‘Okay,’ he said eventually. ‘Here’s the thing… I told you I met with Small Change earlier that day.’
‘The day he was killed?’
‘Yes. Well, you know the way Small Change wasn’t totally legit, but he was more legit than not. Kinda the way you are. Well, like you, Small Change would do the odd deal with me, or Cohen or Murphy. He never did nothing that would get him lifted by the police. Nothing that he could be tied in directly, like. He was as slippery as snail shit in the rain. He liked to be the middle man. The one who arranges everything, and then he’d get an arranger’s fee or a percentage of what came out of it.’
‘And he was fixing you up with something to do with the fight game. That’s what you told me.’
Sneddon made a face. ‘I know. And to start with I thought it was. We were supposed to be meeting to talk about Bobby Kirkcaldy.’
I raised my eyebrows. It was all coming together. But what was coming together still wasn’t clear. ‘I thought you said that Small Change had nothing to do with Kirkcaldy. He wasn’t in that league.’
‘Aye. Aye… right enough. That’s what I thought. But he wanted to talk to me about some deal he wanted to broker. He said Bobby Kirkcaldy was involved. Not as a fighter. As an investor.’
‘So, you went to see Small Change. What did he say the deal was?’
‘That’s the thing. I went up to Small Change’s place… just as arranged. Got Singer to drive me and wait outside in the car. But when I got there Small Change was shiteing himself. He was white as a fucking sheet. He tried to cover it up but when he poured me a drink his hands were shaking like fuck. Then he comes out with all of this shite about being sorry to have cost me a wasted journey, but the deal he wanted to set up had gone south.’
‘Did he tell you what the deal had been?’
‘No. Or at least he spun me some shite about Kirkcaldy setting up a boxing academy in the city but that the finance on his side had fallen through.’
‘And you don’t believe that? Sounds possible.’
Sneddon shook his head. He spread his hands out on the walnut desk top, fingers splayed, and looked at them absently. ‘You know the business I’m in, Lennox. The bookies, the protection, the whores, the bank jobs, the fencing. You know what my business really is? Fear. It’s fear what keeps the whole fucking thing together. I have spent most of my life filling my pockets by making the other guy fill his pants.’ He leaned back in his chair and stared hard at me. ‘So when I say that Small Change MacFarlane had had the frighteners put on him, I know what I’m talking about.’
‘So did you challenge him?’ I asked. ‘Did you ask him what was really going on?’
‘No. There was no point. I could tell that it would have done fuck all good. Someone had done a real job on MacFarlane. I could have brought Singer in from the car and he would still have kept shtoom.’
I nodded. It was a good point. If someone had been able to out-menace Sneddon and out-lurk Singer, then there was something serious going on. Sneddon had a cigarette box on his desk: it looked solid silver and was so big it should have had fifteen pirates sitting on it. He flipped it open, took out a cigarette and nudged it across the walnut aircraft carrier in my direction. I helped myself and used the matching silver desk lighter to light us both.
‘And he ended up dead the same night,’ I said.
‘Yep.’ Sneddon screwed his eyes up against the smoke. ‘That’s why I want that appointment book.’
‘Not just to keep the cops from knowing you saw Small Change the day he died. You want to know who he saw before you.’
‘Aye. It’s maybes not even in the diary. And you say his wife says he doesn’t keep one anyhow.’
‘That’s what she said. Now I get why you wanted me to sniff around.’ I paused for a moment. I was like the clown in the circus standing dumbly till the plank the other clown is swinging around hits him on the back of the head. It hit me. ‘Oh yeah…’ I said. ‘Now I get it. That’s why you’ve got me involved with the Bobby Kirkcaldy crap. It’s the same deal, isn’t it? You want me to find out if Kirkcaldy is tied up with whatever deal Small Change was brokering.’
‘Aye. And my guess is that it’s fuck all to do with boxing academies or shite like that. Especially with what you’ve said about this dodgy fucking uncle he has in tow.’
‘And the nooses and stuff?’
‘Maybes it’s connected — with the deal I mean, and nothing to do with the fight what’s coming up.’
‘I see…’ I drew on the cigarette and contemplated the silver-grey writhes of smoke. ‘Now this takes me into dodgy territory. You too, for that matter. The police are all over Small Change’s murder and I was left in no doubt by Superintendent Willie McNab that his wife will be wearing my balls as earrings if I start sniffing around.’
There was the sound of aged wood on wood as Sneddon pulled open a desk drawer. He reached in, took something out and tossed it onto the desk in front of me. It was a large white envelope. It was tucked shut, not sealed, and it was stuffed thick. Rewardingly thick.
‘Buy yourself some new balls.’ Sneddon nodded to the envelope.
I picked it up and slipped it into my inside jacket pocket without opening it. It tugged satisfyingly at the material of my jacket, balancing the weight of the blackjack in my other inside pocket. I was going to have to start taking a satchel to work.
‘You’re right, the police are all over MacFarlane like flies on a turd.’ Sneddon exposed his talent for colourful metaphor. ‘And I ask myself why the fuck that is. He was an important bookie, but the cops on the case are too many and too high-up.’
I nodded. It fitted. I had wondered about McNab’s involvement myself. ‘So you think the police are onto whatever deal it was that Small Change was setting up?’
‘If that’s the reason, then it’s something really fucking big. And if it’s really fucking big, I really fucking want to know about it. You’ve got contacts in the police, haven’t you?’
‘Yeah…’ I said reluctantly, wondering how much Sneddon knew about my arrangement with Taylor. Then the tug of the heavy envelope in my jacket pocket reminded me not to be too reluctant. ‘So do you. Probably better than mine.’
‘Listen…’ Sneddon leaned forward and narrowed his eyes. Again he was all brow. ‘I’ve already fucking told you: I don’t want to be connected to this. That’s why I’m going through you. You want the money or not?’
Taking a last, long draw on the cigarette, I stubbed it out in a boulder of crystal ashtray, picked my hat off his desk and stood up.
‘I’ll get onto it.’ I turned towards the door then checked myself. ‘You know everybody who’s got a racket going in the city.’
‘Just about.’ Sneddon leaned back in his green leather and walnut captain’s chair. A pirate captain’s chair, probably.
‘Have you ever heard of anyone called Largo?’ I asked.
He thought for a moment then shook his head.
‘Okay… thanks. I just thought I’d ask.’
Industrial pollution can be a beautiful thing. When I came out of Sneddon’s I stood by my car for a moment, looking out over to the west. Sneddon’s house was elevated in more than a social sense and I could see out across the treetops and past the edge of the city. Glasgow’s air was of the granulated variety and it turned sunsets into vast, diffused splashes of colour, like gold and red paint strained through textured silk. I stood and gazed westward, filled with a sense of contentment.
But that had more to do with the wad of cash weighing down my suit jacket than the sunset. I climbed into the Atlantic and headed back down into the city.
I should have been more on my toes. This time there was a little more subtlety and a lot more brains employed.
I was driving back from Sneddon’s and was passing along the curve in the road where Bearsden notches down the social ladder to become Milngavie, when I saw a blue ’forty-eight Ford Zephyr Six up ahead, pulled into the kerb. The driver had the hood up and he was standing next to it on the road. He was about thirty-five, with dark hair, and from what I could see smartly dressed. I say from what I could see because he was doing what every true man does when his car breaks down: he was standing on the roadway, one hand on his hip, the other scratching his head. And like every true man, he had had to take his jacket off and roll up his sleeves to do the head-scratching. It was a pose of helplessness mitigated by stubbornness: you’ve tried everything and you’re asking for help only as a
