Read Online Bitter Water by Gordon Ferris - Free Book Online Page B

for buggering and murdering wee boys. You name it. I just helped Wullie expose them.’
    ‘Well, for your information, Mr Ace Reporter Brodie, I had everyone from the Chief Constable himself down to the traffic polis at George Square shouting at me for dragging their good name through the mud. Do I make myself clear, Brodie?’
    He had. Crystal. I left his fuming presence, shoved a new sheaf of foolscap and carbon in my Imperial and bashed out a draft column which omitted mention of the finger-nabbing or any link to an angry Teuchter.
    As it was, it made a good spread on the inside back page. A bit of conspiracy theory gets lapped up by the readership. I had the crime columns to myself as McAllister was digging away at the Morton murder and council contract corruption and hadn’t yet got anything to show for it. Or not that he was telling me.
    Throughout the week other papers failed to catch up. None of them referred to any letters they’d received. Why was I being singled out? And no one mentioned missing fingers. I needed some corroboration of my own theories. I decided to take a leaf out of McAllister’s notepad and get myself some helpers, as he put it. All I had was a false name for the Teuchter, and I hadn’t a clue where to find him.
    I already had a list of contacts, but they were long shots. I was casting back at least seven years to my days on the force dealing with shady characters working the wrong side of the line. A lot can happen to such folk in seven years. Mortality levels were high in the badlands: those that had lived by the razor had probably died by it by now. Others would be taking their ease at His Majesty’s pleasure. Conceivably a few might have gone straight, only to be buried a hero in some corner of a foreign field that is forever Scotland.
    I’d also had solid citizens in my network. But that didn’t mean they were trained SOE agents. Just folk wanting to do their bit in the hope that they could keep the barbarians at the gate till they’d had their tea. Or plain old nosy parkers. They kept their eyes and ears open and gave me snippets of information that I pieced together into a map of comings and goings in the principality of the Eastern Division. Shopkeepers and publicans, newspaper-sellers and street sweeps, tram conductors and school janitors. Everyone who met the great Glasgow public on a daily basis. It was amazing just how much they observed and just how much they enjoyed gossiping about it. But I thought I should start with someone nearer the action. I made a call.
    Duncan Todd had risen fast to detective sergeant in Glasgow’s Marine Division before the war. Then his career had stalled. I met him in ’35 when I was a green officer at detective training school and he was a lecturer. He was sharp, funny and keen as a Mountie to get his man. Destined for the top. He only faced two barriers: being a Catholic and having an aversion to joining the Masons. Either one was a career-limiting handicap anywhere in the West of Scotland. Duncan took this anti-Freemason stance not simply because he’d have been excommunicated on the spot, but because he despised all the rituals and job stitch-ups. We were of the same naive persuasion, he and I, that talent would out, regardless of whether you could do funny handshakes or not. We were wrong.
    I’d phoned him back in April from London to get the scuttlebutt on the trial of Hugh Donovan. He’d sounded weary then. He’d been transferred to Central Division – HQ – in Turnbull Street and been buried away in some dark corner and forgotten about.
    We met down by the Clyde in the Victoria Bar. A place of mean measures and mean habits. He looked wearier than ever. He was still in Turnbull Street and still a sergeant. We eyed each other up speculatively across our pints. I wondered if he was viewing me as pityingly as I was him.
    His hair was still thick but grey as fag ash. It matched his complexion. Lines ran down the side of his nose and past