Dead men and broken hearts

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

They threw me into a cell on my own, although the previous occupant was still there in spirit if not in substance. I sat on the edge of the bed contemplating how long someone would have to go without bathing and how much cheap hooch you would have to have in your system to stink a place out like that.

I was pretty pissed with the way things had turned out. Sure, they had chucked Sheriff Pete into a cell further down the block, and I could hear him giving forth in his fake American accent to the custody sergeant as if they were long lost buddies, but I knew things didn’t look too good for me. I’d banged Pete up bad enough for them to call out the police surgeon and, after all, it had been me they’d had to haul off of him, and I had no witnesses to back up my side of events. Even the girl Pete had terrified had disappeared into the night.

In all of my time in Glasgow, despite several brushes with the police and having gotten involved in all kinds of dodgy goings-on, I had managed to keep my dance card unmarked. And now, all because of a psychotic little loudmouth, I was going to chalk up an aggravated assault charge and probably thirty days in chokey.

But things never turn out the way you expect.

I had only been in the cell for an hour when the custody sergeant opened up and told me to follow him. That was confusing enough, but he had tied it up in ribbons: he had said please.

There were two other uniformed coppers waiting at the custody desk, one with inspector’s pips on his shoulders. Again, I got the polite treatment, and I formed the distinct feeling that the custody sergeant would have liked to shake my hand.

‘Have you found the girl he was harassing?’ I asked.

‘No, Mr Lennox,’ said the inspector. Mr. ‘Unfortunately we haven’t. But let’s just say your story is consistent with what we know about your chum. Unfortunately we can’t charge him with anything either, but we’ll keep the little shite overnight, anyway.’

‘He’s no chum of mine. Am I free to go?’

‘Aye… you are, Mr Lennox. But we have a favour to ask… would you mind coming across to St Andrew’s Square?’

‘You want me to go to police headquarters? At this time of night?’

The beefy custody sergeant leaned his stripes on the desk. ‘CID would like to talk to you. About chummy in there, if you don’t mind.’

‘It really is important…’ the inspector added. ‘I can’t tell you why, but it is.’

I shrugged. ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Always happy to help…’

The streets were empty and shades of slate and black, sleek in the early morning rain, as we drove through them. I was dog tired, but nevertheless enjoyed the unusual experience of travelling in the back of a police Wolseley without the encumbrance of handcuffs.

When we arrived at St Andrew’s Square, I was conducted into a normal room, not a cell, with a table and four chairs. They left me in it for five minutes until a policewoman came in with a large china mug of tea for me. The five-star treatment was beginning to make me itch.

As I sipped the too-sweet tea, the door opened to reveal Jock Ferguson. I was genuinely surprised to see Jock. He was a nondescript sort of man, tall and lean and with a hooded look and tired eyes.

‘I hear you’ve been administering justice on our behalf, Lennox.’

‘What can I say? There was a maiden in distress and my armour was shining. You seem to be taking the chivalry thing a bit far yourself, Jock. You really turn out of bed at this time of night because I got myself lifted?’

‘Your celebrity isn’t that great,’ he said, offering me a cigarette. ‘It’s the fellow you roughed up that we’re interested in. Or to be more truthful, I’m interested in. I think he’s a killer. One of the kind that do it because they enjoy it. But my colleagues think I’m off down the wrong track because we’ve already got somebody else lined up for the murder.’

‘Well, that must be it,’ I said ingenuously. ‘I know that the City of Glasgow Police never make mistakes.’

Ferguson gave me a look.

‘I don’t know what I can tell you about him, Jock,’ I said. ‘I don’t really know him.’

‘I know, I’ve read your statement. You say you’ve only met him once before?’

‘Met, once; but I saw him in the Horsehead once or twice before that.’

‘And you say he bought you a drink? Why would he do that?’

‘Because I have ears, Jock. Sheriff Pete’s the kind of loser who’ll make friends with anyone who’ll listen to that fake accent. He claims he’s American. American my ass.’

‘Actually, he is. He was called up for National Service and he got out of it because the US Army have prior claim. So he ended up dodging both.’

‘You’re kidding me?’

‘No kidding. He was born in New York then lived in Detroit till he was seven. Then his parents moved back to Britain. Coventry. Then he moved up to Motherwell. So the cod Yank accent is only half cod. Apparently he had a lot of it beaten out of him at school. What did he talk to you about?’

‘Just that he was a big shot. That he’s just done nine years in Peterhead. That he was a real tough guy and a bank robber but that’s not what he’d been in for, that he’s been framed for something else.’

Jock Ferguson snorted, his expression the kind you had if you’d eaten a bad clam. ‘Our friend likes to sneak into women’s bedrooms, wake them up and beat them over the head with a metal pipe…’ He nodded to the weal on my temple. ‘Like the one he clobbered you with. Then he pulls their pants down. He’s a sick, sick bastard. He did the time in Peterhead for the beatings and indecent assaults and he’s been done for rape in the past. I tell you, Lennox, you intervening when you did saved that girl from Christ knows what.’

I took it all in. I remembered the custody sergeant’s approving look. Sheriff Pete was the kind of creep that everyone wanted to see get a hiding. Cops, citizens and crooks alike.

‘So what is it you have him in the frame for?’ I asked.

Ferguson leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table and locking me with an earnest stare. ‘You and I have known each other a few years now and we’ve been reasonably straight with each other. Well, I’m asking for a favour, and if it sounds like I’m trying to warn you off, then I’m not. I’m asking you, as a personal obligement, to walk away from this and forget it ever happened. Don’t talk to anyone about it and, most of all, don’t have anything more to do with that piece of shit we’ve got locked up over there. I need to ask you a couple of questions that aren’t going to sound important but, believe me, they are. I need to get straight answers from you and afterwards I need you to keep your nose out of this whole business.’

‘Sounds big,’ I said.

‘You have no idea. Do I have your word?’

I had been warned off a dozen times by coppers to keep my nose out of cases, but my natural curiosity — and resentment of anybody telling me what not to do — had always gotten the better of me. This was different, I could tell.

‘You’ve got it, Jock. Now what is it you want to know?’

‘He told you he was a bank robber and safe-cracker?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Any details?’

‘No. None. It would all have been crap anyway.’

‘And he bought you this drink?’

‘Yeah. A whisky. I couldn’t get out of it.’

‘And you say he paid for it out of a wad of cash?’

‘Only after he waved it around for half an hour for all to see.’

‘What kind of cash? I mean the age and denomination of the notes?’

I gave Ferguson a look.

‘Seriously, Lennox, try to remember. It’s important.’

I thought for a moment, trying to rebuild the picture in my head. ‘Now you come to mention it, they were all brand new notes. Crisp new fivers.’

Ferguson’s expression changed to something that I felt in the back of my neck. Whatever it was he wanted, I’d just given him it.

Coming home at two-thirty in the morning was something I hadn’t done for a while. As I knew it would be, Fiona’s apartment was in darkness. No point in me tapping on her door for a wee small hours heart-to-heart. Even if that was exactly what I felt like doing.

I felt even more like a heart-to-heart when I reached my rooms and found an envelope addressed to me in Fiona’s handwriting pushed under the door.

I took it through to my small living-room and, switching on the table light, sat down and opened the letter. Here, at last, I thought, was the explanation I had been waiting for.

Except the envelope didn’t contain any explanations. Instead it held a glowing reference for me as a tenant. And a one month notice to quit my flat.

I had intended to march down first thing the following morning, dismissal notice in hand, and challenge Fiona to give me a good reason — any reason — for her asking me to leave. But when she answered the door, she looked so pale and drawn and tired that the fight went out of me. Her pretty eyes above the high cheekbones were shadowed, as if she hadn’t slept at all the night before. There was something about her frailty, about the obvious pain I was somehow causing her, that struck me harder than anything she could have said. I told her I was sad she felt the way she did but I would, of course, honour her wishes. The only thing I asked for was that we had a chance to talk; to meet somewhere away from the house to talk the whole thing through. She was too important to me for me to just walk away from, I told her. Whatever it was that had gone wrong, I wanted a chance to discuss it.

‘Okay,’ she said softly. ‘But not for a while. I need to get some things sorted out first. It may be quite some time, Lennox, but I will explain. I promise you I’ll tell you everything, when the time’s right.’