The Long Glasgow Kiss

CHAPTER TWO

The streets I drove through to get back to my flat were deserted and I reflected that there were probably cemeteries more lively than Glasgow at two in the morning. That was probably why I was so aware of the headlights in my rear mirror. I wasn’t sure if they had been with me since Pollokshields, but they had certainly been there for long enough for me to become suspicious. I didn’t pull over outside my flat — instead I drove along Great Western Road and turned into Byres Road, taking a random right into a silent residential street lined with sandstone tenements and semi-detached houses, soot-stained darker than the night sky above them. The lights in my mirror held back as far as they could without losing me, but nonetheless followed my arbitrary route. Again completely at random, I pulled up outside a tenement, stepped out of the Atlantic, locked the door and walked with a sense of purpose into the tenement close.

The car drove past. An Austin. One of the big jobs. Black or dark grey. The kind the police cruised around in. I saw a driver and passenger, but I couldn’t make out either figure other than that one of them had shoulders to make Atlas jealous. Small Change MacFarlane was a big enough fish all right, but I didn’t see why his case warranted so much attention. I didn’t see why I warranted so much attention from the police, given my tangential involvement. The car cruised around the corner and I heard the synchromesh get a grinding as it did a three-point somewhere out of sight. Stepping out of the shadows, I went back to my car and leaned against the wing, my arms folded, patiently waiting for the unmarked police car to drift around the corner. Sometimes I can be too smart for my own good.

The Austin reappeared and pulled up next to me. It was a Sheerline; too fancy for the police. Something vast and dark unfolded from the passenger seat and cast an improbably large shadow in the lamplight.

‘Hello again, Mr Lennox…’ Twinkletoes McBride said in his earth-rumbling baritone and smiled at me. I straightened up from the wing of the Atlantic. This was interesting.

‘Twinkletoes? What are you doing here? I thought it was the police. Why are you tailing me?’

‘You’ll have to ask Mr Sneddon that,’ he said earnestly. ‘I’m sure he can elucidate you.’ Twinkletoes pronounced every syllable deliberately: ee-loos-ih-date.

‘Still reading the Reader’s Digest I see,’ I said amiably.

‘I’m improving my word power…’ Twinkletoes beamed. I imagined how much more interesting his expanded vocabulary would make the experience of having your toes lopped off with bolt cutters — Twinkletoes’ speciality as a torturer and the origin of his nickname. Or ehh-pee-thett as he would probably call it.

‘An expressive vocabulary is a true treasure,’ I smiled.

‘You’re not fucking wrong there, Mr Lennox.’

‘Mr Sneddon wants to see me now?’ I asked. I unlocked my car. ‘I’ll follow you.’

Twinkletoes stopped smiling. He swung the back door of the Sheerline open. ‘We’ll bring you back to your car. Afterwards. If that isn’ae in-con-veen-ee-ent.’

‘Okay,’ I said, as if he was doing me a favour. But the thought did run through my head that I might return unable to count to twenty on my fingers and toes.

Twinkletoes McBride may have been sadistic and psychopathically violent to order, but at least he was a friendly sort of cuss. The same couldn’t have been said of the driver of the Humber, a thin, meagre and nasty-looking thug with bad skin and an over-oiled Teddy Boy cut. I’d seen him before, lurking menacingly in the presence of Willie Sneddon. To give him due credit, lurking menacingly was something he did extremely well and it made up for his lack of conversational skills.

We drove out of the city, west, passing through Clydebank and out along the road to Dumbarton. The only car on the road. The ugly tenements eventually gave way to open country and I began to feel uneasy. A free taxi ride from Twinkletoes McBride in itself was enough to make you wary, but knowing who had summoned your presence was enough to start the lower parts of your digestive anatomy twitching. Twinkletoes was one of Willie Sneddon’s henchmen. Willie Sneddon was the King of the Southside — one of the so-called Three Kings who ran almost all the crime worth running in Glasgow. Willie Sneddon was bad news of the worst kind.

When we turned off the road and headed up a narrow farm track, I started to think that the news was about to get worse. I even found myself casting an eye over the car door handle, reflecting that at this speed jumping from the car wouldn’t be a break-neck job. Getting caught by Twinkle and his taciturn chum, though, probably would be. Willie Sneddon was the kind of social host to become piqued if you declined his invitations: once I’d started running, if I wanted to hang on to my teeth, toes and maybe even my life, I’d have to keep running until I was back in Canada. We jolted over a pothole. I calmed down. It made no sense that Sneddon had anything unpleasant planned for me other than his company, which, in itself, would fill my unpleasantness quota for the month. I had done nothing to offend Sneddon or either of the other two Kings. The truth was, I had tried to avoid doing work for them as much as I could over the last year.

I decided to sit tight and take my chances.

The farm track ended, as you would expect, at a farm. The farmhouse was a large Victorian granite job, suggesting a gentlemanly sort of turf-turner. Beside the house was a huge stone barn that I guessed was not being used for its original purpose, unless it was home to an equally gentlemanly breed of cattle: the two small windows in its vast flank were draped in heavy velvet that glowed ember-red in the night and yellow electric light shone from under the heavy wooden barn door.

Twinkletoes and Happy Harry the driver conducted me from the car to the barn. I could hear voices coming from inside. A lot of voices. Laughter, shouting and cheering. Twinkle pressed an electric bell push and a peephole slid open as we were checked out by whoever was on the other side.

‘I’ve never been to a milk bar speakeasy before,’ I said cheerfully to my less-than-cheerful driver. ‘Does Sneddon have an illicit buttermilk still in here?’

He replied by lurking menacingly at my side. Twinkle pressed the bell push again.

‘Maybes we shou’ try da udder door,’ I said in my mock-New York gangster voice and smiled. It only served to confuse Twinkletoes and deepen the menace of his companion’s lurk.

I had half expected the doorbell to be answered by a heifer in a dinner suit. As it turned out, I wasn’t far wrong: a bull-necked thug swung open the door. Stepping across the threshold was like diving into a pool; we were immersed in a humid fug of cigarette smoke, whisky fumes and sweat. And the faint copper smell of blood. A simultaneous wave of noise and odour-heavy warmth washed over us: men shouting in anger-edged eagerness, the odd female voice shrill and penetrating. The barn wasn’t exactly full of people, but they were elbow-jostle crowded in a circle around a raised platform upon which two heavily muscled men were beating the bejesus out of each other. Both were stripped to the waist, but they wore ordinary trousers and shoes rather than boxing gear. And no gloves.

Nice, I thought. Bare-knuckle fighting. Unlicensed, unregulated, illegal. And more than occasionally fatal. I had never really understood the need to pay to watch a bare-knuckle fight in the West of Scotland. In Glasgow particularly, it seemed to me redundant, like asking a girl out on a date in the middle of an orgy.

Twinkletoes put his hand on my shoulder and I nearly buckled under the weight. ‘Mr Sneddon says we was to get you a drink and tell you to wait till he was ready.’

A girl of about twenty with too much lipstick and too little frock stood behind the crepe-draped trestle table that served as a bar. Unsurprisingly, she had no Canadian Club and the Scotch I took as a substitute had the same effect on the lining of my mouth that I imagined it would have on paint. I turned back to the fight and took in the audience. Most of the men wore dinner suits and the women were all young, showily dressed, and anything but wife material. The look of the men turned my gut: that pink, scrubbed, fleshy-faced look of accountants, lawyers and other lower-middle-class Glaswegians out slumming it. This was their little charabanc ride to vice. I guessed there were more than a few Glasgow Corporation bureaucrats and even a copper or two here by personal Sneddon invitation. The stench of venality mingled with the sweat and booze-tinged air.

A cheer from the crowd drew my attention back to the fighters. I didn’t mind a boxing match myself, but this was not sport. No skill other than using your face and head to break your opponent’s knuckles. The face of each fighter was the mirror image of his opponent: white skin puffed and swollen and smeared with spit, sweat and vivid streaks of blood; eyes reduced to slits, hair sweat-plastered to their scalps. And both faces were expressionless. No fear or anger or hate; just the emotionless concentration of two men engaged in the hard physical work of doing harm to another human being. Each punch had the sound of either a wet slap or an ugly, dull thud. Neither man made an attempt to dodge his opponent’s blows; this was all about beating the shit out of each other until someone fell down and didn’t get up. Both fighters looked exhausted. In bare-knuckle there are no rounds, no breaks for rest or recovery. If you were knocked to the ground you had thirty seconds to get back up to ‘scratch’, the scored line in the centre of the fighting area.

There’s something about bare-knuckle fighting that holds your unwilling attention, and I found myself focussed on the brutality on the raised platform. The fighters seemed oblivious to everything around them. Probably everything before them and after them. I remembered the feeling from the war. In combat you have no past, no history, no future; no connections to the world outside. You’re not even connected to the men you kill in any human way. I recognized the same dislocation in these two men. One was slightly smaller but heavier-set than the other. Blood from his nose was back-of-the-hand smeared across his upper lip and cheek and one distended eyelid was purpling up and threatening to close over his eye. It looked as if it was only a matter of time before his larger opponent would be able to take advantage of his compromised vision, but the smaller man suddenly swung an ungainly but brutal left hook. It connected with the bigger fighter’s cheek with a sickening snap. Even across the barn and through the cigarette haze I could see the big man had stepped out of his body for a moment and his arms hung limp at his side.

The spectators roared delight and fury, depending on whom they’d placed their money, and the smaller guy slammed a nose-breaking jab into his opponent’s face. Blood cascaded over the big man’s mouth. More roars from the crowd. This was the end. The smaller fighter had the smell of victory in his bloody nostrils and tore into his adversary, his bare-fisted punches slapping loudly into the bigger man’s ribs and gut. Another roundhouse left sent a viscous arc of blood and saliva through the air and the big man dropped like a felled tree.

There was no congratulation for the winner or commiseration for the loser; the serious business of settling bets got underway and there was another jostle around Sneddon’s illegal bookie and a couple of enforcers. Sneddon would be happy: the disgruntled faces hanging back outnumbered the beaming, eager grins of the winners.

After a while, everyone made for the bar and I eased back into a corner with my gut-rot Scotch and contemplated the success I had made of my life. It had so very nearly gone wrong. A few different choices and I could have ended up wealthy and contented three thousand miles from Glasgow, missing out on the edifying experience of watching two bruised apes beat the crap out of each other in a Scottish barn.

Twinkletoes returned with a shortish, compactly built and hard-looking man wearing a suit that was well tailored and expensive without being flash. His blond hair looked freshly barbered and there was a brutal handsomeness in the face. Unfortunately, the ugly deep crease of an old razor scar on his right cheek clearly dated from a time before he could afford the kind of expert needlework evident in his clothes.

‘Hello, Mr Sneddon,’ I said.

‘Do you know where you are, Lennox?’

‘Hernando’s Hideaway?’

‘Aye… very fucking funny,’ Sneddon said without a smile. ‘This is my newest little sideline. You see the fight?’

‘Yeah. Lovely.’

‘Pikeys…’ Sneddon shook his head in wonder. ‘They fight like fuck for pennies. They would do it for the love of it. Mad fuckers.’

‘And you run a book on it…’

Sneddon nodded. ‘It’s been a good night.’

‘I’ll bet…’ I said. Old Ben Franklin once said that the only certain things were death and taxes. But that was before Sneddon’s time, otherwise it would have been death, taxes and Willie Sneddon’s hand in your pocket.

‘I’ve had the place six months. It took a while to fix it up. I got the house, the barn, the whole fuckin’ farm because some toff bet more on the ponies than he had in readies. Wanker. It’s quite poetic that I run a wee gambling thing here, considering I got it because of gambling.’

‘Aye Mr Sneddon, that’s eye-ron-ic,’ said Twinkletoes at Sneddon’s side.

‘Was I fucking talking to you?’ Sneddon glowered up at Twinkletoes who loomed above his boss. Twinkle made a hurt face and Sneddon turned back to me. ‘Anyway, I’ve kept this place pretty quiet. I don’t even think Cohen and Murphy know about it yet. So keep your mouth shut.’ Sneddon referred to the other two Kings: Handsome Jonny Cohen and Hammer Murphy.

I took a moment to ponder why everybody felt that they had to tell me to keep my mouth shut all the time. ‘If they don’t know about it, then I’m sure they soon will,’ I said. ‘This is a village masquerading as a big city. Nothing stays quiet for long.’

‘Like Small Change MacFarlane getting his coupon smashed to fuck

…’ Sneddon smiled. Or moved his face around in an attempt. The result was something cold, hard and careless.

‘Yeah… just like. My God, it doesn’t take long for word to get around. MacFarlane’s not cold yet. Is that why you had Twinkletoes and smiling lad pick me up?’

Sneddon cast a glance over his shoulder at the crowd. ‘Let’s go over to the main house. It’s quieter…’

I’d been to Sneddon’s house in Bearsden, a mock-baronial mansion with manicured gardens, a few times. This place was totally different. As soon as I stepped into the entrance hallway I knew that this was a business premises. From the outside it was a Victorian farmhouse; inside it was a Victorian brothel, all thick velvet crimson drapes, chaises-longues and Rubenesque tits in frames on the walls. The living room of the house had been converted into a bar with scattered sofas. On one a working girl sat with a bored expression as a drunken customer drooled and pawed inexpertly at her. Mel Torme crooned from a record player in the corner, and the bar was manned by another girl in her early twenties who, too, had applied too much make-up and too little frock.

‘What do you think?’ asked Sneddon in a tone that suggested he didn’t give a toss what I thought.

‘Nice ambience. Brings out the romantic in me.’

Sneddon snorted an approximation of a laugh. He tapped Twinkletoes on the chest and nodded in the direction of the drunk and the girl. Twinkletoes obliged by conducting them out of the lounge.

‘So what’s a nice boy like me doing in a place like this?’ I asked. Sneddon told the girl behind the counter to pour us a couple of whiskies and I noticed she brought a single malt up from beneath the bar. The good stuff.

‘You was at Small Change’s place tonight. What business do you have with him? Was he getting you to do a bit of sniffing for him?’

‘The only sniffing I’ve been doing has been around his daughter. All pleasure, no business.’

‘You sure?’ Sneddon narrowed his eyes. It made him look all brow, which was an advantage in Glasgow. Athens had been the cradle of democracy, Florence had given the world the Renaissance, Glasgow had refined, to a precise art, the head butt. The Glasgow Kiss, as it was affectionately known amongst the nations of the world. ‘I would be put out if you was being less than square with me.’

‘Listen, Mr Sneddon, I would think a long time before I’d lie to you. I know Twinkletoes didn’t get his name because he dances like Fred Astaire. I’m attached to my toes and I like to think it’s a mutual arrangement. And anyway, I was asked the same thing tonight by Superintendent McNab.’

‘McNab?’ Sneddon put his glass down on the bar. ‘What the fuck is he involved for? I thought it was a robbery gone wrong.’

‘It’s a big case, I guess. Small Change was high profile,’ I said, hiding how impressed I was with the speed and accuracy of Sneddon’s intelligence-gathering operation. Then I realized I was part of it. ‘Anyway, he took a lot of convincing that I wasn’t involved with MacFarlane.’

‘So you had nothing to do with Small Change or his business?’

‘Like I said, I’m seeing his daughter, that’s all. What’s the problem?’

Sneddon waved his hand at me as if he had been flicking away an annoying fly. ‘Nothin’. It’s just that I had some business going on with Small Change.’

‘Oh?’

Sneddon gave me a look. ‘Listen, Lennox, if you’re hanging around MacFarlane’s place, you can maybes help me out.’

‘If I can…’ I said and smiled, hiding the sinking feeling in my gut.

‘Keep me up to date on what the coppers are getting up to. And, if you get a chance, see if you can find anything like Small Change’s diary. Appointment book. Whatever he kept details of meetings in. Or maybe a log book with events and stuff in it.’

‘May I ask why?’

‘No you fucking can’t.’ Then he sighed, as if relenting to a child’s demand for ice cream. ‘Okay… I had a meeting with Small Change this afternoon. A project we was working on together. I’m moving into the fight game… not like tonight — something more than a couple of pikeys knocking the shite out of each other. Real boxing. I was talking to MacFarlane about a couple of fighters. Things could get complicated if the police found out.’

‘And what was Small Change bringing to the table?’

‘It’s not important. Listen, this deal was nothing big. I just don’t want that kind of police attention. I never want police attention. But specially not if that fucker McNab’s heading the case. Can you check it out for me or not?’

I made a big deal of thinking it over. ‘I’m not trying to be funny, Mr Sneddon, but if I had an appointment with you, I don’t think it’s the kind of thing I’d put in a diary. I mean… that could be evidence, like you say. I don’t think MacFarlane had the kind of business that he would want recorded somewhere.’

‘That’s because you don’t think the way me and MacFarlane do. I have a diary. Every fucking appointment, every talk I have with Murphy or Cohen goes into it. Like you say, evidence. King’s Evidence if I ever need it. Cohen and Murphy do the same thing. Insurance. And I know that MacFarlane had a mind like a fucking sieve… only when it came to things like that. As a bookie he could tell you what was running where and when and what the odds were, right off the top of his head. But stuff like meetings he’d have to write times and dates down or he’d forget.’

‘I don’t think I can help. The coppers took away boxes of stuff from his study. I’d guess they’ve already got their hands on his diary.’

‘You’re smarter than that, Lennox.’ Sneddon fixed me with a hard stare. ‘Small Change wouldn’t keep his diary somewhere obvious, and the coppers are too fucking stupid to look anywheres that’s not obvious. You know something, if I had a suspicious nature I’d start wondering if you don’t want to help me. I would maybes even start to think you’ve been trying to avoid me. Maybes even Murphy and Cohen too. What’s the matter, Lennox… getting too good for us?’

‘I’ve done more than my fair share for you, Sneddon…’ I put my glass down on the bar; I was maybe going to need my hands free. If only for Twinkletoes to lop my fingers off. ‘If I remember rightly, it was me you called when you were hauled off down to St. Andrew’s Square last year. I don’t think you, Murphy or Cohen have anything to complain about. But you’re not my only clients.’

Sneddon looked at me with a sneer. ‘Okay, Lennox. You’re a tough guy — I get it. Find Small Change’s appointment book — or whatever he used to keep that kinda stuff in — and deliver it to me and I’ll pay you three hundred quid. Whether my name’s in it or not.’

‘I’ll have a look if I can.’ I had told Sneddon I’d think long and hard before I lied to him; when it came to it I did it in the bat of an eyelid: I had no intention of snooping around the MacFarlane house on his behalf. But there again, three hundred quid was three hundred quid. It was best to keep my options open. ‘Was that all you wanted to see me about?’

‘There was something else.’

I fixed my smile with glue. Sneddon saw through it.

‘That’s if it isn’t fucking beneath you to do a job for me, Lennox,’ he said maliciously.

‘Of course not.’

‘Anyway, you don’t need to worry, you won’t get your hands dirty. It’s a legit job.’

‘What is it?’

‘Like I said, I’m getting into the fight game. Me and Jonny the kike have each got a share in a fighter.’

‘You and Handsome Jonny Cohen?’

‘Yeah, me and Cohen. You got a problem with that?’

‘Me? Not at all. It’s very ecumenical of you.’

‘I’m not prejudiced. I’ll do business with anyone. Absolutely anyone.’ He paused. ‘Except Fenians, of course. Anyways, this young fighter we’ve got shares in… he’s going places. He has a coupon-mashing right hook. The thing is, he’s been getting a bit of grief.’

‘What kind of grief?’

‘Fucking stupid stuff. A dead bird put through his letterbox, paint on his car, that kinda shite.’

‘Sounds like he’s upset someone. Has he spoken to the police?’

Sneddon gave me a look. ‘Aye… seeing as I have such a cosy relationship with them, that’s the first thing I said he should do. Use your head, Lennox. If the polis start sniffing about then they’ll sooner or later end up on my doorstep or Jonny Cohen’s. We’d both rather keep our investment quiet. It was Cohen what said we should get you to look into it. Discreet, like.’

‘Discretion,’ I said sententiously, ‘is my middle name. So who has he pissed off enough to start a vendetta?’

‘No one. Or no one that he can think of. I mean, he’s hurt a few in the ring, but I don’t think that’s what this is all about. I reckon that someone has put a stash on him to lose when he fights the Kraut and they’re just trying to put the wind up him before the fight. You know, like chucking a fish supper into a greyhound’s kennel the night before the race.’

‘Wait a minute… you said before he fights the Kraut. By Kraut do you mean Jan Schmidtke? Is your boxer Bobby Kirkcaldy?’

‘He’s not my boxer. I own a piece of him, you could say. So what?’

I blew a long, low whistle. ‘That’s a wise investment, Mr Sneddon. Kirkcaldy’s tasty. And you’re right, he is going places.’

‘Oh…’ Again Sneddon smiled the only way he could. Sneeringly. ‘I am so fucking pleased that my business decisions meet with your approval. Cohen and me both lost sleep worrying that we’d gone ahead without your okay.’

I had to admit, Sneddon was much better at sarcasm than McNab. But still nowhere near as good as me.

‘I’m just saying that Kirkcaldy is hot property,’ I said. ‘The stakes are high with him, literally. You got any idea who’s trying to spook him?’

Sneddon shrugged. ‘That’s your job. You find out… if you do, don’t let them know you’re onto them. You want the job?’

‘Usual fees?’

Reaching into his hand-tailoring, Sneddon pulled out his wallet and handed me forty pounds in fives. It was more than most people made in a month but didn’t seem to lighten Sneddon’s wallet too much. ‘There’s another hundred in it for you when you give me a name for who’s behind all this malarkey.’

‘Fair enough.’ I took the money with a smile. It was part of my customer relations policy. There again, smiling when people gave me money came pretty naturally to me. It was a clean job. Legit, like Sneddon had said. All I had to deliver was a name, but I tried not to think too much about what would happen to the face behind the name once I’d delivered it.

‘You said you were talking to Small Change MacFarlane about a couple of fighters. Was Kirkcaldy one of them?’

‘Fuck no. No, it wasn’t nothing in that league. Just a couple of potential up-and-comers, that’s all. Small Change didn’t even know of my interest in Kirkcaldy. You’ve got to fucking watch what you say to bookies. This is Kirkcaldy’s address.’ Sneddon handed me a folded note. ‘Is there anything else you need?’

I made a show of a thoughtful frown, even though the idea had come to me as soon as I had heard mention of Kirkcaldy’s name. ‘Maybe it would be a good idea if you could spring me a ticket for the big fight. Means I can check out anyone dodgy.’

‘I would sincerely fucking hope that you’ve got to the bottom of this before then. But aye… I can manage that. Anything else?’

‘If there is, I’ll let you know,’ I said, inwardly cursing that I hadn’t thought of a reason to ask for two tickets.

‘Right. You can fuck off now,’ said Sneddon. I wondered if the freshly minted Queen followed the same court etiquette. ‘And don’t forget to have a sniff about for Small Change’s appointments book. I’ll get Singer to drive you back to your car. You know Singer, don’t you?’ Sneddon beckoned across to the Teddy Boy who’d driven me and Twinkletoes out to the farm.

‘Oh yeah… we chatted all the way over here.’ I leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘To be honest, I found it difficult to get a word in edgewise…’

Sneddon gave me another of his sneers-or-smiles. ‘Singer’ certainly didn’t seem to like my witticism, I could have been becoming paranoid, but I thought I detected even more menace in his lurking.

‘Aye…’ said Sneddon. ‘Singer’s not much of a conversationalist. Not much of a singer either come to that, are you, Singer?’

Singer interrupted his lurk long enough to shake his head.

‘You could say Singer is a man of action, not words.’ Sneddon paused to take a cigarette from a gold cigarette case so heavy it threatened to sprain his wrist. He didn’t offer me one. ‘Singer’s Da was a real bastard. Used to beat the shite out of him when he was a kiddie. Knocked his mother about too. You know, more than normal. But Singer had this talent. He got it from his Ma. He had a cracking wee voice on him. Or so people tell me. Never heard it myself. Anyways, at weddings and shite like that Singer and his Ma was always asked to stand up and give a song. Not that he took much asking, did you, Singer? He used to sing all the time. The only thing the wee bastard had…’

I looked at Singer who returned my stare emptily. He was obviously used to Sneddon discussing his most intimate personal history with a complete stranger. Either that or he just didn’t care.

‘But it used to wind up his Da no end. He’d come home drunk and no one was allowed to make a sound. Any peep out of Singer and his Da would kick the shite out of him. Literally, sometimes. Then one day Singer’s old man comes back with a really black one on. Wee Singer is innocently chirping away with his Ma in the kitchen, but his Da gets the idea that there should be a meal on the table for him. He goes fucking mental. He grabs Singer and starts to beat the shite out of him. So his Ma comes to try to defend the wee fella. So do you know what he does?’

I shrugged. I looked at Singer: I had a good four inches on him, but he was a hard-looking bastard. Vicious-looking. But I didn’t like listening to Sneddon rejoicing in his misery.

‘He cut Singer’s Ma’s throat,’ Sneddon answered his own question. There was a hint of awe in his voice. ‘Took a penknife — a penknife mind — and cut her throat from ear to ear, right in front of the wee fella. So Singer’s never sung — or spoken — since.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said to Singer because it was the only thing I could think to say. He looked at me expressionlessly.

‘Aye… a bad bastard was Singer’s Da. They hung the fucker at Duke Street and Singer was put into an orphanage. Then a kind of funny farm because of him not talking and that.’ Sneddon looked at Singer knowingly. ‘But you’re not mad, are you, Singer? Just bad… all the way through. I found out about him because Tam, one of my boys, did time with Singer. Shared a cell. Will I tell him what your speciality was, Singer?’

Singer, unsurprisingly, said nothing. But he didn’t nod or move or blink.

‘Someone grassed him up to the police for a robbery he did. But without the witness there was no evidence. But Singer didn’t kill the bastard. He cut his fucking tongue out. All of it. Kind of poetic, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah…’ I said. Singer’s face was still impassive. ‘Positively Audenesque.’

‘Anyway,’ said Sneddon. ‘I like having Singer around. D’you know the ancient Greeks liked to have mutes around at funerals? Professional mourners. Anyway, I look after Singer now, don’t I, Singer?’

Singer nodded.

‘And Singer looks after me. And my interests.’

I was acutely aware of Twinkletoes’ absence in the car on the way back into town, as if he had left twin voids of space and silence. I took a Player’s Navy Blue and offered the packet to Singer, who shook his head without taking his eyes off the road. He was that kind of guy. Focussed. I had forgotten exactly where I’d left the car, but Singer found his way to it first shot.

‘Thanks,’ I said as I got out of the car. Singer was about to drive off when, on an impulse, I tapped on his window. He rolled it down.

‘Listen, I just wanted to say…’ What? What the hell was it I wanted to say? ‘I just wanted to say that I’m sorry about the wisecracks I made… you know, about you not talking. I didn’t know about… well, you know… that was a shitty break…’ I fell silent. It seemed best considering I seemed to have lost the ability to string a coherent sentence together.

Singer looked at me for a moment, in that cold, expressionless way he had, then gave a nod. He drove off. I stood and watched the Humber disappear around the corner, wondering why the hell, after all of the other shit I had done and seen in my life, I had felt the need to apologize to a cheap Glasgow hoodlum. Maybe it was because what had happened to Singer had happened when he was a kid. It was the one thing I found tough to take: the crap that happens to kids. In war. In their own homes.

Not for the first time, I considered the colourful life I had forged for myself here in Glasgow. And the interesting people I got to meet.