Where the Dead Men Go by Liam McIlvanney Page A

coming out of the bathroom with a towel round his waist and a new tatt splashed across his back, a snarling bulldog in a studded collar and a scroll with MAD DOGS in flashy Gothic script. He laughed it off but the family learned later that he’d gotten involved with a bikie gang, he might have been patched, was probably dealing for them. And then he’d fallen out with the top boys. The cops’ intel was that Josh had tried to stiff them on a hash deal but he might just as readily have said the wrong thing or looked the wrong way at someone’s missus.
    The family told people that Josh had been mugged but really he was murdered by his buddies. His Mad Dog brothers. The Kalgoorlie cops found him round the back of a brick-veneer row-house in an Aborigine district. Beaten to death. His face stoved in. Choked by his own blood. Mari’s parents flew over to identify their boy, bring back the body.
    ‘Jesus. I had no idea. I’m sorry, Mari.’
    ‘Yeah.’ She poked at her salad. ‘So, anyway. It gives you an idea why they act like they do, why they’re keen for me to come back. They miss me, Gerry. They worry. Every time I phone they think something’s happened.’
    ‘Why would they worry when they know you’re with someone like me?’
    ‘Well, exactly.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘I can’t imagine.’
    She smiled and I was reaching out to grip her hand when a clatter at my elbow stopped me short. The waitress had dumped an ice-bucket down on a tripod. The dull gold shaft of a champagne bottle poked at a slant from the slushy ice. A waiter leaned across, twice, landing champagne flutes on the table, aligning them with little sweeps of his palm on the tablecloth, two fingers clamped round the stem.
    ‘Sorry, no, we didn’t order—’
    ‘It’s compliments of another diner, sir.’ The waitress had stripped the sheath of gold foil from the neck of the bottle and was twisting the wire coil with sharp little flicks of her wrist. She nodded at the bar. ‘Gentleman in the leather jacket.’
    The little gunshot of the loosened cork sounded as I turned to look. The guy in the pink Kappa polo shirt, the guy Mari recognised, was on his way out, but it wasn’t him. He was holding the door for a second man, the one who’d had his back to us at the table, a shorter, square-set fellow who pocketed his wallet, scooped a handful of mints from the bowl on the bar, tipped two fingers to his temple and aimed them at me on his way out the door.
    ‘Who was that ?’
    Mari held her glass of brimming fizz. The waiter had withdrawn. The waitress lodged the bottle in the bucket, wrapped a napkin round its neck, left us with a little bow.
    It was Hamish Neil.
    ‘No one,’ I said. I lifted my own glass. ‘A guy from work. Owed me a favour. Cheers.’
    ‘ No one ?’ Mari frowned, held her glass as if she was proposing a toast. ‘No one? You look like you’ve just seen a dead man.’ 

Chapter Seven
    The funerals fell on consecutive days, Swan’s on a Tuesday, Moir’s on Wednesday. The Calvinist in me – even the Catholics in Glasgow are Calvinist, and Calvinism never lapses, it bites too deep in the bone – relished the prospect. Black suit laid out on the bed two mornings running, black tie draped on the wardrobe door. Shave against the grain with a fresh blade; virtuous sting of aftershave. I stood before the mirror in my stocking soles, folding a tie I’d inherited from my father, a tie I first wore to his funeral.
    Mari came through from the bedroom, fiddling with an earring. She nudged me out of the way with her hip and stood frowning at the mirror.
    She drew her upper lip over her teeth, checking her lipstick. She smoothed the front of her dress, turned to check the back view over her shoulder. I felt an incongruous stab of desire as I settled my Windsor and turned down my collar, watching the light catch the folds of her dress, the sheer tights, the glossy heels with the tapering spikes, and my cock nudged the fly of my