and he is entitled to come and visit the girls… to visit me… whenever he wants. He’s all the family the girls have.’
‘Don’t be naive, Fiona… you know he’s been after you for years. He’s not hanging around because he has some sense of avuncular duty. But this isn’t just about him. It’s about us. Things haven’t been right between us for over a month and you expect me to believe that his reappearance on the scene has got nothing to do with it?’
‘I don’t give a damn what you think, Lennox. Nothing I do has got anything to do with you.’ Her voice was raised now. Shrill. She composed herself and dropped it down a tone. ‘This is a family. My family. There are things about holding a family together that someone like you could never, ever understand.’
‘Really? And what is “someone like me”?’
‘I’m too tired for this,’ she said, but the fire still burned in her eyes. ‘I told you I couldn’t be the kind of woman you want me to be. I can’t give you what you want.’
‘I would have thought that I’m the best judge of what I want. And I do want you, Fiona. You know that. I’ve made that clear to you, haven’t I? But I’m not competing for you. And especially not with that little cretin. You say you can’t be the woman I want… isn’t it more the truth that I’m not the man you want?’
It was then that Fiona did something that took me by surprise. She reached up and placed her hand on my cheek and looked at me for a moment, wordlessly, the fire gone from her eyes. It was a gesture that should have reassured me, put my mind at rest, but the tide of sadness that washed across her expression did exactly the opposite.
‘I can’t talk about this just now, Lennox. There are more important things, bigger things than you and me to be thought about. To be sorted out. I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you, I really am, but there’s nothing I can do about it.’
‘Fiona, I don’t understand…’
‘Nor do I. I don’t understand either. But sometimes things are the way they are and there’s nothing we can do about it.’
‘Things? What things?’
She let her hand drop and stepped back from me. ‘I want you to know that this has nothing to do with Jim. You’re wrong to think that.’
I shook my head. No matter how she dressed it up, I knew what was going on.
‘I’ve got to get back to the girls…’ she said. I made to stop her but checked myself. She turned and went back down the stairs, and I stood, arms hanging at my sides, watching her go.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
While Jonny Cohen was checking out his places, I did a tour of the remainder of Glasgow’s dance halls. For a century, Glasgow had been the workshop of the British Empire. As the Empire had grown, so had Glasgow to become the second most populous city in Britain and by far the most densely inhabited. It had been a city that, for most of its history, had rung with the sound of iron and steel being hammered, bent, moulded and fused. An expanding Empire had meant the shipyards and the factories had belched ever more smoke into the air as they swallowed ever greater numbers of workers. And to feed the factories and yards, the city had piled people on top of each other — literally — in rows of soot-black tenements. Glasgow had been a city of hard, grimy toil. And on a Saturday night, it liked to wash the grime off for a few hours and pretend it was somewhere more glamorous. On a Saturday night, Glaswegians danced.
They also drank, vomited and fought, but at least they cleaned up nice first.
It was a ritual in Glasgow to dress as much like a movie star as you could and head off to one of the various dance halls. All of which meant knowing Frank Lang liked to dance was as much use as knowing fish liked water. But, in the absence of news from Jonny and with no other lead to follow, other than the long shot that Lang was the Hungarian Donald Taylor had found in the records, I decided to do the rounds of the halls. If nothing else, it would take my mind off all of the other crap that was going on in my life at that moment.
I did the Grand Tour, starting with the city centre ballrooms: the Playhouse in Renfield Street, the Berkley and St Andrew’s Hall in Berkley Street, the Locarno and the Astoria in Sauchiehall Street, the Albert in Bath Street. Nothing. I knew a few of the doormen and swapped the odd lewd remark and off-colour joke, as you do, and, if nothing else, my rounds helped maintain a network of contacts I’d built up over the years. The dance hall staff had been useful in many of the cases I’d worked on of wandering husbands or wives. It never failed to amaze me how some men — and women for that matter — believed that for infidelity to go unnoticed, all you had to do was conduct your illicit courting in a different dance hall less than a mile and a half away from your home and in view of a couple of thousand fellow Glaswegians.
But no luck tonight. Lang’s photograph didn’t spark any flames of recognition.
The Locarno was probably the most popular of the dance halls and I asked the doormen if it was okay for me to take a five-minute walk around the place, just to see if my luck would change. They agreed, and I weaved my way between tables and around the dance floor. The place was packed and fumed with cheap perfume and pomade while the big band on stage did violence to Love is a Many Splendored Thing. The Locarno was like an alien planet, its atmosphere thick and blue-grey with smoke under the sparkle of a glitterball sun. Adrift in an ocean of cheap suits and imitation Perry Como and Liz Taylor hairstyles, I realized that I was on a fool’s errand: even if Lang was in here, I stood no chance of spotting him.
I was making my way out when I spotted someone whom I did recognize, however: Sylvia Dewar was sitting at a table near the wall. She didn’t see me as she was engaged in intimate conversation with a man who was definitely not her husband. They must have been discussing the price of their next drink because, from the angle of her arm as it disappeared beneath the table and from the expression on her friend’s face, I got the impression she was checking his trouser pocket for small change. I decided not to go over and introduce myself, just in case she felt like shaking my hand.
I thought of Dewar, driven to the brink of reason by suspicions he chased like ghosts, and felt sick. Then I thought of myself and felt sicker.
The Atlantic began acting up and it took me a few turns to get it started before driving south, across the river, and down to the Plaza in Eglinton Toll. Same story: no one knew Lang.
Back across the Clyde I checked out the Palais de Dance in Dennistoun and finished up at the Barrowland.
And it was outside the Barrowland that the Atlantic decided to give up the ghost. The Gallowgate is not the kind of place you want to be stranded at night, or any other time of day for that matter, and when my repeated oaths did nothing to get the car started, I got out and opened the hood so I could swear at the engine more directly. When that didn’t work, realizing I’d exhausted my mechanical expertise, I locked up the car. I looked up and down the Gallowgate. It was nine-fifteen, and the street was empty. I decided to head back across to the Barrowland to ask if I could use the ’phone.
I was still on the other side of the street when I saw them.
The couple had spilled out from the ballroom and even from that distance I could see — and hear — that whatever the guy’s intentions were, the girl wanted no part of it. There again, Glaswegian courting rituals had an elegance and charm to make the average mate-clubbing Neanderthal seem like Charles Boyer; but I could see that this was all wrong and the girl was desperately trying to free herself from the man’s grip on her elbow.
A solitary car slowed down as it passed, but the guy yelled obscenities at it and it drove on. Other than me, there was no one else in the street. It was too late for people to be arriving at the dance hall and too early for the crowds to be spilling out onto the street. From what I could see, the guy was trying to drag the girl around the side of the dance hall. It was a distraction I could have done without, but the Canadian in me exerted himself and I walked purposefully across the road towards them.
The man had his back to me and I had just reached them when he slashed her across the face with the back of his hand. I grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around.
‘Take it easy, friend,’ I said, but I was taken aback for a second.
‘Oh…’ I said. ‘It’s you…’
‘Aye… it’s me,’ said Sheriff Pete, without a trace of his cod-American accent. Snakes of oiled black hair hung
