‘Shut up and walk…’ Uncle Bert gave me another shove. It was beginning to become rude.
‘We’ve got a friend waiting for you,’ said Kirkcaldy, and laughed in a dark, vicious way. He went ahead of us and opened one of the doors into the garage.
Just as I had expected, there were two cars in the garage: the sleek, carmine droplet of Collins’s Lanchester and Bobby Kirkcaldy’s open-top Sunbeam-Talbot Sports. What a chump, I thought bitterly to myself. There I was thinking I was all smart and devious, stirring up Collins so he would lead me to Mr Big. Yep, I had had it all down pat, except that the delay in Collins leaving his office had been to give Kirkcaldy time to make the fifteen-minute drive from Strathblane to this place, and get himself settled in. All Collins had had to do after that was lead me by the nose. It served me right; I was beginning to believe my own advertising.
The garage was even bigger inside than I had guessed. The two cars took up less than half of the space. Jack Collins stood in the middle of the free area of floor.
‘I told you he’d follow me,’ he said with a contempt I could have found hurtful.
‘Okay, so you’re pissed off that I’m doing my job. But like I said outside, this doesn’t smell right to me. You’re going to too much trouble just to cover up a fixed fight. Why the artillery?’ I asked, nodding to the Browning in Kirkcaldy’s hand.
‘Maybe you’re right, Lennox,’ Kirkcaldy said. ‘Maybe there’s more going on than you can understand.’
‘Try me,’ I said. ‘I’m an understanding type. But first of all, indulge my curiosity as a fan… why throw the fight last night?’
‘What makes you think I threw it?’
‘Oh, come on. I was there. And I’ve seen you fight several times before. If you could flatten McQuillan the way you did, then Jan Schmidtke should have been a walkover. You threw the fight all right. Is your heart really as bad as that?’
‘As a matter of fact it is,’ said Kirkcaldy, in a matter-of-fact way. ‘Congenital defect. I’ve had it since birth but didn’t know about it. It’s only over the last six months that I’ve had problems with it. The quack says I’ve to take it easy, take the stress out of my life. Maybe I should start with you, huh, Lennox?’
‘So I’m guessing you made a killing on the fight?’ I asked.
‘Jack here arranged it all for us. It actually started off as Small Change’s idea. No really big bets. Nothing that would get noticed too much, but lots of them, spread out across all the bookies. And each bet placed by a third party who couldn’t be connected to Collins, far less me.’
‘Very sweet,’ I said. ‘But you weren’t the only ones in the know. Two young Flash Harrys tried to broker a big bet against you winning through Tony the Pole.’
‘That’s something I don’t know about,’ said Kirkcaldy as casually as he could manage. If he had been as poor at throwing a feint in the ring, then his prematurely terminated career would have terminated even more prematurely.
‘Who were they?’ I pushed my luck. Seeing as I was at gunpoint in an outbuilding in the middle of nowhere, where a shot would go unheard far less unnoticed, I felt I was just as well pushing it.
‘I told you, I don’t know anything about them or anybody else laying bets.’
I decided to move on before Kirkcaldy’s pants caught fire. ‘I’m sure your little scheme will have raked in a lot of cash. But not that much. Not enough for this kind of grief. And it doesn’t add up to something worth killing Small Change for.’
‘Small Change’s death has got nothing to do with us. Nothing at all. And it’s got nothing to do with the fight scam either.’
‘No… I believe you didn’t kill Small Change, but the fight scam does have something to do with his death. Maybe Small Change came up with the idea of you throwing the fight to start with, but when he did it was simply to get you out of the fight game with a little pension. You must have told him about your heart condition. But the real reason you needed to pull it off was because you needed to pay someone off quick. Someone who was going to give you the same treatment that Small Change got.’
Kirkcaldy didn’t say anything, but exchanged a look with Uncle Bert.
‘You see, Bobby, I’m a studious sort. I spend a lot of time up at the Mitchell Library expanding my mind. One direction I’ve expanded in is the traditions and customs of our travelling cousins. Take the ones up at Vinegarhill. Now, to start with, I thought they were just Irish travellers, but it turns out they’re Minceir, proper Romanies from Ireland… the real Gypsy McCoy, you could say.’
Kirkcaldy said nothing.
‘They’ve had a long and difficult history, gypsies,’ I continued. ‘They’ve been in Britain for centuries, you know. Did you know that we actually sold them to Louisiana to work as slaves for freed blacks who had their own small plantations? Or that we used to hang them just for being gypsies? It’s made them an unforgiving bunch. They’re big on vengeance and blood feud.’
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ Kirkcaldy said, but again I could see behind the expression.
‘I don’t know what you did. That’s the one piece that’s missing for me. You see, like I said, I’ve been reading up on gypsy customs. And I met Sean Furie, whose son is up for Small Change’s murder. Now, to start with, I thought Furie was more Blackrock than Bulgaria, but it would seem he’s the real thing. He and his mob follow gypsy customs and law. Furie himself is a Baro — that’s a kind of clan chieftain. The kingpin gypsy. And as a Baro, Furie will also sit as a judge on the kris, the half-arsed court arrangement they have going. One of the things the kris does is sit in judgement on fellow gypsies or even on gaje as they call non-gypsies.’
‘Very fucking interesting,’ said Bert Soutar. ‘Consider my horizons expanded. Now get over against the wall.’
I decided to stay where I was for the moment. ‘It is interesting. You see, one of the things the kris sits in judgement on is if one of their own is killed by someone else. Murder, say… or a careless accident. Then they can issue a sentence on the accused and the only way he can get out of it is to pay a glaba. Blood money.’ I paused for a moment. Less for dramatic effect and more to check my surroundings again. There were a couple of small, grimy windows over by the rear wall. A clutch of old and rusting garden tools, including a small hand scythe mottled with reddish-brown flecks. A shadow fell across the grime-dimmed window and passed on. There was someone else here. Outside.
‘Anyway,’ I continued, ‘here’s the way I see it: you, good old Uncle Bert, and young Collins here, are all under sentence of death. And death, though it’s bad enough, isn’t as scary as the kind of death you’ll have at the hands of the gypsies. Now I don’t know if Furie’s son carried out sentence on Small Change or not, but you fellas have a pretty good idea what’s ahead of you… unless, of course, you hand over a large glaba ransom.’
‘So what are we supposed to have done?’ asked Kirkcaldy.
‘Well, it’s pretty obvious at first sight. Uncle Bert here supplied that young pikey fighter for the bare-knuckle fight. Then he dies. So Soutar, Small Change and Collins are held responsible. Small Change meets a sticky end by having his skull pulped with a statue of his favourite greyhound, and you start getting traditional gypsy symbols of death dropped on your doorstep. I was supposed to work it all out. Well I have. But what I don’t get is why… the gypsy boy went into the fight of his own free will, knowing the risks, and took his chances. So why does his clan hold you responsible?’
‘You’re not as smart as you think you are, Lennox,’ sneered Jack Collins. His face was white and drawn. The coolness had gone. He was afraid. It was either what I had been saying, or he knew he was about to witness something unpleasant. I did my best to believe it was the power of my oratory.
‘Shut up, Collins,’ said Kirkcaldy. ‘Against the wall, Lennox. And keep your hands where I can see them.’
‘So this is it?’ I asked. I noticed I wasn’t breathing hard and I didn’t feel my heart pounding. That was what happened, I guessed, when you’d thought you were going to die so many times before. When you’d seen so many others go before you. ‘So you’re going to kill me over a gypsy curse and an amateurishly fixed fight? No… this doesn’t make sense. I’m missing something here. Who was it in Collins’s car outside your house? And why are the gyppos really after you?’