‘She’s not here,’ the nurse explained. ‘She discharged herself this morning, first thing. I’m surprised you didn’t know. You’re her cousin, you say?’ Her frown darkened with suspicion. ‘It was her brother who picked her up.’
‘Her brother? Are you sure?’
‘I was on the desk myself.’ I could see she was on the point of calling someone. She clearly didn’t believe I was Wilma’s cousin.
‘Must have got our wires crossed,’ I said and frowned as if annoyed. I thought for a moment. ‘You’re absolutely sure it was her brother… he’s a big, good-looking guy… looks a bit like a younger version of Fred MacMurray… you know, the Hollywood actor?’
The suspicion evaporated from her expression. ‘Yes, that’s him.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was late by the time I got back to Glasgow. The Perth spring had evaporated and Glasgow was shrouded in yet another smog. November through to February was the worst time for smog in the city, but it lurked ready to fall at any time of year and the temperature had taken a dramatic drop during the day.
As I had sat in the train watching the weather through the window change its mood, I had thought about Powell. I was certain he was behind the professional job done on my office and that vague feeling I’d had that someone who knew what they were doing was on my tail. Powell was a professional and I would have been unaware of his involvement if he hadn’t flagged it up for me. For some reason that I couldn’t quite figure, he had been making me aware of his presence.
After I got off the train I headed, bag and all, to the Horsehead Bar. I needed a little Glasgow cheerfulness after Perth. Big Bob came over and poured me a rye whiskey from the only bottle of non-Scotch they had in the bar.
‘How you doing?’ he asked without his usual smile.
‘Fine. What’s up?’
‘One of Willie Sneddon’s boys was in here earlier. Looking for you.’
‘Twinkletoes McBride?’
‘No, just some wee bampot they send on errands. He said to tell you that Sneddon wants to see you. If you ask me, Lennox, you play in the wrong part of the playground. I don’t know why you get involved with the likes of Willie Sneddon.’
‘It’s my business, Bob. You know that by now. Sneddon and I are old playmates.’
After I finished my whiskey I headed out to a telephone box and ’phoned Sneddon. I gave him an update on progress so far, which was less than he had expected or I had hoped to give. Mainly because, for some reason I didn’t fully understand myself, I wasn’t ready to pass on Wilma’s conviction that it had been Frankie who had been executed on the stairwell of the flat: all I had was Wilma’s intuition and it was a claim that could cause all kinds of shit to start flying. I decided to keep it under my hat for the meantime. When I had finished my report Sneddon reciprocated: he had had practically all his people trying to sniff out something to report back to me. Nothing.
‘So you think this punter in the hotel snatched Wilma?’ Over the telephone, without the benefit of mock-baronial surroundings and expensive clothes, Sneddon sounded the Govan hardman he was.
‘I’m sure of it. Does he sound like someone you know?’
‘Naw. He sounds like someone you’d remember. And I make it my business to remember faces. He sounds too smooth for Hammer Murphy’s outfit. Could be one of Cohen’s mob, but I doubt it. Maybe he’s an amateur, though from what you’ve said it sounds unlikely. Or some out-of-town firm.’
‘He’s no amateur. He’s a professional all right, but something about him doesn’t fit with being a gangster. No offence.’
‘None taken,’ Sneddon said without irony. ‘I’ll check with the boys, see if he rings any bells.’
There was nothing more to be said but I paused for a moment before hanging up.
‘Mr Sneddon, have you heard of a woman called Lillian Andrews? I don’t know what her maiden name would have been.’ I gave him a description of Lillian’s knockout looks and figure. ‘Like our guy in Perth, she’s a real professional. And tough with it. But not someone that would ever have had to work the streets.’
‘There are a lot of sexy-looking girls out there, Lennox. And I don’t know every tart in Glasgow. But from what you’re saying, she’s got too much class to be working one of Danny Dumfries’s clubs. She’s not working Blythswood Square… if she was an indoor whore, then you should talk to Arthur Parks. I’ll tell him to expect to hear from you.’ I smiled. Sneddon preparing Parks meant that I would get total cooperation. ‘Is this woman connected to the McGahern thing?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘But she is connected to something that’s getting in the way, Mr Sneddon. I appreciate your help.’
‘Lennox…’
‘Yeah?’
‘Make sure you keep me up to date on what you find out about Tam McGahern. I don’t like surprises.’
I hung up feeling more than a little uneasy. If Wilma had been right about Frankie, not Tam, being the first to die, then I had a pretty big surprise up my sleeve.
CHAPTER NINE
The next evening I was in the one place in Glasgow you were guaranteed a date. If you had enough money on you.
I told a doorman who was all neck that Mr Parks was expecting me and he let me into what had been a drawing room at one time.
Park Circus was in the West End of Glasgow and broke up the otherwise Victorian monotony of Glasgow’s architecture with a circle of impressive Georgian townhouses. Most were still single dwellings, occupied by moderately wealthy families, but some had been subdivided into flats. Arthur Parks owned this particular townhouse in its entirety, but had divided it into a large apartment for himself on the upper levels and two smaller flats, one on the ground floor and the other in the basement. From both he conducted one of the most lucrative trades in the world. And, proverbially, one of the oldest.
I was in the ground-floor flat. There were three girls in the reception room I was shown into, all of whom stood up when I came in. One would have been around thirty and the other two were much younger. One looked no more than nineteen. They were all pretty and curved in the right places and all smiled alluringly. I held up my hand.
‘Sorry, girls, I’m here on business, not pleasure.’ Their smiles disappeared as quickly and mechanically as they had appeared and they sat down again on the sofa, resuming the conversation they had been having when I came in. I sat down in a large leather armchair and lit a cigarette. A small, bald, bird-like businessman in an immaculate suit came in and they repeated their performance. I reckoned the businessman was pushing sixty, but he chose the youngest of the girls.
‘Don’t trust him if he offers you a lollipop,’ I said as they left the room. The small businessman’s cheeks flushed bright red. I made no effort to disguise my disgust.
The other two girls were scowling at me when another man came into the room. Not a customer. Arthur Parks was an ugly fucker. He was about five-eleven and immaculately dressed, but he wore bottle-bottom glasses that exaggerated the size of his eyes. His bottom lip curled up, fish-like, over his top and there was evidence of a badly done repair to a congenital hare-lip. When he spoke, it was in a camp baritone.
‘Ah, Mr Lennox,’ he boomed, extending his limp hand theatrically. Everything he did, he did theatrically. ‘What can I do to help you?’
I handed him the photograph of Lillian Andrews that her husband had given me. Parks took it between manicured fingers. The flamboyant turquoise ring on his little finger matched his heavy cufflinks. I wondered if the set was completed with earrings.
‘Recognize her?’
‘Mmmm… very nice.’ It was like a teetotaller commenting on a fine wine. For all Arthur Parks sold pussy, he had no interest in it. His last stretch in prison had been for buggery in the gents’ toilet at Central Station. I thought I saw a split-second of recognition in his expression but then it was gone. Or he had covered it up quickly.
‘Well… Do you know her?’ I asked.
‘No. No, I don’t.’
‘You didn’t look too sure.’
He looked at the photograph again. Made a show of studying it.
‘No, I don’t know her. It was just that she reminded me of someone. But it can’t be her. Who I’m thinking of was blonde. And she’s dead.’
‘Tell me about her.’
‘Forget it, Mr Lennox, it cannot possibly be Margot Taylor. It’s just there is a rough similarity. Margot died three years ago. She was one of my girls but I found out she was doing her own thing in her spare time. She got a bit of a slapping for it and then I kicked her out. About six months later she was killed in a car crash. One of her punters was drunk behind the wheel. Served her right. If she hadn’t messed me about she would still have been working here. Safe.’
‘How alike is this woman to Margot?’
‘Not that much. She just kind of reminded me of her. Around the eyes.’ He handed me back the photograph. ‘Sorry. Can’t help you.’
I put the photograph back in my wallet. ‘One other thing. Did you ever get the McGahern brothers in here?’
‘God no…’ he laughed. Theatrically. ‘Wouldn’t let ruffian gobshites like that into my establishment.’
‘Do you know anything about an independent brothel that the McGaherns supplied security for? Somewhere in the West End.’
‘Not really,’ said Parks. ‘I heard something about it… potential competition and all that. But it didn’t seem to last long and as far as I could tell it wasn’t taking business from me. Anyway, sorry I can’t help you.’ Parks nodded in the direction of the older prostitute on the sofa. ‘Would you like to spend some time with Lena? On the house.’
The vaguely aristocratic-looking Lena responded by tilting her head back and parting her red lips provocatively. I’ve seen that Rita Hayworth movie too, Lena, I thought.
‘No thanks, I’ll pass.’ It wasn’t that I didn’t find Lena attractive. Parks misread my refusal and gave me his own version of a Rita Hayworth pout. ‘I don’t fuck whores,’ I said. ‘Or pansies.’
The next morning a spring sun was trying to break through but an ill-tempered early-morning Glasgow was telling it to fuck off and shrouding it in factory smoke. I had break-fast in a transport caff on Dumbarton Road before heading up into Bearsden about eight thirty. There was a steady flow of commuter traffic in the opposite direction, reflecting the fact that the majority of Glasgow’s privately owned cars resided in the leafy driveways of Bearsden.
I parked around the corner from the Andrews residence and loitered in the street as inconspicuously as I could until I saw John Andrews’s Bentley slide out of the drive with the sound of water over pebbles.
Lillian Andrews opened the door with the blank expression of someone expecting to see a postman on the threshold. She was wearing a pastel-blue sweater with a double row of pearls tight at her throat, dark-blue Capri pants and low-heeled mules. It was a reasonably conservative outfit, but she looked sexier in it than most women would dressed only in French lingerie. There was the tiniest flicker of recognition in her eyes, then it was swept instantly away. She was good. Very good.
‘Yes?’ she asked uninterestedly. For a moment she nearly convinced me that we had never before encountered each other.
‘Hello again, Mrs Andrews. I’m glad to say that the smog seems to have lifted.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said and started to close the door. ‘I don’t buy anything from door-to-door salesmen.’
I got my foot jammed in the door just in time and leaned my shoulder into it so hard that she nearly fell over backwards. We stood just inside the threshold and her dark eyes burned with hate.
‘Get out! Get out now!’
‘I need to talk to you, Mrs Andrews.’
‘What about?’ She backed towards the hallstand and picked up the receiver of the ivory-coloured telephone. ‘If you don’t get out, then I’m ’phoning the police.’
‘You could do that,’ I said, taking off my hat. ‘But there again, the police know me. They know that the information I give them is pretty accurate.’ I smiled, thinking of the ruddy-cheeked farmer’s boy who had worked hard to make sure it was. ‘So I’m sure they will be interested in why your husband is running so scared and why you ambushed me in the fog the other night.’
‘You know my husband?’ She put the ’phone down.
‘You didn’t know that the other night, did you? I know all about your little disappearance and reappearance act. What I want to know is why you bushwhacked me and who it was that parted my hair for me.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never seen you before in my life.’
‘Don’t mess me about, Lillian.’ I closed the door behind me. ‘There’s something about this whole set up that stinks. If you don’t tell me what it’s all about maybe I should talk to your husband.’
She laughed. ‘Go right ahead.’ No bluff.
I grabbed her wrist and dragged her into the living room. I suppose in Bearsden they called it a lounge. It was furnished in Contemporary style: sofa and armchairs slung so low that you needed a lift to get out of them; low-level light-wood coffee table; geometric wrought-iron and hardwood room divider; the small grey eye of a brand-new television set watching us from the corner. I threw her down onto one of the chairs. For a suburban housewife she didn’t seem particularly perturbed by the rough stuff. She eyed me with the same hate in her dark eyes. Not fear. Hate.
‘Listen, Lillian, you can pretend all you like, but we both know it was you with your hand round my dick immediately before the lights went out. All you were interested in was to find out if it was my hard-on following you or whether I had another reason for watching you. Well, I did. A professional reason which I’m not going to share with you. But what started out as professional curiosity became very personal very quickly after your goon tried to fracture my skull.’ I sat down opposite her and dropped my hat onto the sofa next to me. ‘So, what’s the story?’
She stared hard at me but the hate was dissipating. She gave a cynical laugh as if something had just fallen into place for her.
‘You’re working for John, aren’t you? He’s been paying you to snoop on me, hasn’t he?’
I didn’t say anything but she nodded to herself.
‘That’s what I thought. Okay, I made a mistake. I got involved with someone. Someone who was bad for me. I went away with him. I was going to leave John. But then I saw sense and came home. My… friend… well, he didn’t accept that I was going back to John and he threatened to make all kinds of trouble for me. So I agreed to meet him the other night. To tell him it was all over. I told him that someone was following me. That’s why he clobbered you. I’m sorry. But he’s crazy that way. That was one of the reasons I broke it off with him.’
‘Really? I have to say that he’s the most broad-minded jealous lover I’ve ever come across. I mean, letting you flash your tits at me and put your tongue halfway down my throat.’
She took a cigarette from a packet on the coffee table and lit it with a marble table-lighter. She tapped the packet with slim crimson-tipped fingers.
‘You don’t understand. Things like that can get complicated. Sex is complicated. When I’m with him I become another person.’
‘And this is all over?’ I asked.
‘Completely.’
‘Then you won’t mind giving me chummy’s address. I’d like to pay him a call. Balance things up a little.’
Her eyes went hard again. ‘No. I won’t. I want all of this in the past. He’s a violent and dangerous man. As you already know. Please, leave it alone.’
‘His name?’
She walked over to a sideboard and opened a drawer. She took ten five-pound notes from a wallet and held them out at arm’s length towards me. ‘Take it.’
‘Your husband has already paid me.’
‘Now I’m paying you. To forget all about this. I’m back with my husband and he’s none the wiser. I feel bad about what happened the other night. Please take this. Consid
er it compensation.’
I took the money and pocketed it. Like she said: compensation.
I stood up and put my hat on. She showed me to the door.
‘Are we agreed that this whole unfortunate episode is over, Mr Lennox?’
‘Agreed. Just one last thing… does the name Margot Taylor mean anything to you?’
She pursed her full lips thoughtfully. ‘No, nothing. Why?’
‘It doesn’t matter. Someone who looks a little like you. I just thought you might be related.’
She watched me from the door until I turned out of the driveway. I sat in my car for a while and contemplated the windscreen. There were three things that were very clear to me. The first was that if the bribe hadn’t worked then Lillian Andrews would have fucked me to keep me out of her business. Probably on top of the cash. Second, the name Margot Taylor, coming out of the blue, had sparked a hastily concealed reaction.
And the third thing was that all of my original suspicions about her were true. She had called me Mr Lennox.
I hadn’t told her my name.
CHAPTER TEN
I woke up in the middle of the night, my pulse pounding in my ears. The nightmare drifted away before I could capture it, but it had had something to do with a young, frightened face screaming at me. Begging me. In German.
I smoked a cigarette in the dark, its glow painting the walls deep red when I drew on it, then fading again. For some reason I started to think about home. It was my little joke whenever anyone asked me where I was from. My accent had got a little muddled over the years and some people here thought I was American, others that I was English or even Irish. When pushed, which I rarely was, I would say I came from Rothesay and, although puzzled, people generally accepted it. It was actually the truth, but the Rothesay I meant was not the one they thought of: the dismal tourist escape for Glaswegians on the Scottish Isle of Bute. My Rothesay was another. Far distant, in more ways than one: an ocean and a wartime away.
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