The Quiet Death of Thomas Quaid: Lennox 5

by Craig Russell

  Tony and I slipped into the booth, across the table from Archie and McBride. It was the furthest booth from the other customers and I reckoned we were safe from being overheard.

  ‘I know everything now,’ I explained. ‘Tommy left it all for me – but I had already worked some of it out. There’s more that Tommy couldn’t have known about, like Tarnish and his men. But before we get down to that, I need to tell you about what happened last night.’ I turned to my business partner. ‘Archie, this is all stuff you might not be comfortable with, as an ex-copper. If you want to give this particular conversation a miss, I quite understand.’

  ‘I take it we’re talking about criminal acts?’ he asked lugubriously. There again, he asked everything lugubriously.

  ‘Not committed by our side,’ I said. ‘No, wait . . . that’s not strictly true. We committed a criminal act in concealing worse crimes committed by others.’

  Archie shrugged. ‘I’ve already done the same by chucking evidence into Mugdock reservoir. I’m in this already, so I may as well be in it up to my neck. Anyway, with what you said was done – is being done – to those children, and who you suspect is doing it, I don’t know if I believe in the law any more.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said and ran through what had happened, telling Tony and Archie about Pops Loeb and the two hirelings.

  ‘A fucking shame, about that old Jew,’ said McBride in doleful support of my tale. ‘Very igg-noh-mine-ee-us for an old gent like that getting chibbed to fuck all over the coupon the way he was. Real shame.’

  We all paused, staring at Twinkletoes; I decided if McNaught came out of everything on top and I ended up dead, then I’d get Twinkle to deliver my yule-loggy. If, knowing what I now knew, McNaught really was the boss.

  ‘What did you find out from Tommy?’ Archie asked.

  I took a folded sheet of paper from my pocket. I had carefully copied out the names that Tommy had written in his hidden epistle. I handed it to Archie.

  ‘These are the names that were listed in the diary I saw briefly, and more,’ I said. ‘You already know who some of the names are. The others are mostly, but not all, highly placed people: mostly senior army officers, two MPs, three Glasgow Corporation councillors, prominent law officials, even a couple of police. I have to say it’s all very ecumenical: you’ll find clergymen from both denominations very well represented.’

  ‘Shit . . .’ The normally inexpressive Archie looked shocked and shook his head. ‘It’s like a list from Who’s Who, instead of a list of perverts. How did these people get together? I mean, did it come up at the golf club that they all like fiddling with kiddies?’

  ‘It’s staggering, right enough,’ I said. ‘If you look down the list, the reason Robert Weston – the young lad who chucked himself in front of a train – didn’t get a fatal accident inquiry becomes pretty clear.’

  ‘Jesus . . .’ Archie muttered, staring at the page. He looked back at me, his expression still one of disbelief. ‘That Arbuthnot?’

  ‘The one and the same,’ I said.

  ‘Ledd me zee . . .’ said Tony the Pole; Archie handed him the paper.

  ‘Everything revolves around St Andrew’s School. That’s where most, maybe all, of the children involved come from.’

  ‘And zees people – zey are all involved?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Zis iz dangerous shide here, Lennox. Very dangerous shide.’

  ‘You want out, Tony?’

  He looked insulted. ‘Like fugg . . . you zink I let zees bhazdardz gedd avay vid shide like ziss? You dell me vatt I godda do . . . I do it.’

  ‘Okay. Handsome Jonny now has a real dog in this fight, so he’ll be doing whatever he has to. Tony, I know you’re retired, but I need you to break in somewhere. Open a safe.’

  ‘You vant me to steal zomething?’

  I shook my head. ‘No, not quite . . .’

  3

  I cut quite a dash. I could be accused of being superficial, but to me the world seemed to be divided between those who had to hire or borrow an evening suit, like Jock Ferguson, and those who owned their own made-to-measure tuxedo and patent blacks. Like me. I could have done with looking less conspicuous, though, given the venue, and I’d been the object of a few bleary-eyed off-duty stares since I’d arrived. On the other hand, lanky Jock Ferguson, in his ill-fitting borrowed outfit, looked like he should be taking orders for drinks.

  Ferguson had said that he wouldn’t be staying the distance and would get a taxi home later. He still expressed great suspicion about my motives in wanting to attend the retiring Chief Inspector MacIntyre’s retirement smoker, but didn’t push it.

  I’d driven us both to the hotel in the city centre. It was reasonably upmarket and not the type of place you’d usually associate with stripper-and-a-comic stag-dos. But, there again, if the party concerned was the City of Glasgow Police, and you wanted no future trouble with your licences, you pretty much had to put up with it. Even with that, the management had done everything it could to seal hermetically the function suite from the rest of the hotel. When Ferguson and I arrived, we entered directly through a side entrance into the function hall.

  The air was steel-blue thick with cigarette smoke and fumed with the stink of free-bar whisky and boiled chicken and vegetables. There were two bars, running the length of each side, working to full capacity, and the main floor area was filled with round tables, each with six or seven bow-tied men around it. The whole space was filled with the ringing clamour of drunken male voices as bawdy conversations were shouted in competition with each other. The attendees, as far as I could see, were all City of Glasgow Police CID officers, most of whom I reckoned were above the rank of sergeant. The night was still young, but many were already fully drunk, the rest halfway there. And this, I guessed, was more decorous than the usual soirée for the ordinary police ranks: it was well known that your average pillaging Viking or pirate would find City of Glasgow Police smokers uncouth.

  The room was dully lit, except for the spotlight focused on a small raised stage at the far end of the room. A platinum blonde stripper who was on the obese side of voluptuous was going dully and expressionlessly through her routine, while an equally expressionless drummer beat a tattoo on a snare drum and cymbal. It had several of the audience at the closest tables droolingly captivated, but it was one of the most singularly un-erotic things I’d ever seen. And I’d dated a lot of Scottish women.

  ‘Jesus . . .’ muttered Ferguson beside me. ‘I’m in hell . . .’

  ‘I’ll get us a couple of drinks,’ I said. ‘We’ll need them.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Ferguson when I came back and handed him his glass of blended gut-rot. I had an orange juice; when I’d asked the young barman in his tartan waistcoat and bow tie for a bourbon, he looked at me as if I had come from Mars. When I suggested a Canadian Club, he clearly thought I was looking for a membership, not a drink.

  ‘By the way,’ said Ferguson, ‘we found Jimmy Wilson. You know, you were asking about him. We were looking for him at Quaid’s funeral to serve his warrant . . .’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, keeping my eyes on the stage and my cool under control.

  ‘Aye . . .’ said Ferguson. ‘It’s a damned shame.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘He’s dead. He was in his brother’s car when it went off the road – way down near the border. His brother and sister-in-law too. The three of them burned in the wreck. My guess is they were heading for England and going too fast. The car went up in flames.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ I said and sipped my orange juice. Jimmy Wilson, his brother Davey and Davey’s pregnant wife fell into my recall in total, perfect, painful detail. The world shifted beneath my feet and for a moment I thought I was going to throw up. Instead I focused on the stripper’s dead, heavily made-up face as she went through her act.

  ‘Oh, and I checked out what you asked,’ said Ferguson.

  ‘Sorry, what?’

  ‘You asked me the other day to c
heck out any notable break-ins on that date. I did.’ He handed me a folded note from his pocket.

  At that point, the stripper revealed all that she had to reveal and several tables exploded into catcalls, drowning out any chance of conversation with Ferguson.

  After the stripper quit the stage, followed by her accompanist with his snare drum tucked under his arm, a younger CID man came on and acted as master of ceremonies. He fawningly introduced the next act, emphasizing what a great privilege it was to have a star of stage and television appear.

  Ferguson leaned his head towards mine to be heard above the drunken applause. ‘You know the funny thing about that list of break-ins?’ he asked.

  ‘That our star attraction here was a victim of a break-in that night?’ I said, slipping the note into my pocket without looking at it.

  Ferguson gave a start, surprised; then suspicion settled in his expression. ‘How the hell did you know about that?’

  ‘It’s a long story. And not one you want to hear.’

  I said no more and watched as Frantic Frankie Findlay took to the stage. As he did so, I felt a tidal wave of hate and anger surge up from deep within. For the moment, I forced it down. I also ignored Ferguson who I knew was still watching me, and not the stage.

  Findlay’s act was all lamentably predictable, but nonetheless shocking as it progressed. He started with a few jokes from his stage act, the usual Scottish parochial line in humour; then – as tradition demanded at such functions – he settled into his ‘blue’ material. He cracked a few CID in-jokes that he’d clearly been briefed on, naming specific officers, joking about specific events.

  After a while, he launched into the real meat of his act. And his audience certainly proved hungry for it, laughing almost maniacally at every gag. All the usual butts of all the usual jokes were there: sex-hungry and stupid young women; sex-starved and stupid older women; and, of course, the Irish, Glasgow Catholics. And Jews.

  I could feel Ferguson become more uncomfortable with every gag, adding to impatience with me. Everyone else was lapping it up.

  ‘I can’t take much more of this,’ he said. ‘Let’s go to a pub and you can tell me how you knew Findlay was on that list.’

  ‘I have to stay, Jock.’ I turned to him, faced him straight-on. ‘You want me to tell you what I know and why I know it? Okay – I know Frankie Findlay was burgled that night because Quiet Tommy Quaid burgled him. Quiet Tommy Quaid burgled him and was murdered because of it. Tommy knew that Frankie Findlay was appearing at the King’s Theatre that night and that his wife, who is his manager and takes care of all of the money, would be there with him. Tommy knew there would be proceeds from Findlay’s latest stage tour and that he had the time . . .’

  On stage, the man I was talking about was cracking jokes about ‘the Jews’ being upset because Hitler had sent them his gas bill. Men who had fought in a war that was supposed to have been all about ending that kind of hate roared with laughter.

  ‘ . . . had the time to break into the safe and get away with the takings and a pile of jewellery. Except that’s not all he found. There were two leather-bound books – a diary and a ledger – and a document folder. It was these he was killed for. The document folder was stuffed with pictures of men raping children.’

  ‘Where is this folder?’ asked Ferguson. His face was stone. We stood like an island in the middle of the tumult of raucous laughter and yelling, Findlay’s nasal voice microphone-amplified.

  ‘It’s gone. They got it back. And one of the books – a diary filled with the initials of those who took part in these sick, perverted parties. By the way, all of the kids involved came from St Andrew’s School, down on the Ayrshire coast. Findlay organized these little get-togethers and he kept a record of them, maybe for his own safety, maybe because he had ideas of blackmailing those involved. You see, they were – are – all very important people in the Scottish Establishment. Politicians, MPs, army . . .’

  ‘Police?’

  I nodded. ‘Including your chum you’re having the party for here.’

  ‘Bob MacIntyre?’ Ferguson looked around the room, as if he suddenly had found himself in a strange land, surrounded by people he didn’t know.

  ‘It gets worse, Jock,’ I said. ‘One of the biggest of the bigwigs involved in this is Donald Arbuthnot.’

  ‘You are fucking kidding me . . .’

  I shook my head. ‘You don’t have much of a chance of justice when one of the people who’s sexually assaulted you is the Solicitor General of Scotland. And you should know that Jimmy Wilson was there with Tommy Quaid the night he turned over Findlay’s place. Jimmy’s death was no accident.’

  Ferguson cast an eye around the room, grabbed my elbow and steered me through the function suite, the entrance hall and into the street outside. The air, even Glasgow city air, felt clean and cool and quiet after the smoke and noise of the hall. He checked the side street we were in both ways to ensure he wouldn’t be overheard.

  ‘Jesus, Lennox, do you know what you’re saying?’

  ‘I know exactly what I’m saying. I saw some of those pictures with my own eyes and there is no way I’ll ever be able to unsee them. I thought I would never see anything worse than all the shit I saw in the war. Well, I did. If you’d seen those kids’ faces, Jock . . .’

  ‘You’re talking about hard evidence. You’ve got to get those pictures to me and I’ll—’

  ‘And you’ll what? These people run everything. They run you. That evidence will never see the light of day and if you get involved there’s every chance you’ll stop seeing it too.’

  ‘So why tell me?’

  ‘Because you’re a good man. Because you’re a good man more than you’re a copper, just the way Tommy was a good man more than he was a thief. Because you believe in the right thing. I’m telling you that the right thing here has nothing to do with the law. I’m telling you because I need you to turn a blind eye to what is about to happen. I’m asking you to abandon every instinct you have as a copper and let me handle this.’

  ‘Are you telling me blood is going to be spilt?’

  ‘I’m telling you not to ask me questions like that. But let me say, no innocent blood will be spilt.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake, Lennox . . . I’m a detective chief inspector in the City of Glasgow Police. You can’t seriously expect me to turn a blind eye to the kind of crime you’re talking about – or to you going off on some vigilante crusade.’

  ‘If you get involved right now, all you’ll be doing is warning them and they’ll get away with it. They’ll deal with you somehow. Maybe you’ll drive off a road and break your neck, or they’ll pin something on you that’ll ruin you. Everything you believe is turned on its head with this. If you got involved you’d have to forget everything you believe, everything you think you stand for. You’d have to stop being a copper.’ I took a long pull on my cigarette. ‘Go home, Jock.’

  He made to protest.

  ‘Just go home. You got me into the smoker, that’s all I needed you to do.’

  He started to walk up the side street towards Argyle Street and the cab rank.

  ‘One more thing, Jock,’ I called.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Are you much of a reader?’

  He frowned at me in the lamplight, then shrugged. ‘Not a big reader. Some Nevile Shute, that kind of thing. Why?’

  ‘I have a book in my apartment: The Outsider by Albert Camus. If anything happens to me, I want you to have it. You’ll find it very informative, especially if you look behind the dust cover. Then you can decide where you stand.’

  He stared at me for a moment, then nodded and headed out onto the main road.

  I threw what remained of my cigarette onto the cobbles, ground it out with the pointed toe of my patent black, and headed back into the smoker.

  4

  During the war – or at least during my war – time had split into two types: there was the waiting and preparing for action, and there was the action its
elf. Sometimes the waiting was worse: you had time for fear, for outcomes imagined. When the time for action came, when you were finally thrown into the storm, the moment of commitment could be a moment of calm.

  As I went back into the smoker, I had that strange moment of calm.

  My war, like everyone else’s on our side, had been all about recovering held territory, and it was always easier to hold and defend than it was to retake and advance. I was ready to retake territory.

  I went back into the smoke and the noise of the hall and caught the end of Findlay’s act. It was more of the same stuff. Anti-women, anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, anti-Irish, anti-English. The great thing about the good old City of Glasgow Police, guardians of our lives and property, I thought, was that they really knew how to have a good laugh at a few Fascist funnies.

  I checked out the location of the toilets. There was a hallway that led from the main function suite to the double doors of the fire exit. The Gents was off to the left of the hall.

  I went back into the bar and decided to risk a Scotch, rather than an orange juice: I needed something to stop my gorge rising while Findlay finished his act. There was a CID copper at the bar: a detective constable I’d had dealings with in the past. As I leaned against the bar beside him, he looked me up and down with drunken, slow-motion contempt – which I rather took umbrage at, considering the last time I’d met him I’d handed him an envelope thick with banknotes in exchange for information. He was at the elision stage of drunkenness, where words slid into each other seamlessly and vowels stretched.

  ‘Whaddafuckyoodoinhere, Lennox?’

  I told him I’d been invited along by Jock Ferguson. My new drinking buddy twisted his already ugly face into a gurn that suggested he didn’t hold Detective Chief Inspector Ferguson in much regard.

  ‘And of course I wanted to pay my respects to the great man: Chief Inspector MacIntyre,’ I explained.

  The drunk detective again twisted his features in a kind of gurn and it took me a while to work out that this time it was in approval.