Glasgow’s Jewish community owed its origin largely to deception: many Jewish families, escaping the nineteenth-century pogroms of Russia, had been disembarked at the Port of Glasgow and told by disingenuous ship captains that they had arrived in New York. One such family who had eagerly searched Clydebank for a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty had been the Cohen family, who had learned from bitter experience a fierce and uncompromising toughness. One grandson of the original settlers was Jonny Cohen. Handsome Jonny.
The second of the Three Kings.
I had ’phoned Jonny before coming down to see him. We arranged to meet at his home. Unlike Sneddon’s mansion, Jonny Cohen’s house was modern, designed by some up-and-coming London architect. It looked more like something you would expect to see sprawling across a lot in Beverly Hills.
There were no drainpipe-trousered hoodlums in Jonny’s drive. No hint of anything other than here resided a successful businessman and family man.
I rang the doorbell. The door was opened by a tall, tanned and dark-haired man. His face was big and hand-some with a cleft in his chin he could have carried small change in. Jonny Cohen had the kind of looks normally associated with the more masculine Hollywood leading men. They were the kind of looks that women swooned over. Pointlessly. As a husband Jonny Cohen was the model of fidelity; as a father he was loving and fiercely protective; as a gangster he was by far the most intelligent of the Three Kings. Intelligent, ruthless and highly dangerous. But hospitable.
‘Hi, Lennox,’ Jonny said in his rich baritone and beamed a bright smile at me. ‘Come on in…’
There are some people you come across in life whom you can’t help liking in spite of yourself. Jonny Cohen was exactly that type of person: you found yourself putting to one side the fact that he was a violent villain. There was no doubt that Jonny was someone you would be wise not to cross and the Cohen firm had supplied its fair share of custom to the city’s hospitals and, on the odd necessary occasion, mortuary. But according to Einstein everything is relative and in Glasgow you couldn’t hold a couple of murders against a guy’s character. And anyway, Jonny had his own code of ethics. He didn’t run loan sharks like the other two Kings; his money came from illegal gambling, prostitution and a string of restaurants and clubs. Most of all, Jonny Cohen was a robber baron: his success lay in the cruel efficiency of the armed robberies he sponsored, planned and on more than one occasion led.
Jonny showed me into a large, open-plan living room. It was populated with Modernist furniture similar to the stuff in the Andrews’s house. Again there was a television in the corner. He caught me looking at it.
‘Rachael’s idea,’ Jonny explained. ‘She nagged me to death to get one. A Ferranti T thirteen-twenty-five. Cost me fifty-eight bloody guineas. They’re going to televise Princess Elizabeth’s coronation. You got one?’
I laughed at his over-estimation of my financial clout. ‘No… it’ll never catch on. I’ll stick with the wireless.’
He invited me to sit. That was the kind of gangster Handsome Jonny Cohen was: he invited you to sit. He was an amenable kind of guy, so long as he wasn’t standing on top of a bank counter with a stocking mask to hide the film-star looks and waving a sawn-off in your face.
‘What can I do for you, Lennox?’
‘I’m looking into the Tam McGahern killing. I wondered if you could help me.’
‘I heard the police had you pegged for doing his brother.’
‘They pegged me wrong. I had a run-in with Frankie the night he was killed. He wanted me to find out who killed Tam. I told him I wasn’t interested.’
‘So why are you doing it now?’
‘I’m contrary. It’s what makes me an interesting and complex person. People in blue uniforms kept telling me I should stay out of it.’
Jonny went over to a trolley that looked like it should have been on a spaceship. He poured us both a Scotch whisky and soda. ‘So who’s paying for your time?’ he asked, as if he didn’t know.
‘Willie Sneddon.’
Jonny smiled wryly. ‘If you’re working for his outfit you’ve just increased their brainpower by a thousand per cent.’
‘I don’t work for anyone’s outfit. You know that, Jonny. But he’s hired me to do what the police can’t or won’t do.’
‘How can I help?’
I ran through most of what I knew about Tam’s killing. I also told him about Wilma Marshall’s disappearance from the sanatorium in Perth and the handsome, cheerful lug who had made himself known to me before spiriting her away. I hadn’t told Sneddon about Wilma’s conviction that the wrong twin had been shot; that meant I had to leave it out of my explanation to Jonny.
He sat for a moment and contemplated his Scotch.
‘Tam McGahern was a bad bastard. We all hurt people in this business, Lennox. But that’s what it is… business. McGahern hurt people, and worse, because he liked it. Really liked it. His brother Frankie was a bampot. Look at him the wrong way and he’d start farting fire. But that’s all he was, a nut-job. That’s why it fits him coming at you that night the way you said. But Tam was more. Tam had something going on up top. Do you know that Tam never did time? Nor did Frankie. Christ knows how many times they were both questioned but neither was ever arrested, or so much as held overnight.’
‘They weren’t in a cerebral kind of business,’ I said. ‘Loan sharking and protection rackets. If they avoided doing time then it was just down to luck.’
Jonny shook his head. ‘Luck had nothing to do with it. You would never have guessed it to look at him, but Tam McGahern was as smart as they come. Tam made it to sergeant in the Desert Rats. Got decorated. Believe it or not there was talk of him being made an officer. Story goes that when he was in the army this head-quack tested Tam’s IQ and it came out astronomical. But the same psychologist kiboshed Tam’s promotion chances by putting on record that he reckoned he was a complete fucking psycho. There again, we all knew that. Tam always enjoyed hurting people that little bit too much and it often got in the way of his judgement. But the truth is he was really sharp and was slowly becoming a bit of a threat. Anyone can be a hoodlum. But some hoodlums graduate out of the streets – instead of just kicking the shite out of everything and hoping it bleeds money, they start to think things through. To plan. To come up with schemes. That’s what was happening with Tam McGahern.’ Jonny drained his Scotch and got up to pour himself another. I shook my head when he nodded towards my glass. He paused thoughtfully before continuing. ‘Did Sneddon tell you that the three of us got together to talk about Tam McGahern?’
‘No. He didn’t,’ I said.
‘I’m not surprised. I don’t want to confuse things, but we did have a sit down to discuss whether we needed to do something about Tam. Something permanent, if you know what I mean. The alternative was to accept that one day Tam might have become powerful enough to constitute a threat to the Kings.’
‘What was decided?’
‘To leave him alone for the meantime. So long as the threat was contained. Tam knew not to step out of line or he’d get squashed.’
‘Maybe one of the other Kings decided to deal with the problem alone.’
‘Well, I didn’t do it. I don’t see Sneddon hiring you to poke about in this if he had arranged it. Even if he contracted a hit from out of town. And Murphy… Hammer Murphy is incapable of doing anything with discretion or subtlety. If he had done either McGahern, we would all know about it.’