‘Not as much as I’d like. You seen him fight?’
‘Couple of times, yeah.’
‘I know enough about the fight game to know that being a winner – I mean a real winner – is as much about what you’ve got up here as how hard you can hit.’ Sneddon tapped his temple with his forefinger. ‘And Kirkcaldy has got it all. He boxes clever. But more than that, he’s ambitious.’
‘Well, I thought you would have wanted that in a fighter you’re backing.’
‘Aye … I do. But what worries me is how much ambition he’s got outside the ring.’
‘Listen, Mr Sneddon …’ I leaned forward and rested my elbows on my knees. ‘There’s no point in you being elliptical …’
‘What the fuck does that mean? You been at the Reader’s Digestwith Twinkletoes?’
‘It’s clear to me that you have suspicions that you’re not sharing. The other thing is, you could have dealt with all of this with your own men, sitting it out until whoever is doing this shows up to pull another stunt. But you got me involved to see if I smelt the same rat that you and Jonny Cohen clearly have. So why don’t you tell me what it is you really want me to find out?’
Sneddon moved his mouth into the ugly shape he took for a smile. ‘Maybe I like being epileptic …’
‘Elliptical …’ I corrected, and wished I hadn’t. The coarse approximation of a smile dropped from Sneddon’s face. ‘Bobby Kirkcaldy has a shadow with him all the time. An old guy with a mashed-up face. Kirkcaldy calls him Uncle Bert. I’ve checked him out and it turns out he’s an ex-razor gangster called Bert Soutar. Bridgeton Billy Boys back in the Thirties.’
‘I remember the Billy Boys,’ said Sneddon. I had no doubt that he did. The Billy Boys had been a Protestant sectarian gang, organized along military lines. Sneddon had only one weakness in business, one gap in his calculating objectivity. He was a bigot to the bone. ‘But I’ve never heard tell of a Bert Soutar.’
‘He did time.’
Sneddon made a face and shrugged. ‘Cutting up a few Fenians doesn’t make him Al Capone. You think it’s significant?’
‘It suggests Kirkcaldy perhaps isn’t as up-and-up as he seems. Maybe Uncle Bert is connected to dodgy dealings. It could explain the warnings.’
‘Okay,’ said Sneddon. ‘Keep on it and see what you can turn up. I asked you about something else. Small Change’s appointment book. Have you looked for that?’
‘I asked Small Change’s wife … widow … she said he didn’t keep one. She said he did keep everything in his head. The police took some stuff away with them.’
‘They warrant it?’
‘No … no warrant. Maggie MacFarlane gave them the okay. By the way, she’s already had a gentleman caller. Jack Collins. You know him?’
‘Oh aye … I know Collins. Small Change had him as a partner in one of the bookie shops. And small-time fight arranging.’
‘Is there any reason that I should be looking at Collins for anything?’
Sneddon laughed in a way that suggested he was out of practice. ‘You could say that. Why don’t you look at Collins for a family resemblance … MacFarlane used to do business with Collins senior. He was a greyhound breeder and racer. A successful one. Truth was Small Change was supposed to have been doing more business with Collins’s mother, if you know what I mean.’
‘Small Change is Jack Collins’s father?’
‘Aye. And he knows it. Rab Collins died of a heart attack twenty-odd year ago. Since then Small Change paid for Jack to go to a fancy school, all that crap.’
‘I see.’ I made the kind of face you make when you’ve tried every combination but you still can’t get the safe open. There was a silence and Sneddon studied me for a moment. I hadn’t realized until then that scrutiny can be aggressive. Something was going through his head. Something was always going through his head, but this was tying up his attention and his expression.
‘Okay,’ he said eventually. ‘Here’s the thing … I told you I met with Small Change earlier that day.’
‘The day he was killed?’
‘Yes. Well, you know the way Small Change wasn’t totally legit, but he was more legit than not. Kinda the way you are. Well, like you, Small Change would do the odd deal with me, or Cohen or Murphy. He never did nothing that would get him lifted by the police. Nothing that he could be tied in directly, like. He was as slippery as snail shit in the rain. He liked to be the middle man. The one who arranges everything, and then he’d get an arranger’s fee or a percentage of what came out of it.’
‘And he was fixing you up with something to do with the fight game. That’s what you told me.’
Sneddon made a face. ‘I know. And to start with I thought it was. We were supposed to be meeting to talk about Bobby Kirkcaldy.’
I raised my eyebrows. It was all coming together. But what was coming together still wasn’t clear. ‘I thought you said that Small Change had nothing to do with Kirkcaldy. He wasn’t in that league.’
‘Aye. Aye … right enough. That’s what I thought. But he wanted to talk to me about some deal he wanted to broker. He said Bobby Kirkcaldy was involved. Not as a fighter. As an investor.’
‘So, you went to see Small Change. What did he say the deal was?’
‘That’s the thing. I went up to Small Change’s place … just as arranged. Got Singer to drive me and wait outside in the car. But when I got there Small Change was shiteing himself. He was white as a fucking sheet. He tried to cover it up but when he poured me a drink his hands were shaking like fuck. Then he comes out with all of this shite about being sorry to have cost me a wasted journey, but the deal he wanted to set up had gone south.’
‘Did he tell you what the deal had been?’
‘No. Or at least he spun me some shite about Kirkcaldy setting up a boxing academy in the city but that the finance on his side had fallen through.’
‘And you don’t believe that? Sounds possible.’
Sneddon shook his head. He spread his hands out on the walnut desk top, fingers splayed, and looked at them absently. ‘You know the business I’m in, Lennox. The bookies, the protection, the whores, the bank jobs, the fencing. You know what my business really is? Fear. It’s fear what keeps the whole fucking thing together. I have spent most of my life filling my pockets by making the other guy fill his pants.’ He leaned back in his chair and stared hard at me. ‘So when I say that Small Change MacFarlane had had the frighteners put on him, I know what I’m talking about.’
‘So did you challenge him?’ I asked. ‘Did you ask him what was really going on?’
‘No. There was no point. I could tell that it would have done fuck all good. Someone had done a real job on MacFarlane. I could have brought Singer in from the car and he would still have kept shtoom.’
I nodded. It was a good point. If someone had been able to out-menace Sneddon and out-lurk Singer, then there was something serious going on. Sneddon had a cigarette box on his desk: it looked solid silver and was so big it should have had fifteen pirates sitting on it. He flipped it open, took out a cigarette and nudged it across the walnut aircraft carrier in my direction. I helped myself and used the matching silver desk lighter to light us both.
‘And he ended up dead the same night,’ I said.
‘Yep.’ Sneddon screwed his eyes up against the smoke. ‘That’s why I want that appointment book.’
‘Not just to keep the cops from knowing you saw Small Change the day he died. You want to know who he saw before you.’
‘Aye. It’s maybes not even in the diary. And you say his wife says he doesn’t keep one anyhow.’
‘That’s what she said. Now I get why you wanted me to sniff around.’ I paused for a moment. I was like the clown in the circus standing dumbly till the plank the other clown is swinging around hits him on the back of the head. It hit me. ‘Oh yeah …’ I said. ‘Now I get it. That’s why you’ve got me involved with the Bobby Kirkcaldy crap. It’s the same deal, isn’t it? You want me to find ou
t if Kirkcaldy is tied up with whatever deal Small Change was brokering.’
‘Aye. And my guess is that it’s fuck all to do with boxing academies or shite like that. Especially with what you’ve said about this dodgy fucking uncle he has in tow.’
‘And the nooses and stuff?’
‘Maybes it’s connected – with the deal I mean, and nothing to do with the fight what’s coming up.’
‘I see …’ I drew on the cigarette and contemplated the silver-grey writhes of smoke. ‘Now this takes me into dodgy territory. You too, for that matter. The police are all over Small Change’s murder and I was left in no doubt by Superintendent Willie McNab that his wife will be wearing my balls as earrings if I start sniffing around.’
There was the sound of aged wood on wood as Sneddon pulled open a desk drawer. He reached in, took something out and tossed it onto the desk in front of me. It was a large white envelope. It was tucked shut, not sealed, and it was stuffed thick. Rewardingly thick.
‘Buy yourself some new balls.’ Sneddon nodded to the envelope.
I picked it up and slipped it into my inside jacket pocket without opening it. It tugged satisfyingly at the material of my jacket, balancing the weight of the blackjack in my other inside pocket. I was going to have to start taking a satchel to work.
‘You’re right, the police are all over MacFarlane like flies on a turd.’ Sneddon exposed his talent for colourful metaphor. ‘And I ask myself why the fuck that is. He was an important bookie, but the cops on the case are too many and too high-up.’
I nodded. It fitted. I had wondered about McNab’s involvement myself. ‘So you think the police are onto whatever deal it was that Small Change was setting up?’
‘If that’s the reason, then it’s something really fucking big. And if it’s really fucking big, I really fucking want to know about it. You’ve got contacts in the police, haven’t you?’
‘Yeah …’ I said reluctantly, wondering how much Sneddon knew about my arrangement with Taylor. Then the tug of the heavy envelope in my jacket pocket reminded me not to be too reluctant. ‘So do you. Probably better than mine.’
‘Listen …’ Sneddon leaned forward and narrowed his eyes. Again he was all brow. ‘I’ve already fucking told you: I don’t want to be connected to this. That’s why I’m going through you. You want the money or not?’
Taking a last, long draw on the cigarette, I stubbed it out in a boulder of crystal ashtray, picked my hat off his desk and stood up.
‘I’ll get onto it.’ I turned towards the door then checked myself. ‘You know everybody who’s got a racket going in the city.’
‘Just about.’ Sneddon leaned back in his green leather and walnut captain’s chair. A pirate captain’s chair, probably.
‘Have you ever heard of anyone called Largo?’ I asked.
He thought for a moment then shook his head.
‘Okay … thanks. I just thought I’d ask.’
Industrial pollution can be a beautiful thing. When I came out of Sneddon’s I stood by my car for a moment, looking out over to the west. Sneddon’s house was elevated in more than a social sense and I could see out across the treetops and past the edge of the city. Glasgow’s air was of the granulated variety and it turned sunsets into vast, diffused splashes of colour, like gold and red paint strained through textured silk. I stood and gazed westward, filled with a sense of contentment.
But that had more to do with the wad of cash weighing down my suit jacket than the sunset. I climbed into the Atlantic and headed back down into the city.
I should have been more on my toes. This time there was a little more subtlety and a lot more brains employed.
I was driving back from Sneddon’s and was passing along the curve in the road where Bearsden notches down the social ladder to become Milngavie, when I saw a blue ’forty-eight Ford Zephyr Six up ahead, pulled into the kerb. The driver had the hood up and he was standing next to it on the road. He was about thirty-five, with dark hair, and from what I could see smartly dressed. I say from what I could see because he was doing what every true man does when his car breaks down: he was standing on the roadway, one hand on his hip, the other scratching his head. And like every true man, he had had to take his jacket off and roll up his sleeves to do the head-scratching. It was a pose of helplessness mitigated by stubbornness: you’ve tried everything and you’re asking for help only as a last resort.
I muttered a curse when I saw he had noticed my approach and was vaguely wafting a hand about to wave me down. It’s a rule: you don’t look too desperate for another man’s help; you’re signalling in another member of the same auto club to provide the assistance that you would provide him, in the same circumstances.
Despite my efforts to the contrary, I am a Canadian. That means, no matter how hard I had tried to cure myself of it, I suffer from the congenital, chronic and truly Canadian ailment of politeness. I may have gotten lippy with gangsters and cops, slapped the odd uppity hooligan, and I may have fornicated, cursed and sworn on occasion, sometimes the same occasion; but I had helped so many little old ladies across the street that the Boy Scouts had taken out a contract on me.
This guy clearly needed help. I had to stop to help him. I was being so Canadian that it didn’t occur to me for a second that this could have been a more discreet and subtle attempt by Jimmy Costello at abduction. There again, discreet and subtle were not traits you associated with Costello.
‘Having trouble?’ I asked as I pulled up next to him and rolled down the window.
He smiled. ‘Thanks for stopping.’ He opened the door of the Atlantic and dropped into the passenger seat before I could say anything. It was then I noticed the small crescent-shaped scar on his head. I was doing a split-second inventory in my head, trying to remember where I’d filed who had mentioned a fiveeight man with dark hair and a crescent-shaped scar on his forehead, when he produced a gun from his trouser pocket. I recognized it as a Webley point-three-two Pocket Hammerless. The youngest it could have been was 1916. It could have dated back to the turn-of-the century.
‘This is some kind of joke, right?’ I said, with a derisive eyebrow raised at the revolver. But at the same time I was assessing my chances of coshing him with the flat, spring-handled blackjack I had in my inside jacket pocket. When people point guns at me, I get tetchy. I decided it was best to go along with my new chum for the moment. There would be time to discuss my attitude towards being held at gunpoint. Later.
‘There’s nothing wrong with this gun, pal.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with my eighty-two-year-old great-uncle Frank, but I wouldn’t bring him along on an abduction.’
‘Trust me, Lennox. This Webley fires just fine.’
‘I’m sure it did when Mata Hari used it to scare off the Kaiser when he was chasing her around a banquet table. Where are you taking me? An antiques fair?’
The dark-haired goon sighed. ‘Listen, Lennox, let’s not put it to the test. Mr Costello wants to talk to you and the last time you got an invite you cut up rough.’ He was better spoken than the average Glaswegian. He was also a cool enough customer. My efforts to rile him and stall until another car came along weren’t working. I could see over his shoulder that a second goon had come out of hiding and was dropping the hood on the Zephyr Six.
‘What’s your pal got? A flintlock blunderbuss?’ I said, cracking the joke with a smile to hide the fact that I was weighing up my chances of breaking his neck before he could pull the trigger.
‘He’s going to follow us. You can drive out to the pub to meet Mr Costello. Mr Costello told me to tell you to take it easy. There’s no need to kick up a fuss. You got all heated up and messed up Tony and Joe and it was all unnecessary. This isn’t what you think.’ He gave an angled nod to indicate the road ahead. ‘Let’s go.’
I looked at the gun. It could still do the job, right enough. A bullet is a bullet, even if firing it would probably take off a couple of his fingers. ‘So you’re telling me this isn�
��t all about Paul Costello?’
‘You’ll have to talk to Mr Costello about that, but no. Or not in the way you think.’
‘Okay,’ I said and sighed. ‘Where to? The Riviera Club?’
‘No …’ My passenger grinned at me; his teeth were nicotine yellow and pitted. ‘We’re to take you out to the Empire. Just for a talk, like. Nothing heavy. So don’t make trouble.’
‘Me?’ I said in an offended tone. ‘I’m like Rab Butler … I’m all for consensus.’
My passenger directed me across the Clyde and we drove into Govan. Black tenements loomed on either side and he told me to park outside a public house emblazoned with a sign that declared this was the Empire Bar. The sun was now hiding behind the tenements and dressed in a winding-sheet of thin grey cloud. But gloom was something you associated with Govan.
‘Oh look,’ I said cheerily as we got out. ‘The sun is setting on the Empire.’ My companion replied by jerking his head towards the bar. The gun was pocketed now but he rested his hand in the same pocket. The Ford Zephyr Six pulled up behind us and the second guy got out. He was about an inch shorter than his colleague, with hair the colour of dirty sand. Both of them were just the way Sheila Gainsborough had described them.
We walked into the bar. It was noisy and it stank. The air was thick with cigarette smoke, stale sweat and whisky fumes. A woman with unnaturally black hair was making shrilly unpleasant sounds in the corner, accompanied by an out-of-tune piano. The Empire Bar was the kind of place you would have described as spit-and-sawdust; if they had bothered with the sawdust. I allowed myself to be guided to a corner table, guessing that Prince Rainier and Grace Kelly wouldn’t be waiting for me there. They weren’t: a short, fattish man in an expensive but ill-fitting suit was at the table, looking at me glumly as I approached with my escort. He had thick Irish-black hair that needed a cut and a pencil-moustache over a slack, ugly mouth.
‘I believe you wanted to speak with me,’ I said without a smile and sat down without being asked. Unlike Sneddon, Cohen or Murphy, Jimmy Costello didn’t warrant a respectful tone. But, there again, it was exactly that kind of attitude that had gotten me into some of my stickier moments over the last couple of years.
The Long Glasgow Kiss Page 12