‘What made these fights special?’ I asked, though some horrible ideas had already flashed across the screen of my imagination.
‘They was no-holds-barred. No weapons, but apart from that everything was allowed — kicking, choking, gouging, biting. It started off small then just got bigger and bigger. The more blood, the bigger the crowds. And the higher the ticket price.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Let’s have it… what happened?’
‘Someone got killed…’ Sneddon shrugged as if a human being’s death was an inconsequence. ‘A pikey. Something happened in his head and there was fucking blood everywhere, from his nose, his ears… even his fucking eyes…’
‘Let me guess… he ended up catching a train…’ I shook my head. It had been there in front of me all the time.
Sneddon made his usual crooked mouth shape to approximate a smile. ‘You’re a smart fucking cookie, aren’t you, Lennox. You make all of the connections. Yeah… he was the pikey that got mashed by the train. So no one’s the wiser.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong.’ I put my glass down and leaned forward. ‘There’s a keen-as-mustard new pathologist on the job. Very keen on what they call forensic science. He worked out that your pikey fighter wasn’t some drunk caught on the rails. Even proved that he’d been in a fight before he died.’
‘So fucking what?’
‘So you’ve got a problem. Or another problem. The City of Glasgow Police are treating it as murder. Believe me, they’d much rather have chalked it up as an accident, but because of this sharp new pathologist they can’t.’
‘Fuck.’ Sneddon’s face hardened. Which was surprising, because there wasn’t much scope for further hardening. ‘I knew we should have minced the bastard. But I didn’t want Murphy knowing nothing about this.’
I nodded. Hammer Murphy, one of the other Three Kings, owned a meat-processing plant in Rutherglen. It was well known that several bodies had been disposed of through the plant’s mincer. The Three Kings had an agreement whereby Murphy, for a fee, provided the same service for Sneddon and Cohen. Not for the first time I considered vegetarianism.
‘You should have told me all of this at the start,’ I said. ‘It would have made things easier.’
‘Murder. Fuck. And for once it wasn’t…’ Sneddon shook his head self-critically. It was like watching a golfer who had missed what should have been an easy putt. The thought flashed through my head that murderers maybe have a handicap system too.
‘You say he was a traveller?’ I asked.
‘A pikey, aye… What about it?’
‘Well, that means there’s maybe no official records of his existence. No birth certificate, no war record, no National Insurance number. No paperwork means he didn’t exist officially and that makes it more difficult to tie him in with anything. I think you sit this one out.’
‘What about his family?’ asked Sneddon glumly.
‘They’re not going to go to the police, I’d say. It looks to me like they’ve already said their goodbyes.’
‘How the fuck do you know that?’ asked Sneddon. ‘You don’t even know who they are.’
‘When I called in at the Vinegarhill site there was a vardo — you know, a gypsy caravan — all dressed up with red ribbons. Deep red. That’s their colour for mourning, not black. Of course, it doesn’t mean it’s your boy. What was his name?’
‘Gypsy Rose Lee… How the fuck would I know? He was just a pikey.’
‘Go back to the fights. What was Small Change MacFarlane’s involvement in them?’
‘He set them up and ran the book on them for me. He took a percentage of the winnings and I provided the venue, and the muscle to collect unpaid bets.’
‘He supplied the fighters?’
‘Aye, kind of. He arranged for them to be supplied. The deal was he paid for that out of his cut.’ Sneddon sighed wearily. ‘It was Bert Soutar who found them for Small Change.’
‘Soutar?’ For a second I was deafened by the sound of pennies dropping. ‘Oh, I see… so Bobby Kirkcaldy had a stake in this too?’
‘In the background, aye. Kirkcaldy’s a good fighter and he’ll batter this Kraut on Saturday. But when me and Cohen put money into him, we said he was to get checked out by an independent doctor. Turns out his heart’s fucked. Arrhythmia, they call it. Two, three, more big fights and then he’ll have to give the fight game up. The Board of Control know fuck-all about it like. They’re not exactly on the ball. But Kirkcaldy likes having money, so wherever there’s a pie, he has his finger in it.’
‘So that’s why he was so out of breath…’ I said more to myself than Sneddon, remembering the toll Kirkcaldy’s skipping workout had taking on him in his basement gym. That would be why he had been doing so much training there, instead of in the city gym: no one to see him struggle for breath.
‘Then Kirkcaldy or Bert Soutar will have a name for the dead traveller?’ I asked.
‘Maybes. Maybes not.’
I leaned back into the plush red upholstery and sipped at the whisky. It all made sense.
‘So it didn’t occur to you at all that it was the tailers who were making all of these symbolic threats?’
‘Pikeys? Because of the one that got killed? No, it didn’t. It didn’t even cross my mind.’
‘I find that very difficult to believe.’
Sneddon leaned forward, as if about to share a great confidence with me. ‘I’d be very careful before you call me a liar, Lennox. Very fucking careful.’
I said nothing for a moment, doing the discretion/valour equation in my head.
‘So Soutar supplied fighters for these contests and Small Change organized them and ran your book. What about Jack Collins? He was the real fight arranger as far as Small Change was concerned.’
‘Naw. We did have dealings with Collins, but that was for proper boxing matches. What I told you that night I hired you was true. We was putting together proper bouts and running a few half-decent fighters. That was what Collins managed. And that pikey kid who’s supposed to have done Small Change in… he was moving up out of bare-knuckle and was turning into a tasty boxer. All that’s fucked now anyway.’
‘Do you still have Singer on Bobby Kirkcaldy’s tail?’ I drained my whisky and stood up.
‘Aye…’
‘Good. He needs to be watched like a hawk.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘I’ve got paperwork to do.’
Finding a place to park out of sight of the main road, under a dank railway arch, I sat for half an hour, smoking and listening to the steel sounds of the Clyde. It was quieter and cooler during the night, but the shipyards and repair docks never really slept. This was no man’s land, between the tenements and the docks. No one would come down here unless they had a reason. That was both good and bad for what I had planned. There would be very few people to spot my car tucked away from view; but those few people would either be up to no good, like me, or trying to catch the up-to-no-good. The last thing I needed was a patrolling bobby to happen across the Atlantic.
A train thundered over the rails above me and its rattles echoed damply in the arch. I put out my cigarette and took my stuff out of the trunk. Taking my suit jacket off, I pulled the turtleneck jumper over my shirt and I changed my shoes for the plimsolls. I unwrapped the charred corks from the newspaper and rubbed them all over my face. If that patrolling bobby were to catch me now, I’d have to convince him I was auditioning for a blackface minstrel show or face those three months in Barlinnie. Locking up the car, I pulled on my leather gloves and made my way out from under the arch. I ducked behind a bush and watched while an elderly dockworker cycled along the cobbled road that lay between me and the bonded dockside area. He pedalled so slowly that I wondered how he could remain upright with so little momentum carrying him forward. After what seemed an age, he disappeared from sight around the distant corner.