Where the Dead Men Go Read Online Free Page A

the yellow jackets stood impassive. The window was turning glassy, reflective. She jerked her chin at my reflection, pushed the hair out of her face.
    ‘That any use to you?’
    ‘Aye.’ We turned back to the room. ‘Tickety-boo.’ I lifted the UX, put a tenner down on top of the twenty.
    I left the flats at a clip. The boy peeled off from a wall and caught up with me, walking in step.
    ‘Go alright, big man? Get what you wanted?’
    I nodded, kept walking.
    ‘Square me up, then? Finder’s fee?’
    ‘Ask your grannie.’
    The mobile rang and I dug it out. Lewicki. He’d spoken to the CID at Baird Street. They were playing it close, Jan said. Wouldn’t tell him anything, just that there was footage, some camcorder shots of the gunman. ‘Watch the late news,’ he told me.
    The rain was coming on again, thickening into sleet. I flagged a cab on the Baillieston Road. I’d had enough of the celebrated Glasgow banter to see me through the winter but it wasn’t finished yet.
    ‘See that carry-on this morning? Guy shot dead on the fitba park?’
    The driver put his wipers up to double speed. The sleet had turned to snow, big flakes streaming at the windscreen, whipping past like stars, like passing galaxies. It gave me a feeling of vertigo, as if the cab was falling through space.
    ‘It was nothing-each when it happened.’ He caught my eye in the mirror and grinned. ‘First shots on target all day.’
    The cab kept falling through snow.

Chapter Two
    I wrote it up and filed it. Fifty minutes’ work. ‘Man Shot Dead in City Park.’ I used a quote from the woman in the tower, the statement from the police. I wrote it flat and dry. No tricks, no gimmicks. Sent a four-par précis to tribune.com. We put the paper to bed at half past eight.
    In the Cope, I pushed through the crush and found a stool at the bar. Joe Gorman turned for the Lagavulin bottle.
    ‘Saw the splash’ – he nodded at the city edition on the bar-top, tipping a quarter-inch of smoky gold into a tumbler. ‘Been a while.’
    ‘Cheers, Joe. Yeah, for what it’s worth.’
    ‘Moir sick, is he?’
    ‘Fuck you.’
    Joe turned away, smirking. I added some water from the tap on the bar, scanned the crowd for Moir. He was usually here at this time. I took my phone out. There was a text from Roddy – 2nd place and a smiley face. I tapped out my answer: Go get em! Congrats + sorry. Work stuff. See you tomorrow . Since I’d bought him the phone, Rod was like a different boy. The silences, surly pre-teen huffs were gone. He texted me three or four times a day. ‘Sup.’ ‘Hey.’ ‘Later.’ Meaningless little tweets but I was glad to get them. I thought about my own dad, after the divorce. A week, ten days between calls. The pips. Cursing and fumbling as he fed the slot. The coins shunting home. He lived in a bedsit when he left us, a student place on Kelvin Drive. Shared toilet. No phone. I’ll have to go , he’d say; there’s a queue of people outside. I used to picture it. The red phone-box on the city pavement, a boxed oblong of yellow light. Dad holding the door for the next user, the little nod of acknowledgement.
    I texted Moir – Come in Number 3, your time’s up , I wasn’t angry any more – and put the phone away.
    The words ‘White Russian’ cut through the buzz. I recognised the order, then the voice. Neve McDonald was beside me, purse in hand. We’d had a thing, briefly, three weeks of fucking before they fired me for the Lyons piece. I broke it off but I can’t imagine she was heartbroken. That was four years ago. Since I’d come back to the paper we’d kept our distance.
    ‘Back in the old routine,’ she said.
    ‘Sorry?’
    She leaned across me, her left breast grazing my bicep, lifted the folded paper from the bar-top. She spread it out.
    ‘Gerry Conway, ace crime reporter.’
    I’d been on crime in my early days at the paper. Court reports, mostly.
    ‘Can’t keep a good man down.’
    My arm was tingling where her