Wearing Purple

Chapter 58

I know, I should have given some consideration to Mike Dylan’s position as he directed me through the streets which led to Jack Gantry’s house. After all, I had been concerned earlier about the potential effect of our extra-curricular investigation on his CID career. But that was then.

As I drove through Pollokshields, the only thing in my mind was my wife: Jan carrying our embryonic child, Jan excited by her forensic examination of the Gantry accounts, Jan touching that washing machine, Jan in the time it took the electricity to course through her body, her awareness of what was happening before the current blew all the circuits in her brain and stopped her heart for ever.

I could have exploded, gone over the edge, but I didn’t. Instead, I did as I had before; I built that trusty shell of ice-cold anger around myself, feeding from it as we drew closer to the man who, I was sure, held the answers to all my questions of the weeks gone by. I had no clear idea of what I would do when I came face-to-face with him. All I had was determination that when I had finished, his life would be in as many pieces as mine.

‘This is it,’ said Dylan, hauling me back from my dark thoughts to the present. ‘His house is at the end of this cul-de-sac. ’ I turned right, as he indicated.

It was a short street, nothing much to it at all really, half a dozen houses down either side and one at the end: Jack Gantry’s home. An opening to the driveway gaped at us, but I couldn’t see the house from the roadway, since the view was blocked by mature trees down either side of the carriageway and by a high hedge beyond.

What I could see was the dark shape of a Range Rover, parked under the trees, and inside it, almost filling it, an even darker form. Switching off my lights as we cruised up behind it, I drew the Frontera to a halt. Without a word to each other, Dylan and I climbed out and walked up to the driver’s door. Gently I tapped at the window.

Everett Davis started in his seat, banging his head on the roof. He had to turn on the car’s electrics to lower his window, but when he had he looked at us angrily.

‘What you guys doing here?’ he demanded.

‘Naw,’ I said. ‘We saw you first. What the hell are you doing here?’

‘I’m thinking, man,’ he growled. The sound made me imagine unlucky souls lost in the veldt, hearing a noise like that just before they found themselves added to the local menu. ‘I’m thinking about kicking that man’s door down and strangling the mother with his own chain.’

His eyes glistened as he looked at me. ‘Diane’s in there, man.’ The growl had become a moan.

‘Not again, Ev,’ I protested as I leaned against the car. ‘First Liam, now Gantry.’

‘It’s true this time, Oz,’ he muttered. ‘This morning I didn’t get up till later; we’d decided we weren’t going into the office. When I come downstairs she was just finishing a call. . on her mobile, so I didn’t pick up any extension and hear her.’ He glanced at me. ‘You gimme another reason why she wouldn’t use the house phone.

‘So I set a trap. I told her I’d decided to go to London this afternoon, to look at a venue. I packed an overnight bag and I left. But instead of going to the airport, I just drove back up the street and I waited, parked behind a skip someone had hired and left out there.

‘I waited for hours, man. I was just about to admit to myself that you were right and I was an idiot, when she drove out. I just stayed a few cars behind her and followed her; followed her right here. She drove in there and parked right in the garage. I could just see over the hedge when she walked to the door, and I could see who opened it.’ He paused.

‘I waited ten minutes, then I saw a light go on upstairs.’

He looked at me plaintively. ‘Oz, I know you don’t do matrimonial stuff, but would you come in there with me, just as my friend?’

I think I must have looked like Dracula when I smiled at him in the dark, to judge by his expression. ‘Of course I will, Everett. Mike and I are going in there ourselves anyway. Tag along with us. If you’re lucky you might get to kick the door right enough.’

He nodded and climbed out of his car, closing the door as quietly as he could.

Jack Gantry’s house was impressive enough for a Lord Provost, but not overly large for a multi-millionaire; a red sandstone villa on two floors, with a grey slate roof. The driveway was all monoblock paving rather than gravel, so we were silent as we walked up to the front door.

There was a double garage at the side, with a single wide door, which was open. As we approached, Dylan stepped across and looked inside, then motioned me to join him.

There was a motor-cycle inside, a big powerful Kawasaki job. ‘That’s O’Rourke’s bike,’ said the detective. ‘I recognise the number. Let’s just be a bit careful in there.’

I looked over my shoulder and out of the garage at Everett, and felt myself gleaming inside with anticipation. ‘With him as back-up, pal, it isn’t us who have to be careful.’

We stepped up to the front door; I felt totally in command, but I let Dylan ring the bell for form’s sake. All the ground floor was in darkness, but as Everett had said, one big bay window on the first floor showed light behind its drawn curtains. I told the giant to stand to one side, in the darkness beyond the door, so that he was out of sight.

We waited for a full minute, then Dylan rang the bell again. Finally, the curtains moved and a face peered out. I reckoned it was the first time I had seen Jack Gantry without his gold chain. We gazed up at the window, until it swung open.

‘What the hell is this, Mike?’ the Lord Provost exclaimed as he leaned out. His hair was messed up and he was wearing a heavy tweed dressing gown.

‘We have to talk to you, Jack. Open up.’

‘Indeed I will not, Inspector. Now get the hell off my doorstep. You too, Oz.’

‘I don’t think so, Mr Gantry,’ I called up to him. ‘Either you let us in or my big friend here. .’ Unbidden, but dead on cue, Everett stepped out of the shadows ‘. . will take your house apart, stone by stone, just to get to you. You’re nailed, Lord Provost, you and your murderous bastard of a nephew.’

I smiled at him. ‘You do have an alternative, though. In a place like this you’re bound to have a library and a pearl-handled revolver.’

In an instant, Gantry regained his equanimity, goaded, I guessed by my challenge. He beamed down at me, at his most avuncular. ‘I don’t think so, young man. That’s not my style. Just hold on for a minute or two, and I’ll be down.’

‘You better tell Diane to get her ass down too,’ Everett barked. The Lord Provost had no quick comeback for him. He closed the window.

When he let us in a few minutes later, he was fully dressed, in grey slacks, an open-necked shirt and, of all things, a smoking jacket. As we stepped into the big hallway of the villa, we saw Diane, in a leisure suit, standing halfway up the stairs.

‘Honey,’ said Everett, far more calmly than I had expected, ‘you get in your car and go home. I’ll be back later.’

She shook her head.

‘Honey, I promise you I will not lay one finger on this son of a bitch.’

She stared at him, still scared speechless. ‘He won’t, Diane,’ I told her. ‘I’ll see to that.’ She didn’t understand me. . no one did at the time, probably not even me. . but eventually she grabbed her handbag, which was hanging on a Victorian hat stand at the foot of the stairs, and ran out of the door.

‘How gallant of you, Everett,’ said Gantry as we followed him through into a small panelled room, which appeared to be a study. ‘Is it a duel you’ll be wanting?’

‘You heard what I promised her. If I was going to touch you, your back would be broke by now. I just want to hear what you got to say.’

‘About Diane? Nothing. I like beautiful women, and every so often I find that they respond to me. Not to my money, or my office, you understand; that’s not what I like. They have to respond to me, as a man. Diane does; or did, I suppose I should say now.’

‘Do you want her?’ Everett barked.

Gantry looked at him, almost down his nose. ‘Good God no!’ he said. ‘She was drawn to me, she had a need, I fulfilled it. That’s it.

‘Don’t blame her, Everett. Blame yourself if anyone. You assume that she’s as wrapped up in your appalling business as you are. She isn’t, man. She’d like some of your time for herself, every now and again. She even wears those ridiculous costumes in your shows to provoke you, but she never manages to. . or so she tells me.’ He sneered at the huge wrestler.

‘Your business is a pantomime, Everett, full of role-play, and so is your life. But in life there has to be real action, man, not make-believe. That’s what she’s been missing.’

Gantry seemed to have switched into full campaigning mode. The way he was going I was afraid Everett would wind up thanking him for shagging his wife, so I decided to put a stop to it.

‘Let’s leave Diane out of this, Lord Provost,’ I said. ‘There are lots of things I want to ask you. First off, why did you set your nephew Gary O’Rourke up to sabotage the GWA?’

Everett’s eyes bulged as he stared at me. ‘He what!?’ he roared.

Dylan took him by the arm. ‘Quiet just now, big fella,’ he said, as if he was soothing an elephant.

Jack Gantry ignored them both and stared at me. ‘You have to ask me that?’ he retorted. There was no show; his anger was as quick and genuine as that of Everett. ‘You really have to ask me that? Don’t you understand me at all? Don’t you appreciate what I stand for?

‘Man, I loathe and detest everything his tawdry, paltry organisation stands for. I am the First Citizen of a great European cultural capital, yet I have to put up with these freaks, with their human circus, cheapening its very name, and making it a laughing stock all over Europe.

‘They’re worse than the footballers; at least there’s some spurious cultural heritage there. Mr Davis’s stuff has no substance. It’s a disgrace to my city.’

‘So why did you allow it to happen in the first place?’ I asked.

He scowled at me. ‘It was forced upon me,’ he said. ‘By the national level of my Party. Some fool of a Scottish Office Minister decided that it would be a Good Thing For Glasgow to have a European organisation based here. I had personally negotiated that the Turin Symphony Orchestra would relocate to Glasgow. I had personally arranged the deal through Locate In Scotland. Then Everett appeared with his prancing pantomime Sports Entertainment nonsense.’ His voice rose, then fell back to its normal level.

‘I tried to tell the Secretary of State that it was totally unsuitable, but he’s from an Edinburgh constituency. He laughed in my face and said that it was a money-maker, and that no one ever made a profit from a symphony orchestra, so the GWA deal would go ahead.

‘Those people ignored my wishes, Everett, but I determined that I would not tolerate your presence in the city for one minute longer than was necessary. So I made enquiries, and I worked out how you could be driven out. Like any other businessman, you are reliant entirely on the goodwill of your customers. I reasoned that if I could destroy that, I would destroy the Global Wrestling Alliance.’ He laced the words with contempt.

‘So, as soon as I heard that there was a vacancy in your ranks, I sent my nephew Gary along to apply for it. I never had any doubt that he would get it. I didn’t even have to give him a personal recommendation, although I would have, if it had come to that.

‘Best that I didn’t though. No connection between Gary and me; no case to answer, see.’

‘And Diane,’ muttered Everett, slowly, ‘was she in on it?’

‘Good God no. She might betray you between the sheets, my friend, but she couldn’t stand it if anything happened to you. If she’d known what I was up to, she’d have told you right away.’

‘O’Rourke,’ I asked suddenly. ‘Where is he now? We saw his bike in your garage.’

‘Ahh,’ said Gantry. ‘Yes. Gary.Yes. I might as well tell you. He’s in a freezer in the basement, as a matter of fact.’

Cold as my anger was I still felt a chill run through me.

‘Greedy boy,’ the Lord Provost exclaimed. ‘He turned up last night wanting two hundred thousand for his trouble, so that he could get out of the country for a while. I told him that he’d blown it, so he was getting nothing. He became difficult, aggressive, so I stabbed him in the chest with a Kitchen Devil. Bloody sharp, those things are, you know.

‘I know I should have called your chaps in there and then, Mike, but I just panicked. I was in shock, couldn’t think straight; so I stuck him in my old freezer while I gathered myself together.’

Something went out of me then. I was taking immense, if perverse, satisfaction out of confronting Gantry, but beyond him there had lain O’Rourke. My game plan had been to have him lead me to O’Rourke, so that I could do for him myself. Now this man — this madman, as we could all now see he was — who had robbed Everett and me of our wives in different ways, had stolen that prospect from me too.

But I regrouped, repaired the crack in my cold armour and pressed on.

‘And Jan,’ I asked him, quietly. ‘What about Jan?’

He looked at me with his first show of regret. Not remorse, that’s different; this was only regret.

‘Aye son,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry about that, but it was necessary. Thanks to my hot-headed daughter, and to her own skill as an accountant, your lass was about to find out about Gary’s wee sideline, and to tell Susie. I had to stop her from doing that, at all costs, I’m afraid.’

‘Gary’s wee sideline,’ I repeated. ‘So you did know about it.’

‘Oh yes. Almost from the start. I was still running the business when he dreamed it up, so I spotted it within the first two months.’

‘So why didn’t you turn him in?’ asked Dylan, incredulity written all over his face. ‘Why did you cover it up?’

Gantry laughed at him, and shook his head. ‘Michael, Michael, Michael, I am a politician, first and last. The job of the politician is to give the people what they want; not to tell them what they want — that’s the real, patronising, Old Labour way — but to give it to them.

‘And what you and those like you must know but are afraid to admit is that the poor, ordinary underprivileged folk in all big inner city areas want Temazepam and the like, and they want heroin. For good or evil those things have become part of their culture and they want them: more than that, they will have them, come what may.

‘So, as a good politician, what’s my responsibility? That’s right, it’s to give it to them.’

He looked at the policeman, blandly, as if lecturing a child. ‘Which would you rather see happen, Michael? You know my views on the danger of criminalising drugs.

‘I ask you what’s more desirable; to see the housing schemes bled dry to pay for all sorts of uncontrolled poisons — all to make some local criminals, and ultimately some Colombian, or some Burmese, even richer — or to turn a blind eye, as I did, while my nephew gave them a quality supply at prices that let them feed their kids?’

‘For fuck’s sake, man,’ Dylan screamed at him. ‘In these schemes, it’s the kids who are on smack!’

The Lord Provost stared at him, genuinely astonished by his reaction. ‘In every walk of life, Michael, there are good parents and bad.’

He gathered his jacket around him. ‘Listen, I’ve really had enough of this now. Call your people, Inspector, and have Gary taken out of my freezer. I’ll give you a full statement. My nephew came to my house and asked for money to get out of the country. I turned him down and he attacked me. It was self-defence.

‘As for everything else we’ve discussed, you must realise that was off the record. I will never repeat it, either informally, or under caution. You three may allege that I said it all, of course, but it’ll be your word against mine.’ He paused and beamed at us.

‘And remember, I’m Jack Gantry.’

That was it for me. He stood there, and I knew that it had been him I’d really wanted to kill all along, even more than I had wanted O’Rourke. All of a sudden that became the most important thing in my life. I went for him with nothing but my bare hands, to finish him if I could. My first punch, a right hander, staggered him, but the second, a shorter blow, stunned him and knocked him down. I was on top of him then, my left hand tight round his throat squeezing the life out of him, my right fist punching, punching, punching; trying to smash that bland, benign, calm, unspeakably awful face.

All the time, Dylan stood transfixed above me, watching me killing the Lord Provost. It was Everett, eventually, who prised my hand from his throat, and very gently, his great arm wound round my waist, lifted me up and off him.

‘That’s enough, buddy,’ he said. ‘You mustn’t let the man ruin your life any more than he has already.’

He sat me down in an armchair, and everything left me; my strength, my anger, and the last of the restraints which my mind had placed upon my grief. I was back on top of that old Greek wall once more, but this time, there was nothing held back.