I broke out from the cover of the trees and ran across the field, angling my trajectory across the grass to aim for the field-height stretch of path behind the point at which I had last seen Claire Skinner. The lush green grass in the field was ankle height, but the ground beneath was reasonably firm, having been dried out of its normal sodden state by the recent atypical spell of sunshine. Siberia has permafrost; Scotland has permasog. My rush across the pasture was watched disinterestedly by a handful of black-faced, dead-eyed sheep. I wasn’t hurrying in order to catch up with Claire – my guess was that there would be only one destination at the end of the lane – but rather to keep out of her sight by getting to the path before she emerged from the hollow and had a view of the field.
Vaulting over the dry-stone wall, I dropped down onto the lane, a thin grey ribbon of dusty earth between grassy banks. There was something about the lane and the evening light that made me feel I should be in a collarless shirt, sleeves rolled up and with a scythe over my shoulder. But that wouldn’t really be me: as a character I always thought of myself as more Leslie Charteris than Thomas Hardy. Ruddy-cheeked farm girls and frothy ale weren’t my thing. Although I’d probably give the ruddy-cheeked farm girls a go.
I put these bucolic musings out of my head and made my way along the lane at a steady, unhurried pace. There was no sign of Claire Skinner until I came to a bend in the lane. I could see her up ahead, about a hundred yards distant. I ducked behind the cover of the grassy bank and watched as she headed towards a farm cottage tucked into a tangle of bramble and bush. Scotland’s latitude made for long summer evenings, but the sun was low now and I would have expected to see a light from inside the cottage. There was none. Claire knocked on the door and had to wait for a minute or so before someone unseen to me admitted her.
I watched the cottage for five full minutes, just to make sure it wasn’t going to be a flying visit. Seeing as Claire had dismissed the taxi at the lane’s end, and the fact that we were in the middle of nowhere, my guess was Claire had no plans to make the return journey to Glasgow that night.
I considered my options. I would have a long loiter if I waited until it got truly dark before approaching the cottage; but in any kind of light I would be visible on the path a hundred yards away. Time enough to put a party together and shout ‘surprise!’ when I came in through the front door. I didn’t know what I was dealing with and it would be best to check it out unseen first.
Backtracking up the farm lane, I climbed over another stone wall and took a long, wide sweep around to the side and rear of the cottage where I was sure I’d be obscured by the bushes and brambles. It was my only option, but I felt exposed up on an elevated field and silhouetted against a shield of sunset sky. It took me five minutes to get into position around the back of the cottage. As I drew close, I could see that this was a camp-out. Much of the glass in the windows was cracked or broken and what wasn’t was fogged with grime. What I guessed had been a small vegetable garden at the back was now waist-high overgrown and I gently had to scythe my way through it, pushing the vegetation as quietly as possible from my path. By the time I reached the back door, I could hear voices from inside – this was not somewhere you would feel the need to whisper. The voices were urgent. Two voices. One male, one female.
Edging along the rough stone wall, I reached one of the small, grimy windows and peered in. I snapped my head back immediately when I realized that Claire Skinner was sitting directly in front of the window, with her back to it. I wasn’t able to see where the man was, but I could hear him talking. Then I heard Claire saying exactly what I’d been waiting for her to say since I had first started to follow her.
The name ‘Sammy’.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
They both turned abruptly when I entered. Claire stood up so suddenly that the old chair she’d been sitting on crashed onto the grubby floor. The young man stood up too.
I had been wrong about there being no light on: a kerosene lamp sat on a table improvised from a crate, but its wick was turned so low that its light was dim and weak. Bright enough, though, for me to see that this was the kind of place you could call a hovel if you raised the tone sufficiently. A tumble of bedclothes and a large army-style knapsack were piled onto a low-slung camp bed in one corner, a primus stove sat next to a half dozen unopened cans on another crate. Empty cans and bottles lay piled in another corner. You had to be really scared to hide out this much.
I barely recognized Sammy Pollock as the cocky, smooth youth with the expensively barbered hair in the photograph Sheila Gainsborough had shown me. His dark hair was now lank and greasy and his jaw hadn’t seen a razor for several days. He looked unwashed and tired. There again, the facilities here were not all they could be. But there was something more to the tiredness that dulled his expression and draped itself around his frame: it was the high-tension, electric exhaustion of a man on the run.
‘Nice place you’ve got here,’ I said. ‘Fixer-upper?’
Sammy slipped a hand into his jacket pocket.
‘Did Largo send you?’ he asked.
‘Largo?’ I asked and smiled. I leaned forward and turned the flame on the kerosene lamp up. ‘Do you mind?’ I asked. ‘I’m doing a piece for Better Hovels and Gardens and I’d like to have a good look at the place.’ As I did so, I became aware that there were four of us in the room: me, Claire, Sammy and a two-and-a-half-feet-high, very green, very oriental demon. Or dragon. Or devil. Whatever he was, he was an ugly son-of-a-gun, for sure. He grinned at me, his long tongue lapping between jade fangs. Sammy saw me looking at it.
‘Take it,’ he said. ‘Tell Largo to leave me alone. I won’t go to the cops. I won’t do anything. Just take it and go.’
‘Thanks for the offer,’ I said, ‘but it would clash with my colour scheme. I’m not here about ornaments, I’m here for you.’ Whatever it was he had in his jacket pocket, he closed his hand around it. I tutted and shook my head. ‘Don’t even think about it. Sammy. You’re a big boy, but not big enough.’
‘Who are you?’ asked Claire, staring at me with wide, terrified eyes.
‘It’s okay, Claire. I’m the guy who wanted to talk to you about Sammy. I was hired to find him by his sister, Sheila Gainsborough. She’s been worried about him.’
Both their expressions changed and a sense of enormous relief filled the small, filthy cottage. The same kind of relief as if someone had found a whole bunch of lifeboats that no one had known about immediately after the Titanic had hit the iceberg. ‘I’m sure Paul Costello has told you all about me,’ I said. ‘Paul and I had a little chat before he followed you out of the limelight. Where is Costello, by the way?’
I got my answer. Someone was kind enough to switch out all of the lights so I could enjoy the firework display in my head better. After the fireworks, I went somewhere deep and dark and timeless.
I woke up in hell. Or at least that was the first thought I formed after my vision started to come together again. The demon I was looking up at hadn’t been carved out of jade. It was made of much sterner, tougher material.
‘What happened?’ I asked, even though I knew that Singer was incapable of answering. He helped me up to my feet. I was still in the cottage. Sammy, Claire and the little green god weren’t. Instead Twinkletoes McBride stood, hunched over because of the limited headroom. He looked like he was holding the whole roof up. Which probably wouldn’t have been a challenge. Willie Sneddon was there too, eyeing me maliciously and smoking a cigarette.
‘There’s an ashtray somewhere,’ I said as Singer eased me down into a sitting position on the crate-cum-table. ‘Don’t get ash on the carpet … I’ve just done the spring cleaning.’
‘You never tire of the wisecracks, Lennox?’ asked Sneddon.
‘I find them comforting in challenging times.’
I held my head in my hands, trying to keep it still and stop the pounding in my skull. I gingerly felt the back of my head. The skin hadn’t been broken but there was half an egg tuck
ed behind my ear and it hurt like hell. I’d been sapped from behind. The kind of blow with a sap that can kill a man. I pictured the sap swinging through the air behind me and when I followed the imagined hand, arm and shoulder behind it, it led me to Costello’s face. I’d catch up with young Costello sooner or later. Then it would be party season.
I looked up at Sneddon and frowned; a thought suddenly hit me, which was becoming a habit. ‘How did you find me?’
‘Singer’s been on your tail for a while. Quiet, like,’ said Sneddon. Then with a malicious grin. ‘He’s good at that … quiet.’
‘Why d’you have Singer tailing me?’
‘Let’s call it insurance. I get all worked up about you maybes experiencing a crisis of interests.’
‘How did he—’
‘He had someone with him. Tam. Always does. He got Tam to drive into the nearest village and ’phone me. The rest he writes down for me. He said two men and a tart came out of here like bats out of hell. When Singer and Tam saw you didn’t, they came in and checked. Thought you was dead.’
‘How long have I been out?’
‘An hour. We’ve just arrived. We was looking for you anyway.’
‘Oh?’ I said. Then I saw Twinkletoes’ expression. It worried me. Anything other than a smile on Twinkletoes’ face worried me.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Lennox,’ said Twinkletoes. ‘It’s Davey …’
‘Davey Wallace? What about him?’
‘Someone gave him a doing,’ said Sneddon in an I-couldn’t-give-a-shit tone. ‘A really good doing.’
‘He’s in the Southern General, Mr Lennox,’ said Twinkletoes in a doleful baritone. ‘It’s not right. Not right at all. It’s egggree-jus, that’s what it is … fucking egg-gree-jus.’
‘Is he going to be all right?’
Sneddon shrugged.
‘How’d it happen?’ I tried to shake some of the fog out of my head. When I did, I kept seeing Davey’s eager, youthful face. Whatever had happened to him, I was responsible.
‘I need to go.’ I stood up but gravity objected.
‘I’ll drive you,’ said Twinkletoes as he caught my fall like I was a kid on skates for the first time.
‘My car …’ I said weakly. ‘It’s around the corner of the road. Parked by some trees.’
Singer pointed silently to himself and held out his hand. I handed over my car keys and nodded. It could have been my imagination, but these days there seemed to be less menace in his lurk.
By the time we reached the hospital, the sky had turned a velvety purple. At this time of year it never got truly dark. Glasgow’s Southern General Hospital had started off as cavalry barracks, then became the Govan Poorhouse, then a lunatic asylum, before being converted for its current use. It had somehow managed to maintain the charm of its previous incarnations and its jagged Victorian architecture was as welcoming as Castle Frankenstein.
The linoleum-floored corridors we made our way along were quiet and I did not hear distant cries of ‘It’s alive! It’s alive!’ echoing off the porcelain wall tiles. The strictly observed visiting times were over and we were confronted by a matron only slightly less forbidding than the one I had encountered at Craithie Court. She had the same singular eyebrow, with the added twist of facial hair on her upper lip that was in danger of becoming a Ronald Colman moustache. I wondered where they all came from and decided that perhaps Baron Frankenstein did have a part-time job here after all. I anticipated another frosty rebuttal, but Sneddon gained our admittance by handing the matron our special pass: a nice new, crisp, folding special pass with a picture of Her Majesty on it. Matron Karloff tucked the twenty into her apron and bustled off down the corridor, her ugly flat shoes squeaking on the linoleum.
Davey was in a room on his own. I assumed Sneddon was behind that and I was grateful to him, although I guessed that it had less to do with concern or feelings of responsibility towards Davey and more to do with keeping me sweet so I’d deliver everything I could find out.
Someone had done a real number on Davey. His head and jaw were bandaged, framing his face like a mask. And it was more like a grotesque mask than a recognizable face, puffed and swollen until the eyes had become slits between thick pads of bruised flesh. It looked like his nose had been broken but, thankfully, whoever had attended him in the hospital had made some effort to set it straight. His lips were split and the lower lip had ballooned up like Maurice Chevalier’s on a bad day. There were stitches in his upper lip.
‘Davey, it’s Lennox. Are you all right, son?’
Davey turned his head to me. His distended lips twitched and I realized he was trying to smile. That simple act caused a tidal wave of rage to swell up inside me.
‘Who did this, Davey?’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Lennox. I let you down.’ Davey’s voice was strained through clenched teeth and I realized that his jaw had been busted and wired shut.
‘You didn’t let anyone down. Who did this?’
‘I didn’t see them. They came up behind me and clobbered me. When I was on the ground they gave me this kicking. Then I passed out. That’s all I remember, Mr Lennox.’
‘Okay, Davey … okay. You take it easy. Anything else broken?’
‘Just my jaw … and some cracked ribs. The doc says I must have a steel skull. He says he doesn’t think there will be any permanent damage.’
‘That’s good, Davey. We’ll have you out of here and on your feet in no time. I owe you a bonus.’
‘You don’t need to do that, Mr Lennox. Just tell me that you’ll let me work for you again.’
‘Sure, Davey. Sure I will.’
‘Mr Kirkcaldy came to see me.’
‘Bobby Kirkcaldy?’
‘Aye … it was him what found me. He ’phoned for the ambulance and that.’
‘I see. Did he see who attacked you?’
‘No. He only came along later.’
‘I see.’
‘I lost my book,’ said Davey through the wired cage of his teeth.
‘What book?’
‘The one you gave me, Mr Lennox. My notebook that I wrote everything down in.’
‘Don’t worry about it, Davey. I’ll probably find it in the car or on the ground up there. It’s not important.’
‘I’m sorry …’ Now Davey’s voice sounded distant. He made a soft, detached groaning sound.
‘You rest, Davey. I’ll be back to see you tomorrow.’
‘Promise?’ he asked and sounded like a kid. In that moment I remembered that he was alone in the world. No parents. No brothers or sisters that he knew about. A Barnardo’s kid out in the world on his own. The thought restoked the fury in my gut. A fury that was directed in equal shares at whoever had done this to Davey, and at myself for having put the kid in that position.
‘I promise, Davey. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
We left Davey to sleep, and outside in the corridor I had as coherent a conference with Sneddon as I was capable of having. I told him to put men on watch on the Kirkcaldy house twenty-four hours a day. I asked if they could look around for Davey’s notebook, more to put the kid’s mind at rest than anything else. Given that Singer had followed me all the way out into darkest Renfrewshire without me spotting him on my tail, I suggested he be put on following Kirkcaldy. I wanted whoever clobbered Davey, and Sneddon was itchier than ever to find out what was going on with Kirkcaldy. He didn’t care about people getting hurt: he had invested in Kirkcaldy and didn’t want his money to get bruised.
We headed back along the gloomy, porcelain-tiled corridors towards the exit. My head hurt like a bastard and the lurching in my gut was turning into determined heaving. I stopped off in the washroom and only just made it to the cubicle before I vomited. After I finished retching I went over to the wash-hand basins and splashed cold water on my face. When I looked into the mirror I saw a wraith with deep blue shadows under its eyes set into a bleached face. No wonder the ladies found me so damned attractive. The harsh hospital lighting threw up th
e hard angles of my face: the sharp, high cheekbones and the arch of my brow. The faint scars on my cheek, the reminders of an encounter with a German hand grenade, seemed more noticeable. I smoothed my black hair back with the palms of my hands. A plastic surgeon had had to do a bit of tidying up after my adventure with German munitions and it had left me with taut skin that accentuated my features. One thing I got a lot, especially from women, was that they thought I looked a little like the actor Jack Palance. Women seemed to like my face. I’d been told I had a handsome face but it had a touch of cruelty in it. That’s why they liked it and that’s why I hated it.
‘You fucking coming?’ Sneddon was at the door of the washroom.
‘Sure,’ I said, sniffing and drying my face with a paper hand towel. ‘I’m coming. I’ve got work to do.’
I took one more look at the face in the mirror; it seemed to me it looked a little more cruel.
Singer drove me back to my digs in the Atlantic. Halfway there, I had to get him to pull over to the kerb so I could throw up again. I felt dizzy and sick, and had that feeling of unreality that comes with concussion. It wasn’t the first time I’d been clobbered on the head and it probably wouldn’t be the last, despite a doctor warning me that my skull had had just about all the punishment it could take.
It was just before eleven-thirty when Singer parked outside my flat. He helped me to the door. I thanked him and he nodded: we were bosom chums now. He went back out onto the street and climbed into the green Rover that Twinkletoes had followed us in. I didn’t go up to my room right away. There was silence from the Whites’ flat so I was as quiet as I could be as I dialled Lorna’s number. I let it ring a long time. Still no answer.
I went up to my rooms and poured myself a whisky. It was a mistake: the first swallow made me retch. I was getting too old for this kind of malarkey. I decided that I’d probably have to have my head examined in the morning; not an unusual state of affairs but this time not metaphorically.
The Long Glasgow Kiss Page 21
