Where the Dead Men Go Read Online Free PDF

twisted. Black parka slipping off his shoulders. Baseball cap with the bill pulled down. They’d tried to refine it, enhance it, bring out the features, but the face was still a blank. You’d recognise the gait, the stance, before you clocked the face.
    Police are looking for anyone who saw a dark-coloured car parked on Baillieston Road between 11 and 11.25 a.m. Digits on the screen: the incident room at Baird Street; the Crimestoppers number. Please call.
    Mari gathered her drawings, slipped them into the portfolio and zipped it. She slapped my thigh, leaned over to kiss my forehead.
    ‘Don’t be long.’
    I waggled my beer-bottle, two-thirds empty.
    ‘Right behind you.’
    A dark-coloured car . Good luck with that. I heard a noise above the news, a muffled crump as though a war report was encroaching on the previous item. I muted the telly and caught it again, the crackle of fireworks. Glitterburst of purple in the window. Guy Fawkes was two weeks off but they jumped the gun a little further each year, the local neds, terrorising the pets of Kelvinside. I necked the dregs of the Sol and fetched a final bottle from the fridge, thumbed a wedge of lemon down the neck.
    I flicked through the channels and back to the news. Ground was broken today on a 36-hectare riverfront site that will house the Athletes’ Village for the Commonwealth Games in 2014. Camera flashes. A fat man in a hard hat, resting his foot on the lip of a spade. Close-up of his fleshy, grinning face, the green ‘G’ on his yellow hat: Gavin Haining, leader of Glasgow City Council. Cut to artist’s impression of Scandinavian-style houses in tasteful clusters, puffy green trees, pedestrians on walkways.
    ‘This will bring the East End back to life,’ Haining was saying. ‘Nearly eight hundred homes. Eco-friendly. State of the art.’
    I knew Haining a little. I’d been to my share of civic receptions, shared his table at charity dinners. A big ebullient figure with a mooing laugh, a clapper of shoulders, a barer of teeth in bonhomous grins.
    ‘And what happens, Councillor Haining, when the Games are over; will these houses be sold as private homes?’
    ‘Some of them, yes. But four hundred of these homes will be reserved for rental accommodation, providing the kind of high-quality social housing this city so desperately needs.’
    The reporter said that a grouping of construction firms – the Kentigern Consortium – would oversee the building of the village, but that contracts for sub-contractors would be awarded over the coming weeks and months. There were two more items – a fatal collision on the A9 and a missing Glasgow prostitute – before the anchor handed over to the sports reporter, a fizzy blonde in a tailored jacket, risky inch of cleavage.
    The mobile rang, my new iPhone, the ringtone still unfamiliar.
    ‘You see it?’
    Lewicki.
    ‘Not exactly Zapruder, is it? Missed the money shot.’
    ‘Yeah. Well.’ Lewicki’s voice had the belligerent edge. Drink taken. ‘We know who it was anyway.’
    The football results were coming up on the screen. If you don’t want to know the scores, look away now. Could be the caption for my life over the past couple of years, I reflected: Look away now .
    ‘The shooter?’
    ‘Fuck the shooter. The shooter’s immaterial. We know who did it.’
    We’d beaten Hearts two-nil. The Huns had drawn with Motherwell. Put us four points clear.
    ‘Everyone knows who did it, Jan. Maybe they should claim responsibility. Like they did in Ireland in the old days. Passwords and codenames. P. O’Neill. Still,’ I said. ‘Happy days on the South Side. Dancing in the streets of Pollok.’
    ‘Shitting their pants is more like it.’
    ‘Payback?’
    ‘You don’t shoot a guy playing football. Saturday morning. His old man watching from the sidelines.’
    ‘Swan’s dad was there?’
    ‘Aye.’ Little kisses came down the line as Lewicki got a cigar going. ‘Billy Senior. Hamish Neil’s first cousin.