Willie Sneddon was the kind of man my dad would have described as ‘so crooked they’ll dig his grave with a corkscrew’, and I still had reason to doubt that Sneddon had told me all there was to tell about his involvement with Bobby Kirkcaldy. But I had no reason to doubt the truth of what he had told me. And that included the fact that somebody or something had terrified Small Change MacFarlane immediately before Sneddon had met with him that day.
Now, for me, a coincidence was kind of like Socialism: a nice idea, looks good from a distance, but when you get up good and close you can’t really bring yourself to believe in it. I was pretty convinced that MacFarlane’s murder was connected to at least one of the cases. MacFarlane was a backroom player, a money man with his finger in almost as many pies as Sneddon. But, unlike Sneddon, MacFarlane could get his fingers burned. There was a picture coming together in my head. Like a Picasso it was pretty ugly, jumbled, and didn’t make any sense to me.
My immediate and main problem was how to keep tabs on two pilgrims at the same time: Alain Barnier and Jack Collins. Then I had an idea, but first I needed to speak to Collins.
It was basically two small offices on the upper floor of a two-storey building, the lower floor devoted to a boxing gym. It was an older building that was crumbling a bit around the edges. I passed the door to the gym and climbed the stairs to the offices.
When I walked in I was greeted by a secretary who I guessed hadn’t been hired for her shorthand skills. Her hair was the kind of blonde that comes out of a bottle and her figure was the kind that comes out of a teenager’s wet dream. She parted crimson lips and flashed white teeth at me and showed me into the inner office.
Jack Collins sat behind a desk and a dense screen of bluegrey cigarette haze. When I went in, he had been running a finger down a ledger column and yanking at the crank handle of an adding machine. He was in shirtsleeves, his cuffs kept clear of ink and paper by arm garters positioned above his elbows and just beneath his biceps. Seeing Jack Collins close confirmed my first impression of him: he was smooth, expensively tailored, and groomed to an exceptional degree for a city where panache was defined by beating the coal dust from your flat cap before you took a girl up a darkened alley. He was a lean man, his face long, and his features elegant if a little too fine. His thick black hair was immaculately combed back from a broad, tanned brow, and he sported a pencil moustache that was so neat that he must have trimmed it on the hour.
‘Someone to see you, Jacky,’ said the blonde secretary over my shoulder.
‘Senga,’ he said wearily, looking past me. ‘How many times have I told you to get their names first?’
‘I’m Lennox,’ I said helpfully.
‘I know,’ he replied, looking back to ‘Senga’ and making an impatient gesture of dismissal. ‘It’s okay, you go back to whatever it is you have to do. Close the door behind you.’
‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘I’m training her up at the moment.’
‘I can imagine that would be taxing,’ I said, and sat down opposite him. He stubbed out a cigarette and lit another immediately. ‘Sorry,’ he said, and pushed the packet towards me. ‘Help yourself.’
‘No thanks,’ I said, and took my cigarette case out and lit one of my own. ‘I don’t smoke filters. They’re French, aren’t they?’ I nodded to the ashtray bristling with filter stubs. Each had two bands of gold around them.
‘Yes. Montpelliers. I don’t usually smoke them but I got a job lot from an importer friend of mine. You’re the chap who’s been seeing Lorna, aren’t you?’
‘Your half-sister… yes.’
He stared evenly at me. Cool and unruffled. ‘You know about that?’
‘That you’re Small Change MacFarlane’s son? I’m sorry, but it’s not the big secret you think it is. Half of Glasgow knows.’
‘I see. What can I do for you, Mr Lennox?’ Still relaxed. Collins was either extremely cool or he had been expecting my visit.
‘I’ve been looking into a few things concerning Bobby Kirkcaldy. I thought you might be able to cast some light on them.’
‘Really? Why me?’
‘You know something, Jack… Do you mind if I call you Jack? You know something, Jack, I’m quite a philosophical cove. I reflect on the nature of things. One of the things I’ve been reflecting on is the nature of coincidences.’
‘Oh?’ He put on an unimpressed act. Or maybe it wasn’t an act.
‘Yeah… Just like nature abhors a vacuum, I abhor a coincidence,’ I said.
‘What kind of coincidence do you have in mind?’
‘Well, for a start, you are the semi-secret and completely illegitimate son of Small Change MacFarlane. The population of this city is over two million, yet your father’s murderer just happens to train in the gym downstairs. In fact, his defence is based on the claim that he got an anonymous telephone call to the only place with a ’phone where he could be reached. In the gym downstairs. And then there’s Bobby Kirkcaldy, who’s famous for his rigorous training regimen. And where does he train? In the gym downstairs. Then, of course, there’s the fact that every bookie in town is smarting because Bobby Kirkcaldy folded in the middle of a fight that he was expected to win easily. Every bookie, that is, except you.’
‘I’m not a bookmaker.’
‘Not officially, but you and Small Change had a real MacFarlane and Son thing going. I’m guessing that you’ve taken over his book. That’s why there was no paperwork worth a damn for the police to find. My God, you must have moved quickly. And I have to say your grief over your father didn’t impede your business acumen, did it?’
‘You’re becoming very offensive, Mr Lennox. And what makes you think that I didn’t lose out? Everybody expected Bobby Kirkcaldy to walk that fight.’
‘A friend of mine seemed to think that there was someone in the know. Someone who didn’t so much hedge his bets as get Capability Brown to landscape them.’
‘You shouldn’t believe everything Tony the Pole tells you,’ said Collins with a sneer. He was a bright boy, right enough.
‘I don’t understand everything that Tony the Pole tells me. And before you go pointing fingers, I did a lot of asking about and everyone says it was you who scooped on the fight. There are a lot of fingers pointing at you.’
‘What is it you want from me, Lennox?’ He leaned back in the chair, elbows resting on the arms, slender fingers interlocked beneath his chin. A pose of contrived concentration.
‘What I want is to know what exactly you, Small Change and Bobby Kirkcaldy have gotten yourselves involved in. I was hired by Willie Sneddon to find out who was trying to intimidate Kirkcaldy and to look after his investment. Now, after that sham last night, it looks to me like whoever it was succeeded and Sneddon’s investment has gone down the pan. Either that, or a deal of some kind has been done to get you all off the hook. What I want to know is with whom.’
Collins watched me as I talked, still cool and unflustered. I had to resist the temptation to walk around the desk and kick the chair from under him.
‘If what you’re saying is true, what’s it to you? Why should you care? You’ve run your errand for Sneddon. Fight’s over, the outcome is what it is, whether Sneddon likes it or not.’
‘Well, first of all, I have a funny feeling that it wasn’t some disenchanted gypsy brawler who killed Small Change. Secondly, even though you seem to be taking it remarkably well, the bottom has fallen out of Lorna’s world and I feel I owe her something. And thirdly…’ I stood up and leaned knuckles on his desk, pushing my face towards him. ‘And this is the thing that really riles me… There’s a kid lying in the Southern General taking his lunches through a straw, all because there was a chance he saw you arrive to talk with Bobby Kirkcaldy. And that’s where it gets puzzling. It was no secret that Kirkcaldy and Small Change did business. And you were Small Change’s partner in at least one enterprise. So what I’m wondering is who was in the car with you and why he didn’t want to be seen arriving that night.’
‘Listen, Lennox… if you’re really interested in clearing up Jimmy’s death, like you say you are, then I’m grateful for it… though it looks pretty much to me like the police have got their man. But putting that aside, do you think I would really have anything to do with killing Jimmy? Like you said, he was my father, whether it was public knowledge or not, and he looked after me. There were lots of things we were going to do together. He had big plans for me. Why would I have anything to do with his death?’
‘I don’t think you did. I don’t think you were responsible for his death and I don’t think you wanted his death. But I do think you’re scared. And I know Small Change was scared witless before he died. Whoever had him scared has got you toeing the line, for fear of getting the same treatment.’
‘This is shite, Lennox. God knows where you’re getting this stuff. I wasn’t anywhere near Kirkcaldy’s house that day or any other.’
‘What day? I didn’t say when it was. And I didn’t say whether it was day or night.’
Collins gave a small laugh. ‘Look, you’re not tricking me into saying anything because there’s nothing for me to say. You’re barking up the wrong tree.’
‘Really? I think different. But, like you say, I’ve got nothing to back it up. Yet. When I do, it will be interesting to see who your biggest problem is: the police or Willie Sneddon. But, in the meantime, you think things over. If you decide you need my help to get yourself out of whatever it is you’ve gotten into, give me a call.’ I pointedly tossed my card onto his desk. He pointedly didn’t pick it up.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Bantaskin Street, Maryhill, was hardly Sunset Strip, Hollywood, and observing a building from a car is less than inconspicuous when yours is one of only three cars in the street. It meant I had to park around the corner, some distance from the gym, leave the Atlantic, and carry out my surveillance from a tenement corner.
I hadn’t really expected to get anything worthwhile out of Collins. The whole exchange with him hadn’t been to find out what he knew, rather to hint at what I knew. Which was less than met the eye. If my hunch was right, it would take Collins only the time it takes to make a ’phone call and arrange a meet before he’d come hustling out of the side door of the gym. I’d guessed ten, but in fact it was nearer twenty minutes before he emerged and crossed the street to where he had parked his Lanchester-Daimler. I sprinted back to the Atlantic and came around the corner just in time to see the tail of his car as it took the junction into Cowan Street.
I had hoped for a car to intervene between me and Collins’s Lanchester, but Maryhill Road was pretty much empty of anything but trams and buses. I had to hold back. Collins would have checked the street before he got into his car, satisfying himself that I had gone. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be checking his rear-view mirror a little more frequently than usual. Thankfully, his burgundy Lanchester was the kind of colour you couldn’t miss, and I reckoned I could keep tabs on it from a distance.
Collins led me up Maryhill Road and through Milngavie. I smiled smugly, for no one’s benefit but my own: we were heading for Bobby Kirkcaldy’s place in Blanefield. But we didn’t. Instead we passed through Strathblane and Blanefield and headed further north and into Stirlingshire. I couldn’t complain about my work not being varied. Over the last two weeks I had seen more Scottish countryside than a Bluebell Tours bus driver.
We were the only cars on the road now and I held right back, allowing myself to be guided by the blood fleck on the horizon that was Collins’s Lanchester as it breached a hill or took a corner. There was nowhere for him to go, which made me feel relaxed about following him but perplexed about where he might lead me.
We were now out into that part of Scotland that was gently scenic rather than dramatic, but the mountains ahead reminded me that we were becoming ever more remote. When I turned the next corner I found that I had lost sight of Collins completely, so I gunned the Atlantic a little until I reached the next bend. Still nothing. I stopped reflecting on the view, dropped a crunching gear and floored the accelerator. I took the next bend a little too fast and the rear tyres protested. Still no Collins. I took the next stretch as fast as the last, braking hard at the corner. This time there was a long, open expanse ahead of me where the road dipped between trees and rose gradually again, stretching out towards the mountains. I slowed down. No Collins, and there was no way he could have cleared that stretch before I made the corner.
It took me a while to find a place where I could get turned around. The Atlantic objected a little as I floored the accelerator again, heading back up the hill and around the bend. Slowing up on the straight, I checked every farm gate and track, peering through the dense clumps of trees. I passed what looked like the entrance to a house, but couldn’t see the building itself because of the trees and bushes that lined the road, just a sweep of dirt and gravel driveway. I drove on for another five hundred or so yards, checking for signs where Collins could have turned off. Nothing. It had to be the entry into the house. I found a lay-by of sorts and parked so I could steal up the driveway on foot and have a nosey-around. This was becoming a bit of a habit and I was becoming more gumboot than gumshoe. As I headed along the road to the entrance to the driveway, I wondered if I should trade in the Atlantic for a tractor.
It was a long driveway. Tree-lined and curving, so you couldn’t get a glimpse of the house till you were nearly on it. It turned out to be a big Georgian type. Bigger and classier even than Sneddon’s newly acquired country retreat and fight venue. But when I drew closer I could see that most of the windows were shuttered and a door to the side was boarded up. Another empty house. But not another derelict. This had all the look of a home boarded up while the owners were away, or one that was between owners. The driveway opened out into a huge semi-circle in front of the house. No blood-red Lanchester. In fact, no cars at all. I could have saved myself some time and driven up to check it out. There was clearly no one here, least of all Collins. I’d lost him. But it still made sense for me to check the house out. And it still made sense for me to be cautious as I did so.
I decided to get off the drive: the gravel was crunching under every footfall and everything else around here seemed to have taken a Trappist vow. I walked across a broad triangle of lawn that was yearning for a long-lost mower and around the side of the house. The first couple of windows I found — the usual tall, elegant Georgian jobs — had the internal shutters closed over. But when I got around to the back, I found an unshuttered window, its glass as black as obsidian. I peered in through it, pressing my face to the glass and shielding my eyes with my hands, but it was no good: the interior was so dark I could see nothing.
I straightened up. There, reflected in the dark glass, was a face next to mine, standing behind me. A battered, indeterminately old face that looked like it had been used as a punch bag for decades. The name ‘Uncle Bert’ formed itself in my head and I started to turn, but something that felt like steel slammed into my back, right above the pelvis. The pain exploded through my gut and I felt as if my kidney had exploded. The punch had caught me exactly where I was still tender from my encounter with Costello’s goons outside the Carvery.
I spun around and swung wildly at the old man. He blocked my punch with his forearm, and his fist, still feeling like steel instead of muscle and bone, rammed into my solar plexus. Every bit of air pulsed out of my lungs. I stopped defending myself. I stopped thinking. Once more, all of my being was concentrated on the simple effort of breathing. He pushed me back and to the side so I collided with the wall.
Uncle Bert took his time, holding me in place with one hand and pulling his other fist back to deliver a right that we both knew would send me sleepy-bye-byes. He had braced his legs to deliver the maximum power and I swung my foot up as hard and as swiftly as I could manage. My foot went through between his legs but my shin slammed into his groin. He doubled over and I grabbed his ears, hoisted him up and smashed my forehead into his face. The good old Glasgow Kis
s.
I pushed him away from me. Blood was pouring from his nose and I fully expected him to crumble; but Uncle Bert was an old pro and came straight back at me. I scrabbled in my pocket for my sap and swung it at him, catching him on the temple. It sent him sideways but again, amazingly, his feet remained planted and he didn’t go down. I backhanded him with the sap. He went down on one knee and I kicked him in the face. He fell backwards onto his back. I staggered forward, pulling air into my empty lungs and bent from the pain in my kidney. All the hate and the rage was back: I stood to one side of him and raised my foot, aiming to smash my heel into his ugly, old battered face.
There was a shot. I staggered back.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I looked down at my body, then down at Bert Soutar sprawled on the ground at my feet. Neither of us was hit. When I looked up I saw Bobby Kirkcaldy, his face carrying the evidence of his defeat the night before, standing with a Browning in his hand. He’d obviously fired a shot into the air, but I now found myself looking at the business end of the automatic.
‘Against the wall, Lennox,’ he said, his voice still disconcertingly calm. Gentle. ‘Uncle Bert, you okay?’
Soutar got to his feet slowly, eyeing me with malice. I knew what was coming and so, clearly, did Kirkcaldy.
‘Leave it, Bert,’ he said. ‘We’ll do this in the garage, like we said.’
Soutar grabbed me by the collar of my suit jacket and pulled me from the wall. He took up position behind me and guided me with vicious shoves around to the back of the house. The drive arced round the far side of the house to a whitewashed outbuilding. It looked like it had, at one time, been a stables, but had since been converted into a garage. There was a dormer window above it suggesting that the attic had been the chauffeur’s accommodation. There were two huge double doors, and I reckoned you could easily have parked four cars inside it. I studied the structure carefully, for two reasons: the curiosity of the condemned man about his place of execution; and because I wanted to work out any possible escape routes well in advance.
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