noon tomorrow.’
‘Maybe they’ve changed their plans. After all, you know about the meet.’
Gillespie’s laugh turned into a wet cough. ‘Dead men don’t tell tales. Anyhow, I know more than they think I know. Lennox, promise me you’ll get the bastards.’
‘I promise. I’ve got my own score to settle. And the Three Kings have bigger scores to settle.’
It was then that Gillespie said something that jarred with me. Made me feel even more vulnerable and alone. Something he had overheard and couldn’t elaborate on.
We sat quietly in the black and yellow geometry of shadow and streetlight. Everything was quiet. No dogs barking, no distant cars passing.
‘Lennox?’
‘Yeah?’
‘I was in Burma during the war. You?’
‘First Canadian. Italy and Germany.’
‘Then you know too. I mean, you know how this goes.’
‘Sure, Jackie. I know how this goes.’
‘I always wanted to go to Canada. Read all them comics about lumberjacks when I was a kid. Tell me about it.’
So I did. Gillespie sat quiet, apart from the odd wet cough, and listened as I talked about growing up on the banks of the Kennebecasis. About deep snow winters and hot sun summers. About watching the tidal bore surge up the Bay of Fundy. About the smell of the forest when the snow first melts. I was surprised just how much I had to say and talked on, even after Gillespie stopped coughing.
Like I had told him, I knew how it went.
I left the dead armed robber in his brand-new house, his shotgun still on his lap. When I got back in the Atlantic I sat for a moment and thought back to what he had said and how it had shaken me more than anything else: ‘There’s one other thing, Lennox. I don’t know which one, but one of the Three Kings isn’t to be trusted.’
It was four in the morning by the time I got back to my digs. If Mrs White heard me creep in, she didn’t signal it by putting on her light. I lay on the bed in my clothes, my exhaustion playing tug-of-war with the nausea and the throbbing in my head. My exhaustion won.
I woke up with a start and a stab of pain in my head. I looked at my watch and saw it was half past nine. I let my head sink back onto the pillow. The pain was still beyond all description of a headache, but I was aware that the intensity had been turned down a notch or two.
I got up and took enough aspirin to rot a steel gut and took a bath, shaved and dressed in a new change of clothes. I wore a black suit with a red pinstripe and a deep burgundy tie. I was dressing up for my coffin. My plan remained exactly the same as it had the night before when I had explained it to the Three Kings. The only difference now was that instead of going in mob-handed with the combined strength of Glasgow’s criminal underworld, I was going it alone. I could see the epitaph on my gravestone: Here lies Lennox: he went it alone. The wanker.
I drove to the docks and parked the Atlantic. I slipped the switchblade into my jacket pocket, checked the chambers of the Webley, snapped it shut and tucked it into the waistband of my trousers. I found a hole in the fence and dodged between warehouses until I found dock number thirteen. Maybe it would be my lucky number. I could see the warehouse. A Bedford of the same make that had been used the night they attempted to grab me was parked outside, a tarpaulin stretched over its cargo. It started to rain. Something on the other side of the dock began thumping at metal, sending ringing echoes across the water. I ran across to the back of the warehouse and ducked behind its cover. I pulled the Webley out from my waistband and rebuttoned my jacket and coat. I checked my watch: ten before noon. At least it hadn’t rained on Gary Cooper.
Two cars arrived, about five minutes apart. They drove round to the front of the warehouse and I couldn’t see who got out. I made my way along the back of the building and round the corner. I found a door on the side but it was padlocked. I was going to have to go in the same way as everyone else. I sprinted the length of the warehouse’s side and ducked behind a collection of huge oil drums. I just made it, because a third car, a Nash roadster, pulled up and a red-haired man in a houndstooth jacket and cavalry twills got out. I watched the country- set type, whom I reckoned to be their army connection, disappear into the warehouse. He had the look of someone Lillian and her girls could have compromised.
I hesitated for a moment. I didn’t know what I expected the outcome of my one-man crusade to be. Somewhere I still hoped that my chum the Fred MacMurray lookalike and his Mossad pals would come galloping to my rescue, like the US cavalry in yarmulkes. After all, the whole point of our encounter in Perth was to let me know they were there, if I ever got around to working it out for myself.
I looked impotently at the Webley in my hand. Oh well, Lennox, I thought, no one lives for ever. At least my headache would go away. I stole around and pushed the door open enough to see in.
There were two levels to the warehouse and I saw the back of the officer type disappear up the metal stairs to the upper floor. There was no one on the ground floor, but a couple of crates sat in the middle of the vast space. I guessed they had been offloaded at random from the lorry for the buyers to check the merchandise.
I crept over to the crates, laid my Webley on top of one and picked up the crowbar that had been leaning against them. I was doing well to get this far, I thought. The moment was spoiled by something cold, hard and barrel-like being jabbed into the base of my neck.
‘Don’t move, Mr Lennox.’ I recognized the accent as Dutch. ‘I am an expert at executing people with a neck shot.’
I raised my hands. Someone snatched the Webley away.
‘Turn around.’
I did as I was told and came face to face with a tall, heavily built man immaculately and expensively dressed. The Fat Dutchman. There was a smaller, darker man next to him. The other Arab. He had my Webley in his hand and was staring at me expressionlessly. He could have been day-dreaming about violating a marquess’s daughter, for all I could tell from his face. The unpleasant thought that he might actually be day-dreaming about violating me flashed through my mind and I turned back to the fat boy.
‘He isn’t your usual stooge, is he?’ I asked. ‘Don’t you usually hang about with Peter Lorre?’
Fat Boy didn’t laugh. To be fair, he looked nothing like Sidney Greenstreet.
‘You are not half as funny as you like to think you are, Mr Lennox.’ The fat man spoke English with a typically sibilant Dutch accent. I had spent quite a bit of time in Holland at the end of the war. Enough to develop one hell of a respect for a people who’d had the crap kicked out of them, been starved half to death, then simply rolled up their sleeves and got on with the business of rebuilding their country. Probably came from centuries of fighting back the sea, as they had had to in the big North Sea flood a few months back. I liked the Dutch. I so hoped I wasn’t about to become disillusioned.
‘Why don’t you and Dusky here put the guns down, Tulip-sucker, and I’ll amuse the shit out of you both.’ Unfortunately, ‘Tulip-sucker’ was the best I could do: it’s hard to insult a Dutchman and I’d had a trying couple of days. He didn’t respond. ‘So you’re De Jong?’ I said. Again no response but I could tell he hadn’t expected me to know his name. ‘Former Nazi-collaborator and member of the fourth SS Volunteer Brigade Netherlands. Am I right?’
De Jong frowned. I’d hit the target. He was now trying to work out how I knew so much about him. Truth was that I had guessed from his crack about his expertise with the neck shot: there hadn’t been enough enthusiastic Dutch collaborators to make up any more than the one SS brigade. In the meantime, his curiosity might buy me a little more breathing time.
‘Upstairs…’ De Jong ordered and nodded towards the metal stairway.
When I got to the top there were three people waiting: Lillian Andrews, the officer-type and a man I’d never seen before. Not that it would be easy to recognize him, the state his face was in. He was blond with prominent ears and that was about all you could see: his nose and jaw were concealed by surgical dressings and what was visible of his face was puffed up in angry swellings. The bandaged man cradled a sawn-off shotgun in his arms. The Dutchman laid a large canvas military holdall on the floor.
‘It’s all there,’ said De Jong. ‘Half the money. I’ve inspected the goods and I’m satisfied.’
‘What the fuck is going on?’ asked the blond man in the bandages, looking at me through puffy eyelids. I’d maybe never seen him before, but this wasn’t the first time I’d heard him speak.
