Funeral Note

Cameron ‘Cheeky’ McCullough

I know there are cops who don’t approve of Sauce and me, big Jack McGurk for a start; and I can understand why.

My grandfather has been a very bad man in his time; people like Jack, people who don’t know him, think he still is, and that he always will be. People who do. .

No. I can’t say that. The truth is that people who do know my grandpa would never talk to me about him, so I don’t have anyone else’s educated view to go on, other than my mum’s and my aunt’s, and you wouldn’t hang a rat on the word of either of them.

My aunt, Goldie (her real name’s Daphne, but she hates it and nobody ever dares call her by it), is as hard as nails and every bit as dense. My mother, Inez? Grandpa says that Cadburys named a chocolate bar after her. You know, the crumbly one. Dear mother is doing time at the moment for a series of robberies. She even got me involved in the last one, by persuading me to drive for her to pick up a load of gear that she said she’d bought cash from a shop, to be collected out of hours. When we were arrested, Grandpa hired a good lawyer who got me out from under, but to this day nobody in the world, apart from Sauce, believes that I took her at her word and didn’t know what was going on. I did, though, I really did; I persuaded myself that she was telling the truth, because what mother would be stupid enough to involve her own daughter in a scam that could put her in jail?

I tell you all this to explain the closeness between Grandpa and me. He’s always been the major figure in my life, the one who’s raised me and influenced me. He’s very young to have a 23-year-old granddaughter. That’s because my mother got herself knocked up when she was still under sixteen, and didn’t tell anyone until it was too late to have an abortion. . although Grandpa says he wouldn’t have allowed it anyway; he really is a moral maze, that man.

I have no idea who my father is. His name doesn’t appear on my birth certificate. My mum’s always refused to discuss him, and all Grandpa ever said when I asked him was, ‘Doesn’t matter, kid. You are you.’ When I was eleven, I plucked up the courage to ask Auntie Goldie; she’s always scared me, for as long as I can remember. She glared at me with those cold eyes and said, ‘Eff you.’ It took me another two years to tell Grandpa about that conversation. When I did, he explained that she’d meant, ‘Father Unknown.’

It’s hard being the light of somebody’s life. You have a lot to live up to. When that person is said to be one of the major figures in the country’s criminal underworld, you have a lot to live down as well.

He always kept me isolated from that side of his life: I use the past tense because he’s promised me that it’s over. The closest he’s ever come to opening up completely was on my eighteenth birthday. He had a party for me at Black Shield Lodge, his country house hotel up in Perthshire; before it got started he took me into his office. He gave me a glass of Buck’s Fizz, and then he started to talk, not in his Grandpa voice but in one I’d never heard before.

‘Cameron,’ he began; he always uses the given name that we share, not my nickname, ‘there’s a market in everything: houses, horses, whores, herbs, you name it. For every human need, whether it’s as fundamental as a roof over their heads, for entertainment, like a bet every now and again, or just for pure self-gratification, there is commerce and there are merchants, suppliers, providers. Government’s attitude to those varied enterprises is inconsistent, to the point of being illogical. It approves of some, and it attaches itself to them like a giant leech. . that bloodsucker going by the name of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. . drawing its funds from them through taxation. Others it deems to be improper, and it passes laws against them then spends millions on enforcement that’s usually futile, because the big G assumes that it’s smarter than those it classes as criminals, when at the level that really matters the opposite is usually the case. There’s no logic in its demarcation. Government approves of alcohol and tobacco, and taxes both to the hilt. It declares other drugs to be unacceptable and drives them underground, where they’re subject to no regulation or quality control whatsoever. Government decrees that prostitution is illegal, yet prostitutes are subject to income tax just like the rest of us.’ He paused. ‘You with me so far?’

I nodded, wondering what was coming.

‘Government has the power to do all that stuff, but there’s one thing it can’t do, and that’s change the basic nature of mankind. Whether they’re legal or not, human needs will always exist, and people will always satisfy themselves one way or another. If there were no women selling sex, there would be more rapes, there would be more domestic violence. If there were no distilleries, people would make their own hooch, and for sure it would blind and kill them in their thousands. And so on, and so on.’

He looked right into my eyes. ‘Now you’re an adult,’ he said, ‘you’re going to start hearing things about me, maybe not to your face, but one way or another, you will. So it’s best you hear my side of the story. I have businesses that are regarded as legitimate; this hotel where we are right now, it’s one of them. These are very successful, and HMRC does very nicely from them thank you. I should be on the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s Christmas card list. You’d think they’d be grateful,’ he smiled, ‘but that cuts me no slack with them. They say that I have other interests, that I operate on both sides of the fence. Okay, let them try and prove it. I’ll always deny it to them, and I’ll never admit it to anyone else, especially not you, kid, so there’s no chance of you being affected by it or infected by it for that matter.

‘You’re my future, Cameron. My businesses, the CamMac group, the holding company that contains all my interests in housebuilding, commercial property, hotels and pubs, is mine and mine alone. When I die, which I hope will be a long time off since I’m still only mid-fifties, it’s going to be yours. Forget Goldie, forget your mum, they’ll have no involvement in it; your aunt’s an evil woman, and as for Inez, well, I don’t want to speak badly of your grandma, God rest her, but my daughter’s brains come from her mother’s side.’

He took my hand. ‘My will’s made already and in it, you’re my sole heir. You’ll become a director of CamMac, when you’re twenty-one. When you’re done with university, and have a few years’ experience in the wider business world, you’ll come and help me run it. In the meantime, I have quite a lot of property and I plan to transfer some of it into your name. I’m not saying, mind, that it’ll be yours to do with as you wish, but it’s a sensible move, as you’ll appreciate once you’re a qualified accountant.’

‘Grandpa,’ I murmured, but he put a finger to my lips.

‘Shhh, now. Say nothing. It’s your birthright, and it’ll be always be ring-fenced for you against anything that might happen to me, whatever those people in government, those people with flexible morality, might try to pin on me in the future.’

They did try, a few years later. He was charged with murder, and with drug trafficking. He sent me a message, telling me he’d be home soon, and asking me to ignore any crap about him I might read in the press. He walked on both charges; no evidence was ever laid. I doubt if the prosecution ever had any.

Now, just in case you think I’m an idiot, I know full well that my grandfather is not whiter than white. The Crown may have wasted money trying to lock him up, but it didn’t spend it without reason. He has never once flat out admitted it to me, for the reasons he explained in that birthday chat, but I grew up in the city of Dundee, where you would have to be a chromium-plated bammer not to be aware that Cameron McCullough is the most powerful man in town, that there isn’t a door that’s closed to him, and that some of those you would not want to knock.

There’s only once that he’s ever given me a glimpse of that other side and that was last year. I’d gone up to visit him one day, as I try to do at least once a month, because he’s a lonely man, when he surprised me with a question. ‘You’ve got a circle of friends in Edinburgh by now, Cameron, haven’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I told him, ‘of course. Loads.’ That might have been an exaggeration; I had a couple of girl chums from my university days, and I’d had a few boyfriends by then too, but none of them had been keepers. Fact: I’d had to leave Dundee to get laid for the first time. No boy there ever tried it on with me.

‘Are any of them cops?’ he asked, failing to sound casual.

I frowned at him. ‘Why?’

‘Ah nothing,’ he said. ‘Forget it.’

‘Like hell I will,’ I laughed. ‘You wouldn’t ask me that without a reason, Grandpa. Come on.’

‘Ach,’ he was still hesitant, ‘I’ve got a bit of a situation. There’s a guy I’m involved in business with, indirectly. Not part of the CamMac group,’ he added quickly. ‘Nothing you’ve got an interest in. He might have been a bit naughty. If he was involved with the police, it would be useful to know it.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Zaliukas, but you’d never have heard of him. He owns pubs and clubs. There’s one called Indigo. I believe that’s quite well known.’

It was known to me as well. I’d been there a couple of times with a guy I’d met through work. He’d promised me it was drug free because a lot of cops drank there. He’d even pointed a couple of them out, a great tall bloke and his mate, nice, younger and with significant ears.

‘Yes,’ I lied to my grandfather, ‘I know cops. I’ll see if the name comes up in conversation.’

‘Careful now,’ he warned. ‘It mustn’t get back to me.’

I went to Indigo that same night. The same two guys were at the bar, but they were in a threesome; Lofty had a woman with him. I moved in on his tasty mate. . and that’s how I met Sauce.

I told him my name was Davis, not McCullough; it belonged to my mum’s even worse half, so I borrowed it. I hadn’t planned anything beyond chatting to him, so what came later was completely spontaneous. I certainly hadn’t planned on falling for him. If I’d known that was going to happen, I’d have told him everything about myself from the off, but by the time I realised that, it was too late, and I was compromised.

The thing got messy after that, very, very messy, in fact. Grandpa wasn’t involved, thank God, but Sauce was, and when he found out that I’d been less than honest with him, I reckoned we were finished. He’s a lovely guy though. I cried on his shoulder, literally and for real, and he took me back. He laid down the rules, though. One of them is that he never meets my grandfather. Grandpa can live with that so I can too.

I’ll admit to being a bit worried when Grandpa gave me a message for him. I wasn’t keen on doing it at the time, but he told me to trust him, that he had his reasons, so I went along with it, then forgot all about it. I’d never heard of the man that he mentioned, and I didn’t expect any progress reports from Sauce, so when he asked me to pass on a few supplementary questions in return, I was surprised to say the least.

Having started it, I felt obliged to carry on. Sauce still refused to deal directly with my grandfather so I set it up that we would go away for the weekend and that I’d call in on Dundee en route. That’s what we did. Before we left Edinburgh I called Grandpa to make sure he’d be in; once we were there I dropped Sauce on Discovery Quay and headed for his place.

You hear stories about gangsters, especially the Glasgow kind, having houses that look like Disneyland palaces or medieval fortresses. Grandpa’s is an ordinary-looking detached villa on a CamMac development, and the only extraordinary things about it are those you aren’t aware of: the garden motion sensors that are part of the alarm system, the infra-red beams that cover the house like tripwires when it’s activated, and the fact that it would take an anti-tank missile to penetrate the glass.

‘Come away in, lass,’ he said, as he unlocked the door. He seemed as fit as ever, lean and trim, the result of regular sessions in the Black Shield Lodge health club. He wore a polo short with its crest on the front. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m fine, Grandpa. Don’t I look it?’

‘Aye, but I really meant how’s your relationship?’

‘It’s great.’ I paused and looked at him. ‘I wish we could be like normal people, Grandpa, and that I could bring him here, but he says as long as he’s a cop, it’s more than his career’s worth.’

He shrugged. ‘We will never be normal people, Cameron. You can be, Sauce can be, but not if I’m part of it. Your boy’s right: I’m the pitch that he cannot touch lest he’s seen to be defiled. The only thing I can do for the pair of you is be spotless from now on, and that I’m trying my best to be.’

‘In which case,’ I ventured, cautiously, ‘Sauce passed on your message to his boss, in just the way you asked. But it hasn’t been plain sailing. He’s been sent back with a couple of questions.’

Grandpa’s face changed; it seemed to darken. I’ll never be scared of him but when he looks like that I can understand why people are. Funny, I’ve met Sauce’s boss, the chief constable, and he makes me feel exactly the same. ‘Such as,’ he said, quietly.

‘First,’ I continued, ‘when you gave me your message for him about the man called Bass, did you know that somebody else, a man called Freddy Welsh, was involved in the business?’

‘Freddy Welsh,’ he repeated.

‘Yes. Also, do you know this man, and if so, what do you know about him?’

‘I see. Anything else?’

‘No, that’s all. Sauce is waiting for me at the Discovery; we’re going away for the weekend from here. If you’ve got anything to tell him, you can tell me, and I’ll pass it on. He’ll phone his chief from Oban.’

His frown was deeper than I’d ever seen it before. His expression was. . ominous. I’d expected that the answers would be short and sweet, ‘No’ and ‘No’, but it wasn’t shaping up that way. ‘Well?’ I asked.

He looked at me. His face softened and if it had been anyone else I’d have said his eyes went a wee bit misty. ‘What the hell have I done to you, love,’ he murmured, ‘with my fucking ruthless, reckless life? You and your boyfriend go on to Oban. If you’re not booked in anywhere, go on up that coast for a wee bit till you come to a country house hotel called Glen Cameron.’

The name was familiar. ‘Isn’t that. .’ I began.

‘Yes, it’s one of ours; you’re a director of the company that owns it. I’ll call the general manager and tell him you’re coming. You two have a nice weekend.’

‘Thanks, Grandpa,’ I said, ‘but what will I tell Sauce about Welsh?’

‘Nothing,’ he replied, firmly. ‘No, don’t do that. Tell him that he’s out the picture and so are you. Tell him that from now on I’ll be dealing with a higher authority.’