‘I’m not. Skelly and Young stitched up Paul and Sammy Pollock for money. That’s a fact. What you do with that fact is up to you.’
There was a pause at the other end of the line. I could hear a band in the background. The melted-together sounds of many people talking and drinking.
‘I’ll deal with it,’ said Costello, and I knew that he would. ‘Lennox?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Thanks.’
I was as good as my word to Largo and stood outside the Alpha Hotel for half an hour before I went in and asked for Dex Devereaux. The night porter had been very reluctant to let me in and even more reluctant to disturb Mr Devereaux.
‘It’s very important,’ I said and pushed a couple of pound notes into the pocket of his waistcoat. ‘Tell him I have the address he’s been looking for. Mr Largo’s address.’
I sat down and waited. It took less than ten minutes for a dishevelled Dex Devereaux to appear in the lobby. Dishevelled except his flat-top haircut, which looked as precision-engineered as ever. I handed him the note with the address.
‘You sure about this?’ He held up the note.
‘That’s him. That’s his address.’
I left Devereaux, passing a flustered Jock Ferguson as the night porter let me out and him in.
‘Dex’ll explain,’ I said elliptically. I was in an elliptical frame of mind. I had another call to make. The one I dreaded most. I got back in the Atlantic and drove out to the West End, to Sheila Gainsborough’s apartment.
It was two weeks later that I met John Largo. Dex Devereaux had been as good as his word and had paid me the thousand dollars for the information, but when they had arrived at Largo’s place, he had flown the coop. He must have been warned off, Jock Ferguson had said to me, without a hint of suspicion.
Largo was waiting for me, hanging back in the shadows, as I came out of the Horsehead Bar. He kept his hand in the patch pocket of his suit jacket and I suspected he was holding something more than his change. That was okay. I understood his caution.
‘I wanted to thank you,’ he said.
‘What… for turning you in?’
‘For giving me a chance. How did you find me?’
I took out my cigarette case and offered him one. He took it with his left hand, keeping his right in his pocket.
‘You’re too sentimental,’ I said. ‘I followed you to the Lyle Hill monument. I guessed there was some connection to the Maille-Breze. So I did some checking.’
As I had explained to Devereaux in the lobby of his hotel, the Maille-Breze had been a French Navy destroyer. It had been anchored at the berthing point at the Tail of the Bank, at the mouth of the Clyde Estuary and beneath the spot where the Free French monument now stood. The Tail of the Bank had been the gathering point for the Atlantic convoys: a bustling knot of merchant vessels and their heavily armed escorts. And it had also been where the Maille-Breze had been berthed in April 1940. The French destroyer had only just set out to sea when two torpedoes were accidentally launched onto the ship’s own deck. The torpedoes had exploded midships with a force that had shattered windows in Port Glasgow and the broken vessel had blazed and smoked with many of its crew trapped in the forward mess hall. Despite the efforts of the Port Glasgow fire brigade, when the Maille-Breze eventually sank to the bottom of the Firth, it took sixty-eight of the two-hundred-strong crew with it. I had never met anyone connected to the disaster. Until now.
‘I found your name all right…’ I said. ‘I mean I found the name Alain Barnier. But it was amongst the list of missing. I had no list of survivors to check.’
‘Alain was a friend of mine.’ Largo smiled. His face looked completely different without the goatee beard. And his hair was now as dark as mine. ‘In a way, it was my way of commemorating him… keeping his name alive. But how did you trace my name?’
‘Remember the fight in Port Glasgow? A couple of nights after the French fleet was sunk at Mers-el- Kebir?’
‘Ah…’ He nodded. ‘Of course…’
‘When I first came to your offices, Miss Minto corrected me when I said the name Clement the English way. There are a lot of names that are spelt the same in French and pronounced differently.’
‘And, of course,’ he concluded the thought for me, ‘there are many words that are spelt differently but sound the same…’
‘Dex Devereaux had an informant who heard mention of your name. He just reported it how he heard it, John Largo. But when I was going through the court records, I found the statement given by Capitaine Jean Largeau of the Fusiliers Marins. After that I guessed your career must have become so colourful that you adopted the name Alain Barnier.’
‘It was prudent at the time. I have another name now. And another port. You have succeeded in making Glasgow — ’ he struggled for the right word — ‘… untenable for me.’
‘I can’t say I’m sorry about that. I don’t approve of your business, Jean.’
Largeau shrugged the same Gallic shrug that he had as Alain Barnier. ‘America is corrupt, my friend. I did not create the corruption, I merely profit from it. And I do not force these blacks to use my goods. I supply a need.’
‘They’re going to hang the gypsy boy, you know,’ I said, changing the subject. ‘The boxer, Tommy Gun Furie.’
Largeau made an expression of incomprehension.
‘For Small Change MacFarlane’s murder. He pled guilty, on his lawyer’s advice, but they’re going to hang him anyway. Which is a shame, because I don’t think he killed Small Change.’
‘Ah…’ Largeau shook his head slowly. ‘I’m afraid I’m not familiar with the case. But with these itinerant people, they are normally guilty… of something.’
We talked for a few more minutes. Two men standing chatting outside a Glasgow bar. We wished each other well and he took his hand from his pocket to shake mine. I left him standing there and drove off. When I looked in my rear-view mirror he was gone.
I don’t know why I didn’t turn Largeau in to the police, or at least why I gave him a chance of getting away before I did. I think it was probably one of those there but for the grace… moments. The war had done things to us both and I had very nearly turned out the same way.
But I hadn’t.
EPILOGUE
Maggie MacFarlane, the Merry Widow of Pollokshields, took the disappearance of Jack Collins with the same stoicism as she had her husband’s demise. I guessed I would never know just how much she knew about, or was involved with, his business dealings. Jack Collins wasn’t mentioned once when I called up to see Lorna and there seemed to be some kind of peace between the two MacFarlane women. I reckoned it had about the same chance of lasting as the new armistice in Indochina.
I told Lorna that if she needed anything, I was there for her. It was goodbye and we both knew it. She was a big girl and could look after herself — one of the things that had brought us together was that we had both been carved from the same wood — but I was beginning to question how I handled women.
Willie Sneddon coughed up my fee in full. I had gone up to see him with Singer and we had told him the whole story. Or I told him the whole story and Singer backed me up with nods every time Sneddon looked to him for confirmation. Sneddon took his losses on the chin, but made his displeasure clear when I told him what we had done with Kirkcaldy instead of handing the boxer over to him. But Sneddon was better off out of it: a few days later the papers were full of the discovery of Bobby Kirkcaldy’s body, which, they reported, had been subjected to a protracted and brutal assault. I braced myself for a visit from Jock Ferguson or, worse still, Superintendent Willie
