Archie was out too, flanking Twinkle on the other side. We stood with our backs to the van, its engine still running, watching the mouth of the alley.
Nothing.
‘Could they have gone past?’
‘Doubt it,’ Twinkle growled. ‘I was watching it till we made the turn.’
We stood for a few seconds more in expectant silence. I braced when I heard a motor, but it turned out to be a grubby coal truck – a moving darkness against a dark landscape – and it passed by the mouth of the tenement alley without stopping. I took in our brick and cobble redoubt. Banners of washday linen, hanging on lines looped between the windows, were the only brightness against Victorian tenements grimed black by a century of industrial toil; even the broken-paved street seemed sleeked with a sooty grease. It was a darkness that seemed to suck the light of the unreflected sun out of an otherwise bright day.
I realized we had attracted a small audience of children. Four boys and a girl, all maybe nine to eleven – although Glasgow kept its children small and they could have been older – stood mutely watching us, their faces, hands and clothes smirched from play in the grimy street, as if the darkness that surrounded them had already begun to claim them.
I turned to Twinkletoes, then nodded in the direction of the main road. He nodded and headed off to the road end, looked in both directions before turning back and shaking his head.
As Twinkle made his way back towards us, one of the kids who’d been watching us impassively made his way over to me. He wasn’t the biggest of the boys but was clearly the leader of the sad little group. Again I cast a nervous eye towards the road end: the last thing I wanted was for kids to get caught up in it if things went south.
Still no van appeared at the road end.
‘I got the number, like you said.’ Twinkle held up a small notebook. ‘SLR 882.’
‘You sure you got it right?’
‘Sure, boss. SLR 882.’
‘Good work. Thanks, Twinkle.’
I felt the tugging of small fingers on my sleeve and looked down. The boy’s face, topped with a sprout of unbrushed, black hair, was so pale that the dirt from his playing stood out like dark bruises.
‘Excuse me, mister . . .’ he said. ‘Are you the ice cream van?’
‘No, sonny,’ I said, smiling. ‘Sorry.’
‘You’re definitely no’ the ice cream van?’
I shook my head.
‘Oh . . . Well if you’re no’ the ice cream van,’ he said without changing tone, ‘then why don’t yous fuck off.’ A sharp pain jabbed through my ankle – the same ankle I’d injured the night of Tommy’s death – as he kicked me hard and ran off, he and his pals laughing raucously as they did so. He turned just before he and his pals were swallowed up by the black mouth of an entrance to tenement close. ‘Yah bunch o’ fannies!’
The loud roaring laughter of his playmates echoed in the china-tiled close.
‘Little bastard . . .’ I muttered, rubbing my bruised ankle.
‘From small acorns . . .’ said Archie.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ I said and climbed back in the van.
8
I couldn’t work out what would have been more suspicious: for me to go to Quiet Tommy’s funeral or if I stayed away. The truth was that the police had shown no interest in me – and very little in Tommy’s death, for that matter – and there was nothing to link me to the events of the night of his death.
But my paranoia was not totally unfounded: Quiet Tommy Quaid had, in his own words, been a craftsman; a craft which had been employed at one time or another by each of the Three Kings, and anyone else who had something they wanted liberated from the inconvenience of lawful ownership. There was always the chance that Tommy’s funeral could see a turnout of the great and bad from Glasgow’s underworld, which also meant the City of Glasgow Police would make the effort too. Liked as Tommy was by his opposite numbers in blue, the constabulary’s interest in his funeral would be more than a paying of grudging respect. The police would want to see who turned up; again, that interest wouldn’t have anything to do with how the thief had met his end, but what connections could be made between funeral attendees. There was also the chance that the odd outstanding warrant could be discreetly executed at the cemetery gates.
Given Tommy’s atheistic leanings, it didn’t surprise me at all that there was no church service, nor any clergyman at the interment. Someone had coughed up the funds, however, and Tommy was brought to his final resting place in the Glasgow Necropolis by the Co-operative’s finest. The polished and waxed coachwork on the Austin Sheerline hearse gleamed and sparkled in the bright July sunshine – the same sunshine that forced me to wear sunglasses and nagged me to take off my jacket. I couldn’t help but think that Tommy would have appreciated the weather’s complete lack of funereal tone.
I could tell from the cars lined up outside the cemetery that there was a good turn-out for Tommy: two Bentleys and a Jaguar, all new and polished to a mirror sheen, declared the regal presence of all Three Kings. A lot of Tommy’s former associates had clearly turned up, and the fundamental flaw in the whole crime-doesn’t-pay thing was highlighted by another Jaguar, two Rovers, a Daimler and an Armstrong-Siddeley Sapphire parked at the cemetery gates. Parked among them was a battered old Morris Oxford and a two-tone, light blue over cream Ford Consul. At the time, I had no idea that I would later have good cause to remember the Consul in the ice cream colours.
I decided against watching proceedings from a distance: I had noticed Jock Ferguson and a couple of younger CID guys taking up that position as I had come in through the main gates with the other mourners. I had been expecting the police, of course, but I was surprised that Jock had taken a personal interest. He looked in my direction when I arrived; I deliberately smiled and gave a small nothing-odd-about-me-being-here wave, which he returned with a nod.
Funerals are the oddest occasions at the best of times, but I found Tommy’s send-off stranger yet. Quiet Tommy Quaid had been liked by everyone, but known by few – and even those few, in which I included myself, had enjoyed only restricted knowledge of the man. But Tommy had somehow managed to create the illusion of intimacy: he was the kind of guy who knew everyone’s name, who passed the time with anyone he encountered, with whom you could spend a whole night drinking, exchanging deep secrets and universal truths, only to realize the next day that he hadn’t really said anything at all. I calculated that there was something in the region of sixty mourners at the funeral, and I guessed that most of them genuinely felt they had known Tommy. Maybe it would be only now, with his death, that they would question whether they were mourning a friend or a complete stranger.
I positioned myself far enough back from the graveside not to be conspicuous, close enough to watch proceedings – and keep an eye on a cutie in a black skirt and bolero jacket I’d noticed at the centre of events.
It was a strange thing to watch the mourners: the actors and backstage hands in the playing out of a man’s life. I recognized many of them, but as many were strangers to me. Tommy’s life had been a drama of many acts, and I hadn’t been in the audience for them all.
The Three Kings were all there. Handsome Jonny Cohen wore a dark Italian suit and sunglasses, as always looking more like a movie star than a gangster. Hammer Murphy did his best to look sombre, but was his usual fizzing ball of barely contained aggression and looked at his fellow mourners, the sky, the world as if challenging them all to a fight. There again, he always looked like that. Murphy too had pushed the boat out on his tailoring: bespoke and expensive, his black suit vaguely glossy in the sunlight. Mohair, I guessed. But where Cohen looked classy, Murphy just looked spivvy: you can wrap a turd in Christmas paper and a silk bow; it doesn’t stop it being a turd.
That Willie Sneddon had also turned up surprised me: Sneddon was doing his best to keep his criminal connections out of sight and he wasn’t the kind of person to fulfil moral or personal obligations. He was there, I reckoned, fo
r a reason.
I checked out the other mourners: Tommy’s professional circle was well represented and I counted eight housebreakers, two of Glasgow’s most successful pickpockets, three armed robbers and four petermen, including the retired Tony the Pole Grabowski. I sensed the dead beneath my feet clutch bony fingers protectively around whatever valuables had been buried with them.
One of the attendees I hadn’t seen before was a man of about forty. He was small and wiry and I noticed him mainly because his movements had an electric jumpiness about them. Combined with his small frame, they made him seem vaguely rat-like. Watching him, I got the impression he was trying to avoid being noticed, always folding himself into the crowd or half behind a memorial stone. The more casual he tried to appear, the more shifty he looked. He darted eyes across the assembled mourners and I could see he was searching for someone. Given the professional circles Tommy Quaid had moved in, I thought it entirely possible that the little man was checking out the best pockets to pick.
Another stranger I noticed was a woman of about forty, with dark hair unfashionably short and wearing a black skirt suit that was even less in mode. I noticed her because she looked unlikely as someone Tommy would have been involved with. Yet I could tell, even from a distance, that she was genuinely upset: something about her movements and the way she stared dully at Tommy’s coffin. There was no dabbing of eyes or bowing of head: hers was a tearless grief; a grief muted by shock.
In the absence of the usual religious master-of-ceremonies, I wondered if there would be some undignified confusion about when Tommy should be lowered into the ground, but the attractive young woman who’d bleeped on my usual radar seemed to be the principal mourner and very much in charge of things. She had dark blonde, almost copper-coloured hair and was tallish and slim, but despite the black formal dress and bolero jacket she wore, I could see she had curves in all the right places. It was the hint of copper in the hair that told me who she was and why she was in charge: Tommy’s sister, the one he had been so proud of getting out and away from Glasgow. She nodded curtly to the undertaker and the coffin was lowered into the ground. No eulogies, no graveside words of remembrance. Quiet Tommy Quaid’s burial, like his death, lived up to his name.
‘You should be ashamed of yourself,’ someone said in low tones, close to my ear.
I turned round; Jock Ferguson and a too-youthful detective companion were standing behind me. The younger man looked at me with deep suspicion. I knew not to take it seriously: it was the mask rookies pulled on to conceal their inexperience; the younger the cop, the deeper the suspicion.
‘Me? Why?’
‘Tommy Quaid’s funeral isn’t the place to eye up his sister as a potential conquest. I saw you looking at her.’
‘I could say that a funeral isn’t the place to run a warrant roundup. I’m sure you’re not here out of your fondness for Tommy.’
‘Let’s just say I was interested to see who showed up. You I get – you and Tommy got on. But Sneddon?’
‘I was thinking that myself.’
‘But there’s someone conspicuous by their absence,’ said Ferguson.
‘Who?’
‘Jimmy Wilson. You know him?’
I thought for a moment then shook my head. It was an automatic reaction whenever a copper asked me if I knew someone. In this case it was true; I’d never heard of Wilson.
‘He’s a small-time peterman and housebreaker. We’ve heard that he helped out Quiet Tommy from time to time and thought he might turn up here. We’ve an outstanding warrant.’
‘Tommy never mentioned him to me.’ Again it was true. Tommy may have waxed philosophical to me now and then, but he played his professional cards close to his chest. I hadn’t heard of Wilson and I was hoping that Wilson hadn’t heard of me.
I jutted my chin in the direction of the small, wiry-looking man, who was still trying to camouflage himself in the dark foliage of other mourners. ‘You know him?’
‘Nope,’ said Ferguson. He turned to his taciturn junior officer who shook his head. I guessed he must have been a laugh a minute to work with.
The copper-blonde passed us and her eyes briefly caught mine. I was about to express my condolences, but she passed on by, purposefully.
‘How do you know she’s Tommy’s sister?’ I asked Ferguson as I watched her make her way through the gates.
‘She came in to see me,’ said Jock. ‘Asking where we were with the case. If we thought there was anything suspicious about Tommy’s death.’
And there it was: that combination of words I had dreaded hearing. ‘Tommy’s death’ and ‘suspicious’ in one sentence, and in a copper’s mouth, sent a chill through me despite the early August sunshine.
‘And is there?’ I hoped my nonchalance was convincing. Suddenly I worried that the younger cop’s suspicious gaze seemed more than a youthful guise.
‘I doubt it.’ Jock shrugged bony shoulders in a cheap Burton’s off-the-peg. Charcoal grey rather than black. Jock and I, mainly because of our wartime experiences being of the same kind – the shitty kind – had a lot of things in common. Dress sense wasn’t one of them. ‘I told her the case was closed. Tommy got sloppy, that’s all. If you spend your life dodging about on factory roofs in the middle of the night, all it takes is one foot put wrong and . . .’ He finished the sentence with a gesture indicating the burial grounds.
‘But the Saracen Foundry?’ Emboldened by Jock’s lack of interest, I decided to push my luck. ‘Have you any idea why he would want to break in there?’
‘Beats me – maybe he’d been tipped off there was cash in a safe or something. The foundry says not, though. Nothing worth stealing at all.’
I did my best not to give a sigh of relief: coming to the funeral had been worthwhile just to hear Jock express his lack of interest. I was in the clear.
Admittedly I was a little surprised: Jock was a smart guy, and an instinct-driven cop who let little get past him – but he clearly was frying bigger fish than the death of a burglar. Maybe he did suspect Tommy’s death wasn’t as simple as it seemed; the simple truth was, I could see, that he didn’t give a shit either way.
‘So she accepted that? The sister, I mean?’
Jock shrugged and nodded. ‘Seemed to. She was a bit annoyed that there was no fatal accident inquiry, though. To be honest, it surprised me too.’
‘Should there have been?’
‘Maybe not. I suppose the cause and manner of death’s quite straightforward. But the odd thing is that there was supposed to be an inquiry – it was originally scheduled but the procurator fiscal cancelled it. He’s said he’s satisfied that Quaid’s was a death by misadventure during the commission of a crime.’
‘I see,’ I said. Scotland had its own way of doing things: there was no such thing as a coroner’s court in Scotland, no inquests before a jury. Instead most sudden deaths were investigated and signed off by the procurator fiscal, the public prosecutor in Scotland. Fatal accident inquiries in front of a sheriff – the Scottish equivalent of a magistrate – and without a jury only took place when there was a public interest or where specific circumstances surrounding the death required further scrutiny. I suddenly felt a cosy glow of appreciation for the Scottish legal system.
People started to drift away from the graveside. I saw Jonny Cohen look pointedly in our direction as he headed out of the cemetery. Cohen and I got on well, better even than I had gotten on with Tommy, and he had gotten me out of a few sticky situations, including once when he very definitely saved my life – but he was what he was, a gangster, and I had pretty much avoided him of late. I could sense his disapproval at what he’d see as my cosiness with the police.
‘The funny thing . . .’ said Jock absently as we headed towards the gates, ‘is that it’s the second cancelled inquiry that I’ve been surprised about.’
‘Oh . . .’
‘Aye . . . you know the young laddie who threw himself in front of the train near Central Station?’
‘I read about it, yes.’
‘Well the fiscal cancelled that one too.’ He shook his head. ‘Now that’s one I thought should have had a hearing. But it’s been chalked up as a suicide. Bloody shame. Nineteen years old, apparently.’
We reached the cemetery gates.
‘Jock, can I ask you to do me a favour?’ I asked.
‘That depends . . .’ Jock glanced meaningfully at the young copper at his side, who still regarded me with deep suspicion. I got the message: if my favour involved any bending of rules, then it was not a request to make in junior’s presence. I smiled and shook my head.
‘It’s straightforward, Jock. I just need a registration number checked out.’
Ferguson arched an eyebrow. ‘And exactly why should this confidential police resource be made available to you?’
‘Don’t worry, Jock, it’s on the up-and-up. Last bank run we did, this van was sticking to us like shit to a shirt tail. What I can’t work out was why they followed us both ways – when we were full and when we were empty.’ I reached into my jacket pocket and handed him the slip of paper on which Twinkle had written the number.
‘Casing you?’ Jock took the note.
‘Could be. Archie thought they might be. Inexpertly done if they were.’
‘Okay, I’ll get it checked.’
9
Sometimes you get an itch in your brain. Some splinter of an idea in the back of your mind that prickles insistently, demanding you pay attention to it. Sometimes you know what it is, mostly you don’t. The itch in my head was incessant, but I promised myself to ignore it. For once, I knew exactly what it was that was causing the irritation and I was determined not to scratch it.
A suit so very like mine hanging in my wardrobe.
The Quiet Death of Thomas Quaid: Lennox 5 Page 10