two-day-old, chicory-flavoured assault on my palate had haunted me almost as much as the kicking my ribs had taken, so after I’d spoken with McNaught, I fixed myself a proper coffee. I’d recently picked up a new recording at the record store in Sauchiehall Street and put the long-player of Brahms’ first piano concerto on the radiogram; I may have been accused of being a thug and worse at various times, but at least I was a cultured thug. While Leon Fleisher arpeggiated, I eased myself, stiff-backed, into the armchair by the window and read through the news.
There was nothing of any note: mainly the usual crap about the forthcoming Empire and Commonwealth Games – but as headbutting wasn’t a scheduled event, I didn’t expect a strong representation from Glasgow in the Scottish team. The only thing that caught my eye was a three-column-inches mention of the incident I’d witnessed from my office window while Mr McNaught had been making his unobserved way up the stairwell. Headed CENTRAL STATION ACCIDENT VICTIM STILL UNIDENTIFIED, it explained that the body was of a young male who had apparently wandered onto the tracks somewhere between the Broomielaw, where trains crossing the bridge over the Clyde began slowing as they approached the terminus, and the station platforms. The police had given no further details other than that the deceased was not a railway employee and that they were not treating the death as suspicious.
I closed the papers and drank my coffee, watching nothing through the lounge’s bay window.
For a sliver of a moment, I wondered why, if the dead man had been between the platforms and the Broomielaw, they had gone in through the main concourse and brought the body out the same way. That was all I thought about it.
At the time.
7
As we had agreed, a week later, an hour after Sunday had become Monday, Tommy and I met to do the foundry job.
At least I looked the part: I had dressed in a pair of dark cavalry twills, a black sweater the neck of which covered up my shirt collar, and a pair of rubber-soled, black suede desert boots. Examining the figure I cut in the full-length hall mirror, I couldn’t help but laugh: all I was doing was driving Tommy and keeping an eye out for night watchmen or strolling coppers, yet I’d dressed as some kind of Hollywood movie-version diamond thief. At least if we got caught I’d have a Cary Grant mugshot.
Leaving my apartment building as quietly as possible, I eased the Alpine out of the car park onto Great Western Road and headed west. At the best of times, Glasgow at one in the morning was a haunted-looking place; the streets blank and silent, blind between the pools of street-lamp light. Tonight, one-in-the-morning Glasgow was especially haunted-looking under an uncharacteristically cloudless sky. The third-quarter moon had withdrawn into a sliver of crescent, giving up the night to the sparkle of stars. The next full moon, Tommy had informed me, would not be until the thirtieth. ‘No point in putting on a shadow show,’ he had said in the pub when we had planned the break-in. ‘The full moon’s like a spotlight – you become a silhouette up there on a rooftop and you’d be as well doing a dance routine for the coppers. Always best to go on a cloudy, moonless night.’
The only car on the streets, I got all the way past the Maryhill canal locks without spotting a soul, but as soon as I turned into Maryhill Road I saw a copper on foot patrol watch me as I drove past. I gave a small wave and he saluted – driving a new Sunbeam Alpine in Glasgow gave me salutable status – but I still checked my side and rear-view mirrors to make sure his hand didn’t fall from the salute onto his notebook pocket. It didn’t and he walked on, continuing his patrol through Maryhill, where he’d find nothing else that night to salute.
Tommy’s instructions had been clear: I turned off Maryhill Road at Bilsland Drive and pulled over, leaving the parking lights on,
There was nothing of any note: mainly the usual crap about the forthcoming Empire and Commonwealth Games – but as headbutting wasn’t a scheduled event, I didn’t expect a strong representation from Glasgow in the Scottish team. The only thing that caught my eye was a three-column-inches mention of the incident I’d witnessed from my office window while Mr McNaught had been making his unobserved way up the stairwell. Headed CENTRAL STATION ACCIDENT VICTIM STILL UNIDENTIFIED, it explained that the body was of a young male who had apparently wandered onto the tracks somewhere between the Broomielaw, where trains crossing the bridge over the Clyde began slowing as they approached the terminus, and the station platforms. The police had given no further details other than that the deceased was not a railway employee and that they were not treating the death as suspicious.
I closed the papers and drank my coffee, watching nothing through the lounge’s bay window.
For a sliver of a moment, I wondered why, if the dead man had been between the platforms and the Broomielaw, they had gone in through the main concourse and brought the body out the same way. That was all I thought about it.
At the time.
7
As we had agreed, a week later, an hour after Sunday had become Monday, Tommy and I met to do the foundry job.
At least I looked the part: I had dressed in a pair of dark cavalry twills, a black sweater the neck of which covered up my shirt collar, and a pair of rubber-soled, black suede desert boots. Examining the figure I cut in the full-length hall mirror, I couldn’t help but laugh: all I was doing was driving Tommy and keeping an eye out for night watchmen or strolling coppers, yet I’d dressed as some kind of Hollywood movie-version diamond thief. At least if we got caught I’d have a Cary Grant mugshot.
Leaving my apartment building as quietly as possible, I eased the Alpine out of the car park onto Great Western Road and headed west. At the best of times, Glasgow at one in the morning was a haunted-looking place; the streets blank and silent, blind between the pools of street-lamp light. Tonight, one-in-the-morning Glasgow was especially haunted-looking under an uncharacteristically cloudless sky. The third-quarter moon had withdrawn into a sliver of crescent, giving up the night to the sparkle of stars. The next full moon, Tommy had informed me, would not be until the thirtieth. ‘No point in putting on a shadow show,’ he had said in the pub when we had planned the break-in. ‘The full moon’s like a spotlight – you become a silhouette up there on a rooftop and you’d be as well doing a dance routine for the coppers. Always best to go on a cloudy, moonless night.’
The only car on the streets, I got all the way past the Maryhill canal locks without spotting a soul, but as soon as I turned into Maryhill Road I saw a copper on foot patrol watch me as I drove past. I gave a small wave and he saluted – driving a new Sunbeam Alpine in Glasgow gave me salutable status – but I still checked my side and rear-view mirrors to make sure his hand didn’t fall from the salute onto his notebook pocket. It didn’t and he walked on, continuing his patrol through Maryhill, where he’d find nothing else that night to salute.
Tommy’s instructions had been clear: I turned off Maryhill Road at Bilsland Drive and pulled over, leaving the parking lights on,
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