On the second floor they come to black storm doors with a brass plaque announcing ‘The Gordon’. Shifty opens the doors with another key, ushers them inside and locks it carefully behind them.
The hallway is red and pink, softly lit and filled with a smog of fresh cigar smoke and whisky smell. From a side room they can hear laughing and a high voice struggling to deliver a punchline through chortles.
The uniformed cloakroom boy stands to attention. His eyes are red.
‘Right, son?’ asks Shifty.
‘Yes, sir, Mr Thomson.’
Everyone looks at Shifty, surprised that he can evoke respect from anyone.
Shifty leads them down the back corridor. They pass the open double doors to the main room and catch sight of two catatonically drunk men in leather armchairs. It’s the tail end of a long night. One man is asleep, his chin collapsed onto his chest, drooling. The other is facing them and lifts a glass of whisky to his mouth but his eyes look panicked, as if the hand is holding him to drunken ransom. Pinned to his lapel is a sprig of mistletoe. He is a Glasgow Corporation councilman.
Shifty leads them down the dark corridor to the very furthest door. He knocks twice, listens and opens it.
Maurice Dickov is at his large desk. He is in his shirtsleeves, working on a set of books. Dandy McKay is standing next to him. Dandy wears a suit, double-breasted with a broad stripe in blue and pink. He looks like a settee. He has a red carnation in his buttonhole, wilted, denoting the hour. His tie is purple and green.
When the door shuts behind them, Watt, Manuel, O’Neil and Thomson line up against the far wall.
Dickov stands up. He slaps the accounts book shut. He looks at the men.
‘Gentlemen,’ he says softly, ‘this is terribly awkward.’
13
Friday 16 May 1958
AFTER LUNCH THEY HEAR the history of the Beretta. It is similar but less classy. The original source of the gun was a soldier in a pub, again. No one paid for the gun or asked if they could buy it, again. And again unrelated money is exchanged during time frames contemporaneous with the gifting. The first person to be gifted the Beretta is Billy Fullerton, a famous hard case and leader of the Billy Boys of Brig’ton Razor Gang.
In a city that reveres angry men Billy Fullerton is a god. He walks across the stuffy courtroom in the late afternoon, trailing a reputation that sparkles with spite and absolutes. The stillness in the room is profound. Everyone watches him walk, in their heads rerunning whichever story they’ve heard about him.
Billy leading his boys into nearby Catholic neighbourhoods on their holy days of obligation.
The Billy Boys wielding razors, and knives and broken bottles, playing penny whistles and drums, calling out the Irish to meet them.
Catholic mothers flattened to the inside of front doors, begging their boys not to leave the house.
Catholic mothers putting knives in their hands and ordering them to go.
Billy Fullerton has been angry all of his life. When young, he joined the British Union of Fascists. He got a medal for strike-breaking during the General Strike. As he grew older, disillusioned by the liberalism he encountered among the Fascists, he established one of the first chapters of the Ku Klux Klan on British soil. Retired from street fighting now, he beats his wife every night. His children’s backs stiffen at the sound of his first footfall in the close. He has served time for wife-beating which, in the 1950s, means he nearly killed her. She doesn’t leave the house without his permission and her face is as scarred as her husband’s.
Fullerton mounts the witness stand heavily. He is flat-footed and can’t help this, but it sounds as if he is trying to smash his foot through each step.
When he turns to face the court the lawyers avert their eyes. His face is scarred, a map of vicious encounters with other angry men.
Billy takes in the room. He sees the lawyers in their funny costumes, posh boys. He sees the women on the balcony, all sitting back, heads tipped, looking down on him. He lifts his chin to challenge them. They’ve annoyed him just by being there.
M.G. Gillies, gentleman, stands up reluctantly and clears his throat. Fullerton nods permission to speak.
Gillies lifts production 72, the Beretta gun used to kill the Smart family, and asks him to identify it. Fullerton says he owned that gun briefly.
‘Mr Fullerton, would you mind telling the court where you first encountered this Beretta?’
So, Fullerton explains: a man called John Totten approached him a couple of years ago and asked Billy to find a gun for him.
‘To what purpose?’
The question is phrased in a way that makes its meaning obscure. Fullerton hesitates before answering. He is annoyed by this enforced pause. He thinks it makes him look stupid. Blood rises to his neck and he struggles to stay calm.
‘Totten has ran a pitch-and-toss school out at Glasgow Green. It was a big school, two hundred, three hundred men sometimes. Totten said he’d been hearing a rival gang were meaning to take it over.’
‘A “pitch-and-toss” school?’
‘A gambling school. On the Green. Totten was after a gun for to protect hissel’.’
‘And did you furnish him with a gun?’
‘I did, aye. I got offered a Beretta from a soldier in a pub.’
The whole of Britain is awash with guns bought from a-soldier-in-a-pub. At the end of the First War soldiers were allowed to take their Webley service revolvers home, as a memento. The Second War is thirteen years ago and mandatory national service means that everyone is near guns or has guns or can steal a gun. A soldier in a pub with a gun doesn’t elicit any further questioning.
‘How much did Totten pay you for it?’
‘Five quid.’
‘How much did you pay for it?’
‘Nothing. I loaned the soldier a fiver though and Totten paid us the fiver back and gaed us another quid for a finder’s fee.’
‘Why would Mr Totten ask you to get him a gun, Mr Fullerton?’
Fullerton swells. His scarred face crumples into an approximation of a grin. ‘A few year ago I was a wee bit famous for fighting.’
‘With guns?’ asks Gillies innocently.
Fullerton is insulted. Fighting with guns is not manly. It is cowardly, a thing done by jilted women and Frenchmen. His lips tighten. His blood pressure rises. His cheeks turn a deep furious red but the scar tissue, capillary-less, remains white, vivid against his mottled red face.
Fullerton lifts his tight fists to the court. They are swollen and scarred.
‘Never wi’ guns,’ he growls. ‘Wi’ ma hands!’
As he says this he jabs at the gallery of women.
Fullerton is thanked and asked if he wouldn’t mind getting down now.