The Long Glasgow Kiss

CHAPTER THREE

It’s funny: at the time, I didn’t think of the week after Small Change’s murder as ‘the week after Small Change’s murder’. I had other things to think about, other things to do. It’s often only in retrospect that you see the significance of a particular moment in your life. At the time it’s just the same old crap, and you just stumble along oblivious to the fact that you should be keeping a scrapbook, or a diary, or photographing the minutiae of your life; that at some time in the future you would look back and think, if only I’d known what the fuck was going on.

Obviously, I saw Lorna every day that week. And obviously I kept my hands out of her underwear — I am nothing if not a gentleman — and, anyway, experience had told me that the ardour of even the most enthusiastic of mattress companions diminishes with grief. Not with death; with grief. I’d learned during the war that death and violence tend to be powerful aphrodisiacs for both genders. Suffice it to say, I became the most solicitous and least lecherous of suitors.

To be honest, I had other distractions.

They say Eskimos have a hundred words for snow. Glaswegians must have twice that many for the different kinds of rain that batters down on the city year-round. In winter, Glasgow lies under an assault of chilled wet bullets; in summer, the rain falls in greasy, tepid globs, like the sky sweating on the city. Completely atypically, Glasgow was experiencing a dry and searingly hot summer. Half of the city’s population spent most of that summer looking up, squinting at the sky and trying to form the word blue.

I found the hot weather disconcerting. Usually any sunlight in Glasgow was mitigated by a sooty veil thrown up by the factories and tenement chimneys; but that summer there were disorientating moments when the sky cleared and the heat and the light reminded me of summers back home in New Brunswick. It was only ever a fleeting illusion, though, repeatedly shattered by the fuming, dark-billowing reality of the city around me.

At least I got to wear lightweight suits that hung better. When it came to material, the Scots had a year-round preference for tweed, the scratchier and denser the better. A Scottish acquaintance had once tried to reassure me that tweed from the Isle of Harris was less scratchy, explaining that this was because it was traditionally soaked in human urine. I could have been accused of being picky, but I preferred couture that hadn’t been pissed on by an inbred crofter.

I had spent three days getting all the gen I could on Sneddon’s fighter. Bobby Kirkcaldy had been born in Glasgow but raised in Lanarkshire, first in an orphanage and then by an aunt. Both his parents had died prematurely from heart attacks when Kirkcaldy was a child. Tragic, but not unusual: if cardiac disease had been a sport, then the entire British Olympic team would have been made up of Glaswegians.

Young Bobby Kirkcaldy had used his fists to fight his way up and out of the Motherwell slum that had been his adoptive home. To put his success in context, Motherwell was the kind of place anyone would fight like hell to get out of. I’d been able to track down a couple of businesses that Kirkcaldy had invested in and it was clear he was getting good advice on cashing in on his success when he eventually hung up his gloves. Either that, or he was as nifty with investment as he was in the ring. In fact, for someone approaching the height of his boxing career, he seemed to have his mind, and money, on other things.

My office was three floors up, across Gordon Street from Central Station, and by Thursday I had done just about all I could do on the ’phone and was going to take an afternoon trip out to see young Mr Kirkcaldy. I decided to drink a coffee and read the newspaper before I left. I like to keep up with things. I never knew when Rab Butler or Tony Eden would ask for my advice.

All the news was gloomy. Britain wasn’t the only nation struggling with the loss of an empire: the French were having the stuffing kicked out of them in Indochina by the Vietminh. There had been a clash of razor gangs in the Gorbals. A man had been run over by a train on the outskirts of the city. The police hadn’t issued a name. The only thing that cheered me up was an advertised assurance that, apparently, taking an Amplex chlorophyll tablet each day guaranteed breath and body freshness; obviously an attempt to break into an underexploited market.

I was in the middle of Rip Kirby when I got a pleasant surprise. A very pleasant, five-foot-three, blonde surprise. I recognized her as soon as she walked into my office, despite the fact that we had never met before. She dressed with an elegance that Glasgow didn’t stretch to. Cream silk blouse, figure-hugging powder blue pencil skirt, long legs sheathed in sheer silk. Her throat was ringed with a necklace with pearls so big the diver must have had to bring them up one at a time. Earrings to match. She wore a small white pillbox-type hat and white gloves, but had a jacket that matched the skirt draped over the same forearm as a handbag that, in a previous life, had swum in the Nile or the Florida Everglades.

I stood up and tried to prevent my smile from resembling a leer. It probably just looked goofy. But Sheila Gainsborough was probably used to men smiling at her goofily.

‘Hello, Miss Gainsborough,’ I said. ‘Please sit down. What can I do for you?’

‘You know me?’ She smiled a famous person’s smile, that polite perfunctory baring of teeth that doesn’t mean anything.

‘Everybody knows you, Miss Gainsborough. Certainly everybody in Glasgow. I have to say I don’t get many celebrities walking into my office.’

‘Don’t you?’ She frowned, lowering her flawlessly arched eyebrows and wrinkling a fold of skin on her otherwise flawless brow. Flawlessly. ‘I would have imagined…’ Shrugging off the thought and the frown, she sat down and I followed suit. ‘I’ve never been to a private detective before. Never seen one before, come to that, other than Humphrey Bogart in the pictures.’

‘We’re taller in real life.’ I smiled at my own witticism. Goofily. ‘And I call myself an enquiry agent. So why do you need to see one now?’

She unclipped the sixty-guinea crocodile and handed me a photograph. It was a professional, showbizzy shot. Colour. I didn’t recognize the young man in the picture but decided in an instant that I didn’t like him. The smile was fake and too self-assured. He was wearing an expensive-looking shirt open at the neck and arranged over the collar of an even more pricey-looking light grey suit. His chestnut hair was well cut and lightly oiled. He was good-looking, but in a too-slick and weak-chinned sort of way. Despite his dark hair, he had the same striking, pale blue eyes as Sheila Gainsborough.

‘He’s my brother. Sammy. My younger brother.’

‘Is he in show business too, Miss Gainsborough?’

‘No. Well, not really. He sings, occasionally. He’s tried every other kind of business though. Some of which I’m afraid haven’t been totally… honourable.’ She sighed and leaned forward, resting her forearms on the edge of my desk. Her skin was tanned. Not dark, just pale gold. The cute frown was back. ‘It’s maybe all my fault. I spoil him, give him more money than he can handle.’ I noticed that she had a vaguely Americanized accent. I spoke the same way, but that was because I’d been raised in Canada. As far as I was aware, Sheila Gainsborough had never been further west than Dunoon. I guessed she had been voice-trained to sink the Glasgow in her accent somewhere deep and mid-Atlantic.

‘Is Sammy in some kind of trouble?’ I too leaned forward and frowned my concern, taking the opportunity to cast a glance down the front of her blouse.

‘He’s gone missing,’ she said.

‘How long?’

‘A week. Maybe ten days. We had a meeting at the bank — he’s overdrawn the account I set up for him — but he didn’t turn up. That was last Thursday. I went to his apartment but he wasn’t there. There was two days’ mail behind the door.’

I took a pad from my desk drawer and scribbled a few notes on it. It was window dressing, people feel comforted if you take notes. Somehow it looks like you’re taking it all that little bit more seriously. Nodding sagely as you write helps.

‘Has Sammy done this kind of thing before. Gone off without letting you know?’

‘No. Or at least not like this. Not for a week. Occasionally he’s gone off on a bender. One… two days, but that’s all. And whenever I’m in town — you know, not on a tour or in London — we meet up every Saturday and have lunch in Cranston’s Tea Rooms on Sauchiehall Street. He never misses it.’

I noted. I nodded. Sagely. ‘You said his account is overdrawn — have there been any more withdrawals since he went awol?’

‘I don’t know…’ Suddenly she looked perplexed, as if she’d let him down — let me down — by not checking. ‘Can you find that out?’

‘’Fraid not. You say you were supposed to attend the meeting at the bank with him?’

‘I’m a co-signatory,’ she said. The frown still creased the otherwise flawless brow. With due cause, I thought. Her brother sounded like a big spender. A high liver. If he hadn’t been trying to pull cash from his already overdrawn account, then he wasn’t spending big or living high. Or maybe even simply not living.

‘Then you can check,’ I said. ‘The bank will give you that information, but not me. Even the police would have to get a court order. Have you been to the police, Miss Gainsborough?’

‘I was waiting. I kept thinking Sammy would turn up. Then, when he didn’t, I thought I’d be better getting a private detective… I mean enquiry agent.’

‘Why me?’ I asked. ‘I mean, who put you in contact with me?’

‘I have a road manager, Jack Beckett. He says he knows you.’

I frowned. ‘Can’t say…’

‘Or at least knows of you. He said…’ She hesitated, as if unsure to commit the rest of her thought to words. ‘He said that you were reliable, but that you had contact with — well, that you knew people that were more the kind that Sammy has been mixing with.’

‘I see…’ I said, still trying to place the name Jack Beckett and making a mental note that if I ever did come across him, to thank him appropriately for the glowing character reference.

There was a silence. A taxi sounded its horn outside on Gordon Street. A river-bubble of voices rose up from outside and through the window I had left open in the vain hope it would cool the office. I noticed a trickle of sweat on Sheila Gainsborough’s sleek neck.

‘So exactly what kind of people was Sammy mixing with? You said he had gotten involved in less than honourable businesses. What do you mean?’

‘Like I said, Sammy isn’t really in show business as such. But he does do the odd singing job. He’s not great, if I’m honest, but good enough for Glasgow. He’s been singing in nightclubs and mixing with a bad crowd. Gambling too. I think that’s where a lot of the money has been going.’

‘Which clubs?’

‘I don’t know… not the ones I started in. There was one he went to a lot. I think he sang there too. The Pacific Club down near the river.’

‘Oh… yes,’ I said. Oh fuck, I thought. Handsome Jonny Cohen’s place.

‘You know it?’

‘I know the owner. I can have a word.’

‘Have you ever heard of the Poppy Club?’ she asked.

‘Can’t say that I have. Why?’

‘When I went to his flat there was a note by the telephone that said “The Poppy Club”. Nothing else. No number. I looked up the ’phone book but there’s no “Poppy Club” listed in either Glasgow or Edinburgh.’

I wrote the name down in my notebook. Reassuringly. ‘What’s Sammy’s full name?’ I asked.

‘James Samuel Pollock.’

‘Pollock?’

‘That’s my real name. Well, it was my real name. I changed it by deed poll.’

‘So you were Sheila Pollock?’

‘Ishbell Pollock.’

‘Ishbell?’

‘My agent didn’t think that Ishbell Pollock had the kind of ring to it that a singing star’s name should have.’

‘Really?’ I said, as if confused as to why anyone would be blind to the charms of a name like Ishbell Pollock. They had done a good job on her. A Glasgow club singer, one amongst thousands. But they had had great raw material to work with. Sheila Gainsborough had the looks — she certainly had the looks — and the voice to stand out from the crowd. She’d been talent-scouted. Groomed. Repackaged. Managed. She maybe had the looks and the voice but the name Ishbell Pollock and the Glasgow accent would have been dropped faster than utility-mark panties on VE Day.

I wrote Sammy’s full name in my notebook. ‘When did you last see Sammy?’

‘Lunch at the Tea Rooms, a week past Saturday.’

‘What about friends… girls… people he used to hang around with? And you said he has been associating with a bad crowd. Can you put any names to them?’

‘He has this friend, Barnier. A Frenchman. Sammy mentioned him a couple of times. I think they were friends, but it could have been a business thing.’

‘First name?’

She shook her head. ‘Sammy always just called him Barnier. There can’t be that many Frenchies in Glasgow.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘They probably come here in their droves for the cuisine.’ We both smiled. ‘Anyone else?’

‘I was at his flat one day and he got a telephone call from a girl. They sounded intimate. All I got was her first name. Claire. But there were a couple of guys he knew who I really didn’t like the look of. Rough types.’

‘Names?’

‘Sorry. I only saw them once, waiting for Sammy outside the club. They had the look as if… I don’t know… as if they didn’t want to be seen. But they were a shiftless sort. Late twenties, one about five-eight with dark hair, the other maybe an inch shorter with sandy hair. The one with the dark hair has a scar on his forehead. Shaped like a crescent.’

I sat and looked at her, deep in thought. She looked back eagerly, obviously reassured that she had provoked some deep, investigative cogitations. What I was really thinking about was what it would be like to bend her over my desk.

‘Okay. Thanks,’ I said once the picture was complete. ‘Would it be possible for us to go to your brother’s flat… have a look around?’

She looked at her watch. ‘I need to be on the sleeper to London tonight. I’ve a lot to do beforehand. Could we go now?’

I stood up and smiled. ‘My car is around the corner.’

The Atlantic had been sitting in the sun and I rolled down the windows before holding the door open for Sheila Gainsborough to get in. I found myself casting an eye up and down the street in the desperate hope that someone — anyone — I knew was there to see me let this beautiful, rich and famous woman into my car. Two youths passed without noticing, followed by an old man wearing a flat cap and, despite the temperature, a heavy, thick, dark blue jacket and a neckerchief tied at his throat. He paused only to spit profusely on the pavement. I didn’t take it as a sign of his being impressed.

Even with the windows open, the car was stifling; the air heady in its confines: hot wood and leather mingled with the lavender from Sheila’s perfume and a vague hint of a musky odour from her body.

Sammy Pollock’s flat was on the west side of the city centre, but not quite the West End. We drove without speaking along Sauchiehall Street to where the numbers started to climb into the thousands and she told me to turn right. A ribbon of park broke up the ranks of three-storey Georgian terraces. There were some kids playing on the grass and mothers, prams parked beside them, sat indolently on the park benches, beaten listless by summer heat and motherhood.

Pollock’s apartment was actually over two levels of one of the semi-grand stone terraces. At one time the terrace would have gleamed golden sandstone. A once brightly coloured arch of stained glass and lead work sat above the door, almost Viennese: Charles Rennie Mackintosh style or similar. But Glasgow was a city of ceaseless work. Dirty work. The unending belchings of smoke and soot had blackened the stone and dulled the glass. It was like seeing a parson in frock coat and breeches after he’d been sent down a mine for a few shifts.

‘You’ve always had a key?’ I asked Sheila as she unlocked the door.

She sighed. ‘Look, Mr Lennox, I can tell you’ve guessed the set-up. I own the flat. I own it, I furnished it and I let Sammy stay in it. I also give him an allowance.’

‘How old is Sammy?’

‘Twenty-three.’

‘I see,’ I said. I thought of a twenty-three-year-old being handed everything by a sister who, herself, had yet to hit thirty. I thought about when I had been twenty-three, fighting my way through Europe with only a vague hope that I’d make it to twenty-four. Sammy Pollock was only thirteen years younger than me, but he was a completely different generation. Lived in a different world.

She read my mind. ‘You disapprove of Sammy’s way of life?’

‘I envy Sammy’s way of life. I wish I’d had it when I was his age. You’re a very generous sister.’

‘You have to understand something…’ Letting her hand rest on the door handle, she looked at me earnestly with the bright blue eyes. ‘I’m five years older than Sammy. Our parents are both dead and I’m… well, I feel responsible for my brother. And I’ve been lucky. Got the breaks. And that’s put me in the position to help the only person I care about in the world. Sammy’s not a bad kid. He’s just a bit silly at times. Immature. I’m just worried that he’s got himself in with a bad crowd. Got into trouble.’

‘I understand.’ I nodded to the door she still held shut. ‘Shall we?’

‘Someone’s been here.’ It was the first thing she said when we walked into the living room. Sure enough, the place was a mess. Some of the mess was clearly bachelor living at its best — over-full ashtrays, sticky-bottomed beer bottles, and whisky glasses bonding maliciously with the expensive walnut of the side tables, a jacket tossed carelessly on an armchair, a couple of dirty plates and a coffee cup. It was a vernacular I was familiar with myself. But there was another dimension to the disorder, a third-party, purposeful element. Like someone had been looking for something, and in a hurry.

‘Sammy?’ Sheila called out and moved urgently across the living room towards the hall. I took a couple of steps and halted her progress with a hand on her arm. The skin was warm; moist beneath my fingertips.

‘Let me have a look,’ I said. ‘You wait here.’ I had already closed my hand around the leather-dressed spring-steel sap I carried in my pocket. When I was in the hall and out of Sheila’s sight, I took the sap out.

‘Mr Pollock?’ Nothing. ‘Hello?’

I moved along the hall. An ivory-coloured telephone sat on a chest-high hallstand, another full ashtray beside it. I noticed some of the butts were filters, not something you saw a lot of, and they were rimmed with crimson lipstick. I slipped one into my pocket. I moved on, checking each of the rooms as I passed. The flat was bright and expensively furnished, but each room had been turned over, with papers and other debris scattered all over the floors. I climbed the stairs and found the same on the upper floor. I came to Pollock’s bedroom. More clutter strewn across the floor. Something shiny caught my eye, glittering in the sunshine. Once I was sure we were the only ones in the flat, I called down and asked Sheila to come upstairs.

‘You said you were sure someone has been in here. I take it the flat wasn’t like this when you were last here?’

She shook her head. ‘Sammy was never house-proud, but not this… this looks like he’s been burgled.’

I nodded to the bedside cabinet. There was a lead crystal ashtray and a brick of a gold table lighter. ‘No house breaker is going to leave without that in their pocket. This hasn’t been a burglary, this was a search.’ I bent down and picked up from the floor the shiny item that had caught my eye. It was a small, polished, steel-hinged box, lying open on the floor. I looked around my feet and found the contents that had spilled out.

‘Does your brother have any medical condition I should know about?’ I placed the syringe and needle back in the metal box and held them out for Sheila to see. ‘Is he diabetic?’

Sheila looked at the box and her expression darkened. ‘No. He doesn’t have any medical condition.’

‘But this means something to you?’ I asked.

She looked at me hard for a moment before answering. ‘I’ve been around a lot of musicians. It’s part of my job. Musicians and artists

… well, they experiment with stuff.’

‘Narcotics?’

‘Yes. But I don’t think… or at least I’ve never had any reason to think that Sammy would be involved in that kind of nonsense.’

For a moment, we both gazed silently at the metal syringe box in my hands, as if it would surrender its secrets to us if we stared at it long enough.

‘It could have been Sammy himself, of course,’ I said. I could have sounded more convincing. ‘Maybe he came back to collect stuff. Pack a bag.’ I pocketed the syringe box.

‘I’ll check his wardrobes and drawers,’ she said dully. ‘Maybe I’ll notice something missing. If he’s taken clothes…’ She stepped past me. The room was hot and stuffy and as she passed, I again picked up a whiff of lavender and musk: the dressing and the flesh. Oh boy, Lennox, I thought, you’ve got it bad this time.

There was a sound from downstairs and we both froze. Someone was opening the apartment door. Sheila had closed the snib over behind her and that meant whoever was coming in had a key. Again I stopped Sheila as she made her way to the bedroom door, clearly to call out her brother’s name. I put a finger to my lips, slipped past her and moved as quickly and quietly as I could back down the stairs, again unpocketing the spring-handled sap. I reached the bottom of the stairs just as a young man with black hair and a dark complexion opened the vestibule door and stepped into the hall.

‘Hello,’ I said with a friendly smile, keeping the sap out of sight. The dark-haired man looked at me, his eyes wide with surprise.

‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’ The eyes narrowed as surprise gave way to suspicion. I kept smiling and tightened my grip on the sap.

‘You know in these films,’ I said, ‘where someone says “I’m asking the questions here”? Well, that’s me. Let’s start with why you have a key for an apartment you don’t own or rent and seem to come and go as you please.’

‘Are you a cop?’ he asked.

‘Let’s just say I’m investigating the disappearance of Sammy Pollock.’

‘But you’re not a cop…’ His eyes narrowed further. Suddenly he looked unsure of himself. ‘You sent by Largo?’

‘Largo?’

He looked relieved, then the hardness came back to his eyes. His head lowered slightly into his shoulders and he slipped a hand into the side pocket of his jacket. Playtime.

Upstairs, Sheila Gainsborough must have crept towards the stairs. A floorboard creaked. My dark-haired chum’s eyes cast in the direction of the sound and he looked less sure of himself. He clearly thought I had reinforcements in the wings. I was a little piqued that he thought I’d need them to deal with him.

‘If you’re not a cop, then fuck you.’ He turned and went back into the small tiled vestibule, moving swiftly but without panic.

‘Oh no you don’t…’ I reached out and grabbed his shoulder. ‘Just hold on a minute…’

He was about three or four inches shorter than me and he misjudged the vicious backward jab with his elbow. Instead of hitting me in the face or throat, it slammed painfully into my chest and sent me backwards. It gave him time to open the front door and he was stepping through it when I ran for him. I slammed the door shut on him with the flat of my foot. All my weight behind the kick. The edge of the door caught him on the shoulder but glanced off and smashed into his cheek, jamming his head between the door edge and the jamb. He was stunned. A thick bulge of blood swelled up on his cheek, then turned into a torrent down the side of his face and neck, staining his shirt crimson.

‘Oh, sorry,’ I said. ‘Did I catch you with the door?’

His hand made for his pocket and whatever was in it, but his movements were sluggish and unfocussed. I snapped the sap at him hard. Twice. The first blow cracked something in his wrist and the second caught him on the nape of his neck. His lights went out and he went down, half in and half out of the door. I grabbed him by the back of his shirt collar and dragged him back into the flat.

I turned to see Sheila standing halfway down the stairs, her eyes wide and a hand to her mouth.

‘Did you have to do that?’ she said, once she had recovered sufficiently.

‘He had a go,’ I said. ‘And he’s got some kind of weapon in his pocket. He was going for it.’ I bent down and pulled out a switchblade. I flicked the release and held the knife up for her to see. ‘See… self-defence.’

‘You seem to relish defending yourself, Mr Lennox.’

I shrugged and pulled the slumped figure to his feet. He was still groggy but looked at me maliciously. I didn’t like that so I gave him the back of my hand. Twice and hard across the uninjured side of his face. Setting boundaries.

‘For God’s sake, that’s enough, Lennox…’ Sheila stepped forward staring hard at me. She was right. It was enough. It was too much. I had that hot, tight feeling in my chest. The desire to hurt someone else that I learned during the war slept in me. I could see Sheila didn’t like the person she was looking at. At least we had that in common: I didn’t like me much either.

I steered our visitor back into the flat and dropped him into the armchair. Sheila followed us in and leaned against the wall. She lit a cigarette and smoked it urgently. Other than that she was calm and collected. Impressive. I gave the man in the chair the once-over: mid-twenties, the double-breasted blue pinstripe not cheap but not expensive, same for the shirt and tie. I noticed his shoes were not the newest and brown leather. I felt like giving him another slap just for that: black or burgundy shoes with blue pinstripe; not brown.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Fuck off,’ he said sullenly, cradling his injured wrist.

‘There’s a lady present,’ I said, grabbing a fistful of pinstripe Burton. Watch your mouth or you’ll get a little more pampering from me.’

He looked across at Sheila and muttered something apologetic.

‘So what’s your name?’

‘Costello.’

‘Very funny, I expect Bud Abbott is outside on lookout.’ I gave his mid-price tailoring a twist in my fist.

‘It’s true. Paul Costello. That’s my name.’

I let him go and straightened up. ‘You Jimmy Costello’s boy?’

‘Yeah. That’s me.’ He looked suddenly sure of himself. ‘You’ve heard of my Da? Then you’ll know that he won’t like it much when I tell him you did this to me…’ He held up his wrist and turned his cheek to me.

‘Why do you have a key to this flat?’ I asked.

‘Mind your own business. I’m going to ’phone my Da and he’s going to sort you out for this good and proper.’

I nodded. ‘Miss Gainsborough, could you wait for me in the car?’ I held out my car keys to her but she didn’t take them.

‘What are you going to do?’ she asked, her tone simultaneously injecting disapproval and suspicion.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Costello. ‘He’s not going to do anything. He didn’t know who he was dealing with. Now he does and he’s going to try and talk his way out of it. Except he won’t.’ He sneered at me.

‘Like Mr Costello says, we have a bit of a disagreement. I need to talk to him in private.’ I shook the car keys as if I was ringing a bell. ‘Please.’

She took the keys sullenly and left, slamming the door behind her. After she’d gone, Paul Costello glared at me maliciously.

‘Shiteing yourself now, aren’t you? You know who my Da is all right. You should check who you’re dealing with before you start throwing your weight about.’ He winced, cradling his injured wrist with his other hand. ‘I think you’ve fucking broken it.’

‘Let me look at it.’ I bent down and Costello looked at me suspiciously. ‘Seriously, let me look at it.’

He held out his hand and I gingerly felt the wrist joint. He yelled out.

‘It’s not that bad,’ I said. ‘I think I’ve cracked a couple of bones, that’s all.’

‘That’s all? Wait till my Da finds out.’

‘You’re right,’ I said, still examining the wrist. ‘You should always know who you’re dealing with before having a go. Take me…’

Costello winced again as I found a sensitive spot on his wrist. It was beginning to swell up. Maybe there was a more significant break after all.

‘As I was saying, take me… I do know who your father is.’ I dug my thumb hard into Costello’s swollen wrist. He screamed. ‘And I don’t give a crap. D’you think that your pig-arsed Mick father is someone I should be scared of?’

He tried to pull his hand away and I rewarded him with another vicious squeeze. More screaming.

‘Truth is, I work for the Three Kings. You know the Three Kings?’

Costello nodded, staring wildly at the wrist he could not free from my grip.

‘Well, I work for them all, on and off. I do know your father and he’s nothing in the scheme of things. A nobody. If Hammer Murphy decided to squash him he could, as easy as a bug. So you run to Pop with tales and I’ll do the same with Hammer Murphy. We understand each other?’ I punctuated my question with another vicious squeeze of his wrist. His face contorted and when I eased the pressure he nodded violently again.

‘Okay,’ I continued. ‘Now that we understand each other, I think we should have our little chat. Now… why do you have a key to this flat?’

‘Sammy gave me one.’

‘Why?’

‘We’re friends.’

‘What do you mean “friends”? Good-mate friends or knob-jockey friends?’

‘What the fu-’

I interrupted his profanity with a light squeeze.

‘I’m no poof,’ he protested when he got his breath back. ‘Sammy and me are just friends.’

‘Now you’re going to find this a tad difficult to believe,’ I said self-deprecatingly, ‘but I have a lot of friends myself, and none of them have a key to my place. Try again, Mr Costello… Junior.’

‘That’s the truth. Sammy lets me crash here every now and again. I work at the club too.’

‘What club? The Poppy Club?’

‘Poppy Club? I’ve never heard of it. I work at the Riviera… my Da’s place. Sammy sings there now and again.’

‘The Riviera?’ My laugh came out a snort. ‘Very glamorous. And on what particular part of the Ligurian coast does your father’s club reside?’

Costello looked at me as if I was talking Japanese. In Glasgow it paid to keep your cultural references simple. ‘Where’s the Riviera Club?’

‘Partick. Near the river,’ he said.

This time my snort came out a full-blown laugh.

Costello looked offended. ‘It’s a classy place.’

‘I’m sure it is. It must be high on every VIP’s itinerary. I would guess you see a lot of Princess Margaret.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘Now, now, Junior. Don’t get tetchy or I’ll hold your hand again. Speaking of holding hands, why are you so cosy with Sammy Pollock? I wouldn’t have put you two together.’

‘We’ve got ideas. Business ideas. He’s fed up of just being Sheila Gainsborough’s brother and I’m fed up being thought of as just Jimmy Costello’s son.’

‘Please stop. I’m getting all teary. When did you last see Sammy?’

‘A couple of weeks ago. I was out of town.’

‘Where out of town?’

‘What’s it to you?’

I smiled and squeezed. He winced and glowered.

‘London…’ He strained it through his teeth. ‘I was down in London for a couple of weeks.’

‘So you didn’t know he was missing?’ I let go of his wrist and lit a cigarette.

‘You fucking enjoy this, don’t you?’ He smiled maliciously through his pain. ‘Hurting people. You really do enjoy it, don’t you?’

‘Oh, please don’t generalize…’ I looked offended, then smiled ingratiatingly. ‘I don’t enjoy hurting people, I enjoy hurting you. Let’s just say it’s our thing. Now…’ I let the smile drop as I leaned forward. ‘Did you know Sammy was missing?’

‘Missing? Is he missing? I know he’s not about. That doesn’t mean he’s missing. I tried to get him on the ’phone a couple of times from London. I just thought I’d missed him, been unlucky. That’s why I came around today.’

‘What kind of business?’ I blew smoke into his face.

‘What?’

‘What kind of business are you and Sammy thinking about getting involved in?’

‘Just… I don’t know… artist management. We were going to represent some of the musicians who work the pubs and clubs. The better musicians. We know a lot of them. So we thought we’d offer management.’

‘Are you sure you’re competing with Bernard Delfont and not ICI?’

‘What?’ Costello gave me an irritated frown.

‘I wondered if you were thinking about getting into the pharmaceutical business.’ I took the metal syringe box from my pocket, opened it and held it out for Costello to see.

‘Is this supposed to mean something to me?’

‘I was just wondering if you and Sammy were thinking about supplying more than career advice to your musician chums.’

‘You’ve lost me, mister…’ If Costello was lying then he was hiding it well. Although most of his expression was tied up with pain. I got the feeling his cheek was now competing with his wrist for his attention.

‘Who’s Largo?’

‘What?’

‘You thought I was a cop, then you thought I’d been sent by someone called Largo.’

‘Largo? Nothing. I mean nobody. Someone I owe some money to. I thought he’d sent you round here to see if I’d show up.’

‘Does Sammy know Largo? Does he owe him money too?’

‘No…’ Costello kept my gaze. He didn’t look like he was lying, but with a slimy piece like him it was difficult to tell.

‘You didn’t answer me. Who is Largo? I’ve never heard of him.’

‘Just a guy.’

‘Just a guy who sends people to collect his debts, apparently.’

‘Listen, Largo’s got nothing to do with Sammy. They don’t know each other.’ He winced and eased his wrist closer to his chest with his other hand.

‘Give me the key,’ I said, pocketing the syringe box again.

‘What?’

‘Give me the key. Sammy Pollock doesn’t own this flat and you sure as hell don’t. So hand it over.’

After he handed me the key with his good hand I hoisted him up and escorted him out of the flat. The heat hit us as soon as we were on the street.

‘You’ve not heard the last of this.’ Costello glowered at me, clutching his injured wrist. I took a step towards him and he scuttled off in the opposite direction.

Sheila Gainsborough was standing by the car, the sun catching the gold in her hair.

‘Well, did you manage to beat the truth out of him?’

‘Listen, Miss Gainsborough, I think we need to understand one another. Young Mr Costello, whose acquaintance we’ve just made, is a less than desirable type. I know his father, or at least know of him. Jimmy Costello is even less desirable. He’s a gangster and a thug. You’ve come to me with a problem: your brother has gone missing and the first thing we find out is that his flat has been turned over by someone. Then Costello junior arrives with a key to the flat you pay for and seems to come and go as he pleases. I’m sorry if my methods seemed a little direct but, having made young Mr Costello’s acquaintance, I am now a lot more concerned about your brother’s disappearance than I was an hour ago.’

Sheila Gainsborough did her cute frown again. ‘Did Costello explain what he was doing there and why he had a key?’

‘Well, to start with, he doesn’t have one any more.’ I handed her the key and it was swallowed by the alligator. ‘Costello claims they were friends and potential business partners, but he was pretty vague about what type of business. Representing musicians. Does your brother know anything about working as a talent agent?’

‘Sammy? Not a thing.’

‘I doubt if Costello has taken a course on it either.’ I started the car but paused before moving off. ‘Does the name “Largo” mean anything to you?’

‘What, the place in Fife?’

‘No, this isn’t a place. It’s a person. Costello thought I had been sent by someone called Largo.’

Sheila stared ahead for a moment, thinking. The scent of her hung in the small, humid silence. ‘No,’ she said eventually. ‘I don’t know anyone called Largo. And I can’t say I’ve ever heard Sammy mention anyone by that name.’

‘Okay,’ I said, and smiled. ‘I’ll take you back into town. I’d recommend you continue with your plans and travel down to London. I’ll have a sniff around. Is there somewhere I can get in touch?’

Snapping open the alligator, she pulled out a visiting card. ‘This is my agent’s number. His name is Humphrey Whithorn. If you need to get in touch, he can always find me. But what are you going to do? You’ve got nothing to go on.’

‘I’ve got the clubs where he worked. I can start there.’ I took the card. The name Sheila Gainsborough sunk silver grey into thick white vellum. Whithorn’s name was at the bottom right, smaller. Like everything else about her the card shouted quality and money. I tried to imagine the name Ishbell Pollock on the card. It didn’t take. ‘In the meantime, it would be good if you could check with your bank to see if Sammy has made any attempts to withdraw more money.’

I drove her back to my office where I asked more questions about Sammy’s lifestyle. After we ran out of straws to clutch at, I promised to do everything I could to find her brother. Stretching out a hand for me to shake, she nodded and stood up. I walked her to the door — not much of a walk in my tiny hot-box office — and promised her that I would keep in touch. Watching her as she made her way back down the stairwell, I noticed how she seemed to glide, rather than walk, her gloved hand hovering above the banister and her high heels light on the stone steps. Sheila Gainsborough had a grace I hadn’t seen in a woman for a long time. It reminded me, for a moment, of someone else and the memory hit me in the gut. Someone else was someone dead.

When Sheila disappeared from view, I turned back into the heat of my office. I sat at my desk for a long time trying to pinpoint the source of the uneasy feeling that was beginning to gnaw at me.

My digs were on Great Western Road. It was a good enough place, the whole upper floor of a typical Glasgow Victorian villa.

It’s not uncommon to come across a place to stay by happen-chance: someone knows someone who knows somebody else who has a room to let. The happenchance that had led to my flat becoming available was a German U-boat fortuitously hitting a Royal Navy Reserve frigate directly midships. The frigate had gone down faster than a Clydebank whore on a payday docker, and took with it a young junior officer called White. No big deal: just one of the millions of brief human candles that had been prematurely snuffed out during the war. This insignificant statistic, however, had been a universe-shattering tragedy for the pretty young wife and two daughters of the junior naval officer. A future that had once shone so brightly now lay rusting at the bottom of the Atlantic with the hulk of the broken frigate.

I had encountered the fractured White family when looking for a place to stay. Mrs White had advertised the place in the Glasgow Herald. With only a Navy widow’s pension to survive on, Fiona White had come up with a drastic but practical solution: she had the upstairs of the house converted into a more or less self-contained flat and put it up for rent, with an insistence that the successful tenant be able to display exceptional references. My references had been the most exceptional you could buy from a forger and Mrs White had accepted me. What I couldn’t quite work out was why she had let me stay, given that I had had a couple of late night visits from the local constabulary over the last couple of years. But, there again, the place wasn’t cheap and I was sedulously prompt with the rent each week. The truth was that I could have easily moved on to a better place, but I had become fond of the little White family. Anyone who knew me wouldn’t have been at all surprised that my first thought when I had met the pretty young widow was that maybe I could console her. And she was the type of woman you really wanted to console. But, as time went on, something unpleasantly chivalrous had crept unbidden into my attitude towards her and I felt somewhat protective of the sad little family downstairs.

There was a wall ’phone on the stairs that we both shared and when I got back to my digs I ’phoned Lorna. I had hoped to satisfy her with a call but she was insistent that I come round.

Doing the gentlemanly thing was getting to be a bad habit and I drove across to Pollokshields. When I arrived at the house, I was surprised to find my Hebridean chum back on guard duty at the front door, ‘chust forr the laydees peace hoff mind’ he sang reassuringly to me.

I sat between Lorna and Maggie, the atmosphere so charged that I expected to be struck by lightning at any time. I comforted. I soothed. I made my talk as small as it was possible to make it, avoiding anything that might remind us all that we were just twenty-four hours on from a brutal murder. Maggie made some tea and offered me a cigarette from a hundred-box on the coffee table. I noticed the brand was Four Square, made by Dobie of Paisley.

‘That’s not what you were smoking the other night,’ I said. ‘The fancy cork tips.’

‘Oh those?’ She shrugged. ‘Jimmy got me them. It’s not my usual brand.’

Reaching into my jacket pocket, I pulled out the stub I’d lifted from Sammy Pollock’s hall stand ashtray. I held it out to Maggie so she could see the twin gold bands around the filter. She frowned.

‘That’s them all right. Where d’you get that?’

‘It’s a case I’m working on. Missing person.’

‘Is the missing person French?’

‘Not that I’m aware. Why do you ask that?’

‘Montpellier, that’s the brand. French. Jimmy got half a dozen packets from someone. Probably smuggled. Maybe that’s why you’ve found someone else smoking them. Maybe someone’s smuggled a lorry load in.’

‘Could be.’ I turned to Lorna. ‘Have the police got any news? Have they said anything about the investigation?’

‘Superintendent McNab has been back,’ she said. Her eyelids looked heavy and settled-in grief had dulled her expression. ‘He asked some more questions.’

‘What kind of questions?’

‘Who Dad had seen over the last few weeks. If anything unusual happened.’

I nodded. Willie Sneddon was right to keep his meeting and dealings with Small Change quiet. ‘And did anything unusual happen recently?’

‘No.’ It was Maggie who answered. ‘Not that either of us knew about. But Jimmy played his cards close to his chest. He kept anything to do with business to himself.’ She paused for a moment. ‘There was only one thing… not worth mentioning…’

‘Go on…’

‘Someone left a box for him. A delivery.’

‘I remember that,’ said Lorna, frowning. ‘It was strange. A wooden box with nothing in it but a couple of sticks and a ball of wool.’

‘Wool?’

‘Yes,’ said Lorna. ‘Red and white wool all bound up together.’

‘Doesn’t sound significant,’ I said. ‘Did the police go through your father’s stuff again? I mean in his office?’

‘No. Why?’

‘I just wondered.’ I shrugged and sipped my tea. ‘Did your dad keep an appointment book at home?’

‘Why are you asking?’ It was Maggie who cut in, more than a hint of suspicion in her voice. The thing about suspicion is that it can be infectious and I found myself wondering why she felt the need to be cautious.

‘Like I said to you before, the police aren’t the most imaginative bunch. Maybe they didn’t think to check for an appointment book at his home.’

‘Jimmy didn’t need one,’ said Maggie. ‘He kept everything up here

…’ She tapped a demi-waved temple. ‘He didn’t need an appointment book.’

‘That’s what I thought… Never mind.’

‘Do you think it would help?’ asked Lorna, without any of her stepmother’s suspicion.

‘Maybe. At least we would know who he had seen on the day he died.’ I decided to drop it. Maybe Maggie’s answer would be enough to get Sneddon off my back.

I stayed for over an hour. Or at least until I felt I had fulfilled my duty as consort to the bereaved daughter. Lorna saw me to the door and kissed me as I was leaving. It was a desperate kind of embrace and her fingers squeezed tight and hard on my arms. It made me feel sad. Sad because she really needed something from me and I really wanted to give it to her. But I couldn’t, because it wasn’t there in me to give.

Lorna and I had been in it for the laughs, nothing more. And that was the way our little diversion should have played. But now, with her father murdered and finding herself alone, she was looking for something that neither of us had signed up for.

She seemed to sense its absence and drew back from me. Something cold had formed in her eyes: a frost of realization and resentment.

‘Listen Lorna…’ I began.

‘Save it, Lennox,’ she said.

When I came out of the mouth of the drive, a car turning in was forced to brake. I waved my thanks but the driver ignored me, heading up the drive as soon as I was clear. He didn’t even look in my direction, but I took a long look at him. The car was moderately fancy, a nearly new, maroon Lanchester Leda or Daimler Conquest, polished to gleam like a sleek droplet of fresh blood. The driver himself looked pretty polished: he was driving hatless so I could see he was around thirty with black hair and a pencil moustache. Neat. Tailored, as far as I could see. I pulled up at the kerb and considered going back up to the house to see what he wanted. He wasn’t a cop. Too well-turned out and expensively carriaged. I got out of the car and walked a little way up the drive, ducking behind a bush to take a surreptitious look. He was at the door and I could now see I was right about his suit. It was expensive. He was tall, maybe a couple of inches on me, which was rare for Glasgow. Maggie opened the door and let him in. She knew him, that was clear and they both unconsciously took a look back down the drive, as if checking no one was watching. Or maybe he had mentioned our brief encounter at the bottom of the drive. They couldn’t spot me behind my euonymus camouflage and disappeared into the house. There had been something about the way they had greeted each other that lay somewhere between the intimate and the professional. Maybe they had some business together.

There was, of course, a limit to how surreptitious they were being: Lorna was still in the house. Unless. I had a less than charitable thought about my recently bereaved sweetheart and dismissed it almost in the same instant it occurred to me. No conspiracy here, Lennox. And even if there is, I told myself, leave it alone. You’ve been warned. And anyway, while there might have been a moral imperative to help bring Small Change’s killer to justice, I had paying cases to work on.

And I was never much one for moral imperatives.