‘It wasn’t like that,’ said Annan, his eyes still wild. ‘She wasn’t part of it. I didn’t even know who she was to start with… just this married tart who kept coming to the door whenever I was there. I wasn’t interested. The whole set up with the house was just to have an address for Lang. The only reason I made regular visits was to keep up the pretence.’
‘But that meant showing your face.’
‘People don’t remember me, don’t recognize me. And I kept my visits to the minimum.’
‘So what happened with Sylvia Dewar?’
‘I thought she was just some randy housewife who kept pestering me, so I gave her what she wanted. Just a couple of times. Then she hit me with it. She remembered me but I had forgotten her. She knew me from this shitty job I’d done when I’d first got into the business. She knew my name wasn’t Lang and she asked what scam I was working. I made up some shite about an insurance company. She said she wanted a cut or she would tell the police I was renting the place under a false name and that I was a confidence trickster. We both knew that the coppers would never get me, but it would fuck up my cover story, meaning it would fuck up the job and the score.’
‘So you played along. Screwing her and promising her a cash payout.’
‘Don’t make it sound like I was taking advantage. She shagged anything in trousers. She was a whore and she treated her husband like shite. I felt sorry for him, but I was just one of many.’
‘But then you smashed her skull in with an ashtray.’
‘She started saying she wanted away from her husband and if I didn’t give her a cut, she’d tell the police everything. I knew Tom Dewar was going nuts and I reckoned he’d get the blame, but they wouldn’t hang him or anything. I mean, they’d find it difficult to panel a fucking jury in Glasgow that she hadn’t shagged at least one of them. I didn’t think he’d kill himself, I swear I didn’t…’
‘Dead men and broken hearts…’ I said, more to myself than Annan.
‘What?’
‘Something someone said to me recently.’
‘Listen…’ he said, glancing anxiously at Twinkletoes who was still patiently poised. ‘We can do a deal here. You can end up rich. Really fucking rich. You can keep all the money — all of it — just give me a chance to get away.’
I turned to Twinkletoes. ‘Untie him.’
‘What about…?’ McBride nodded to the toe.
‘Untie him, Twinkle.’
Annan twisted his lipless mouth in a smile that made me want to hit him again. ‘You won’t regret this,’ he said as McBride laid the bolt cutters aside and set to loosening his bonds. I took two blank sheets of foolscap I had brought in my jacket pocket and unfolded them. I laid the sheets on his lap and handed him my fountain pen.
Annan looked nervously over his shoulder at Twinkletoes, then to me, trying to work out what I was going to do, and I could see a glimmer of hope in his eyes.
‘On the first sheet, I want you to write down all of the account numbers and the corresponding bank details for every account you’ve set up. And don’t think about flannelling me. If I for one second think that there is a single figure or account number that’s bogus, then I’ll let Twinkle get back to work on your pedicure…’
‘You won’t regret this, Lennox. I promise you… you can have it all.’
‘Well, I want a little insurance. You’re going to write down a full confession to the murder of Sylvia Dewar. Everything you’ve told me, but also all of the specifics about times and dates. Oh, and I want your fingerprint in ink next to the signature. Again, no lies or bending the truth, or you’ll never tiptoe through the tulips again.’
‘Wait a minute… I can’t do that… they’ll hang me.’
‘Only if I give it to the police. If everything goes well with making withdrawals from the accounts, then you’ve nothing to worry about. And, anyway, a confession under duress isn’t admissible in court.’
‘So…’ said Annan, still rat-clever and cautious despite his situation, ‘what you’re saying is if you get the money, you burn that?’
‘Is it a deal?’
‘How do I know you’ll burn the confession?’
‘You don’t. You’ll just have to trust me. I’m Canadian after all. The clean living and maple syrup makes us grow up straight and true.’
Rubbing his raw, untied wrists, Annan’s little rat eyes darted about, as if looking for an escape route. Eventually, he started to write. Half way through he asked for a small red notebook from the pocket of his coat. Leaving him guarded by McBride, I got it for him, flicking through the pages and seeing rows of letters and numbers. It was some kind of cypher. Referring to the notebook, he scribbled down the details I needed.
He handed the sheet to me.
‘Now the confession. And I want all the details of the union scam in it as well.’
It was clear he saw no way out of it and he started to write. Every now and then I checked over his shoulder to make sure he was telling it how it was. When he was finished, both sides of the sheet were filled with handwriting. I got him to rub ink on the tips of his thumb and forefinger and pressed them down on the paper.
‘Sign it and date it,’ I said. And he did.
He stood up slowly and painfully, handing me both pieces of paper. I checked them over again.
‘There you go, Lennox. You’ve got it all. Happy?’ A raw hatred peeked through the curtain of his fear.
‘I’m a cheerful kind of guy.’
Annan put his socks and shoes back on, each movement slow and stiff except for his fingers, which shook almost uncontrollably. Twinkle had scared him good, all right.
He straightened up and started to walk past me. I stopped him with a hand on his chest.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I’m not going to hang around. Or do you want me to come with you when you pick up the money… is that it? You’ve got the confession. You don’t need me any more.’
‘Oh, I think we do, Dennis.’
He looked from me to Twinkletoes. ‘What is this? I thought we had a deal…’
‘Well, that just goes to show you, you can’t trust anyone. You’ve been conned, Annan. We’re going to tie you up again, nice and tight, and tell the coppers where to find you. And we’ll give them the bank details and your confession.’
‘But that confession’s not admissible, like you said…’
‘True. But it points the police in the right direction to get evidence that they can use.’
‘You bastard!’ Annan looked like he wanted to hit me, but he was too yellow.
‘Yep, Dennis,’ I said, in a calm, conversational tone, ‘I’m going to give the police everything you’ve given me. You maybe won’t swing for Sylvia’s murder, but you’re going to spend a long, long time sleeping lightly in an eight- by-four cell with someone called Big Boabie who’s hung like a mule and gets frisky after his cocoa.’
I thought of Sylvia Dewar with her head smashed in, of her husband’s lonely walk up the stairs with a length of electrical cable. And I thought about all of the crap I’d been through. How chasing a ghost Frank Lang had involved me with a very-much-alive Ferenc Lang. Annan had no direct involvement with the Hungarian thing, but there would have been no Hungarian thing without him.
I wanted to give him a beating. One that he’d never forget. Instead I shoved him backwards and onto the chair.
‘Tie him up good and tight, Twinkle,’ I said.
Turned out I wasn’t that person any more, after all.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
After we left Annan tied up again in his chair, I sat in the car, quiet for a moment, letting myself calm down. Twinkletoes sat silently beside me. When it came to the etiquette of violence, Twinkle was the equivalent of Barbara Cartland. After a while I turned to him and smiled.
‘Thanks, Twinkle, you did great in there.’
