About how easy it would be for one bundle of damaged goods to get mixed up with another.
About how shit everything and everyone was.
Big Bob asked me if I wanted another but I said no. I was getting into that ugly tinder mood that needs just one drink too many to catch light and then you want to smash a face, any face, just to make someone else feel worse than you do. There was more Scots blood in me than I liked to admit.
I went out into the cold and clammy Glasgow night. I left the car outside the Horsehead and walked all the way back to my flat. It was a long walk and the night air slowly cooled my mood. I stood outside the house. The curtains of Fiona White’s downstairs flat were drawn but edged with warm light. The two girls would be asleep in the room to the back, probably dreaming of a father whom they now only really remembered from photographs.
I opened the door quietly and moved quickly up the stairs once I’d closed it behind me. Tonight was not the night to bump into Mrs White. Tonight there was a danger that our mutual need for comfort would be too great.
Or perhaps I was deluding myself.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I met Jock Ferguson at lunchtime in the Horsehead Bar. I had arranged it with him earlier by ’phone and given him a rough idea what it was I was looking to find out. But with coppers there is always a price. They are inquisitive by nature. Nosy.
‘Why do you need this information?’ Ferguson asked. ‘Is this something we should be interested in?’
‘It’s a case I’m working. Something stinks with it. First of all this guy asks me to find his missing wife, then he tries to pay me off, then his wife flashes her tits at me while her buddy cracks my head open.’
‘You lead a colourful life, Lennox. Where does this company come in?’
‘He owns it. Or runs it. He was none too specific about exactly what it was that they did.’
‘Well, I checked it out all right. If your guy is John Andrews, then he owns the company. CCI stands for Clyde Consolidated Importing. The consolidated comes from the fact that Andrews bought a number of smaller companies and formed one big one from it. They have warehouses down on the Clyde and a big office in Blythswood Square.’
‘What do they export?’
‘Plant, machine parts, that kind of thing. All over. North America, Middle East, Far East… You say you had a run-in with the wife?’
‘That’s one way of putting it. The stitches come out tomorrow.’
‘Were they worth it?’ Ferguson asked.
‘Were what worth it?’
‘The tits.’ Ferguson came the closest he ever did to a smile.
‘I’ve been able to find out that she’s an ex-whore,’ I said, ignoring his question. ‘Maybe still is. Or at least she used to act in blue movies. You know, the kind you guys like to watch at police smokers.’
He gave me a look. ‘Is he crooked?’
‘No. That’s the thing. Seems a straight Glasgow businessman, if that isn’t a contradiction in terms. He obviously didn’t know about his wife’s past.’
‘Until you put him right.’
‘Actually, I’m maybe wrong to say that he didn’t know. When I showed him the pictures-’
‘Pictures? You showed him photographs of his wife fucking? You’re quite a piece of work.’
‘Anyway…’ I tried to live with Ferguson’s disappointment. ‘When I showed him the pictures he wasn’t really shocked. More sad. Resigned.’
‘A set up?’
‘Dunno.’ I took a mouthful of pie with more grease than a tractor’s axle. Glasgow was not one of the world’s culinary capitals. ‘That’s the feeling I get. Doesn’t fit. His wife used to go by another name. However, which is her real and which is her professional name I don’t know. But it doesn’t fit with blackmail either.’
Ferguson shrugged. ‘Well, let me know if you think there’s something going on that we should know about.’
We talked about other things until we finished our pies and pints. In fact, Ferguson was making small talk. Or as close to small talk as he could manage. The one thing he was at pains not to discuss with me was the McGahern killing. The one thing that should have cropped up, even if only to repeat his earlier warning.
The next day I went to my local doctor, who removed the stitches from the back of my head. Which was a relief, because they had begun to itch like a son-of-a-bitch. Afterwards I went into my office and it was there that I got the call. It was a young woman. She spoke with an approximation of a middle-class accent, but Glasgow kept reappearing in it, like an unwanted coarse relative trying to squeeze in through the door of a dinner party. She didn’t give her name, even when I asked directly.
‘All you need to know is that I was a close friend of Tam McGahern. I know you’ve been asking questions about him. I have information you need.’
‘Then just tell me.’
‘Not on the ’phone. Meet me down by the river, at the Broomielaw, tonight at ten.’
‘You know something?’ I said. ‘I never understand why people always say that in movies and some mug always goes along with it… “Not on the ’phone. Meet me in person in some secluded and dark place where you can get your head bashed in with a tyre iron.” Now why should I meet you in a quiet, dark place?’
‘Because the people who are mixed up in this are a dangerous bunch. I don’t want to be seen talking to you.’
‘I’ve got a better idea. It’s called hiding in plain sight. I’ll meet you in the main concourse of Central Station. And not ten, nine. I get wrinkles if I stay up late.’
She began to protest but I hung up.
Central Station was just around the corner from my Gordon Street office, but I decided to go back to my digs first and freshen up. I drove back into the city, parked in Argyle Street and walked up to the station to give me a chance to recce everything out properly.
I turned up early. About twenty to nine. I stood under the main station clock, looking up at the information board as if planning my journey. There were still people milling about the station. The Edinburgh train arrived and a wave of travellers pulsed through the cavern of the station building. Then it became quieter again. Ten to nine.
I became aware of a smallish figure next to me. Actually I became aware of the odour before the figure. A man of about fifty. Or twenty. Serious drinking had fudged the issue. The lines on his unwashed face where grime had entrenched itself in the creases looked as if they had been drawn in graphite onto grey skin. He looked up at me and bared the ruins of his teeth.
‘Y’awright, pal?’
‘The best. You?’
‘Oh you know… cannae grumble. Widnae dae much use. Would you have a few pennies to spare?’ The tramp spoke with the kind of gutteral Glasgow patois that had confused the hell out of me when I had first moved to the city. To start with I thought the city had a large indigenous population of Gaelic speakers. It took me weeks to realize it was in fact English.
‘Let me guess,’ I said. ‘You’ve lost your train fare home and you would like me to lend you the money, right? And you promise that if I give you my address you’ll send a postal order to me first thing tomorrow?’
‘Naw,’ he grinned wider. I wished that he hadn’t. ‘Naw, I wouldnae say that at all. I’ll tell you exactly what I want the money for. Drink. I could lie, mind. But the truth is I would like you to spare me a few pennies so I can get pished.’
‘I admire your honesty.’
‘Always the best policy, pal. But I’ll tell you this and it’s no lie: whatever you gie me will be carefully invested. Gie me a couple o’ bob, and I can guarantee that of everybody that will ask you for a handoot in the station the night, naebody else will be able to stay drunk for as long as me. Per penny invested, that is.’
