onto the gravel. Curly hauled him up to his feet and dragged him off to a waiting car. A second car had Lang’s hired help bundled in the back. I gave them both a cheery wave: after all, I hadn’t seen them since we met on the stairwell of my office.
Hopkins was wearing the same dark coat I’d seen him in earlier, at the car, and before that, outside Larry Franks’s apartment. The warrant cards hadn’t been fake, after all.
‘If you don’t mind,’ said Blondy, ‘I’ll take that.’
‘Certainly, constable,’ I said and handed him the automatic. ‘By the way, I’m glad you’re such a lousy shot. That was when I worked out which was the side of the angels.’
‘You’ve caused us a lot of extra work,’ he said.
‘Have I? I kind of thought I’d cleared the whole thing up for you. By the way, if I can give you a tip… try not to be so ambiguous. When you said I was getting in the way and it was your job to take me out of the way, I started to get the wrong idea.’
‘I think you’re being paranoid,’ he said.
‘Oh I am that. I’ve been paranoid for over a week now. And it’s getting worse. I’ve even been getting this crazy idea that you didn’t identify yourselves as police officers because you wanted me to make a break for it and flush out your little Hungarian network. It’s got nothing to do with expatriates, has it?’
‘It has and it hasn’t,’ answered Hopkins. ‘I think I’d better explain.’
And he did.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
I was driven back to Glasgow in a grey Rover with red leather seats that, after everything I’d been through, felt better than a woman’s touch. Hopkins explained about Lang and how he had infiltrated the Matyas Network, as the Hungarian emigre organization was known.
Ferenc Lang had skipped out of Hungary at the end of the war and before the Iron Curtain had closed around him. If he hadn’t got out, Hopkins explained, Lang would have faced awkward questions about his Arrow Cross party membership. Then, when the Uprising had started to take shape, Lang had seen an opportunity to cash in on the situation in Hungary and get some of his cronies out amongst the others fleeing the coming Russian crackdown.
‘Does Jock Ferguson know any of this?’ I asked. My voice was drunk-slurry with tiredness.
‘Don’t be naive,’ said Hopkins. ‘Do you really think that you were able to escape police custody without some collaboration?’
‘As a matter of fact, I didn’t. So Jock knew you wouldn’t be in the building in Ingram Street?’
‘I told you when we met that it was only a temporary arrangement. By the way, your associate Archie McClelland is in police custody. He assaulted the estate agent, Mr Collins, who is responsible for the building. I don’t know what it is about you, Mr Lennox, but you seem to inspire great loyalty. I just wish the Crown had the same gift.’
‘The charges against Archie… I take it you can make them go away.’
‘I can, and I will. But only if you drop out of sight for a while. And forget what you’ve seen. There’s more going on here than you can begin to understand.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’m a very understanding person. Let’s start with Matyas. Why did he side with Ferenc Lang?’
‘He didn’t. Matyas, whom you met, is the genuine article. But his network became infiltrated with Lang’s people.’
‘The chaff in the wheat,’ I said, recalling our conversation in Ingram Street. ‘But Matyas set me up. Him and the girl.’
‘No they didn’t. That day at the station, the day Ellis was murdered in your office, they genuinely thought they were arranging for you to meet Ferenc Lang. Just like Ellis believed he had been summoned to an urgent meeting with you because you had found out what was going on and wanted to help him.’
‘So Magda and Matyas really did get a call at the last minute to tell them Lang couldn’t make it?’
‘Yes. And asking that Magda meet with you to explain. I’m afraid the Matyas network comprises writers and intellectuals. Lang had them believing he was a champion of Hungarian democracy and freedom. I’m afraid they’re simply not equipped for this kind of subterfuge. Nor, frankly, are you.’
‘I did all right,’ I said.
‘With the greatest respect, Lennox, you’re an amateur and you have no idea what is really going on.’
‘Really? Like Lang maybe not being a Hungarian fascist at all but really a Soviet intelligence agent?’
Hopkins smiled. ‘Now why would you think that?’
‘Because I don’t know that Andrew Ellis would have been too perturbed about rabid Hungarian fascists. He had a tough time getting into the army because of his membership of a Hungarian youth organization before the war. My guess is the army wouldn’t worry if he’d been a Boy Scout.’
‘So why, then, was he so opposed to Lang, if your theory is right?’
I fumbled about in my pockets until I found the corner from Ellis’s desk blotter. I handed it to Hopkins. ‘It’s got something to do with this, I think. NTS.’
Hopkins looked at the paper and shrugged. ‘Doesn’t mean anything,’ he said, rolling the window down and tossing the paper out.
‘If you say so…’ I said. I closed my eyes and let the motion of the car rock me to sleep.
EPILOGUE
Dead Men and Broken Hearts.
Hopkins could not have put it better. He had been right when he said that was what men like me seemed to leave behind.
There were two murder trials that year.
Dennis Annan stood trial for the murder of Sylvia Dewar. His defence lawyer pointed out that much of the evidence came from dubious sources. I just happened to be in the witness box when he pointed it out.
The judge told the jury that they were dealing with one death, that of Sylvia Dewar. He instructed them not to allow themselves to be influenced by the fact that the murder of Sylvia Dewar had driven her husband to commit suicide. The fact that he pointed this out immediately before they retired to consider their verdict perhaps had something to do with them returning before the Jury Room tea had cooled in the pot.
They didn’t bother trying Annan for the union fraud. He took the eight a.m. short walk to a long drop in Barlinnie jail just as the leaves were beginning to fall in Fifty-seven.
Joe Connelly somehow managed to come out of the whole thing squeaky clean and actually appeared as a witness for the prosecution. Whatever he was, Connelly wasn’t simply a political animal, he was an apex political predator. Shortly after, he switched his allegiance from the Communist Party to Labour; and a couple of years after that actually got himself elected MP in some Ayrshire constituency where a mentally retarded donkey could have won, provided it wore a red rosette. His parliamentary career was, however, spectacularly short. It turned out that his heart had been as livid and puffy as his face, and he died of a massive heart attack a month after making his maiden speech.
The second trial was for the murder, in my office, of Andrew Ellis. Obviously, I appeared as a witness in that case, too. I had been prepared to describe, from the stand, my dramatic flight through the heather, my tussles with foreign agents and smouldering Hungarian brunettes. I would, I had predicted, stand heroically upright, pointing my resolutely accusing finger at Ferenc Lang and the two men I’d struggled with in the stairwell of my office building, immediately before finding Ellis dying.
I didn’t get a chance. A Hungarian national, an absconded merchant seaman, was arrested and tried for the murder of Andrew Ellis. He admitted the killing, but with a plea of diminished responsibility, and provided details
