the hall telephone to call the RAC. I gave the address in Garnethill, not far from the synagogue, where my Austin Atlantic sat broken down. I explained that I would take a taxi there right away and would be waiting for their patrolman.
As it turned out, a helmeted and goggled RAC motorcyclist was already at the Atlantic when I arrived. He saluted — which I appreciated — and asked me if I would ‘be so kind as to pop open the bonnet for me, please, sir’.
I did what he asked and tried the starter again while he disappeared behind the shield of the open car hood. Again a dull clunk. The RAC man came back into view, and, although he maintained his polite formality, something had shifted in his demeanour.
‘Is there a problem?’ I asked, innocently.
‘Would you mind having a look at the engine, sir?’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘But I gotta tell you that I know nothing about mechanics.’ I followed him to the front of the car and leaned in to look at the engine, succeeding in getting motor oil on my tie.
As I had said, I knew practically nothing much about engines, but I knew enough to be aware that spark plug cables were not meant to be neatly sliced in two.
I looked at the patrolman helplessly.
Fifteen minutes later, I had a new set of leads installed and was heading towards Bearsden.
Pamela Ellis was surprised and uneasy to find me standing on her doorstep and hastily ushered me into the house. I half expected her to stick her head out through the door and check the street in both directions to see if anyone had seen me.
I had seen the house often enough from the outside: an unremarkable Victorian sandstone box with bay windows and a steep-pitched roof, typical of area and class, and the interior pretty much reflected the conformity of the exterior. In almost every way, the Ellis lounge was the opposite of the front room I had shared with hostess- with-the-mostess Sylvia. But both made a statement. Just as the Dewar home had been all about the modern and synthetic, about change and the Future, about melamine, Formica and polyester, the Ellis home was about solidity, tradition and continuity. The lounge Pamela Ellis showed me into was flock-wallpapered and furnished with solid reproduction furniture with the odd genuine antique. There was no space-age decor here, and above the fireplace was the expected Farquharson print with the expected sheep in the expected sunset.
‘I thought you would ’phone first, Mr Lennox,’ she said, still flustered, as she invited me to sit. ‘I’m afraid you’ve caught me on the way out — Wednesday night is my weekly bridge night. I never miss it.’ She looked at her watch. ‘The girls will be expecting me at eight-thirty.’
‘I won’t keep you, Mrs Ellis,’ I said. ‘But I have to tell you there have been developments. I felt we needed to talk as soon as possible and I knew that your husband would be at work.’ I broke the news to her that her husband had indeed, been meeting with another woman. There were tears — tight, restrained, Scottish tears — then composure.
‘Is she younger than me?’ she asked eventually.
‘Mrs Ellis…’
‘Is she?’
‘Yes. But I need you to listen to me, Mrs Ellis. I can’t explain why, exactly, but this still may all not be what it seems to be.’
‘In what way?’
‘I don’t think your husband really is having an affair,’ I said with less certainty than I had intended.
‘Are you telling me that my husband sneaks out to meet attractive young women because they really are demolition customers?’ She gave a small, bitter laugh.
‘I watch people all the time. It’s my job. And after a while you start to develop an instinct about the way people behave. The way they act when they’re around other people, the messages you get from a dozen little things. I don’t sense a romantic involvement between your husband and this woman. And it’s not just a hunch. Mr Ellis has been taking very special care not to be followed and last night, when I returned to my car, it had been hobbled so that I couldn’t follow him when he left. By the way, I’m afraid I’ll have to charge you for a set of jump leads.’
She shook the comment away irritatedly. ‘He’s hiding an affair. That’s why he was trying to shake you off.’ A thought seemed to take root and trouble her; she bit her lip and frowned. ‘That means he knows I’m on to him. That it was me who hired you to follow him.’
‘But that’s my point, Mrs Ellis… It’s as if he knows I’m tailing him, but he’s not sure why. Now that is confusing. Why would your husband feel he was being followed, if he’s not having an affair? And if he is going to such lengths to stop me from getting evidence of infidelity, then why hobble my car after I’ve seen them together?’
‘I’m confused, Mr Lennox. Did you or did you not catch Andrew with another woman?’
‘I saw him with a young woman. And yes, you’re probably right. I tend to shave situations like these with Occam’s Razor.’
She frowned.
‘It’s a variation on if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck,’ I explained. ‘But I just feel there’s something not kosher about the whole business. And, in any case, all I saw was your husband talking with a woman. In fact, I didn’t even see them talking to each other. It’s not enough to confront your husband with, far less start divorce proceedings.’
‘So if Andrew isn’t carrying on with this woman, then what on earth is it?’
‘Can you think of anything that your husband could be involved in that he would want to try to keep from you? From everybody?’
‘Not a thing. Like I told you before, Andrew is a very ordinary, very honest, very reliable man. He wouldn’t be involved in anything illegal or funny.’
‘To be honest, that’s also the description of a man who’s unlikely to be involved in an extramarital affair, although I have seen it happen. Are you sure there isn’t something that could explain all this subterfuge?’
She held out her arms in a helpless gesture.
‘Okay…’ I said. ‘Do you want me to continue tailing your husband?’
‘Yes. I need to know what’s going on.’
‘The way your husband is giving me the slip, it could be a costly business, not least in car parts.’
‘I have enough money to pay you for another week or so. After that Andrew will know that the money’s going missing. Can you find something out in that time?’
‘I honestly don’t know, Mrs Ellis, but I’ll do my best.’
Back in the car, I examined my oil-stained tie, dabbing at the smudge with a handkerchief. It was a dark blue knitted silk tie and the stain wasn’t that noticeable, but I knew it was there. Going back to my digs to change the tie was, I knew, nothing more than an excuse to talk to Fiona away from the girls and hopefully get to the bottom of what the hell was going on with her.
However, as I passed my digs I saw a car parked outside. A Jowett Javelin — and one I recognized. Instead of pulling into the kerb, I drove on.
Deafened by the sound of pennies dropping.
Like every City of Glasgow policeman, Donald Taylor was tall; about an inch and a half taller than me. He had been a Detective Constable in Central Division for four years and for three of those had been supplying me with information in return for unreceipted donations. I was not the kind of citizen that many Glasgow coppers would want to be seen hob-nobbing with — the exception being the newly promoted Detective Chief Inspector Jock Ferguson, who was above bribery and suspicion as well as being the closest thing I had to a friend. Consequently, I arranged to meet Taylor down by the river, under the shadow of a forest of shipyard cranes.
‘Tanglewood, you say?’ Taylor took the cigarette I offered him and frowned. ‘Nope, I can’t say it means anything to me.’
‘I’ve a couple of names I’d like checked out. They’re not connected but I need to know if either has been naughty at any time. Or anything else you can dig up on them.’ I handed Taylor a folded slip of paper with Ellis’s and Lang’s names on it. It was folded around a five-pound banknote and Taylor slipped it into his coat pocket without looking at it.
‘Are they likely to have form?’ he asked.
