‘Brodie, if you think this is an IRA thing, shouldn’t you…? I mean, isn’t it getting just a bit too risky?’
She was right, of course, but that wasn’t enough to dull the glowing coals of anger that seemed to live in my guts these days.
‘I’m just going to look around.’
‘What? Where?’
‘Bearsden. Stroll those leafy lanes and admire the big houses. See if there’s one I fancy.’
‘Will you take the gun?’
‘For Bearsden?’
She looked at me. ‘You’re daft. Be careful.’
I had their address but I wasn’t sure what I’d do when I found the house. I just needed to be moving, doing something. I took trams and buses out to the north-west of Glasgow, only about four miles, but it felt like forty. Bearsden is a place apart. A separate community out in the countryside, and settled by folk with loads of money and a preference for big sandstone villas. Sam’s house was pretty fabulous by my standards but it was terraced. Many of the big villas in Bearsden were detached with gardens front and back, and approached down quiet, tree-lined streets.
I felt conspicuous, like a door-to-door salesman on the prowl, except I’d forgotten my bag of brushes and chammy cloths. I asked my way of a genteel woman outside the row of pretty shops in the main street. She was politeness itself, despite her clear suspicions that I was ‘trade’ at best, and an axe murderer at worst. They could spot strangers here a mile off. Maybe it was the remnants of the scarring along my jaw. Maybe my accent. Her polished vowels made mine sound like a butcher’s mincing machine.
It was a perfect morning in an idyllic setting. Warm sun and fluffy clouds. I was glad I’d left my coat behind. I was tempted to carry my hat, loosen my tie and sling my jacket over my shoulder, but I would have stood out even more amidst the prim privets and laurel bushes.
I followed the twists and turns up the gentle hills until I was walking along a beautiful street, filled with beautiful villas, nestling in their own grounds. Blue hydrangeas burst out of every garden. There was no traffic, in fact no people. It felt like a Sunday. It would always be Sunday here. I was counting out the numbers where I could; often enough the houses simply had names, like Lochinvar or something inappropriately Gaelic. I was keeping to the even side of the street as Slattery castle was an odd number.
Suddenly I could see which it was. About fifty yards ahead. Unlike the other leafy-fronted houses, this one had a high wall with railings and a gate. I did some counting and confirmed it was chateau Slattery. I slowed down, but it wasn’t the sort of street you could dawdle on innocently. Not the sort of place to stand leaning against a lamppost with a fag without someone coming out and demanding to know who you were. That’s if they hadn’t just called the police to arrest you for walking around without a hat.
Suddenly, from ahead, from Slattery’s, came the sound of clanking chains. The big metal gate swung back and a woman came out. She held the chain in her hand, and carefully threaded it through the bars and locked it with a massive padlock. There was another lock built into the gate itself and she put a big key in it and turned. She began to walk towards me. I crossed over.
‘Good morning,’ I said as she came closer. She was about fifty, I’d guess, plainly dressed, not at all like the owner of a big pile like this.
‘Morning,’ she replied warily. I took the chance.
‘I wonder if you can help me. I’m looking for Mr Slattery’s place. I was supposed to meet him. He had a job for me.’ I smiled. She looked suspicious. I had really blown it if this was Dermot’s wife.
‘Och, they’re away. You’ve missed them. I suppose he didnae have time to get in touch. Are you on the phone?’
‘No. Gone, you say? That was short notice.’
She softened up. ‘Aye. Packed up and left last night, so they did. Left me a message to clean up the place and lock it up weel. Never a thought about paying me. And no telling how long they’ll be away. See, they’re awfu’ good to work for but at times-’
I cut in. ‘Do you know where they’ve gone?’
‘Back hame. The auld country as they call it.’
‘Ireland?’
‘Aye. I hear it’s awfu’ wet there.’
I watched her plod off and thought that only a West Coast Scot could picture somewhere wetter than here. I looked again at the drawn curtains and big locked gates and cursed myself. It seemed like the rock I’d thrown in the pool had made too big a splash. All the pond life had fled. I turned and ran after the woman.
‘Missus? Oh, missus? Sorry to bother you again. You don’t happen to have an address for Mr Slattery in Ireland? I could send him a wee note.’
She eyed me up and down. ‘You’re no’ the polis, are you?’ She paid particular attention to my scarred face.
‘Do I look like the polis?’
‘Ah’m no’ supposed to do this, but if you just want to write a letter…’ She was digging in her string bag, then in her purse. She brought out a scrap of envelope and unfolded it. ‘Here. Have you got a pencil?’
I jotted down the address and handed the slip back. I hoped I hadn’t stored up trouble for her. But now what? I gazed at the address. Planner Farm, Lisnaskea. It was a place I’d never heard of, presumably a village. But it was in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. Bandit country.
THIRTY-SEVEN
I got myself back to central Glasgow and went to the library. I trawled through some gazetteers till I found some references to Lisnaskea. It claimed to be one of the major villages near Enniskillen in Fermanagh. Which put it in the middle of nowhere. It was the former family seat of the Maguire kings, the ruling family in the area for generations, until good king James VI of Scotland and I of England decided to supplant the local Catholic top dogs with loyal Scottish Protestants. The Plantation.
Locally, this was badly received, and to this day, the population in this wildest and most westerly of the six counties of Ulster was still mainly pissed-off Catholics, and therefore a stronghold of nationalism and the Irish Republican Army. A Scottish Protestant strolling into such a village intent on making a citizen’s arrest of one of their distinguished old boys – as I assumed would be the case with the well-off Slatterys – would find it easier to stick his head into a bear’s cave, bang on a drum and ask how the hibernation was going.
Even I knew when I was beaten. The British Army were given a hard enough time of it over the last three hundred years. Why would one man fare any better?
*
When I got back to the house there was no sign of Sam. She’d left a note in her elegant copperplate on the kitchen table: Brodie, Had a phone call from Craig Allardyce. Lord Chief Justice himself! Said he wanted to chat about my career! Can you believe it? Judge Lech must have put in a word. What’s to lose? I can ask him face to face about the Donovan case and why he picked me. Meeting him at 11 for coffee at the Royal Crown. I can be a sleuth too! Sam
Good for you, Sam. Things were really beginning to happen, it seemed. I picked up the Gazette and read McAllister’s latest piece of invective against the police. He’d be piling on the sorrows in tomorrow’s edition by breaking the news about the Reid kids.
It made me think about Arran again and Father Connor O’Brien. He’d been conspicuous by his silence. Though Arran was an island they still got daily papers and news of his old pal Father Cassidy’s demise must have got through to him. Surely the news of Mrs Reid would have set tongues wagging and heads shaking in sympathy in that little community of Lamlash?
But O’Brien hadn’t tried to call me. I wondered why. Given how recently we’d met and our reason for meeting, it would have been perfectly natural for him to have phoned me as the bodies piled up to find out what the hell was happening. But nothing. Suspicious bloke that I am, I also wondered how much of a coincidence it was that after my visit to O’Brien’s island, I’d nearly met a watery end. At the time I’d dismissed his involvement out of hand. Now I wasn’t so sure. His silence was compounding my everyday religious paranoia. I picked up Sam’s phone and asked the operator to connect me. It rang for a while, then: ‘Father O’Brien. How can I help?’