Twinkletoes?’
‘Delighted. He gives me a warm glow of security. And it’s nice to reminisce. I arrested him for breach of the peace, aggravated assault, resisting arrest and police assault back in Forty-seven, you know.’
‘Really?’
‘Mmm. Old times. It gives us something to chat about.’
I tried to imagine Archie and Twinkletoes chatting, but the effort made my head hurt.
Some people make a big show of their learning. Bookshelves dressed with the ‘right’ novels with unbroken spines, learned spoutings in the tap room, the dropping of the right names in conversation. The Mitchell Library was Glasgow’s very public, very brash statement of erudition. It was big. Very big. The largest public reference library in Europe.
I worked my way through the Commercial Reference Library and came away with details of Ellis’s company, as well as Hall Demolitions, the company he had worked for before setting up his own outfit. While I was there, I also checked out the public records on the Amalgamated Union of Industrial Trades: no mention of Frank Lang anywhere among the names of union officers.
Glasgow’s air is usually too heavy and sluggish for the wind to waste effort on, but that afternoon, as autumn oozed indistinctly into winter, it had decided to make its presence felt. As I came out of the Mitchell Library and stepped into a chill, damp swirl of rain and grime, I tightened my elbow-grip on the leather document case tucked under my arm and with my other hand clamped my protesting Borsalino to my head.
It was at times like these that I reflected on how, at the end of the war, I may have been directionless and feckless, but could not work out why I hadn’t chosen to be directionless and feckless in Paris or Rome or anywhere with a better climate. Which was hardly a restrictive criterion.
I pushed through the wind, the rain and the grim-faced crowds, steering a course back to my office.
Andrew Ellis wasn’t the only one who was skilled at spotting when he was being tailed.
I didn’t feel like going back to my digs and there was a kind of aimlessness about me when I left the office. I was still smarting about what had happened with Fiona White. I’d been all kinds of cad and swine with women, it was true, but I had been straight with Fiona White. It stung hard to be on the receiving end for a change.
I found myself in a fish restaurant in Sauchiehall Street. It was not the kind of place I usually frequented: generally, the range of Glaswegian gustatory delights was determined by whether or not they could be cooked by dropping them into a deep-fat fryer, and I generally tried to be more cosmopolitan in my dining habits. But I did call into this place from time to time on the conceit that it was slightly more sophisticated than the usual fish and chip joint. It was all high ceilings, porcelain and chequerboard floor tiles, and had huge windows that looked out onto the street; the waiters and waitresses wore waistcoats and aprons, your fish and chips were served on china, instead of being wrapped in the previous day’s Scottish Express, and you ate with cutlery, not your fingers.
I was all class.
He didn’t come into the restaurant. Instead he stood directly across the street, hiding from the rain in a bus shelter and smoking. Whoever he was, he wasn’t a pro. A pro doesn’t stand in plain sight of his target, especially when that target has gone into a public building with only one entrance and exit. My meal came with a pot of tea and I ate it leisurely, finishing off with an even more leisurely cigarette. The guy across the street let four buses come and go from the stop without budging.
After I’d finished and paid at the cashier’s desk, I pulled my coat collar up and the brim of my hat down and shouldered my way into the rain. My ‘shadow’ across Sauchiehall Street turned his back to me and started to read a tattered bus timetable with sudden and profound interest.
I made my way through the crowds back in the direction of my office. The Atlantic was parked a couple of streets away but I decided to do my own little test to see how far my new chum would follow me. I turned right and crossed Blythswood Street. As I casually checked the traffic, I caught a quick glance of him bustling around the corner. He was a reasonably big guy, maybe five-ten but heavy-set. He was wearing a pale grey raincoat, a matching hat and a harassed expression.
I cut into Sauchiehall Lane, one of the intersecting alleyways that run parallel to the grid layout streets of Glasgow city centre. It was lined with the unadorned brick and steel-doored backs of the buildings that faced onto Sauchiehall Street and Bath Street, and in the rain the cobbles were greasy and treacherous underfoot. I trotted along the lane to put some distance between me and him.
He had a round, fleshy face and large eyes, and if it had not been for the smudge of trimmed moustache above the plump lips he would have looked like an overblown baby. The big eyes got bigger when he saw me waiting for him and he stood for a moment, startled.
Then he took a swing at me.
‘You bastard!’ he shouted, as his fist arced wide and as predictably as if he’d sent me a three-sheet telegram about his intentions. I blocked his punch easily with my left forearm and planted my own in the cushion of his belly just below the breastbone. He doubled up and I slammed one into the side of his head. His feet slipped on the cobbles and he fell against the wall, still clutching his gut. It was quick and easy and all of the fight went out of him. The problem was — or at least always had been since the war — that the fight never seemed to go out of me. Once I had gotten started, I found it difficult to stop. But now, as I lined up another blow, I looked down at the doubled- over guy gasping for breath. He was as good at fighting as he was at tailing people, and with a sigh I hauled him up and pushed him against the wall. His hat had come off and I could see he was bald, with only a band of close- cropped hair from temple to temple. It made him look even more like some kind of overgrown infant. The fight might have gone from him, but when our eyes met, his still burned with hatred.
‘You bastard…’ he repeated breathily. ‘You stay the hell away from her. Stay away from her or I’ll kill you.’
I grabbed the collar of his coat with both hands and slammed him against brickwork.
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ I demanded. ‘Why are you following me?’
‘You know why, you shite.’
‘Cut out the name-calling, bud, or I’ll slap it out of you. Now… what the hell is wrong with you and why are you on my tail?’
‘I know it’s you. I know you’ve been… You and her. I found your card in her handbag…’ He reached into his coat pocket and I grabbed his wrist, easing his hand slowly into view. It was my business card, all right.
‘Listen, I have no idea what this is all about,’ I protested. I had been chased by more than one angry husband in my time, but it had been a while since I’d given anyone cause.
‘You’ve been carrying on with my wife, that’s what it’s all about, as if you didn’t know.’
‘Who’s your wife?’
‘Don’t try to come on all innocent,’ he blustered and straightened himself up. He was trying to regain some dignity, but it was still well beyond his reach. ‘You know who she is… that is unless you’ve got a string of marriages you’re wrecking, you bastard.’
I gave him a backhander, hard across the face. ‘I told you to watch your mouth. What’s your wife’s name?’
‘Sylvia Dewar. I’m Tom Dewar, her husband.’ His eyes fell with the last word. The shame of a cuckold. I let him go.
‘Sylvia Dewar?’ The pieces began to fit. I let go of his coat and he tried to smooth the crumples out of it and his pride. ‘Listen, friend, I only met your wife the other day. On business. And I’m sure as hell not playing footsie with her.’
‘No?’ he looked at me defiantly. A shaky sneer on his swelling face.
‘No.’
‘Then someone is. And I found your card hidden in her handbag.’
‘Didn’t you think to ask her who I was? Or do you just jump on the first mug you think your wife’s spoken to?’
‘She would just have lied if I’d asked her. She’s a liar as well as everything else. I know all about it. There are ways of knowing. It’s been going on for months.’
‘Not with me, it hasn’t.’
He stared at me, the bitterness and anger still burning in the large, watery eyes. But I guessed that was the way he looked at the whole world and he was clearly less sure about his accusation. I bent down, picked up his hat
