I decided to focus my attention on the missing wife. Maybe if I pretended the whole McGahern thing wasn’t there it would go away. I ’phoned the husband, John Andrews, at his office and arranged to meet him at his home at six that evening.
Glasgow was a sleeves-rolled-up city. For a hundred years its sole reason for being had been to serve as the Empire’s factory. The industrial revolution had been born here with a scream of metal and thundering mills. Britain’s mercantile and military ships were built here. The vast machines that powered the British Empire were assembled here. The fuel to drive those machines was hewn from the earth here. Glasgow was a city where pretensions of gentility rang false, where the villa of the mogul had to rub grubby shoulders with the tenement. Bearsden lay to the north of the city and dressed itself up as Surrey, yet was within soot-flecked spitting distance of run-down, violent Maryhill. John Andrews’s home was set back from the sweep of the street in a large, wooded garden. I didn’t fully understand what it was Andrews did; it was one of these occupations that were dismissed with a vague generalization: ‘import-export, that kind of thing’. Whatever it was he did, it paid well. Ardbruach House, Andrews’s home, was three floors of Victorian villa, built as much to impress as to accommodate. The truth was I had nothing new to tell Andrews, mainly because I had dropped the ball on his wife’s case with all that had happened since my encounter with Frankie McGahern.
Andrews had been brusque on the ’phone. He didn’t like me ’phoning his office, despite the fake name and company he had given me as a code for his receptionist. But when I pulled up at his mansion, he was waiting for me at the door with what looked like a practised smile. The kind that quivers at the corners.
Andrews was a small, tubby man with whitish-grey hair and a wattle of fat beneath his weak jaw. He wore a fresh carnation in the buttonhole of his sixty-guinea suit. When he shook my hand, his fleshy palm felt moist. ‘I’m sorry you’ve had a wasted journey, Mr Lennox. I didn’t get a chance to call you. Mystery solved!’ He made a big shrug with his small shoulders and it was as fake as the smile. I was getting all kinds of bad feelings about this. And after the McGahern episode, I could have done with something straightforward.
‘Mr Andrews, is there something wrong?’
‘Wrong?’ He laughed but didn’t hold my gaze. ‘Quite the contrary. I’m afraid this has all been a terrible misunderstanding. Lillian telephoned me this afternoon, not long after you and I had spoken. She was called on at short notice to visit her sister in Edinburgh. Her sister took ill very suddenly you see. Lillian had left me a note all along, but it had slipped behind the bureau. It was only when she ’phoned that she realized that I’d been so worried.’
‘Oh, I see,’ I said. He was talking nonsense, or as the locals were wont to call it, shite.
‘Here, Mr Lennox.’ Andrews made no attempt to invite me in: instead he took a cheque from his pocket and handed it to me. It was for much more than I was due. ‘I feel guilty about your wasted effort. I hope this covers the inconvenience.’
This was so wrong. But I pocketed the cheque.
‘Do you mind if I have a look at the note your wife left?’ I asked.
Andrews’s relief faltered and he looked flustered. ‘The note? Why? Oh… I’m afraid I threw it away after I found it. There seemed little point in hanging on to it.’
‘I see.’ I lifted my hat an inch. ‘Well, I’m glad things are settled. Goodbye, Mr Andrews.’
Something flickered in his expression. A faint doubt, or hope. Then it was gone.
‘Goodbye, Mr Lennox.’
Maybe it was because I was at a loose end that I didn’t go straight home. There are more ways than ‘import-export’ to make the kind of money to afford a home in Bearsden. I headed north through Glasgow’s leafy suburb and turned into another lengthy drive through manicured bushes and trees. But when I reached the top, it wasn’t a short, fleshy businessman who stood outside the small mansion. Instead there was a huddle of thugs in cheap suits, maliciously eyeing my progress up the drive.
‘And what can I do for you?’ The Glasgow accent was as thick as the macassar on the hair of the heavy who came over to the car window. He was dressed in tight drainpipe trousers and a mid-thigh-length jacket. It was the latest fashion, apparently. It was supposed to look ‘Edwardian’ and I’d heard followers of it called themselves ‘Teddy Boys’.
‘I’d like to see Mr Sneddon.’
‘Oh you would, would you? Do you have an appointment?’ He pronounced every consonant of ‘appointment’ as if he’d been practising it.
‘No. Tell him Lennox is here. I want to talk to him.’
‘What about?’
‘That’s between me and Mr Sneddon.’
The goon in the drainpipes opened the car door and led me into Sneddon’s mansion. Like some thug parody of a butler, he told me to wait in the mock-Gothic hall. Sneddon let me stew for half an hour before he emerged from the snooker room. He was making a point. I was now at his pleasure and could not leave without his permission.
Willie Sneddon was one of the Three Kings who ran Glasgow. The Bearsden mock-baronialism that surrounded us may have been Sneddon’s castle, but his kingdom sat on the South Side. He was not a particularly big man, and he was expensively and surprisingly tastefully dressed. But at the very first glance you could tell that this man was all about violence. His build was stocky but not heavy. Muscular. Sinewy, as if he had been woven from rope. Added to that, someone had in the distant past permanently creased his right cheek with a razor.
‘What the fuck do you want, Lennox?’ He fired the greeting over his shoulder as he led me into a study lined with books he would never and probably could never read. I was not invited to but I sat down anyway.
‘I had a run in with Frankie McGahern,’ I said, lighting a cigarette.
‘I heard it was him that had a run in with you,’ answered Sneddon with perfect Govan grammar. ‘You kill him, Lennox?’
‘I’m in the clear for that. Someone else did him. Who, is the big question. And that’s what I want to talk to you about. I wanted to ask you if you knew anything about what happened to his brother.’
‘You accusing?’
‘No, Mr Sneddon. Not accusing, just asking. I can’t see any reason why you would have Tam McGahern killed. Or Frankie. But no one knows this town like you…’
‘Oh aye? I suppose you’ve not talked to the other Kings?’
‘As a matter of fact I haven’t. I came to you first.’ It was the truth and he knew it. He could check it out easily enough. Although he tried to hide it, I could tell he liked the idea that I somehow rated him above the other two Kings. I failed to mention that I just happened to be in the neighbourhood.
‘I know fuck-all about Tam McGahern’s killing. Of course I wouldn’t tell you if I did and normally I wouldn’t give a fuck if you believed me or not. But I really don’t know and I don’t like not knowing. I don’t need to tell you that knowledge is power in this town. I’m not the kind of man that appreciates the lack of either. Who’s paying you to look into this?’
‘No one.’
Sneddon raised an eyebrow dubiously. This could easily turn into another beating for information I didn’t have.
‘I mean it. No one. I think that Frankie McGahern wanted me to find out who killed his brother but I wasn’t interested. That’s why things turned ugly. I’ve been warned off by the police. I guess I’m contrary that way, but when someone tries to warn me off with a beating, I tend to get stubborn.’
Sneddon nodded slowly, a cold appraising glint in his eyes. He seemed to make up his mind about something.
‘Well, you’re being paid now. You find out who snuffed Tam and Frankie and I’ll pay you.’
‘Like I said, I’m looking into this for myself-’
‘Not any more.’ Sneddon’s tone informed me that the discussion was over. He reached into a drawer of his walnut desk and pulled out a dense, neat roll of fivers. ‘This’ll keep you going. There’s a hundred there. I’ll pay you another two hundred if you deliver the name to me first.’
I took the money. ‘You know I can’t guarantee I’ll succeed. I never guarantee results. You know that.’
‘Then I’ll be a hundred quid poorer. But you only get the other two hundred if you deliver the name.’
‘Okay,’ I said as if I had a choice in the matter. ‘Thanks. I’ll see what I can find out. But I’ll have to talk to the other two Kings. Things may get complicated.’
