Lennox

CHAPTER THIRTY

I’ve always considered myself a smart cookie. It’s one of these things you get smug about, having brains. Generally, I thought of myself as someone who always had an answer. Tonight, however, that answer must have been moving all over Glasgow, because I found myself driving through the city aimlessly, not seeing the streets, my bruised and drugged brain refusing to give me directions.

But maybe it had. I found myself back in the future. Ahead of me the partly built monoliths of Moss Heights loomed black into the night sky. Again I parked some distance from Jackie Gillespie’s brand-new house, although it did little to make the Atlantic, one of only three cars parked on the entire length of the street, less conspicuous.

The back door was still ajar. I made my way into the kitchen and cursed the fact I hadn’t brought a torch. I wasn’t even sure what I was doing there. I was alone. The Three Kings were out of the picture for God knew how long. No Twinkletoes or Tiny to call on to add muscle. I wasn’t even here on a hunch.

I went through to the living room. It was easier to see in there because of the nauseous yellow light cast in from the streetlamp. It was still the tumbled mess it had been earlier. The only difference was the figure sitting in the corner, partly concealed in shadow. I noticed him mainly because of the yellow gleam on the sawn-off double-barrelled shotgun he had pointed at me. I put my hands up but otherwise didn’t move.

‘Hello, Jackie,’ I said. ‘You okay?’

‘No.’ The voice from the corner was deep but weak. ‘You Lennox?’

‘Were you expecting me?’

‘Kinda,’ said Gillespie. He lowered the gun and I lowered my arms. ‘You’re a favourite topic of conversation for McGahern and his tart. You was supposed to sit still for the frame. Like me.’

‘Funny thing is I was half-expecting to find you here,’ I said.

‘Everybody’s turned this place over once. They’ve crossed it off their list. It’s the one place in Glasgow I’m safe.’ Gillespie moved slightly to the side and his face became etched in yellow. From the look of him, I guessed it would be yellow even without the streetlight. I could see a glistening patch, black in the streetlight, on his shirt and jacket. There was a pool of it on the floor next to him.

‘Fuck, Gillespie. Let me have a look at you.’ I moved towards him but he hinted I stop by raising the barrels. I took the hint.

‘Forget it, Lennox. You’re talking to a ghost. You was in the war too. You know when someone loses this much blood, he’s fucked. Anyway, I could have gone to a hospital a day ago. What would be the point? Nursed back to health just to be dropped through a fucking hatch at Barlinnie. This way I choose where and when I die.’

‘I guess I’m right to think it was McGahern and Lillian who fucked you?’

‘Full fucking shaft.’ Gillespie lowered the gun again. He nodded when I asked if I could sit next to him. I could see his torso more clearly. He was right. There was no point in discussing it any more. ‘McGahern shot me. He executed those fucking soldiers. They didn’t die in a fire-fight. They was conscripts. Kids. Then he turned, calm as fuck, and shot me. But I got a shot off too. Missed the bastard, but he ran for it and drove off in the van. I took the car. Could hardly fucking drive. Dumped the car, waited till dark and walked here. The walk nearly fucking killed me. I was hoping you’d turn up.’

‘I kinda guessed you’d be here. Can I get you something? Water?’

Gillespie shook his head. ‘The only thing I want you to get me are those bastards. McGahern and his whore. She planned the whole fucking thing.’

‘Not McGahern?’

‘Naw. His idea. She put it all together. Now shut the fuck up and listen. I don’t have a lot of breathing left in me. And remember what I tell you. The Carpathian Queen. She’s one of the three ships McGahern’s been using. It sails at eleven the day after tomorrow. But the big payoff takes place tomorrow, noon. McGahern gives sight of the goods and gets half the money. Then the other half on delivery. The agent is a big fat Dutch fucker. We only ever called him The Fat Dutchman, but McGahern slipped once when he was talking to Lillian… he called the Dutchman De Jong. You have to watch the Dutchman: he has a couple of Arabs in tow. Dangerous bastards.’

‘One of them isn’t any more,’ I said. ‘We had an episode. I’ve ended his lineage.’

‘Watch your back anyway, Lennox. They’re all meeting at an empty warehouse on dock thirteen. Like I said, noon tomorrow.’

‘Maybe they’ve changed their plans. After all, you know about the meet.’

Gillespie’s laugh turned into a wet cough. ‘Dead men don’t tell tales. Anyhow, I know more than they think I know. Lennox, promise me you’ll get the bastards.’

‘I promise. I’ve got my own score to settle. And the Three Kings have bigger scores to settle.’

It was then that Gillespie said something that jarred with me. Made me feel even more vulnerable and alone. Something he had overheard and couldn’t elaborate on.

We sat quietly in the black and yellow geometry of shadow and streetlight. Everything was quiet. No dogs barking, no distant cars passing.

‘Lennox?’

‘Yeah?’

‘I was in Burma during the war. You?’

‘First Canadian. Italy and Germany.’

‘Then you know too. I mean, you know how this goes.’

‘Sure, Jackie. I know how this goes.’

‘I always wanted to go to Canada. Read all them comics about lumberjacks when I was a kid. Tell me about it.’

So I did. Gillespie sat quiet, apart from the odd wet cough, and listened as I talked about growing up on the banks of the Kennebecasis. About deep snow winters and hot sun summers. About watching the tidal bore surge up the Bay of Fundy. About the smell of the forest when the snow first melts. I was surprised just how much I had to say and talked on, even after Gillespie stopped coughing.

Like I had told him, I knew how it went.

I left the dead armed robber in his brand-new house, his shotgun still on his lap. When I got back in the Atlantic I sat for a moment and thought back to what he had said and how it had shaken me more than anything else: ‘There’s one other thing, Lennox. I don’t know which one, but one of the Three Kings isn’t to be trusted.’

It was four in the morning by the time I got back to my digs. If Mrs White heard me creep in, she didn’t signal it by putting on her light. I lay on the bed in my clothes, my exhaustion playing tug-of-war with the nausea and the throbbing in my head. My exhaustion won.

I woke up with a start and a stab of pain in my head. I looked at my watch and saw it was half past nine. I let my head sink back onto the pillow. The pain was still beyond all description of a headache, but I was aware that the intensity had been turned down a notch or two.

I got up and took enough aspirin to rot a steel gut and took a bath, shaved and dressed in a new change of clothes. I wore a black suit with a red pinstripe and a deep burgundy tie. I was dressing up for my coffin. My plan remained exactly the same as it had the night before when I had explained it to the Three Kings. The only difference now was that instead of going in mob-handed with the combined strength of Glasgow’s criminal underworld, I was going it alone. I could see the epitaph on my gravestone: Here lies Lennox: he went it alone. The wanker.

I drove to the docks and parked the Atlantic. I slipped the switchblade into my jacket pocket, checked the chambers of the Webley, snapped it shut and tucked it into the waistband of my trousers. I found a hole in the fence and dodged between warehouses until I found dock number thirteen. Maybe it would be my lucky number. I could see the warehouse. A Bedford of the same make that had been used the night they attempted to grab me was parked outside, a tarpaulin stretched over its cargo. It started to rain. Something on the other side of the dock began thumping at metal, sending ringing echoes across the water. I ran across to the back of the warehouse and ducked behind its cover. I pulled the Webley out from my waistband and rebuttoned my jacket and coat. I checked my watch: ten before noon. At least it hadn’t rained on Gary Cooper.

Two cars arrived, about five minutes apart. They drove round to the front of the warehouse and I couldn’t see who got out. I made my way along the back of the building and round the corner. I found a door on the side but it was padlocked. I was going to have to go in the same way as everyone else. I sprinted the length of the warehouse’s side and ducked behind a collection of huge oil drums. I just made it, because a third car, a Nash roadster, pulled up and a red-haired man in a houndstooth jacket and cavalry twills got out. I watched the country-set type, whom I reckoned to be their army connection, disappear into the warehouse. He had the look of someone Lillian and her girls could have compromised.

I hesitated for a moment. I didn’t know what I expected the outcome of my one-man crusade to be. Somewhere I still hoped that my chum the Fred MacMurray lookalike and his Mossad pals would come galloping to my rescue, like the US cavalry in yarmulkes. After all, the whole point of our encounter in Perth was to let me know they were there, if I ever got around to working it out for myself.

I looked impotently at the Webley in my hand. Oh well, Lennox, I thought, no one lives for ever. At least my headache would go away. I stole around and pushed the door open enough to see in.

There were two levels to the warehouse and I saw the back of the officer type disappear up the metal stairs to the upper floor. There was no one on the ground floor, but a couple of crates sat in the middle of the vast space. I guessed they had been offloaded at random from the lorry for the buyers to check the merchandise.

I crept over to the crates, laid my Webley on top of one and picked up the crowbar that had been leaning against them. I was doing well to get this far, I thought. The moment was spoiled by something cold, hard and barrel-like being jabbed into the base of my neck.

‘Don’t move, Mr Lennox.’ I recognized the accent as Dutch. ‘I am an expert at executing people with a neck shot.’

I raised my hands. Someone snatched the Webley away.

‘Turn around.’

I did as I was told and came face to face with a tall, heavily built man immaculately and expensively dressed. The Fat Dutchman. There was a smaller, darker man next to him. The other Arab. He had my Webley in his hand and was staring at me expressionlessly. He could have been day-dreaming about violating a marquess’s daughter, for all I could tell from his face. The unpleasant thought that he might actually be day-dreaming about violating me flashed through my mind and I turned back to the fat boy.

‘He isn’t your usual stooge, is he?’ I asked. ‘Don’t you usually hang about with Peter Lorre?’

Fat Boy didn’t laugh. To be fair, he looked nothing like Sidney Greenstreet.

‘You are not half as funny as you like to think you are, Mr Lennox.’ The fat man spoke English with a typically sibilant Dutch accent. I had spent quite a bit of time in Holland at the end of the war. Enough to develop one hell of a respect for a people who’d had the crap kicked out of them, been starved half to death, then simply rolled up their sleeves and got on with the business of rebuilding their country. Probably came from centuries of fighting back the sea, as they had had to in the big North Sea flood a few months back. I liked the Dutch. I so hoped I wasn’t about to become disillusioned.

‘Why don’t you and Dusky here put the guns down, Tulip-sucker, and I’ll amuse the shit out of you both.’ Unfortunately, ‘Tulip-sucker’ was the best I could do: it’s hard to insult a Dutchman and I’d had a trying couple of days. He didn’t respond. ‘So you’re De Jong?’ I said. Again no response but I could tell he hadn’t expected me to know his name. ‘Former Nazi-collaborator and member of the fourth SS Volunteer Brigade Netherlands. Am I right?’

De Jong frowned. I’d hit the target. He was now trying to work out how I knew so much about him. Truth was that I had guessed from his crack about his expertise with the neck shot: there hadn’t been enough enthusiastic Dutch collaborators to make up any more than the one SS brigade. In the meantime, his curiosity might buy me a little more breathing time.

‘Upstairs…’ De Jong ordered and nodded towards the metal stairway.

When I got to the top there were three people waiting: Lillian Andrews, the officer-type and a man I’d never seen before. Not that it would be easy to recognize him, the state his face was in. He was blond with prominent ears and that was about all you could see: his nose and jaw were concealed by surgical dressings and what was visible of his face was puffed up in angry swellings. The bandaged man cradled a sawn-off shotgun in his arms. The Dutchman laid a large canvas military holdall on the floor.

‘It’s all there,’ said De Jong. ‘Half the money. I’ve inspected the goods and I’m satisfied.’

‘What the fuck is going on?’ asked the blond man in the bandages, looking at me through puffy eyelids. I’d maybe never seen him before, but this wasn’t the first time I’d heard him speak.

‘Nice job, McGahern, or it will be when it heals. Pity about the ears, though…’ I said. ‘Or did radar come as part of the package?’ McGahern clearly didn’t rate my critical opinion as much as I hoped. He ignored me and looked back at the Dutchman.

‘I’ll tell you what is going on,’ said De Jong. ‘Your security is worthless. We found him downstairs sniffing around the samples-’

‘ Sniffing and samples,’ I said helpfully. ‘Not shniffing and shamples. Whatever you do, don’t order me to sit.’ Actually, the Dutchman’s English wasn’t that bad: he was easier to understand than most Glaswegians.

McGahern laughed at my joke. Then he swung the shotgun upwards and slashed me across the face with the barrels. My cheek split and I went down. It was as if all the pain in my head had been asleep and the blow to my face had woken it up. I stayed down but the Arab grabbed me under my arm and hauled me up.

‘That’s for outside the Horsehead Bar,’ said McGahern.

I held the back of my hand to my bleeding cheek and checked my jaw was still working. I examined McGahern. From what I could see through the bandages, the whole architecture of the face had been altered. Even his lips were fuller. But changing someone’s eyes was a tougher job and I recognized the same hard, rat-eyed stare from our previous encounter.

‘You got what you wanted, didn’t you?’ I said, but McGahern ignored me.

‘What I want to know is how he knows so much about me,’ said the Dutchman. ‘My name. My background.’

McGahern looked at me then shook his head. ‘He doesn’t know nothing. Kill him.’

‘I know it all. Or almost all. I know about De Jong here and his two Arab pals. Of course he’s down to one now. I helped his other dusky chum out with a change of career. He’s applying for the post of Chief Eunuch of the Harem now. And I know all about the set up you had running for a year. The shipments to Aqaba. I know about Parks and Smails.’ I turned back to the Dutchman. ‘That was your handiwork, wasn’t it? Or more accurately it was the Son of the Sheik here that did it… or his cousin before he started singing soprano. You panicked when McGahern killed John Andrews and then Lillian dropped out of sight. You knew Parks was a partner so you tortured him to find out what was going on. Smails got it afterwards, when you two had kissed and made up. A favour for McGahern to make up for Parks, I’d guess. And I know all about Alexander Knox and your army chum here. How am I doing, so far?’

‘You’re doing fine,’ said Lillian. She had been standing to one side smoking a cigarette and watching. She dropped the cigarette and crushed it with the toe of her black velvet court shoe. ‘But this is all guesswork. A yarn you’re spinning to save your neck.’

‘Oh yeah? Tell that to the Mossad boys when they get here.’

Three blank faces looked back at me. But I could tell that had shaken them.

‘We’ve got Jackie Gillespie,’ I said. ‘He’s making quite a recovery. Your aim ain’t what it used to be, McGahern.’

‘Bollocks,’ said McGahern. ‘Now I know you’re lying.’

‘Really? Then how come I know that the two soldiers didn’t die in an exchange of fire? That they were a couple of scared teenage conscripts and you executed them then shot Gillespie immediately after, trying to catch him unawares? You got him in the right side, didn’t you?’

Bullseye. McGahern turned to Lillian, as if looking for guidance.

‘Where is Gillespie?’ she asked.

‘Safe. Somewhere you can’t touch him.’ At least that much was true.

‘No…’ Lillian shook her head. ‘No, something doesn’t fit with all this. If Lennox knows so much and others know the same, how come he’s here alone?’

‘I thought you said there would be no loose ends?’ The red-haired officer type spoke for the first time. He had an English accent and his voice was high with fear. ‘You promised that no one would see me. That I would be in the clear.’

‘There won’t be any loose ends,’ said Lillian. ‘You will be in the clear.’ She gestured to McGahern who handed her his sawn-off. It looked like my headache was going to disappear for good. But she didn’t aim at me. The sound of the blast was deafening in the warehouse. I was still breathing: Lillian had ruined the army guy’s houndstooth. He was on the floor now, blubbering and leaking blood and piss. Lillian walked over to where he lay and fired the other barrel into him. He stopped blubbering.

I looked down at the dead Englishman. ‘This is nice,’ I said. ‘We really should try to get together more often.’

Lillian handed the gun back to McGahern, who plopped two fresh cartridges into the chambers. I heard footsteps coming up the metal stairs behind me. A woman’s high heels. The woman came into view and stood next to Lillian, totally eclipsing her looks.

‘Hello, Helena,’ I said. ‘I thought I’d be seeing you here.’

‘You never did know when to leave things be, Lennox,’ she said, her face genuinely, beautifully sad.

‘So you ran the honey-trap operation for them? All along I thought that McGahern here was cracked up on Lillian. But it was you, all the time.’

‘I run things here,’ said Lillian. ‘You weren’t smart enough to work that out.’ She looked over my shoulder to the Dutchman. ‘Go down and get the driver to load the sample cases. But leave the Arab here. I want him to deal with Lennox. Slow and painful.’

I heard the Arab move behind me. I knew he’d loop the garrotte over my head and strangle me to death. I’d wait until he made his move before I went for the switchblade in my jacket pocket. The Fat Dutchman had been careless in not frisking me. I’d maybe get the Arab and one other before they shot me dead. Like Gillespie, the idea of choosing my departure route appealed to me.

The leather flashed in front of my face. This was it. But then I heard a shot and the Arab dropped the garrotte and crashed onto the floor. I looked up. Helena Gersons was holding an automatic and had it trained on Lillian and McGahern.

‘Put the shotgun down,’ she ordered McGahern. ‘Nice and slow.’

I stood up. McGahern put the shotgun down on the floor. I saw him exchange a look with Lillian. Helena looked at me and smiled an agitated smile. ‘Things are never what they seem,’ she said. ‘Remember I told you that once?’

I moved towards the shotgun. At that moment the Big Dutchman appeared at the top of the stairs. Helena swung her automatic around to bear on him and I made a lunge for the shotgun at McGahern’s feet. McGahern threw himself at me and checked my dive. We fell onto the floor. Somehow McGahern got on top of me and sliced at my Adam’s apple with the side of his hand. I twisted sideways and his blow hit the side of my neck instead.

There was the sound of a shotgun blast.

We both looked in the direction of Lillian. She was holding the shotgun and Helena was lying on the filthy floor of the warehouse, a great plume of blood and bone and flesh stretching from where her face should have been. I heard myself scream and found the switchblade in my hand. I rammed it under McGahern’s ribs and up. He looked into my eyes with an expression of shock. I added to his surprise by giving the knife a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree twist. I felt the heat of his blood on my hand, running down my wrist and under the cuff of my sleeve.

I pushed McGahern off and got to my feet in time for Lillian to let me have it with the other barrel. The blast hit me in the side. Lower left, just above the hip. There wasn’t that much pain, but suddenly I felt as if someone had plunged me into a vacuum and I gasped to fill my empty lungs. I fell down beside Helena’s body, my cheek on her thigh. It was still warm. I grabbed the automatic lying next to Helena’s body and fired wildly in Lillian’s direction.

Still clutching the automatic, I hauled myself to my feet. Lillian was gone, but dodging my bullets she’d left the holdall of cash behind. Helena lay with her face gone. The army officer, the Arab and McGahern weren’t providing much company either. I leaned against the wall and pressed my hand to where the blood was pulsing out of my side. I tried to catch my breath and listened to the rain and the dull metallic thumping from somewhere across the docks.

I looked over at the Dutchman, who was still standing at the top of the metal stairs.