The Quaker. Liam McIlvanney

and she raised her arms now in a long, slow stretch, fingers interlaced, her shoulder blades lifting in the clingy fabric. The window was turning glossy in the dusk. Paton could see the glass clouding where she blew out a sigh. She twisted her head to look coolly at Paton. ‘You think I’ll fall apart, break under questioning, blurt it all out?’

      ‘I think you should be prepared. I think these people can be very persistent.’

      ‘There’s seventeen people know about this sale. I imagine at least some of them have more interesting backgrounds than mine. Anyway,’ she flashed a smile at Paton; ‘if it comes off, there’s other things we need to decide. Like who’s getting what?’

      ‘Nothing to decide,’ Paton said brusquely. ‘Six-way split. Equal shares. End of discussion.’ Paton stood up. He could have argued for a larger share of the take – he was the skilled tradesman, after all; the rest were just manual labour – but he knew from experience the trouble this caused. An equal split was clean and straightforward. If the take was big enough you didn’t worry about trying to leverage a bigger share. Make the split, move on, everyone’s happy.

      ‘You’ll be taken care of,’ Dazzle told her. ‘Same as everyone else. No one’s stiffing anybody.’

      She looked at Paton through her fringe. ‘Well, I hope that’s not the case.’

      They drove back separately, leaving ten minutes between each car. Paton went last, in Dazzle’s Triumph, the smell of dog, dog hairs on the upholstery, he thought of the dog resting its chin on his thigh, the mobile eyebrows, the sad, wet, intelligent eyes.

      ‘That Jennifer,’ Dazzle said, shaking his head. He looked across at Paton then back to the road.

      Paton cracked the window an inch, kept it open while they drove, the smells of the night mingling with his cigarette smoke.

      ‘I handle gelly for a living,’ Paton said. ‘Not for fun.’

       8

      ‘That’s four bob, bud.’

      McCormack put a ten-shilling note on the bar and took a pull at his pint, the brown sourness cutting through the milky head. After Work You Need a Guinness. The Smiddy was quiet, a trio of pensioners nursing their halves at one end of the bar, two guys in suits and ties playing pool. He thought he’d missed the rest of the day shift but then one of the pool players bent into the light to play a shot. It was Goldie, his features puffy and harsh in the overhead glare.

      McCormack scooped his change from the bar and took his pint across to a table, opened the Evening Times at the sports section. He could see the TV, hear the click of the pool balls behind him. Ask the Family was finishing up and then it was the opening credits of Z-Cars, the patrol car’s flashing headlights and a dotted line across a map of the city. He thought of the maps in the Murder Room and the boxes above them, boxes that ran on shelves covering three sides of the room.

      At first he’d thought it was some kind of storeroom. They’d set up their Murder Room in the station’s storage area and these boxes held the archives of all the old cases. Then it came to him that the boxes were current, the boxes were the Quaker files.

      On his first afternoon he took down the first two boxes and leafed through them. Witness statements. He took a box from the middle and one from the end of the twenty-odd yards of shelving. Each was filled with the same buff folders of typed statements, the verbatim accounts of those who had some connection – however tenuous – with one of the victims. He tallied the boxes and made his calculation. There were fifty thousand witness statements on the Murder Room shelves.

      He thought again about the madness of that number. You had fifty thousand statements and no suspect.

      A shadow fell on his Evening Times. McCormack looked up. The angry one, Goldie, was stood there in front of him, pool cue in hand. He shook the cue like a spear. McCormack thought for a moment that he was being challenged to fight but it was only a game that the burly man wanted.

      ‘Ten bob a throw?’

      ‘Fine.’ McCormack eased out from behind the table, followed Goldie to the lighted baize. ‘Last of the big spenders.’ McCormack meant this as a joke but Goldie wheeled round.

      ‘Fine then, nicker a game.’ He tossed his cue on the table. ‘Rack them up, I’m away for a pish.’

      McCormack took the plastic triangle down from the lampshade. He swept the balls together, lifted and dropped the stripes and spots until the pattern was right, the black nestling in the centre.

      When Goldie came back McCormack broke off. They played the frame in silence. McCormack won, dropped the black with Goldie stuck on three. They racked up again and Goldie broke off viciously, the balls spreading in slow motion and something clunked home in a middle pocket and rumbled down.

      ‘Stripes?’ Goldie said. McCormack bent to check the ball as it slotted home, nodded. Goldie surveyed the table.

      ‘You know what bothers me about you?’ Goldie kept his eyes on the table, chalking his cue. ‘Don’t take this personal, but you know what gets me?’

      ‘My clearance rate? My impeccable taste in clothes?’

      ‘You sit there every day like you’re one of us. You listen to our conversations. You drink our coffee. And all the time you’re taking notes for your wee report, what we’re doing wrong. I’ve worked this inquiry fifteen months.’ He was watching the tip of his cue, tiny blue clouds rising as the chalk-cube scuffed it. ‘Fifteen months. You’re gonnae take a fortnight to tell me how I should’ve done it different.’

      ‘You think I should take fifteen months to write my report?’

      ‘Aye, very good. But that’s not even it.’ Goldie waited till McCormack had played his shot, a long five that rattled the mouth of the left baulk pocket, failed to drop. ‘You know what it is? You sit there – day in, day out – the fucking boy genius of the Flying Squad, the man with the answers. And have you made one suggestion? Have you made a single positive contribution to what we’re trying to do here?’

      ‘I’m writing the report, mate. That’s my brief. If I get involved in the investigation it just muddies the waters.’

      ‘Aye. Fair enough.’ Goldie lifted his pint from the windowsill and took a pull. ‘Or maybe you’re just as fucking lost as we are. Could that have something to do with it?’

      ‘Ah come on, now. Don’t sell yourself short. I’ve got some catching up to do to be as lost as you are.’

      Goldie’s laugh was soft, he was nodding to himself. ‘We’re getting it now, are we? The big insight. This should be fucking good. How lost are we, DI McCormack? Where did we go wrong?’

      It occurred to McCormack as he straightened up that a pool cue was a useful object, its fat end nicely weighted for connecting with someone’s mouth. He held the cue at arm’s length and leant it gingerly against the wall. He planted his palms on the pool-table’s edge and leaned down into the light.

      ‘All right then, DS Goldie. Listen to yourself. I’ve worked this inquiry fifteen months. You’re boasting about that? You should be embarrassed. Fifteen months and you’ve never had a sniff. What does that tell you?’

      Goldie’s face was in shadow. He didn’t say anything. He was bouncing his cue on the floor, you could hear the rubberized end bumping on the lino. McCormack leaned down further into the light. ‘No thoughts? What about this then. How many parades have you held?’

      ‘How many what?’

      ‘ID parades. How many have you held? Do you even know?’

      ‘This is how you spend your time? Doing sums in your wee book?’

      ‘Three hundred and twelve, Detective.