I wrote Sammy’s full name in my notebook. ‘When did you last see Sammy?’
‘Lunch at the Tea Rooms, a week past Saturday.’
‘What about friends… girls… people he used to hang around with? And you said he has been associating with a bad crowd. Can you put any names to them?’
‘He has this friend, Barnier. A Frenchman. Sammy mentioned him a couple of times. I think they were friends, but it could have been a business thing.’
‘First name?’
She shook her head. ‘Sammy always just called him Barnier. There can’t be that many Frenchies in Glasgow.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘They probably come here in their droves for the cuisine.’ We both smiled. ‘Anyone else?’
‘I was at his flat one day and he got a telephone call from a girl. They sounded intimate. All I got was her first name. Claire. But there were a couple of guys he knew who I really didn’t like the look of. Rough types.’
‘Names?’
‘Sorry. I only saw them once, waiting for Sammy outside the club. They had the look as if… I don’t know… as if they didn’t want to be seen. But they were a shiftless sort. Late twenties, one about five-eight with dark hair, the other maybe an inch shorter with sandy hair. The one with the dark hair has a scar on his forehead. Shaped like a crescent.’
I sat and looked at her, deep in thought. She looked back eagerly, obviously reassured that she had provoked some deep, investigative cogitations. What I was really thinking about was what it would be like to bend her over my desk.
‘Okay. Thanks,’ I said once the picture was complete. ‘Would it be possible for us to go to your brother’s flat… have a look around?’
She looked at her watch. ‘I need to be on the sleeper to London tonight. I’ve a lot to do beforehand. Could we go now?’
I stood up and smiled. ‘My car is around the corner.’
The Atlantic had been sitting in the sun and I rolled down the windows before holding the door open for Sheila Gainsborough to get in. I found myself casting an eye up and down the street in the desperate hope that someone — anyone — I knew was there to see me let this beautiful, rich and famous woman into my car. Two youths passed without noticing, followed by an old man wearing a flat cap and, despite the temperature, a heavy, thick, dark blue jacket and a neckerchief tied at his throat. He paused only to spit profusely on the pavement. I didn’t take it as a sign of his being impressed.
Even with the windows open, the car was stifling; the air heady in its confines: hot wood and leather mingled with the lavender from Sheila’s perfume and a vague hint of a musky odour from her body.
Sammy Pollock’s flat was on the west side of the city centre, but not quite the West End. We drove without speaking along Sauchiehall Street to where the numbers started to climb into the thousands and she told me to turn right. A ribbon of park broke up the ranks of three-storey Georgian terraces. There were some kids playing on the grass and mothers, prams parked beside them, sat indolently on the park benches, beaten listless by summer heat and motherhood.
Pollock’s apartment was actually over two levels of one of the semi-grand stone terraces. At one time the terrace would have gleamed golden sandstone. A once brightly coloured arch of stained glass and lead work sat above the door, almost Viennese: Charles Rennie Mackintosh style or similar. But Glasgow was a city of ceaseless work. Dirty work. The unending belchings of smoke and soot had blackened the stone and dulled the glass. It was like seeing a parson in frock coat and breeches after he’d been sent down a mine for a few shifts.
‘You’ve always had a key?’ I asked Sheila as she unlocked the door.
She sighed. ‘Look, Mr Lennox, I can tell you’ve guessed the set-up. I own the flat. I own it, I furnished it and I let Sammy stay in it. I also give him an allowance.’
‘How old is Sammy?’
‘Twenty-three.’
‘I see,’ I said. I thought of a twenty-three-year-old being handed everything by a sister who, herself, had yet to hit thirty. I thought about when I had been twenty-three, fighting my way through Europe with only a vague hope that I’d make it to twenty-four. Sammy Pollock was only thirteen years younger than me, but he was a completely different generation. Lived in a different world.
She read my mind. ‘You disapprove of Sammy’s way of life?’
‘I envy Sammy’s way of life. I wish I’d had it when I was his age. You’re a very generous sister.’
‘You have to understand something…’ Letting her hand rest on the door handle, she looked at me earnestly with the bright blue eyes. ‘I’m five years older than Sammy. Our parents are both dead and I’m… well, I feel responsible for my brother. And I’ve been lucky. Got the breaks. And that’s put me in the position to help the only person I care about in the world. Sammy’s not a bad kid. He’s just a bit silly at times. Immature. I’m just worried that he’s got himself in with a bad crowd. Got into trouble.’
‘I understand.’ I nodded to the door she still held shut. ‘Shall we?’
‘Someone’s been here.’ It was the first thing she said when we walked into the living room. Sure enough, the place was a mess. Some of the mess was clearly bachelor living at its best — over-full ashtrays, sticky-bottomed beer bottles, and whisky glasses bonding maliciously with the expensive walnut of the side tables, a jacket tossed carelessly on an armchair, a couple of dirty plates and a coffee cup. It was a vernacular I was familiar with myself. But there was another dimension to the disorder, a third-party, purposeful element. Like someone had been looking for something, and in a hurry.
‘Sammy?’ Sheila called out and moved urgently across the living room towards the hall. I took a couple of steps and halted her progress with a hand on her arm. The skin was warm; moist beneath my fingertips.
‘Let me have a look,’ I said. ‘You wait here.’ I had already closed my hand around the leather-dressed spring-steel sap I carried in my pocket. When I was in the hall and out of Sheila’s sight, I took the sap out.
‘Mr Pollock?’ Nothing. ‘Hello?’
I moved along the hall. An ivory-coloured telephone sat on a chest-high hallstand, another full ashtray beside it. I noticed some of the butts were filters, not something you saw a lot of, and they were rimmed with crimson lipstick. I slipped one into my pocket. I moved on, checking each of the rooms as I passed. The flat was bright and expensively furnished, but each room had been turned over, with papers and other debris scattered all over the floors. I climbed the stairs and found the same on the upper floor. I came to Pollock’s bedroom. More clutter strewn across the floor. Something shiny caught my eye, glittering in the sunshine. Once I was sure we were the only ones in the flat, I called down and asked Sheila to come upstairs.
‘You said you were sure someone has been in here. I take it the flat wasn’t like this when you were last here?’
She shook her head. ‘Sammy was never house-proud, but not this… this looks like he’s been burgled.’
I nodded to the bedside cabinet. There was a lead crystal ashtray and a brick of a gold table lighter. ‘No house breaker is going to leave without that in their pocket. This hasn’t been a burglary, this was a search.’ I bent down and picked up from the floor the shiny item that had caught my eye. It was a small, polished, steel-hinged box, lying open on the floor. I looked around my feet and found the contents that had spilled out.
‘Does your brother have any medical condition I should know about?’ I placed the syringe and needle back in the metal box and held them out for Sheila to see. ‘Is he diabetic?’
Sheila looked at the box and her expression darkened. ‘No. He doesn’t have any medical condition.’
‘But this means something to you?’ I asked.
She looked at me hard for a moment before answering. ‘I’ve been around a lot of musicians. It’s part of my job. Musicians and artists
… well, they experiment with stuff.’
‘Narcotics?’
‘Yes. But I don’t think… or at least I’ve never had any reason to think that Sammy would be involved in that kind of nonsense.’
For a moment, we both gazed silently at the metal syringe box in my hands, as if it would surrender its secrets to us if we stared at it long enough.
‘It could have been Sammy himself, of course,’ I said. I could have sounded more convincing. ‘Maybe he came
