I spent half an hour going through Ellis’s desk drawers. I did it carefully, methodically. Fruitlessly. There was nothing. I pulled drawers out, upended his desk chair to check beneath the seat, ran my fingers over every surface to find somewhere something significant could be hidden. Nothing. There were plenty of notes, that was for sure, a diary full of appointments, the address book full of contacts, but not a single reference to anything that could not be linked to his business or social activities. The only thing that leapt out at me was how unbelievably dull his day-to-day routine had been. Again the image of the dying man in my office came to mind and I couldn’t bridge the gap between the mundane life before me on the desk and the horror and drama of its end.
I checked my watch. I had spent three-quarters of an hour going through Ellis’s stuff and, although I had made an effort to do so methodically, it would take me another fifteen minutes to get everything back the way it had been. When I left, I wanted to leave no trace of where I’d been, nothing disturbed or out-of-place. The only evidence of a break-in would be the back door.
When I finished up, I felt frustrated. It had been a hell of a lot of effort and twice as much stress – and for absolutely nothing other than a torn-out doodle from a dead man’s desk blotter.
I made my way back through the kitchen, picking up the chisel on the way, and out into the garden. I closed the back door carefully, pushing some of the splintered wood back into place with my pigskin-gloved fingers. Depending on how often Pamela Ellis used her back door, it might be a day or two before the damage was noticed.
A waste of time.
I replaced the chisel in the drawer of the old desk in the garden shed. It was an odd-looking job: dense, dark wood. It had that sort of mittel-European solidity and I guessed it was Hungarian in origin, along with the heavy chest that looked like it had been hewn from the same forest. I wondered if it was some kind of heirloom passed down from Ellis’s Hungarian parents, but that didn’t make sense. From what Archie had passed on from Ferguson, the Elès family, like so many European refugees over the last hundred years, had left all their belongings and half their family behind them.
Then it struck me.
I had spent an hour in Ellis’s study scrabbling through paperwork that had told me nothing about the man. Yet the moment I had first stepped into this shed, I had had a real feeling that this was the space inhabited by his personality. It was here I should be looking. I thought again how Pamela Ellis had told me that her husband insisted that the shed was always kept locked, and how angry he got when she forgot.
I had a practical problem. In the house, with the curtains drawn closed, and in a back-facing study, it had been easy to search with the desk lamp switched on. But every second I spent in the shed, with its shadeless square windows and using my penlight to illuminate my searching, exposed me to a real risk of being seen. I got down on my knees, the penlight between my teeth, and pulled the drawers out one by one. They were heavy with tools and I eased each to the ground before emptying its contents, tool by tool. It was going to take an age.
Nothing in the first drawer. Or the second. Ellis had lined the bottom of each drawer with newspaper and when I emptied the third drawer, I eased up the newspaper to find a square, flat package wrapped in waxed paper. When I opened it, I found an Ordnance Survey map and nothing else. But there was no doubt that a real effort had been made to conceal the package, so I slipped it into the pocket of my duffle coat. At last, I was maybe getting somewhere.
The chest was locked with a heavy padlock. Retrieving the chisel from the desk drawer, I jammed it as a lever into the loop of the padlock and twisted, using all my strength, but it wouldn’t give. I was running out of time, but there was a difference in being stuck in the shed if Pamela Ellis and her escort returned and being caught in the house itself. Nevertheless, it was still a risk I didn’t want to take. I opened the shed door and leaned my head out, checking down the drive and the street as far as I could see it, and listening for any sounds nearby. Everything was quiet. I went back into the shed and took a large steel-headed mallet from where it hung on the shed wall. I swung. The padlock clashed and rattled but didn’t break. Hitting the padlock made too much noise and I was going to have to be quick. I hit it another three times, taking full swings at it and was rewarded with a deformed, but still clamped shut padlock. I tried the chisel again and this time the weakened padlock gave way.
It was a huge effort for nothing. The chest, as far as I could see, was filled with more tools; larger or heavier ones that would not have fitted into the desk drawers. Ellis’s fastidiousness made my job easier; other than the largest tools such as the heavy bolt cutters with two foot long handles which were left loose, everything was sorted and kept in wooden boxes, which I was able to lift out and examine one by one, laying them on the shed floor. But it was another fruitless search. The only discovery I had made was that Ellis had a staggering array of tools even for the most dedicated do-it-yourselfer. I picked up the bolt cutters, trying not to think how Twinkletoes had used such implements in his colourful past, and placed them back in the chest.
I noticed the carved chest was thick-walled and heavy-lidded, so I assumed the base would be similarly thick. But, putting the bolt cutters back, I was aware that the chest was far shallower than it should be. Using the handles of the cutters as a guide to measure the well of the chest compared to its outer wall, I reckoned there was a good six-inch disparity, over and above the thickness I would have expected from the walls and lid.
A false bottom.
I ran my fingers around the inside edges of the chest’s base, looking for a trigger or catch to release the bottom, but all I could find was a natural looking notch in the wood, a few inches from the edge. I went back to the shelves and ripped the lid off a jar of nails, took one and leaned on it with the head of the steel mallet to bend it into a hook. My bet was that Ellis already had a hook hidden somewhere in the shed, but I didn’t have time to look for it. Going back to the chest, I twisted and wiggled the bent nail into the notch. I got purchase on the base and it lifted clear. I had been right.
This hulking, ugly hunk of wood in the corner of a garden shed turned out to be a treasure chest. There were four packages, all wrapped in the same waxed paper as the map I had found. But these had been hidden away more carefully. And with good reason.
The first contained a heavy cardboard box, just big enough for the automatic pistol and spare magazine it held. The Bearsden Rotary Club, I guessed, hadn’t known about this. The other three packages contained cash. Banknotes. One contained US dollars, the second Bank of England ten-pound notes, the third German marks. Even without counting it, I could tell it was a small fortune. It was the kind of pot-of-gold that gave you ideas and made you jump to conclusions. My first idea was where I could stash the cash to add to my repatriation fund, should the local constabulary decide to be difficult about me liquidating my other assets. And my first conclusion was that this was dirty money. Maybe not from a dirty source, but for a dirty use. Whatever his little Hungarian cycling club were up to, I guessed that Ellis had been the treasurer. The banker. Something he had found out had made him hold back funds, which was why his playmates had hit his business safe.
That, as far as I was concerned, made this money up for grabs. But I came down with a bout of that ailment that had been plaguing me increasingly of late: a bad attack of morality.
I thought of all that Pamela Ellis had been through – the confusion, the grief, the fear. She wouldn’t know about this stash. Nobody except Ellis did, I guessed.
Dirty or not, this money belonged to Pamela Ellis and I was going to make sure she got it. I didn’t want the coppers to get their hands on it and would do everything I could to avoid that happening, but, at the end of the day, I had probably just worked out the motive for Ellis’s murder – someone else’s motive – and it might end up being the only card I had to play.
Stuffing the three packets into the duffle coat’s pockets
, I turned my attention to the pistol. It was a Browning-type nine-millimetre automatic, and when I examined it, I saw the name Femaru-Frommer tooled into the barrel flank: a gun I’d neither seen or heard of before. Despite being a pretty standard Browning configuration, it had one highly unusual feature: a curved finger rest that hooked out from the base of the magazine.
I released the box magazine from the well and slipped it and the spare into my inside coat pocket. Then I tucked the pistol into the waistband of my trousers. Given my current predicament, it was probably on the insanely reckless side of inadvisable to wander around Glasgow heavy with an illegal gun, but I suspected that the police were the least of my worries.
There was no way I was going to end up like Ellis without putting up a fight.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
It was still a bright, cold night and I found myself wishing for a wisp or two of the smog that had cloaked my city-crossing skulk the night of my escape. I guessed, however, that my getup and set of wheels were as good a disguise as I could have.
Stopping the Cresta out of sight, I tugged my cap’s peak down over my eyes, walked back to where I’d seen a late-night street vendor and bought an evening paper. Still nothing about me. I was beginning to find my lack of mention, however welcome, rather strange.
I took a slow drive along Broomielaw without stopping, checking out for any watching coppers or cars with their engines running, before doing a city block loop and coming back.
Larry Franks was doing his best to look casual, hanging on the corner across from the Paradise Club and smoking. I was on time, so I guessed he couldn’t have been waiting too long. He snapped a cigarette away into the street as he saw my second approach; I pulled up to the kerb.
‘The coppers give you that?’ he asked when he got in, nodding to the bruise on my face. I had hoped it would have faded, but it had simply changed tones: an identifying mark that would be with me for a week or so.
‘No, not the coppers,’ I said, looking in my rear-view mirror before driving off.
‘Nobody’s watching the club,’ he said. ‘And I really don’t think anyone’s tapped the telephone. The coppers aren’t taking the subtle approach. Jonny’s been hauled in three times and they’ve leaned on him pretty hard. But they’re doing the leaning because they’ve got nothing else now. He told me he owes you for that and wanted me to tell you he won’t forget it.’
I didn’t say anything. Having sentenced a man to death was not something I wanted gratitude for.
‘Jonny also knows all about your problem with the police. Like I said on the ’phone, a couple of coppers came in twice, asking for you. Turn here, over the bridge,’ said Franks. ‘I live in Newton Mearns. But you’d have guessed that already.’
I smiled. Newton Mearns was known locally as Tel Aviv on the Clyde. Jonny Cohen lived there as well.
‘These two coppers …’ I said, as we crossed the Jamaica Bridge and into the South Side. ‘Anyone you know?’
‘Never seen either of them before. One had an Englishy-type accent, which you don’t often hear in a Glasgow copper.’
‘But they showed you their warrant cards?’
‘Yeah … or more that they flashed them at me. But these boys couldn’t be anything other than coppers. You know the type.’
And I did. More specifically, I knew two in particular who were exactly the type. With Special Branch warrant cards.
‘So what did you find out on those names?’ I asked.
‘I’ve got more than the names for you,’ said Franks. ‘I’ll go over it all when we get back to my place. I’ve fixed up a bed in the spare room. I guess you’re looking for a place to lie low.’
‘The bed for tonight’s great, Larry, I appreciate it. But after that, I’ve got plans.’ I trusted Franks and I trusted Cohen more, but the barge was going to stay a secret between me and Twinkle. Who, bizarrely, I found myself trusting the most.
We spent the rest of the drive chatting, but I kept checking the rear-view mirror as we did so and was aware of Franks doing the same with the wing mirror.
Franks’s flat was in a newly built, boxy concrete horseshoe of apartments. It was right on the edge of Newton Mearns and, even in the dark, I could see the black clouds of silhouetted trees rolling across the landscape and into the distance. It was, for me, a uniquely Scottish thing: the way hard-edged, asphalt urbanism could come to a sudden stop and open landscape began, without any graduation between. It was the same phenomenon I’d experienced in the Lanarkshire mining village when I’d gone hunting for Frank Lang’s supposed birthplace.
Larry Franks’s flat was on the top floor of three and it was a nice place. Cool and calm, and somehow nothing like I had expected. Everything was clean and modern, including the Danish-style furniture; but it wasn’t the strident, clumsy modernity of the Dewars’ Dennistoun terrace. It was tasteful. And expensive: I guessed that Franks made more than a bob or two running the Paradise Club, and much of that income would not have been allowed to add to the taxman’s workload.
‘You hungry? I’m hungry,’ he said, and headed towards the kitchen. ‘Sit down and I’ll fix you a sandwich.’
I did what he said. I was hungry. Before he went into the kitchen, Franks poured two Scotches and handed me one. As I sipped it, I took in more of my surroundings. Everything new. This was what it was like, I guessed, not to have a history. To have to start everything again anew.
The only things that were of any kind of vintage were the photographs on the mantelpiece. Even they were in modern frames, but the photographs themselves were creased and one had a corner torn and missing. I guessed they were of family, but when Franks came back in from the kitchen, I didn’t ask. There were a lot of questions you didn’t ask of a man with a number tattooed on his forearm. Asking about his family was one of them.
He placed a plate on the G-Plan coffee table in front of me and I started to eat.
‘Cheese and ham?’ I asked disbelievingly.
‘Don’t you like cheese?’ he asked, grinning.
‘Cheese and ham’s fine by me. Now, what did you find out about those names?’
‘Well, all three are scam-merchants, like you say. But that’s like saying the guy who does the toilet signs for the Corporation and Michelangelo are both painters.’
‘So who’s the signpainter and who’s Michelangelo?’
‘Well, let’s put it this way, you were right to say Eddy Leggat was your best bet to find. Dennis Annan, or whatever name he uses now, is definitely the Michelangelo of long-firm fraud. He can spend years setting up a fraud and then makes a big hit. Eddy Leggat is the middleweight. The third guy on the list is small fry, and anyway he’s in prison.’
‘Does anyone know what Annan looks like?’
‘I don’t. I think Jonny’s maybe met him, but a long time ago. He isn’t your Frank Lang, or whoever the guy in the photograph was. Jonny would have recognized him.’
‘Have you got me anything on Leggat?’
Franks got up and went over to a low level oak bureau. When he came back he had a heavy envelope and a slip of paper in his hand. He handed me the note and I saw it had an address in Anniesland on it.
‘Anniesland?’ I asked incredulously. ‘The profits of long-firm fraud only get you as far as Anniesland?’
‘That’s where he is now. Recuperating.’
‘Recuperating?’
‘Recuperating … His last scam was a phoney travel agency business, taking cash directly from punters for bus tour holidays of the Lake District, Blackpool, that sort of crap. But his big score was selling tickets for a bogus trip to Lourdes for the genuflection set. Turns out one of the punters he ripped off was some old biddy with a bad back she wanted Our Lady to fix for her. An old biddy by the name of Murphy … as in her nephew, Hammer Murphy.’
‘Ouch …’
‘Yeah … ouch. I believe Leggat said that when Murphy and his boys came to visit. Over and over again.’
‘He doesn’t sound like
he’s the mastermind of deception I’m looking for.’
‘It’s not what he knows, it’s who he knows,’ said Franks.
‘You said you had more than the names for me?’
‘That I have …’ He handed me the envelope and I opened it.
‘Shit …’ I said, bemused, when I saw the contents.
‘Travelling funds, Jonny said. Enough to get you out of the country and back to Canada. Enough to take the less conventional or obvious route.’
I looked at the swollen envelope. There was a couple of thousand in it, enough to buy all of the flats in the block.
‘Tell Jonny that I’ll return this, when everything is over.’
‘I got the impression it was non-returnable. Whatever happens.’
I took a deep breath. ‘Okay,’ I said, and slipped the envelope into the pocket of the tweed jacket.
We finished our sandwiches and then another whisky. We sat and smoked and drank and Franks even made me laugh with some bad jokes. For the first time in days I felt like a normal guy with no worries.
He asked me if I wanted a coffee and I said yes, following him into the kitchen with my plate. The kitchen was like the rest of the flat: clean, tidy, efficient, all built-in and modern lines. Even the jumble of notes, calendar and photographs pinned to the cork notice board on the wall by the door seemed to have a kind of organization to it. He had a small espresso pot on the hob and I knew that I was going to taste real coffee for the first time in a long time.
‘Do you miss Hungary?’ I asked. He turned to me, as if surprised by the question.
‘Do you miss Canada?’
‘Every day.’
‘Well then. The difference is you rejected Canada instead of the other way around. That’s the difference between an emigrant and a refugee, I suppose. Hungary didn’t so much reject me as spit me out.’
He handed me my coffee and I turned to head back into the living room when I noticed one particular photograph, actually a press cutting, pinned to the cork board.
Dead Men and Broken Hearts: A Lennox Thriller (Lennox 4) Page 27