And, looking up the stairwell towards my office landing, I decided it might be more beneficial to find out where they had come from, rather than where they were headed.
The last person I expected to find waiting for me when I returned to my office was Andrew Ellis. After all, it had been his wife who’d been my client, not him.
But, on balance, that wasn’t the most discomfiting thing about Ellis’s presence in my business premises.
Alarm bells had begun to ring as soon as I found my office door unlocked. Not jemmied or forced, unlocked. Archie had a set of keys, of course, but I wasn’t expecting him back until later that afternoon. As I had suspected, this was where my stairwell dance partners had come from.
I stepped into my office and found it trashed. Not as if someone had been rifling through it, more as if Rocky Marciano and Jersey Joe Walcott had decided to hold a rematch there.
And then there was Ellis.
I heard him before I saw him: short, shallow urgent breathing. I found him behind my desk, next to where my captain’s chair had been tipped over and paper and the shattered glass shade of my desk light lay scattered on the bare boards of the floor. He was staring up at the ceiling, the expression on his face one of intense concentration, like a track athlete focusing on the race. But Ellis wasn’t going to win a Melbourne gold. This was a race he was going to lose.
There was blood everywhere, welling up from the wound on his chest, a vast bloom of crimson on the white of his shirt-front. The weapon lay next to him: a broad-bladed hunting-style knife. The sight of the knife did nothing to cheer me up; not just because the size and type of blade would have done the maximum damage.
It was my knife.
The one I kept in my office drawer and never used for anything more violent than rendering open my rent bill.
I knelt down beside Ellis and applied some pressure to the wound with a handkerchief that I folded into a pad. I looked around for the ’phone; it lay thrown across the room, the lead ripped from its connection box on the skirting board. Not that that mattered much. I probably wouldn’t have made the call to summon an ambulance then anyway. In the war, and on one occasion after, I had stayed with a man to ease his way out; and that was my job here. But I needed to know something first.
‘Who did this to you, Andrew?’ I asked.
He turned his intense gaze from the ceiling to my face, moving his eyes only and keeping his head still, as if held in place by a vice. His breathing came even faster, as if he was summoning up the energy to speak. He moved his pale lips but nothing came out. Ellis had started to shiver, a sign that he had passed that point where there was enough blood left in him to maintain body temperature. He tried again, and this time when it came out, it was short and hissed and I couldn’t make out what he said.
‘Who?’ I repeated. ‘I couldn’t hear you.’ I could feel the handkerchief warm and wet under my hand. I felt damp seep into the fabric of my suit trousers, at the knee, and realized I was kneeling in a pool of Ellis’s blood. Not long.
‘Tanglewood.’
‘Who is Tanglewood? What is Tanglewood?’ I asked. He shook his head. Small, sharp, urgent movements.
‘Tanglewood. You’ve got … to get … to Tanglewood …’ He reached up with his right hand and grabbed the collar of my coat, pulling me close to him. His breath spilled in my face and I could feel there was no warmth in it. His eyes were locked on mine, urgent, pleading, desperate. Then, in a second, like I had seen so many times before, the light went from them.
And it was in that pose, his hand slipping from its grasp on my collar, his face still close to mine, which itself was bruised and bloodied from my encounter on the stairs, and looking for all the world like Ellis and I were in the last stages of a fight to the death, that the coppers burst in through my office door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
I was given the third degree by Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.
The balding, fat Detective Inspector, who did most of the talking, didn’t introduce himself or the skinny, vacant-looking Detective Sergeant next to him who did none of it. Throughout the questions about when I was supposed to have gotten back to my office and found Ellis, and what my supposed connection with him was, and where and when I was supposed to have been when Ellis was being filleted with my knife, I half expected the Detective Sergeant to unfold a handkerchief, tap a hard-boiled egg on the desktop and start peeling it, only to have the fat senior copper slap it out of his hands. I knew I was being too glib, too flippant about the position I was in, but there were too many people to back up my story for them to seriously believe I had murdered Andrew Ellis.
And the duo across the desk really did remind me of Stan and Ollie.
I had already given a full written statement, in detail, but they made me go through everything over and over again. I accounted for my time down to the last minute, including toilet breaks.
It was the usual police procedure. A big lie is easy: saying you didn’t commit a crime you had committed is a granite block of a lie that no amount of chipping away at will break. But get the tiniest detail wrong – change the brand of the cigarettes you say you bought at a certain place at a certain time, or who was standing in front of you in the bus queue – and that tiny crack in your carefully constructed story will bring the whole thing down on you. Coppers were never particularly bright, but you didn’t have to be; all you needed to be was methodical, patient and take notes.
The fat copper may not have introduced himself or his partner, but I knew who he was. Inspector Shuggie Dunlop.
Shuggie was one of those strange Scottish diminutive forms that was actually longer and infinitely uglier than the original name, Hugh. And Shuggie Dunlop was infinitely uglier than his name. A big man in all three dimensions, he was clearly a keen collector of chins and, in keeping with his surname, spare tyres. Jacketless, the roll of blubber that spilled over his belt and strained his cheap white shirt seemed completely to encircle him, like a built-in life-ring.
It had become clear from the outset that I was not being treated as a witness, but a suspect. This time, no one had called me Mr Lennox when I had arrived at St Andrew’s Square, and Dunlop was engaging me in a battle of wits. Which, to be honest, was kind of like being challenged to an arm-wrestling contest by Shirley Temple.
The first thing I had asked when I’d been taken into custody was that I be allowed to get a change of clothes. The fine worsted of my suit trousers had absorbed Ellis’s blood like blotting paper. What hadn’t soaked into the material as a red-black stain had dried and crusted on the surface of the cloth and I doubted if any cleaner could restore the suit to wearable. Which was annoying, because it was one of my bespokes and cost me far more than I should ever have paid for tailoring.
But it wasn’t my sartorial sensibilities that had been my main reason for wanting to get out of the suit: it was a skin I needed to shed to lose the taint of death. Maybe then, the image of Ellis’s face as he stared up at me, letting go of my collar and his life, would stop pushing its way to the front of my mind, jostling with the image of Sylvia Dewar’s broken skull.
Once more, I felt Canada beckoning. But this time it seemed to beckon from much further away.
As it turned out, the police were only too happy to assist me get out of my stained suit. In fact they insisted on it. I was put in a custody cell and ordered to strip down to my underwear and they took everything – coat, jacket, trousers, hat, shirt, tie, shoes – and placed each item in a separate canvas bag, labelled it and took everything away.
They refused my request that I be allowed to pick up fresh stuff from my hotel and instead I was given a neatly folded stack of clothes to change into. It was an interesting get-up: a collarless grey-white shirt and a prison uniform of battledress type jacket and formless trousers. It was scratchy, uncomfortable and smelled as if it could have done with another couple of runs through the laundry. The ensemble was rounded off with a pair of laceless, army-style boots, the leather of
which was dull and scuffed.
The prison uniform instantly gave the interrogator an advantage: dressed in that outfit, even I started to believe I might be guilty.
‘You realize you could hang for this Lennox, don’t you?’ Dunlop leaned forward, resting his fat elbows on the wooden desk between us.
‘Really?’ I asked amiably. ‘I would have thought that there was a tiny obstacle in the way of that – and I know it’s a technical point, really – but I didn’t kill Andrew Ellis.’
I was smart-mouthing to push for a reaction, even if it was to come in the form of a fat fist. I was a little disconcerted when I didn’t get one. Dunlop gave a quiet, contemptuous laugh that quivered his fleshy face.
‘Well, I say you did. And it’s not just Andrew Ellis you’ll hang for …’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You’re here for more than the one killing, Lennox. You thought you were going to get away free and —’
Dunlop was interrupted by the door behind me swinging open. When I turned, I was relieved to see Jock Ferguson framed in the doorway, although the timing of his appearance troubled me. Dunlop had just been about to give away more than he had gotten out of me and the unpleasant suspicion crossed my mind that Ferguson had perhaps been listening to Dunlop’s questioning from a neighbouring room and had judged it was time to intervene.
‘Jock …’ I said. ‘Am I glad to see you.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t say the same, Lennox.’
I didn’t like the look on Ferguson’s face one little bit. He nodded to Laurel and Hardy and they stood up wordlessly and left the room. Taking the chair vacated by Dunlop’s bulk, Ferguson took a packet of cigarettes out, lit one and slid the pack and lighter across the table to me.
The room was lit by a couple of neon strips, suspended by wires and thin, painted chains from the ceiling. The walls were distempered in two tones: dark green to waist-height, then a buttery cream above. It was a bleak, stark room and, somehow, Jock Ferguson, with his ill-fitting, dull grey gabardine suit, his long, pale face and hooded eyes, seemed to fit right in.
He leaned forwards, elbows on the desk, his gaze empty and focused on the desktop.
‘You’re in trouble, Lennox,’ he said when he looked up to face me. ‘You’re in an awful lot of trouble, and I don’t think there’s much I can do to help you.’
‘What?’ I twisted my face in disbelief and it hurt like hell from where my chums on the stairs had given me the beating. ‘Just because I found Ellis dying? That makes me a witness, Jock, not a suspect. I had nothing to do with his death.’
‘Whoever killed him just happened to choose your office as the place to do it, wrecking the joint in the process, is that it?’
‘How the hell do I know, Jock? Maybe Ellis found out that his wife had hired me because she had suspicions about his fidelity and he wanted to set me straight. Or maybe he had something to tell me about Tanglewood, whatever or whoever it is, or this Hungarian crowd he’s involved with and they followed him to my office and killed him there.’
‘Your locked office?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, Jock …’ I said exasperatedly. ‘Maybe I forgot to lock it when I left to meet Magda at Central Station. Maybe whoever broke in knows how to pick locks. Or had a key, somehow.’
‘Oh yes, this mysterious Hungarian brunette you say you met at Central Station?’
‘Yes, Magda the mysterious Hungarian brunette. Are you telling me that you don’t believe me, Jock?’
‘Now, there’s the thing … you seem to automatically expect me to believe you. Why is that, Lennox? Is that because you never lie to me?’
‘You think I’ve been lying to you?’ I said defensively, but there had been a touch of bitterness in Ferguson’s voice. Perhaps I should not have been so relieved to see him walk into the interrogation room; what I thought was the cavalry was maybe just more Apaches.
‘I don’t know, Lennox. Have you been lying to me?’ The bitterness was still there. I could tell Ferguson had caught me out on something, or thought he had, but I had no idea what.
‘Do you think I’ve been lying about Magda? Magda is real enough, believe me. And she played her part pretty damned well, keeping me occupied while her pals did in Ellis in my office. In fact, she was pretty insistent that I wait ten minutes after she left before going back to my office. If I had done that, then I wouldn’t even have bumped into the two heavies on the stairs. They’re the guys you should be looking for. Anyway, I’ve already told Dunlop all of this. Magda was involved with Ellis in one way or another and it’s a hell of a coincidence that she keeps me busy while Ellis meets his end, don’t you think?’
‘That’s if she exists. And I wouldn’t push the importance of coincidences too much, if I were you. There are too many coincidences revolving around you over the last week or so. And when you get enough coincidences, you get a circumstantial case. You know what a circumstantial case is, don’t you?’
‘Something you put a picture in before you hang it on the wall, in the case of most coppers.’ It was my turn to be bitter. I had expected support, not suspicion, from Ferguson.
‘No one is trying to frame you, Lennox. You’ve done a pretty good job of doing that yourself.’
‘What the hell is that supposed to mean? Listen Jock, I understand that being found with a dying man in my office is likely to raise a few eyebrows, but it doesn’t take a genius to work out that a killer doesn’t use his handkerchief to try to halt the bleeding of his victim.’
‘We found your handkerchief stained with Ellis’s blood, all right. But we also found the knife that had been used to kill him wiped clean of fingerprints. A knife you admit is yours.’
‘Oh yes … I’m a master criminal covering up my tracks. I wipe my fingerprints off my knife so you’ll never be able to link me with a dead man stabbed to death in my office. That would throw you off the trail all right, wouldn’t it?’ If my sarcasm was making an impression on Ferguson, then it didn’t show.
‘Yes, your knife. But there again you had to admit it was yours, because I saw you opening mail with it that day I came to your office.’
‘Aw come on, Jock, you know this is all crap. You know I didn’t kill Ellis. And what’s this crap that Dunlop is throwing in about me being in the frame for more than one killing?’
Ferguson stubbed his cigarette out on the pressed tin ashtray and stood up. ‘We’ll talk about this tomorrow. We’re still carrying out some enquiries and you and I are going to have a lot to talk about. In the meantime, I’m afraid you’re going to be our guest for the night.’
‘This is bull, Jock. All bull.’ It was all I could think to say.
‘We’ll talk tomorrow.’ Ferguson said as he went to the door and called in a uniform to see me back to my cell.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The rough blankets they gave me had presumably been laundered but still oozed a fusty odour into the tiny cell and I lay, fully clothed in the uniform they had given me, on top of the bedding. If I could have summoned the power of my will and hovered, Indian guru-like, above them, I would have. But levitation was only one of the many abilities I seemed not to possess. Like common sense. Or the ability to sleep.
The facilities of the City of Glasgow Police headquarters did not run to a resident chef and I was passed a body-warmth package wrapped in grease-transparent newspaper through the fold-down flap in the heavy steel cell door. The fish and chips were caked in salt, and despite being ravenously hungry I could only eat half of them. The same went for the tea: the enamelled tin mug handed through the door was skin-peelingly hot and filled with tea turned to syrup by a ladleful of sugar. They obviously had focused their menu to meet the demands of their regular clientele.
The custody sergeant turned out the lights at nine-thirty and I did my best to sleep. I would need my wits about me the next day, and I felt bone-achingly tired, but my face hurt like hell and my brain was burning with images and thoughts and memories as it
tried to make sense of what was happening. Lying in the dark, I found myself thinking of Fiona White, sleeping alone in her flat, my rooms empty above her. That was if she was sleeping alone.
I wondered how long it would take for all this crap to hit the headlines. I hoped I’d be out of this jam before the papers got a hold of my name. In the meantime, I found myself thankful that I had quit my digs when I had instead of waiting the full month. At least I wouldn’t have to see that look of weary disappointment on her face when she found out I was in deep trouble again.
I must have dozed off eventually, but was woken again at three by voices from a cell further down the block: one voice loud, strident and shrill, crying out in pain; two others deep, quiet and controlled, occasionally grunting as if engaged in physical labour. Obviously a couple of Glasgow’s guardians of law and order had dropped in on a miscreant – at the dead of nightshift – to discuss the error of his ways. Maybe the grunting was them rearranging the furniture for their guest.
I wondered if I would get a visit, but guessed I wouldn’t. Paradoxically, that troubled me. The coppers were doing everything by the book with me, and that smacked of keeping their act clean for a date in the High Court, where the judge was allowed to wear a black cap when passing sentence.
The only window in the basement cell was high up and out of reach, but still barred and meshed. When they came round with a breakfast of the same scalding brown sugary sludge and butterless toast, the small square of window was still dark and they switched on the cell block lights again.
It was mid-day when they again parked me in the interrogation room, having left me to stew in my cell until then. Ferguson and his dumb stooge Dunlop were waiting for me at the cheap oak table and a homely, uniformed WPC sat in the corner with a notepad, ready to take down in shorthand everything that was said. Everything by the book for the judge with the black cap.
Dunlop kicked off by mumbling through my caution that my answers could be used as evidence in court. Then they went through the questions. Had I killed Andrew Ellis in my Gordon Street offices? How did I get the bloody nose and the marks on my face? Could I identify the two men I claimed to see running away from my office?
Dead Men and Broken Hearts: A Lennox Thriller (Lennox 4) Page 19