Lennox l-1

by Craig Russell

  ‘At the moment I get the idea you’re trying to talk me to death. What is it you want, Morrison?’

  ‘This is about what you want.’ He smiled and the small eyes twinkled coldly behind his spectacles. I thought of how those tiny, ugly bank manager eyes had been the last thing so many people had seen. I could imagine their deaths the way he had described. A moment of shock. Of disbelief. Then a final gaze into those eyes.

  ‘However,’ he continued, ‘I do have a proposition of sorts to put to you. But we can discuss that later. Ah… our stop. Or at least my stop and I’m afraid I’ll have to prevail on you to accompany me part of the way. And, Mr Lennox, please don’t be silly. I also have a gun.’

  We got off the train, Mr Morrison staying behind me with his raincoat draped over his arm to conceal the knife. It was a small station with two platforms and a siding. It sat on the edge of a small town in the middle of a landscape of unremitting moorland bleakness. It was getting dark now and Mr Morrison indicated the direction we should take from the station. I noticed we were heading away from the town and towards the empty uplands.

  A thousand different images of a thousand different endings to our outing were spinning around in my head. Sure, Mr Morrison was known to be the best in the business, but by his own admission he took most of his victims unawares; I was very much aware of the little shit behind me, the stiletto blade still tucked under his raincoat. And sure, he had all kinds of combat experience, but so did I. And he was a little guy after all. After about fifteen minutes walking uphill we reached an ugly church shaped like a vast stone barn with an undersized steeple. A wrought-iron fence formed a tight square around a clustered churchyard of headstones, some tilted, a few broken. This was Scottish Protestantism given solid form: forbidding, sinister, bleak, hard.

  ‘Kirk o’ Shotts…’ explained Mr Morrison. He was reduced to outlines and shadows in the half-light. I looked around me. No one in sight. This was as good a place as any to do your killing. I cursed myself for not having had a go at him earlier. Now he would be ready for me if I came at him.

  ‘Take it easy.’ Mr Morrison seemed to read my mind. ‘I know this is a secluded spot for a killing, but that’s not why I brought you here. Listen, can I dispense with this?’ He raised the sliver of blade and snapped it back into its handle before pocketing it. ‘Please don’t give me any trouble, Mr Lennox. I brought you here for your benefit, not mine.’ He walked across to a corner of the churchyard and eased up a broken piece of headstone that had sunk into the mossy grass. ‘I have a particular affection for this place,’ he said, retrieving a tobacco tin from the concealed depression under the stone. ‘This was — still is — the Great Road between Edinburgh and Glasgow. In the fifteenth century this was a dangerous highway to travel, mainly because of Bertram Shotts. He was a highwayman who was reputedly also a giant. Seven foot tall. Some say eight. He was supposed to have had a hideaway near the Kirk. The place is supposed to have taken its name from him.’ Mr Morrison removed a folded envelope from the tobacco tin and put it unopened into his pocket. ‘Of course he wouldn’t have been a giant, but people like to make their villains larger than life. Literally. I’m sure you’ll agree I have a reputation that is more impressive than my physical presence.’

  ‘Why bring me up here? Other than for an I-could-give-a-fuck history lesson.’

  ‘It’s a quiet place to talk and I had to pick up my mail. This is how my clients tell me they have a job for me. They leave a time and a telephone number in the tobacco tin for me to call and I call it. I have several such “mailboxes”, but this one is a favourite. It’s a difficult place for the police to stake out, being so elevated and exposed. Of course some of my clients, the Three Kings for example, have a more conventional and direct line of communication with me.’ He pointed across the valley to where a needle of ironwork pierced the almost-dark sky. ‘Things are changing, Mr Lennox. They put that up about five years ago. Television transmitter. That’s the future, apparently. Things are getting more sophisticated. More technological. The police too.’

  ‘I still don’t get why I’m here.’

  ‘First of all, I want you to know how to get in touch with me.’

  ‘Living in Glasgow, I could do with a half-decent tailor. Sometimes it’s difficult for my landlady to find a plumber.’ I rubbed my chin in sarcastic thoughtfulness. ‘But no… I don’t think I ever really have much call for a contract killer.’

  Mr Morrison looked at me blankly. He had described his sociopathic lack of emotion. It obviously extended to any sense of humour. ‘No, no

  … I don’t mean that,’ he said. ‘I have a proposition for you, like I said. I wanted you to know how to contact me if you needed. But I’ll come back to that.’

  ‘Oh good,’ I said, again with undetected irony.

  ‘The main reason I wanted to talk to you is because I have some information which I think you’ll find interesting. About a week ago I had a project to undertake for Mr Sneddon. When I was taking the brief he told me that you were looking into the Tam McGahern killing for him. Trying to find out who’s behind it. It wasn’t me, by the way.’

  ‘If you brought me up here to tell me that you could have spared me the hike. I knew that already.’

  ‘That’s not what I have to tell you. About two and a half weeks ago there was a number left in one of my mail collection points. It wasn’t one that I recognized. I work for an established clientele and don’t tout for business. As I said to you on the train, Mr Lennox, I am a hunter rather than a stalker, but I am more than capable of the odd bit of detection. I have contacts… people upon whom I can call for paid favours. None of whom, by the way, have any idea what it is I do for a living, although they probably have guessed it’s less than legal. Anyway, I had the number checked out by one of these contacts — one who works for the GPO. He told me the number belonged to a public call box in Glasgow. In Renfield Street. Whoever had left the message was being very careful to avoid being traced. Obviously, because it was a call box, they had left a specific time for me to call.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘No. Of course not. It could have been a police trap. So instead of calling, I hung around in Renfield Street with a view of the public telephone. Right enough, five minutes before the appointed time a smallish young man went into the call box. It could have been a coincidence, of course, but when another man started to tap impatiently on the glass, the young man opened the door and grabbed the waiting man by the collar and obviously made some kind of threat. The other man scuttled off.’

  ‘Yeah, but you’re talking about Glasgow. That’s a normal conversation.’ I took a cigarette from my case and lit up, offering Mr Morrison one: I thought it best to keep his hands busy. As I lit the cigarette for him his round, fleshy little face glowed in the sudden light. Given all the time in the world to place him in a profession, hit-man would never have come up. That was probably why he was so successful.

  ‘No. This was my man. He hogged the ’phone box for half an hour. He was the person I was clearly expected to contact.’

  ‘Did you recognize him?’

  ‘No. But I recognized his type. He was an underling. Again, another distance that whoever was trying to hire me was placing between him and me. I could tell he wasn’t my potential client from the way he dressed and the way he looked frightened when he didn’t get the call he had been told to take.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Like I said, smallish, maybe a couple of inches taller than me. Cheap suit. Oily hair in what I believe is popularly called a “Duck’s Arse” style.’

  ‘Dirty blond?’

  There was a pause and I guessed Mr Morrison was frowning in the dark. ‘You know him?’

  ‘Knew him. If he was who I think he was, then he’s no longer with us,’ I said, and had a nauseating thought about Scotch pies. ‘I think he may have been a gofer called Bobby. Worked for Tam and Frankie McGahern.’

  The sky was dark-blue and velvet behin
d the looming black form of Kirk o’ Shotts. Morrison’s face and the mirrors of his spectacles were again briefly illuminated as he drew on his cigarette. ‘That would fit. I followed him from Renfield Street all the way back to a spit-and-sawdust place in Maryhill.’

  ‘The Highlander?’

  ‘Yes. I told Mr Sneddon about this little experience and he told me that the Highlander was run by the McGaherns.’

  ‘Doesn’t that breach your client-contractor confidentiality?’

  ‘The McGaherns weren’t my clients and were never going to be. Like I said, I don’t work for just anybody. But, as you know, killing isn’t always a refined art. Glasgow is full of men who would take a life for you for twenty pounds. Or less. I’m a specialist and I cost a lot to hire. If the late Mr McGahern had wanted to use my services then it must have been something special. Out of the ordinary.’

  I thought about what Morrison was saying. I also thought of John Andrews’s faked accident. Maybe that had been planned weeks before. Maybe something was planned for me.

  ‘Mr Sneddon wanted you to know this. He would have told you himself but I said I wanted to talk to you about another matter.’

  ‘This proposition of yours.’

  ‘Exactly. You see, Mr Lennox, we plough parallel furrows. In an odd way we are colleagues, both independent, both working for mainly the same people. The difference is you are a stalker, I am a hunter. As such we could share the kill. As you can imagine, my anonymity is paramount. I do everything I can to remain invisible and the only reason I have exposed myself to you is because I see the potential for partnership. On certain cases, that is. You see, sometimes my observation of marks, following them and establishing patterns of movement, et cetera, exposes me to the risk of discovery. But you are a natural stalker who’s at home in the shadows and an expert at tracking people down. My proposition is simple: a fifty-fifty split on any kill we work together on.’

  I dropped my cigarette butt onto the ground and crushed the spray of orange sparks with my shoe. I looked at the small, dense silhouette of the bank manager killer.

  ‘Thanks for the offer but no. I’m not interested in that kind of work,’ I said, trying to make my tone decisive. ‘I don’t want any part of your business.’

  The silhouette remained silent for a moment. ‘Very well,’ he said eventually. ‘But I think you’re making a huge mistake. This is very lucrative work. And, whether you like it or not, you already play your part.’

  ‘What’s that meant to mean?’

  ‘Do you remember last year, when Mr Murphy asked you to track down a young couple for him?’

  ‘Yes.’ I remembered the job. ‘Hammer Murphy said it was a favour for a friend whose daughter had eloped. Murphy’s friend just wanted to make sure his daughter was okay.’

  ‘I’m afraid the truth was a little less domestic. The young man had, in fact, been an employee of Mr Murphy and had stolen a large sum of money from him. He’d also supplied the police with embarrassing information. Your job was to find them. My job was to lose them again. Permanently.’

  ‘The girl too?’ I remembered her. No more than twenty-two or — three.

  ‘The girl too. So you see, Mr Lennox, you have stalked for me before. In any case, I’d like you to think it over. Use the tobacco tin “mailbox” if you need to contact me. Anyway, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll leave you to get the train back to Glasgow. I won’t be travelling with you as I have a housecall to make near here.’ Mr Morrison began to walk towards the black shoulder of the Kirk. He paused for a moment. ‘Oh, and I take it I don’t need to stress how important it is for you, if you’re not going to consider my business proposition, that you do your best to forget my face.’

  ‘No. You don’t.’ The truth was that Morrison’s face had faded from my memory with the fading light. It was that kind of face. Ideal for a killer.

  I walked back down what seemed the pitch-black road towards Shotts station. As I did so I had to fight the urge to glance over my shoulder to see if the eight-foot ghost of Bertram Shotts, or the five-foot-five shadow of a sociopathic bank manager, was tracking me.

  I telephoned Sneddon as soon as I got back to Glasgow. In fact I ’phoned him from the station and gave him everything I had, including, this time, the fact that Bobby, the McGahern gofer, had had his head mashed in a pretty similar way to whichever McGahern brother it had been who’d had his head pulped in the Rutherglen garage. I told Sneddon that I’d had a cosy chat with Mr Morrison and that we were pretty certain that it was Bobby who had tried to hire him on Tam McGahern’s behalf. And I did tell him about my suspicions that it had been Frankie who had been the first to go.

  ‘So it was Tam you gave a hiding?’ asked Sneddon. ‘I wouldn’t have thought that he would have been such a push over.’

  ‘Nor would I. It was a set up. For some reason Superintendent McNab was watching Frankie. I think that “Frankie” was Tam and he made a deliberate exhibition in front of McNab. I started off thinking that it was to set me up as a suspect for the first murder.’

  ‘But you don’t think that now?’

  ‘No. What happened that night made me more of a suspect for the second killing which, of course, doesn’t make sense. Tam wouldn’t frame me for his own murder. It was a set up all right, but I think it wasn’t to incriminate me but so that McNab saw me give “Frankie” a hiding. Maybe McNab suspected that it was Frankie who’d been killed the first time round. If I had been in a street fight with Tam McGahern, then I would’ve had my work cut out, like you say. I think Tam deliberately took a beating to convince McNab that he was Frankie.’

  There was a silence at the other end of the ’phone. I guessed Sneddon was thinking it through.

  ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ he said eventually. ‘Why the fuck would Tam McGahern go to all that bother to convince people that he was Frankie and not Tam?’

  ‘Because Tam had been their real target and because of the games he and Frankie played with poor Wilma Marshall, Frankie had been pretending to be Tam that night and ended up getting the lead enema. Tam knew that whoever was after him, they were serious professionals. He was trying to prove that they’d got the right target and leave him alone. He obviously knew enough about me to guess that I would tell him to stuff his job and give him an excuse to jump me and take a hiding in front of a police audience.’

  ‘So who is it that’s after him? That’s what I’m paying you to find out.’

  ‘With the greatest respect you’re not paying me enough. These guys are real professionals, like I said. They gave my office a going over and you would hardly have noticed it. And the way they took out the first McGahern brother was slick. Funny thing is the second killing wasn’t. And the guys who jumped me in Argyle Street were more brawn than brains.’

  ‘You saying you don’t want the job any more?’

  I sighed. I wished that I could say I didn’t. ‘No. The truth is that there’s a connection between this and something else I’m working on.’

  ‘Something I should know about?’

  As I fed the pay ’phone with almost all of the change in my pocket, I related the whole story of John and Lillian Andrews to Sneddon. The only thing I had changed slightly in all I had told Sneddon was the chronology to disguise the fact that I hadn’t let on right away about Bobby’s splitting headache: if Sneddon thought that I hadn’t been delivering hot-off-the-press then I might have got a bit of a slap from a couple of his boys. Nothing to put me in hospital, but enough to make me less forgetful in future. And, of course, I thought it prudent not to mention my little bathtub windfall.

  I actually felt better for going through the whole story. Saying it out loud even helped me see the whole thing more clearly. Again Sneddon stayed quiet other than the odd grunt throughout. I ended the conversation by retracting my declaration of independence. Maybe Twinkletoes would be useful to have on call. It was a call for help: I didn’t hold back on telling Sneddon about John Andrews warning me that I had been set up just l
ike him. Sneddon could have gloated — I had been pretty self-righteous about my independence — but he didn’t.

  ‘I’ll put a couple of guys on your tail. Twinkletoes and another guy you don’t know. His name’s Semple.’

  ‘Is he more subtle than Twinkletoes?’

  Sneddon laughed at his end of the line. ‘Naw. Not much. But he’s the kind of punter you want around if shite occurs.’

  ‘That’s what I need at the moment, to be honest. But tell them to stay in the background unless there’s trouble.’

  ‘I’ll fix it up.’

  ‘Okay, thanks,’ I said.

  I was just about to hang up when Sneddon added: ‘By the way, what does he look like? Mr Morrison, I mean. I’ve never actually met him face-to-face.’

  ‘Oh… pretty much as you’d expect,’ I said. ‘Big. About six-three. Hard-looking bastard.’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Sneddon. ‘Figures.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Sneddon was as good as his word. I turned in early that night and when I opened the curtains in my digs the next morning I saw a dark Austin 16HP, about seven or eight years old, parked on the street outside, about fifty yards up and on the other side of Great Western Road. One man behind the wheel. Of course it might not have been Sneddon’s men, but the vague feeling I had had over the few days before had suggested that if someone was following me, then they were too good for me to catch sight of.

  After breakfast I drove west along Dumbarton Road and out of the city. The dark Austin 16HP dutifully followed. It only took me fifteen minutes to reach Levendale House. It was a vast place that had been designed and built as an expression of vast wealth and superiority. It had started life as a stately home: the kind of place you usually saw sitting in the heart of some majestic and beautiful Highland estate. Except it didn’t: it sat on the outskirts of Bishopbriggs.