Dead Men and Broken Hearts: A Lennox Thriller (Lennox 4)

by Craig Russell

  The inn was a long, low jumble of stonework and small, irregular windows. It was one of those places you came across every now and then in Scotland: inns and taverns that had offered rest and nourishment to the weary and hungry traveller continuously since the days of Bonnie Prince Charlie or before.

  In fact, the mutton pie they served me with a pint of roomtemperature beer tasted like it had been in the pantry since the last visit of the Young Pretender – probably when, during one of Scotland’s more dignified historical moments, the Prince had stopped by for a snack before slipping into women’s clothing and skipping town.

  The welcome I got from the barkeep reminded me that dour is indeed a Scottish word, and I was tempted to ask him if he had a brother in Milngavie, in the newsagent business. Instead I smiled and took the tepid beer over to a table.

  The only other customers were a pair of old boys at the bar who watched me expressionlessly but constantly from the moment I came in. They had obviously run out of conversation sometime around the Boer War and the lack of animation in their expressions would have made Archie McClelland look like Danny Kaye. They could have been twins, I thought, their white, wrinkled, leathery faces identical under matching flat caps. They probably weren’t twins, though: this was rural Scotland where everybody unrelated probably was.

  I had once visited Fifeshire, because I had had to – which was the only reason anyone ever visited Fifeshire. Everyone in the ancient Pictish kingdom had shared the same dull-coloured hair and had had the kind of big, long face you would usually associate with a favourite for the one-thirty steeplechase at Chepstow. The look here was different but still familial and I reckoned that, as in Fifeshire, the wedding vows in this part of the world probably included the wording ‘do you take this woman as your lawfully-wedded sister?’

  I sat at a table in the corner of the taproom near the fireplace and picked at the mutton pie. Even in the hiker get-up, I felt hugely conspicuous. I guessed they didn’t get a lot of outsiders here. As I had walked along the village main street – basically the road through it – I had seen only one vehicle, and that had been an ex-army Land Rover whose mud-splattered flanks told me that the driver was probably a local farmer. I took some solace in the fact that there was probably a direct ratio between the number of policemen in any given area and the overall population, making my chances of running into the bicycle-clipped forces of law and order pretty remote.

  I was still pushing the pie around the plate, wondering if fossilisation was a cooking process, when two men came in and sat at the opposite end of the bar from the two old not-twins in caps. From the way the geriatrics shifted their gloomy attention from me to the two new customers, I guessed that the recent arrivals were, like me, strangers.

  I checked them over without making it obvious. They were both dressed in ordinary suits beneath raincoats and one of them, the one with the curly dark hair and beard, was built like a house on legs, while the other was lean and more athletic-looking. Despite his less impressive build, it was the thinner of the two that had the look of a hard and dangerous man. When he took off his hat and hung it up on the rack by the door, his blond hair was skull-clingingly oiled and combed back from his brow and the skin on his hard-featured face was pock-marked.

  I didn’t recognize either man. But that didn’t mean that they hadn’t been part of the crew who had turned up outside Larry Franks’s place. Despite everything having happened as a blur, the two guys who had left Ellis dying in my office and with whom I’d exchanged pleasantries on the stairs had made a big enough impression on me to remember their faces. These guys definitely weren’t them.

  Nevertheless, their presence bothered me. It was not as if they had paid me any attention when they had arrived; it was that they had gone out of their way not to pay me attention, or even look in my direction.

  But the truth was my little trip into the village had been as much to show the dogs the hare as anything else.

  I contemplatively swirled the last quarter of my tepid pint sluggishly around the glass, then I took the pipe out of my pocket and filled it, inexpertly, with tobacco, before quietly smoking it as I sat. Or at least sat quietly struggling to stop the pipe from going out while the two newcomers at the bar studiously avoiding looking in my direction.

  I didn’t think they were policemen but, coppers or not, it made no sense that the two heavies at the bar were there on my account. Whatever the connection between Ellis and this part of the world, there was no way anyone could have known I was on my way up here. Unless, of course, mine host at the bar had been told to make a call if anyone out of the ordinary called in at his establishment. Maybe that would explain why it had taken so long for my mutton pie to arrive, lukewarm, in front of me.

  Or maybe I was just letting my paranoia run away with me again.

  I decided to put them to the test. I downed the last of the pint, got up and left. Again the only eyes on me were the geriatrics at the bar.

  I walked to the bridge over the river and leaned on the stone parapet, smoking my pipe while really waiting to see how long it would take for the two burly types to come out of the inn. They didn’t.

  A false alarm, clearly. If you’re going to get through this, Lennox, I thought to myself, then you’re going to have to calm down. Nothing gets a wanted man caught like panic. Or self-doubt.

  I found my way to the far side of the village and started to hike uphill. The byway I was on was obviously used by occasional traffic, but was unmetalled and more like a farm track than anything. It took me up past the farm and its outbuildings, but it became clear there must have been a second, parallel route up to the large manor. I guessed that would be a better maintained way than the one I was on. As I passed the farm, I was aware of two men in the yard stopping whatever it was they were doing to watch me pass. I made sure I kept going, my pace unbroken and determined, like some wintertime nature lover striking out resolutely to attain the hilltop.

  After a while, when I’d climbed a hundred feet or so, the path thinned out to little more than a trail or bridleway. I guessed I had reached the upper limit of the farm’s land and the path was now only for hill walkers. It took a turn behind an isolated copse before continuing up the hillside and I ducked into the trees. Tree cover was rare in Scotland. The entire country had originally been dense with the Great Caledonian Forest, in turn populated with bear, wolf, lynx and elk. Stone Age Scots, a breed still evident in parts of Glasgow, had eradicated more than ninety percent of the forest, with subsequent generations reducing it even more. Now there were only these odd clumps of ancient woodland. The bears, wolves, lynxes and elks had long ago gotten eviction orders.

  I used the trees as cover while I checked out the farm through the binoculars. It had been a good fifteen minutes since I had passed it, but the two men in the yard had been joined by a third, and they were still looking up the path I had taken, as if they were waiting for me to re-emerge from behind the trees. There was a lot of discussion, then, eventually, they went back to their work, the third man returning to the farmhouse.

  From this position, I could see not just the farm down and to my right, but also the manor-type house. I had been right about the approach to it: I saw a wider, metalled way leading down to the village, but coming out onto the main road on the other side of the inn, near the edge of the settlement. My guess was that this had been the historical route for the local laird to take, avoiding having to pass through the forelock-tugging riff-raff of the village.

  I watched both locations alternately. There was no activity at the main house that I could see, and what there was at the farm was the expected drudgery of agricultural winter maintenance.

  It was about an hour later when I saw the farmer – or at least the man I had seen coming out of the farmhouse to talk to the two workers – walk out through the farm gates and cross the fields, taking a direct route to the big house. There was no way of knowing if his visit was provoked by the presence of a stranger, or if he was simply th
e farm’s manager reporting to its owner in the laird’s house.

  He certainly knew his place, going around to the back door before disappearing inside. He came out again half-an-hour later and strode back across the fields to the farm, never once looking in my direction.

  Whatever the purpose of his visit, it didn’t provoke any activity and, after another hour, by which time the chill had succeeded in penetrating my clothing, I decided to strike off across country and down onto the road that ended at the gates of the big house.

  By now, and given everything that had happened to me over the last few days, I didn’t care about being provocative. I wanted something to happen. Anything.

  I slowed down as I passed the house. There it was: a name embossed on the gate capital. The name of the house. I was aware of my pulse in my ears as I passed it. This would confirm whether I had, after all of this time, found Tanglewood.

  Collieluth House. I muttered a curse.

  This name of the villa was Collieluth House. The farm over the way had been Collieluth Farm and, I guessed, the hamlet was called Collieluth.

  I scanned the house, or as much of it as I could see through the gates. There was nothing unusual or untoward. No Hungarian heavies, no heavies of any denomination. No one on look-out. As far as I could see, I was passing by unnoticed and unremarked.

  I tried not to panic. I was stuck up here in the middle of nowhere, another winter night closing in, without transport, having wrecked McBride’s prized Cresta. I had wasted time I could ill afford, money, and effort in chasing after ghosts, based on the flimsy evidence that a cross on a map looked like a T. And now, I was stuck here. To get transport back to Glasgow would attract a whole lot of attention, even if I just started walking and sticking my thumb out when the rare car, truck or tractor passed by.

  I reached the road, walked all the way back through the village, across the bridge and headed back up the hillside to the bothy. I needed time to think everything through. I’d spend the night in the bothy. Something would come to me.

  It would have to.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Back in the bothy, I lit a fire with some of the wood from the store. I was no longer worried about attracting the attention of Ellis’s Hungarian chums, but I was mindful that I was still a man on the run.

  The only thing that stuck with me was the two men I had seen in the inn. It was a hell of a coincidence that they happened along just at the same time I had, tourists in a season that was as off-season as it was possible to be.

  The bread I had brought with me was stale and hard, but I toasted it at the fire and heated up some beans from a tin on the billycan. Another mug of tea, swimming in leaves that I had to pick off my lips and from my teeth, warmed me up.

  It was only seven p.m. but pitch dark outside. My feet and right shoulder were aching, so I piled up the fire, unrolled the sleeping bag and went to sleep.

  I woke up twice through the night. The first time was when I heard a desperate screaming. I sat bolt upright, trying to work out if I’d dreamt the scream. Then I heard it again. And again. It took me a while to realize that it wasn’t human. A fox, it sounded like to me.

  I settled back down and tried to calm my heartbeat and nerves. Eventually my exhaustion reclaimed me and I fell back into another dream about card games and how many people there really were at the table.

  The second awakening was less rude, and took place just as grey fingers of daylight were beginning to probe the bothy through the small, square window.

  ‘Mr Lennox?’ a voice asked. A hand shook my shoulder. ‘Wake up, please, Mr Lennox …’

  Remembering where I was and what I was doing there fell into my brain at the same time as the realization that there shouldn’t be anyone there with me, especially someone who knew my name. I spun around and sat up, my movements restricted by the sleeping bag. A hand steadily but forcibly pushed me back down. I heard the click of a hammer being pulled back on a gun.

  I saw the gun. And the face. It was a hard, cruel, pockmarked face with blond hair combed back and plastered to his skull with macassar. The leaner of the two men I had seen in the bar. He eased back, keeping the gun on me.

  ‘Please, Mr Lennox, get up and gather your stuff. You need to come with us now.’ The quiet, polite tone didn’t fit with the face, or the situation. The accent sounded more English to me than anything else. Not a foreigner, unless you considered anyone from south of Carlisle an alien.

  ‘And if I don’t?’

  He smiled and shrugged. ‘Then that could make things unpleasant. Now, if you don’t mind …’

  I lay there, considering my options. One of them was jabbing painfully into my waist. I had slept, deliberately, with the Femaru-Frommer automatic stuck in my waistband. But my polite chum had caught me unawares, and – like I said – I was in no position to enter a fast-draw contest. The question was whether Blondy knew I was armed or not. From his relaxed manner, I guessed not. I just hoped he wasn’t going to search me when I got out of the sleeping bag.

  I winced as I struggled to extricate myself from the sleeping bag, a sharp jab stabbing into my strained right shoulder.

  ‘Bit tender?’ the blond thug asked. ‘We found the car. You were lucky to walk away from that, I’ll tell you.’

  ‘The question is, am I going to walk away from this?’

  ‘That’s up to you … Please, gather your stuff together.’

  At that, the door opened behind him and his pal appeared; the one with the curly hair, beard and a build to put the bothy to shame.

  ‘Go back and tell them we’ve found him,’ the blond guy said.

  ‘Will you be all right here?’ asked Curly.

  ‘We’ll just get ready to go, won’t we, Mr Lennox?’

  ‘You’re the one making the decisions,’ I said, nodding to the gun in his hand.

  ‘Get them to send a car as close as they can get it. No need to attract more attention than we need to.’

  Curly disappeared and Blondy leaned against the wall, watching me while I packed up my stuff, coiling the sleeping bag back up into a roll. The only time he looked less than relaxed was when I reached for my camp knife, which sat on the table.

  ‘Leave the knife …’ he said sharply. ‘I’ll get that for you when we go.’

  When I was packed, he told me to sit cross-legged on the floor, with my hands where he could see them. Other than that, he seemed perfectly relaxed and in control. He hadn’t searched me. They obviously didn’t know that Ellis’s gun had gone missing. Or didn’t consider me enough of an operator to come along heavy.

  ‘So …’ I said conversationally. ‘How’s the world of international post-war fascism?’

  He stared at me blankly.

  ‘You don’t sound like some Budapest Blackshirt – so, unless I’ve got my wires, or my arrows, crossed, I’m guessing you’re the local help. Or relatively local … it’s clear that you ain’t frum arrund thees paarts …’

  My humour failed to work its magic on him. I fell silent. I had no moves. He was across the room from me, I was sitting with my legs crossed and, despite his relaxed demeanour, the barrel of his gun stayed locked onto me. Rushing him now would be fatal.

  ‘So what now?’ I asked.

  ‘You’ve been getting in the way, Mr Lennox. My job is to take you out of the way. Simple as that.’

  ‘I see,’ I said.

  We sat in silence for half-an-hour and my legs began to protest at being permanently crossed. I winced and wriggled.

  ‘You can stand up and stretch your legs,’ he said, straightening up from the wall. ‘But nice and slow.’

  I did as he said, surprised by his consideration. After I had stretched the knots out of my muscles, he told me to sit again, but said I didn’t need to cross my legs, if I stayed very still and kept my hands in sight.

  His architecturally-built friend arrived at the doorway again, red-faced from exertion and sweating in his heavy coat. Both men were dressed for the weather, bu
t not the terrain, and both, I noticed, were wearing ordinary town shoes.

  ‘I’ve got the car as close as I can. We’re to take him straight there,’ he said.

  ‘Fine.’ Blondy turned to me. ‘Time to go, sport. And let’s keep this nice and civilized. No monkey business.’

  ‘I’m too tired and sore for that,’ I said dully.

  ‘Pick up your pack and let’s go.’

  I didn’t put the rucksack on, instead swinging it over one shoulder. They made me walk ahead of them, Blondy cool and focused, keeping the automatic on me, Curly puffing away with the exertion.

  ‘I take it you’re not the outdoor type …’ I said over my shoulder as we descended the trail back into the glen.

  ‘Shut the fuck up and walk,’ said Curly bad-temperedly. He clearly hadn’t been to the same finishing school as Blondy.

  As we walked, I could hear them both occasionally skidding on the gravel, their smooth-soled shoes failing to gain purchase on the loose, gravelly path. If I had an opportunity anywhere, that was where it would lie.

  I made a show of stumbling over a rock myself, struggling to steady myself under the weight of my rucksack. When we made the turn that took the path towards the village, I could see where they had parked their car, on some rough ground beside the roadway. What’s more, I recognized the car, or at least I was pretty sure I did. It was the same model and colour as the car that had been parked outside Larry Franks’s that night. If we had been in the corresponding spot on the opposite side of the valley, they would have been able to drive the car along to a spot just below the bothy. As it was, we had another five to ten-minute walk to reach the car.

  I stumbled again and I sensed Blondy tensing behind me.

  ‘Damned boots,’ I said. ‘They’re the wrong size. I had to pick them up in a hurry.’

  ‘That right?’ he said. ‘That’s a relief. Because here was I beginning to think that your little pantomime was you getting ready to make some kind of move … And that wouldn’t end at all well. And slow down a little. Don’t try taking advantage of the rough going.’