‘It took them a while to work out that I was a witness.’ I sipped my tea. It was sweet and hot and eased the throbbing in my head. I wasn’t in the mood for the third degree from my landlady too.
A baker’s van sounded its horn out on the street and she excused herself in a ‘we haven’t finished’ way, grabbed her purse and trotted out. I watched her go. She was slim, maybe a little too slim. She was an attractive woman, with Kate Hepburn cheeks and eyes and would have been prettier had it not been for the perpetual wraith of sad tiredness that haunted her face. Fiona White would have been no more than thirty-five or — six, but looked older.
I had grown attached to the sad little White family, who had acknowledged that father and husband lay at the bottom of the Atlantic, yet still seemed to be waiting for his return from a war long-ended. I drank my tea.
‘So… would you rather that I left?’ I asked again when she returned.
‘I don’t want this kind of thing to happen again. That’s all I’m saying for now, Mr Lennox. If it does, then I think you should look elsewhere for somewhere to stay.’
‘Fair enough.’ I drained my cup and stood up. ‘It won’t, Mrs White. By the way, thanks for telling the police I was here last night. That saved me a lot of… awkwardness, you could say.’
‘I only told them the truth.’
The police had been busy in my digs and it took me a half-hour of housekeeping to get things back into order. My flat was really the two upstairs bedrooms and a bathroom of the original house layout. They were good-sized rooms and had big sash windows that let in a lot of light and a view along Great Western Road. The biggest of the bedrooms had been converted into a living room-cum-kitchen. Mrs White was fair with rent, but it was still pricey.
The first thing I checked was the copy of H.G. Wells’s The Shape of Things to Come I had jammed in the middle of my bookshelves. I opened it and made sure that the hollowed-out section was still full of large, white, crisp Bank of England five-pound notes. It was. My Niebelungsgold from Germany, to which I’d been able to add during my time in Glasgow. I had a lot of books and it had seemed a pretty safe hiding place: policemen tend not to be the most literary bunch. The next thing was to check that the floor beneath the bed hadn’t been disturbed. I lifted up the section that I had cut out and reached in underneath the floorboards. My hand cupped the heavy, hard object wrapped in oilcloth.
Still there. If I needed it.
CHAPTER THREE
I slept most of that day, but the next I rose early, had a bath, shaved and put on one of my smarter dark suits. I needed to feel clean and fresh. The pain in my neck still nagged at me and I borrowed a couple of sachets of aspirin from Mrs White. But something else was nagging at me and I couldn’t quite pin it down. The papers were full of Frankie McGahern’s murder and I had sensed an even deeper chill in my landlady’s demeanour.
Petrol rationing had ended two years before but I’d gotten into the habit of leaving the car at home if I was just going into the office. I took the tram into town and unlocked the door of my one-room office in Gordon Street. I had often thought about dumping my office, seeing as most of my business was conducted from the Horsehead Bar, but it made sense to keep it for legal and tax reasons. It also provided me with the odd missing person, divorce case or factory theft case: some legitimate sleaze to show the coppers and the revenue.
It was my office that disturbed me most.
Whereas the police had gone through my flat with their usual ham-fistedness, there was no outward sign that someone had been in my office, far less searched it. But I knew they had. The angle of the ’phone on my desk. The position of the inkwell. The fact that my chair was pushed squarely and neatly into the desk. This was a truly professional job. Whoever did this was skilled in searching without detection. Not something the police had to worry about.
After going through every drawer and every file, I was certain nothing had been removed from the office. I checked the door, paying particular attention to the keyhole. No sign of forced entry or even of someone fiddling with the lock. And I had the only set of keys. Whoever had done this was good. Very good. And I had no doubt that if it had been them who’d gone through my home then they would have found both my nest egg and my stash hidden beneath the floorboards. But I had the feeling I wasn’t dealing with common thieves and in any case it would be much more difficult to get in and out of my place while Mrs White was in.
I tried to put it out of my mind and focused on the missing-person case I’d been working on. Jobs like these were essential: a client who was legitimate and who gave and asked for receipts meant I had something convincing to show the tax inspector. At least fifty per cent of my clients didn’t like to trouble the taxman and, I have to admit, I liked to ease his workload a little myself. The case I had spent the last week on was that of the missing wife of a Glasgow businessman. She was young, pretty and lively and he was middle-aged, paunchy, with bad teeth and definitely no Robert Taylor to look at. It was a clear mismatch based on money and I knew I wasn’t going to give the client the happy end he was looking for.
I decided to focus my attention on the missing wife. Maybe if I pretended the whole McGahern thing wasn’t there it would go away. I ’phoned the husband, John Andrews, at his office and arranged to meet him at his home at six that evening.
Glasgow was a sleeves-rolled-up city. For a hundred years its sole reason for being had been to serve as the Empire’s factory. The industrial revolution had been born here with a scream of metal and thundering mills. Britain’s mercantile and military ships were built here. The vast machines that powered the British Empire were assembled here. The fuel to drive those machines was hewn from the earth here. Glasgow was a city where pretensions of gentility rang false, where the villa of the mogul had to rub grubby shoulders with the tenement. Bearsden lay to the north of the city and dressed itself up as Surrey, yet was within soot-flecked spitting distance of run-down, violent Maryhill. John Andrews’s home was set back from the sweep of the street in a large, wooded garden. I didn’t fully understand what it was Andrews did; it was one of these occupations that were dismissed with a vague generalization: ‘import-export, that kind of thing’. Whatever it was he did, it paid well. Ardbruach House, Andrews’s home, was three floors of Victorian villa, built as much to impress as to accommodate. The truth was I had nothing new to tell Andrews, mainly because I had dropped the ball on his wife’s case with all that had happened since my encounter with Frankie McGahern.
Andrews had been brusque on the ’phone. He didn’t like me ’phoning his office, despite the fake name and company he had given me as a code for his receptionist. But when I pulled up at his mansion, he was waiting for me at the door with what looked like a practised smile. The kind that quivers at the corners.
Andrews was a small, tubby man with whitish-grey hair and a wattle of fat beneath his weak jaw. He wore a fresh carnation in the buttonhole of his sixty-guinea suit. When he shook my hand, his fleshy palm felt moist. ‘I’m sorry you’ve had a wasted journey, Mr Lennox. I didn’t get a chance to call you. Mystery solved!’ He made a big shrug with his small shoulders and it was as fake as the smile. I was getting all kinds of bad feelings about this. And after the McGahern episode, I could have done with something straightforward.
‘Mr Andrews, is there something wrong?’
‘Wrong?’ He laughed but didn’t hold my gaze. ‘Quite the contrary. I’m afraid this has all been a terrible misunderstanding. Lillian telephoned me this afternoon, not long after you and I had spoken. She was called on at short notice to visit her sister in Edinburgh. Her sister took ill very suddenly you see. Lillian had left me a note all along, but it had slipped behind the bureau. It was only when she ’phoned that she realized that I’d been so worried.’
‘Oh, I see,’ I said. He was talking nonsense, or as the locals were wont to call it, shite.
‘Here, Mr Lennox.’ Andrews made no attempt to invite me in: instead he took a cheque from his po
cket and handed it to me. It was for much more than I was due. ‘I feel guilty about your wasted effort. I hope this covers the inconvenience.’
This was so wrong. But I pocketed the cheque.
‘Do you mind if I have a look at the note your wife left?’ I asked.
Andrews’s relief faltered and he looked flustered. ‘The note? Why? Oh… I’m afraid I threw it away after I found it. There seemed little point in hanging on to it.’
‘I see.’ I lifted my hat an inch. ‘Well, I’m glad things are settled. Goodbye, Mr Andrews.’
Something flickered in his expression. A faint doubt, or hope. Then it was gone.
‘Goodbye, Mr Lennox.’
Maybe it was because I was at a loose end that I didn’t go straight home. There are more ways than ‘import-export’ to make the kind of money to afford a home in Bearsden. I headed north through Glasgow’s leafy suburb and turned into another lengthy drive through manicured bushes and trees. But when I reached the top, it wasn’t a short, fleshy businessman who stood outside the small mansion. Instead there was a huddle of thugs in cheap suits, maliciously eyeing my progress up the drive.
‘And what can I do for you?’ The Glasgow accent was as thick as the macassar on the hair of the heavy who came over to the car window. He was dressed in tight drainpipe trousers and a mid-thigh-length jacket. It was the latest fashion, apparently. It was supposed to look ‘Edwardian’ and I’d heard followers of it called themselves ‘Teddy Boys’.
‘I’d like to see Mr Sneddon.’
‘Oh you would, would you? Do you have an appointment?’ He pronounced every consonant of ‘appointment’ as if he’d been practising it.
‘No. Tell him Lennox is here. I want to talk to him.’
‘What about?’
‘That’s between me and Mr Sneddon.’
The goon in the drainpipes opened the car door and led me into Sneddon’s mansion. Like some thug parody of a butler, he told me to wait in the mock-Gothic hall. Sneddon let me stew for half an hour before he emerged from the snooker room. He was making a point. I was now at his pleasure and could not leave without his permission.
Willie Sneddon was one of the Three Kings who ran Glasgow. The Bearsden mock-baronialism that surrounded us may have been Sneddon’s castle, but his kingdom sat on the South Side. He was not a particularly big man, and he was expensively and surprisingly tastefully dressed. But at the very first glance you could tell that this man was all about violence. His build was stocky but not heavy. Muscular. Sinewy, as if he had been woven from rope. Added to that, someone had in the distant past permanently creased his right cheek with a razor.
‘What the fuck do you want, Lennox?’ He fired the greeting over his shoulder as he led me into a study lined with books he would never and probably could never read. I was not invited to but I sat down anyway.
‘I had a run in with Frankie McGahern,’ I said, lighting a cigarette.
‘I heard it was him that had a run in with you,’ answered Sneddon with perfect Govan grammar. ‘You kill him, Lennox?’
‘I’m in the clear for that. Someone else did him. Who, is the big question. And that’s what I want to talk to you about. I wanted to ask you if you knew anything about what happened to his brother.’
‘You accusing?’
‘No, Mr Sneddon. Not accusing, just asking. I can’t see any reason why you would have Tam McGahern killed. Or Frankie. But no one knows this town like you…’
‘Oh aye? I suppose you’ve not talked to the other Kings?’
‘As a matter of fact I haven’t. I came to you first.’ It was the truth and he knew it. He could check it out easily enough. Although he tried to hide it, I could tell he liked the idea that I somehow rated him above the other two Kings. I failed to mention that I just happened to be in the neighbourhood.
‘I know fuck-all about Tam McGahern’s killing. Of course I wouldn’t tell you if I did and normally I wouldn’t give a fuck if you believed me or not. But I really don’t know and I don’t like not knowing. I don’t need to tell you that knowledge is power in this town. I’m not the kind of man that appreciates the lack of either. Who’s paying you to look into this?’
‘No one.’
Sneddon raised an eyebrow dubiously. This could easily turn into another beating for information I didn’t have.
‘I mean it. No one. I think that Frankie McGahern wanted me to find out who killed his brother but I wasn’t interested. That’s why things turned ugly. I’ve been warned off by the police. I guess I’m contrary that way, but when someone tries to warn me off with a beating, I tend to get stubborn.’
Sneddon nodded slowly, a cold appraising glint in his eyes. He seemed to make up his mind about something.
‘Well, you’re being paid now. You find out who snuffed Tam and Frankie and I’ll pay you.’
‘Like I said, I’m looking into this for myself-’
‘Not any more.’ Sneddon’s tone informed me that the discussion was over. He reached into a drawer of his walnut desk and pulled out a dense, neat roll of fivers. ‘This’ll keep you going. There’s a hundred there. I’ll pay you another two hundred if you deliver the name to me first.’
I took the money. ‘You know I can’t guarantee I’ll succeed. I never guarantee results. You know that.’
‘Then I’ll be a hundred quid poorer. But you only get the other two hundred if you deliver the name.’
‘Okay,’ I said as if I had a choice in the matter. ‘Thanks. I’ll see what I can find out. But I’ll have to talk to the other two Kings. Things may get complicated.’
‘We’ll cross that bridge when you come to it, Lennox. Just remember who’s paying you. You find out something, I hear it first. And if I say no one else hears about it, that’s the way it’ll be.’
‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘Maybe we can start with you telling me something more about Tam and Frankie. I don’t know much about them at all. Never had to come across them.’ I rubbed the back of my neck, remembering how difficult it had been to convince McNab of that fact.
‘Not much to tell,’ said Sneddon. ‘Couple of wee Fenians on the make. You know the type: one generation away from shiteing in a Galway peat bog. They were trying to carve themselves a wee empire. More Tam than Frankie. Tam was hard, ambitious and sharp as a tack. Frankie was just…’ Sneddon frowned as he sought an appropriate comparative. ‘Frankie was just a wee cunt.’
‘I would have thought that they’d have divided the action up equally, being twins and all.’
‘Aye, you would have thought that. But the brains weren’t divided equally. Tam and Frankie were only identical twins in the way they looked. Like I said, Tam was the brains… and the muscle… of the operation. He was a clever wee fucker, by all accounts. Frankie wasn’t. Tam ran things and looked after Frankie. Threw him scraps from the table.’
‘So they were close?’
‘How the fuck am I supposed to know? Not my type of people, if you catch my drift. But I did hear one story about how Frankie leaned on some whore who was operating her business independently. Tam found out and gave Frankie a real hiding. But then there’s another story about how Tam paid a fucking fortune to have some nobody take a rap and do six months inside for Frankie. Just so Frankie didn’t have a record.’
‘Frankie’s got no criminal record?’
‘None.’ Sneddon lit a cigarette without offering me one. ‘Neither of them has. Tam because he was smart. Frankie because it was as if Tam went out of his way to keep Frankie’s record clean. But, like I say, he wasn’t above giving Frankie a hiding.’
‘What operations did they run?’ I asked.
‘Three bars — the Highlander, the Imperial and the Westfield — and a couple of bookies; they did a few half-decent hold-ups and they ran security for a whore-house. And they had a small-time protection thing going on. But, like I say, Tam McGahern was a cunning wee shite. He always had some kind of scam going on. We tried to keep track of what he was up to but he always wa
s too slippery.’
‘Okay,’ I said and stood up, lifting my hat from Sneddon’s ornate desk. ‘I’ll see what I can find out. But it may be tricky. A lot of people are nervous about the whole McGahern thing. Reluctant to talk.’
Sneddon leaned to one side in his chair and shouted ‘Twinkletoes!’ past me and out into the hall.
Suddenly the light in the study dimmed, as if the door had been closed. I knew, without turning, that it hadn’t: it was just that Twinkletoes McBride was standing in the door frame.
‘You’ve met Twinkletoes before, haven’t you, Lennox?’
‘Not in a professional capacity.’ I smiled weakly and turned to nod a greeting to the beast in the doorway.
‘Hello, Mr Lennox,’ Twinkletoes said in his troll baritone, smiled and sat down on the chair by the door. He was a friendly cuss. Not too bright. Read comic books. Occasionally quoted from the Reader’s Digest. Tortured people for Sneddon.
‘This is going to be a tough nut to crack, Lennox,’ said Sneddon. ‘People aren’t keen to talk. I want you to use Twinkletoes if that happens.’
‘Listen, Mr Sneddon… that’s not really my style. No offence, Twinkletoes.’
Twinkletoes McBride sat smiling silently, a dark mass of friendly menace in the corner. Conversation was not his strong point: his reputation was for getting other people to talk. The origin of the epithet ‘Twinkletoes’ lay in his methods as Sneddon’s torturer. These involved the removal of the victim’s socks and shoes, the use of a pair of bolt cutters and McBride’s recitation, with a surprising use of ironic humour, of ‘this little piggy went to market’. Apparently Twinkletoes would leave the big toe of each foot until last.
‘I give them the chance to talk before I do the big toe,’ the normally laconic McBride had once explained to me. ‘Unless Mr Sneddon has said he doesn’t want them to walk again. You can’t balance without your big toe, you know.’
‘That’s a really interesting fact,’ I had said.
‘Aye…’ Twinkletoes’s vast, battered moon of a face had shone with an almost child-like pride in his learning. ‘I read it in the Reader’s Digest.’
Lennox l-1 Page 3
