Read Online Bitter Water by Gordon Ferris - Free Book Online

king-maker, the man who was handing over his life’s work to me. As he kept telling me . . .
    ‘You’ve earned it, Brodie. I was gonna insist on them making a funeral pyre of my desk with a copy of every edition I featured in. Me laid out on top with a pint in one hand and a copy of the Gazette in the other as the flames licked my arse. But, what the hell. The show goes on. We are the voice of the people, the scourge of the villains. My work must continue.’
    He’d finish his rhetoric with the passing of an imaginary torch to me and a far-off look in his smoke-red eyes. This self-promoting funeral oratory happened when he was in his cups and feeling the weight of ages pressing on his furrowed forehead. In other words, most nights. The more he lauded me, the more I felt like handing back the torch and accompanying laurel leaf and catching the first train back to the anonymity of London. Did I want to end up like him? On the other hand there were enough attractions. The job itself. Being with my ‘ain folk’. Being able to keep an eye on my mother. The West of Scotland weather? Hardly; this spell was a freak. Or just Samantha Campbell. Sam . . .
    ‘Half a crown.’
    I was torn from my reverie of blonde hair and lie-detecting eyes by the arrival of my pints. I slid the half-dollar on to the sweating counter, scooped up my drinks and change and slopped back to the table. McAllister pushed the empties aside to make room. I put the two glasses down in the puddle.
    ‘You were in a dwam up at the bar. Thinking about that bint of yours?’
    ‘Two things, Wullie. She’s not a bint, and she’s not mine.’
    ‘Aw right, that burd you did the Sir Galahad thing for.’
    I sighed. ‘Sam. Samantha Campbell. She’s not a burd . She’s an advocate. A top lawyer. Her dad was Procurator Fiscal.’
    ‘Aye, aye, her. Still shagging her?’ The old devil cackled. There was no sensible answer to that, though the word still was severely redundant.
    I nodded my head backwards. ‘Wullie, see that pair at the bar? The old yins blethering away? They were talking about some bloke who’s making life difficult for our criminal readership. It fits with a daft couple of letters I got last week claiming they’re taking the law into their own hands. And I’ve seen proof up at the Royal these past two Sundays.’
    Ace reporter William McAllister squinted through his own smoke signals. ‘We’re in a pub. It’s past seven o’clock. Folk talk shite. But funnily enough, it’s no’ the first time I’ve heard something this past week. Just a wee word here and there. Facts, however – in which we alone deal, Brodie, we recorders of mankind’s sins – facts are thin on the ground. My own wee gang of helpers – ye ken I have sources’ – he touched his nose – ‘have been intimating that folk are getting hurt out there. More than usual. The word I’m getting is that the treatment is being dished out to known desperadoes. But nobody’s been putting two and two thegither and making five. So far, it’s being put down to the work of a fellow villain, shark or all-round general miscreant. In such circumstances nobody cares, except the wans getting the hiding, of course. And their mammies, I suppose.’
    ‘Any mention of a gang calling themselves the Glasgow Marshals?’
    ‘The whit? Roy Rogers has a lot to answer for. Show me the letters.’
    He read the notes slowly, once, twice, and handed them back to me. He sucked on his fag, then his pint, and sat back.
    ‘It’s yours if you want it.’
    ‘It’s sort of already mine, Wullie. I think I know who’s doing this. Or at least I know the leader.’ I told him the story of Ishmael.
    He squinted at me. ‘You’ve got a rare talent for finding trouble, Brodie. Was it like this when you were in the polis?’
    ‘These letters, this warning. You’re saying we should take it seriously? And that I should run with it?’
    ‘Aye. There’s something going on. Could be big. And you’ve got