Dead men and broken hearts l-4

by Craig Russell

  Case closed.

  Archie came into the office an hour later.

  ‘Could you do me a favour?’ I asked him before he could hang up his hat. ‘Could you go down to the Glasgow Corporation Planning Office for me?’

  ‘I’d be delighted.’ Archie said dully. ‘What for?’

  ‘I’d like you to check out any applications over the last six to nine months that involve site demolition and clearing for a new building.’

  ‘What? All of them?’

  ‘No…’ I said, looking at the crisp new fivers sitting on my desk. Next to them, where I had placed it and flattened it out, was the crumpled piece of paper with the company name and address in Garnethill I had used to direct the RAC to my disabled car. ‘Just anything that involves a project called Tanglewood.’

  There were no surprises for me over the next couple of days. Archie checked and re-checked, but there was no planning request lodged with the City Corporation for any project named Tanglewood. After making a few calls myself without ringing any bells, I told Archie to forget it; that we were off the case, and we could divide our time on finding the missing Frank Lang. I went from union office to union office, from shipyard to shipyard, doors opening magically for me because I carried the standard of Joe Connelly and the Amalgamated Union of Industrial Trades. Despite Connelly wanting me to be as discreet as possible, he had spread the word far and wide. Everybody was cooperative, but nobody could tell me anything to help.

  I traced Lang to his home town, or at least the address the union had for where he had lived before moving to Glasgow. I drove about half an hour south into Lanarkshire and to a small village outside Wishaw.

  There was a lot of mining in Scotland. Oil shale. Ironstone. Slate. But most of all, coal.

  The business of digging deep into the Earth created strange landscapes. The mining village I drove to was in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by open November-bare countryside painted in a palette of greys and dull greens; mainly farmland with the odd clump of forest. But this was every bit as much an industrial landscape as the docks, shipyards and factories of Glasgow. In the case of Cleland, as with dozens of villages just like it from Ayrshire to Fife, the industry was hidden from view, deep in the earth. The only clues to what was going on under your feet were the mine head towers and gears, and the unnatural black peaks — the spoil tips of mine waste, called bings in Scotland — that flanked the village. And, despite the rural setting, all of the dangers of heavy industry lay as much here as anywhere else, it was just that they lurked hidden from view.

  I was no Red, but there were times I could understand why Scotland had become so militantly socialist. People died here all the time, smothered or crushed or drowned in the pit galleries. Even children perished here, falling into disused shafts or through the crust of a burning bing — a spoil tip that had spontaneously combusted deep within — and burning to death. I had heard that in some places, at night, you could see some of the burning bings glow menacingly in the dark, but I was yet to see one for myself.

  Scottish mining villages were designed and built as if they were meant to be in urban centres. Ranks of uniform, tiny, single-storey dwellings arranged in tight, ugly rows; exactly the same kind of housing you found in the shadow of factories in towns and cities. The difference with these communities was that the dreary urban architecture would stop suddenly and sharply and you were instantly back into a gentle, rolling rural landscape. It was almost as if someone had cut out a city neighbourhood and dropped it at random into the countryside.

  The village was there. The street was there — short, straight, flanked by miners’ houses and declining to a dead end — but when I looked for Lang’s old place, it wasn’t there. The street numbers stopped before they got anywhere close to the one I had for him. I saw an older man heading out of one of the houses further up, close to where I’d parked the Atlantic — the only car in the street. I strolled up and introduced myself and he looked at me as if I had come from another planet. He was small and stooped and had a face of wrinkled grey-white leather, the eyes sunk deep into it. The retired miner had a thick accent and I struggled to understand him, but I picked up that there had never been any houses other than the ones standing. I suspected some kind of administrative error on the part of the union and that the street was right but the number wrong, but the old guy, who had lived in the same house for forty years, assured me there had never been a Frank Lang in that or any nearby rows.

  I stood and looked down the narrow, truncated street, across the fields to where, half a mile distant, the stark geometry of the mine head winding gear stood black against the grey sky.

  When it came to Frank Lang, the dead ends were becoming more than metaphorical.

  Time for a chat.

  CHAPTER TEN

  As he sat in the corner, a pint glass of flat beer on the table before him, the sound of two miners swearing at each other seeping through from the main bar, Joe Connelly’s fat neck was straining another shirt collar to tolerance. He was wearing the same suit that he’d had on the last time I’d met with him and again it was stretched drum tight over his corpulence. His were not the only beady eyes that watched me as I came into the small room at the back of the working men’s club: Lynch was there too, as I had expected him to be.

  ‘This is… quaint…’ I said as I sat down opposite them without being asked. I had only ever seen the inside of a working men’s club when I’d been in one on business. My second impression pretty much matched my first. Living conditions for the average Scottish working man must have been dire indeed if he chose to spend his free time in a place like this.

  An ugly box of smoke-darkened brick under a shallow-pitched roof, the club was for dock workers, rather than shipyard workers. It sat on the south side of the river, in Govan, at that point where the Clyde swelled into the Queen’s Dock in the north shore and the Prince’s Dock, with its three basins, on the south.

  Rather oddly, my instructions had included an order to come around to the back door, where no one could see me. Lynch had been waiting to usher me in unseen by the club’s regulars, who, even at this time of day, were probably too drunk to notice me anyway.

  ‘Exactly what have you got for us on Frank Lang’s whereabouts?’ Connelly posed the question like it was a wages demand.

  ‘Exactly? Well, the best way of answering that would be to say I’ve got exactly nothing.’

  ‘Why am I not surprised?’ sneered Lynch. I really, really wanted to reach over the table and smack the sneer off his face, but instead I smiled.

  ‘Why are you not surprised? I don’t know… because I sure am. You see, given enough time to ask the right questions, I could write a book on just about anybody’s personal history. If you dig around for long enough, and deep enough, you can put together a pretty comprehensive picture of just about anyone. People exist on several levels. The first is existing in the way we all understand it:, simply being there. The second is the way we exist in the minds of others: family, friends, lovers, acquaintances, colleagues… even people who see us regularly on the street or the bus or the tram without knowing our names or the first thing about us. The third is our bureaucratic existence: birth, marriage and death certificates, national insurance numbers, drivers’ licences, rent books…’

  ‘What’s your point?’ asked Connelly.

  ‘You have assured me that Frank Lang exists. The problem is the only footprints he leaves come to a sudden end. There is no dimension, no depth to Frank Lang. Go back two jobs or one address and there’s nothing. Because he was a sailor, the people I want to speak to about him are scattered all over the world. I’ve only been able to find two seamen who confirm that the face in the picture you gave me really is Frank Lang. And as for his paper trail existence, even that is minimal.’

  ‘This all sounds like an excuse for you not being able to do the job we’re paying you for,’ said Lynch, his small eyes glittering in the dim, smoky light.

  ‘Does it? It sound
s more to me like I’ve been chasing a ghost. A ghost that, so far, only you two gentlemen, his two ex-shipmates and his nearest neighbours can confirm actually having seen in the flesh.’

  ‘Are you telling us that you can’t help us any more?’ asked Connelly.

  ‘Well, that depends.’ I paused and took a cigarette from my case, tapped the tip against gold plate to get rid of the loose shards of tobacco, and lit it. ‘I’ll be honest. I don’t think you’re telling me everything I need to know about Mr Lang and his sudden disappearance.’

  ‘We’ve told you all we can at this stage, Lennox.’ Lynch didn’t look at me when he spoke, his head lowered as he rolled loose tobacco into a cigarette paper.

  ‘I see.’ I turned to the union boss. ‘What kind of car do you drive, Mr Connelly?

  ‘I don’t have a car. If I need to get about on union business, then I have an official car and driver.’

  ‘What make is it?’

  ‘Ford Zodiac.’

  ‘Colour?’

  ‘Two-tone. Grey on top and a sort of fawny-brown underneath.’

  ‘What about you, Mr Lynch?’

  ‘I have a Morris Minor Traveller. Green. Now what the hell has that got to do with anything?’ He had finished rolling his cigarette and sealed the paper by running the edge along the tip of his tongue.

  ‘The only thing I’ve been able to find out is that, two weeks ago, Frank Lang went off with a couple of men in a large, expensive car, either red or brown in colour. Whoever these men were, and wherever Lang went with them, that is the last sighting we have of him. He just dropped off the world after that.’

  ‘Are you suggesting it was us?’ said Lynch. ‘If we have spirited Lang away, then why would we hire you?’

  ‘I wasn’t suggesting anything. I just need to know who picked him up that night. But I do know you’re keeping something from me. Lang is turning into the man-who-never-was. So, gentlemen, why don’t you cut the bull and tell me the truth about him?’

  ‘Everything we’ve told you is the truth,’ said Connelly, unperturbed. ‘Why would we hire you and then deliberately mislead you?’

  ‘Maybe what I’m looking for isn’t important, but simply the act of looking.’

  ‘Is this the way you sound all the time?’ asked Lynch. ‘Or do you, every now and again, open your mouth and make some sense?’

  ‘Oh, I sometimes make sense all right. Even if it is only to me.’ Again I turned back to Connelly. ‘You see, I am a suspicious sort of cove by nature. And this suspicious streak is putting odd ideas in my head.’

  ‘Such as?’ asked Connelly.

  ‘Such as maybe you hired me to go through the motions so you have something to show the police when whatever it is you’re hiding comes to light. I don’t know what that missing ledger has in it, or if that money really has gone missing. All I do know is that Frank Lang is a ghost, and I don’t believe in ghosts. There’s something dodgy going on here, maybe even illegal, and, like I told you, I don’t get involved in anything illegal.’

  ‘Is that a fact?’ Lynch smiled in a way I didn’t like. ‘We know all about your past, Lennox. Your involvement with the so-called Three Kings.’

  Picking up my Borsalino from the table, I stubbed out my cigarette in a cheap ashtray made of pressed tin, and stood up. ‘I think we’re through here, gentlemen. I’ll send you my bill.’

  ‘You just hold on a minute, Lennox…’ Lynch protested as he stood up. It gave me no end of pleasure to plant my hand squarely on his chest and shove him back, hard, into his chair. The force of it nearly toppled him backward.

  ‘Stand up to me again,’ I said in an even, quiet tone, ‘and I’ll break your jaw.’

  Connelly held up his hand in an appeasing gesture. ‘Mr Lennox, there’s no need to get fired up. Please, sit down. We really do need your help.’

  I stayed standing. Lynch’s small rat eyes burned up at me with resentment. But he wasn’t going to do anything about it any time soon.

  ‘You’re right,’ said Connelly. ‘We haven’t told you everything. But with good reason. Please, Mr Lennox. Sit down and listen to what I have to say. Then, if you still don’t want the job, we’ll settle your bill and you can forget all about us. But please, hear me out.’

  I shrugged and sat down.

  ‘When we first met, I told you that we had carried out our own limited enquiries, such as they were.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, dropping my hat back onto the table. ‘So limited you didn’t even speak to Lang’s neighbours.’

  ‘Union officials are not detectives, and they would be very conspicuous carrying out any kind of public investigation. But with the enquiries we did make, we found ourselves in exactly the position you’re in now. Frank Lang doesn’t have much of a history, and all the history he does have seems to have been just enough to get him involved with the union.’

  ‘Some kind of plant?’

  ‘We don’t know, and that’s the truth,’ said Lynch, still glowering. ‘There’s a history of it in the movement. MI5, Special Branch… we know they use informers and infiltrators to spy on the union. It’s all supposed to be chummy at Number Ten these days, but the police still have their little rats burrowing away in our organization.’

  ‘Normally they’re ordinary workers who they pay for information,’ said Connelly. ‘Class traitors. But maybe Lang wasn’t working for the police or the government and is just a skilled con man. A criminal. When we couldn’t pick up any kind of trail, we thought we would involve you. Because of your background, we thought we could trust you not to talk to the police. And, to be brutally frank, that you may have ways of getting information out of people that we can’t be seen to employ.’

  I snorted. ‘I see… you think I’m some kind of thug for hire?’

  ‘Not that. Just someone who was more likely to get to the bottom of this matter than we are. And you know people connected to the underworld who may have a better chance of knowing who Frank Lang really is.’

  ‘Forget it,’ I said. ‘From what you say, Lang is as likely to be some kind of copper as he is to be a crook. And that could buy me a whole lot of trouble.’

  ‘Trust me, we don’t like relying on outsiders, but we’re out of our depth here. We don’t think that Frank Lang was a government plant.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Like we said, more than likely a con man who wanted to fleece the fund,’ said Lynch. ‘But he maybe realizes the value of the ledger. Insurance, in a way. The information in that ledger could be worth even more than the money he has stolen… and if it falls into the wrong hands then people may die. That’s the main reason that your background qualified you for the job. You have contacts in that world. If Frank Lang is some kind of confidence man or extortionist, then you could talk to the right sort of people. Maybe even track him down.’

  ‘So what, exactly, is in the ledger?’

  ‘Payments made by our union to foreign workers’ organizations,’ Lynch answered. ‘We set up a special fund for aiding groups in countries where trade unionism is actively oppressed.’

  ‘What? Like Russia, Poland or Hungary?’ I asked with a straight face.

  ‘No, Mr Lennox…’ Connelly rode the jibe patiently. ‘… like the United States, South American countries or Franco’s Spain. Anywhere where the rights of the working man are being fought for in an environment of great adversity.’

  ‘Why do I get the feeling this isn’t exactly kosher?’

  ‘It’s a legitimate part of the union’s activities,’ said Lynch. ‘But it has to be dealt with very discreetly. We needed a middleman. Someone with special skills.’

  ‘Lang?’

  ‘He proved that he had been building up contact with groups during his time at sea. Merchant sailors have access to parts of the world cut off to everyone else. And he presented himself as an active and committed trade unionist.’

  ‘So he never actually worked in the union’s headquarters?’

  ‘No. And at his request,
we conducted all of our meetings away from the offices.’

  ‘But he took you both in?’ I asked. I couldn’t imagine Connelly being easy to dupe. Lynch and Connelly exchanged a look. This was going to be good.

  ‘I never actually met him,’ said Connelly. ‘I spoke with him on the ’phone a few times, but all face-to-face meetings were done with Paul here, and in places where they wouldn’t be seen. Lang insisted on it. And, to be honest, I thought it was a good idea not to meet with him directly.’

  ‘And you fell for this?’ I failed to keep the incredulity out of my tone.

  ‘He had the most reliable people speak to his reputation,’ said Lynch. ‘And the contacts he had were confirmed as genuine.’

  ‘Although he stole thirty-five thousand,’ said Connelly, ‘the fund was originally standing at fifty thousand. The first fifteen thousand made it to the groups and organizations it was targeted to help. We got confirmation of that. We were very pleased with what he achieved.’

  I thought it all through for a moment.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Connelly, this is all far too complicated for me. And too political. I don’t want to get any more involved.’

  ‘Then maybe this would simplify it for you…’ He reached into the tight squeeze of his jacket and dropped an envelope on the table in front of me. Picking it up I could feel the unmistakable heft of a pleasing wad of banknotes. ‘And if you locate Lang and secure the missing ledger and funds, I can promise you the same again.’

  He was right. It did simplify things for me.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I had, at one time or another, dealt with all sorts of dodgy characters — thugs, killers, torturers, bank robbers, pimps. Car salesmen, however, were in a league all of their own.

  The showroom was owned by Willie Sneddon, one of the Three Kings, or at least he had a major interest in it. One of his legitimate fronts.

  My experience with the Teddy Boy Samaritans in Maryhill had highlighted my need for something more reliable for work than the Atlantic. The repair bills were piling up and it seemed to be eating up fuel these days, which was a problem given that the cost of petrol had soared to over five shillings a gallon and rationing had been temporarily reintroduced because of the shenanigans in Suez. Most of all, the next time I had a breakdown in Maryhill or some other Badlands of Glasgow, it might not end so well.