The Low Road (27 page)

“I know. John would never do anything wrong,” Joanne told them all, working hard to keep the terror out of her voice and off her face and to steady her hands. And knees. “There's been a terrible mistake. It will all work out.”

Annie saw through her mother's reassurances. “Nothing ever works out in our family,” Annie muttered. No one contradicted her.

I
t was left to Sandy Marshall to coordinate the legal help for McAllister. Which he did: he set the newspaper's legal team to work on the bail application; he himself worked the phone calling in every favor owed. But all his contacts warned that as it was the weekend, little could be done until Monday.

“Probably a deliberate strategy on the part of DI Willkie, a trick the inspector is very fond of,” the
Herald
's solicitor explained. “But we'll do our best.”

There was nothing more Sandy could do on that front. Next he telephoned Joanne and explained it was all a piece of mischief on the part of corrupt policemen. He did everything to reassure her.

“Thank you for letting me know.” He could hear her take a breath to calm her voice. “It's taken me a while to accept that this is part of his job, and his nature, and I accept that McAllister can't stop himself getting involved . . .”
But it doesn't make it any easier
, she didn't say.

Sandy was impressed at how calm, how accepting, she sounded. And before he hung up, he added, “We're doing everything we can to get him out and send him home.”

Aye,
she thought, as she thanked him for his kindness,
but where is home?

• • •

Mary Ballantyne hadn't forgotten the promise to drive Mrs. Crawford to her sister's in Shawlands. She was pursuing the same goal but with a different strategy; she had an idea that Mr. Gerry Dochery senior would lead her to Gerry Dochery junior and to help for McAllister. Or trouble for herself.

On Saturday, Mary picked up Mrs. McAllister's neighbor, calculating that the distance from Dennistoun to the suburb of Shawlands was long enough to establish a rapport with the terrified old lady and ask questions. As they were crossing the River Clyde towards the Kilmarnock Road, she began questioning her. “Do you know old Mr. Dochery?”

“Aye. A nice man . . . he did his best, but Wee Gerry . . .” She hesitated. Then, remembering his visit, said no more.

“Did you hear that McAllister is being held on suspicion of murder?” Mary knew she was being ruthless, upsetting an already frightened old lady.

“I saw in this morn's paper . . .”

“He's innocent, of course, but how to prove it . . .” Mary left the question dangling in the middle space on the leather bench seat that was a feature of her mother's car.

“I might have heard something in the close that night, but I didney look. Kept ma door firm shut.”

“Wise,” Mary replied. “What time was this?”

“Late. Almost ten o'clock. It's hard to sleep sometimes and . . . I heard the neighbor above's clock strike ten . . .”
Then I pulled the blankets over ma head
, she didn't say.
As I didn't want to hear what was going on in the close.
“Next day, when Wee Gerry came around . . .” She was clutching her handbag tight, holding on to it in case even here, in the safety of the car, the bad men might come for her next.

“The police were saying a body was found in your close. It's a wonder none of them came and asked you about it.” Mary kept
her tone conversational. But the implication was there—something was not right.

“The police did come. But no' that night. Next day, the man above me, a right nice man he is, too, even though he's a Rangers supporter, he went with them. Came back a good while later, four hours or more. He's gone, though. I heard he canceled his milk an' I never seen him since.”

“Do you know where he went?”

“No idea. He has a daughter over the Maryhill Road way. But he doesn't get along wi' her husband.”

They arrived in Shawlands, a district of respectable homes and row upon row of red sandstone terraces. Her sister's flat was in one such row, three hundred yards from the main road. It curved up a slight hill, and every flat looked as though the curtains were made from a job lot of the same lace.

“Thanks for bringing me over,” Mrs. Crawford said as she sat staring at the front door but not moving.

Mary sensed her reluctance. She pulled out her notebook. Scribbled two numbers. “If you need anything, call me. This is work, this is home.”

“I'll make sure I have pennies for the phone—just in case.” The old woman nodded and reached for the door handle.

“I was thinking of going to see old Mr. Dochery, but I don't have an address for him.”

“He should have disciplined thon son o' his years ago, but he didn't have the heart.” The old lady tutted, then explained. “The wife died in childbirth, leaving him to bring up the bairn wi' the help of his old mother. Mr. and Mrs. McAllister, they were the soul o' kindness to Wee Gerry and look where that got them.” With the look of a thunderhead about to burst, she turned to Mary. “Lend me yon wee book an' the pencil.” She wrote down an address. “He's living in Govan. I'm not sure he'll help, Gerry's his only bairn, after all.”

“Thank you,” Mary said. “And if anyone threatens you . . .”

“I'm too old to be feart o' the likes o' Wee Gerry Dochery. And if I can help Mrs. McAllister, I will.” She was out of the car, carrying what looked like a full laundry bag. She paused on the steps and gave a wave before ringing the doorbell.

Mary sat thinking over what Mrs. Crawford had told her, scribbling down notes as the questions piled up.

The absence of a full police search, especially in a murder case, was odd. What was most strange was the nonappearance of the full panoply of photographers, fingerprint team, detectives, and constables on door-to-door inquiries—all the paraphernalia of a murder scene was missing. Plus there was no indication of a body. She thought about the neighbor taken in for questioning and his subsequent disappearance.

“Something not right about all this,” Mary muttered as she did a three-point turn to take her back to the
Herald
office. And to herself only, she could not hide the satisfaction, and the thrill, of chasing another potential front-page scoop.

• • •

In a cell, in a row of cells filled with the night's refuse gathered up from the streets and the tenements and the public houses of Glasgow, McAllister considered how he would survive if it all went wrong and he was convicted. Thinking about the deprivations of prison, he knew what he could not tolerate: sharing a cell. Bad food, constant noise, the smell, the despair, he could cope with. No books? He lived inside his own head for much of the time, he knew he could endure that. Lack of solitude, that was his idea of hell.
Ah, well, I could always punch DI Willkie, that might earn me time in solitary.

It was seventeen hours from his arrival at the police station before the
Herald
lawyers achieved his release. When the door of the custody cell was unlocked and he was told to go, he asked, “What's happening?”

“Just go,” said a large round sergeant with the complexion of a man who'd eaten one too many pies. “Think yourself lucky.”

McAllister made straight for the newspaper. There was nowhere else he could think to go.

Even though it was Saturday afternoon, Mary was at her desk. She looked up when he came in, grinned, but didn't look surprised.

“I'll call our esteemed editor. You look in need of good feed, so go down to the canteen.” She waved him away and picked up the phone.

They had to wait nearly an hour, as the editor was at home. He had been looking for an excuse to escape, since his wife's brother and family were visiting and they had four children, all boys. Sandy's wife had a soft spot for McAllister, so all she said was, “Give him my best.”

The whole argument for McAllister's release had hinged on the time of death.

Even Sandy Marshall was amazed. “Our solicitors were tipped off that even though the postmortem has yet to be done, the time of death was at the earliest five in the morning . . .”

“And I can prove I was on a train,” McAllister said.

“So why on earth did Willkie, and the procurator fiscal, charge you?” Mary asked.

“They say they have witnesses,” McAllister said.

“DI Willkie must have known the time of death. It's the first thing you ask.” The editor was so puzzled by the police actions, and nonactions, he hadn't noticed that McAllister bore a close resemblance to a gentleman of the road. But Mary did.

“Phew! McAllister! You stink,” she said, fanning herself with her notebook.

“Thanks.” McAllister smiled. He didn't care. He was out.

“How did you know the estimated time of death?” Sandy was pointing a finger at Mary.

She shrugged. “Contacts.”

Sandy left it at that; he knew how unreasonable she became when anyone tried to discover her sources of information. She would never tell the whole truth, never admit to using her late father's circle of friends and relatives in what she referred to as the Auld Boy's Club, emphasis on Boys, too conscious of her rival Keith's accusations that that was what helped her get ahead.
If you have the contacts, use them—discreetly
, was her motto.

“Thank Mrs. Crawford for tipping me off . . .” Mary started.

“Mary, what happened?” Sandy was exasperated. It was his day off. He wanted a drink. He wanted to hear the football results. “How did you find out?”

Mary ignored him; she would tell the story her own way. “Mrs. Crawford, Mrs. McAllister's friend and neighbor, it was something she said.” She moved her chair away from McAllister. “She said she'd heard scuffling, and shouting, in the close around ten that night. So I asked the other neighbors in the close, and the newsagent—a nice man—and they had no idea there'd been a fight, or a commotion of any kind, and no police came around asking questions. The man had been reported dead in the early morning, according to Willkie, so how come the circus of a murder inquiry didn't start until the next day?” She tossed two packets at McAllister. “Here, the newsagent gave me the cigarettes you ordered.”

“Thanks.” Exhaustion had descended and he was hearing the conversation as though the voices were coming from inside an old-fashioned record player's horn. And for the first time he was scared; if DI Willkie could behave so arbitrarily, locking up a journalist with no good cause, what else might he do?

“The story was leaked to our rivals, probably by Willkie, minutes after your interview ended and you were taken into custody.”

“What do you mean?” McAllister didn't yet know about the front-page splash.

“A story ran saying you were being held for questioning over the suspicious death of the man,” Sandy explained. “And it was on the wireless and the telly news.

“God in heaven.” Exhaustion drained out, replaced by fury. “Does Joanne know?”

“Aye, I spoke to her and to your deputy, Don McLeod,” Sandy said. “He called around to your house and said to give him a bell as soon as you can.”

“I spoke to Joanne,” Mary said. “She was calm.”
Joanne Ross is stronger than McAllister realizes.
“The lawyers are on the case, making certain there is no reason for Willkie to interview you again. Then you can go home.”

McAllister looked down at his hands. Seeing the grime on his shirt cuffs, remembering the smell of vomit and fear in the cells, going home was tempting. But he knew this had to end—lest it come back to haunt them. “The man who was killed, what did you find out about him?”

“Not much,” Mary answered. “Maybe you should ask Wee Gerry.”

McAllister shook his head. “The lad was fine when—”

Two separate hands shot into the air. “Don't want to know!” Sandy said for both of them.

“I found the name of the examining police doctor . . .” Mary didn't say that he was a retired military doctor in the same regiment as her father. “I asked for an estimated time of death. He wouldn't tell me, so I watched him closely and gave out times . . . One a.m.? Three a.m.? On six a.m., he looked away. Then . . . nah, I won't tell you the rest, might compromise you both.” Her shoulders shook—a tiny shudder. “Anyhow, there is no way this Smith character was killed before three in the morning.”

“And I have an alibi for three a.m.,” McAllister added. “How did the lad die?”

“This person you never met, remember? He was beaten to death. Won't know until after the official postmortem report which of his multiple injuries killed him.” She wasn't going to elaborate on the visit to the mortuary, next door to the High Court, in the Saltmarket area, which had been gruesome.