The Long Glasgow Kiss

by Craig Russell

  I habitually carry a sap with me: six inches long, spring-steel with a lead ball on the end, all encased in stitched leather. But I was a slave to fashion and I didn’t want it bagging my suit. Fortunately I had a slimline equivalent: a nine-inch blackjack. Basically the same principle, but flattened out, only the width of a wallet and almost like a small version of a barber’s leather razor strop. It was an elegant-looking thing, slim and black, like something Chanel would have designed for Al Capone.

  I slipped the blackjack into my inside jacket pocket. On the left, where I could pull it out with my right hand. The leaden weight of it tugged that side of my jacket, but I decided to live with it. A flat blackjack is often missed when someone frisks you: it feels like a wallet. And I didn’t feel like going out onto the street without some insurance.

  I ’phoned Sneddon to arrange a meet. He told me he was tied up all day and couldn’t I give him the information over the ’phone. I said I’d rather talk to him face-to-face, and anyway it wasn’t the kind of thing to discuss over the ’phone, or some shit like that. He bought it and told me to call round in the evening, about eight-thirty.

  I had ’phoned him first to make the point that calling and arranging a mutually convenient time was preferable to being lifted from the street by Twinkletoes McBride. Added to which, unlike the farmhouse out by Dumbarton, the place in Bearsden was Sneddon’s home, as well as business headquarters. Maybe I could even persuade Jimmy Costello to follow the same diary etiquette. Though I doubted it.

  Before I went out, I stopped at the hall ’phone and called Lorna at home. She was bearing up well, it seemed, but her voice still sounded tired and grief-dulled. I somehow got by with a promise to ’phone her later, without calling in at the house. I did ask her if the police had been around to ask anything else and if Jack Collins had been around again. No to both questions. Then we had one of those long silences where we each waited for the other to say something. Something meaningful or comforting. Something to take us out of our depth: shallow.

  ‘I’ll hear from you later then,’ she said eventually, her tone still colourless, and hung up.

  I drove out to the East End, to Dennistoun. Like many of the fine districts of Glasgow, it was a great thing to be able to claim that you came from Dennistoun. It was ever going back there that was to be avoided. Dennistoun was a warren of old tenements, dressed in grime that had belched from chimneys when Victoria had been a lass. As I drove into it there were gaps and clear spaces where some of the more derelict slums had been cleared. Shiny new blocks of flats were already in residence on a couple of the cleared sites.

  I drove to the far side of Dennistoun, to an incongruous green patchwork square of allotments. Behind those, an equally incongruous building, made out of corrugated metal sheets bolted together and which looked like it belonged in a shipyard.

  I parked and went in through a door under a sign that told the world this was McAskill’s Gymnasium. Inside, there were two practice rings, the ropes sagging and the canvas grey, and several punch bags hung unpunched from the ceiling. It was quiet in the gym. The only person was an old man in a turtleneck sweater and flat cap sitting over in the far corner on a battered old armchair, reading a newspaper. He looked up when I came in, carefully folded the newspaper and came over to me.

  ‘Hi, Lennox …’ Old McAskill smiled at me. It was a weary smile on a weary face that had also had more than its fair share of encounters with a gloved fist. He jerked his capped head in the direction of the office at the back. ‘He’s in there …’

  I went through to the office. A lean man with a too-long face was sitting behind the desk, smoking. He looked about forty but I knew he was ten years younger than that. He had put his hat on the desktop and I could see it was the kind of wide-brimmed fedora that had been out of fashion for half-a-decade. I dropped my skinny-brimmed Borsalino on the desk next to it. To make a point.

  ‘Mr Lennox …’ The man smiled and stood up. He was tall. No surprise: the City of Glasgow Police had a minimum height requirement of six feet, hence the fact that at least two-thirds of their number came from outside Glasgow. He shook hands with me. Now, it has to be said that City of Glasgow cops were not in the habit of calling me ‘Mister’ or shaking hands with me, unless it was to snap a pair of cuffs on me. But Detective Constable Donald Taylor was different. We had an arrangement.

  ‘Thanks for coming, Donald. You on duty?’

  ‘Backshift. Start at two.’

  ‘Did you find out anything about what I asked you?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not much, I’m afraid, Mr Lennox. Bobby Kirkcaldy isn’t Glaswegian. He was born in Motherwell. To sniff around any more I’d have to contact the Lanarkshire County Police. That would start questions.’

  ‘But you would at least be able to check out whether he has a record or not.’

  ‘Oh aye … I did that. Nothing. And from what I can gather there are no rumours about him. He seems to be straight.’

  ‘What about the other thing? Small Change MacFarlane?’

  ‘Sorry … no joy there either. I’m not on the case and, again, if I start asking too many questions, the gaffers’ll get suspicious. I did talk to the evidence sergeant though. Conversational, like. He said they took tons of stuff away from MacFarlane’s place. With his missus’s say-so, like.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘Couple of things. Inspector Ferguson was asking about you.’

  ‘He knows you know me?’

  ‘No, not really. Well not that we … well, do business. Inspector Ferguson doesn’t go in for that kind of thing. It was just that he knew that I’d interviewed you about that business last year. When you was away abroad.’

  I nodded. Jock Ferguson had been my main contact in the police. Not paid for. A straight copper. Or so I had thought. I hadn’t spoken to him in six months.

  ‘What was the other thing?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s just one of the reasons I couldn’t ask too many questions about the MacFarlane thing. There’s been all kinds of top brass sticking their noses into it. It’s like there’s something more to it than just a simple robbery.’

  ‘And …?’ I said impatiently. I knew Taylor was building up to something. Or building something – or nothing – up. He knew that I only paid for results.

  ‘There was a Yank in St. Andrew’s Square. He was in with Superintendent McNab and the DCC.’

  ‘An American?’

  ‘Think so. I passed them in the corridor. He talked like you.’

  ‘I’m not American. I’m Canadian.’

  ‘Yeah … his accent was stronger. He was a big man. Big as McNab. Loud suits.’

  ‘So what’s this got to do with me?’

  ‘Well, you know what tarts are like. The typing pool and the women police constables were swooning all over the place because of his accent. He was the talk of the steamie. I’m friendly with one of the girls who works up in the DCC’s office. She says they asked for all the files on MacFarlane’s murder.’

  ‘So this guy’s an American cop?’

  ‘Don’t know. Someone said he was a private detective. Like you.’

  ‘Okay …’ I thought for a moment. ‘Anything else going on?’

  ‘Just this other murder.’

  ‘What other murder?’ I asked.

  ‘The guy they found by the train tracks.’

  ‘I thought that was an accident.’ I lit another cigarette, pushing the pack across the desk for him to help himself. ‘What are you Einsteins up to? You going to arrest the train driver?’

  ‘Superintendent McNab is as mad as hell about it. Everyone was happy that it was the train that killed him. I mean, they had to use spades to get all of him gathered up. But the pathologist who did the post-mortem said the guy was dead before the train ran over him. The other thing is he had two busted fingers and knuckles skinned to fuck. The quack says it looked to him like the guy’d been in a fight and was beaten to death, then dumped. The train mashed him up to bu
ggery and the thinking is that whoever killed him dumped him on the tracks.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ I said. ‘There was a good chance that no one would question that the injuries were caused by anything other than the train. Who was he?’

  ‘No idea. No one’s reported anyone missing that fits and he didn’t have any identification on him. This pathologist is some new hot-shot with fancy tricks. He put in his report that from the stiff’s build, the calluses on his palms and his colouring, he reckons he was a manual labourer of some sort. It fits with the clothes.’ Taylor laughed. A thin, mean laugh. ‘I think the pathologist’s going to be our next murder victim. Supe -rintendent McNab is really pissed off that he’s been lumbered with another killing. Doesn’t like paperwork, does the Superintendent.’

  I nodded. I could see McNab prioritizing deaths. Nobodies, somebodies and, right at the top, coppers. If you killed a policeman, then McNab would be harder to stop in his tracks than the train that had mashed the labourer’s corpse.

  Taylor talked for another ten minutes without saying anything, again trying to justify his fee. When he was finished I thanked him and gave him the number of the wall ’phone in the hall at my digs.

  ‘Give me a ring if you hear anything else. It’ll be worth your while.’ I opened my wallet and handed him three tenners. Coppers didn’t come cheap.

  After Taylor had gone I went back out into the gym. A couple of youths had arrived and had changed into boxing shorts and white singlets. They looked skinny and too pale. Both were working the punch bags and Old McAskill was leaning against the wall watching them disinterestedly.

  I walked over to the old man and slipped him a fiver. ‘Thanks for the loan of the office, Mac. Do you know much about Bobby Kirkcaldy?’

  ‘Not much. He’s a great wee mover. He’s going to malky that Kraut next week.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘No doubt about it.’

  ‘But you’ve never come across him? I mean through the boxing.’

  ‘Naw. He wouldn’t pish on a place like this if it was on fire. Anyways, he’s a country boy. No’ Glasgow.’

  I smiled at the thought that McAskill pictured Motherwell as some bucolic paradise. I suppose, in comparison to Dennistoun, it was.

  ‘He’s got a minder. Says he’s his uncle. About your age. Calls him Uncle Bert.’

  Old McAskill seemed to be concentrating. It took a lot of effort. He was clearly trying to retrieve something from a brain that had been rattled about in his skull by years of punches. It must have been like trying to pick a specific ball out of a spinning bingo cage.

  ‘What does he look like?’

  ‘Like he’s used his face to break toffee.’

  ‘Fuck …’ He’d clearly found the ball he’d been searching for. ‘Albert Soutar. Is he Kirkcaldy’s uncle?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Is his nose all busted to fuck?’

  ‘I don’t think to fuck covers it adequately. He could sniff his ears with it.’

  ‘That sounds like Soutar all right. And he had family out in Lanarkshire. That’s one bad wee fucker. Or was.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘In the late Twenties, early Thirties, he went professional, but he was shite. A slugger who stopped too many punches with his head. Did a lot of bare-knuckle too. Then he went inside.’

  ‘Prison?’

  ‘Aye. He was in with the Bridgeton Billy Boys. Razor gang. He was supposed to have cut up a copper. He kept his razor in the peak of his bunnet.’ McAskill touched his own flat cap. ‘He was a bad, bad bastard. He abused the privilege of being a cunt, as my old Da would say.’

  I smiled, picturing the cozy fireside scene of young son on father’s knee being inducted into the world of abusive epithets.

  ‘So you think that Uncle Albert is the same guy?’

  ‘Could be.’ McAskill shook his head slowly. ‘If it is, then he’s so crooked he pisses corkscrews. I’d be surprised if young Kirkcaldy would have anything to do with him.’

  I drove out of Dennistoun and had lunch – if you could call it that – at the Horsehead Bar. I ordered a pie and a pint and while I was proving valid the scientific principle that oil and water don’t mix, I spotted Joe Gallagher, a journalist friend, at the other side of the bar. I use the word friend loosely, not just in terms of this guy, but generally for the acquaintances I had made in Glasgow since I first arrived in the city. Drinking buddy would have been a better description in Joe’s case.

  The price of information from journos is much cheaper than cops on the take. Usually a pint and a whisky chaser opens the channels of communication, so I made my way round to Joe’s side of the bar and asked him what he was having.

  I left half an hour later. My newspaper chum had told me that he had interviewed Kirkcaldy on a couple of occasions. Smart kid, in Joe’s opinion. He had mentioned the battered old minder who seemed always to be at Kirkcaldy’s shoulder.

  ‘Yeah … calls him his uncle, I believe …’ I had said.

  ‘Some uncle,’ Joe had muttered. ‘That’s Bert Soutar. Bad sort.’

  It was eight-thirty on the dot. I pulled into the long, uphill drive that led through gardens dense with thick, glossy-leaved shrubs and trees and up to Sneddon’s mansion. It was a pleasant evening. The deepening blue of the sky didn’t seem to suit as a backdrop for the Victorian architecture of Sneddon’s place. Gothic and the normal Scottish climate – and the Scottish character – were meant for each other. Even Sneddon’s black Bentley R-type seemed to lurk on the drive; I parked behind it and went up to the house, half-expecting Vincent Price to answer the door and ask me in to see his waxworks. Vincent Price would have been good: my ring of the bell was answered by Singer opening the door and silently standing to one side to let me into the hall.

  Sneddon didn’t do his usual trick of keeping me waiting and I was led into his study. The bookshelved walls were heavy with learning and the room had a rich smell of walnut and leather. I somehow didn’t think that Sneddon spent much time in here acquainting himself with literature.

  ‘You got something for me already?’ Sneddon sat down behind a tree-and-a-half of desk. I’d seen smaller aircraft carriers. He was wearing a well-tailored blue pinstripe three-piece with a handmade white and blue striped silk shirt, and a pale and plum red tie. It could have been the outfit of a Surrey stock-broker, but all it did was emphasize the razor scar and the hard, vicious face behind it.

  ‘I saw Kirkcaldy yesterday,’ I said.

  ‘And?’

  ‘There’s nothing for me to go on. He can’t tell me anything. This is a watch and wait job. You’ve got to catch whoever’s doing this in the act.’

  ‘So watch and wait.’

  ‘I can’t be there twenty-four hours a day. And I would have thought that you’d maybe want a couple of your guys to be there to mete out some extemporary retribution when they do show up again.’

  ‘I hired you because I want you to find out what’s going on. I mean what’s really going on.’ Sneddon’s hard blue-grey eyes were fixed on mine, as if trying to communicate a deeper meaning.

  ‘I see. So Jonny Cohen’s not the only one who thinks there’s something more to this.’

  Sneddon looked over my shoulder and past me, jerking his head in a gesture of dismissal. I turned and saw that Singer had been standing, silently of course, by the door. I had thought he’d left us alone after he’d shown us in, so if he’d been lurking for my benefit, then it had been a wasted effort.

  ‘I’ve got a lot of fucking money riding on Kirkcaldy,’ Sneddon said after Singer had left, closing the heavy door behind him. ‘More than you can imagine. What did he tell you?’

  Referring to my notebook, I ran through the facts as Kirkcaldy had related them to me. When I had finished and closed the notebook, Sneddon kept his hard eyes on me. He raised a questioning eyebrow.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘You want to know what I think, rather than what I found out. All right … Bobby Kirkcaldy went out of
his way, several times, to tell me that I was wasting my time. That it was no big deal. He positively leapt on the notion that this was all just some bollocks to put him off his game before the big fight. And he reassured me that it would do no such thing.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘It was like he wanted to brush the whole thing off. Brush me off. How did you find out about this anyway? Did Kirkcaldy tell you?’

  ‘No, he didn’t. His manager told me.’

  ‘And Kirkcaldy had complained to him about it?’

  ‘No, as a matter of fact.’ Sneddon’s face remained impassive. ‘His manager turned up at the house and saw the car covered in red paint. He asked Bobby what was going on and got the same tale you did.’

  ‘Yeah …’ I offered Sneddon a cigarette. He shook his head impatiently. I took my time lighting mine. ‘Kirkcaldy is very dismissive about the whole thing. I asked him if it could be something personal – a grudge, an old enemy from the past, that kind of thing, and not related to the fight – he made a big show of thinking about it before telling me he couldn’t think of anybody. Now if it were me and someone was leaving dead birds, nooses and crap like that on my doorstep, I think I would already have done a lot of thinking about anyone who might have an old grudge to settle. I don’t think I’d need someone to come along and put the idea to me first.’

  ‘So you think he knows what this is all about?’

  ‘I’m not saying that, but let’s face it … Jonny Cohen smells something fishy about the whole thing, so do I. Now you seem to smell a rat. What do you know about Kirkcaldy? I mean apart from his abilities in the ring?’