all?’ after each sentence.
We found a table and slumped into two hard back chairs. His eyes were red. Drugs or lack of sleep — take your pick?
I opened up by handing him Martin’s letter. He looked at it suspiciously. As would I given its state after all these years. He read it with care and then handed it back to me.
‘I haven’t seen Martin since Christ left Govan.’
I nodded, waiting for him to open up a little but he stayed quiet.
I asked if he knew why I’d been left a pint. It sounded dumb.
‘It’s got fuck all to do with a pint. I wanted nothing to do with it back then. But they threatened to do some damage to my mum. Can you believe that — MY MUM. So I agreed. Take this and I’m off.’
‘Who are they?’
He blanked the question and reached into his pocket, pulled out a key, dropped it on the table and was up and off before I could speak. I grabbed the key and chased him out of the building but he broke into a run, sprinted to the roadside, leapt into an old VW Beetle, locked the doors and blanked me as he pulled away.
I watched the car merge into the traffic and when I lost sight of it I opened my hand to look at the key. It was a small brass Yale type with a few serial numbers on one side. Other than that it had nothing to indicate what it was a key for.
One mystery after another but on this occasion I know someone else that might be able to help.
Chapter 26
Friday January 11 th 2008
Back to the old haunts is the order of the day. I hardly recognised the Gorbals. New flats, leisure centre and a distinct lack of many of the pubs I had frequented. I doubted that the person I wanted would still be in the same house. I doubted they would still be alive. But they were both.
The man who answered the door was bald (where he had once had a shock of ginger hair), wrinkled (where he had once had a face so smooth he had been nicknamed ‘baby’) and a stoop (where once he had stood tall and proud — five years in Her Majesties Armed Forces would do that to a man). Recognition flickered in his eyes and he stepped back to let me in. There was no fear — once there would have been — but my story was well kent and I was no longer a threat.
The flat was minimalist and dominated by a wretched stained coffee table that had the Mount Etna of fag ash and doots as its centre-piece. The heating was all the way up to eleven and the place smelled like nothing I had ever encountered.
There was no offer of a seat. My host collapsed in the only chair in the room. It sat square in front of the TV, next to the fag mountain and, before his backside hit the fake leather, he lit up.
‘How you doing Ron?’ I asked.
‘Better than you from what I hear.’
That hurt. The house was a shit-hole and yet I was the one on my uppers. Go figure.
‘I need a favour?’
‘It will cost.’
I knew it would. I had cleaned out the geek kid for everything he had and bought forty fags. I dropped them next to the mountain.
‘Small favour,’ he said looking at the two packets with contempt.
I dropped the key on the table.
‘What’s it for?’
In the good old days Ron had been a locksmith and a bloody good one at that. In my house breaking phase Ron had been a saviour on many an occasion. It was easier to get into a house with a key and it was often surprisingly easy to snatch a key, copy it and return it to the owner. Ron did the copying for a fee at odds with the going rate on the High St, but the stiff cost paid for his silence.
He looked at the key and picked up one of the packets of cigarettes, muttering something about the wrong brand before pulling a stick from the pack and lighting up. The one in his mouth wasn’t even half dead.
‘Well?’
He inhaled and held up the key, twirling it over a couple of times before dropping it back on the table. He said nothing and exhaled.
‘Well?’
‘Safety deposit.’
‘What bank?’
He inhaled again and I was seconds from landing one on him. It was like drawing teeth from a crocodile.
I waited.
‘Can’t be sure.’
He drew on the cigarette again and I changed tack. Stepping behind him I wrapped my arm round his neck and pulled upward. He spat out the fag and began to struggle but he was old and I had a fourteen year stretch of using the prison gym in my arms.
‘Be sure,’ I said.
His choking was getting in the way of his ability to talk and I loosened off a little.
‘Ok, ok, no need for the heavy stuff.’
I let go but stayed behind him, ready to grab him if he made a move that looked out of place. I was staring down on his bald pate. The collection of liver spots and scabs made for an unpleasant vista.
‘It ain’t a bank key. This is either a Credit Union or a private box.’
‘Go on.’
‘There are very few private box places left. No money in them anymore. I’d put money on a Credit Union but not a new one. The key’s old. Twenty years, maybe more. They don’t make these anymore. Is the key local?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Assume it is. If we don’t you’re screwed. I only know three Credit Unions that might, and I mean might, still have old safety deposit boxes.’