The Long Glasgow Kiss

by Craig Russell

  Costello’s eyes were wide open. There were grains of dust and dirt on them and looking at them made me want to blink. His face was bleached of colour and his hair dishevelled. The paleness of his skin was in stark contrast to the vividness of the gaping wound that arched, like a clown’s smile, across his throat. He was very, very dead.

  ‘Why were you looking for Costello?’ asked McNab. He snapped the blanket back over the dead face.

  ‘His father Jimmy asked me to,’ I answered honestly, if not wholly. ‘Paul Costello went missing a few days ago. Without warning and, more importantly, without cash.’

  ‘Aye,’ said McNab, his voice loaded with suspicion. ‘Inspector Ferguson here said you told him that when he came up to see you with that Yank, Devereaux.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And that was because you were bandying the name Largo about. So tell me, is this Largo’s work, d’you think?’

  I looked at the blanket-draped corpse. ‘I honestly don’t know. But if Largo is as big and as dangerous a crook as Dex Devereaux seems to think, then my guess would be yes.’

  ‘Aye? Well thanks for your valuable insight, Lennox. Next question: who the fuck is this celebrity client of yours? The relative of the other missing person?’

  I sighed. ‘Like I told Inspector Ferguson, I can’t compromise client confidentiality.’

  ‘Client confidentiality my arse …’ McNab took a step closer to me. I didn’t need to look to know his hands had already balled into fists. Whatever happened here would be only the beginning.

  ‘If I tell you, will you keep her out of it? Unless there’s a direct involvement, I mean?’

  McNab laughed. An ugly, mocking laugh. ‘Do you think that I have to negotiate with the likes of you, Lennox? I’ll do whatever the fuck I want, talk to whoever the fuck I want. This is a murder enquiry, you clown.’

  ‘And then some. Let’s face it, Superintendent, someone is playing a very big game in this town. Bigger than anything the local talent is capable of putting on. Now you can walk all over me and feel like the big bollocks, and I’ll do exactly what you want and walk away from the whole thing. No skin off my nose. But if we work together you could end up getting the credit for breaking the biggest case this city’s seen in years. Remember that Dex Devereaux can’t make the arrest here …’ I looked meaningfully at Ferguson. ‘Yes, Jock, I know Devereaux’s FBI. I knew the moment you brought him into my place.’ I turned back to McNab. ‘I’m not being funny, but this case involves things you don’t understand. You don’t understand them because this kind of crap has never washed up in Glasgow before. Okay … here it is: my client is Sheila Gainsborough, the singer. Now you can let me deal with this side of it or you can dirty her carpet with your size tens. But, if you do, then count me out.’

  ‘I’m a policeman, Lennox.’ McNab looked at me as if inspecting something noxious that he’d just scraped from his shoe. ‘Doesn’t that mean anything to you? I don’t have to wheel and deal with the likes of you. I’ve got hundreds of officers I can rely on. Real policemen. Not Canadian gobshites.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said and shrugged. ‘Your call.’

  ‘Just a minute …’ Jock Ferguson stepped between us. ‘Lennox has got a point, sir. And we don’t have someone like him we can call on.’

  ‘He works for fucking crooks, for God’s sake, man. How do we know that he’s not delivering information to them instead of us?’

  ‘I am working for one of the Three Kings,’ I admitted. ‘But not on this, on something else. And the job I’m doing for him is legitimate private investigation work. I know you have a low opinion of me, Superintendent. I don’t blame you, sometimes I share it. But I’m not a crook. Anyone who hires me knows I won’t break the law for them.’ I stopped. It was a pretty speech. I particularly liked the bit where I’d sworn my adherence to the law. Apart from the laws pertaining to breaking and entering and police assault, that was.

  ‘Sheila Gainsborough?’ McNab asked. ‘How the hell did you get a client like that?’

  ‘I move in the best circles, Mr McNab. Now, can I deal with the Sammy Pollock/Sheila Gainsborough side of things?’

  McNab examined me long and hard. ‘For the meantime, Lennox. But just remember this is a murder investigation now.’

  I looked back at Paul Costello’s body. So I wouldn’t be getting even with him, after all.

  ‘I’m not likely to forget,’ I said.

  McNab remained at the scene while Jock Ferguson and I got back into the polished Wolseley squad car.

  ‘I’ll take you back,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a stop to make on the way, if that’s okay.’

  ‘I’m glad of the lift,’ I said.

  I didn’t remain glad for long. We only drove a little way along South Street before turning into the gates that led to the Nissen hut offices of various importers.

  ‘This won’t take long,’ said Ferguson as we pulled up. Outside the office of Barnier and Clement Import Agents. ‘Some stupid break-in. I wouldn’t be involved if it weren’t for the fact that some stupid flatfoot got himself clobbered.’

  ‘No rush.’ I smiled. Which was an impressive achievement, because a small, elderly man in a worn tweed jacket and a flat cap was looking at me through the rear window of the police car. Billy the night watchman stood, rolling a scrap of tobacco in a cigarette paper. Even though I hadn’t seen him close up, I recognized his stooped frame and wide, scruffy flat cap. I hoped he wasn’t about to return the compliment. I was sitting in the back of the car, with the uniformed driver in front. It made me look like an arrested suspect. I had been sure Billy wouldn’t identify me: he had only seen me from a distance. But with the visual clue of me seemingly in custody he might make the connection.

  ‘I think I’ll stretch my legs,’ I said to the driver and stepped out of the car, lighting a cigarette. As I did so, Billy seemed to peer at me, as if examining me more closely. He walked across to me, a little uncertainly, the meagre roll-up unlit between his lips. At least he wasn’t shouting for help from the police. His eyes were narrowed under the brim of his scruffy flat cap.

  ‘Excuse me, officer,’ he said. ‘Would you spare me a light?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, suddenly, explicably cheerful. I struck a match for him. ‘Lots of excitement today …’

  ‘Aye,’ he said with a bright mournfulness. ‘Too much excitement for me.’

  ‘What, the break-in?’ I asked.

  ‘Aye … Those hooligans really clobbered yon young polisman.’

  ‘Did you see them?’

  ‘Aye … But not good. To tell the truth I forgot my spectacles. Brand new ones and all, off the National Health. Two pairs I got. And the one night something happens that I need to see, I leave the bastards at home.’ He shook his head and I resisted the impulse to kiss him. ‘But I seen them all right. Running away. Two of them.’ He leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘Teddy Boys. Them Teddy Boys is nothing but trouble. Them two was lucky I didn’t catch up with them.’

  I smiled. This time it was a genuine smile. A heartfelt, thankful, joyous smile. It had been one hell of a morning so far: a rollercoaster of emotions. Everything that could have come along to shake me up, had. All I needed now was the copper I had sapped to turn up, the blow to the head I’d given him somehow bestowing a photographic memory. There again, he was a Highland copper: a photographic memory is no good if there’s no film in the camera.

  But he wasn’t going to turn up. Unfortunately, as I looked over the cap of my new best night watchman friend, I saw the next best thing arrive.

  Striding with resolute purpose up from the main gates and heading towards the offices, a small but sturdily built woman with her hair in what could only be described as an aggressive permanent. Miss Minto.

  I could see her taking in the police cars and guessing that something had happened that threatened her little but jealously guarded realm of absolute order. The last thing I needed was for her to spot me; or casually ask in front of Jock Ferg
uson what I was doing there.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said to Billy, turning my back to the approaching Miss Minto and ambling as casually as I could between the Nissen huts, as if I had been going around the back to check for damage. I heard her determined steps behind me on the gravel, then on the wooden steps into the office. Doing a swift about turn, I flicked my cigarette away and headed back to the car. It was now the best place for me to keep out of sight. I just hoped that Miss Minto did not re-emerge from the office and spot me in the police car.

  Leaning forward between the seats, I rested my elbows on the seat backs and supported my head in my right hand, hopefully concealing my face from the office doorway. As an excuse for invading his territory, I engaged the police driver in small talk. It was an effort: he was only marginally more chatty than Sneddon’s mute bodyguard, Singer. After what seemed an age, Jock Ferguson came out of the office and over to the car.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you that lift now.’

  ‘No problem,’ I said cheerily. ‘I would have thought that by now you would be above investigating simple break-ins, Jock.’

  Ferguson shrugged. ‘The bastards clobbered a cop. That changes everything. ‘No one puts one of ours in the infirmary and gets away with it.’

  ‘Quite right …’ I said, and tried to think ahead. But not too far ahead.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  It took me a little while and another conversation with her supercilious agent, before I finally arranged a meeting with Sheila Gainsborough. Telling her that the person her missing brother had gone missing with had turned up dead was the kind of thing you had to do face to face.

  I met her again at her apartment. She took it well, or at least as well as it could be taken, and much better than I had anticipated. I suspected there was an element of blind wishful thinking on her part; or maybe it simply didn’t occur to her that her brother might be just as dead as Paul Costello but no one had found the body yet. It was a thought that was never far from the front of my mind.

  For my part, I played it all down, as much as you can play down a sliced throat. It also didn’t occur to her that eventually the police would want to talk to Sammy. It was only a matter of time and lack of results before they would start to look around for the most convenient possible suspect. That’s when Sammy’s name would be pulled out of McNab’s hat and I would be elbowed out of the way.

  I had things to do and places to be, but I could see that Sheila Gainsborough was in a fragile state, so I gave her all kinds of assurances that I would double my efforts now that the stakes were higher, and that I would definitely bring Sammy back in one piece. Making promises to women was something I did all the time – especially ones like that, where there was every chance I wasn’t going to be able to deliver on it.

  After I left Sheila, I went to a telephone kiosk and rang Ian McClelland at the University. We did the usual banter thing and then I got down to business.

  ‘Ian, could you tell me what a Baro is? In a gypsy or tinker context?’

  ‘Gosh, Lennox, it’s not really my field, but I could check it out. What was the context?’

  ‘I was meeting with someone, a gypsy, and another gypsy referred to him as the Baro.’

  ‘Okay, I know someone I can ask …’ said McClelland.

  ‘Could you ask the same people what significance a wooden box with pieces of wood and red and white wool might have as well? About nine inches square, I’d say.’ I described the box Lorna told me had been delivered to her father shortly before his death. ‘The wool was rolled up into a ball.’

  ‘Certainly, old man. In fact I’m just along the corridor from the very person. Can I call you back in ten minutes?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘What about the description and drawing of the dragon I gave you?’

  ‘As I thought, it’s a Chinese Qilin.’

  ‘Actually, you’re wrong …’ I sounded rather smug. ‘Not a Qilin, it’s a Vietnamese Ky-lan, if my information’s correct.’

  ‘Probably is,’ said McClelland. If he was impressed with my knowledge of the finer points of oriental mythology, he hid it well. ‘It is a Sino-Vietnamese character. It looks fierce but it’s one of the good guys. It brings you luck and wealth and looks after the good and the honourable.’

  ‘I can tell,’ I said. ‘My luck’s been just dandy since I first saw him.’

  As good as his word, Ian McClelland called back ten minutes later.

  ‘A Baro is a clan chieftain,’ he explained. ‘A real bigwig in Romany circles. And I hope you didn’t find that box you were talking about … the one with the wool in it.’

  ‘No I didn’t … why?’

  ‘It’s a bitchapen … it’s a kind of gift, but not the kind you want to get. Everyone in the gypsy tribe touches it and passes on everything ill or evil into it. It rids them of ill-fortune but whoever finds the bitchapen gets the lot.’

  ‘Thanks, Ian,’ I said. ‘That makes a lot of sense.’

  I met up with Dex Devereaux for a drink in the bar of the Alpha Hotel. I told him about Sammy, Paul Costello, Claire Skinner, their little jade demon friend and the charming country retreat they all shared. But for the moment I kept my suspicions about Alain Barnier and his possible connection to John Largo quiet. I had one very good reason to keep quiet: the big American was a good guy, but, at the end of the day, he was a copper. The last thing I needed was the City of Glasgow Police connecting me with Barnier. They may not have been the Brains Trust, but it wouldn’t take much thinking to place me at the Barnier and Clement office on the night of the break-in with a sap in my hand and a semi-conscious Highlander at my feet.

  Maybe they would pick up Billy the night watchman’s glasses for him. The City of Glasgow CID must have had a leading neurologist working for them: they had a remarkable record of suddenly curing witnesses of bad vision and unreliable memory.

  After I said goodbye to Devereaux, I drove up to see Lorna and check how she was. Again, she responded as passionately as a bank manager and Maggie MacFarlane was positively frosty. There was no sign of Jack Collins when I called. Lorna made some tea and we sat in the lounge drinking it, me doing my best to say the right solicitous things and Lorna remaining sullen and unresponsive, her expression one of barely concealed resentment. She knew I was going through the motions and would have given anything for a way out. And we both knew that if the roles had been reversed she would have been the same. Neither of us had signed up for emotional involvement.

  I spent the next two days keeping tabs on Alain Barnier. Because I had so many other things to juggle, including squeezing in a daily visit to Davey, it was an inter alia kind of surveillance and therefore pretty hit or miss.

  What made following the Frenchman especially difficult was that he was hardly a creature of habit. On average he would only spend two or three hours of each day in the office, and not always the same two or three hours. The rest of the time he spent doing his rounds of clients, mainly hotels and restaurants. Wines and spirits were not his sole stock in trade: he also did a fair amount of visiting antique dealers, a handful in Glasgow and several more in Edinburgh.

  Following Barnier was time-consuming and seemed largely pointless, but there was always the chance that he would lead me somewhere that would be one step closer to John Largo. Although, as Barnier went about his mundane daily business, I found myself doubting that this debonair, cultured and educated Frenchman could have anything to do with an international peddler of narcotics.

  I was maybe getting cocky, but I actually took to parking the Atlantic under the same railway arch that I had used on the night of the break-in. From there I could see the gates into the bonded area and pick up Barnier’s Simca whenever he left his office. He emerged at three-thirty in the afternoon; leaving early was something he did quite often, squeezing in a few client calls before driving home to Langbank.

  It may have seemed like a pointless exercise, but I followed him anyway. An ugly jade demon and a dead gangst
er’s son were pointing me in that direction. And then there was the gut feeling I had about the Frenchman too: I liked the guy but every time I thought of him it was like someone prodding something that had been curled up for a nap in a room somewhere at the back of my brain.

  One afternoon I waited outside the bonded docks until about six. When Barnier’s Simca pulled out through the gates, I followed. When he drove west towards Greenock, I guessed we were heading straight to his home in Langbank. I had to hold back as far as I could without losing him. The road ribboned along the side of the Clyde and, despite this being the main road that connected Glasgow with its satellite town Greenock, there were practically no other cars in either direction. We passed the point where I had turned south and camped out in my car by the reservoir. Then, surprisingly, the Simca drove past Langbank and out towards the west. I couldn’t imagine what business an importer of fine wines and oriental curios could possibly have in Greenock.

  He drove towards the town and I lost him where the coast takes a sudden sweep southwards. I accelerated a little and nearly missed his turning. Port Glasgow had a vast sugar works and the hill above it had been named Lyle Hill. Why Tate didn’t deserve recognition was something I didn’t know. Driving up the sweep of Lyle Hill I passed Barnier’s parked Simca. I drove on, not even slowing down until I was around the bend in Lyle Road, out of sight of where he had parked. I pulled over and took a set of binoculars out of the glove compartment. I had to scrabble up the hillside to get a vantage point from which I could watch Barnier. The leather soles of my Gibsons slipped on slimy grass and I came down onto my knees several times, cursing the damp, dark staining on my suit trousers. Glasgow was a city with a heavy-industrial attitude to everything and I had found out to my cost that laundries in the city approached the dry-cleaning of my best suits with a delicacy that make steel-smelting look like needlepoint.