Ferguson’s face darkened. ‘For Christ’s sake, Lennox, do me a favour and don’t insult my intelligence. You and I are going to have problems if you start playing me for an arse. What’s your angle?’
‘Okay, Jock, I’m sorry.’ I could see he was genuinely angry. I told him about Tommy having a ticket stub to Findlay’s show at the King’s and it not making sense. ‘I just wanted to see the guy up close.’
‘Well, you can buy a ticket to one of his shows. There’s no way I’m going to let you use me so that you can snoop around at a police function. You’re pushing our friendship too far, Lennox.’
I was about to respond when Ferguson’s desk 'phone rang. He scowled at me, making it clear that he would have missed the call and would have been on his way home if he hadn’t been stuck talking to me. He leaned over his desk and picked up the receiver without putting down his cellophane-wrapped dinner suit or his briefcase.
‘Oh, hello, Bob,’ he said, and looked at me, as if I should understand his surprise. ‘What? No, I don’t have any direct interest, it just came up in conversation and I couldn’t remember the lad’s name . . .’ Ferguson listened for a while, still looking over at me and frowning. After a while he said: ‘No, that was all. Just couldn’t remember the name.’
After he hung up, Ferguson left his hand resting on the receiver in its cradle.
‘Talk of the devil . . .’ he said, thoughtfully. ‘That was Bob MacIntyre, the chief inspector I was talking about.’
‘The one whose retirement the monkey suit is for?’
Ferguson nodded. ‘He was asking me why I’d asked for details of that boy’s suicide.’ His frown deepened. ‘What the hell has it got to do with him? I didn’t think, but there was actually no reason for him to have an interest. And Christ knows how he knew so quickly that I’d been asking.’
‘He didn’t investigate the death?’ I asked.
‘God no. Not his area. But there again, we never get to hear what his crowd are into.’
‘His crowd?’ I asked.
‘Special Branch,’ said Ferguson as he steered me to the door.
6
This time I knew it wasn’t my imagination. The light was finally fading by the time I got back to my car and I decided to take a swing by the lock-ups down by the river. I was heading towards the Broomielaw when two cars that had been behind me turned off at Greendyke Street. And there, suddenly exposed, was chummy in the two-tone Consul. I gave no indication that I’d seen him and turned into Clyde Street. He didn’t make the turn with me, and I guessed he had pulled over and was waiting for some other cars to hide behind. But it was quiet at that time of night and he clearly decided he would have to rely on distance rather than camouflage; in my rear-view mirror, I saw him take the corner about a hundred yards behind me, no lights.
I guessed he expected me to try the storage shed site again, so I decided not to let him down and headed in that direction. He was doing his best not to be seen, holding back to the point of risking losing me, his thinking clearly that he knew where I was heading and could pick me up again if he lost sight.
I decided to make things interesting for him. I indicated right, before turning up a side street. Once out of sight around the corner, I floored the pedal and accelerated as fast as the Wyvern would allow, pulling up at the kerb about fifty yards along the street. I got out and locked the car and ran back up the street, seeking out some kind of cover before chummy made the road end. The street was narrow and not residential, flanked on either side by huge sandstone warehouse-type buildings and offices, all about five storeys high. They threw the street into shadow and made the most of the gloaming. The only form of illumination was a couple of wall-mounted street lamps that gave off an insipid, nauseous orange light. There were no signs of life or light from any of the buildings and I congratulated myself on my excellent choice of ambush spot.
I was running out of time, so I ducked into the only half-decent cover I could find: a deeply recessed doorway, shaded by a heavy stone lintel and pillars on either side. It was very similar to the cover my attackers had used three weeks before. Shrinking back as far as I could into the shadows, I checked the Wyvern. I’d parked it outside the main entrance to a shut-up warehouse, making it look like I had gone inside.
And there he was. The Ford Consul, its headlights now on full, turned into the street but pulled up just inside the corner, the engine still running. The driver was obviously holding back and assessing the situation. This was clearly no dimwit.
After what seemed an age the car started moving again and slowly made its way along the street; I squeezed myself into the smallest shadowed place in the doorway as the car passed and I couldn’t make out the driver, or whether there was more than one person in the Consul. It slowed even more as it passed the parked Wyvern; they were checking it out.
Thinking it through, I decided I would wait until they got out of the car, hopefully only one of them and with his back to me, then I would pull the same stunt on him that had been pulled on me three weeks before.
This time, I promised myself, I would show a little more restraint. I steeled myself for action.
The car drove on. It headed for the far end of the street, turned the corner and disappeared. So much for steeling myself. I stayed put, though, just in case the car came back. And it did. It reappeared and turned back into the street, heading towards me. I quickly shifted position so that the opposite side of the doorway shielded me but, even at that, there was a good chance I’d be picked up by the Consul’s headlights. But he stopped at the other end of the street, switched off his lights and sat. No one came out of the car.
After five minutes, I saw the spark and flare of a match, then the ember glow of a drawn-on cigarette. Just one. After ten minutes, I realized my ruse had worked that little bit too well, and the guy in the car was waiting for me to re-emerge from the warehouse and drive off.
I was pretty much at a loss about what to do. Another painfully slow ten minutes passed and I stayed hidden. Thankfully, the guy in the car must have gotten pretty fed up too, because he got out and headed towards my parked car on foot. I guessed that he was on his own and that there were probably no hulking, non-smoking passengers left sitting in the car. He was wearing a narrow-brimmed hat and a lightweight summer raincoat, and I could see the man wasn’t too tall or robustly built. But there was something about his movements that seemed familiar.
I decided he wouldn’t present too much of a danger, especially if I caught him unawares, approaching from behind. He stopped at the Wyvern and tried the door. His back was half-turned towards me and I eased out from the concealment of the doorway and made my way as silently as possible towards him. He leaned forwards and peered into my car, cupping his hands around his eyes and against the glass. I decided to make the most of his encapsulated attention and grab him from behind.
I closed the last five yards in a sprint and seized a fistful of raincoat and jacket collar, knocking the hat from the small man’s head.
It was the shock as much as the pain.
A bolt of intense pain seared through my barely healed ribs as the small man’s elbow found its mark. I realized that I still had a hold of his coat collar, but he in turn had an iron grip on that wrist.
Suddenly my feet were off the ground and swinging through air, and I found myself slamming into the greasy pavement. I came down on my back and right side and my breath pulsed out of me. He had levered me clean off the ground and over his shoulder. With rat-like speed and agility, he dropped a knee onto my chest, squeezing the last of my breath from me and leaving me sucking air desperately. Just to add to the fun, the blade edge of his hand slashed across my throat, shutting off my airway for a split second.
I no longer knew where he was or what he was doing; I made no effort to defend myself further. Every ounce of my being was focused on that single existential need: to breathe. To pull air through a constricted throat into empty lungs.
I guess he had grabbed my co
llar and dragged me across the pavement, because when I started to breathe more easily, I found myself propped up in a sitting position against the warehouse wall. I looked up and saw the small man standing over me, his stance one of readiness, his hands balled into fists.
‘You had enough?’ he asked. He had one of those working-class English accents I always found difficult to place, but I guessed somewhere south rather than north. I nodded. It had been a long time since I’d been bested in a fight and I was struggling with the etiquette of it – and with the embarrassment of having taken a hiding from someone who looked like he should be wearing jockey silks and whipping a thoroughbred around Aintree.
Two things dawned on me. The first was I remembered where I recognized the swift, rat-like movements from: he was the same small guy I’d seen at Tommy’s funeral, trying to merge into the background; the one who had asked Jennifer if Tommy had seen any of his old army comrades recently. The second was that this small, slight man had been very professionally trained and could have done a lot more damage to my throat if he had wanted to. My money was on him having been a commando.
I started to ease myself up and if I had had any remaining thoughts of resistance, he put them out of my head: he reached into his coat pocket and I found myself looking at the business end of a Webley revolver.
‘We’ll take my car . . .’ he said with a smile that was more a rodential baring of teeth, and tossed me the keys with his free hand. ‘You drive.’
7
‘Where to?’ I asked with the kind of amenability that comes from having a gun dug into the side of your belly.
‘You know where to go.’ He sat in the passenger seat but turned sideways, facing me.
‘Just tell me where you want to go,’ I said wearily. My ribs hurt like hell again and my throat still felt tight and raw. ‘It’s been a long day.’
‘The lock-ups. Tommy Quaid’s lock-up.’
No big surprise there, I thought.
‘So I show you the way to the right lock-up, you get the key, McNaught clears it all out and I take a dip in the Clyde – that it?’
‘Just drive.’
I did, despite the sparks and flashes that still danced across my vision. I needed to think. To work out a strategy: one where there was a future in which I would still be breathing. As soon as McNaught’s henchman got the key and knew which lock-up it fitted, I would become decidedly surplus to requirements.
‘Your boss McNaught. Was he in the same unit as you and Tommy? Is this what this is all about?’
My passenger remained silent.
‘All of that at the ironworks . . .’ I persisted. ‘It was all a smokescreen, wasn’t it? There were no trade secrets, nothing to be stolen. It was just a credible place for Tommy to take a tumble. Somewhere out of the way with minimal security.’ A thought struck me and with it I felt a surge of anger. ‘You’re pretty handy when it comes to unarmed combat, aren’t you, chum? It was you, wasn’t it? It was you who broke Tommy’s neck on that roof, nice and clean and quiet, then chucked him over the side.’
Again the small murine man stayed silent. We were getting nearer the lock-ups and with every hundred yards we drove I felt my life shorten by a year. One way or another, I would have to make my move soon. Despite my furious strategizing, before any plan took a definite form we had already arrived at the entrance to the lock-ups. And the end of the road for me.
‘Pull in and stop,’ he said, jabbing me in the side with the gun. ‘Over by those sheds. We need to talk.’
I did what I was told, turning into the lock-ups and pulling over into the shadow between two storage sheds. Maybe this was it, here and now. Maybe it was just the key, not the location of the lock-up, that he needed. Maybe I had already outlived my usefulness.
‘You have the key?’ he asked. I said nothing. He jabbed again. ‘The key to the storage shed?’
I would have to make my move. Now. But if I did, there was no way I could avoid being shot, and I would need all my strength, all my skills, to take him down. This time, I’d have to be ready for his fancy moves. But first I needed him to shift the gun from my side.
‘I’ve got it. It’s in my pocket,’ I said. Reach for it, I silently prayed. ‘Who’s McNaught?’ He didn’t take the bait.
‘What? Who’s this McNaught you keep talking about?’
‘You’re telling me you don’t know?’
‘I wouldn’t be asking if I did. And seeing as I’m the one holding the gun, I don’t have a reason to lie about it.’
‘If you’re not one of McNaught’s people, who are you? Why have you been following me?’
He gave an ugly, rat-like snigger in the dark. I felt another sharp jab of the gun muzzle, making me wince. ‘You really don’t get this whole question and answer thing being all about who’s holding the gun, do you?’
I looked at him, trying to read a face almost completely hidden in the shadows. I was confused and, given the alternative, I decided to hold back on making a move. For the moment.
I answered his question. I told him who McNaught was. I told him that I was there the night Tommy died. I told him everything. I had no other cards to play.
He listened to me in silence. After I finished, after he sat small and dark and unreadable, he said: ‘I’m not who you think I am. I’m going to take the gun away, but don’t do anything stupid. You got me?’
I nodded, then realizing he probably wouldn’t have seen me in the dark, I said, ‘I’ve got you.’
‘My name is Baines,’ he said. ‘You’re right about one thing, I served with Tommy during the war. We became friends. Close friends. Or at least as close as Tommy could be with anyone. We were in the same commando unit for a while. We had both been picked because of our special talents – Tommy because he could get in and out of almost any building undetected, me because – well, I think you’ve seen my special talents for yourself.’
And I had. This man was a killer – a natural viciousness and propensity for violence had clearly been honed into a professional skill by the military. It all fitted – except I couldn’t for the life of me imagine Quiet Tommy Quaid being close friends with someone whose principal skill was the taking of lives with ease.
Then I remembered the conversation I’d had with Tommy. He had been disturbed by my violence and talked about a murder-eyed member of his wartime unit. I remembered Tommy had said: ‘Someone who called himself my friend too.’
‘There were a lot of special units about,’ Baines went on. ‘Commando units dropped behind enemy lines for all kinds of reasons: sabotage, assassination, intelligence gathering. We were in the last category. Our job was mainly to steal plans from the Krauts; ideally without anyone finding out we’d been in and out. But if we were disturbed, then it was my job to deal with the opposition.’
‘And you were on missions with Tommy?’ I asked.
‘A few. The unit we were in was headed by Captain Jack Tarnish – the hardest bastard I’ve ever known. Maybe even a bad bastard. Tarnish was one of those men who had been born at the right time, the type who thrived on war. He was a Jock too, like Tommy.’ Baines gave another rat-like laugh. ‘For some reason Tarnish took a shine to Tommy, who was the youngest of us. But it wasn’t a protective thing, you know? It was more like Tommy was an investment to be looked after, like Tarnish had special plans for him.’
‘What kind of plans?’
‘That I didn’t know for sure at the time, but looking back, and with what I’ve found out since, I can guess. Back then, all I knew was that there was something big about to happen – some big mission behind enemy lines. But before it came off, I was transferred out of the unit. Suddenly and without any reason or warning. I ended up in another unit, a sabotage outfit. I tell you, mate, I was lucky to survive the fucking war.’
‘You think Tarnish wanted you out of the picture?’
‘I got the impression he was handpicking the team he wanted around him. I mean, we were already handpicked, but it was like he was fine
-tuning his team. Like he had something particular in mind and maybe something that wasn’t strictly kosher. About six months later, after my old outfit had carried out their secret mission that I was no longer party to, I heard these rumours about a large cache of Nazi loot going missing and began to suspect that Tarnish had used Quaid in an off-the-books job.’
‘This Scottish officer, Tarnish – did he have a wound to his face?’ I asked.
‘No. Why?’
I told Baines about McNaught, describing his build and his lopsided face.
‘No . . . that’s not Tarnish. Tarnish was tall and lean. Dark hair. No damage to his face. In fact, he isn’t unlike you in appearance. By pure chance I saw him shortly after the war, outside a pub in London, dressed like a country gent and with a couple of tarts on his arm. No signs of any wound to his face. Anyway, it sounds like your McNaught has a totally different build. But that doesn’t mean McNaught isn’t somehow connected to Tarnish. And anyone connected to Tarnish is dangerous.’
I thought about what Baines had told me. I asked the obvious question: ‘So what is your interest in Tommy’s death? In me? Why have you been following me all over the place?’
‘Like I told you, I liked Tommy. We got on. The outfit we were in was as tough as you get and Tarnish made a habit of recruiting misfits. Some of them were probably psychopathic.’
I repressed my urge to laugh or to bring up accusations of blackness by pots against kettles. Baines must have sensed my thought in the dark.
‘You maybe think that they couldn’t be worse than me, but some of them were. Much worse. The one thing that held them all together was Tarnish, who seemed to inspire some kind of deep loyalty in men. Me – I didn’t get it. Problems with authority and all that bollocks. That’s why Tarnish had me transferred, I think. But my point is this – the story that did the rounds was that Tommy Quaid was part of this raid on some top Nazi’s place in occupied France. The story goes that they got what they were after – plans or documents or shite like that – but Tommy found all of this other stuff in the safe. I don’t know if it was gold or jewels or something else, but whatever it was it was worth a mint. Tommy came out a lot heavier than when he went in. Rumour has it that he didn’t let on to the rest of the unit.’
The Quiet Death of Thomas Quaid: Lennox 5 Page 16