Friday January 11 th 2008
Back to the old haunts is the order of the day. I hardly recognised the Gorbals. New flats, leisure centre and a distinct lack of many of the pubs I had frequented. I doubted that the person I wanted would still be in the same house. I doubted they would still be alive. But they were both.
The man who answered the door was bald (where he had once had a shock of ginger hair), wrinkled (where he had once had a face so smooth he had been nicknamed ‘baby’) and a stoop (where once he had stood tall and proud — five years in Her Majesties Armed Forces would do that to a man). Recognition flickered in his eyes and he stepped back to let me in. There was no fear — once there would have been — but my story was well kent and I was no longer a threat.
The flat was minimalist and dominated by a wretched stained coffee table that had the Mount Etna of fag ash and doots as its centre-piece. The heating was all the way up to eleven and the place smelled like nothing I had ever encountered.
There was no offer of a seat. My host collapsed in the only chair in the room. It sat square in front of the TV, next to the fag mountain and, before his backside hit the fake leather, he lit up.
‘How you doing Ron?’ I asked.
‘Better than you from what I hear.’
That hurt. The house was a shit-hole and yet I was the one on my uppers. Go figure.
‘I need a favour?’
‘It will cost.’
I knew it would. I had cleaned out the geek kid for everything he had and bought forty fags. I dropped them next to the mountain.
‘Small favour,’ he said looking at the two packets with contempt.
I dropped the key on the table.
‘What’s it for?’
In the good old days Ron had been a locksmith and a bloody good one at that. In my house breaking phase Ron had been a saviour on many an occasion. It was easier to get into a house with a key and it was often surprisingly easy to snatch a key, copy it and return it to the owner. Ron did the copying for a fee at odds with the going rate on the High St, but the stiff cost paid for his silence.
He looked at the key and picked up one of the packets of cigarettes, muttering something about the wrong brand before pulling a stick from the pack and lighting up. The one in his mouth wasn’t even half dead.
‘Well?’
He inhaled and held up the key, twirling it over a couple of times before dropping it back on the table. He said nothing and exhaled.
‘Well?’
‘Safety deposit.’
‘What bank?’
He inhaled again and I was seconds from landing one on him. It was like drawing teeth from a crocodile.
I waited.
‘Can’t be sure.’
He drew on the cigarette again and I changed tack. Stepping behind him I wrapped my arm round his neck and pulled upward. He spat out the fag and began to struggle but he was old and I had a fourteen year stretch of using the prison gym in my arms.
‘Be sure,’ I said.
His choking was getting in the way of his ability to talk and I loosened off a little.
‘Ok, ok, no need for the heavy stuff.’
I let go but stayed behind him, ready to grab him if he made a move that looked out of place. I was staring down on his bald pate. The collection of liver spots and scabs made for an unpleasant vista.
‘It ain’t a bank key. This is either a Credit Union or a private box.’
‘Go on.’
‘There are very few private box places left. No money in them anymore. I’d put money on a Credit Union but not a new one. The key’s old. Twenty years, maybe more. They don’t make these anymore. Is the key local?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Assume it is. If we don’t you’re screwed. I only know three Credit Unions that might, and I mean might, still have old safety deposit boxes.’
‘What’s a Credit Union?’
I felt stupid asking but it was a hole in my education.
‘A kind of community bank. It’s run by locals and lends small amounts of money at decent rates and allows local people to save money without having to go to the bank. They also do stuff like pay your bills for you, arrange insurance and so on. There used to be lots of them when times were bad. They seem to be coming back into fashion in some areas. I’m surprised you’ve never heard of them given your career.’
He was referring to my loan sharking days and to be fair I was surprised at my ignorance. Maybe there had never been any on my patch?
‘Where are they?’
‘There’s still a shed load of them around but there are only three that would have boxes for this key. There is one over in Easterhouse. One up in Castlemilk and one over in Drumchapel.’
It figures. Easterhouse, Castlemilk and Drumchapel were (along with Pollok) Glasgow ’s ‘townships’ built in the sixties.
Overcrowding was becoming a real issue for Glasgow in the fifties and the council targeted some twenty nine districts for renewal or demolition. Close on a hundred thousand homes met the wrecking ball and many of the inhabitants were shipped out to the new build ‘townships’ on the edge of the city. At the time it was hailed as a master stroke. In truth Glasgow lost its heart and soul, as row after row of tenements were flattened.
The planners also gave little thought to infrastructure. Thousands of people found themselves crammed into housing with few facilities. Castlemilk with a population of close on fifty thousand didn’t get a pub until the early eighties — thirty years after the first house went up.
All four areas became hotbeds for gangs and trouble but now there were third world debt levels of cash being invested to rid the city of that legacy.
‘If I turn up with a key will they let me use it?’
‘No. You need the chit that came with the key or proof of ownership. They won’t use the boxes that much now. They are not stupid. They may even have trashed them although I doubt it’
‘Shit.’
I got him to write down as much as he knew about each Credit Union and left.
As I walked back to the hostel it occurred to me that I might just be about to get back into the ‘breaking and entering’ market again.
To do that I need to tool up.