Dead men and broken hearts

CHAPTER EIGHT

I spent two days wearing out shoe leather and working up the telephone bill. The days were spent mostly on the union case, the evenings on Ellis.

Now, I considered myself to be a self-contained, independent kind of character. Maybe not a loner, but someone who tries not to give too much away about himself. I kept a lot of stuff private and a lot of the people I knew didn’t know who else I knew.

Even with that, it’s true that no man is an island. Each of us exists partly through others; the connections we make throughout our lives, good or bad, extending into a far-reaching web. A traceable web to one degree or another. Me included.

Frank Lang appeared to be the exception to John Donne’s rule. If there was a committee or a reading group or a theatre association, then Lang’s name would be on the list of members or contributors. There were lot of threads spun in Lang’s web, right enough, but they just didn’t stretch very far.

The calls I made and the people I visited confirmed the bare bones of Lang’s existence: he had been a member of the merchant marine, working as a ship’s cook; he had enrolled for evening classes through the Workers’ Educational Association; he had been on the membership lists of several societies and committees. The only thing was that no one I spoke to could really remember ever meeting Lang.

Eventually I did manage to trace two merchant seamen who had served with Lang. I showed them the photograph and they both confirmed it was him and yes, they had seen him in the flesh. One of the sailors said that he had heard that Lang had emigrated years ago, Canada or Australia.

And that was it: all I could find on Frank Lang.

Archie had been sniffing around the Ellis case where the opposite of Lang seemed to be true. Andrew Ellis’s history was eminently traceable and transparent. A well-liked and well-respected member of the Glasgow business community, he had a reputation stretching back to the end of the war. No dodgy dealings, no grey areas, no skeletons in the cupboard. His case may have been the opposite of Lang’s, but it was just as baffling.

When Archie came into the office on the Tuesday morning, he balefully confirmed that he’d been unable to dig up anything of note on Ellis.

‘The problem is our hands are tied,’ he explained. ‘I’m just nipping away at the edges here, Chief.’ Archie habitually called me Chief, despite me asking him not to. Probably because I’d asked him not to. ‘I can’t talk to his employees or customers, because that would alert him to the fact that his missus has put a couple of professional snoopers onto him. And he hasn’t answered the call of the wild for the last three nights, so there’s been nowhere or no one to follow him to. If you’ve only got until the end of the week, then I think we’re scuppered.’

‘I think so too,’ I said, infected by Archie’s dolefulness. I ran through where I was with the union thing with him, for no other real reason than to hear myself say it out loud. It didn’t sound any better.

‘What’s in the ledger?’ Archie asked.

‘That is something I am going to have to find out,’ I said. ‘Connelly is being unusually coy about it. My guess is that the missing money has been donated by supporters of the union who would rather keep their names out of the public eye, and the ledger details the payments. It sounds to me like blackmail, but Connelly denies that. Maybe Lang intends to sell it to the newspapers, but it is technically stolen property… What is it, Archie?’ I noticed him purse his thin lips as he held me in his bloodhound stare.

‘A list of union supporters? Joe Connelly and his union have hired us to track down a missing jotter with the names of a few Reds in it?’

‘You don’t think it’s likely?’

‘Well, Chief, that’s relative. Compared to Twinkletoes’s chances of winning Brain of Britain, it’s likely. Compared to there being something in that ledger that is a lot more important or embarrassing, it’s not.’

‘I know what you mean,’ I said. It had been troubling me since my meeting with Connelly and Lynch. Not what had been said, but what hadn’t been said. ‘By the way, are you happy enough to do this week’s run with Twinkletoes?’

‘Delighted. He gives me a warm glow of security. And it’s nice to reminisce. I arrested him for breach of the peace, aggravated assault, resisting arrest and police assault back in Forty-seven, you know.’

‘Really?’

‘Mmm. Old times. It gives us something to chat about.’

I tried to imagine Archie and Twinkletoes chatting, but the effort made my head hurt.

Some people make a big show of their learning. Bookshelves dressed with the ‘right’ novels with unbroken spines, learned spoutings in the tap room, the dropping of the right names in conversation. The Mitchell Library was Glasgow’s very public, very brash statement of erudition. It was big. Very big. The largest public reference library in Europe.

I worked my way through the Commercial Reference Library and came away with details of Ellis’s company, as well as Hall Demolitions, the company he had worked for before setting up his own outfit. While I was there, I also checked out the public records on the Amalgamated Union of Industrial Trades: no mention of Frank Lang anywhere among the names of union officers.

Glasgow’s air is usually too heavy and sluggish for the wind to waste effort on, but that afternoon, as autumn oozed indistinctly into winter, it had decided to make its presence felt. As I came out of the Mitchell Library and stepped into a chill, damp swirl of rain and grime, I tightened my elbow-grip on the leather document case tucked under my arm and with my other hand clamped my protesting Borsalino to my head.

It was at times like these that I reflected on how, at the end of the war, I may have been directionless and feckless, but could not work out why I hadn’t chosen to be directionless and feckless in Paris or Rome or anywhere with a better climate. Which was hardly a restrictive criterion.

I pushed through the wind, the rain and the grim-faced crowds, steering a course back to my office.

Andrew Ellis wasn’t the only one who was skilled at spotting when he was being tailed.

I didn’t feel like going back to my digs and there was a kind of aimlessness about me when I left the office. I was still smarting about what had happened with Fiona White. I’d been all kinds of cad and swine with women, it was true, but I had been straight with Fiona White. It stung hard to be on the receiving end for a change.

I found myself in a fish restaurant in Sauchiehall Street. It was not the kind of place I usually frequented: generally, the range of Glaswegian gustatory delights was determined by whether or not they could be cooked by dropping them into a deep-fat fryer, and I generally tried to be more cosmopolitan in my dining habits. But I did call into this place from time to time on the conceit that it was slightly more sophisticated than the usual fish and chip joint. It was all high ceilings, porcelain and chequerboard floor tiles, and had huge windows that looked out onto the street; the waiters and waitresses wore waistcoats and aprons, your fish and chips were served on china, instead of being wrapped in the previous day’s Scottish Express, and you ate with cutlery, not your fingers.

I was all class.

He didn’t come into the restaurant. Instead he stood directly across the street, hiding from the rain in a bus shelter and smoking. Whoever he was, he wasn’t a pro. A pro doesn’t stand in plain sight of his target, especially when that target has gone into a public building with only one entrance and exit. My meal came with a pot of tea and I ate it leisurely, finishing off with an even more leisurely cigarette. The guy across the street let four buses come and go from the stop without budging.

After I’d finished and paid at the cashier’s desk, I pulled my coat collar up and the brim of my hat down and shouldered my way into the rain. My ‘shadow’ across Sauchiehall Street turned his back to me and started to read a tattered bus timetable with sudden and profound interest.

I made my way through the crowds back in the direction of my office. The Atlantic was parked a couple of streets away but I decided to do my own little test to see how far my new chum would follow me. I turned right and crossed Blythswood Street. As I casually checked the traffic, I caught a quick glance of him bustling around the corner. He was a reasonably big guy, maybe five-ten but heavy-set. He was wearing a pale grey raincoat, a matching hat and a harassed expression.

I cut into Sauchiehall Lane, one of the intersecting alleyways that run parallel to the grid layout streets of Glasgow city centre. It was lined with the unadorned brick and steel-doored backs of the buildings that faced onto Sauchiehall Street and Bath Street, and in the rain the cobbles were greasy and treacherous underfoot. I trotted along the lane to put some distance between me and him.

He had a round, fleshy face and large eyes, and if it had not been for the smudge of trimmed moustache above the plump lips he would have looked like an overblown baby. The big eyes got bigger when he saw me waiting for him and he stood for a moment, startled.

Then he took a swing at me.

‘You bastard!’ he shouted, as his fist arced wide and as predictably as if he’d sent me a three-sheet telegram about his intentions. I blocked his punch easily with my left forearm and planted my own in the cushion of his belly just below the breastbone. He doubled up and I slammed one into the side of his head. His feet slipped on the cobbles and he fell against the wall, still clutching his gut. It was quick and easy and all of the fight went out of him. The problem was — or at least always had been since the war — that the fight never seemed to go out of me. Once I had gotten started, I found it difficult to stop. But now, as I lined up another blow, I looked down at the doubled-over guy gasping for breath. He was as good at fighting as he was at tailing people, and with a sigh I hauled him up and pushed him against the wall. His hat had come off and I could see he was bald, with only a band of close-cropped hair from temple to temple. It made him look even more like some kind of overgrown infant. The fight might have gone from him, but when our eyes met, his still burned with hatred.

‘You bastard…’ he repeated breathily. ‘You stay the hell away from her. Stay away from her or I’ll kill you.’

I grabbed the collar of his coat with both hands and slammed him against brickwork.

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ I demanded. ‘Why are you following me?’

‘You know why, you shite.’

‘Cut out the name-calling, bud, or I’ll slap it out of you. Now… what the hell is wrong with you and why are you on my tail?’

‘I know it’s you. I know you’ve been… You and her. I found your card in her handbag…’ He reached into his coat pocket and I grabbed his wrist, easing his hand slowly into view. It was my business card, all right.

‘Listen, I have no idea what this is all about,’ I protested. I had been chased by more than one angry husband in my time, but it had been a while since I’d given anyone cause.

‘You’ve been carrying on with my wife, that’s what it’s all about, as if you didn’t know.’

‘Who’s your wife?’

‘Don’t try to come on all innocent,’ he blustered and straightened himself up. He was trying to regain some dignity, but it was still well beyond his reach. ‘You know who she is… that is unless you’ve got a string of marriages you’re wrecking, you bastard.’

I gave him a backhander, hard across the face. ‘I told you to watch your mouth. What’s your wife’s name?’

‘Sylvia Dewar. I’m Tom Dewar, her husband.’ His eyes fell with the last word. The shame of a cuckold. I let him go.

‘Sylvia Dewar?’ The pieces began to fit. I let go of his coat and he tried to smooth the crumples out of it and his pride. ‘Listen, friend, I only met your wife the other day. On business. And I’m sure as hell not playing footsie with her.’

‘No?’ he looked at me defiantly. A shaky sneer on his swelling face.

‘No.’

‘Then someone is. And I found your card hidden in her handbag.’

‘Didn’t you think to ask her who I was? Or do you just jump on the first mug you think your wife’s spoken to?’

‘She would just have lied if I’d asked her. She’s a liar as well as everything else. I know all about it. There are ways of knowing. It’s been going on for months.’

‘Not with me, it hasn’t.’

He stared at me, the bitterness and anger still burning in the large, watery eyes. But I guessed that was the way he looked at the whole world and he was clearly less sure about his accusation. I bent down, picked up his hat and handed it to him.

‘Listen, Mr Dewar,’ I said, ‘I think we should grab a coffee. There’s a place around the corner.’

We got some odd looks as we walked into the cafe. The harsh neon ceiling lights threw up the oily smears on Dewar’s coat and the angry swelling on his temple where I’d bopped him. We took a table in the corner and a glum, meagre, middle-aged waitress took our order for two frothy coffees as if it had been a personal insult.

‘Okay, here’s why your wife had my card…’ I explained all about my work for Joe Connelly and the union and his concern for Frank Lang’s welfare. I gave him all the main points of what I’d discussed with his wife, but, given that he’d recently taken a swing at me for stealing some of his apples, I missed out the part where Sylvia had offered me the whole fruit bowl. I ran through what she had told me about Lang going away with the men in the fancy car.

‘She never said anything about that to me,’ he said. ‘And I’ve never seen any fancy cars outside. All I know is he’s not been back to the house for a week or more.’

‘Do you believe me?’ I asked. ‘I promise you that I haven’t seen your wife before or since and our meeting was strictly business.’

Dewar stared at me. He knew I was telling the truth, but there was desperation in his eyes, almost as if that believing it had been me, that being able to put a face to his wife’s secret lover, made it easier somehow.

Eventually, he shook his big, baby head glumly. ‘But there is somebody. I know it. I even thought it could have been Frank next door but he’s hardly ever there.’

‘Quite,’ I said, but thought about how his wife had known what Lang kept in his kitchen cupboards. I had recognized something in Sylvia Dewar, something I had seen in many of the women I had known. The type of women I had known. My guess was that Dewar was making a mistake in looking for one offender. Given the fact that I had nearly become one of them, there had probably been more than one notch on Sylvia Dewar’s bedpost. I looked at Dewar, slumped at the table, the spirit leaving him just as the fight had. Despite the fact that he had just tried to take my head off, I felt sorry for him.

‘Sylvia… you see, Sylvia isn’t the kind of woman that goes for someone like me,’ he said, desperation in his voice. ‘I couldn’t believe it when she went out with me and then said she would marry me. But I make a good wage and I give her a good life. I like to buy her things. She likes me buying things for her.’

‘Mr Dewar…’ I said as soothingly as I could manage. I was not good with other people’s unhappiness. ‘You don’t have to — ’

‘I’m sorry about today. But I’m going out of my mind with this. I suspect everybody and when I found your card…’

‘Forget it.’ I waved a dismissive hand. ‘I understand. You don’t need to explain. Let’s just forget about it.’

‘But your card…’ he was almost pleading. ‘It says you’re an Inquiry Agent. Is that like a private detective? Do you handle marriage cases?’

‘It is and I do,’ I said. ‘But before you ask, I can’t get involved. I’ve met your wife in another context and that rules me out of handling a divorce case involving her.’ I didn’t mention that the real reason I couldn’t get involved was because she had invited me to test out their marital bedsprings. Which could make things complicated.

‘I don’t want a divorce. I just want to find out who she’s messing about with. Will you take the case? I can pay…’ He was raising his voice in desperation, attracting more glances, including from the waitress who’d clearly gone to the same charm school as Mussolini.

‘I can’t, Mr Dewar.’ I sighed. ‘Listen, give yourself a few days to calm down, then call me.’ I handed him a business card. ‘You best put the other card back in your wife’s purse, just in case she looks for it. I asked her to get in touch if Frank Lang comes back home.’

We sat over our coffees for a while and I asked him what he knew about his missing neighbour.

‘Not a lot,’ he said. ‘Frank keeps himself to himself. Always friendly though.’

‘But?’ I said, reading something in his expression.

‘Nothing really. Just he seems a bit of a misfit. Not odd, exactly, but he’s… I don’t know… just a bit different.’

‘In what way different?’

‘Just not your typical union man, I suppose.’ There was frustration in Dewar’s shrug: we were not talking about what he wanted to talk about, all he wanted to talk about. His wife’s suspected infidelity was filling his mental universe.

‘I guess he’s never left a key with you, in case he was away like he is now?’

‘No. Like I said, he keeps his business to himself.’

‘I may have to ask you and your wife more questions,’ I said. ‘But, under the circumstances, it would probably be best if I did that when you were both at home.’

He nodded. ‘You will think about what I asked you? About maybe just keeping an eye on Sylvia to see what she’s playing at?’

‘I will,’ I said. ‘But at the moment it’s a definite no-can-do. Even without the complication of your wife knowing who I am, I’ve already got two cases running at the moment.’

After a while, we ran out of things to say and we left the cafe. As he took his leave of me, Dewar apologized again for trying to jump me in the alley.

‘We all make mistakes,’ I said. ‘God knows, I’ve made more than my share.’

‘You don’t know what it’s like,’ he said, the too-large eyes cast down. ‘You don’t know what it’s like to think you have something special, something good, with a woman, only to find out it’s all a sham.’

‘Don’t I?’ I asked. ‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that… ’