The Long Glasgow Kiss

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I looked down at my body, then down at Bert Soutar sprawled on the ground at my feet. Neither of us was hit. When I looked up I saw Bobby Kirkcaldy, his face carrying the evidence of his defeat the night before, standing with a Browning in his hand. He’d obviously fired a shot into the air, but I now found myself looking at the business end of the automatic.

‘Against the wall, Lennox,’ he said, his voice still disconcertingly calm. Gentle. ‘Uncle Bert, you okay?’

Soutar got to his feet slowly, eyeing me with malice. I knew what was coming and so, clearly, did Kirkcaldy.

‘Leave it, Bert,’ he said. ‘We’ll do this in the garage, like we said.’

Soutar grabbed me by the collar of my suit jacket and pulled me from the wall. He took up position behind me and guided me with vicious shoves around to the back of the house. The drive arced round the far side of the house to a whitewashed outbuilding. It looked like it had, at one time, been a stables, but had since been converted into a garage. There was a dormer window above it suggesting that the attic had been the chauffeur’s accommodation. There were two huge double doors, and I reckoned you could easily have parked four cars inside it. I studied the structure carefully, for two reasons: the curiosity of the condemned man about his place of execution; and because I wanted to work out any possible escape routes well in advance.

Soutar kept the shoves going and I considered dancing with him again. He was a tough old bird, all right, but I’d do my best to snap his neck before his nephew got one off. I could always hope that Kirkcaldy was a worse shot than he was a boxer.

‘All of this because you fixed a fight?’ I called over my shoulder. ‘I’ve got to give it to you, Kirkcaldy, you take your petty larceny very seriously.’

‘Shut up and walk…’ Uncle Bert gave me another shove. It was beginning to become rude.

‘We’ve got a friend waiting for you,’ said Kirkcaldy, and laughed in a dark, vicious way. He went ahead of us and opened one of the doors into the garage.

Just as I had expected, there were two cars in the garage: the sleek, carmine droplet of Collins’s Lanchester and Bobby Kirkcaldy’s open-top Sunbeam-Talbot Sports. What a chump, I thought bitterly to myself. There I was thinking I was all smart and devious, stirring up Collins so he would lead me to Mr Big. Yep, I had had it all down pat, except that the delay in Collins leaving his office had been to give Kirkcaldy time to make the fifteen-minute drive from Strathblane to this place, and get himself settled in. All Collins had had to do after that was lead me by the nose. It served me right; I was beginning to believe my own advertising.

The garage was even bigger inside than I had guessed. The two cars took up less than half of the space. Jack Collins stood in the middle of the free area of floor.

‘I told you he’d follow me,’ he said with a contempt I could have found hurtful.

‘Okay, so you’re pissed off that I’m doing my job. But like I said outside, this doesn’t smell right to me. You’re going to too much trouble just to cover up a fixed fight. Why the artillery?’ I asked, nodding to the Browning in Kirkcaldy’s hand.

‘Maybe you’re right, Lennox,’ Kirkcaldy said. ‘Maybe there’s more going on than you can understand.’

‘Try me,’ I said. ‘I’m an understanding type. But first of all, indulge my curiosity as a fan… why throw the fight last night?’

‘What makes you think I threw it?’

‘Oh, come on. I was there. And I’ve seen you fight several times before. If you could flatten McQuillan the way you did, then Jan Schmidtke should have been a walkover. You threw the fight all right. Is your heart really as bad as that?’

‘As a matter of fact it is,’ said Kirkcaldy, in a matter-of-fact way. ‘Congenital defect. I’ve had it since birth but didn’t know about it. It’s only over the last six months that I’ve had problems with it. The quack says I’ve to take it easy, take the stress out of my life. Maybe I should start with you, huh, Lennox?’

‘So I’m guessing you made a killing on the fight?’ I asked.

‘Jack here arranged it all for us. It actually started off as Small Change’s idea. No really big bets. Nothing that would get noticed too much, but lots of them, spread out across all the bookies. And each bet placed by a third party who couldn’t be connected to Collins, far less me.’

‘Very sweet,’ I said. ‘But you weren’t the only ones in the know. Two young Flash Harrys tried to broker a big bet against you winning through Tony the Pole.’

‘That’s something I don’t know about,’ said Kirkcaldy as casually as he could manage. If he had been as poor at throwing a feint in the ring, then his prematurely terminated career would have terminated even more prematurely.

‘Who were they?’ I pushed my luck. Seeing as I was at gunpoint in an outbuilding in the middle of nowhere, where a shot would go unheard far less unnoticed, I felt I was just as well pushing it.

‘I told you, I don’t know anything about them or anybody else laying bets.’

I decided to move on before Kirkcaldy’s pants caught fire. ‘I’m sure your little scheme will have raked in a lot of cash. But not that much. Not enough for this kind of grief. And it doesn’t add up to something worth killing Small Change for.’

‘Small Change’s death has got nothing to do with us. Nothing at all. And it’s got nothing to do with the fight scam either.’

‘No… I believe you didn’t kill Small Change, but the fight scam does have something to do with his death. Maybe Small Change came up with the idea of you throwing the fight to start with, but when he did it was simply to get you out of the fight game with a little pension. You must have told him about your heart condition. But the real reason you needed to pull it off was because you needed to pay someone off quick. Someone who was going to give you the same treatment that Small Change got.’

Kirkcaldy didn’t say anything, but exchanged a look with Uncle Bert.

‘You see, Bobby, I’m a studious sort. I spend a lot of time up at the Mitchell Library expanding my mind. One direction I’ve expanded in is the traditions and customs of our travelling cousins. Take the ones up at Vinegarhill. Now, to start with, I thought they were just Irish travellers, but it turns out they’re Minceir, proper Romanies from Ireland… the real Gypsy McCoy, you could say.’

Kirkcaldy said nothing.

‘They’ve had a long and difficult history, gypsies,’ I continued. ‘They’ve been in Britain for centuries, you know. Did you know that we actually sold them to Louisiana to work as slaves for freed blacks who had their own small plantations? Or that we used to hang them just for being gypsies? It’s made them an unforgiving bunch. They’re big on vengeance and blood feud.’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ Kirkcaldy said, but again I could see behind the expression.

‘I don’t know what you did. That’s the one piece that’s missing for me. You see, like I said, I’ve been reading up on gypsy customs. And I met Sean Furie, whose son is up for Small Change’s murder. Now, to start with, I thought Furie was more Blackrock than Bulgaria, but it would seem he’s the real thing. He and his mob follow gypsy customs and law. Furie himself is a Baro — that’s a kind of clan chieftain. The kingpin gypsy. And as a Baro, Furie will also sit as a judge on the kris, the half-arsed court arrangement they have going. One of the things the kris does is sit in judgement on fellow gypsies or even on gaje as they call non-gypsies.’

‘Very fucking interesting,’ said Bert Soutar. ‘Consider my horizons expanded. Now get over against the wall.’

I decided to stay where I was for the moment. ‘It is interesting. You see, one of the things the kris sits in judgement on is if one of their own is killed by someone else. Murder, say… or a careless accident. Then they can issue a sentence on the accused and the only way he can get out of it is to pay a glaba. Blood money.’ I paused for a moment. Less for dramatic effect and more to check my surroundings again. There were a couple of small, grimy windows over by the rear wall. A clutch of old and rusting garden tools, including a small hand scythe mottled with reddish-brown flecks. A shadow fell across the grime-dimmed window and passed on. There was someone else here. Outside.

‘Anyway,’ I continued, ‘here’s the way I see it: you, good old Uncle Bert, and young Collins here, are all under sentence of death. And death, though it’s bad enough, isn’t as scary as the kind of death you’ll have at the hands of the gypsies. Now I don’t know if Furie’s son carried out sentence on Small Change or not, but you fellas have a pretty good idea what’s ahead of you… unless, of course, you hand over a large glaba ransom.’

‘So what are we supposed to have done?’ asked Kirkcaldy.

‘Well, it’s pretty obvious at first sight. Uncle Bert here supplied that young pikey fighter for the bare-knuckle fight. Then he dies. So Soutar, Small Change and Collins are held responsible. Small Change meets a sticky end by having his skull pulped with a statue of his favourite greyhound, and you start getting traditional gypsy symbols of death dropped on your doorstep. I was supposed to work it all out. Well I have. But what I don’t get is why… the gypsy boy went into the fight of his own free will, knowing the risks, and took his chances. So why does his clan hold you responsible?’

‘You’re not as smart as you think you are, Lennox,’ sneered Jack Collins. His face was white and drawn. The coolness had gone. He was afraid. It was either what I had been saying, or he knew he was about to witness something unpleasant. I did my best to believe it was the power of my oratory.

‘Shut up, Collins,’ said Kirkcaldy. ‘Against the wall, Lennox. And keep your hands where I can see them.’

‘So this is it?’ I asked. I noticed I wasn’t breathing hard and I didn’t feel my heart pounding. That was what happened, I guessed, when you’d thought you were going to die so many times before. When you’d seen so many others go before you. ‘So you’re going to kill me over a gypsy curse and an amateurishly fixed fight? No… this doesn’t make sense. I’m missing something here. Who was it in Collins’s car outside your house? And why are the gyppos really after you?’

My back was to the wall now, but, as I’d backed up, I’d angled my steps so I ended up next to the scythe. A rusty garden implement against a gun and two experienced fist fighters. They don’t stand a chance, I thought to myself.

‘Show him…’ Kirkcaldy barked the order at Collins and indicated his car with a jerk of his head. Collins went over to the car and opened the trunk, lifting out something wrapped in a blanket. He carried it in his arms like it was a baby. He laid it on the floor and unwrapped it for me to see. It was the Ky-Lan demon statuette. It had been broken into two pieces. The fake jade was less than an inch thick. The contents spilled from the broken sculpture: tightly wrapped waxed paper bricks.

I sighed as something tied itself into a knot in my gut. I knew what Kirkcaldy having it meant. ‘Sammy Pollock?’

Kirkcaldy smiled, and it reminded me of the way Sneddon smiled. ‘Just like everything else in Glasgow, Lennox, the Clyde is unpredictable. You dump two bodies at the same time in the same place and one washes up and the other sinks without trace.’

‘He didn’t deserve that, Kirkcaldy. He was just a kid.’ I thought about how Sheila Gainsborough would take the news. I hadn’t earned my fee on that one, that was for sure. But, there again, it wouldn’t be me who’d be breaking the news to her. I gave a bitter laugh.

‘What’s so fucking funny?’ asked Kirkcaldy.

‘Just that I was working two cases that I never connected. I’m not as smart as I thought I was.’

‘You’re smart, Lennox. Too smart. But you should know by now that nothing happens in this city without it being tied into everything else. And before you get all huffy about Pollock, remember that he brought it on himself. He wanted to play with the big boys. He ended up way out of his depth.’

‘I don’t think you’re far behind him. You having that stuff means you don’t just have a bunch of irate gypsies after you. Have you heard of John Largo?’

‘I’ve heard. And I know this is his stuff. But he’s still looking for Pollock and Costello. We happened on this by chance. We’re in the clear.’

‘Not that in the clear. I found you.’

‘No you didn’t. All that you said to Collins here was smoke and mirrors. You were grouse-beating. Except now it’s the grouse with the gun on you. Anyway, you’re not going to be telling anyone anything.’

That’s that then, I thought. If there was one thing you couldn’t accuse Kirkcaldy of, it was ambiguity.

‘How did Costello and Pollock get their hands on the jade demon? There was no way they could have known what was in it.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong. Young master Pollock was a young man of cosmopolitan tastes. Bohemian, you might say. He was a bit of a hashish smoker and had experimented with opium. No other bastard in this city would have realized the value of refined heroin, but Pollock knew all right. But that was as smart as he got. He was no master criminal and he thought he was dealing with Al Capone when he got in tow with Paul Costello. But Costello was a wanker and as much out of his depth as Pollock was.’

‘So how did they get their hands on this?’ I asked. The three of them — Soutar, Collins and Kirkcaldy — were all facing me now, with their backs to the doors. Kirkcaldy had left the door open a few inches and I could have sworn that I had seen it move. My shadow at the window was maybe not another accomplice after all. I pinned my hopes on a guardian angel.

‘Paul Costello was always looking for a score,’ Kirkcaldy continued and I made a gargantuan effort not to cast a glance at the garage doors behind him. ‘I think he was trying to prove he could be a real player, like his Da. Fuck all chance of that. He didn’t have the brains to blow his hat off. Sammy Pollock was supposed to be the thinker. Talk about the blind leading the blind. Anyway, they did a couple of night-time jobs. They got two other guys in with them. Their first score was a warehouse with cigarettes. French shit. They didn’t have a clue how to move the stuff on, other than going round the clubs and pubs themselves. Complete amateurs. You don’t pull a job unless you’ve done a deal in advance with a fence who’ll move the stuff on. Not only did these wankers have no deal, they didn’t even know a fence.’

‘So they went to Small Change?’ It was all fitting now.

‘Aye… he took the stuff off them for peanuts. Now Small Change was no Fagin, but he did handle the odd dirty merchandise now and again. Especially if there was decent money to be made. But only if it was something special and there was a high brokering margin to be made.’

‘It still doesn’t explain how Pollock knew to steal the jade dragon.’

‘Pollock and Costello had help on their jobs. Two guys who worked for Costello’s Da and a pikey who provided extra muscle,’ said Kirkcaldy. Again something fell into place for me.

‘The five of them did the cigarette job,’ Kirkcaldy went on. ‘All the stuff came from the warehouse used by that Frog, Barnier. Before they get to the cigarettes, they have to open a few crates to check before they hit the jackpot with the fags. The genius pikey cracks open a jade statue by accident and sees it’s full of packets. He tells Pollock and Pollock jumps to the conclusion that it’s hashish. So they take the statue as well and get away scot-free. But when Pollock gets home and opens one of the packets, he realizes they’re all in the deepest shite. He realizes it’s not hashish but heroin, and pretty high grade. He takes a sample from one brick, puts the brick back and glues the statue back together. He takes the sample straight to Small Change. Small Change doesn’t know the slightest thing about narcotics, so he comes straight to yours truly.’

‘So these two guys you said were working for Costello,’ I said, ‘I’m guessing that they did a deal with you and Small Change and then delivered up Sammy Pollock and Paul Costello… So what went wrong?’ I kept my eyes fixed on Kirkcaldy’s and ignored the figure I saw on the edge of my vision slipping in through the doors and edging, crouched down, along the wall and behind the cars.

‘The pikey works out there’s something more to the job and starts asking for more money or he’ll talk. Except he doesn’t know that I’m involved now. He also happens to be a bare-knuckle fighter who Uncle Bert has fixed up with a few fights at Sneddon’s place.’

‘And he just happens to die during the fight?’

‘Aye… funny that.’ Kirkcaldy smiled coldly. ‘Quite a coincidence. Particularly as Uncle Bert gave him some special medicine before the fight. Told him it would make him fight better and not feel the other bloke’s punches. The last bit was right. The stupid pikey bastard took it. The other fighter was able to beat the shite out of him and then he started bleeding like fuck. From the beating or the drugs I don’t know.’

‘And your problem’s solved.’ I tried to stay relaxed and natural, when all the time I was mentally measuring the distance to the rusting scythe and waiting for the figure hidden behind the cars to make his move.

‘Naw… that’s when our problems just began. Turns out that the pikey is Sean Furie’s son… the brother of the one up for Small Change’s murder.’

‘So that’s the glaba you have to pay…’ I said. ‘A Baro ’s son won’t come cheap.’

‘It takes more than a bunch of pig-arsed Irish gyppos to scare me. It’s a nuisance that I don’t need at the moment. I can’t sell the heroin yet and I needed to raise money to buy the knackers off.’ He jerked his chin in the direction of the broken statuette. ‘This is the biggest business opportunity I’ve ever had. This stuff’s going to be big here… Have you seen Glasgow on a Saturday night? Half the city gets totally fucking stocious. Thousands of men out of their skulls on booze. No one drinks for the taste and Christ knows they don’t drink for the social fucking aspect. Do you know what they want? They want a holiday. They drink because for a few hours they can step outside their lives. If cheap whisky or red biddy gives them a day trip to Largs, this stuff is two weeks in fucking Monte Carlo. This…’ He bounced the package in his hand, as if assessing its worth. ‘This is the future, Lennox. This is Glasgow’s future. We won’t be able to get enough of this stuff to keep up with demand. I’m fucking telling you, this stuff was made for Glasgow. Because this stuff makes Glasgow go away. Anyway, talking about making things go away, enough chat…’

Kirkcaldy pulled the carriage back on the Browning. The three of them faced me. Collins looked even paler. He had known from the moment he left his office to lead me up here that this was what was going to happen. Bert Soutar twisted his thin lips underneath his busted-up nose. He was going to enjoy this.

For some reason that I couldn’t fathom, Fiona White’s face came to my mind. Maybe it was the fact that she was about to have a vacancy to let.

There was a terrible grace to it. I had guessed it would be Singer who was behind the car. After all, it had been me who had suggested he was put onto tailing Kirkcaldy. He moved out from behind the car without a sound. It was Collins’s startled cry that caused Kirkcaldy and Soutar to spin round. I saw Singer’s hand move swiftly up and make a short arc in the air. Collins made a gurgling sound and blood started to pulse from his neck where Singer’s razor had slashed him.

I lunged for the scythe. Kirkcaldy heard the rasp as I tore it from the wall and he spun back, swinging the gun around. The scythe sliced into his wrist and the gun fell to the floor. I rushed forward and swung the scythe again, this time its tip sank into Kirkcaldy’s back and he screamed in a way that didn’t sound human. I saw that Singer and Soutar were now desperately wrestling with each other: Soutar’s iron grasp on Singer’s wrist, stopping him from bringing the razor down to his throat. I threw down the scythe and snatched up the automatic Kirkcaldy had dropped. I didn’t even think about it. I put two rounds into the side of Soutar’s head and he went down. Lifeless. His dead grip pulling Singer down on top of him.

The whole thing would only have lasted four or five seconds, but now Soutar lay dead, Collins was on his back, shivering and twitching the last of his life away, Kirkcaldy was on his knees, clutching his hacked-open wrist.

‘Thanks, Singer…’ I said. ‘If you hadn’t come along, I’d be dead.’

Singer straightened himself up and nodded. He was out of breath but I thought I detected a hint of a smile in the corners of his mouth.

We left the bodies in the garage. I wrapped a handkerchief around Kirkcaldy’s hand and we put him in the passenger seat of his Sunbeam-Talbot Sports. Tucking the Browning into the waistband of my trousers, I gathered up the jade demon, wrapped it back into its blanket and put it into the boot of my car. I knew Kirkcaldy wouldn’t give me any more trouble, so I told Singer to follow me in my Austin Atlantic. We stopped at a telephone box by the side of the road and Singer watched Kirkcaldy as I ’phoned Willie Sneddon. I gave him a brief outline of what had happened and told him there were a couple of consignments of meat for Hammer Murphy’s mincer, and where to find them.

We drove back into Glasgow, all the way Kirkcaldy trying to do a deal with me, offering all kinds of riches if I helped him get out of this mess. As I drove along the Clyde and into the Gallowgate, I promised I would; that I knew people who would sort him out.

Singer parked outside and waited for me. I drove into the enclosure at Vinegarhill. The old guy I’d seen before ran across to Sean Furie’s caravan and hammered on the door. Furie nodded to me and I nodded back. Neither of us paid any heed to Kirkcaldy’s begging. I threw the keys of his car onto the ground and he fell out of the car and started to scrabble in the dust for them, but they were too far away and the ring of gypsies that had formed was already closing on him.

When I dropped Singer off at Sneddon’s place, I thanked him again. He nodded once more and got out.

I was tired and I was aching but I had three ’phone calls to make. It was getting dark, darker than it had been for weeks, and there was something in the late evening air that spoke of a colder season on its way. I parked by the side of the Clyde and took the shattered jade demon out of the trunk and carried it down to the water’s edge. I took a couple of the waxed-paper bricks out and held them, one in each hand. I was always looking for a way of making a buck. Here, in my hands, I had an entire retirement fund. I guessed I would even get a tidy finder’s fee if I returned the narcotics to Largo. I also knew that it was only a matter of time before Kirkcaldy’s predictions came true and the streets of Glasgow would be awash with the stuff. But there was some money that was just too dirty, even for me. I took my lock-knife from my pocket and, one by one, cut open the bricks and shook out great clouds of white powder. I watched the clouds of white powder drift away on the evening breeze, and the wrappers as they drifted away on the dark, sinewy surface of the water.

I made my calls from a telephone box on the corner of Buchanan Street. The first was to someone everybody seemed to think of as a phantom: I told John Largo that he had an hour before I told Dex Devereaux where to find him. Without going into the specifics, I told him that all accounts had been set straight and he had no scores left to settle in Glasgow. I recommended an immediate change of climate. Probably somewhere sunny.

The second call was to Jock Ferguson at home. I told him to meet Dex Devereaux at his hotel in half an hour and that it would mean he would get the John Largo collar.

My third call was brief and to the point. I tried ringing Jimmy Costello at the Empire Bar. He wasn’t there but I got him at the Riviera Club. He asked me impatiently what I wanted. I understood his impatience: he had asked me to find his son for him and he had turned up dead. I was making a habit of it.

‘Are Skelly and Young there?’ I asked.

‘Aye, so fucking what?’

‘They’re there right now?’

‘Aye…’ His impatience grew. ‘I’m looking right at them.’

‘Then you’re looking right at the men who killed Paul. Or at least gift-wrapped him for someone else to kill. And don’t worry, all other accounts have been settled.’

‘If you’re fucking lying…’

‘I’m not. Skelly and Young stitched up Paul and Sammy Pollock for money. That’s a fact. What you do with that fact is up to you.’

There was a pause at the other end of the line. I could hear a band in the background. The melted-together sounds of many people talking and drinking.

‘I’ll deal with it,’ said Costello, and I knew that he would. ‘Lennox?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Thanks.’

I was as good as my word to Largo and stood outside the Alpha Hotel for half an hour before I went in and asked for Dex Devereaux. The night porter had been very reluctant to let me in and even more reluctant to disturb Mr Devereaux.

‘It’s very important,’ I said and pushed a couple of pound notes into the pocket of his waistcoat. ‘Tell him I have the address he’s been looking for. Mr Largo’s address.’

I sat down and waited. It took less than ten minutes for a dishevelled Dex Devereaux to appear in the lobby. Dishevelled except his flat-top haircut, which looked as precision-engineered as ever. I handed him the note with the address.

‘You sure about this?’ He held up the note.

‘That’s him. That’s his address.’

I left Devereaux, passing a flustered Jock Ferguson as the night porter let me out and him in.

‘Dex’ll explain,’ I said elliptically. I was in an elliptical frame of mind. I had another call to make. The one I dreaded most. I got back in the Atlantic and drove out to the West End, to Sheila Gainsborough’s apartment.

It was two weeks later that I met John Largo. Dex Devereaux had been as good as his word and had paid me the thousand dollars for the information, but when they had arrived at Largo’s place, he had flown the coop. He must have been warned off, Jock Ferguson had said to me, without a hint of suspicion.

Largo was waiting for me, hanging back in the shadows, as I came out of the Horsehead Bar. He kept his hand in the patch pocket of his suit jacket and I suspected he was holding something more than his change. That was okay. I understood his caution.

‘I wanted to thank you,’ he said.

‘What… for turning you in?’

‘For giving me a chance. How did you find me?’

I took out my cigarette case and offered him one. He took it with his left hand, keeping his right in his pocket.

‘You’re too sentimental,’ I said. ‘I followed you to the Lyle Hill monument. I guessed there was some connection to the Maille-Breze. So I did some checking.’

As I had explained to Devereaux in the lobby of his hotel, the Maille-Breze had been a French Navy destroyer. It had been anchored at the berthing point at the Tail of the Bank, at the mouth of the Clyde Estuary and beneath the spot where the Free French monument now stood. The Tail of the Bank had been the gathering point for the Atlantic convoys: a bustling knot of merchant vessels and their heavily armed escorts. And it had also been where the Maille-Breze had been berthed in April 1940. The French destroyer had only just set out to sea when two torpedoes were accidentally launched onto the ship’s own deck. The torpedoes had exploded midships with a force that had shattered windows in Port Glasgow and the broken vessel had blazed and smoked with many of its crew trapped in the forward mess hall. Despite the efforts of the Port Glasgow fire brigade, when the Maille-Breze eventually sank to the bottom of the Firth, it took sixty-eight of the two-hundred-strong crew with it. I had never met anyone connected to the disaster. Until now.

‘I found your name all right…’ I said. ‘I mean I found the name Alain Barnier. But it was amongst the list of missing. I had no list of survivors to check.’

‘Alain was a friend of mine.’ Largo smiled. His face looked completely different without the goatee beard. And his hair was now as dark as mine. ‘In a way, it was my way of commemorating him… keeping his name alive. But how did you trace my name?’

‘Remember the fight in Port Glasgow? A couple of nights after the French fleet was sunk at Mers-el-Kebir?’

‘Ah…’ He nodded. ‘Of course…’

‘When I first came to your offices, Miss Minto corrected me when I said the name Clement the English way. There are a lot of names that are spelt the same in French and pronounced differently.’

‘And, of course,’ he concluded the thought for me, ‘there are many words that are spelt differently but sound the same…’

‘Dex Devereaux had an informant who heard mention of your name. He just reported it how he heard it, John Largo. But when I was going through the court records, I found the statement given by Capitaine Jean Largeau of the Fusiliers Marins. After that I guessed your career must have become so colourful that you adopted the name Alain Barnier.’

‘It was prudent at the time. I have another name now. And another port. You have succeeded in making Glasgow — ’ he struggled for the right word — ‘… untenable for me.’

‘I can’t say I’m sorry about that. I don’t approve of your business, Jean.’

Largeau shrugged the same Gallic shrug that he had as Alain Barnier. ‘America is corrupt, my friend. I did not create the corruption, I merely profit from it. And I do not force these blacks to use my goods. I supply a need.’

‘They’re going to hang the gypsy boy, you know,’ I said, changing the subject. ‘The boxer, Tommy Gun Furie.’

Largeau made an expression of incomprehension.

‘For Small Change MacFarlane’s murder. He pled guilty, on his lawyer’s advice, but they’re going to hang him anyway. Which is a shame, because I don’t think he killed Small Change.’

‘Ah…’ Largeau shook his head slowly. ‘I’m afraid I’m not familiar with the case. But with these itinerant people, they are normally guilty… of something.’

We talked for a few more minutes. Two men standing chatting outside a Glasgow bar. We wished each other well and he took his hand from his pocket to shake mine. I left him standing there and drove off. When I looked in my rear-view mirror he was gone.

I don’t know why I didn’t turn Largeau in to the police, or at least why I gave him a chance of getting away before I did. I think it was probably one of those there but for the grace… moments. The war had done things to us both and I had very nearly turned out the same way.

But I hadn’t.