We switched to general chat for a while and then I thanked Jonny for his time and we made for the door. On the way out I saw a photograph of his parents on the bookcase. They were sitting outdoors at a cafe table under a sun that had never shone on Glasgow.
‘How are your folks?’ I asked.
‘They’re fine, Lennox. Thanks for asking. I worry about them. All the trouble with the Arabs.’
‘You never fancy it yourself?’ I asked.
‘Israel? Naw. You can’t get a decent fish supper there. Anyway, I was never political. That was my dad’s thing. I remember, before the war, he was always talking about the trouble in the Mid East. I could never work out what the fuck was happening in Falkirk that worried him so much.’
I laughed.
‘But,’ he said, ‘God knows I didn’t expect them to emigrate at their age…’ He shrugged, looking at the photograph. ‘Just goes to show you never can tell what the future holds.’
I smiled. I was talking with Jonny the devoted son, not Jonny the gangster. The son who had financed his elderly parents’ emigration to Israel. The Jewish boy from Newton Mearns who had served with the Second British Army in Germany and had walked through the gates of a camp on the Luneburg Heath forty miles south of Hanover with a name no one had heard of before. Belsen.
‘Nope, Jonny. You never can tell.’
I had a clear goal when I left Jonny Cohen’s. More a target. And after an hour sitting in my car outside the Highlander Bar I caught sight of it. I crossed the road and intercepted Bobby and his two chums, all of whom were still carrying the signs of our previous encounter, just as they were about to enter the bar. Dougie, the biggest of the trio, obviously still fancied himself as tasty.
‘What the fuck do you want, Lennox?’ he said, placing himself between me and Bobby and squaring his not insubstantial shoulders. ‘We told you fucking everything we-’
I interrupted him with a sharp head-butt to the bridge of his nose. He slumped against the wall of the pub. Pete, ever his loyal companion, turned on his heel and ran. Bobby again was frozen to the spot.
‘I cannot abide coarse language,’ I explained to Bobby as I grabbed his upper arm and frogmarched him across the road, leaving the still-dazed Dougie propped against the wall.
I shoved Bobby into the passenger seat and drove down to the Clyde. Clydebank was still gap-toothed from wartime air raids and I parked on one of the half-cleared bombsites by the river. I hauled him out of the car and down to the pier. We stood near its edge, the water below black and sleeked with rainbow-swirls of engine oil.
Bobby eyed me sulkily through the eye I hadn’t closed. ‘One of these days you’re going to push the wrong person too far.’
‘Oh really? Well, until that day comes I’ve always got you.’ I shoved him and he staggered back towards the edge of the pier. His hideous winkle-picker boots scrabbled on the rough rubble.
‘This is very simple, Bobby. You held out on me. I told you I wanted to know everything about Tam McGahern.’
‘I didn’t hold out,’ he protested. ‘I told you everything I know!’
I gave another shove to his chest and he tilted precariously backwards. I grabbed a hold of his bootlace tie.
‘I can’t swim!’ he bleated.
I laughed at him. ‘This is the fucking Clyde, Bobby. You’ll die of heavy-metal poisoning before you have a chance to drown. Anyway, shite floats. Now talk to me… what about the whore McGahern used to go to? The one he provided heavies for?’
The hate and fear on Bobby’s face didn’t leave much room for any other emotion, but for a moment something like confusion crossed it.
‘What whore?’
‘The classy operation in the West End. The one McGahern was giving one to.’
The penny dropped.
‘Oh, aye… her. I didn’t even think about her. I didn’t think it was important. I wasn’t holding out on you. I just didn’t think about her.’
I yanked his bootlace tie and pulled him clear from the water’s edge. In a way I was disappointed not to be throwing him into the Clyde. ‘What was her name?’
‘Molly. I don’t know her second name.’
‘Tell me about her.’
‘I can’t. I never met her. Tam had another heavy that he used as a chucker-out. He said me, Dougie and Pete wasn’t smart enough for a job like that.’ Bobby looked hurt and straightened his tie. ‘I don’t know what was so fucking special about being a chucker-out for a bunch of whores.’
‘Who was this guy?’
‘I don’t know. Never met him.’
‘So you don’t know where this brothel was?’
‘I didn’t say that. One night Tam was supposed to be up seeing this tart, but he got held up at the Imperial. He got me to order him a taxi by ’phone. The address was in Byres Road. Or off it. I can’t remember exactly.’
‘That’s a long road.’
Bobby shrugged. ‘It was a long time ago. I can’t remember the number. I don’t think it would do any good anyway.’
‘Why?’
‘I heard Tam on the ’phone to Molly one night, about a month before he was killed. I got the impression that she was winding the business up. Or moving.’
I nodded, remembering what Jonny Cohen had said about the operation seeming to drop from view. ‘What gave you that idea?’
‘I don’t know. But I think Tam was worried about him being involved with it maybe causing problems with the Three Kings.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought Tam would have been too worried about that.’
Bobby shrugged. For the first time I really examined him. He was younger than I had first thought; the twisted face and half-closed eye I had given him made him look almost vulnerable. I found I didn’t have the appetite to push him around any more. ‘I heard him talking to Jimmy Wallace about Hammer Murphy. Couldn’t hear much because they kept it quiet. But I knew that Tam thought Hammer Murphy might take a pop at them.’
I thought about what Bobby had said. ‘You told me you couldn’t think of anyone who could be behind Tam and Frankie’s killings.’
‘I can’t. Everyone knows it wasn’t Hammer Murphy. Everyone knows that Hammer Murphy was dying to have a go at Tam, but that the other two Kings had said no.’
‘Tam knew this?’
Bobby nodded.
‘Why was Tam talking to Jimmy Wallace about this? I thought you said he wasn’t involved with the outfit?’
‘He isn’t. Or wasn’t. But Tam used to ask him things. Talk to him a lot. Like he could give him advice.’
I took a couple of pound notes from my wallet and stuffed them into the breast pocket of Bobby’s thigh- length jacket. He took them out and looked at them. His mood lightened.
‘What’s this for?’
‘Get yourself a new suit.’
The biggest immigrant group in Glasgow was the Italians. Some families had been here since the twenties or before, but most had endured repatriation or internment when the war broke out. Now they tried hard to be liked.
The Trieste was a small Italian restaurant near the city centre. I ate there a lot and had got to know the family who ran it. To start with the Rosselis had been surprised at my basic knowledge of Italian. Then they had been distrustful, realizing it was the passing acquaintance the invader — or liberator — has with the culture of the nation he occupies. Now they greeted me with an incurious familiarity that made me feel comfortable. Like the food, the atmosphere was cheap and cheerful.
I sat in the corner, under a tattered but colourful poster extolling the sunny virtues of Rimini, and ate
