Lennox

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

I didn’t think I’d need Twinkletoes to deal with Ronnie Smails, and after the cosy scenes in Dumfries’s club, I thought I’d give him the afternoon off. I went back to my digs first, called a buddy in the Port of Clyde and arranged to meet that night at the Horsehead Bar for a pint and a chat.

I drove to Cowcaddens and found Smails’s place: a two-roomed shop on the ground floor of a soot-blackened tenement building. There was a printed card in the corner of the grimy window that gave rates for family and wedding photography and provided the last resting place for half-a-dozen flies. Next to it a freshly married couple gap-tooth-grinned out of a yellowing photograph. The bride was a head taller than the groom, and either the dark suit he wore had been borrowed from an even shorter chum, or he preferred his ankles to be well ventilated.

I tried the door but it was locked and no one answered my knock. Smails was out, probably assisting Richard Avedon on an Audrey Hepburn shoot. I decided to come back later.

Jimmy Frater and I had got to know one another through a chance meeting in a bar on a foggy night. I hadn’t been in Glasgow long and we both stank a little of the war. It was one of these evenings where light chat reveals a common history, which turns into a gloomy recognition of a similarly damaged soul. The difference between us was that Frater had somehow managed to drag his life back onto some kind of track. He worked for the authority that ran the Port of Clyde and had proved to be a valuable asset on the odd occasion.

I ordered a pint of heavy for Frater and a rye whiskey for myself while I waited for him to arrive. Frater, unlike me, was the dependable, solid sort. I knew I could rely on him being on time for our meeting.

‘You get a chance to look at those codes I gave you?’ I asked after he had arrived.

‘Tell me you’re not up to something illegal, Lennox.’

‘I’m not up to something illegal,’ I said. ‘I’d tell you that anyway, of course, but in this case it happens to be true. In fact if I’m right about these codes, then I’ll be handing the information over to the police.’

‘Okay,’ Frater said, but didn’t look entirely convinced. ‘You were right. All of these relate to CCI shipments from the port. Three different ships, each appearing several times, but different manifests.’

‘What was the cargo?’

‘Machine parts. Mainly agricultural. Two shipments were oil drilling equipment. The one thing all of the shipments had in common was their destination. Aqaba, in Jordan. That help?’

‘Kinda,’ I said. Truth was it was a big help: proof of the Middle East connection I suspected.

I drank a few more with Frater, who made his apologies and said he had to get back to his wife and kids. That suited me because I wanted to catch Smails that night. The other reason was that nothing depressed me more than success and happiness.

Ronnie Smails’s studio was still in darkness when I arrived back. I guessed that he lived above the premises, but the first-floor flat was also unlit. I tried the studio door again and found it still locked.

I waited until a Corporation tram rattled past and cast a look up and down the street before turning my attention to the panel of four small glazed panes in the door. I picked at the putty around one of them and it crumbled to the touch. I set about easing the pane out of the door with my penknife. Eventually it came away and I squeezed my hand through and un-snibbed the door. With the blinds down, I reckoned it was okay to switch the lights on.

Whatever Smails’s talents as a photographer, he was never going to char for me. The studio was filthy and looked as if it hadn’t been swept out in a couple of months. I looked through some of the display drawers and found a collection of photographs. Mainly wedding and portrait pics, some of which were ancient. Smails’s trade was less than brisk.

I went through to the darkroom. There were several prints hanging on the line. All of them portrayed what tended to happen after the wedding ceremony. This was Smails’s real business. The commonality between the photographs was that they all illustrated the act of physical union between two or several individuals. The other common factor was that, for some inexplicable reason, the men all had kept their socks on.

I rifled through a steel cabinet and found more of the same predictable fuck and suck shots. But these were posed, not surreptitiously taken blackmail photos. There was one set of photographs that did, strangely, make me a little homesick. It was the most creatively conceived of the scenarios: a Canadian tableau in which a Mountie and a trapper were showing a young lady partially attired as an Eskimo the true meaning of what it meant to spear a beaver. I felt a tear in my eye and had to resist the temptation to burst into a chorus of Oh, Canada!

I was about to put the photographs back when I realized that the Eskimo Nell was familiar. To be honest, I hadn’t really been examining her face so I took a closer look. She was really quite pretty and I was sure I had seen her somewhere before, but in a completely different context. I pocketed one of the photographs that showed something of her face and put the rest back in the cabinet.

I went through the rest of the place and couldn’t find anything that fitted with extortion. Switching the lights out, I climbed the stairs to the apartment above. Maybe there was a hidey-hole up there. Again the flat was in darkness and I flicked the light switch. Nothing. I had to fumble along the hall until I found a standard lamp. It flooded the hall and the rooms off with an insipid, jaundiced light. Smails had obviously opted for a design motif that could best be described as Early Shithole. The place was filthy and smelly and I doubted that this was anybody that McGahern would get involved with.

I was wrong.

I found Smails in the living room. This time there had been no torture, just simple execution. He sat on a grubby clubchair, a long-cold cup of tea on the side table next to him and a cigarette between his fingers that had burned down and scorched unfeeling flesh. A copy of Spick magazine had slipped from his fingers and onto the floor at his feet. Smails obviously made a big effort to keep up to date with what was current in his profession.

I examined him more closely. His face showed all the signs of strangulation. He had been choked to death with the same width of garrotte as Arthur Parks. Unlike Parks, Smails hadn’t had any information worth torturing out of him and he had been killed swiftly and silently.

He maybe hadn’t told his killers anything, but he was telling me exactly what I wanted to know: he was a small man with greasy grey hair long overdue a cutting and his eyes were open and staring, as they would have been in life. But Smails had obviously had some kind of congenital defect: his right eyelid drooped over the eye. Just the way Bobby had described the ‘greasy wee shite’ he had seen Tam McGahern talking to shortly before he died.

Smails had been my man. I was now certain he had taken the photographs for the blackmail operation but I knew a search of the place would be futile: the pics and the negs would be long gone.

Parks dead. Smails dead. There were two other contacts that Tam McGahern had had before his demise: the fat Dutchman and Jackie Gillespie, the armed robber. I wondered if they were both still breathing.

Remembering my experience at Arthur Parks’s place, I decided to get out quick, just in case the cozzers were on their way again, maybe this time without bells and flashing lights. I paused long enough to wipe down with a handkerchief the surfaces and handles that I remembered touching. My fingerprints weren’t on record, but they were all over the Parks place and I didn’t want my dabs to be the link between two murder scenes. I switched all of the lights off and slipped out into the street.

I had had the sense not to park the Atlantic directly outside, mainly because I didn’t want to scare Smails off if he had returned while I was still inside. I was just about to turn the key in the ignition when a taxi stopped outside Smails. Two women got out. I couldn’t see them too well but as far as I could tell they were reasonably well put together and I guessed that they were a couple of Smails’s ‘models’. One paid the taxi driver, while the other rang Smails’s doorbell. I had locked the door and hastily tapped the small glass pane into place. The brass at the door called over to her chum, obviously to tell the taxi driver to wait. She rang again and rapped on the door. As far as I could see her knocking hadn’t dislodged the pane. She gave up and climbed back into the taxi.

I followed them across town. I had noticed that they weren’t cheaply dressed and they certainly weren’t concerned about the cost of the taxi. The dark-haired girl I’d seen knocking at Smails’s door got off at the Saltmarket. I decided to stick with the taxi. It headed south and we passed Hampden Stadium and eventually stopped outside a tenement in Mount Vernon. The girl got out and paid the taxi driver. Bingo: she was none other than Eskimo Nell. And now I remembered where I’d seen her before. She was the woman I’d twice seen Lillian Andrews with. I tried to be as inconspicuous as possible but it was difficult with so few cars on the street.

A number twelve Corporation tram stopped and half a dozen people dismounted. I parked and walked briskly into the midst of the passengers. The blonde disappeared into the communal tenement close. I was just in time to see her turn the corner at the far end of the close and climb the rear stairs. I moved as quietly as I could to the end of the passageway and watched from its cover as she entered her flat. Making a mental note of the number, I headed back out to the Atlantic.

The only reason I didn’t make a house call there and then was I did not want her to work out that I’d followed her from Smails’s. After all, he would be found over the next day or so and they would work out a rough time of death. Roughly the time that coincided with me being there. And the City of Glasgow Police had a problem with the concept of coincidence.

I drove past Smails’s place on the way back. No police cars outside and the place was still in darkness. I tried to ’phone Willie Sneddon to give him an update, but he was out. I headed back to my digs and turned in for the night. But every time sleep started to come it was shouldered out of the way by something big and ugly and frightening. I lay in the dark and thought of Helena and Fiona White and May Donaldson and new starts in Canada. The idea had never been so appealing. I had gotten involved in something a little too deadly this time. I realized that, for the first time in a very long time, I was actually a little scared.

My foreboding turned out to be well-founded. An ill-tempered Mrs White called me down to the shared hall telephone at seven the next morning. It was Willie Sneddon.

‘Lennox, don’t talk but listen. The polis are on their way to arrest me and I’m going to be here when they arrive. The coppers have lifted Murphy and Cohen. About an hour ago. I was supposed to be lifted at the same time but I wasn’t at home. The bastards have lifted most of my team as well, including Twinkletoes and Tiny. I need you to contact George Meldrum – he’s my lawyer – and tell him to bail me out. I can’t get him on the ’phone and they’ll be here any moment. The cops will leave you alone because you’re not on any of our teams.’

‘What the hell has happened?’

‘I don’t fucking know. Just get Meldrum as fast as you can.’

‘Okay, if it’s as big as it seems to be, then they won’t let you near Meldrum.’

‘Just do it.’ He hung up.

I knew of Greasy George Meldrum. I reckoned there was a picture of him on every dartboard in every police canteen in Glasgow. He was known as Greasy George for two reasons: his overly groomed appearance, over-elaborate vocabulary and oiled hair, and the fact that everything he touched seemed to become slippery. Just as the police had a solid case against one of the Three Kings, it would slip from their grasp, thanks to Greasy George.

I got Meldrum’s home number from the book and dialled it. No answer. I got dressed quickly, unsuccessfully tried to reach him again by ’phone, and jumped into the Atlantic. I decided it was pointless driving up to his Milngavie home and instead decided to head into my office and wait until nearer nine, when I’d probably catch Meldrum at his offices in Wellington Street.

I listened to the Home Service on the car radio on the way in to my office. One story dominated the news. I pulled quickly over to the kerb and listened intently to the whole report. I muttered fuck as all of the pieces suddenly fell into place. Unfortunately the pieces falling into place meant that all hell was breaking loose. I now understood why the Three Kings had been pulled in. I went straight to Meldrum’s office and sat outside until his staff started to arrive. I followed them in.

A pretty receptionist greeted me a little disdainfully, obviously annoyed at someone turning up before she could settle into her day. She was also seriously unimpressed that I didn’t have an appointment. It was only after I told her I was representing the interests of Mr William Sneddon – and probably those of Mr Michael Murphy and Mr Jonathan Cohen – that she suddenly became very much more accommodating.

I sat for an hour waiting in the reception area trying to work out just how accommodating the receptionist might become. Eventually Greasy George arrived. He was tallish, well-built and balding and wore an expensively tailored blue-pinstripe business suit. I intercepted him as he passed through reception.

‘I’ve heard a great deal about you, Mr Lennox,’ he said amiably. ‘But our paths have never crossed. Some of our mutual clients speak very highly of you. Please…’ he held the door open to his office.

‘I tried to get you at home,’ I said, sitting down.

‘I’m afraid I was staying overnight at a friend’s house.’ He still smiled. It was the type of smile you wanted, for no good reason, to punch. ‘My good lady wife and children are away for a few days, so I took the opportunity to visit my friend.’

‘I understand,’ I said. We both knew I did. ‘Have you heard the news?’

‘What news would that be, Mr Lennox?’

‘The armed robbery. It was the main story this morning. I’ve no doubt it will hit later editions of the papers. There was an army convoy on its way from the Royal Ordnance Arsenal at Fazakerly in Liverpool to Redford and Dreghorn Barracks. It was stopped by police officers at a checkpoint. Except they weren’t police officers. It was a highly organized job, but something seems to have gone disastrously wrong. The result is two dead soldiers, a driver badly beaten and in a coma, and a ton of the latest sub-machine guns gone.’

‘I see…’ The smile faded. ‘I’m guessing that this has something to do with those stolen uniforms.’

‘You know about the uniforms?’ I asked.

‘Yes, I do. Messrs Sneddon, Murphy and Cohen have been receiving the attentions of our constabulary a little too persistently over the last while.’

‘Well, that’s why I’m here. Sneddon ’phoned me this morning. The CID have taken them all in for questioning. Sneddon needs you to head over to St Andrew’s Street with a get-out-of-jail-free card.’

‘I’m afraid it will be anything but free.’

I smiled. ‘I would think you’d want to get all three out of there as quick as possible. After all, between them, the Three Kings must pay more than your tailor’s bills.’

‘In which case, we’re both in the same position, as far as I can gather.’

‘True,’ I said. ‘So I suggest we both work, each in his own way, to free up our revenue sources.’

We left together, Meldrum pausing to tell his secretary to cancel all his appointments for the day. I wondered how many of his clients were on the ’phone. It was quite an achievement for him to get such a large percentage of his clients off: he had a growing word-of-scum reputation and everybody knew that if Greasy George Meldrum was your lawyer, you were as guilty as sin.

We parted company on the street outside his office. He shook my hand and handed me one of his expensive embossed cards.

‘Thanks,’ I smiled, ‘but I don’t think I’ll be needing your services.’

‘You never know, Mr Lennox. But that’s not why I gave it to you.’ He unlocked the door of his new Bentley R-type and I could have sworn I smelled polished walnut and leather from twenty yards away. ‘It is I who may need your services in the future.’ He got into his Bentley and drove off. I stared at his card. So far I’d been offered informal partnerships with a professional murderer and the most despised figure in the Scottish legal system. Maybe I should change my image.

I pocketed the card. I’d told him I would never need his services. Truth was that if the police made the link between the Parks and Smails murder scenes, then Greasy George could be exactly who I’d need.