Where the Dead Men Go Read Online Free

the fresh dispensation. In the centre of the garden was a pond, a deep green eye, where the tiniest orange smudges flashed and died.
    ‘Big man.’ The boy was loping towards me, waving his mobile. ‘It’s sorted. Come on.’ We set off across the grass to the high flats.
    The lifts were fucked. Rain started falling as we climbed the stairs, big windblown squalls that shook the landing windows. Stink of piss and cooking oil. The walls were finished in some hard metallic render and the slap of our palms on the black plastic handrail echoed round the stairwell.
    Fifth floor. SHEPHERD in yellow on a tiny Perspex nameplate. A short woman in a dark hallway, she grunted at the boy. The boy didn’t stay. I heard him clattering down the stairs as I followed his mum down the hall.
    The living room was cold but I was sweating from the climb. A big window gave onto the pitch. I sat on the sofa opposite her armchair. There was a print above the fireplace, something Highland and greenish, gloomy hills, a fringed cow.
    Her face was puffy and coarse. Lank orange hair. Late fifties. She was wearing a man’s fleece, zipped to the neck, its sleeves folded back into gauntlet cuffs.
    ‘Mrs Shepherd—’
    ‘My name’s Duncan,’ she said.
    ‘Mrs Duncan.’
    I could see my breath. There was a coal-effect electric fire in a fake-brick fireplace, its three bars dead and grey.
    ‘Mrs Duncan, your son tells me you saw the incident?’
     ‘Uh-huh.’ Suspicious, truculent. She looked too old to be the boy’s mother. Deep creases on her upper lip. Smoker’s face. Giving nothing away.
    ‘Could you describe what happened?’
    I set my Sony UX on the coffee table.
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘It’s a kind of tape recorder. It saves me having to take notes. Is that alright?’
    She frowned at the black oblong with its glowing orange screen. Her fringe hung down like the cow in the painting.
    ‘Mrs Duncan, I’m not the police. You don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to. I thought that was clear.’ I took out my wallet and found a twenty, laid it down beside the UX.
    She looked at the money and stood up, pushed at the too-long sleeves. ‘Come here.’ I followed her to the window. The detectives had gone, but the uniformed cops kept their guard beside the dwindling crowd. The rain had stopped but the droplets shone on the pane.
    ‘That was all in shadow.’ She wiped her hand across the foreground. ‘The sun was out this morning but this bit was in shadow. Most of the folk watching were on the far side, in the sunshine. There was nobody really on this side. Couple of wee boys, just. And the man.’
    ‘You noticed him? You got a good look?’
    ‘Aye. He was standing right there with his hood up. This pointy hood. Kind of scary-looking.’
    ‘You didn’t see his face?’
    The red fringe shook.
    ‘Naw. When the ball got kicked out just here he ran back to get it and the hood came down but he was wearing a hat, a baseball cap and I couldn’t see his face. He got the ball and I thought he would kick it back but he didn’t. He just stood there with his foot on the ball. And when the player came towards him he wanted it back, he was waving for the guy to kick him the ball and then bang, he’s down.’
    She shook her head, slower, seeing it again.
    ‘You see the gun?’
    ‘Naw. I didn’t even know he’d been shot. I heard the noise but I didn’t know what it was. I saw the guy running away and the football fella sat down. He didn’t seem that bothered. Then he’s on his back and the rest of them come running. And ten minutes later the ambulance comes right across the pitch, siren going. I didn’t know he’d been shot till I heard it on the wireless.’
    We stood looking out at the scene, the locus. Not yet four but the light was failing, shadows on the grass, yellow headlights on the Baillieston Road. From this height you could see the tracks in the grass, the ambulance’s treadmarks. The crowd had thinned by now and