‘How the hell should I know? Like I said, I was just getting into the car when they jumped me.’
‘Did you get the number of the van?’
‘No,’ I lied. ‘’Fraid not.’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I have an aversion to police stations. As I walked into the St Andrew’s Street nick I felt the phantom of a farm lad’s fist on my neck. The Station-Sergeant eyed me suspiciously when I asked to speak to Detective-Inspector Ferguson. In my experience, all Station-Sergeants tended to be the same. Most of them were older coppers nearing the end of their careers, or retired to a desk for health reasons. They all wore the same weary ‘seen-it-all’ expression: it seemed to be a prerequisite to getting that little crown above your stripes that you had to be a cynical fucker. I told this particular Happy Harry that I had an appointment.
Jock Ferguson came out five minutes later and led me into his office.
‘I need a favour, Jock. I need to know who the registered owner of this vehicle is.’ I handed him a slip of paper with the number of the Bedford truck on it. I knew I was pushing my luck. Ferguson took the note and looked at it.
‘I hear you were involved in a bit of a public exhibition the other night. I take it this is the truck involved?’
I nodded.
‘Why did you tell the constable you didn’t catch the number?’
‘Delayed recall,’ I said. Ferguson didn’t laugh. ‘I wanted to keep it unofficial.’
‘And why is that? I thought you told the beat man that you reckoned they were after your car.’
‘I think it’s got something to do with the case I’m working.’
‘You know something, Lennox? I think that case is the McGahern case. If it is, you’re heading for a shitload of trouble. You were warned.’ Ferguson’s tone was neutral and I couldn’t read any threat into it. ‘Have you been poking your nose where it’s not wanted?’
‘Me? No… You know me. I’m not the curious type. But maybe someone out there thinks I’m involved because of my run-in with Frankie McGahern. It’s just that I was given a beating for some reason and they made off in that truck.’ I nodded towards the slip of paper with the number of the Bedford truck on it.
‘Okay… I’ll check it out. Give me a day.’
I had lunch at a greasy spoon place and headed back to my office. I felt a bit queasy when I arrived. It could have been the eggs I’d eaten, but it was more likely to have been the sight of an expensively tailored Willie Sneddon and a Burton-suited Twinkletoes McBride waiting for me outside the door to my office. Twinkletoes smiled at me and I felt even queasier.
‘We were in town,’ explained Sneddon. ‘I thought I’d get the latest from you.’
I unlocked my office door and let Sneddon and Twinkletoes go ahead of me.
‘There’s not much to tell,’ I said. I offered them a whisky but Sneddon turned it down for both of them. ‘But someone’s getting rattled.’ I told Sneddon about the botched attempt to snatch me on Argyle Street.
‘You recognize any of them?’ asked Sneddon.
‘No. But if it had been one of the other two Kings, they wouldn’t have sent anyone I would recognize. But that doesn’t fit. I think this is some independent outfit, maybe even something to do with McGahern’s operation. But I smell a new team in town. These guys were big and enthusiastic but really clumsy. Inexperienced.’
‘Whoever it is, they’re trying to scare you off.’ Sneddon was wearing a double-breasted mohair suit, similar to the one Hammer Murphy had been wearing the last time I saw him. He reached into his jacket pocket. For a moment I thought he was going to pull a gun. Instead he took out a gold cigarette case. A gun would probably have weighed less. He lit up.
‘No. They were trying to do more than that. They were trying to lift me off the street. Maybe they were as interested in what I could tell them as I am in what they could tell me. Or it could be that it was going to be a strictly one-way trip.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ said Sneddon. He flicked ash onto my floor. ‘That’s why I’m having Twinkletoes shadow you. Protection.’
‘I can look after myself, Mr Sneddon.’
‘I’m not offering. I’m telling.’ Sneddon’s expression darkened. ‘People know that you’re working for me, even if it’s only temporary. No one fucks about with someone who works for me. I let this go and it sends out the wrong signals. For all we know it could have been that Fenian fucker Murphy, just pushing things to see how far he can go. Twinkletoes is watching your back from now on.’ Sneddon stood up to go. Twinkletoes didn’t. ‘But listen to me good, Lennox. If I hear you’ve tried to lose him or give him the slip, then I’ll get him to give your toenails a trim. Hear me?’
‘Then I quit.’ I took the cash Sneddon had given me out of my wallet and held it out to him. ‘Your money’s all there. I can’t work the way you want me to. I talk to all sorts who would run a mile at the idea of anyone, least of all Twinkletoes, knowing they were a contact of mine. You hired me because I’m independent. Because you know that by buying my loyalty for only a short time, you’re buying it completely. I appreciate your interest in my welfare, but what I do is a risky business and I look after myself.’
Sneddon glared at me. A hardman glare. He didn’t take the money, so I dropped it onto the desk for him to pick up. We were all three standing now. Worryingly, Twinkle-toes had stopped smiling. I felt my toes wriggle involuntarily within my shoes.
‘Have it your way, Lennox.’ He picked the money up and handed it back to me. ‘It’s your neck.’
There was a pause. I spoke as much to fill the silence as anything. ‘By the way, I got the key you sent. What’s the significance?’
Sneddon looked at me blankly for a moment. ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’
I took the key out of the desk drawer I had stashed it in, and handed it to Sneddon. The tag with the address in Milngavie was still attached.
‘I didn’t send you this,’ said Sneddon.
I regretted having mentioned it. I had assumed it had been Sneddon, but it could have been Jonny Cohen or even Hammer Murphy.
‘My mistake.’ I reached out for the key but Sneddon was still examining the address tag.
‘But I think I know what this key might be for. Tam McGahern lived with his brother in a flat in the West End. You can’t get near it because it’s still lousy with cops. But there was a rumour that Tam bought another couple of places. A few months ago. One of them was a house in Milngavie. But the way I heard it was an investment. He was going to rent it out or sell it at a profit.’
‘I’ll check it out,’ I said. I looked across at Twinkletoes, who still wasn’t smiling, then back to Sneddon. ‘We’re clear that I work alone on this, Mr Sneddon?’
‘I fucking said so, didn’t I?’ He stood up. ‘But keep me completely up to date on progress, Lennox. Or I swear to God I’ll have Twinkletoes make me a necklace out of your toes.’
*
Milngavie and Bearsden sat next to each other on the north side of the Clyde and were both climbers on the Glasgow social ladder. But Milngavie, bizarrely pronounced Millguy by the locals with an odd defensive pride, was one chip-on-the-shoulder rung down from its neighbour.
I waited until evening before driving up to the address on the key tag. The house itself was one of the many anonymous bungalows built twenty years before. In this case, someone had added a dormer window in the roof, obviously converting the attic into a bedroom. If Tam McGahern had intended this to be his home, then its modesty was a comparative statement of his status in Glasgow’s crime hierarchy: in contrast to Jonny Cohen’s Newton Mearns architect-designed modernity or Willie Sneddon’s mock-baronialism, this was humble stuff indeed. It was difficult to equate a flash gangster with this suburban banality.
I parked across the street and back from the house and watched for a while. Dusk turned to dark and the lights flickered on in the windows of its neighbours, but the house remained in darkness. I waited another ten minutes before leaving the car where it was and walking across to the house. There was a wrought-iron gate which protested with a squeak as I opened it, but the neighbouring houses were far enough apart for it not to be heard. I moved quickly up the path that led through a well-tended garden and slipped the Chubb key into the lock. It fitted. I slipped into the dark of the hall.