The Quiet Death of Thomas Quaid: Lennox 5

by Craig Russell

  ‘We didn’t get them all,’ said McBride, gloomily.

  ‘We got the ones that matter, Twinkle. The others will be looking over their shoulders for the rest of their lives.’

  ‘We didn’t get all the ones that matter,’ said Jonny Cohen. ‘I still want McNaught.’

  ‘McNaught wasn’t the linchpin we thought he was,’ I said. ‘But leave him to me. I’ll get him.’

  ‘I want that pleasure,’ said Cohen.

  I shook my head. ‘I gave you Tarnish. McNaught’s the one who set up Quiet Tommy Quaid. I may never find him, but if I do, he’s mine.’

  8

  It took me over a month to track down Gresty, the ENSA actor I had seen in the photograph with Findlay. Guessing that he had some kind of record, I asked Jock Ferguson if he had any details on a J.P. Gresty.

  John Philip Gresty had been convicted twice of petty theft, once on an assault charge. His record card stated his profession as ‘unemployed actor’. Ferguson had asked no questions, nor had he passed any comment when he handed me the file on Gresty, which included a photograph. It confirmed that it was the same face I’d seen with Findlay in the wartime photograph. Or nearly the same face.

  I found Gresty in Edinburgh, living in a run-down flat on the third floor of a Craigmillar tenement. I watched him for a full day and night and it was enough to see that there was nothing to the man’s life. He was unemployed and his only social activity had been to buy a bottle of cheap sherry from a corner shop. It was a worn-down stub of a life. The life of a nobody, a loser.

  He looked shocked to see me standing there when he opened the door. Then flustered. Whatever the truth of his real identity or background, he was still a big guy and had a record of violence. I decided not to take any chances and waved the Webley vaguely in his direction.

  ‘Now let’s not get all silly,’ I said. ‘Do you mind if I come in, Mr McNaught?’

  John Philip Gresty had a face that some event had robbed of its symmetry, making it lopsided. Standing there in the doorway of a low-rent apartment, looking worn-down and frightened, he certainly didn’t have the military bearing he had had the day he had walked into my office and announced himself as Mr McNaught. And this time he wouldn’t have a script to follow.

  He backed away from me into the apartment, which I took as an invitation to follow him in. Gun in one hand, I had a brown paper bag tucked under the other arm. I nudged it upwards a little and inside glass clinked on glass. ‘I’ve brought us something to drink.’

  It was a depressing place. A single room served as a kitchen, dining room and living room, a sink and gas cooker in one corner, a bedroom and a small bathroom off. The walls were dressed in a dark wallpaper that had been gloomy when it had been put up, probably before the war, and had darkened to a toffee colour with decades of cigarette smoke and fireplace soot. The furniture looked like Noah had refused to have it on the ark and there was only one piece of soft furnishing: an ancient settee of threadbare chintz.

  Like Tommy’s apartment, there was no real hint of the personality occupying this space; except in this case, I suspected it had more to do with poverty and the lack of personal belongings. There was one, strangely pathetic, personal touch: a framed photograph on the mantelpiece of Gresty as he had been before his face had been messed up. The glass and frame were clean and dust-free, as if the photograph received care that the rest of the flat missed.

  The only other personal touch was a couple of immaculately pressed suits, a lovat raincoat and two pairs of shoes – one black, one burgundy brogues – polished till they gleamed.

  I waved Gresty over to the settee and told him to sit, keeping the gun on him. Pulling over one of the dining chairs from the table, I sat opposite him. He asked me how I’d found him and I told him.

  I took a bottle of Scotch from the paper bag and placed it on the floor in front of him.

  ‘A present,’ I said. ‘Do you have glasses?’

  I kept the gun on him while he fetched the glasses from the sink in the corner, set them on the floor between us and filled them from the bottle. He winced as it went down.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘They were all out of single malt.’

  He looked at me steadily and quietly, but I sensed a tremor running through him, like a faint electric current. I guessed he knew what was coming.

  ‘I take it it was Findlay who paid you to act the part of McNaught?’

  ‘Aye.’ His natural voice was broader Scots than the one he’d used the day he’d visited me in my office and set the whole ball rolling. ‘But I didn’t know what was going on until later. Honest. All that stuff with kids . . . I wouldn’t have had anything to do with it if I had.’ His shoulders slumped and he sighed. ‘That’s not true . . . I’d have done it anyway. I needed the money. I don’t get acting jobs because of this . . .’ He pointed to his face. ‘Not the romantic lead type any more, you could say. Or even comedy.’ He looked at me; at the gun in my hand. ‘I’m sorry about your friend, by the way.’

  ‘Did you know they were going to kill Tommy Quaid?’

  ‘That was the plan. Frankie got me to hire those two monkeys. They were supposed to be waiting for him at the foundry, but it was all taken out of our hands.’

  ‘Help yourself . . .’ I twitched the barrel of the gun towards the whisky bottle. He didn’t need telling twice. I had left my glass untouched. ‘Why was it taken out of your hands?’

  ‘Frankie had those pictures and all those names and details as an insurance policy. He had set the whole thing up for them – where they met, getting the kids from that school. A bunch of sick perverts, if you ask me – but they were all powerful, really powerful, men. Frankie felt reasonably safe because he was so much in the public eye, but he was always a bit worried that the members of his little club might start to think he knew too much. I don’t think it was a real worry, because he was into all of that sick shite anyway, but that’s why he kept the goods on the others locked up in his safe.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with what happened at the foundry?’

  ‘You see, to start with Frankie was shitting himself, realizing someone had all of that stuff. That’s why he hired me. He knew me from doing troop entertainment shows together in the war. He also knew that I’d been in trouble with the police since, and that I couldn’t get any acting work because of my face. He said he had the perfect part for me and my face was an advantage. It was just the three of us – me and the two boys – and we were to try and get the stuff back. But one of Frankie’s pervert chums was the shipyard owner, Sir John MacIlwain. We were drawing blanks and Frankie was getting, well, frantic like his stage name says. He went to MacIlwain and told him what had happened.’

  Gresty paused to top up his drink. He looked over to me, the bottle in his hand, seeking permission. ‘Go ahead,’ I said. ‘In fact I insist.’

  He poured himself another. My first still sat untouched.

  ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘the old guy said – I mean old man MacIlwain – that he had an idea about who could have pulled off the job and gave us Thomas Quaid’s name. When I checked around, it seemed like Quaid was definitely the most likely suspect.’

  I nodded, remembering what Jennifer had told me about how MacIlwain’s pre-war insurance claim, and consequently Tommy’s prison time, had both been inflated.

  ‘We came up with the plan to lure Quaid somewhere where his death could look like an accident. After that we would turn over his place and get the ledger back. No one would know that it had never contained the negatives. And that’s how you got involved. Frankie did his homework – or got someone to do it for him – and found out you and Tommy Quaid were tight, and heard all the rumours of him doing work for you. Frankie knew Quaid would be on the lookout for someone coming after him, but he would trust you.’

  Once more, I had to fight down the rage that rose at the idea that I’d been a collaborator, albeit unknowingly, in Tommy’s death. ‘I thought you said your boys didn’t do it . . .’ I sa
id.

  ‘They didn’t. After Frankie told him about the break-in, MacIlwain went straight to the others and told them that Frankie had been secretly keeping the goods on them. One of the others was a high-up in Special Branch—’

  ‘Chief Inspector Bob MacIntyre?’

  ‘I don’t know his name, but he had connections and he knew that Quaid’s old commanding officer worked for military intelligence, or counter-intelligence, or some shite like that. He was an expert in dealing with scandals, apparently, brushing evidence of MPs’ indiscretions and stuff like that under the carpet. He came up north with some of his men and they took the whole thing over. But Frankie kept me and the boys on.’

  ‘Why, if it was all out of his hands?’

  ‘He still had the negatives, but had to keep them safe from the others. Everyone had to think the negatives were missing. Frankie told us we had to make sure the military types didn’t get to the stuff and find out the negatives weren’t there.’

  ‘And that’s why you went after Jimmy Wilson?’

  ‘Aye . . .’ Gresty’s voice was becoming slurred. ‘But we weren’t up to it. I’m an out-of-work actor and the other two were a couple of thick-as-shite ballroom bouncers. The military types took it out of our hands. Again.’

  ‘Have another drink,’ I said.

  ‘No . . .’ He smiled wanly and the damaged side of his face didn’t join in. ‘I’ve had enough.’

  ‘Have another drink,’ I said. With my free hand I took the two unopened bottles of whisky from the bag. With the other I cocked the hammer on the pistol.

  ‘Oh . . .’ he said. ‘I see. It’s like that.’

  ‘It’s like that.’

  I could see he was trying to shake off his incipient drunkenness. ‘Listen, it doesn’t have to be. I’m sorry for what happened, but when I first got into it I didn’t know what was planned. I got out of my depth.’

  ‘It does have to be like this,’ I said. ‘Don’t bother with the glass, just drink from the bottle.’

  Gresty looked around his grubby room, at his meagre possessions, at the smart clothes incongruously hung on the improvised rail. He was saying goodbye.

  ‘There’s no other way?’

  ‘There’s a queue of people wanting to get to you. Or get to McNaught, the character you played. Trust me, you’re lucky that it’s me. The others wouldn’t give you as easy a passage. It’s the bottle or . . .’ I raised the gun.

  He lifted the whisky bottle by the neck and drank from it, keeping his eyes on me as he did so. Half the bottle went down like water.

  ‘How?’ he asked.

  ‘The bath,’ I said. ‘When you’ve drunk so much you won’t know what’s happening. A quiet death.’

  He stared at me for a moment. Then he said, quietly, ‘Okay.’

  By the time he’d finished the first bottle, he was very drunk. A cold drunk. The drunk of a man desperately clinging on.

  ‘Will you feel bad about this?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I’ll feel bad, but there’s no other way. The way this was played from the start, the losers don’t get to walk away.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ he said, slurring. ‘Don’t feel bad about it. Wasn’t much of a life anyway. Shite, in fact. I’m a bad sort. Worse – I’m a shite actor.’ He waved his finger at me, the bottle still in his hand. ‘But I was good with you, wasn’t I? I had you convinced . . . the whole ex-officer, hard bastard thing. I carried that off. I was fucking good at that.’

  ‘You sure were,’ I said, dully. ‘You had me hook, line and sinker.’ The truth was I’d suspected something from the way he had overplayed the military thing. But I said nothing: I didn’t think now, when I was soon to hold his unconscious head under water until he drowned, was a good time to give him critical notes. I pushed the second bottle across the floor to him. ‘Cheers . . .’

  ‘Cheers . . .’ He snatched up the bottle, sneering defiantly at me with the half of his face that was capable of sneering defiantly, and took two long pulls. He wiped his mouth, his lips now slack with booze.

  ‘Wanna know ’bout my face? What happn’d it?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. There was an etiquette to killing a man in cold blood. An executioner’s code. Anyway, it wouldn’t be long now. He’d get so drunk that he’d start talking nonsense, then he’d fall asleep, then I’d force more booze down him, then he’d pass out; and then I’d kill him, making it look like a drowning accident in the bath.

  ‘Everybody thinks I was wounded. But I wasn’t. I never saw action. Fucking entertainment corps. Along with Frankie fucking Findlay – by the way, you kill him?’

  ‘I didn’t play lead, but was in the supporting cast,’ I said.

  ‘Good. Surprise t’hear me say ’at? Good fuckin’ riddance. No loss either. What he did to those kids. Fucking creep.’ He shook his head woozily as if annoyed at losing his thread. ‘Anyway, Findlay was in Singapore with me, but fucked off before the Japs came. By the way, he started all this shite as far back as then, out there in Singapore. He used to arrange little parties for officers, local whores an’ that. Rumour was he also catered for “special tastes”. He made a fuckin’ fortune out of it and gained powerful friends. Got himself transferred home. Me?’ He stabbed his chest with his thumb. ‘Muggins here gets captured in forty-two when Singapore fell. Along with eighty-five thousand other poor bastards.’ He shook his head and it nearly cost him his balance, even sitting down. ‘All because they put that useless, buck-toothed, lanky streak of piss Percival in charge. Anyway, I was in with the real fighting men – Aussies and Indians who’d been captured after Sarimbun Beach – an’ others who’d had to give up without a fight.’

  ‘Keep drinking . . .’ I said. He actually made an apologetic gesture and took a couple of hefty swigs.

  ‘Anyway . . . I ended up with the others in a prisoner of war camp. A labour camp run by the Kempeitai. Men starved, beaten and worked to death. But I got what everyone else thought was a cushy number. The Nips put me to work as a steward in the Kempeitai barracks. In the non-comms’ mess, serving drinks and polishing boots for fuckin’ Jap’nese NCOs. For a while it was a cushy number. Not as hard work as the others an’ I was able to steal scraps of food, sleep separately from the others. Less chance of catching typhus or dysentery, y’see.’ He frowned, trying to focus on his story through his growing stupor; or maybe it was the memory that was making him frown. ‘But then things started to change: there was this particular sergeant – Sergeant Tsukuda. I can still see the little bastard. A short-arsed, squat, dark-skinned wee sadist. I’d taken the odd beating for being too slow or not serving the sake right, but this little shite decided to start a new game. This night they were all pretty pissed and I brought in another tray of tokkuri and ochoko – you know, the pottery jug and cups the Nips use for sake. Anyway, instead of being dismissed, Tsukuda makes me stand to attention and wait. Wee bastard starts waving yen about like he was starting a bet on something. Know what they were bettin’on? Me. Tsukuda walks straight up to me and hits me in the face, hard. That side.’ McNaught pointed to the right side of his face.

  ‘I go down, everybody starts fucking laughing. I’m hauled to m’feet and the next Nip has a swing, then the next, then the next. I can hear the sound still – the bones cracking in my face. Eventually I pass out. The bet, I worked out, had been to see how many punches it would take to put me out. I woke up in the dirt outside the mess hut. Next day, they treated me as usual and no one laid a finger on me. They didn’t for two weeks. Then they obviously reckoned that I’d healed enough for it to be sport again. So they did the same thing. Did it the following week, and the week after, and the week after. Breaking and rebreaking the bones in my face, always just on that side. It went on for months. That’s why I look the way I do.’

  I nodded. There wasn’t much to say. There were a thousand – tens of thousands – of stories like that, brought back from the war in broken containers.

  ‘But I swore I’d get the wee cunt.’ More wavi
ng of the bottle. ‘After they dropped the bomb and Japan surrendered, the Nips handed over the camp to us. Tsukuda knew what was good for him and fucked off sharpish. I searched for him for days. All I thought about was killing the little bastard, cutting chunks out of him. Payin’ him back. Thousand per cent interest. Never did find him though. Never did get justice. Never did.’

  He shook his head sadly and looked across the table, his eyes struggling to focus on me. He was now too drunk to be any danger, if he ever really had been any danger, so I tucked the gun back in my waistband, came around to his side of the table. Holding his head back, I poured the rest of the bottle into him. A lot of the whisky was spilled as he coughed, spluttered and gargled on it, but enough went in to finish the job.

  I let him go and he slumped onto the settee. I slapped his face a couple of times and called his name, but got no response.

  Taking out my cufflinks and putting them in my pocket, I slipped off my jacket and rolled up my shirtsleeves. I went through to the bathroom and ran the bath taps. Gresty didn’t regain consciousness while I undressed him, leaving his clothes scattered on the floor. When he was naked, I dragged him across the living room and into the bathroom. It took a lot of effort to get him into the bath, which was filling up. Eventually I got him in and waited until the water level was up to his chest.

  I looked at him. A fucked-up man with a fucked-up face and a fucked-up life.

  I grabbed his ankles and pulled his legs upwards. Gresty’s head went under the water. There was a stream of bubbles from his nose and mouth, then a sudden explosion of them burst the surface as, without regaining consciousness, he bucked and wriggled under the water. He started to drown.

  A fucked-up man with a fucked-up face and a fucked-up life, which I was now ending for him. Maybe he had been right: maybe he had played the part well, after all. I was killing McNaught, the character he had played, not Gresty, the actor. For some reason I couldn’t get the image of that photograph on the mantelpiece out of my head. A pathetic attempt to brighten up a bleak and empty life with memories of a past life. A life that had been shaped by the cruelty of a little Japanese who’d never been held to account. I was doing Gresty a favour.