I drew back and muttered a few words that my mother didn’t think I knew. I leaned against the wall and considered my situation. A typical Lennox one: I was crouched in the dark with nearly two thousand American dollars and six hundred English pounds bulging in my pockets, there were four heavies to deal with, one sitting smack bang in the middle of my escape route and another inside whom I already knew to be a real pro. I’d started off thinking that I’d be lucky to get out of here with the cash. Now, I’d consider myself lucky to get out in one piece.
There was nothing else for it than to sit tight and wait until the guys inside finished whatever it was they had to finish or found whatever it was they had to find. The last thought chilled me: what if they were picking up the cash? Maybe they would put two and two together and work out that the cash had gone out the unlocked back door. Then they’d come looking. I pushed at the hedge tight in front of me. With a little effort I could squeeze through it and into the garden of the house next door. But it would be noisy.
I couldn’t see my watch but I reckoned I’d been in the house for roughly a couple of hours and out here for twenty minutes. That made it about half past midnight. Not a lot happened in Milngavie at half past midnight and there wasn’t even the sound of cars in the distance. I decided to wait it out.
I didn’t have to wait long. I heard the front door open and the three goons from inside headed out. No hint of them searching for an intruder. They walked quietly to the Wolseley and got in. The last guy out turned as he closed the gate, trying to minimize the squeaking. His face in the streetlight was shadowed by the brim of his hat but he seemed to look directly at me and my chest went very tight very fast. He turned and got into the car and they coasted down the incline for a hundred yards before starting the engine.
In the sterile Milngavie quiet I could hear the car until it faded into the far distance. Still I waited another ten minutes to reassure myself there hadn’t been a fifth goon left inside McGahern’s house before I made my way as quietly as possible across the grass, through the gate and back towards where I had parked the car.
While I waited I thought about the figure I had seen in the light of Tam McGahern’s kitchen and the strange language he had spoken to the other two men. They had looked foreign. Dark. But, whatever lingo he had been speaking, it had done nothing to dispel the impression I had of him the first time I’d met him. He still reminded me of the actor Fred MacMurray.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I lit a cigarette to dampen down the cough that had woken me. It was already light and I heard the sound of a draughthorse’s hooves outside on Great Western Road. A factory whistle flatly sounded the beginning of a day’s monotony for the masses somewhere far across the city.
I swung my legs around and sat on the edge of the bed smoking for a while before I pulled the brown envelope from under my pillow. I had stuffed the cash, the wartime photograph and the notebook I had found at McGahern’s into the envelope and hidden it there. It had been after one by the time I got in and I had seen the brief cold glow of Mrs White’s light under her door when I tiptoed in, switched on just long enough to let me know I’d disturbed her. There had been no way I could have started lifting the lid on my floorboard hidey-hole and I had been too tired to start hollowing out another book.
I sat stubbornly staring at the notebook, refusing to accept that the meaning of the rows of numbers and letters was never going to leap out at me spontaneously. After ten minutes I soothed my frustration by counting the money again. I had come out of this very nicely. And coming out of it was exactly what I wanted to do. I would give up on the two hundred Willie Sneddon was going to give me for a name. I even considered giving him the hundred back — after all I was well ahead of the game — but I decided against it. Doing that would only signal that, somehow and somewhere along the line, I had scored. I would simply tell Sneddon that I had drawn a blank: that no one was holding out on me, it was just that they really didn’t have a clue who was behind the McGahern thing.
Of course I had started the whole thing myself out of sheer curiosity and bloody-mindedness, but a couple of thousand quid did a lot to assuage one’s curiosity. Maybe it was time to move on. Or even go home. I now had a reasonable amount of cash behind me, not a fortune, but enough to go a long way in Canada. And, of course, my folks had money.
I had a vague and goofy image of myself buying a place in Rothesay or Quispamsis with a boat moored at Gondola Point, an image that impossibly included Mrs White and her kids. But I was kidding myself: it hadn’t been the want of cash that had kept me here. Everybody would be expecting the return of the Kennebecasis Kid: the youth I had been and was no more. Probably the youth I had never been: the truth was that there had always been something in me. A bad seed. The war had just cultivated it. There were a lot of adjectives to describe how men came out of the war: changed, disillusioned, dead. The adjective I used for myself was dirty. I came out of the war dirty and I didn’t want to go back to Canada until I felt clean about myself. But the truth was as time went on and I mixed with the people I mixed with I just got dirtier.
I told myself to change the record and while I washed, shaved and dressed I started to think through how I could walk away from the McGahern thing with my new-found stash, which I had now safely stowed under the floorboards. I approached the day in an upbeat mood, determined to put the McGahern business behind me.
It didn’t last.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
It was Jock Ferguson who pissed on my parade, albeit with the best of intentions. And at my own request.
I offered to buy Ferguson lunch at the Trieste, as thanks for checking out the Bedford van registration. It was as close as I would ever get to bribing him. At first he declined and declared that a pie and a pint at the Horsehead would do fine, but I insisted and he met me there just after one.
‘As I’ve said before, you lead an interesting and complicated life, Lennox.’ Ferguson eyed me with the same suspicion as he had his spaghetti when it had arrived. ‘I checked out the number of that truck you gave me.’
‘And?’
‘And it’s nothing to do with the McGahern case.’
That’s what you think, I thought. Hell of a coincidence that a truck full of heavies is parked behind me after I’ve been lured out by a call promising information on Tam McGahern.
‘So who does the truck belong to?’
‘You should think about making a formal complaint about this. There’s clearly something rotten going on-’
‘Jock…’ I said impatiently.
‘The registered owner of the Bedford is CCI.’ Ferguson slid the name and address across the Formica table top. ‘Clyde Consolidated Importing.’
‘John Andrews’s company?’
‘The same. Obviously he’s not as straight and clean as you thought. You’ve stirred something up there.’
So there it was. I tried to conceal the jolt that ran through me. Just when I thought I was going to get clear of the McGahern case. The call I got to draw me to Central Station had been specifically about Tam McGahern; then, when it turned into a no-show, I got jumped by goons from a van registered to John Andrews’s company. Whatever Lillian Andrews was into — and I knew it was Lillian Andrews and not John Andrews — had something to do with Tam or Frankie McGahern. I was convinced that I had been right about John Andrews all along. Lillian was pulling his strings.
‘You okay?’ Ferguson frowned at me. His chin was tomato-striped where his spaghetti had whipped it. ‘You looked a little taken aback.’
‘How’s the spaghetti?’ I nodded towards his chin and he wiped it clean.
‘Really good. Never had it before. Never been in an Italian restaurant before, for that matter. You surprised?’
‘The cultural poverty of Glaswegians never fails to surprise me.’
‘Not that, you clot. Are you surprised that it was one of John Andrews’s company vans?’
I lit a cigarette, leaned back and smiled. ‘Nothing
surprises me these days.’
*
I had intended to ’phone John Andrews, but thought better of it. Why should he take my call now? Added to which, for all I knew Lillian and her cronies might now be monitoring all his calls, even in the office. I would have to think of a way of getting Andrews on his own. Maybe intercept him on his way into work. I’d have to think it through. I had left Jock Ferguson with not only a newfound appreciation of Italian cuisine but also a growing curiosity about Andrews, CCI and whatever the hell I’d got myself involved with. It would be best to keep a low profile around Jock for a while.
The main thing to come out of my lunch with Ferguson was that I wasn’t finished with the McGahern mess. I wanted to forget all about it, but now that I knew the Andrews business was mixed up in it I was sure that there were those who wouldn’t let me forget. I spent the afternoon in more stubborn fruitlessness trying to decode the notebook I had taken from Tam’s Milngavie retreat. I moved on to studying the photograph I had found. Gideon. Why had a Glaswegian gangster like McGahern written the name of a biblical judge on the back of a snap of wartime chums? Given the infinity of sand in the background, the blazing sun and the desert fatigues, the photograph had clearly not been taken on Mallaig beach. This was the Middle East. And Fred MacMurray and his chums from the night before had been speaking a foreign language that hadn’t sounded European to me.
*
There was something about the whole set up that was making me twitchy. Twitchy was fast becoming paranoid and I was sure that someone followed me back to my digs after I left the office around three forty-five. Glasgow didn’t have a lot of cars for a city its size and I should have been able to recognize any tail I had picked up, but the lack of a recurring grille in my rear-view mirror didn’t do much to ease the feeling in my gut.
I ate sandwiches and used up the last of my precious supply of good coffee to make a pot. I ate lying on my bed reading, the Overseas Service mumbling in the background as I tried to force myself to relax. Every now and then, however, I felt the need to twitch the net curtain and check there was no movie heavy leaning on a lamp-post outside smoking. It was about eight thirty when Mrs White called me down to the telephone at the bottom of the hallway we shared and wordlessly handed me the receiver.
‘Lennox. Is that you, Lennox?’ I recognized the voice on the other end of the line instantly.
‘Is everything all right, Mr Andrews?’
John Andrews gave a bitter laugh. ‘I’m a dead man, Lennox. I hope you remember this call for the rest of your life. A conversation with a dead man. Just talking to you means they’ll kill me.’
‘Who’ll kill you, Mr Andrews? Lillian? If you’re in some kind of danger you should ’phone the police. Or I can speak to a detective I know, Jock Ferguson at Central Division…’ I made the offer even though it would mean me having to explain to Jock Ferguson that there was a connection with Tam McGahern and that I’d been sticking my nose exactly where I’d been told not to.
‘No. No police. Say nothing to the police.’ He was getting agitated.
‘Okay, okay. No police. Who’s going to kill you, Mr Andrews?’
‘They set me up. They had it all planned from the beginning, from the first day I met Lillian…’ John Andrews sounded as if he’d been drinking and I heard noises in the background that suggested he wasn’t ’phoning from home. A pub, maybe. It made me nervous: he was not an impulsive man and certainly not a courageous man, and I had the sense that the nerve it had taken to ’phone me had come distilled.
‘Set you up for what?’
‘My business. They need my business to make it all work. Not that I know it all, but I’ve been able to put enough together. And that’s another reason for them to kill me. Lillian’s been making me forge shipments. Change the details. But that’s not why I ’phoned. They set me up and I walked straight into their trap. But so did you. That’s why I’m ’phoning you, Lennox. Like I said, I’m dead already, but you could still get out of it all.’
‘You’re not making sense. Set up for what? And how did they set me up?’
‘I’m sorry…’ he said and I knew that he meant it. ‘Through me. They set you up through me. When Lillian went missing… when she was supposed to go missing… they told me to contact you. They wanted you involved.’
I thought about what Andrews was saying. It didn’t seem to make any sense but what chilled my gut was that somewhere, deep at the back of my mind, it did.
‘Where are you?’ I asked. ‘I’ll come and get you.’
‘No… no, it’s not safe. Nowhere’s safe.’ There was a pause and I listened to the background sounds of a bar. ‘Help me, Lennox. You’ve got to help me.’
I thought for a moment. I stared at the brownish floral wallpaper on the wall opposite and felt the draft from the gap beneath the front door. ‘Listen, Andrews, do you have your car handy?’
‘It’s outside.’
‘I want you to go right now and get in it. Are you sober enough to drive?’
‘Think so.’
‘Then I want you to get into your car and drive out of the city. North. Take the Aberfoyle road. Don’t take Maryhill Road and go through Bearsden and Drymen. I don’t want you to go anywhere near your house or your office. Don’t stop to pick anything up; don’t go anywhere else; don’t stop anywhere else. Are you listening?’
‘I’ve got it. I won’t.’ I could tell he was taking strength from my sense of purpose.
‘There’s a hotel at the north end of Loch Lomond. It’s called the Royal Hotel. Do you know it?’
‘I know where it is.’
‘I want you to drive up there right now and check in under a fake name. I’ll meet you there later tonight. Call yourself Jones… no, call yourself Mr Fraser, so I know who to ask for. Have you got that?’
‘Yes. Royal Hotel, Mr Fraser.’
‘Like I said, don’t stop for anything: I’ll bring a change of clothes and toothbrush and stuff for you. And listen, Mr Andrews, I will get you out of this. I promise.’
‘Thank you, Lennox.’ I could hear a vibrato in his voice. The guy was as close to cracking as you could get. He had given up and now was struggling to accept that there was maybe some hope. ‘I don’t know how to thank you.’
‘You can start by telling me when I get up there everything you know about what Lillian and her cronies are up to.’
‘Why are you doing this? Why are you helping me like this?’
‘You’re my client, Mr Andrews. Or maybe it’s just that I’ve watched too many Westerns. It’s my turn to be the good guy.’ I laughed bitterly at my own joke. ‘Call me the Kennebecasis Kid.’
After I hung up I ran upstairs, threw a few things into an overnight bag for Andrews and grabbed my keys and jacket. I was halfway back down the stairs when I checked myself. I went back up and unlocked the door of my apartment. I took the bent nail from inside the vase on the mantle and slid under my bed. I used the nail to hook and ease up the floorboard. I reached in underneath and found the oilskin-wrapped bundle, pulled it out and draped my raincoat over it before heading back down the stairs and out onto the street. I put the bundle on the passenger seat and placed my coat over it. I carried out each of these actions quickly and mechanically. I didn’t want to think about the seriousness of what I was doing.
But the truth was that John Andrews’s ’phone call had spooked me. Whatever the connection between Lillian and Tam McGahern had been, whatever the caper was they had planned, it was big. They had been working on it for months, since whenever Lillian had hooked Andrews, a gullible, lonely widower with a business they needed to control to make their project work. As I drove out of town I tried to think it through as calmly as I could manage. What was the connection between McGahern and Lillian? She could have been the ‘Mrs McGahern’ who had sold on the house in the West End. I had certainly seen the evidence of Lillian Andrews’s impressively professional expertise in administering blow-jobs on screen; it didn’t take an enor
mous leap of imagination to envisage Lillian running a brothel. But what didn’t gel was Tam McGahern being a partner in whatever scam Lillian and her associates were involved in. It was too big-league for either McGahern. It was more likely that Tam had been involved in some minor way and had started to try to muscle his way in. There was the connection. Maybe. Maybe the connection was simply that whoever Lillian was involved with had killed Tam. And Frankie.
I was now out of Glasgow. It was getting darker and the clutter of the city around me gave way to the increasingly dramatic dark undulations of the Trossachs. It’s amazing how you can be in the black heart of Britain’s most industrial city and within twenty minutes be driving through a landscape full of drama and empty of people. The road was quiet and I hadn’t seen another car for five minutes so I pulled over tight to the verge.
The guys who had tried to snatch me off the pavement in Argyle Street had been enthusiastic for my company. So I had reluctantly taken out a little added insurance. After I parked, I took the tyre iron from the trunk of my car and dropped it into the passenger seat footwell. I thought it fitting, considering my potential opponents had used a tyre iron to pulp Frankie McGahern’s head. Although I was now pretty sure that it had been Tam who had been the second McGahern twin to depart this life.
But my main insurance policy lay on the passenger seat, under my coat, wrapped in oilskin. I unwrapped it. It contained a Webley Mk IV revolver and a packet of. 38 ammunition. The pistol was identical to the one I had been issued with during the war. But I had liberated this revolver in such a way that it would never be directly linked to me.
I wiped the grease from the Webley, snapped open its top break and loaded it with six rounds then slipped it uncomfortably into my waistband and tugged my double-breasted jacket over it. Again I thought about how much walking around heavy upped the ante: the problem with carrying a gun is that you tend to end up using it. Ten years ago that had not been a problem. In fact it had been expected of me. Encouraged. Now I could end up with a noose around my neck.
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