CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
We waited until it was beginning to get dark before heading off the barge, across the quay and out onto the street where Twinkletoes’s car sat, gleaming, in a pool of light, as if it had been placed there by the gods themselves.
‘I always park under a lamppost,’ Twinkle explained, ‘in case I don’t get back to it before dark.’ He glowered disapprovingly from under his eyebrows. ‘There are some thoroughly dis-rep-uh-table people around in Glasgow, you know, Mr L.’
‘So I believe,’ I said, ignoring the irony of an ex-gangland torturer commenting on the moral decline of his home city.
‘Aye…’ he shook his head mournfully. ‘Steal the ground from under you. Wee fuckers.’
And there it was. What I was presented with was, exactly like the barge we had just left, one man’s pride and joy.
‘She’s a beaut…’ I said appreciatively, and Twinkle beamed back.
It was a one-year-old burgundy red Vauxhall Cresta, polished and burnished until it shimmered in the lamplight. It clearly seldom made it out of its garage and I thought back to how McBride had handed over his key and driver’s licence. Seeing the car, I appreciated the gesture even more. The truth was I could have done with a downpour of sooty rain to dull the car’s conspicuous lustre. But it was good to be mobile and to have the feeling that there was at least one person on my side.
The interior of the Cresta was filled with the smell of unguent polishes and was as luxurious as Connelly’s Zephyr: piped two-tone claret and white leather, white leather panels on the doors and a white steering wheel and column. Twinkletoes slid in behind the steering wheel and suddenly the proportions of the car shrank. Looking at him, he was the most unlikely person to imagine spending evenings and weekends polishing and tinkering at a motor car, but it strangely fitted with my experience of him.
‘There’s a raincoat in the back,’ he said. ‘To go with what you’s got on.’
I reached over and picked up the raincoat, laying it folded on my lap. The usual grey-green job, shapeless, style-less and totally anonymous. It was perfect and I told McBride so.
‘Where to then?’ he asked me.
‘Bearsden…’ I said. ‘I’ll give you directions.’
We drove by the house several times before parking far enough around the corner not to be seen getting in or out of the car. Mind you, this was Bearsden, the most twitchy-curtained part of Glasgow, and if being noticeable had been an event at the Melbourne Olympics then McBride would have cleaned up the golds. There were no signs of police or any other unusual cars outside the house, so I reckoned it was safe enough for us to make our approach.
We reached the gate of the house and I was about to lead the way in when I became aware of a car slowing to walking pace beside us.
‘Keep walking,’ the driver leaned across and spoke through the open window. ‘Police… in the Ellis house… waiting for you inside. Keep walking and I’ll park around the corner.’ He drove off along the road and turned into the next adjoining street.
‘Let’s do as the man says and keep walking, Twinkle, and try to look casual,’ I mouthed sideways and, without looking towards the Ellis residence, walked on with a sense of purpose in the direction taken by Archie McClelland’s ancient Morris Eight.
Archie had parked even further up his side street than we had ours, and no sooner had Twinkle heaved, wriggled and squeezed into the back seat and I had slid into the front than he took off.
‘You two need to rethink your double-act,’ said Archie, his tone even more doleful than usual. ‘If I could count the number of times you drove past the house, then I’m sure the uniforms inside will have too.’
‘You saw us check the street out?’
Archie turned his spaniel eyes to me as if I had said something profoundly stupid. ‘I was dazzled by the gleam on your car. What’s the story? Did you steal it straight from the showroom?’
‘Naw…’ There was a gratified rumble from McBride in the back. ‘It’s a year old. I keep it clean, but.’
‘Point taken,’ I said to Archie. ‘How do you know there are coppers in there?’
‘Because they gave me the third degree when I went calling a couple of hours ago. I take it your current state of liberty is self-instigated?’
‘Naw…’ rumbled Twinkle again. ‘He ran away…’
‘What were you doing at the Ellis house?’ I asked Archie.
‘Seeing as you’ve got yourself up to your ears in shite, I thought I’d try to get to the bottom of what is going on. Wait a minute… how did you and Twinkletoes get together?’
‘He found me,’ I said. ‘He worked out where I’d be hiding. I owe him, Archie. Whatever happens to me, remember that. I owe Twinkle big time.’
‘Thanks Mr L…’ Another rumble.
‘Well, wherever it is you’re hiding,’ said Archie, ‘don’t tell me. If I don’t know, I can’t tell. Just having you in the car could land me a stretch inside.’
‘I know. It’s appreciated, Archie. It sounds like I owe you too for trying to get me out of this. Did they let you speak to Pamela Ellis?’
‘No. I get the feeling she’s scared witless. And, of course, instead of looking to see who’s putting the screws on her, the police are putting her terrified state down to you being at liberty… that her husband’s murderer is going to come after her for not backing up his insane story, that kind of thing.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Thanks for putting it that way. Makes me feel all warm inside. So that’s why the police are there?’
‘They obviously think that you would be stupid enough to make straight for her as soon as you escaped… Oh, but hold on a minute, that’s exactly what you did…’ Another wryly doleful look.
‘But if they think that’s what I’d do, then they must realize it would be to try to get the truth out of her?’
‘Or to silence your partner in crime, in case she turns Queen’s against you to save her own neck. If you have a clarty mind like Detective Inspector Shuggie Dunlop.’
I sighed. I had hoped to have gotten the truth out of Pamela Ellis and have her believe that between us, the police and I could guarantee her safety. But that just wasn’t going to happen any time soon.
‘Cheer up, boss,’ said Archie, cheerlessly. ‘You’ve got me and Twinkle here on the case. And I suspect we aren’t your only friends.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘As soon as you did a runner, I was hauled in by Jock Ferguson. He knew I didn’t know where you were, but he went through all the motions. But, while I was in there, he made a point of telling me all of Shuggie Dunlop’s Double Indemnity theories about you and Pamela Ellis. I mean, he really went into detail, like he was laying the whole case out for me. He also gave me the usual warnings about what to do and not to do if you got in touch.’
‘Sounds pretty much what you’d expect,’ I said.
‘Except he then starts to tell me all of this stuff that I really shouldn’t know and if he ever found out that you found out about it, he’d know it was me who told him. So I was to make sure I never told you what he’d found out, if you catch his drift.’
‘Bastard…’ growled Twinkle.
‘No, no…’ I explained over my shoulder. ‘It’s his way of getting information to me.’ I turned back to Archie. ‘What did he tell you?’
‘Shuggie Dunlop may be the one-line-of-enquiry type but Jock isn’t. He’s obviously been following up a few leads on his own. You were right that Andrew Ellis was born in Hungary, but his family were no penniless peasants; more like political refugees. It’s all confusing, you know, the history over there: there were all types of revolutions and counter-revolutions and a hell of a lot of bloodshed. There was a Red Terror, as they called it, then a White Terror — or maybe the other way around — anyway, there were left-wing extremists and right-wing extremists and
