Lennox l-1

by Craig Russell

  ‘Jonny?’ I say weakly to the big handsome face pushed into mine. It can’t be Jonny Cohen. I think I’m hallucinating. Someone’s cutting my clothes. I feel a faint sting as a needle is pushed into my arm.

  I look over Jonny’s shoulder and see someone else standing there. I decide I definitely am hallucinating: what would Hollywood actor Fred MacMurray be doing in a Glasgow warehouse?

  EPILOGUE

  I’m standing looking down at a grave. The weather is standing-looking-down-at-a-grave weather: a steel-grey Scottish sky above and a haar — as the lyrical Scots call a thick mist — lurking down in the valley. Up here the rain is thin and measly and soaks maliciously into every square inch of clothing it can find.

  The summer of nineteen fifty-three turned out to be a record year for sunshine in Scotland, but it still doesn’t explain the deep brown tan I’ve picked up. Three months ago I sat under a sun that had never shone on Glasgow. It had taken a couple of months for me to heal reasonably fully and in that time I had sat, first in a wheelchair, then a hospital deckchair, shaded by palms. The shade didn’t prevent me developing this dark tan that makes me stand out even more now that I’m back.

  It was Jonny who had fixed it all, but I guess it was his pals in Mossad who had spirited me there and had arranged for my care. I had a visitor while I was there. Actually, there had been a few, including, surprisingly, Jonny who was visiting his parents, ‘and dealing with some business’ as he put it. But it was Wilma Marshall who surprised me. She was tanned and TB clear. They had fixed her up too, mainly because she had provided so much information about the McGaherns and the operation Lillian Andrews had been running. The funny thing was she had no intention of going home. She had a boyfriend there and a good job and was sending money back to her folks in Glasgow. For once I was glad to see someone change to become someone else.

  But it hadn’t been all sunshine and happy reunions as I had recuperated. Whenever I thought about all that carnage in Glasgow it made me misty-eyed for the beaches of Anzio. So what happened to everyone?

  Well, the police recovered the guns and the cash and decided that it all pointed to a gang fighting amongst themselves. ‘ When thieves fall out… ’ Glasgow policemen are fond of saying elliptically, as if it explains all things.

  Obviously, they took an interest in me as soon as I surfaced again, seeing as I seemed to have dropped out of sight at precisely the same time as the shoot-out at the warehouse. However, my tan backed up my story that I’d been abroad for six months. I now even had official paperwork to explain my absence. It was all just a coincidence, I said. But even I had to admit that it stretched coincidence pretty far that everyone involved seemed to have had some connection to me.

  Funnily enough the police didn’t push me that far. My conversation with McNab was afternoon tea compared to my previous painful encounter. I got the feeling that he knew more than he was letting on: that word had come down from above not to dig around in my involvement too far. Whatever the reason, I found myself back doing what I had been doing before. I’ve even been making an effort to increase the number of legitimate clients I work for.

  I never did find out for sure who the copper was that Lillian had in her pocket. Maybe it was McNab. Maybe not. There were things, or people, I tried not to think too much about. Particularly Jock Ferguson, the one straight copper I felt I could talk to. I had told Ferguson a fair bit about what was going on as I had stumbled along. Or as much as I could tell any copper. And, like I said, I had always had the feeling that Lillian was constantly a step ahead of me. Funny thing, coincidences. I asked a few casual questions about Ferguson. I always did have the feeling he’d had a tough war. Turns out he had been a Desert Rat.

  On the romantic front, I never saw my little nurse again, nor did I ever come across Jeannie, the waitress: although I’m sure it was her I saw terrorizing a hotel owner in the film Key Largo. Twinkletoes gave up being a professional heavy and studied chiropody; he now has a peripatetic practice on the Isle of Lewis. Tiny Semple got his big break when Howard Hawks cast him as the ‘Thing’ in a sequel to The Thing From Another World. Hammer Murphy found God, relinquished control of his outfit and last I heard was sequestered in a seminary studying to become a priest.

  All of which, of course, is total crap: Twinkletoes still tortures, Tiny Semple still looms menacingly for a living and Hammer Murphy is still the concentrated nucleus of hate at the heart of his violent little empire.

  Different day, same shite, as they say in Glasgow.

  But I was never free of the image of Helena Gersons lying with her face blown off. No one told me if she had been working for the Israelis or not. But there again, no one told me if Jonny had, either. Not that I think either had been a spy or an agent or crap like that. I just think that, after what had happened during the war, they had become part of something big that I would never fully understand. But whatever her involvement, I couldn’t forget Helena. While I had been recovering in Israel, the pain of what happened to her became anger and the anger became hate. I had burned with the need to get even.

  When I got back I didn’t tell anyone for a couple of months or so. Other than my landlady, Mrs White, and Jonny, that is. Mrs White had kept my place for me and had even seemed better disposed towards me despite my prolonged and without-warning absence. It turned out that Jonny had called in and explained that he had engaged me at short notice to investigate an urgent security problem he had in one of his distant foreign operations. He had paid six months’ rent in advance plus a bonus for the inconvenience. When I returned bearing a tan that was impossible to pick up in Britain, Mrs White had clearly abandoned what doubts she may have had. I think Jonny’s handsome outward respectability and the idea of an overseas posting convinced her that my work was, at least in part, above board. And the cash would have helped.

  When I got back into my digs I checked that everything was where it should be: my Niebelungsgold hoard and the stash of sterling and dollars I’d relieved from Tam McGahern’s bathtub hiding place. What I had to do next was expensive, but there was more than enough to cover it. And anyway, for once I don’t give a fuck about coming out of this with my pockets lined.

  I made sure that it stayed that Jonny and Mrs White were the only people who knew I was back. I steered clear of the Horsehead Bar and I left the Atlantic parked outside my digs where it had been parked throughout my absence and got Jonny to lend me a less conspicuous car. He did so without asking and I think he knew all along what I was going to do.

  It took me six weeks to find Lillian Andrews. Not that that was what she was calling herself. As I had expected, the trail had been difficult to pick up. But I did pick it up. I would have found her earlier if I’d not had to keep such a low profile. But as Mr Morrison had pointed out, I’m a natural stalker. Lillian had moved south, to England. The accent had changed as had the appearance, this time without the benefit of plastic surgery. But it’s amazing what hair dye and a change of wardrobe can do. I established her movements and kept a detailed log. After a week I drove all the way back to Scotland without stopping.

  So now I’m standing in the rain in a churchyard looking down at a grave. Whose grave? That I don’t know because the name has been abraded by Scotland’s corrosive climate. And anyway, it doesn’t matter: it’s not the occupant of the grave who interests me, you see. Instead I reach down and ease up a broken corner of stone and take out the tobacco tin hidden beneath it. I place a piece of paper in the tin and replace it under the stone. I turn my back to Kirk o’ Shotts and head back into the valley.

  What’s on the piece of paper I have left behind? Just the number of the Horsehead Bar and the day and time I can be reached there. Mr Morrison will know who to ask for. And I still have the cash I found beneath Tam McGahern’s bathtub.

  Funny thing is, I always considered myself too cynical to go in for revenge.

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