The Quaker. Liam McIlvanney

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ reached for the bottle and filled the glasses and waited for Paton to explain.

      ‘You don’t need all night to do a safe. Do it in half an hour if you can do it at all. We’re wearing boiler suits, toolbelts, we’re a crew of sparkies, plumbers, whatever. When it’s over we walk out the front door, to the van parked down the street. This way, we’re only over the railings on the way in, not the way out. Cuts down the risk.’

      Stokes was playing with the zipper on his Harrington jacket, running it up and down. ‘So, you’re saying we wear masks? Is that the idea?’

      ‘No masks. We don’t need masks. We’re a crew of workies. We’re four guys in boiler suits. We’re invisible. We’re not trying to hide, we’re not skulking about looking dodgy, so no one’s paying attention. It’s like four cops: you remember the uniform, you don’t remember the faces or the hair or anything else.’

      At this point the door handle clanged and the kitchen door swung open. The dog came skidding triumphantly into the room and stopped, its head raised, abruptly self-conscious, like a bull entering the bull-ring. It looked at the faces and trotted straight over to Paton and plumped its chin down on his thigh, twitching its brows. Paton drew his hand across the animal’s head, feeling the smooth curved cap of the skull under the fur, and flattened the ears. Then he scratched the loose skin under the dog’s jaw and the tail whacked against the carpet.

      ‘Looks like we’ve found the fifth man,’ Dazzle said.

      Paton stroked the dog as he talked.

      ‘We need a van. We need walkie-talkies. We need boiler suits, workboots, toolbelts. Balaclavas. We need some sort of decal or paint job on the side of the van, Such-and-such Electricians or Plumbers.’

      Dazzle was writing it down. He finished with a flourish and tossed the pen down on the table.

      ‘Right. Fine. We’ll get to it.’

      ‘Van’s the priority.’

      ‘Fine. We lift one on the night before the job. Easy.’

      Stokes shook his head. ‘I like to know what I’m driving, Daz. How it handles. You don’t want surprises.’

      ‘So drive it around on the night. Get the feel of it. A van’s a van.’

      Paton was still clapping the dog. He rubbed its belly and the creature emitted a high voluptuous whine. ‘Stokes is right,’ Paton said. ‘You don’t steal a van on the night before a job. Use your head, Daz. The owner gets up for a piss at 2 a.m., opens the curtains to check on his van. The van’s gone. He reports it stolen. Patrol car clocks it parked in Bath Street at six in the morning. We’re fucked before we start. You don’t do a job in a stolen van.’

      ‘What, then?’

      ‘We buy one. Now. Tomorrow. Give Stokes time to drive it, break it in.’

      ‘We buy it. We buy it?’ Cursiter was incredulous. ‘You’re that keen to go about buying vans, it comes out of your end.’

      Paton looked at Dazzle. Dazzle shrugged.

      ‘You planning to walk home, are you?’ Paton turned to Cursiter. ‘After the job. Take a bus? Maybe wait for a taxi? We buy a van, it comes out of everyone’s slice. If the payoff’s what you say it is, it won’t make any difference.’

      ‘Aye but there’s other outlays, overheads.’

      Paton waited. The other three exchanged a look. Dazzle spoke.

      ‘He means McGlashan.’

      Paton had moved to London before John McGlashan took over from Eddie Lumsden. He knew who McGlashan was. He just didn’t see the relevance.

      ‘You’ve got your own arrangement there. That’s your business, you do what you like with your share. Dazzle: you call another meet in three days when you’ve got the gear ready, the plan of the building. Not here, though. We meet someplace else.’

      Paton scooped his cigarettes from the table and stowed them in his jacket pocket.

      ‘Actually, hold on here.’ Cursiter’s big hand was raised. ‘We all kick in for the van but you don’t kick up to Glash?’

      ‘The van’s a necessity. It’s part of the job.’

      ‘McGlashan’s a necessity, mate. McGlashan’s a fucking necessity. Round here.’

      ‘I don’t live round here, Brian.’ Paton buttoned his jacket. ‘I live in London. Mr McGlashan will have to visit London if he wants to collect.’

      ‘He might do that,’ Cursiter said. ‘He might just do that. Everyone kicks up to McGlashan, fella. Sooner or later. Some way or other.’

      Paton shrugged. The dog got up and trotted across the floor and lay down in front of the dead electric fire.

      ‘So you’re in?’ Dazzle’s chin lifted in challenge. Everyone looked at Paton.

      Paton frowned. He’d been looking for a reason to say no and he couldn’t find one.

      ‘Kinda looks that way, doesn’t it?’

      ‘He-e-ey!’ Dazzle snatched up the whisky and twirled off the cap, but Paton clamped his palm across his glass.

      ‘One thing.’ He looked at each face in turn and then back to Dazzle. ‘Why’s McGlashan not moving on this himself? Why’s he leaving it to you boys?’

      For a moment nobody spoke. Paton had the feeling they had discussed this question before he came, worked out how much to tell him.

      ‘He’s not been himself.’ It was Dazzle who spoke. ‘He thinks the polis are watching him. He’s been cagey. For months now. Everyone’s frightened to move. Do anything. Till this gets sorted out. This Jack the Ripper shit.’

      ‘But they’re not watching you?’

      ‘They’re not watching him, probably. He’s just paranoid. Anyway, who’d watch us, Swifty? We’re not a big enough deal. We’re the waifs and strays, mate. Slip through the cracks.’

      Stokes turned to Paton. ‘The Quaker, they’re calling him.’

      ‘London, Bobby,’ Paton said. ‘I live in London. Not the moon. We get the papers down there.’

      He removed his hand and Dazzle poured the shots and they all clinked glasses and drank.

      Ten minutes later, he sat in the passenger seat of Stokes’s Zodiac, thinking it through. He liked to hole up after a job was done, get off the streets fast and go to ground for three or four days. The hotel was no good.

      ‘I’ll need a place,’ Paton said. ‘Somewhere quiet.’

      Stokes nodded. ‘For afterwards, like? I know a guy can probably help. Want me to set it up?’

      There was a black market in houses. Everyone knew this. Glasgow never had enough houses and the clearing of the slums had only made things worse. СКАЧАТЬ