Free Where the Dead Men Go by Liam McIlvanney

the long lunches or even his arrogant freehold on the front page. I was jealous of Moir’s job. His brief, his beat. When I started at the paper I wrote crime. I sat in the High Court and the Sheriff Court and took my shorthand notes and I wrote up my stories of murder and mayhem. I met cops and liked them and they liked me. I was happy. Then the day came when John Fyfe called me into the office and gave me the news. I was moving up. Political Correspondent. In a few years’ time I could be Political Editor. I took his fat hand in mine and let him clap me on the back but even then, as I smelled his rank cologne, I knew it was a comedown. I’d left the pure realm of story for the palace of lies.
    There were ghosts that evening when I got home from work. The first one rang the bell as we finished dinner. Angus held my legs while the ghost stood in our kitchen and took three attempts to complete a limerick. His friend was a vampire with a knock-knock joke. There were two more posses of neighbourhood kids – zombies and Hobbits, buccaneers and superheroes. We gave them lollies and chocolates, dropped fistfuls of monkey nuts in their supermarket carrier bags, and they trooped down the stairs with their swag, their voices ringing in the stairwell.
    Later that evening I sat at my desk, checking the PA, the Beeb, Slugger, Scottishwire, the reputable blogs, the disreputable blogs. Nothing on the Walshes: Hamish Neil wasn’t trick-or-treating down Govanhill way or out in Pollok. Nothing on the referendum. The Glasgow pro was still missing, six days and counting. A roadside bomb in Helmand province had killed two British soldiers.

Chapter Six
    ‘That’s your idea of a story, Fiona? Nothing’s happened yet. “The news is there is no news.” How is that a story?’
    ‘A blog post, then. The mood on the streets. Climate of fear. A city holds its breath.’
    ‘It’s like we want it to happen. We’re egging them on. Gee the fuck up and start topping each other. We’ve got papers to sell .’
    Maguire was smiling. ‘Gerry. Thing is, I’m not pitching this. I’m not inviting a debate. I’m your editor. Now go and fucking write it.’
    At least it wasn’t snowing. I drove along Paisley Road West, down Eglinton Street, parked the Forester on Westmoreland Street. Maguire’s idea was to do a feature on the communities who would suffer the brunt of Neil’s revenge. What did it feel like in Govanhill, in Pollok, waiting for the sky to fall?
    It felt like anywhere else in the city as I left the car, took to the mid-morning southside streets. For years, now, Govanhill had been the city’s blackspot, the rancid backdrop to all the crime reports we couldn’t stop reading. In scores of exposés, some of them written by Moir, the name had acquired an aura, the tinge of stigma. The irony here was that Govanhill looked alright. A little shitty and shabby, but this wasn’t one of the Sixties misadventures, the no-go zones of broken lifts and gangland murals that pitted the city. Externally, at least, this was solid Victorian Glasgow, street upon street of bluff orange tenements.
    I turned the corner onto Allison Street. A gorgeous Pakistani woman was striding towards me in a sky-blue sari with silver tassels, silver-lamé high heels, stepping through the dogshit and burst cardboard boxes, the pigeons nipping at the spent kebabs.
    I walked on, past the bookies, the Jeddah Food Store, another bookies, a Western Union and the Queen’s Park Pawnbrokers. I stopped under the Guinness sign and the plastic Sky Sports banner of Neeson’s Bar.
    Years ago Govanhill was Irish. When the Pakistanis moved in, the Irish moved out – to Newlands and Shawlands – but they kept their pubs. When the Pakistanis traded up to Pollokshields they kept their shops and their buildings. The landlords here were mostly Pakistani and their tenants were the Pakistani poor and the white Scottish poor and the city’s most recent wave of poor migrants: A8s from