‘Don’t get in a sweat,’ she said and laughed bitterly. ‘I’m not proposing. I didn’t come up the Clyde on a banana boat. I know exactly what I mean to you, Lennox. But sometimes I need to talk. Don’t you need to talk sometimes?’
‘Oh yeah. I talk. I talk myself silly.’
‘I want to get out of Glasgow. Get out from behind that fucking hotel bar. Go somewhere where no one knows anything about me. Somewhere cut off from everywhere else. Like South Africa or Australia. Or the middle of the bloody African jungle.’
‘You should think about Paisley,’ I said. ‘It’s even more removed from civilization but you can get to it by bus.’
‘I’m being serious. This city is shite. My life is shite. Everybody here thinks they know who I am. What I am. They know fuck all about me. Everyone in this ugly fucking city thinks the universe revolves around Glasgow. They just can’t see past it. And the truth is this isn’t a city: it’s a village. Full of petty, stupid, bigoted shits. I hate it. Fucking hate it.’ She bit into the crimson of her lower lip.
I stroked her arm. ‘Why don’t you just leave?’
‘And do what?’ she said, pulling away. ‘I need money, Lennox. The kind of money that working a bar or helping you with your divorce scams doesn’t bring. I don’t suppose you know any lonely rich widowers?’
The gag startled me for a moment. ‘I did. One. But he’s not looking in the lonely hearts any more.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
There was something nagging away at me. Everything Lillian Andrews did was carefully thought out and planned. A lot of that probably came from her association with Tam McGahern: ‘Mafeking’ Jeffrey had told me that McGahern’s war record showed him to be intelligent, organized and a natural strategist. But what got to me more was what May had said about no one in Glasgow thinking beyond the city’s tenement-fringed horizon. It was becoming clear that that was exactly what Tam had been all about.
Everything I had heard about the high-end, West End brothel that no one knew anything much about didn’t make sense. I had seen the house they had used. You had to know where to find it. I thought of the affected Kelvinside housewife who had answered the door. I couldn’t imagine her type redirecting clients who had lost their way: ‘Oh, Eh’m ehfraid you hev the wrong door, the whooorhouse is three along, between the deyntal prehctitioner and the hayccountent…’ Lillian’s well-connected clients knew exactly where to go. So who was pointing them in the right direction?
I used the ’phone in the hall and called Willie Sneddon. I shared my thoughts with him and asked if I could lean on Arthur Parks.
‘You think Parky was involved with this other outfit?’ Sneddon asked.
‘I don’t know. But someone was sending the right kind of client up there. Parks works the top end of the business; maybe he was creaming the best off for this special set up.’
‘Naw…’ said Sneddon after a moment’s silence. ‘Parky would know that I’d nail him to the fucking floor if he pulled a stunt like that.’
I winced. From what I’d heard of Sneddon’s enforcement techniques, he wasn’t speaking metaphorically. ‘Maybe it was worth the risk,’ I said. ‘Or maybe the clients he was redirecting wouldn’t have been seen in his place anyway.’
‘A sideline is a fuckin’ sideline,’ said Sneddon. ‘No one works for me and runs their own wee business on the side. Parky’s not your man.’
‘I’d still like to lean on him. Maybe take Twinkletoes or Tiny with me.’
‘No way. Parky’s one of my best earners. I don’t want him… upset.’
‘Then let me at least talk to him again,’ I said. ‘Maybe he’s not the supplier. I have to admit that when I showed him a photograph of Lillian Andrews, he seemed genuinely not to recognize her, although she did remind him of someone else. But maybe he’s heard something more. Or there’s something he’s not telling me.’
‘Like I said, Lennox, I don’t want Parky upset. You know how fuckin’ antsy these mattress-munchers can be. Just find out what you have to find out without getting him worked up. And leave Twinkle and Tiny out of it. And I wouldn’t go round at this time of night. These are his big business hours. Parky shuts up shop between seven in the morning and three in the afternoon. I’ll ’phone him and tell him you’ll be round to disturb his ugly sleep tomorrow morning. I’ll advise Parky to be cooperative. That should be all you need.’
I agreed and hung up. I wasn’t too happy about the set up. Whether Parks was involved directly or not, my instinct told me he needed leaning on to spill everything he knew. And Sneddon had just prohibited me from leaning.
I lay on the bed with the lights out and smoked. There was all kinds of crap in my head, buzzing about like bees trapped in a jar. I kept thinking back to what May had said and the desperation with which she had said it. I thought about Lillian Andrews and her dark hair and long legs. Then for some reason I couldn’t work out, I thought of Helena Gersons sitting like a beautiful bird in a cage of Georgian architecture. We had had something once. Really had something. But each of us in our own way had been so fucked up that we didn’t want anything that made you feel. But that wasn’t why I thought of her. I thought of her because if Arthur Parks hadn’t been supplying customers to the West End operation, then the next name on the list was Helena’s. And, after all, we had a history of lies between us. But most of all, it was what May had said that kept jabbing me awake.
I took breakfast in a cafe on Byres Road before heading off to the Park Circus area. The rain was taking a breather and the sun was trying to fill in, but Glasgow was vomiting its early-morning smoke into its face. I sat at the cafe window eating my ham and eggs — or bacon and eggs as they called it here. I watched the world go by: an older man with rickets worse than the mortuary attendant I had encountered waddled past. He looked under five foot tall but I idly wondered if he would have been six foot, straightened out. He paused, leant over, pressed his thumb to one nostril and ejected the contents of the other in a violent exhalation onto the pavement. A delivery man pulled up his dray horse and cart outside, spoiling my view of Glasgow’s cosmopolitan streetlife. The Clydesdale twitched its tail and splattered the cobbles with dung that steamed in the cool morning sunlight. I said a small prayer of thanks that I hadn’t ended up somewhere less sophisticated, like Paris or Rome.
The ancient Greeks were great ones for reading omens. I should have read the augurs in the Clydesdale’s shit: it would have saved me a hell of a day.
I walked back along Great Western Road and into the concentric circles of the Park Circus area. When I reached Parks’s townhouse, all of the curtains were still drawn across the windows. There was no bull-necked doorman on guard and the deep gloss red of the Georgian-panelled front door combined with the soot-blackened masonry to give the impression of a back door to hell. Or a back door to hell on its tea break. I tugged at the bellpull and rapped the ornate door knocker. After a few minutes it was clear that I wasn’t going to get an answer. But when Willie Sneddon told you to expect someone, you expected. I started to get a bad feeling about there being no one at home.
The funny thing about the criminal fraternity is that they are generally very trusting that everyone else will be law-abiding. I walked down the steps to the basement level and found a window slightly open on its sash. I slipped in through the window into a small bedroom. Or rather a room with a bed: I got the impression not much sleeping went on there. It was decorated with red and black Paisley-patterned wallpaper and a vast gilt-framed mirror hung on one wall offering a view of the bed. Romantic. There were two other basement rooms, a hall and the stairs up to the main apartments. I recognized the waiting room in which I’d spoken to Parks before. There were four bedrooms off it. All empty. A vague funk of stale cigarette smoke, scent and whisky hung in the air. A radio played quietly somewhere. From upstairs. I called out for Parks but received no reply. An ornate staircase led up to the next floor, where I knew Parks had his living quarters.
As I reached the top of the stairs the decor became less lurid and more tasteful. The music from the radio was louder: Perry Como informed me that she wears red feathers. I walked along the landing and came to a large, light living room. The walls were bright and broken up with framed prints and posters of various theatrical productions. The furniture was modern and tasteful and again contrasted with the contrived lurid Victorian wickedness of the decor chosen for the ‘working’ part of the house.
‘Hello, Arthur,’ I said to Parks. He didn’t answer. But there again I didn’t expect him to. As soon as I had
