‘It means you’re holding out on me.’
‘Am I? What?’
‘Alain Barnier.’
That stopped me in my tracks. Thankfully it was at that point that Jock Ferguson re-emerged from the toilets.
‘We ready?’ he asked.
Devereaux drained his whisky. ‘We’re ready.’
It had been raining while we had been in the Horsehead. The stonework and the cobbles on the street outside were the oil-sleek black of a Glasgow night. I had arranged to give Jock Ferguson a lift home.
‘I’ll drop you off at your hotel first,’ I said to Devereaux.
‘It’s okay,’ he said, squeezing his considerable bulk into the confines of the Atlantic’s back seats. ‘I’ll come along for the ride. See a little more of Glasgow by night.’ It was a fait that could not have been more accompli. I shrugged and dropped in behind the wheel.
Jock Ferguson, normally on the lugubrious side of funereal, was positively chipper on the journey back. The evening and the drink had combined to open a door in his personality. I wondered if that was who Ferguson had really been before the war. And I wished I could find as easy a way back to my prewar self. There again, the bottle was the key most men used.
After we dropped Ferguson outside his anonymous semi, Dex Devereaux swapped seats and took the front passenger seat.
‘Okay Johnny Canuck… Let’s go for a drive,’ he said cheerlessly.
The rain started again: intermittent, thick, greasy globs on the windscreen. The streets were empty of cars and our only obstacle on the way back to his hotel was a drunk in the middle of the road, one foot anchored as if glued to the asphalt. I gave him a blast of my horn but he waved his arm vaguely and cursed incomprehensibly at me. I swerved around him and drove on.
‘This town sure has an interesting relationship with booze,’ said Devereaux. Then he sighed. ‘I suppose if most of the crime you deal with is related to drunks, then it doesn’t stretch the grey matter. And these guys here… I mean the City of Glasgow Police — and no offence to Jock Ferguson — but these guys aren’t the brightest of cookies.’
‘I’ve made the same observation myself. In the past,’ I said, keeping my eyes on the road. ‘Why don’t you say what it is you want to say, Dex?’
‘Okay… like I say, these guys aren’t big thinkers. If they were, I reckon you’d be in a lot of trouble by now.’
‘And why would that be?’
‘Come on, Lennox.’ Devereaux laughed. ‘Paul Costello’s body is found half a mile away from a break-in and they don’t even think to see if it’s connected. Do you know the kind of beating you’d get if these guys found out you tapped that uniform?’
‘If you’re so convinced I did, why don’t you tell them?’
‘Listen, Lennox, if you get antsy with me, I might do just that. But I’m not interested in giving them you. I’m interested in you giving me Largo.’
‘I don’t have him to give,’ I said. We were on a quiet street and I pulled over to the kerb.
‘Yet,’ said Devereaux.
‘Yet.’ I sighed and rested my wrists in the basin of the steering wheel.
‘But you’re getting close. And you should have told me about Barnier.’
‘You seem pretty well informed without my help.’
‘Ferguson told me about the break-in. Actually, he was being a gripey pain in the ass about it. He said it was a French importer with an office in Marseille who got broken into. You see, it’s difficult for these guys to hold two thoughts in their head concurrently…’
‘They need a lie-down if they hold them consecutively,’ I said.
‘Well, the only thing they’ve got stuck in their heads is that a uniformed cop got cracked across the head. This town isn’t so different to the States. There’s a blood price to be paid if a cop gets hurt. But, like I say, they can’t see past that. No one is asking why the hell someone would break into an importer’s office where there’s nothing to steal except paperwork… in the middle of a bonded warehouse area filled with whisky, luxury goods, cars and god knows what else.’
‘Maybe they’d run out of paper clips and the stationers was closed.’
‘Cut the crap, Lennox, or I might just begin to feel the need to pay some professional courtesy to my Glasgow colleagues. What have you got on Alain Barnier?’
‘I think he’s a front for your boy. Or at the very least he’s behind the murder of Paul Costello, directly or indirectly. Costello and Sammy Pollock have stolen at least one of a consignment of twelve jade statuettes. My guess is that each statuette is packed with happy snow for your Harlem negroes.’
‘How did you find out about the statuettes?’
I told Devereaux about my trip to the disused farm cottage, the jade demon and somebody, probably the recently deceased Paul Costello, putting the lights out for me.
‘That’s why I turned over Barnier’s office, and I was right. I found the manifest for twelve Vietnamese jade demons.’
‘Vietnamese?’ Devereaux turned in his seat, pivoting his shoulders around.
‘Yeah. So what?’
‘Indochina is the source of the heroin that’s turning up on the streets. It could be that your frog Barnier doesn’t know what he’s shipping. It’s likely the heroin’s been packed into statuettes at source. Maybe Barnier has just been asked to ship these things, not knowing what’s inside them.’
‘I’d like to think that,’ I said. ‘But, for a wine merchant-cum-curio importer, Alain Barnier is pretty handy in a fight.’ I told Devereaux about what had happened outside the Merchants’ Carvery. ‘I’ve been following him for the last day or two.’
‘And?’
‘And nothing. The only thing remotely illicit I’ve caught him doing is visiting a married woman in Bearsden while her husband’s at work.’
Devereaux sat quietly for a moment. ‘You say he has a history of importing from Indochina?’
‘As far as I know, yes.’
‘Then he must have strong connections and contacts there. The place is a mess. The French have fucked up good. Dien Bien Phu has been a disaster. A turning point. The French are going to clear on out of it, you know.’
‘I guess.’
‘And when they do, the Commies will take over. The French are going to leave the back door wide open for them.’
‘It’s a long way away, Dex,’ I said. ‘It’s a French colonial problem.’
‘Not now. Now it’s our problem. There’s going to be another Korea out there, take my word for it. In the meantime, it’s chaos. And chaos is the best environment for someone like John Largo to operate in.’
‘But you don’t think Barnier’s directly involved?’
‘I didn’t say that. It could be that he doesn’t know what he’s shipping. Or it could be that, for all we know, Alain Barnier is John Largo.’
‘It’s unlikely,’ I said. ‘Barnier is established here. The other thing is he looks too much like an international criminal mastermind. The sharp clothes, the French accent and the goatee beard… I think John Largo would keep a lower profile.’
‘So don’t I,’ said Devereaux, then grinned at my puzzled expression. ‘You’ll have to learn Vermontese. It’s what we say when we mean “so do I”. You know the other thing it could be… maybe John Largo is like Robin Hood. A kind of composite character. Maybe John Largo is more an organization than a criminal. Maybe Barnier is part of John Largo.’
‘He has a partner. A guy called Claude Clement. Here…’ I took my notebook from the side pocket of my dinner jacket and copied the addresses onto a blank page, tore it out and handed it to Devereaux. ‘I found that when I was stealing paper clips. Maybe Barnier and Clement are in this together. So what now?’
‘I’ll get onto Washington, see if we’ve got anything on Barnier or this other guy. In the meantime I suggest
