‘Bastard…’ muttered Sneddon.
‘Jackie Gillespie can’t stay hidden if all your people are looking for him. He can hide from the police, but not the Three Kings.’ I took another sip of water. I felt really sick now and wanted to stop talking. ‘I need you three to work together. We need your hardest and most experienced men on this. When we know which ship and when, then we hit the bastards. One more thing. I don’t think any of you is the sentimental type, but I’ve got to make this clear. Lillian Andrews may be a woman, but she’s as much the brains behind this as Tam. You’ve got to see her, and deal with her, the same way. That’s it.’
The room seemed to buzz with talk as Sneddon, Murphy and Jonny engaged in heated debate. I sat and felt my head throb with every beat of my pulse. I took another one of Doc Banks’s horse tablets and broke it in two, swallowing it in stages with the last of my water. I closed my eyes. There was a rush of sound from outside again as another set of traps opened and the crowd roared. Again, even with my eyes closed, everything seemed bigger and harder and sharper than it should. I imagined I could feel the fall of each paw of every greyhound. Something tidal was going on in my gut. I opened my eyes and stood up. I made my way to the door marked ‘toilets’, unnoticed by the others because they were still debating who should do what, who was in charge of whom. There was a short corridor then another door, marked ‘WC’.
I just made it. Once more I continued to retch, even after my gut was empty. When I was finished I cupped some water from the hand basin and rinsed my mouth. I reckoned that the pill had been puked up so I took another, halved it and washed it down with more tap water. I stood and rested my forehead on the cool porcelain of the tiles. I became aware I could hear the voices from the entertaining suite. Too loud. Not talking: shouting.
I headed back along the corridor and heard glass shattering, furniture breaking. Fuck. I thought I could trust them to pull together and they were ripping each other apart. I opened the door to step back into the suite but eased it shut again as quickly and quietly as I could. No one had seen me, I thought. But I had seen enough. I opened the door again a crack and peered through. Sneddon, Murphy, Jonny and their respective heavies were all on the floor, their faces shoved into the red carpet by burly Highlanders. Batons were arcing through the air and colliding with ribs, arms, heads. I saw Superintendent McNab walk calmly through the carnage. I reckoned there were at least twenty coppers crammed into the room. Half in civvies, the other half in uniform.
I backed away from the door. If I had gone out into the entertaining suite I would have got the same treatment as the others, and I reckoned another stiff blow to the head would probably be enough to finish me off. It would only be a matter of minutes before the police had everybody subdued and handcuffed. Then they would check the toilets for any stragglers.
I went back through the door marked WC and closed it behind me but didn’t lock it. There was a tall, narrow window of frosted glass beside the cistern, but high up. This is getting to be a habit, I thought to myself as I braced one foot on the toilet, the other on the wall and eased myself up, undid the catch and swung open the window. It took all that was left of my strength to haul myself up and wriggle my head and right shoulder out through the window. I found myself looking straight down at a two-storey drop onto the car park below. I continued to ease myself through, gripping the wooden frame of the window. I got a leg free and eased a foot down onto the sill. I heard voices in the hall outside the toilet. I pushed through and eased the window closed.
I was outside, but I would still be seen against the frosted glass. The sill extended a foot or so on either side of the window and I worked my way along to its end. There was no downpipe this time; no projection on the stadium’s architecture to use as a stepping stone. I turned my back to the window, remained motionless and hoped that no one would pay too much attention to the window. I heard voices in the toilet. Then nothing.
I looked down at the car park. It was getting dark but I could see the police cars and a van parked outside. There were still a few punters milling about. I felt another lurch in my gut, this time from the sight of a figure leaning against the van and smoking, wearing a peaked driver’s cap with a City of Glasgow Police chequered band around it. Don’t look up, I thought. Whatever you do, don’t look up.
I knew the coppers would come out with their captures soon and my chances of being seen would increase to the almost certain. As I was too well-dressed for a window cleaner, I decided the best thing was to climb back into the toilet. I moved as quietly as I could and slid back through the window. I could still hear voices from the entertaining suite, but, having checked the toilet once, I didn’t think they would come back.
Not so clever Lennox. The one thing I didn’t take into account, of course, was that while my place of hiding may have been checked out, it was, after all, a toilet. I only just managed to duck behind the door as it swung open and a large uniformed figure stepped through and into the cubicle. He had his back to me and was clearly unbuttoning his fly. A man is never more vulnerable than when he’s got his dick in his hand and I knew what I had to do. I couldn’t let him see me and I couldn’t be captured. I cursed inwardly and took the sap from my pocket and swung it at the back of the copper’s head. He stumbled forward but steadied himself with his hand against the wall. He wasn’t out. I swung again, harder, trying not to think what would happen to my neck if I killed a copper. He went down, his face smashing into the porcelain of the toilet bowl and splashing it with blood.
It had been quiet. Messy, but quiet. But had it been quiet enough? I stood stock still and listened for anyone approaching. Nothing. I went back along the hall. The door at the end was open and revealed the suite was empty. The copper I clobbered had obviously come back to take a leak. But he would be missed.
I moved swiftly across the suite and out onto the stairwell. Making sure that the last of the coppers was heading out of the bottom door, I ran silently down the steps and watched through a crack in the door as the police piled the Three Kings and their bodyguards into the van. The tablet I’d taken earlier had really kicked in and I was back in a Technicolor world. I saw several faces streaked with blood, glistening in the stadium lamplight that seemed to me to sparkle in the dusk.
A small crowd had gathered in the car park and was watching the proceedings. As a group of onlookers passed by the entrance to the suite, I slipped out into their number and walked into the main racing stadium.
I watched three races before I risked going back to the car park. When I did, the police cars were gone and I assumed they had not yet missed their colleague. I found a pay ’phone, made a pithy call to Greasy George and explained he had better get his Bentley and his ass into gear. I made my way to the Atlantic and drove off. I knew that when the copper with his face in the toilet came to, or was discovered, then the Three Kings would each get very special treatment to cough up who had been left behind. But I knew they wouldn’t give me up. Not through any sense of comradeship or loyalty – just because I was the only hope they had of getting out of this mess.
Some hope, I thought to myself as I looked at my face in the rear-view mirror of the Atlantic.
CHAPTER THIRTY
I’ve always considered myself a smart cookie. It’s one of these things you get smug about, having brains. Generally, I thought of myself as someone who always had an answer. Tonight, however, that answer must have been moving all over Glasgow, because I found myself driving through the city aimlessly, not seeing the streets, my bruised and drugged brain refusing to give me directions.