Dead men and broken hearts

CHAPTER FORTY

I couldn’t simply walk into the union’s headquarters, and sending Twinkletoes in with a message was going to be less than low key, so I decided to ’phone Lynch from a call box. I was lucky and got him.

‘You do know the police are looking for you?’ asked Lynch. ‘And I mean looking for you as in wanted fugitive looking for you. Our union cannot have anything more to do with you.’

‘Listen, Lynch, I’ve only run into this shitstorm because your information about Frank Lang was so vague it led me to someone totally unconnected but very, very dangerous. We don’t have time for this. I know who Frank Lang is. Or at least I’m pretty sure I do, and my description of him has rung the right bells. I think I can deliver him to you.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘As sure as I can be, but I need you. You were Lang’s contact at the union. He kept it like that to cut down the number of people who could identify him. And that’s what I need you to do. Identify him for me.’

There was a pause. I imagined Lynch at the other end of the line. His beady eyes. His lipless mouth.

‘All right. When?’

‘Now. Right now. Where’s your car parked?’

‘In Park Circus. Just around from the union.’

‘I’ll meet you there in five minutes,’ I said, and hung up.

I was waiting for him by his car. When we had met in the working men’s club, I had asked him what kind of car he drove and his was the only model of its type parked in Park Circus. I watched him approach, bare-headed, wearing the kind of slacks intellectuals and beatniks had a taste for, an open-collar shirt and a pale grey raincoat. Everything about Lynch annoyed me. Even his wardrobe.

‘What’s this all about?’ he asked when he reached the car. ‘I should be telling the police where you are, you know.’

‘But you haven’t.’

‘No, I haven’t.’

‘Let’s take your car,’ I said. I let Lynch get in first, then nodded across to where Twinkletoes was parked; my pre-arranged signal that he should follow us.

‘Where are we going?’ Lynch turned those beady little eyes on me. I could tell he was uneasy.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to force you into any big confrontation. I just need you to eyeball Lang and confirm I’m right. I can take it all from there. Head south. Out through Rutherglen.’

We drove through the city, mainly in silence, and the landscape around us changed from commercial and residential to purely industrial: dark, grimy walls lining the streets, smoke stacks black against the grey sky. I directed him turn by turn, occasionally checking over my shoulder to make sure Twinkle was keeping up.

‘What are we doing out here?’ he asked.

‘You’ll see.’

It started to rain and he switched on the wipers to clear the split screen of the windshield.

‘Next left…’ I said. We had entered a warren of narrow streets. Most of the factories and yards around us were now derelict, apart from the occasional scrap yard where vicious-looking dogs bellowed and snarled at the car as it passed.

‘Stop here.’

I got out and ran through the chill, greasy rain and unhooked a chain from the gate. Directing Lynch through, I beckoned for Twinkletoes to bring the Cresta in behind. When they were both through, I closed the gate behind him. It was as if the Luftwaffe had used this whole area for target practice. Ten acres or so of flat, empty, black landscape, punctuated by occasional piles of rubble yet to be trucked away. A single tenement remained, pointing a black finger into the sky.

‘I’ve been working on this other case,’ I explained when Lynch got out of the car. ‘The guy who got killed in my office. He was in the demolition business and this was one of the sites he was clearing. Flattening slum tenements. That’s the last to go…’ I said, pointing to the tall, black slum standing all on its own. ‘I thought it was the ideal place to do this.’

‘In there?’ Lynch said incredulously.

‘Trust me.’

‘And who’s that in the car behind? Is that Lang?’

‘No, that’s a business associate of mine. He has a special role to play in getting the truth from Lang. But the less you know about that, the better.’

We got out and Lynch cast nervous glances at Twinkletoes.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Follow me.’

The tenements here had been the worst kind of slums. Crowded, filthy, insanitary. They had crammed in on each other, squeezed tight to allow the maximum occupancy in the minimum of space. Now, with all of its neighbours razed, this solitary tenement had a strange, brooding presence, like some siege-blackened mediaeval tower dominating its landscape.

I led Lynch through the china-tiled entry close and up the communal stairs, McBride bringing up the rear. When we reached the second floor apartment, I turned to Lynch and smiled.

‘I’ll just get the key…’ With that I kicked the door hard with the flat of my foot and it flew open, smashing against the wall inside. ‘After you…’ I said, stepping back and extending my arm to indicate he should enter the flat.

Lynch stepped into the flat, along the hall and into the living room, which had been one of only two rooms, probably for a family of six or seven. There was no furniture other than a single kitchen chair sitting in the middle of the room on the bare, black-painted floorboards. There were two bed recesses in the wall, both empty of any palliasses or bedding. One wall was dominated by a fireplace and its mantel, the mirror above it the only item, other than the kitchen chair, left by the previous owners.

‘What the hell is all this about, Lennox? Where’s Lang?’

‘Don’t you see him?’ I asked, infusing my tone with puzzlement.

‘There’s NOBODY HERE!’ Lynch yelled at me. ‘Have you gone mad?’

With one hand, I grabbed a fistful of the back of Lynch’s raincoat. With the other, I seized him by the nape of his neck and ran him forward, pushing his face close into the mirror.

‘Don’t you see him?’ I screamed at him. ‘Don’t you see Lang there?’

I hauled Lynch back and threw him onto the floor. I reached into my coat pocket and tossed over to McBride a length of rope I’d brought from the barge.

‘Tie him up, Twinkle. To the chair. Good and tight.’

‘Okey-doke Mr. L.,’ said McBride.

‘Why are you doing this?’ yelled Lynch. He struggled uselessly in McBride’s grip.

‘Now, now…’ said Twinkletoes, slapping Lynch so hard on the side of the head I even felt my ears pop.

‘Give it up, Annan,’ I said. And with that I could see it in his eyes. His tiny, cold, swindler’s eyes.

‘Who’s Annan?’ he protested when he recovered himself. ‘What the hell has this got to do with Frank Lang?’

‘There never was any Frank Lang. There never really was any Paul Lynch. All there was was Dennis Annan.’

He looked at me dully. Even through his fear, I could see he was assessing the situation. Deciding whether to keep the denials and pretence up or to try to start doing a deal.

‘I know who you are, Annan. Who Lynch and Lang really are. But my question is: so who the hell is this?’ I held out the photograph he had given me of ‘Frank Lang’ when I’d met with him and Connelly.

He didn’t answer, or was having difficulty remembering. So Twinkletoes started to jog his memory. I stepped out into the tenement stairwell and smoked a cigarette. I could still hear the sounds of Twinkletoes working Annan over and went back in before it went too far.

I nodded to Twinkletoes and he stood back. Lynch’s face was red and swelling up, but I could see Twinkle had done exactly what I asked: a big show, but nothing too damaging. I had been forced back into this kind of shit, but there was a limit to how far I was going to let myself sink.

I showed Lynch the photograph again.

‘His name really is Frank Lang,’ Lynch sobbed. ‘And he really does exist. He is a merchant seaman. We used to serve on the same ship, work the same galley.’

‘But he knows nothing about your little game?’

Lynch shook his head. ‘I bumped into him in a pub in Glasgow, a few years back. He was pished and started to give me his life story. So I took it. He told me how he was getting out of the merchant navy because he was married and they were about to emigrate to Australia. I stole his wallet but made him think he’d lost it. I got his union and identity cards, as well as some other personal photographs.’

‘So you set up this phoney identity and background, rent the house in his name, and use the position in the union to fabricate a working history for him.’

‘Everybody is so worried about someone stealing their money or their stuff. The real big steal is if you can rob them of their name. Their identity. That’s what I do. No one else does it.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘You’re a real trailblazer… But the real effort has been put into the other identity — establishing Paul Lynch as a committed and unimpeachable union official. That right?’

I could see the small dark eyes working. ‘Listen, Lennox,’ he said, ‘you’re in a bit of a bind. In trouble to your neck. I can help you get out of all of — ’

‘Never mind the wriggling, Annan,’ I said. ‘Just tell me how you pulled it all off.’

‘Okay, okay… I’ve been working on the Paul Lynch identity for years. I picked someone born around the same time as me but died when they were three years old. It’s mad, but births and deaths are kept in different sections of the General Register House in Edinburgh. There’s no connection between them, so you can take a dead kid and build a new life for it. That’s what I did with Paul Lynch. To start with I didn’t know what I’d use the identity for, and I just added details over time and then when the union job came up, I applied for it as Paul Lynch, with all kinds of testimonials and references and memberships of different labour mobs. It was tough going… much more difficult than ripping off a company. Union people are like aristos, they really are a closed shop. Everyone knows everybody and I had to be seen in the right places with the right people before getting the job.’ He looked up at me. ‘You want to know the funny thing? I was good at it… my job at the union, I mean. You see, in this game, you have to become what you’re pretending to be.’

I looked at Annan. Or Lynch. Or Lang. Three people mixed up in one body. He was a con man, and good at his crooked craft, but there was something wrong with him. Anyone with such a tenuous grip on their own identity was missing something.

‘So Connelly wasn’t in on it?’ I asked.

‘No.’

‘I don’t believe you. You think you’re a cut above the average embezzler but you’re not. Every con man needs someone on the inside — some unwilling dupe or willing accomplice. My money’s on Connelly either way.’

‘But don’t you see?’ said Annan, his flushed, bruised face suddenly illuminated with workman pride, ‘You’re absolutely right. I did need a man on the inside. But I was the man on the inside. Or at least me as Paul Lynch. That was the beauty of it. No one would be looking for me. They would be looking for someone who never existed.’

‘And that was where I came in…’ I said darkly. Annan fell silent, sensing another storm coming his way.

‘You hired me… not Connelly, but you,’ I continued. ‘You had it all worked out. You put me on the trail of a non-existent go-between whose work needed him to stay elusive, and fed me just enough to stumble along and too little to find out anything substantive. No one would suspect you of having anything to do with the fraud, because it was you who hired me. The only problem I have with it all is this… you — or at least you as Paul Lynch — would have to disappear eventually. Wouldn’t that point the finger? Or were you going to stay on at the union until you collected your pension?’

‘A year, maybe. Maybe less, depending on how things worked out. I was going to arrange some kind of muddle or mess to do with records. Maybe a small fire. Something where my records and any photographs could go missing but be lost with everyone else’s. There had to be time enough between the money going missing and that.’

I gave a small laugh with something like grudging respect in it. He had had it all worked out.

‘Where’s all the money you took from the union?’

‘All over. Several accounts at different banks. Listen, Lennox, let me go and I’ll take a powder. I’ll give you half of the take. No… three-quarters. You want to piss off back to Canada, and you’ve got problems with the police here… there’s enough money to get you free and clear. I can even set you up with a new identity. A new passport.’

‘Yeah? That would be convenient for you, wouldn’t it? I recently got a really interesting lecture from the police about circumstantial evidence. Apparently, evidence of flight is part of it. If I disappear from sight, then the coppers assume they were looking in the right direction and don’t bother to look anywhere else.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘About Sylvia Dewar.’

‘I don’t want to talk about that…’ he said.

I took a step towards him and grabbed his shirt front.

‘Maybe I can get Twinkletoes here to make you feel a little more loquacious,’ I hissed into his face.

‘ Low-qway-shus… ’ muttered McBride behind me. I turned to see him reach for his notebook, his brow furrowed.

‘Not now, Twinkle,’ I said, shaking my head. I turned back to Annan. ‘Let’s get one thing straight. This is not the time for you to try to wriggle out of what’s coming to you from the law. This is the time for you to talk your way into staying in one piece. And I’m not talking in metaphors. Twinkle… go get your stuff.’

While McBride was out at the car, I put a cigarette between Annan’s lips and lit it for him.

‘I’ll tell you something about Twinkletoes,’ I said. ‘He’s a good bloke. Not too bright at times, but a good bloke. But I’ve never really seen him at his worst. A lot of other people have had a very different perspective on Twinkletoes, but they’ve never really put it into words, mainly because they’ve been too busy screaming and begging or losing consciousness through lack of blood. Do you know why he’s called Twinkletoes?’

Annan shook his head vigorously, seeming to have lost the power of speech.

‘Well, you’re about to find out…’ Taking the cigarette from his lips, I dropped it on the floorboards and crushed it out. Then I knelt down and with one hand untied the laces on his right shoe, holding his struggling ankle in place with the other. I slipped off the shoe and sock. Then repeated the process with the other foot.

‘What are you going to do?’ Annan’s voice was loud and shrill and crackled with fear.

McBride came back. A long-handled pair of bolt cutters, fetched from the Cresta’s trunk, hung from his beefy grip. Seeing him come into the room, filling it like an ocean tide filling a bay, even I felt scared. The high-pitched, barely audible sound I heard coming from Annan was somewhere between a whimper and a squeal.

‘Do you want me to do his big toes as well, Mr. Lennox?’ Twinkle asked matter-of-factly, as if he was a jobbing gardener enquiring about which hedges to trim.

‘What do you want me to DO?’ Annan screamed at me. ‘Just tell me, for fuck’s sake. Please… please get that fucking ape away from me!’

Twinkletoes moved forward, silent. He crouched down at Annan’s feet. Annan’s small toe looked tiny between Twinkle’s forefinger and thumb. He started to struggle furiously but fruitlessly against his bonds.

‘I know you killed Sylvia Dewar,’ I said. ‘You thought you were free and clear when Tom Dewar killed himself after finding her. Even I thought it was a murder-suicide. But the pathologist’s times of death didn’t fit. And I know that when you were playing your occasional bit part of Frank Lang, Sylvia played a supporting role. What was the deal? Was she part of your setup? I know she had previous for dishonesty.’

‘STOP HIM!’ Annan screamed, his pale, small toe now in the black jaws of Twinkletoes’s bolt cutters.

‘Just a minute, Twinkle. Let’s hear what he has to say.’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ said Annan, his eyes still wild. ‘She wasn’t part of it. I didn’t even know who she was to start with… just this married tart who kept coming to the door whenever I was there. I wasn’t interested. The whole set up with the house was just to have an address for Lang. The only reason I made regular visits was to keep up the pretence.’

‘But that meant showing your face.’

‘People don’t remember me, don’t recognize me. And I kept my visits to the minimum.’

‘So what happened with Sylvia Dewar?’

‘I thought she was just some randy housewife who kept pestering me, so I gave her what she wanted. Just a couple of times. Then she hit me with it. She remembered me but I had forgotten her. She knew me from this shitty job I’d done when I’d first got into the business. She knew my name wasn’t Lang and she asked what scam I was working. I made up some shite about an insurance company. She said she wanted a cut or she would tell the police I was renting the place under a false name and that I was a confidence trickster. We both knew that the coppers would never get me, but it would fuck up my cover story, meaning it would fuck up the job and the score.’

‘So you played along. Screwing her and promising her a cash payout.’

‘Don’t make it sound like I was taking advantage. She shagged anything in trousers. She was a whore and she treated her husband like shite. I felt sorry for him, but I was just one of many.’

‘But then you smashed her skull in with an ashtray.’

‘She started saying she wanted away from her husband and if I didn’t give her a cut, she’d tell the police everything. I knew Tom Dewar was going nuts and I reckoned he’d get the blame, but they wouldn’t hang him or anything. I mean, they’d find it difficult to panel a fucking jury in Glasgow that she hadn’t shagged at least one of them. I didn’t think he’d kill himself, I swear I didn’t…’

‘Dead men and broken hearts…’ I said, more to myself than Annan.

‘What?’

‘Something someone said to me recently.’

‘Listen…’ he said, glancing anxiously at Twinkletoes who was still patiently poised. ‘We can do a deal here. You can end up rich. Really fucking rich. You can keep all the money — all of it — just give me a chance to get away.’

I turned to Twinkletoes. ‘Untie him.’

‘What about…?’ McBride nodded to the toe.

‘Untie him, Twinkle.’

Annan twisted his lipless mouth in a smile that made me want to hit him again. ‘You won’t regret this,’ he said as McBride laid the bolt cutters aside and set to loosening his bonds. I took two blank sheets of foolscap I had brought in my jacket pocket and unfolded them. I laid the sheets on his lap and handed him my fountain pen.

Annan looked nervously over his shoulder at Twinkletoes, then to me, trying to work out what I was going to do, and I could see a glimmer of hope in his eyes.

‘On the first sheet, I want you to write down all of the account numbers and the corresponding bank details for every account you’ve set up. And don’t think about flannelling me. If I for one second think that there is a single figure or account number that’s bogus, then I’ll let Twinkle get back to work on your pedicure…’

‘You won’t regret this, Lennox. I promise you… you can have it all.’

‘Well, I want a little insurance. You’re going to write down a full confession to the murder of Sylvia Dewar. Everything you’ve told me, but also all of the specifics about times and dates. Oh, and I want your fingerprint in ink next to the signature. Again, no lies or bending the truth, or you’ll never tiptoe through the tulips again.’

‘Wait a minute… I can’t do that… they’ll hang me.’

‘Only if I give it to the police. If everything goes well with making withdrawals from the accounts, then you’ve nothing to worry about. And, anyway, a confession under duress isn’t admissible in court.’

‘So…’ said Annan, still rat-clever and cautious despite his situation, ‘what you’re saying is if you get the money, you burn that?’

‘Is it a deal?’

‘How do I know you’ll burn the confession?’

‘You don’t. You’ll just have to trust me. I’m Canadian after all. The clean living and maple syrup makes us grow up straight and true.’

Rubbing his raw, untied wrists, Annan’s little rat eyes darted about, as if looking for an escape route. Eventually, he started to write. Half way through he asked for a small red notebook from the pocket of his coat. Leaving him guarded by McBride, I got it for him, flicking through the pages and seeing rows of letters and numbers. It was some kind of cypher. Referring to the notebook, he scribbled down the details I needed.

He handed the sheet to me.

‘Now the confession. And I want all the details of the union scam in it as well.’

It was clear he saw no way out of it and he started to write. Every now and then I checked over his shoulder to make sure he was telling it how it was. When he was finished, both sides of the sheet were filled with handwriting. I got him to rub ink on the tips of his thumb and forefinger and pressed them down on the paper.

‘Sign it and date it,’ I said. And he did.

He stood up slowly and painfully, handing me both pieces of paper. I checked them over again.

‘There you go, Lennox. You’ve got it all. Happy?’ A raw hatred peeked through the curtain of his fear.

‘I’m a cheerful kind of guy.’

Annan put his socks and shoes back on, each movement slow and stiff except for his fingers, which shook almost uncontrollably. Twinkle had scared him good, all right.

He straightened up and started to walk past me. I stopped him with a hand on his chest.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I’m not going to hang around. Or do you want me to come with you when you pick up the money… is that it? You’ve got the confession. You don’t need me any more.’

‘Oh, I think we do, Dennis.’

He looked from me to Twinkletoes. ‘What is this? I thought we had a deal…’

‘Well, that just goes to show you, you can’t trust anyone. You’ve been conned, Annan. We’re going to tie you up again, nice and tight, and tell the coppers where to find you. And we’ll give them the bank details and your confession.’

‘But that confession’s not admissible, like you said…’

‘True. But it points the police in the right direction to get evidence that they can use.’

‘You bastard!’ Annan looked like he wanted to hit me, but he was too yellow.

‘Yep, Dennis,’ I said, in a calm, conversational tone, ‘I’m going to give the police everything you’ve given me. You maybe won’t swing for Sylvia’s murder, but you’re going to spend a long, long time sleeping lightly in an eight-by-four cell with someone called Big Boabie who’s hung like a mule and gets frisky after his cocoa.’

I thought of Sylvia Dewar with her head smashed in, of her husband’s lonely walk up the stairs with a length of electrical cable. And I thought about all of the crap I’d been through. How chasing a ghost Frank Lang had involved me with a very-much-alive Ferenc Lang. Annan had no direct involvement with the Hungarian thing, but there would have been no Hungarian thing without him.

I wanted to give him a beating. One that he’d never forget. Instead I shoved him backwards and onto the chair.

‘Tie him up good and tight, Twinkle,’ I said.

Turned out I wasn’t that person any more, after all.