Liam McIlvanney - The Quaker

Outside on the pavement, Kilgour found his courage. ‘Youse huckled me for the last one. No remember? You’ve done me already. I’m in the clear.’

The night air was cool on their forehead and cheeks.

‘This time’s different.’ A big hand pushed Kilgour towards the car, the Velox parked on the waste ground. When the hand gripped his shoulder, Kilgour tried to shrug it loose.

‘How’s it different?’

The thin one had the door open and the heavy one bundled him into the car.

‘This time there’s a witness.’

‘Sandy’s what she said.’ DCI George Cochrane dragged a chair from a vacant desk and straddled it, crotch splayed. He rubbed two hands up and down his face. ‘Sandy. Fair. Light-coloured. I don’t know how else to say it.’

They were in the Murder Room at the Marine, maps on the wall, boxed statements on the shelves, the sun already burning in the high sash windows. Photos pinned to the board behind Cochrane’s head. The victims’ smiling faces. The victims’ naked bodies.

Jacquilyn Keevins. Ann Ogilvie. Marion Mercer.

‘Flaxen.’ Goldie couldn’t help himself. ‘Straw-coloured, sir. Pale blond.’

Cochrane twisted a finger into the corner of his eye. He gave no indication of having heard Goldie. ‘Jokes you can do.’ He nodded heavily. ‘Acting the clown. Catching killers? That’s the tricky part for you boys, right? The fucking hotshots.’ He stood up sharply and the chair scraped on the floor. ‘Scottish Crime Squad. Fucking Flying Squad. What’s the matter, they don’t teach you how to read witness statements?’ Goldie said nothing. Cochrane tugged his shirt away from his chest, blew down its front. ‘Sandy, she said.’

Goldie shifted in his chair. ‘ She said.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘The doormen tell it different, sir. The manager, too. Mid-brown, maybe darker. And the boy and girl, the couple, who came forward after the first one; they had him mid-brown, too.’

‘We’ve been through this, Detective. She’s the witness.’

‘Plus the height. The doormen call it five-eight, nine. Not six foot.’

‘She’s the one shared the taxi with him. She’s the one was in his company for most of the night.’

Goldie cleared his throat. ‘She’s the one too pissed to know her own name. Her own colour of hair.’

Cochrane turned his back, stared at the wall, the map of the city. ‘He says you punched him,’ he said.

‘What’s that, sir?’

Cochrane kept his back to them. ‘Kilgour. Your suspect. The nonce. He says you assaulted him.’ Cochrane turned. ‘What’s Boy Wonder going to say about that, hmm? How’s that gonnae look in his report?’

Goldie shrugged. The question was put to Goldie but it was McCormack who had to answer it.

‘DS Goldie behaved professionally throughout the arrest.’

‘It’s not going into your wee report? When you tell the brass how we’re doing it wrong?’

McCormack said nothing. He figured Cochrane had a right to be aggrieved. He had watched his biggest case, the case that would define him, become a slow-motion nightmare. Three women murdered and still no one charged. Months slipping past, the task getting bigger, not smaller. There were thousands of fair-haired men in this city, tens of thousands, men between twenty-five and thirty-five, men with overlapping teeth. Men who matched the photofit, the artist’s impression. Men who smoked Embassy Filter. But the papers didn’t get any kinder as time went on and the pressure from the brass didn’t slacken. If Cochrane was sore he had every excuse.

The suspect, Kilgour, had been held in the cells overnight. There was a magistrate’s court attached to the Marine and the cells were often busy. They’d given Kilgour a mate, put him in with a fairy they’d lifted on Kelvin Way. Cold white tiles. A shitter with no seat.

They’d arranged a parade for the morning. Nancy Scullion, sister of the third victim, Marion Mercer. At 10 a.m. a squad car picked Nancy up from her work – she was a secretary at Harland and Wolff’s – and took her to the Marine. Ten minutes later she was being driven back to Govan. She’d walked down the line of men, looked at Cochrane and shaken her head. In the foyer, she told Cochrane, ‘You think it’s number four, don’t you? It’s not really like him.’ Kilgour was number four. Kilgour went home. Kilgour was a waste of everyone’s time.

Now Cochrane had his hands behind his head, fingers laced, his teeth bared in a bitter grin. ‘You know what they’re calling us? The fucking papers?’

The two men knew. Everyone knew. But Cochrane told them anyway.

‘The Marine Formation Dance Team.’ Cochrane smiled. ‘Cute, eh? Fucking clever.’

The Quaker Squad had been haunting the city’s dance halls for the past year, brushing up their dance skills, mingling with the punters, looking for the man with the overlapping teeth and the regimental tie, the short fair hair and the desert boots. It was easy to spot the cops: they were the ones watching the men, not the women.

‘I’d say we’ve never seen anything like it, but even that’s not true.’

The two detectives nodded. They knew what Cochrane was talking about. It was Manuel all over again. Another dapper killer. Peter Manuel. Another stain on the city’s name. Ten years back. Cochrane had worked it. Goldie too. McCormack was too young.

‘Happening again, sir, isn’t it?’ Goldie grimaced.

McCormack remembered. He’d been too young to work it but not too young to remember. The crowds outside the High Court during the trial, men and women in their good clothes, wee boys climbing on the High Court railings. He was working in C Div at the time, lodging with Granny Beag in Partick. Manuel was convicted of seven murders, confessed to eight more. They hanged him on 11 July. McCormack’s birthday. Waking up in Granny’s flat, coming through for breakfast, the present on the kitchen table, the radio on, Granny Beag sitting in her quilted dressing-gown and fur-lined slippers, a lit cigarette in the ashtray, they announced it on the radio. Sentence of execution was carried out on Peter Manuel in Barlinnie Prison at one minute past eight this morning. McCormack unwrapping the parcel. His body was buried in an unmarked grave in the prison grounds. A watch, a Rolex Tudor with a leather strap, the watch he still wore.

Cochrane stood up, dragged the chair over to the other desk, rested his hands on its back. ‘Sometimes I think it never stopped.’ He sighed out some smoke. ‘Him down in Manchester. Brady. He’s one of ours, too, God help us. Pollok boy. You got a minute, McCormack?’

‘Sir.’

McCormack followed Cochrane into the narrow office next to the Murder Room. He closed the door behind him.

‘Did he hit him?’

‘Like I said, sir, DS Goldie behaved professionally.’

‘Ah fuck it. Guy’s a nonce. Who gives a shit. Had your boss on the phone.’ Cochrane was stubbing his Rothmans in the ashtray, jabbing it into the scuffed red metal.

‘You’re my boss.’

‘Your real boss. DCI Flett. Wants to know how long we’re planning to keep you. When we might be able to spare you.’ McCormack rode the little punch of irony on the last two words. Cochrane had stopped jabbing the cigarette butt and now he folded it over on itself, pressing down hard with the ball of his thumb. ‘Told him you’re playing it close to your chest. Any thoughts, though? How long this might take?’

‘Few more days. Another week, maybe.’

‘Then we learn our fate.’

Cochrane moved round the desk to stand beside McCormack. McCormack could smell something carious under the older man’s tobacco breath, a rottenness that made him breathe in shallow sips. Above the height of four feet, the wall of Cochrane’s office was frosted glass through which the torsos of the day-shift detectives floated like clouds.