The Hanging Shed

THIRTY-TWO

We woke with a start at nine o’clock, guilty as sin. Not for our deeds, but for sleeping past eight o’clock. Dozing in sensual comfort while a man’s life was snuffed out. Sam slipped on her nightdress and dressing gown and went downstairs. I heard her on the phone. She came back up to the bedroom and stood in the door. I was sitting on the edge of the bed smoking and looking out the window.

‘It’s done,’ she said.

I nodded.

‘I’m getting dressed,’ she said and went off to her room. I heard the bath run. The trees outside were lush from the frequent drenchings of Scottish rain. Look thy last on all things lovely every hour. Wordsworth, I think. Or was it de la Mare? An hour ago while we slept Hugh would have seen only blank prison walls and prison bars. Then they would have come to him with the black bag and the leather strap to bind his arms before his last short walk. Who’d heard his last confession now Cassidy had gone on ahead, as Hugh would put it? Did he have any doubts at the end? I hope what was left of his faith carried him through and that there was a big guy in blinding white waiting on the other side saying; everything’s all right now. Don’t worry. Here, see. Your son’s waiting for you. But I didn’t think it worked like that. But however you looked at it, with faith or without, it was a bitter final chapter to a wretched adult life…

I thought back to our boyhood and the mad days running wild across the back greens. It was as well we had no idea of our future. I think Hugh would have thrown himself under a train if he could have seen this end. I might have joined him. I reran the past month in my mind and harangued myself for not doing enough, not being smart enough. I castigated myself for wallowing in self pity in London since last November. I should have come back to Kilmarnock right away and not dallied down south with a bottle stuck to my mouth. Maybe then I’d have heard about Hugh. Maybe done more. But would I? Wouldn’t I have gone on nursing my anger against him for stealing Fiona from me? As though my boyhood love was more precious or significant than any other teenage passion? I had let it define too much of my life. Their betrayal – how melodramatic that sounds now – had probably been the clincher in making me knuckle down to my exams and drive me on to Glasgow university. Just to put distance between us. I thought of her going to him yesterday. I hoped they were kind to each other. I hoped they spoke without regret of their son and their brief days together. I hoped they found some of their old love.

I veered between anger and emptiness. It was over. I could get out of here and back to London. I would put aside last night’s maudlin thoughts and get on with my life. I had a good degree. I had risen to major by being tested on the battlefield and not found wanting. I could now hold my head up alongside any of my old pals who’d followed their fathers down the mines. I had no right to squander these achievements. I thought of my old CO, General Tom Rennie, who led the 51st across the Rhine. We were within days of the German surrender when Tom was killed by a shell. Like me he’d been at St Valery with the BEF. He was captured but escaped to lead us through north Africa, Italy, Normandy and finally into Germany itself. It was Tom who gave me field promotion to major when Davy Sinclair took a bullet. I remember his words: this company’s now yours, Major Brodie. Their very lives are in your hands. And for God’s sake, Brodie, smile! The men hate a gloomy bugger!

I washed and shaved and we met at the breakfast table. Our consciences didn’t get in the way of slice sausage and tattie scones. Something had wakened all our appetites at once. Intimations of mortality? After mopping up the juices with our bread, we faced each other over cups of tea to discuss beginnings and endings.

‘You’re off south, then?’

‘Time I earned some money. If I still have a job, that is.’

‘About last night-’

I waved my hand. ‘It’s OK, Sam. It was just one of those things. You don’t have to-’

‘No! I mean I don’t feel bad about it. Do you?’

‘It was lovely.’ I smiled at her, remembering her surprising curves and her sharp teeth.

She toyed with her cup for a bit. ‘And I go north. Ever been up there?’

‘To Skye?’

She shrugged. ‘Just a thought.’

‘It’s a great thought.’ It was. But what then? It would be a strange foundation for a love affair. Was there anything other than guilt to build on?

‘But? Forget it, Brodie. It’s time you went back.’

She got up and clattered dishes in the sink. I went over and put my arms round her and held her to me. She resisted at first but then slumped and I realised she was crying. I turned her round and held her sobbing body to me till she was still.

‘I’m sorry, sorry…’ she began.

‘So am I, Sam. But you know it wouldn’t work. Not…’

She pushed me away. ‘What are you talking about? It’s not about you!’

‘Oh, right. I mean what…’

‘He’s dead and I couldn’t save him.’

‘You did everything possible.’

‘Not enough. I wasn’t good enough. They shouldn’t have appointed me. I shouldn’t have taken the case on. I didn’t have the experience.’ Her face was blinded by tears again, this time with anger.

‘How do you think I feel? My blundering around got Mrs Reid killed. Her four weans are missing! I probably got the bloody priest murdered! If anyone’s to blame it’s me. I used to be a detective! I couldn’t detect a currant bun in a tea house.’ Suddenly we were shouting at each other.

She waved her arms. ‘Listen to us! Mea culpa, and that’s it? We both just let it go at that? This time next year we’ll drink a toast to absent friends, shed a tear of remorse and carry on? That’s bloody it?!’

‘What else can we do? We can’t bring him back!’ Even as I spat it out, I knew what else. So did she.

We stood, chests heaving staring at each other. Her challenge had caught me out. I’d judged victory or defeat solely in the context of saving Hugh’s neck. He’d died. We’d lost. Time to move on. Revenge was surely a tawdry objective. But what about justice? I was a sceptic. Everything I’d seen in the last month had reinforced my view that it was as rare as hen’s teeth. And if it did exist, who would deliver it? The legal brains and the law enforcers had let Hugh down. If Sam and I left the field now, who would pick up the banner? I faced her probing stare.

I smiled. ‘You just don’t like drinking alone.’

‘Oh, I don’t mind. I’m good at it.’

‘What, then?’

‘Five wee boys vanished. We found one, dead. This is a habit. If Hugh didn’t do it, who did? It will happen again.’

‘You want us to play detective?’

‘I want Slattery’s head on a plate.’

‘OK Salome, nothing would make me happier.’

She inspected my face for irony. ‘Are you serious? If you are, I am.’

I sighed. ‘Sure. Why not? I’ve got enough bones to pick with him.’

She sat down facing me rubbing her face dry with the dish towel. ‘All right. Where do we start?

I realised I was already prepared for that question. ‘At the beginning. When you got in involved. You told me before that you shouldn’t have been given the job. It didn’t add up. Maybe we’ve been looking in the wrong direction. Talk me through the process. I mean, tell me how you were appointed.’

She stared at me for a bit longer then nodded her head. ‘I’ll make tea.’

‘It’s all about contacts,’ she said. ‘First, you need to be a member of the Faculty of Advocates, headed by the Dean. We all work as independents but we belong to one of twelve groups or stables. The most senior are King’s Counsel. Normally, KCs get the toughest roles but it’s not mandatory. Though I’m not yet a KC, I’ve been around. I’ve served often enough as junior counsel. It’s not unusual in itself that I was given this work.’

‘Who decides?’

‘Strictly speaking, you get instructions from a solicitor. In this case my old firm were given the case, as a pro bono.’

‘So it was normal to come to you, an old girl of the firm?’

‘Partly, but it’s not clear why they were chosen as Hugh’s solicitors in the first place. And they could easily have picked someone more senior and experienced.’

‘So how does an advocate get selected?’

‘It’s not that formal. You have to serve your time, of course, and senior advocates and judges are always keeping an eye on you. Most of it gets done in the corridors of the Advocates’ Library in Parliament House. Or over a glass of Scotch in the Glasgow and Edinburgh clubs.’

‘ That’s why you practice.’ I nodded at the whisky glasses on the sideboard.

‘That’s for my own sanity. They don’t let women in those clubs. I stand more chance of making Pope. It’s just a wonder they thought of me at all, far less assigned me to lead on a capital case.’

‘Your father’s reputation?’

‘That’s all I can think of. I’m not such a high flyer, you know.’

‘I rather think you are, but you need more than talent to succeed in this game. Still and all, it’s not exactly a favour to drop this one on you. So, there are two possibilities. Either someone thought that no one would blame you if you didn’t get Hugh off, given the sheer weight of evidence. And that you’d come out looking plucky and smart but not having lost anything. A kind of salute to your father.’

‘Or?’

‘Or someone didn’t want to take any risk that Hugh would get off.’

Her face flushed. ‘By giving it to someone incompetent!’

‘No! And I’m not going to butter you up any more than I already have by saying how wonderful you are. You know you are. You’re not a bad lawyer either.’ I smiled.

She threw her tea towel at me. ‘Sod!’

‘Sam, can you find out who put your name up? Because maybe if we knew that, we’d know why.’

She stared into her cup, looking for her future. ‘I should have done this before, shouldn’t I? I didn’t want to find out, Brodie. I just wanted to believe I was good enough. That my father would have been proud. Do you understand?’

‘Only too well.’

‘I’ll make some calls. It’s time I did some more socialising. What will you do?’

‘Go to the bank. I need cash.’ My heart sank at the prospect, not just because I would be dipping into my meagre savings but because of the sheer amount of bureaucratic effort involved in cashing a cheque at a bank other than my own in far-off South London.

‘I can help. You can still be on the case. They pay from public funds.’

‘You’ve been more than generous. But I think that that case is over. This is personal. But if you’d let me stay on a week or two?’

Her cheeks went pink. ‘Of course, Brodie. Your old room’s yours for as long as it takes.’ If I read that right she was saying that the old arrangements – prior to last night – would hold good too.

‘Could I borrow a pad of paper?’

She delved in her briefcase, which sat on the sideboard, and plonked a lined foolscap pad in front of me. She retrieved a propelling pencil and rubber and handed them to me.

I drew five circles on the pad and started to write names into each. I pointed to each one in turn.

‘I’m going to find out what links the late Father Cassidy, Hugh Donovan, Glasgow’s Finest, Mrs Reid and the Slatterys.’

‘You think the police are bound up in this?’

‘I know they’re incompetent. They’re also arrogant and pigheaded and would rather do time in Barlinnie than admit they’re wrong. Some of them are surely taking back-handers to turn a blind eye to drug-dealing in the city. But it doesn’t explain their sheer monumental cussedness over the murders of Father Cassidy and Mrs Reid. Nor why they should be so ready to see Hugh Donovan swing for a murder he didn’t commit.’

I drew a sixth circle. I put a question mark in the centre.

‘This is for you to fill in. Someone in the judiciary picked you. We need to know who and why.’

She nodded. She leaned over the table and pointed at the pad, at the two circles embracing Mrs Reid and the Slatterys.

‘We’re pretty sure they killed her. We’re also pretty sure it was to stop her testifying about what she heard and who she heard the night before Hugh’s arrest. But what’s the link between these two?’ She pointed at the Slatterys and Father Cassidy. ‘Why would they kill him?’

‘He must have been a risk to them. If Cassidy was the mystery man that brought Hugh home that night, he probably knew something about the real murderer. Presumably one of the Slattery clan. Did the good Father Cassidy learn something in the confessional? Or was he actively involved with these thieves and murderers? What possible service could a Catholic priest be giving to a bunch of gangsters? And if so, why would they want to kill him now?’

‘Do you really think he told them about your Arran trip?’

‘Who else? No one else knew. One day he arranges for me to be tossed off a boat, the next he’s found hanging naked in his own chapel. What happened? I’m certain it wasn’t suicide. Was he going to turn King’s evidence against the Slatterys? And if so, why? A pointing finger from the Virgin Mary or a sudden glimpse of the fires of hell?’

‘But how did he get involved in this mess?’

‘If we knew that…’

‘How are we going to find out?’

‘I wish I knew.’