Thursday January 24 th 2008
For the bulk of my incarceration I had always thought that Dupree had taken Martin out after I was sent down. Then I had the pleasure of a new cell mate, a confidence trickster, who shared my cell for a few nights. It meant there were three of us crammed in the room built for one but the prison was bursting at the seams and there was hardly a union rep we could complain to.
The con was called Gerald Crainey and in some distant part of my brain his name rang a bell. At first he said little but on the third night we were talking football and he came over all gobby. It turned out he had been on the books for Celtic as a schoolboy.
‘I could have played for the first team, you know.’
He loved his football and to hack him off I told him I was a Partick Thistle fan. He took the royal piss out of me but we got into it over the 1971 game and, as I had learned over the years, it was a great way to wind up some Celtic fans.
‘Another Partick nutter. Met one not long ago called Martin Sketchmore.’
I backed him up and asked him if Martin Sketchmore was my Martin Sketchmore.
‘Sassenach who thinks he’s Scottish. Balding, likes his rugby and his pros?’
It was as good a description as I had heard. What intrigued me, on further interrogation, was that the meeting had occurred at a football event that was only a few years in the past. That put Martin on this planet well after I thought Dupree had got to him.
I pumped Gerald for everything he knew but it wasn’t much. He had met Martin at a Celtic supporters’ do that was being held in Murrayfield — the home of Scottish rugby. They had got to talking at the bar. The inevitable subject of 1971 came up and then Martin had told Gerald that he always wanted to go to an Old Firm game but had never gotten round to it. Gerald happened to have two tickets for the main stand at Hampden for the upcoming Rangers v Celtic game in the Scottish Cup. The game was a sell out and tickets were nowhere to be found — not for love nor money. A few drinks later and they were soul mates. A few more and Gerald invited Martin to the game.
Gerald and Martin had drunk themselves stupid at the game but parted ways with no exchange of details. Martin had been a stranger to Gerald ever since. But it was enough for me. If Martin was alive someone would know where and I intended to find out.
It took me months of favours and back-handers to track him down. In truth it wasn’t difficult, just agony when you are trying to do it from prison. My lack of friends made everything expensive, painful or slow.
I found out he was back in Glasgow and now part of the law abiding citizenry. He had a job in a city lawyers, as a ‘by the hour’ detective. His job was to dig up dirt and his old contacts had made him a bit of a winner at the gig. I knew he lived in Eaglesham — a small satellite village south of Glasgow. I didn’t have an address but with a name like Sketchmore I reckoned he wouldn’t be too hard to find.
I took the bus to the village. A long haul by any accounts, and, when I arrived, I realised this might be harder than I first thought. The village, although small, was still big enough to cause me some grief and as I alighted the bus and stood next to the bus stop I thought — where now?
The pub was the obvious start point and I entered the Eaglesham Arms with some hope in my chest. Ten minutes later I was back on the street.
The bar staff had looked at me with the sort of blank expression reserved for non locals and people who weren’t buying. The two customers I quizzed gave me even less than that. If I’d had a mobile in my pocket I could have given directory enquiries a pop but I could hardly afford the bus fare, never mind a mobile phone.
I wandered back up the main drag and headed towards the shops the bus had passed as it had entered the village. On my left I found a Chinese restaurant and a light bulb went on. Martin was big on his Chinese food. His tastes might have changed but I didn’t think so.
The restaurant was small but welcoming. It was too early in the day for a crowd but there were still a few tables buzzing with chat. A matronly looking Chinese woman appeared to take my order and I had to disappoint her. I explained that I was a friend of Martin’s just back from the big smoke and that I’d had my bag stolen on the train north. I knew he lived in Eaglesham but I didn’t have his address — could they help?
She drew me a blank and I thought I was out on my backside but one of the diners had ear wigged the conversation, and beckoned me over. The Chinese lady threw him a look of disdain but he either missed it or didn’t give a rats. He told me that Martin didn’t live in Eaglesham but in a smaller village up the road called Jackton. He didn’t know the address but he described the house and with thanks I was gone.
Jackton turned out to be a fair walk but its size made finding Martin’s house easy and I stared at the front door for an age.
A decade earlier I would have envisaged myself kicking the door in and confronting him. I had envisaged myself beating him within an inch of his life. Dark night after dark night I dreamed of this moment — and then some — but now I just wondered what the hell I was doing here. Did I really need his help to crack the Credit Union? After all wasn’t it just a toy town bank? The answer was no — it wasn’t and I was scraping the bottom of a fairly deep barrel. One that had given up everything but Martin. After this I was a busted flush.
I stared at the door and thought — this is the bastard that had put me away for the best part of fifteen years. This is the man that had hung me out in a way that was hard to fathom.
I could still see him in the dock spouting forth — me open-mouthed as he spat out every tiny detail. He never looked at me once. Not even the swiftest of glances. He fixed his eyes on a spot behind the prosecuting lawyer and kept them there.
Not that he couldn’t feel my gaze. It was a laser burning into his head — a laser loaded with all the hate I could muster. Yet he was an unblocked dam of information that flooded across the courtroom and drowned me.
As I stood at the door and looked at my watch I thought about all the time that the bastard had taken away. Every single second that could never be handed back. How he had walked free from the court and I had walked away in handcuffs. Him to a future outside prison walls. Me to one inside. And what would this visit achieve? After all he had sent the letter. Whatever lay in the safety deposit box was surely known to him. Yet there lay the intrigue. If he did know, then why give it to me? Bad news seemed the most logical conclusion. I was to be set up again. Was that it? Am I supposed to open the box and the contents lead me straight back to prison — or worse? Why else would he lead me to the key?
I know the bastard well. Is this his back up plan? His security blanket. Send me right back in. Go straight to jail — do not pass go. But why? He must have known I would look for him now I was out.
Before the Castlemilk and Easterhouse jobs I’d considered tracking him down, but it chewed my gut like cancer to think about it. Now I had no choice. Whatever lay in that box was going to be revealed. Either right now, right here or, with Martin’s help, after I did Drumchapel.
I kicked the door. One way or another the mystery ended here. At least that’s what I thought at that moment. As it turned out life is far from that simple.
The door flew open and Martin stood before me. Less hair, stooped and a good four stone heavier but it was Martin. If I expected shock at my presence it wasn’t to be. He smiled as recognition took hold and, standing back, asked if I still took two sugar and milk. It was far from the response I had been expecting.
I walked into the house and was swallowed by an idyllic cottage — layout replete with large open hearth fire, overstuffed armchair and bright chintzy curtains over lattice windows. The floor was stone with a large rug dead centre and a couple of two seat sofas sat at right angles to each other. The ceiling was low and stripped with beams that made ducking a necessity for anyone over two feet tall. The walls were rough hewn sandstone and, opposite the fire, was a monumental sideboard and display cabinet. Just at that moment a grandfather clock chimed.
All of this would have been perfectly normal if it wasn’t for the fact that I was standing in one of a small row of ex-council nineteen sixties, breezeblock homes. It was hard to fathom the dichotomy of exterior and interior but Martin resolved it in seconds.
‘I bought it like this. The previous owners were in their eighties. They always wanted a farmhouse but couldn’t afford it. So they did this. You should see the bedrooms. Drink?’
I almost missed the offer but the sound of glass on glass as Martin whipped two tumblers from the drinks cabinet meant we had moved on from tea to something stronger. I nodded my head. Martin waved at one of the sofas and I sat down. He chinked and clinked until a four-finger measure of whisky and ice appeared over my shoulder.
‘ Highland Park. Or have you changed.’
I hadn’t had a glass of Highland Park malt whisky since the day before I was arrested. I gave a non-committal grunt and took a slug. Nectar slid down my throat and I realised how far I had fallen.
Martin sat down in the other sofa and sipped at a whisky that was half the size of mine. He kicked out his feet and let rip with a sigh that would have brought a tear to a glass eye.
‘I’m surprised you didn’t start off by kicking my head in,’ he said.
‘So am I.’
‘A lot of questions?’
‘Sorry.’
‘You’ll have a lot of questions?’
‘No shit.’
‘Fire on.’
This was not going in any shape or form the way I had planned it. For a start Martin was supposed to be quaking in his boots at my reappearance. At the moment the only quaking going on was the rumble of the double decker buses and trucks that occasionally went past his front door. I took another swallow and realised I had drained the glass. Martin pulled in his feet, stood up and took the glass from me. Clink, chink and it was full again.
‘You must have been thirsty?’
I ignored the jibe.
I wasn’t sure where to start. Did I get into the whole trial and betrayal thing? Did I ask how he had survived the coming to power of Dupree? Would an opening gambit be to ask about the key? Did I ask him if Partick Thistle were doing well or did I ask after his other love — rugby?
‘How’s Clarkston RFC doing?’ I said.
‘They aren’t. They vanished years ago. Merged and changed names a few times and are now known as GHA. Still in the same place but a health club bought some land off them and, as part of the deal, they had a new stand and clubhouse built for them. Good deal really.’
‘Do you still go to see them?’
‘Most weekends when they are at home. Occasionally on the road but only if they are close by.’
‘Any of the old school still there.’
‘A couple. Jimmy Naismith still pulls the odd stint on coaching but he has a place in Spain and is more there than here. Donald Grier is club secretary but I am a bit persona non gratis with him. What with me and his daughter.’
I couldn’t help laughing. Mary Grier had been an on/off girlfriend of Martin’s for the last few years before I was sent down. Although she lived in Glasgow, Martin would fly her down for long weekends and then some. This seriously pissed of her dad — a lay preacher of the fire and brimstone variety. Donald was none to happy at his ‘takeaway’ daughter. His phrase not mine — ‘You’re like a bloody Indian takeaway. He calls and you deliver.’
Inevitably it had ended in tears when Martin, tired of the old man’s complaints, found that Donald was badmouthing him to anyone that would listen. Donald had even been known to bring Martin’s name into some of his sermons. Martin reacted by sending four of the lads to have a quiet word. Donald got the message but some people just don’t scare well and he continued to slag off Martin. Only the intervention of his daughter saved him a more serious kicking.
‘Do you still see Mary?’
‘Kind of.’
‘Meaning.’
‘I see her when I pick up Tara.’
‘Who’s Tara?’
‘Mary’s stepdaughter.’
‘Why would you be bothered about Mary’s stepdaughter?’
‘We’re an item.’
‘You and Mary’s stepdaughter. No shit?’
I didn’t ask her age. I could guess. Martin was just too weird for cheese.
The conversation drifted and was taking on a strange glow. Not just as a result of the whisky but, although we’d had our ups and downs, because we had always been able to gab just fine. The years were slipping away and my desire to lay into him was waning with the bottle.
‘Hungry?’
I realised I was ravenous.
‘Kind of.’
Martin reached for a cordless phone that sat next to his sofa and dialled a number from memory.
‘For delivery please. Martin Sketchmore. Hi Ajmal. How’s business? Good — can I have a Lamb Korma, Chicken Tikka Masala and two fried rice? Add in a garlic nan, a regular nan and a bottle of Diet Coke’
He hung up.
‘Not Chinese?’ I said.
‘Had one last night.’
We jawed about next to nothing for half an hour before the doorbell went and we were in Indian food land. We ate in silence and when the dishes were cleared away and my glass refilled we sat down to some serious talk.
‘The courtroom. Why?’ I asked.
Martin rubbed his stomach and belched.
‘Dupree had me by the nuts. I grass on you or my family/friends/acquaintances/colleagues/people I met when I was three and have never seen since — don’t see the next morning. He threatened to kill mum, gran, Joan, Colleen — even little Brian. All of them and then some. What would you have done?’
I had always suspected as much but it didn’t lessen my anger.
‘You could have run.’
‘Where? Dupree is an evil fucker. Far worse than you or me ever were. He was onto me hours after you were lifted and laid it on the line. You or my family.’
‘So who cut the deal with the police?’
‘Dupree. Don’t ask me how, but he did.’
‘And you believed he would keep his word?’
‘It was my biggest fear. I drop you in it and then I’m history. But he’s a weird one. His word is his bond. He said that not me. From what I know he seems to hold to that. If I stay away from him he’ll honour our deal. How else could I have survived? I’m hardly the invisible man. How long did it take you to find me?’
That was true. I had found out his location from behind the bars of a prison. Dupree would have found him in seconds.
‘The letter?’ I said.
‘Do you still have it?’
I pulled it out of my pocket and handed it to him. He rolled it up and threw it in the fire.
‘So what’s in the box?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. But whatever it is it didn’t come from me ‘
‘Sorry.’
‘It’s from Spencer. Whatever is in the box is from Spencer.’
‘Where’s Spencer?’
‘Dead.’
‘Dupree?’
‘No, a car crash on the road to Oban about two years after you went down. Up until that point Spencer worked for Dupree.’
‘I thought he vanished with you.’
‘That’s what Dupree wanted everyone to think but Dupree needed someone who knew the way the crockery was laid out until he could get his feet under the table. So Spencer was shipped back north and moved in with his mum in Inveraray. Dupree used him as a sounding board and as long as he kept himself to himself Dupree left him alone.’
I had known Spencer’s mum had roots in Scotland but not where she lived. Inveraray was a tourist stop on the way to the Mull of Kintyre. Nice enough for the day but not somewhere I would choose for home and certainly not somewhere for Spencer. He would have gone out of his mind with boredom. I could see him now — blind drunk at the wheel of some hot rod, hammering up the road between Inveraray and Oban. On a good day you need to take care on the road as it either twists and turns through the glens or hugs the shore. Forty feet artics are frequent and, at points, the road hardly accommodates a mini. Car crashes were all too common.
‘So what has Spencer got to do with the box?’
‘I was staying with one of Spencer’s friends. She lived in Fulham. Spencer turns up at the door one day. He looks nervous and knows he is well outside the safe zone that Dupree has given him. He comes in but he doesn’t sit down. He shouldn’t be in London and he knows it. His eyes are all over the place. Like he is expecting someone to jump him any minute. He tells me that Stevie at the Lame Duck has something for me. I look at him as if he just landed from Mars. I ask him what he is on about. He says he knows some things about Dupree and has given Stevie instructions to hand it over to you or me. Then he leaves. Next thing I know he is on the inside page of the Daily Record as one of four that died in a high speed crash on the road to Oban.’
‘So you went to Stevie?’
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘You don’t know Dupree. You really don’t. He has figured out ways to hurt people that wouldn’t seem credible in a Stephen King novel. I was safe and I wanted to stay that way but I figured you might like a pop at him. So I scribbled up the letter and sent it to you.’
‘And you never once thought to see Stevie in all those years?’
‘Oh it passed my mind now and again and I always reckoned that if I got a sniff Dupree was on the turn I could track down Stevie double quick.’
Sometimes in life you smell things that just makes your nose curl up.
‘Are you telling me that you never went to find out what Stevie had been given?’
‘Never. I wrote you the letter years ago and sent Rachel to deliver it when I thought you were due out. Then I tried to blank it from my mind.’
I rolled back in the chair and sipped at the malt. Martin was looking at me, waiting for a response but I didn’t have one. Not then anyway. I sipped some more and held up the glass for more. Tonight was going no further. I either got very drunk or I went home.
I got very drunk.