shoulder was burden enough for him to bear.
‘You Lennox?’
‘I’m Mr Lennox, yes. I have an appointment to see…’
‘Joe Connelly. Aye. We’ve been expecting you. You’re late.’
‘I’m working to rule,’ I said.
My new bestest friend led me along a high-ceilinged hall with elaborate plaster cornicing stained yellow by Woodbine smoke, somehow perfectly capturing the spirit of the new age. He rushed me past several offices filled with cigarette haze and burly men who looked as at home behind a desk as a Home Counties accountant would at a mine coalface. A few hard-faced women typed industrially. I noticed I was attracting the odd look that made my skinny pal’s welcome seem positively warm. I really should, I decided, make an effort to dress appropriately for the event. Unfortunately my wardrobe didn’t extend to a flat cap and clogs.
We went up the stairwell and I was shown into a large office with a view out over Kelvingrove Park. A fat, florid-faced man was using a worn-down stub of a pencil to scribble into a large ledger. Looking up, he saw me, stood up and came round the desk, his face empty of expression. Like the pencil, he was a worn-down stump. Short and squat and livid and tough. He was committing several crimes against tailoring in a too-tight, dark brown suit.
‘Mr Connelly?’ I asked.
‘Aye, I’m Joe Connelly. You Lennox?’
I nodded. ‘You asked to see me. What can I do for you, Mr Connelly?’
‘Did anyone see him come in?’ Connelly asked the younger man.
The younger man shrugged. ‘I told you we should have had the meeting somewhere private. But no one knows who he is or why he’s here.’
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Do I have offensive body odour or something?’
‘Sit down,’ said Connelly. ‘I’ve got a job for you to do. If you’ll take it.’ He waited till I sat. ‘It’s highly confidential and it’s best if no one else in the union knows about your involvement. From now on, I think our meetings should be conducted somewhere out of public view.’
‘Sounds a bit cloak-and-dagger for a trade union,’ I said.
‘Before I go into detail, I need to establish something. Whether you accept this job or you don’t, I take it anything we discuss here is considered privileged and will be treated confidentially?’ Connelly’s accent was broad Glasgow, but he spoke with the precise, deliberate articulation of a self-taught man.
‘Of course. So long as it’s all legal.’
‘A crime has been committed, Mr Lennox. But this union is the victim of that crime. We do not, for the moment, want to involve the police. However that may change.’
‘Anything you tell me will go no farther, Mr Connelly.’ I looked across at the skinny guy who had shown me in. He was making no effort to leave.
‘Paul Lynch here is my deputy.’ Connelly had clearly read my expression. ‘Brother Lynch takes care of a number of key areas of our activity, including safeguarding the good name of our union.’
‘I see,’ I said, and looked again at Lynch, who looked back at me with his tiny, hard eyes. There was something about those eyes that told me this was not someone on whom to turn your back. I found myself wondering what kind of ‘safeguarding’ Lynch did for the union.
‘Why don’t you tell me what this is all about? You say it involves a crime. What kind of crime?’
‘Theft,’ said Lynch.
‘From this building,’ Connelly added. ‘We are having difficulty getting in touch with one of our union officers.’
‘Let me guess. You’re also having difficulty getting in touch with some union funds?’
Lynch again turned his tiny, cold eyes on me. ‘A ledger has been stolen, along with thirty-five-thousand pounds in union funds.’
I blew a whistle. ‘Who took it?’
‘His name is Frank Lang,’ said Connelly. ‘He is a member of the union and was carrying out some sensitive work for us.’
‘What kind of sensitive work?’
‘We can only discuss that when we know you’ll take the job,’ said Connelly.
I took a cigarette out and lit it, blowing a blue jet into the air. ‘And the sensitivity of this work… I take it that’s why you’re not involving the police?’
‘What you have to understand,’ said Connelly, ‘is that a trade union is a complex body. It has many dimensions and many functions beyond the immediate one of protecting its members’ rights and welfare. It is a political entity as well, and there are those who see us as a danger to the status quo. Who would wish to spy on us and do us harm.’
‘The police?’
‘If you could find Frank Lang within the next few days, then we can maybe persuade him to return what he took. He’ll be kicked out of the union, for sure, and I will personally make sure he never finds a job again, but he won’t go to prison.’
‘And in return you won’t have the police and the press sticking their noses into your business.’
‘Believe me, Lennox,’ Lynch chipped in. ‘The last thing we want to do is involve someone like you in our business either. We’ve tried to find Lang ourselves, but he’s disappeared without trace. This is something that’s outside the union’s expertise or resources. That’s why we contacted you. This is your kind of work, isn’t it?’
‘Sure…’ I nodded. ‘But the police have more and better resources than anyone. I know they’re not your favourite people, but I still don’t really understand why you are so reluctant to get them involved if a crime has been committed.’
‘You don’t know much about the union movement, do you, Mr Lennox?’ asked Connelly.
‘My usual clients tend not to be unionized.’ I smiled at the thought of what union affiliation would be held by some of the people I’d rubbed shoulders with in the recent past: Singer, Twinkletoes McBride or Hammer Murphy. The Association of Armed and Allied Thuggery Trades, probably. At least it would resolve demarcation issues about who should be ramming the shotgun in the teller’s ribs and who should be stuffing the cash from the safe into the duffle-bag.
Connelly stared at me with not much to read in the way of an expression. It was as if he wore the slightly livid, puffy flesh of his face as a mask to hide what was going on in the mind behind it — a skill probably honed throughout years of industrial confrontation and wage negotiation.
‘I’m not what you would call a political animal,’ I said, as much to fill the silence as anything. ‘Maybe a touch of classical liberal. Not much Marx about me, unless you count Groucho.’
‘There is a revolution going on in this country. A slow, quiet social revolution that has picked up pace since the end of the war,’ continued Connelly. ‘Any revolution, by its very nature, involves displacing the powers-that-be. And the powers-that-be in this nation will do their damnedest to stop that revolution in its tracks. I know what I’m talking about. I’ve seen the lengths the British Establishment will go to crush opposition. I stood alongside Manny Shinwell and Willie Gallacher during the Battle of George Square in Nineteen-Nineteen. I saw with my own eyes British tanks brought out onto the streets of Glasgow to crush legitimate protest.’
‘Before my time, I’m afraid,’ I said. But the truth was I knew all about Red Clydeside and the riots in Glasgow in 1919. The Coalition Government had thought that Glasgow was the kicking-off point for a Bolshevik revolution and had flooded the city with troops, machine-gun posts and tanks. I decided it wouldn’t be helpful to point out to Connelly that, as we sat there and chatted, his communist comrades were in the process of using the same tactics, but much more ruthlessly, in the streets of Budapest. Or that, just a few months before, good socialist soldiers in Poland had gunned down unarmed strikers in Poznan.
‘Well, take my word for it,’ continued Connelly. ‘This union is at the forefront of a social and political revolution. That means we come under the frequent and unwelcome scrutiny of the police and other government agencies. Believe me, they would just love an excuse to come in here and start poking around in our affairs. But we have to be seen to observe the law in its smallest detail, Mr Lennox, and that means eventually we will have to contact the police and report the theft — unless someone finds Lang in the meantime and we can persuade him to return the stolen items. It would save me a lot of embarrassment and Frank Lang a prison term if you could find him. Will you take the job?’
