The affected accent of the Kelvinside area of Glasgow was a remarkable piece of vocal engineering. The socially pretentious Kelvinsiders could not imitate the vowel sounds of Standard Southern English, so instead tried to torture the instinctive Glasgow flatness out of each syllable. Cavalry became kevelry, cash became kesh. The woman who answered the door was the Torquemada of vowels. She was a small, plain housewife in her late thirties with dull reddish-blonde hair and a frosty manner. I could hear the sounds of children from inside the house.
‘Ken I help you?’ she said.
‘Hi, ma’am. My name is Wilbur Kaznyk. I’m over here on vacation from the States and I was hoping to look up an old buddy of mine. War buddy. Frank Harris. I don’t have his exact address, but I know it’s here in Dowanside Road. Someone told me he’d sold up and moved. I believe you folks’ve just bought this house.’
For a moment she eyed me suspiciously. She called over her shoulder into the hall. ‘Henry… there’s a menn here looking for a Frenk Herris.’
Henry appeared at his wife’s shoulder. He was a small mole of a man behind thick glasses. I repeated my fiction about being an American guest.
‘It wasn’t this house,’ he said. ‘We bought this house from a Mrs McGahern. She was a young war widow, apparently.’
‘Did you meet Mrs McGahern?’ I pushed credibility as far as I could. ‘I mean, maybe she bought the place from Frank and has a forwarding address.’
‘We nayver met Mrs McGeyhern,’ continued Henry’s wife. ‘She hed already moved. Everything was conducted through Mason and Brodie, her solicitors.’ It had been Mason and Brodie who had given me the address. ‘Perhepps you should ask them. Their offices are in St Vincent Street. Good day.’
She closed the door. So much for hands across the ocean. At least I knew now that I had the right address. I was also pretty sure that Tam McGahern hadn’t had a secret wife. I’d have to work out some way of getting the information from Mason and Brodie.
I thought about heading in to the Horsehead Bar at opening time for the traditional pie and pint but Hammer Murphy’s processing plant came to mind, so I decided to have high tea in Byres Road. The overpriced pastries were too sweet. Rationing was being phased out and sugar had only just come off the ration book, so the new badge of affluence was to be liberal with it. I sat at the window and watched the world, or at least Byres Road, pass me by. I drank my tea and contemplated where I was with everything. The sun outside shone on the people and cars that passed with the joyfulness of a Presbyterian preacher: the time I felt most homesick for Canada was the British Sunday.
I made a decision and, after I’d paid, picked up my car and headed up towards Bearsden. Parking where I had before, I walked round to the drive of the Andrews house. A mink-coloured MG TF convertible swished down the drive and out onto the road and I ducked back out of sight, shielded by an overhang of thick bush. I recognized the driver as the blonde woman whom I’d seen Lillian Andrews with that night in the smog, and I was pretty sure it was Lillian in the passenger seat. I waited until they had pulled out into Drymen Road before heading up towards the house.
It was John Andrews who answered the door. He was wearing an open-necked shirt with a cravat and a pale-blue sweater that exaggerated a paunch that needed no exaggeration. Given that he had been avoiding my calls, I expected him to be taken aback, angry even. But he looked startled. And afraid.
‘What do you want, Lennox?’
‘We have to talk, Mr Andrews.’
‘Our business is concluded. We discussed that already. My wife is back safe and sound.’
I held up the envelope. ‘We need to discuss what I have here, Mr Andrews. I’m afraid it’s important. May I come in?’
Andrews looked undecided for a moment, then stood to one side. I tried not to show that I knew my way into the Contemporary-furnished lounge. Andrews remained standing and didn’t invite me to sit. I handed him the envelope with the photographs. After planning this moment for so long, I suddenly found that I wasn’t sure what to say. I let him look at the pictures. Halfway through he didn’t so much sit down as drop all the way onto the low-slung sofa. He kept looking. When he was finished he looked up at me. There was pain in his eyes. Lots of pain, but no surprise. Or disappointment.
‘Are you satisfied now, Mr Lennox?’ he said, the hate dull, heavy and blunt in his voice. ‘Are you happy that I’m now humiliated before you?’
‘No, Mr Andrews. This gives me absolutely no pleasure. I could have left things as they were-’
‘Then why the hell didn’t you?’ His eyes were now glossy. ‘Why didn’t you leave things alone when I asked you to?’
‘Because, Mr Andrews, I thought you were a man in trouble. And I think it even more now. I can imagine these pictures are upsetting for you to see, but I also know they were no surprise to you. Are you in trouble, Mr Andrews? Are you being blackmailed or something?’
He laughed a bitter laugh. ‘I loved my wife, you know. I still love her. Lillian is so beautiful. So beautiful. I couldn’t believe that I could be so lucky at this time of life. My first wife died, you see.’
‘I’m sorry. So even then you thought it too good to be true?’
Another bitter laugh. ‘Thanks for that, Lennox. Thanks for pointing out how obvious it should have been.’
‘Listen, I know you’re in trouble. I want to help if I can.’
‘I see. Touting for more business…’
‘I’m not interested in the money. You’ve paid me more than enough already. I just want to help.’
‘Then leave me alone. Just piss off and leave me alone. I’m in trouble all right. I’ve married a gold-digger and a slut and she’s going to take me for everything I’ve got. That’s all the trouble I’m in. And believe me that’s enough. Isn’t that enough for you, Mr Lennox?’
I picked up my hat. ‘If you say so. But I still think there’s more to this. If you need my help, ’phone me at my office or on this number.’ I wrote down the number of my digs. ‘One more thing… you maybe aren’t aware of this, but Lillian’s real name is Sally. Sally Blane. I thought you ought to know. If that still is her legal name and she married you under a false identity, then the marriage is void. You could get out.’
He continued to glare at me with a dull hatred, but took the number anyway.
I stopped off at the Horsehead Bar for a couple. I needed them. I didn’t like Andrews. I didn’t like his fleshy, ugly face, his affected manner or the way he talked. But once more, somewhere deep inside, I felt pity for another human being in distress. Again it surprised me. I thought that capacity had died in the war along with the kid from the Kennebecasis.
A couple became three or four and I started to think about the little nurse again. And then about Fiona White, my landlady. About her Kate Hepburn eyes. About kissing her to loosen the lips that were always drawn too tight. About how easy it would be for one bundle of damaged goods to get mixed up with another.
About how shit everything and everyone was.
Big Bob asked me if I wanted another but I said no. I was getting into that ugly tinder mood that needs just one drink too many to catch light and then you want to smash a face, any face, just to make someone else feel worse than you do. There was more Scots blood in me than I liked to admit.
I went out into the cold and clammy Glasgow night. I left the car outside the Horsehead and walked all the way back to my flat. It was a long walk and the night air slowly cooled my mood. I stood outside the house. The curtains of Fiona White’s downstairs flat were drawn but edged with warm light. The two girls would be asleep in the room to the back, probably dreaming of a father whom they now only really remembered from photographs.
I opened the door quietly and moved quickly up the stairs once I’d closed it behind me. Tonight was not the night to bump into Mrs White. Tonight there was a danger that our mutual need for comfort would be too great.
Or perhaps I was deluding myself.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I met Jock Ferguson at lunchtime in the Horsehead Bar. I had arranged it with him earlier by ’phone and given him a rough idea what it was I was looking to find out. But with coppers there is always a price. They are inquisitive by nature. Nosy.
‘Why do you need this information?’ Ferguson asked. ‘Is this something we should be interested in?’
‘It’s a case I’m working. Something stinks with it. First of all this guy asks me to find his missing wife, then he tries to pay me off, then his wife flashes her tits at me while her buddy cracks my head open.’
‘You lead a colourful life, Lennox. Where does this company come in?’
‘He owns it. Or runs it. He was none too specific about exactly what it was that they did.’
‘Well, I checked it out all right. If your guy is John Andrews, then he owns the company. CCI stands for Clyde Consolidated Importing. The consolidated comes from the fact that Andrews bought a number of smaller companies and formed one big one from it. They have warehouses down on the Clyde and a big office in Blythswood Square.’
‘What do they export?’
‘Plant, machine parts, that kind of thing. All over. North America, Middle East, Far East… You say you had a run-in with the wife?’
‘That’s one way of putting it. The stitches come out tomorrow.’
‘Were they worth it?’ Ferguson asked.
‘Were what worth it?’
‘The tits.’ Ferguson came the closest he ever did to a smile.
‘I’ve been able to find out that she’s an ex-whore,’ I said, ignoring his question. ‘Maybe still is. Or at least she used to act in blue movies. You know, the kind you guys like to watch at police smokers.’
He gave me a look. ‘Is he crooked?’
‘No. That’s the thing. Seems a straight Glasgow businessman, if that isn’t a contradiction in terms. He obviously didn’t know about his wife’s past.’
‘Until you put him right.’
‘Actually, I’m maybe wrong to say that he didn’t know. When I showed him the pictures-’
‘Pictures? You showed him photographs of his wife fucking? You’re quite a piece of work.’
‘Anyway…’ I tried to live with Ferguson’s disappointment. ‘When I showed him the pictures he wasn’t really shocked. More sad. Resigned.’
‘A set up?’
‘Dunno.’ I took a mouthful of pie with more grease than a tractor’s axle. Glasgow was not one of the world’s culinary capitals. ‘That’s the feeling I get. Doesn’t fit. His wife used to go by another name. However, which is her real and which is her professional name I don’t know. But it doesn’t fit with blackmail either.’
Ferguson shrugged. ‘Well, let me know if you think there’s something going on that we should know about.’
We talked about other things until we finished our pies and pints. In fact, Ferguson was making small talk. Or as close to small talk as he could manage. The one thing he was at pains not to discuss with me was the McGahern killing. The one thing that should have cropped up, even if only to repeat his earlier warning.
The next day I went to my local doctor, who removed the stitches from the back of my head. Which was a relief, because they had begun to itch like a son-of-a-bitch. Afterwards I went into my office and it was there that I got the call. It was a young woman. She spoke with an approximation of a middle-class accent, but Glasgow kept reappearing in it, like an unwanted coarse relative trying to squeeze in through the door of a dinner party. She didn’t give her name, even when I asked directly.
‘All you need to know is that I was a close friend of Tam McGahern. I know you’ve been asking questions about him. I have information you need.’
‘Then just tell me.’
‘Not on the ’phone. Meet me down by the river, at the Broomielaw, tonight at ten.’
‘You know something?’ I said. ‘I never understand why people always say that in movies and some mug always goes along with it… “Not on the ’phone. Meet me in person in some secluded and dark place where you can get your head bashed in with a tyre iron.” Now why should I meet you in a quiet, dark place?’
‘Because the people who are mixed up in this are a dangerous bunch. I don’t want to be seen talking to you.’
‘I’ve got a better idea. It’s called hiding in plain sight. I’ll meet you in the main concourse of Central Station. And not ten, nine. I get wrinkles if I stay up late.’
She began to protest but I hung up.
Central Station was just around the corner from my Gordon Street office, but I decided to go back to my digs first and freshen up. I drove back into the city, parked in Argyle Street and walked up to the station to give me a chance to recce everything out properly.
I turned up early. About twenty to nine. I stood under the main station clock, looking up at the information board as if planning my journey. There were still people milling about the station. The Edinburgh train arrived and a wave of travellers pulsed through the cavern of the station building. Then it became quieter again. Ten to nine.
I became aware of a smallish figure next to me. Actually I became aware of the odour before the figure. A man of about fifty. Or twenty. Serious drinking had fudged the issue. The lines on his unwashed face where grime had entrenched itself in the creases looked as if they had been drawn in graphite onto grey skin. He looked up at me and bared the ruins of his teeth.
‘Y’awright, pal?’
‘The best. You?’
‘Oh you know… cannae grumble. Widnae dae much use. Would you have a few pennies to spare?’ The tramp spoke with the kind of gutteral Glasgow patois that had confused the hell out of me when I had first moved to the city. To start with I thought the city had a large indigenous population of Gaelic speakers. It took me weeks to realize it was in fact English.
‘Let me guess,’ I said. ‘You’ve lost your train fare home and you would like me to lend you the money, right? And you promise that if I give you my address you’ll send a postal order to me first thing tomorrow?’
‘Naw,’ he grinned wider. I wished that he hadn’t. ‘Naw, I wouldnae say that at all. I’ll tell you exactly what I want the money for. Drink. I could lie, mind. But the truth is I would like you to spare me a few pennies so I can get pished.’
‘I admire your honesty.’
‘Always the best policy, pal. But I’ll tell you this and it’s no lie: whatever you gie me will be carefully invested. Gie me a couple o’ bob, and I can guarantee that of everybody that will ask you for a handoot in the station the night, naebody else will be able to stay drunk for as long as me. Per penny invested, that is.’
‘I also admire your pitch,’ I said.
‘Thanks, pal. I’m a leading expert in the field.’
I laughed and handed him a half crown and he was gone.
The station clock struck nine. I glanced around again. No mysterious blonde femmes fatales. No heavies with hands tucked into their jackets. I waited another ten minutes. Nothing. Five minutes more and I left the station. My date had obviously decided Central Station wasn’t romantic enough. I walked along Gordon Street past a row of smoking taxi drivers and down Hope Street towards Argyle Street, where I had parked the car.
They jumped me while I was unlocking my car door.
There was a large Bedford van parked close behind me, which I thought suspicious because the rest of Argyle Street was practically empty of parked cars. Because it had pricked my attention I had been half-expecting something and heard them running towards me from the tail of the Bedford. Four of them. Two on either side. Big.
The one who came nearest first swung a length of lead pipe at my head. I didn’t have time or room to duck so I jammed forward and into him, weakening the strength of the swing. I brought my knee hard up into his balls. Really hard. And as he doubled over I hooked my fist up and cracked it into his face. I heard him moan and as he went down I grabbed his wrist and snatched the pipe from him. They were all on me now and I swung wildly. I hit t
wo of them. I got one in the face and he screamed as his cheek split open.
I had two temporarily down, one stunned and one uninjured. I couldn’t win this fight, but it wasn’t a fight they were looking for. They were trying to snatch me off the street and they had lost the element of surprise.
Someone kicked me at the top of my thigh, missing the groin they had aimed for. I took three heavy punches to the side of my face but stayed on my feet. I swung the pipe again and made glancing contact with a head. I was tiring. I took another punch and tasted blood. I hit the pavement and the kicks started to rain in. But then stopped.
I heard the Bedford reverse at speed, a grinding of gears and it sped off. I heard the shrill sound of a police whistle and flat feet running towards me. I dragged myself upright and caught sight of the tail of the van as it swung around the corner into West Campbell Street. A young bobby grabbed my arm and steadied me.
‘You all right?’
‘I’m okay.’ I spat a small puddle of viscous crimson onto the pavement. There was a small crowd gathering around me. A green and orange tram had emerged from the black Argyle Street underpass beneath the huge Schweppes sign on Central Station’s flank. As it passed most of the passengers on my side gawped at me.
‘What was all that about?’
‘No idea,’ I said. ‘They jumped me when I was getting into my car. Maybe they wanted to steal it.’
The young copper eyed me sceptically. ‘Who were they?’
‘How the hell should I know? Like I said, I was just getting into the car when they jumped me.’
‘Did you get the number of the van?’
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