‘Do you know the make?’
She laughed. ‘I don’t know one car from the other. All I know is it wasn’t the type you usually see around here. And that it was dark red or brown.’
‘I see. Have there been any other odd comings and goings, recently?’
‘Not really. Frank Lang keeps himself to himself and is hardly ever at home. No wife, no family. The only time we know he’s there is when we smell his cooking.’
‘His cooking?’
‘I think he cooks fancy stuff. French, or something else foreign. That’s what it smells like, anyway. And he keeps all of these spices and things in his cupboards. Other than that I couldn’t say — my husband has more to do with him than me. He gets the impression that Frank spends most of his time attending meetings and talks, that kind of thing. Although I think he likes to dance.’
‘Dance?’
‘He went out every Saturday night. Always in a nice suit. A friend of mine said she saw him at the Palais. He was very good, she said.’
‘I see…’
‘Do you like to dance, Mr Lennox? I like to dance.’ The wistful expression gave way to bitterness. ‘Tom — that’s my husband — Tom doesn’t dance.’
‘Would it be worthwhile me coming back to talk to your husband? I mean if he had more to do with Mr Lang?’
Something frosted in her expression. ‘No… I don’t think that would do anyone any good. Tom does have more to do with Frank than I do, but not that much more. Anyway, there’s not much point talking to my husband about anything. He gets lots of stupid ideas in his head.’ Sylvia paused and eyed me. ‘Tom’s at work at the moment. He won’t be back until six tonight.’
‘The union told me that they had carried out a few enquiries of their own,’ I said, ignoring the invitation in ten-foot high neon. ‘Has anyone else been here to talk to you?’
‘No,’ she kept me held in her gaze. ‘Only you.’
I stood up. ‘Well, thanks for your time, Sylvia. If anything else occurs to you, please give me a ring. Obviously, I’d appreciate it if you got in touch right away if and when Mr Lang returns home next door. My number’s on the card.’
‘You haven’t finished your tea…’ she protested.
‘It was fine, thanks, but I have to go. Thanks for your help.’
‘You could stay for a while longer, couldn’t you?’
She got up from the sofa, stepped around the table and stood close to me. Too close. She couldn’t have signalled her meaning more clearly if she had been waving semaphore flags at me from two feet away.
‘Sorry…’ I smiled and put on my hat. ‘I’ve got to go.’
As I made my way back to the car, two thoughts struck me. The first struck me like a shovel across the back of the head: I had just declined a chance of guilt-free, no-complications sex. Something I would never have turned down before. But since Fiona had come on the scene, of course, it wouldn’t have been guilt-free.
The second thought was more of a nagger, like an eyelash in your eye: if Sylvia Dewar had nothing to do with Frank Lang, how come she knew what he kept in his cupboards.
CHAPTER SIX
The following night I took Fiona and the girls to Cranston’s Cinema de Lux on Renfield Street to see The Ten Commandments. I had suggested we go to see The Searchers, but the girls would not have gotten in so, in the absence of a babysitter, I sat and watched an American-accented Moses argue the toss with a Russian-accented Pharaoh while a Max Factored Nefretiri smouldered. I was maybe getting paranoid, but as Chuck Heston climbed down the mountain with commandments in hand, I couldn’t help wondering if it was a ploy by Fiona to remind me just how many of them I had broken.
But I had more to bother me that night. When I had come home from work and tapped on Fiona’s door to remind her of the time of our date, I could tell there was something wrong. Her face was pale to the point of being ashen and there was something distracted about her manner, as if something massive and heavy was sitting in the path of her concentration. I asked her what was wrong but she dismissed the question, saying that she hadn’t slept too well the night before, that was all. But I knew there was more to it. Much more. She had become increasingly distant over the last month.
When I had called again to pick up her and the kids to take them to the picture house, Fiona looked better and sounded cheery at the prospect of watching the movie. But there wasn’t really a block that I hadn’t been round several times and I recognized the deceit of her good cheer.
Chuck parted the Red Sea for the Chosen and I cast a glance at Fiona. It did nothing to reassure me. Whatever her thousand-yard-stare was focused on, it wasn’t the screen or the peril of the Israelites. I rested my hand on her forearm and felt it tense, as if she had stifled a start. She turned to me and smiled.
‘It’s good, isn’t it?’ she said, and turned back to the screen.
After the movie, we stopped off at Giacomo’s to get the girls an ice cream. I had a coffee from one of those machines that hissed like a steam train but Fiona had nothing.
‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ I asked and rested my hand on hers. She pulled her hand away as if scalded and cast a meaningful look at the girls. I had broken the cardinal rule: no shows of affection, or any other kind of behaviour that might suggest a romantic involvement, in front of Elspeth and Margaret.
‘I’m fine,’ she said through her teeth, then, with the same ersatz jollity as before, started to talk to the girls about the movie.
Something was wrong. Very wrong.
I had intended to push Fiona for a truthful answer about what was going on when we got home, but she used the girls as a shield, saying that she needed to get them to bed. I got no invitation to come in for a drink or a cup of coffee and Fiona kept me on the threshold.
‘That was a great night out, thanks, Lennox. If you don’t mind I’m just going to turn in. Like I said, I didn’t get much sleep last night.’
‘Fiona, I don’t know what’s going — ’
I was cut off by the ringing of the wall ‘phone in the hall. Fiona squeezed past me to answer it.
‘Yes, he’s here…’ she said and held the receiver out to me to take. It looked large and heavy in her small, slender hand.
‘Hello, Mr Lennox?’ I recognized the voice instantly.
‘Hello, Mrs Ellis, what can I do for you?’
‘You told me to telephone you if Andrew went out unexpectedly. Well he has, he’s just getting into his car now.’
‘At this time?’ I looked at my watch. It was five after ten.
‘He got a ’phone call just a minute ago,’ she explained. ‘Same as always, very short.’
‘Did you hear the word “Tanglewood” mentioned this time?’
‘I couldn’t hear much of anything, I was in the lounge and the radio was on, but I don’t think so. He just seemed to keep saying “yes” then he hung up. It’s almost like someone’s telling him what to do. As if Andrew is being given orders or instructions or something. I have to tell you, Mr Lennox, there’s something about this frightens me.’
‘He hasn’t given you any idea where he’s going?’
‘Just the usual “I have to go out, something’s come up with a customer”.’
‘And how was he? His demeanour, I mean?’
‘He didn’t seem anything in particular. He tried to make out he was annoyed at being disturbed… but whatever was going through his head, that wasn’t it.’
I thanked her and said that I had better go and see if I could pick up his trail.
‘I’ve got to go out. Sorry,’ I said to Fiona, who shrugged, went into her flat and closed the door. Normally I would have expected to sense her annoyance, but all I picked up this time was relief.
I drove too fast to Maryhill Road, trying to close a distance greater than Ellis had to travel. I took the turning Ellis had taken before, just around the corner from where my Teddy Boy Scouts had helped me get the Atlantic started again, and swung the car around to face back
out towards the junction where I could see passing traffic on Maryhill Road.
I switched the engine off and waited five minutes before deciding to give up, working out that Ellis must have already passed by, or had taken another route. The Atlantic conked out on me again and it took me a couple of expletive-urged turns to get her started. It was not a good night for hunting, anyway: the darkness was starting to tinge greenish as smog began to turn the air grainy. I would be lucky to see anything ten feet in front of me — which was exactly the distance I was from the glossy claret flank of Ellis’s Daimler as it sleeked past the road junction.
Startled, I clunked the lever into first, offering a silent prayer that the Atlantic didn’t stall again, and swung out onto Maryhill Road behind him, sticking close to his tail. The fog-turning-to-smog was getting thicker and I worked out that it was maybe drifting in from the North, which meant it had slowed Ellis’s drive into town while mine had been unimpeded. I decided to leave the dentistry of this particular gift horse unexamined and focused on keeping Ellis in sight.
There was a tried and tested habit in the Glasgow smog of playing follow-my-leader, leaving the driver in front to work for you by keeping the kerb in sight, so I knew that Ellis would not suspect the lights in his rear-view were anything other than an innocent fellow traveller navigating the miasma. Fortunately, one of the many things to have failed recently on the Atlantic was the central headlamp; if Ellis had seen me the first evening I had tailed him, then tonight the Atlantic would not be showing its distinctive three lamps in his mirror.
Progress became painfully slow as Glasgow’s night air took on the consistency of broth. Travelling little faster than walking pace, Ellis led me — and three cars behind me — through the city and out to the West End. A couple of turnings and I lost both the entourage of cars and my bearings. Mine being the only other car following Ellis’s made me more conspicuous, and I eased back until the Daimler’s tail lights reduced to faint red smudges in the gloom. It was practically impossible to get any kind of idea of where we were in the smog, but I reckoned we were somewhere in the Garnethill district of the city. Driving through smog demands total focus and I wasn’t able to look out for some kind of landmark or street sign to become visible, but I knew I would need something if I wanted to find my way back in the daylight.
We turned into a narrow street that seemed to arc around then uphill. I wondered if Ellis was doing the same kind of elaborate stunt he had pulled in Maryhill and was taking odd turns just to check if I was following him. After about twenty yards, the Daimler stopped. We were now in a narrow street with only the odd parked car. I drove past and allowed myself to be swallowed up by the smog before pulling up after fifty yards or so at what I hoped was the kerb.
I switched the engine off and got out of the car as quickly as I could, straining to hear any sounds from the Daimler. I locked the Atlantic and found the pavement without tripping over it, then fumbled my way back to where Ellis had stopped. Smog in Glasgow is the most difficult thing to describe to someone who has never experienced it. The oily smoke that the city’s industry and tenement chimneys pumped into the sky seemed to be drawn back into the ground-hugging fog that soaked it up like a sponge. The result was something dense and choking that took the lives of anyone too weak, too ill, too old or too young to resist its smothering blanket. Whatever the chemistry involved, the mix of soot, smoke and fog became something green-tinged and cloying. The simple act of walking became an experience of sensory deprivation where you existed in a tiny, arm’s-length confined universe. My unease in the smog was particularly acute: I had been jumped twice before by attackers using the dense fug as cover. These were, without doubt, the worst possible conditions for surveillance and I cursed Glasgow’s climate with more vehemence than usual.
The Daimler was parked and empty and I considered myself lucky to have found it. I peered through the miasma to try to estimate where exactly I was and which direction Ellis was likely to have taken. I found myself against a high, windowless wall and, running my hand along the brickwork as a guide, I tried to find a doorway.
I almost walked straight into Ellis.
He was standing at the foot of some steps that led up to an arched doorway. I realized that the masonry I had been following wasn’t the wall of a building, but a soil-retaining bulwark that divided the roadway from a terrace of buildings elevated above it. As I had followed the wall around the sweep of the street, I had been climbing to the same level as the buildings.
And now I was face-to-face with the man I was supposed to be shadowing. Stealth was my middle name.
Ellis turned and looked startled for a moment when he first saw me and I was pretty sure that I must have had the same expression on my face. But I was confronted with more than Ellis: I was faced with the fact that his wife had been right all along. Next to Ellis was a young woman with unfashionably shoulder-length black hair. Like the hair, her clothes were out of fashion and looked old without being shabby. Her coat was too heavy for November in the west of Scotland, where the emphasis had to be on waterproofing rather than insulation, and the cut was something I hadn’t seen in Glasgow before. Perched on her head was a small toque-type hat that did not match the coat. None of which mattered, because she had the kind of smouldering dark beauty that made you want to look through the clothes rather than at them. Set above a classical architecture of cheekbone and jaw, her eyes were large and a dark, nutty brown; her full lips had been lipsticked crimson but otherwise her face seemed naked of make-up that she would not have needed.
She was a piece of art, all right. I found myself thinking about Pamela Ellis’s desperate wish to find out why her husband was acting so strangely, and her vague hope that there was something more, or less, than simple adultery behind his behaviour. But I had the answer standing right there in front of me: the kind of woman who would make Ellis, me, or any man with a pulse, act strangely.
‘What a night!’ I said to them both as casually as I could manage. ‘Sorry… I nearly walked straight into you. You can’t see your hand in front of your face in this muck.’
They both stared at me wordlessly, like a couple of entomologists studying a bug. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I detected a hint of suspicion in Ellis’s eyes. He looked past me in the direction I had come, as if he could see through the smog, and I wondered if he was trying to work out if my face and the headlights that had been in his mirror since Maryhill Road were connected. I thought about claiming to have lost my way and asking exactly where we were, but I decided it would be best to move on as quickly as possible.
Ellis had seen me for only a matter of seconds, but I could almost hear the click of the camera shutter in his memory. The girl’s too. There was something about the set-up I didn’t like; secretive rather than furtive, conspiratorial rather than adulterous. A subtle difference.
I walked on in the opposite direction to my car and into the smog, hoping that I would be able to find my way back. I reached a corner and another doorway, in which I sheltered while lighting a cigarette. I only began to make my way back after I had finished my second smoke. This time I approached much more slowly, ready to pull back if I heard voices, but when I eventually reached the steps, Ellis, the girl and the Daimler were all gone.
I made my way up the steps to the doorway of the building. The sandstone arch, like most stonework in Glasgow, was sooty black, but I could see that this was not a tenement or any other type of residence and the building probably housed some kind of offices. Perhaps the girl had not come from inside and this had been a randomly chosen meeting point, but I guessed that she lived not far from here. I found a brass plate next to the door and noted down a couple of the company names, simply to allow me to find the exact address in the telephone directory and find my way back when the smog had lifted.
I headed back to my car.
I sat for a moment and tried to work out what it was that was nagging at me about Ellis and the girl. It was something more than the way
they didn’t gel as partners in extra-marital crime. I shook my head trying to loosen the thought from my brain, turned the ignition key and thumbed the starter button.
This time, I didn’t even get a splutter out of the engine, just a dull, dry clunk.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It took me an hour on foot to fumble my way to a rank of stationary taxi-cabs with drivers intent on staying stationary. It was only after a twenty-minute wait and a slight easing of the smog that one of the cabbies reluctantly agreed to take my fare.
The White flat was in darkness and silence when I got back and I went straight up to my rooms. It had been a confusing day and my head buzzed with unconnected thoughts like bees trapped in a jar. It was nearly two a.m. before I fell asleep.
I dreamed that night. It was the dream that I thought I had stopped having; the dream I used to have every night, for months and years after the war had ended. But it had been a long time since I’d last dreamt it, and I woke cold and afraid with the ghost of another man’s screaming echoing in the room.
A bad omen.
For some reason, I had become a member of the RAC earlier that year. Maybe because I liked watching their uniformed patrolmen wobble on their motorcycles as they passed because they were compelled, on seeing the bumper badge, to salute me. There were times I loved the British.
After I had breakfast, I checked out in the directory the address of the company names I had noted and used the hall telephone to call the RAC. I gave the address in Garnethill, not far from the synagogue, where my Austin Atlantic sat broken down. I explained that I would take a taxi there right away and would be waiting for their patrolman.
As it turned out, a helmeted and goggled RAC motorcyclist was already at the Atlantic when I arrived. He saluted — which I appreciated — and asked me if I would ‘be so kind as to pop open the bonnet for me, please, sir’.
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