Gordon Ferris: The Hanging Shed

‘She’s her father’s daughter, that’s who she is! Fiscal Campbell! He was always after Gerrit. Never letting him go. Always hauling him into court. He had to be stopped. It was all settled. And then she ends up disturbing our lives again!’

I gazed at her, and rubbed my suddenly dry lips. ‘What do you mean: “He had to be stopped” and “It was all settled”?’

She turned up her mouth at me, like a sneer. Suddenly I knew with complete certainty what she meant. The sequence of niggling coincidences were nothing of the sort. The constant harassment of the Slattery clan by the Procurator Fiscal in the late twenties and early thirties came to an abrupt halt when Sam’s parents drowned. Were drowned.

‘Dermot killed her father and mother, didn’t he? On the loch.’

She got up and walked over to the sink. She picked up the whiskey and two glasses. She poured them full and plonked them between us.

‘It’s all one, now. Derry had no choice. Same old story. He had to protect his brother. It’s how it’s always been.’

I felt sick again. Maybe it was the last of the adrenaline oozing away, or the peaty whiskey. Maybe it was the long dark story that stretched down the years. The tale that started with the deliberate drowning of an old couple on a walking holiday and led to Sam’s own abduction and possible murder. The brutal and callous removal of everyone who might give evidence against them. The final retreat to the old country that ended in violence and gore.

I asked quietly, scarcely daring to hear the answer, ‘Where is Samantha Campbell? Do you know?’

She shrugged, as if it was of little interest to her. ‘Gerrit has her, I expect. The boy was always daft, so he was. Mental.’

I gripped the table, my guts churning in a mix of outrage and fear. Gerrit – the rabid dog – had her. ‘Where?’

She took a big pull on her whiskey. ‘That would be tellin’ now, wouldn’t it?’ she smirked.

I flung the half full tumbler at the wall. It smashed to pieces and left a dark reeking stain down the whitewash. ‘Well, you’d better be telling! Right here, right now!’

I was ready to beat the information out of her, and she knew it. I’d wiped the smirk off her face and for a second, fear lit her eyes. But then her face glazed into a tight mask. This wasn’t the first tumbler she’d seen smashed off a wall. It wasn’t the first threat she’d had. Mrs Slattery had seen the worst life could offer and wasn’t about to turn into a quivering jelly at this late stage. I let the silence fill the kitchen. Neither of us moved. I got control of my shaking hands by clasping them together on the table as though I was going to say grace. I decided to try the long way round.

‘You said, “It’s how it’s always been.” What did you mean?’

Her mouth softened. ‘Since they were kids. Dermot looking after his wee brother.’

‘Tell me.’ I reached over and topped up her glass.

She eyed me up. She’d been beautiful once, I imagined. The white hair would have been thick black curls, and the curves more subtle. She would have set Dermot Slattery’s blood racing. I bet she was a dancer. That shrug again. Another big mouthful.

‘Trouble with the authorities. That sort of thing.’

‘Were they IRA, Dermot and Gerrit?’

She laughed. ‘Sure, everybody’s a wee bit IRA round these parts.’

I tried a long shot. ‘What about the priest? Why did Father Cassidy have to die?’

Her already flushed face turned crimson round the neck. She rocked to her feet and stood swaying. ‘That’s it! I’ll say no more! Now, get out of this house. You’ve destroyed us all, so you have! Just you get going!’

I stood up to face her, just as much at the end of my tether. ‘Where is Gerrit Slattery! Where is he keeping Samantha Campbell?’

She tottered and nearly fell, then caught the edge of the table. Her speech was slurring. ‘It’s likely too late. Gerrit’s a devil, so he is.’

‘I need to try. For pity’s sake, woman, just give me an address,’ I pleaded. ‘Enough folk have died, have they not?’

She looked out of the kitchen window as the darkness grew. She wiped her face and turned back to me.

‘Gerrit brought all this down on us. He didn’t deserve a brother like that.’ She nodded towards the room where her husband lay. ‘Derry was a good man. It could have been different for us. Him and me. But always, always, that bloody maniac threw everything up in the air. Just for the fun of it half the time. Or for his dirty treats. And now my Derry is in there. And he’s out there laughing at us all.’

‘Out where, Mrs Slattery? Is it right that Gerrit lives on and your Derry doesn’t? After all that Derry did for him?’

She gazed at me through bleary eyes. She knew what I was doing, what I was saying.

She sighed, ‘He’ll be in one of two places. The cottage in Arran, or the den in Dumbarton. Him and his pals. And they’ll get you this time, Mister smart murdering angel-of-death Brodie.’

‘Well, you won’t mind giving me the addresses then, if they’re going to kill me?’

She squinted at me, the logic sifting through her fuddled brain. Then she grinned. ‘That’s right. Send you to hell, so I will…’

She told me, and my stomach turned over at the thought of Sam being captive so close to me in Glasgow while all the time I was chasing the wrong target. I collected myself and started making for the door. I faced her again.

‘What about…?’ I nodded towards the room where Slattery lay oozing on to the bedspread.

‘We’ll take care of our own.’

‘And the ones outside?’ I felt no guilt about these deaths. It was them or me. But there was the small matter of the police. All she had to do was pick up the phone and I’d be explaining this evening’s work behind bars until I turned old and grey. Or they hanged me.

‘I know some folk. We’ll do it our way. The quiet way.’

I believed her, but to make sure, I made her make one phone call to a local number. She asked for two men. They would be round directly. I ripped out the phone from the wall and tore the cable away. Then I picked up my Dickson where it lay outside and walked off down the driveway in the warmth of a fine spring evening. I ejected the spent cartridge and filled both chambers afresh. I stepped round the big black saloon whose lifeblood was ebbing into the gravel in a glistening mix of oil and water and fuel. I climbed over the gate and walked off into the humming darkness.

I drove through the night and got to Larne harbour in the wee small hours. I parked, and slept fitfully in the back of the car and woke to the sound of chains and horns. I caught the first ferry back to Stranraer. I found a baker’s open and bought a couple of soft rolls filled with some nameless paste. I stopped a milkman finishing his rounds with his horse and cart and acquired a couple of pints of milk. I chewed and drank as I drove. By eleven o’clock I was coaxing a garage in Girvan to let me have a couple of gallons without coupons. He took double the price but money wasn’t my problem. Time was. Eighty miles to Glasgow.

I hammered the Riley up the A77 shore road past Ayr and then cross country through Kilmarnock. I was doing seventy down the Glasgow road overtaking everything in sight like a madman. I reached the Jamaica Bridge by one o’clock and headed out west towards Dumbarton. I’d decided to start with this den she’d talked about. If I found nothing there, I’d cross the Erskine ferry and catch the boat to Arran.

Initially I passed rank upon rank of swinging cranes on either side of the Clyde where the shipyards were dinning away. Then there was the long stretch of Clydebank where a town used to sit next to the yards. The community was blitzed to rubble in ’41. On along the Dumbarton Road past the Erskine Ferry until the big rock of Dumbarton castle shunted into the clear blue morning. It was a perfect site for a fortress and had held the pass through the Clyde estuary for centuries. Kings of Scotland, and before them, Pictish kings, had been crowned here and ruled the surrounding fertile valleys. But not even a Celtic seer could have forecast the Luftwaffe.