I hesitated for a moment. I didn’t know what I expected the outcome of my one-man crusade to be. Somewhere I still hoped that my chum the Fred MacMurray lookalike and his Mossad pals would come galloping to my rescue, like the US cavalry in yarmulkes. After all, the whole point of our encounter in Perth was to let me know they were there, if I ever got around to working it out for myself.
I looked impotently at the Webley in my hand. Oh well, Lennox, I thought, no one lives for ever. At least my headache would go away. I stole around and pushed the door open enough to see in.
There were two levels to the warehouse and I saw the back of the officer type disappear up the metal stairs to the upper floor. There was no one on the ground floor, but a couple of crates sat in the middle of the vast space. I guessed they had been offloaded at random from the lorry for the buyers to check the merchandise.
I crept over to the crates, laid my Webley on top of one and picked up the crowbar that had been leaning against them. I was doing well to get this far, I thought. The moment was spoiled by something cold, hard and barrel-like being jabbed into the base of my neck.
‘Don’t move, Mr Lennox.’ I recognized the accent as Dutch. ‘I am an expert at executing people with a neck shot.’
I raised my hands. Someone snatched the Webley away.
‘Turn around.’
I did as I was told and came face to face with a tall, heavily built man immaculately and expensively dressed. The Fat Dutchman. There was a smaller, darker man next to him. The other Arab. He had my Webley in his hand and was staring at me expressionlessly. He could have been day-dreaming about violating a marquess’s daughter, for all I could tell from his face. The unpleasant thought that he might actually be day-dreaming about violating me flashed through my mind and I turned back to the fat boy.
‘He isn’t your usual stooge, is he?’ I asked. ‘Don’t you usually hang about with Peter Lorre?’
Fat Boy didn’t laugh. To be fair, he looked nothing like Sidney Greenstreet.
‘You are not half as funny as you like to think you are, Mr Lennox.’ The fat man spoke English with a typically sibilant Dutch accent. I had spent quite a bit of time in Holland at the end of the war. Enough to develop one hell of a respect for a people who’d had the crap kicked out of them, been starved half to death, then simply rolled up their sleeves and got on with the business of rebuilding their country. Probably came from centuries of fighting back the sea, as they had had to in the big North Sea flood a few months back. I liked the Dutch. I so hoped I wasn’t about to become disillusioned.
‘Why don’t you and Dusky here put the guns down, Tulip-sucker, and I’ll amuse the shit out of you both.’ Unfortunately, ‘Tulip-sucker’ was the best I could do: it’s hard to insult a Dutchman and I’d had a trying couple of days. He didn’t respond. ‘So you’re De Jong?’ I said. Again no response but I could tell he hadn’t expected me to know his name. ‘Former Nazi-collaborator and member of the fourth SS Volunteer Brigade Netherlands. Am I right?’
De Jong frowned. I’d hit the target. He was now trying to work out how I knew so much about him. Truth was that I had guessed from his crack about his expertise with the neck shot: there hadn’t been enough enthusiastic Dutch collaborators to make up any more than the one SS brigade. In the meantime, his curiosity might buy me a little more breathing time.
‘Upstairs…’ De Jong ordered and nodded towards the metal stairway.
When I got to the top there were three people waiting: Lillian Andrews, the officer-type and a man I’d never seen before. Not that it would be easy to recognize him, the state his face was in. He was blond with prominent ears and that was about all you could see: his nose and jaw were concealed by surgical dressings and what was visible of his face was puffed up in angry swellings. The bandaged man cradled a sawn-off shotgun in his arms. The Dutchman laid a large canvas military holdall on the floor.
‘It’s all there,’ said De Jong. ‘Half the money. I’ve inspected the goods and I’m satisfied.’
‘What the fuck is going on?’ asked the blond man in the bandages, looking at me through puffy eyelids. I’d maybe never seen him before, but this wasn’t the first time I’d heard him speak.
‘Nice job, McGahern, or it will be when it heals. Pity about the ears, though…’ I said. ‘Or did radar come as part of the package?’ McGahern clearly didn’t rate my critical opinion as much as I hoped. He ignored me and looked back at the Dutchman.
‘I’ll tell you what is going on,’ said De Jong. ‘Your security is worthless. We found him downstairs sniffing around the samples-’
‘ Sniffing and samples,’ I said helpfully. ‘Not shniffing and shamples. Whatever you do, don’t order me to sit.’ Actually, the Dutchman’s English wasn’t that bad: he was easier to understand than most Glaswegians.
McGahern laughed at my joke. Then he swung the shotgun upwards and slashed me across the face with the barrels. My cheek split and I went down. It was as if all the pain in my head had been asleep and the blow to my face had woken it up. I stayed down but the Arab grabbed me under my arm and hauled me up.
‘That’s for outside the Horsehead Bar,’ said McGahern.
I held the back of my hand to my bleeding cheek and checked my jaw was still working. I examined McGahern. From what I could see through the bandages, the whole architecture of the face had been altered. Even his lips were fuller. But changing someone’s eyes was a tougher job and I recognized the same hard, rat-eyed stare from our previous encounter.
‘You got what you wanted, didn’t you?’ I said, but McGahern ignored me.
‘What I want to know is how he knows so much about me,’ said the Dutchman. ‘My name. My background.’
McGahern looked at me then shook his head. ‘He doesn’t know nothing. Kill him.’
‘I know it all. Or almost all. I know about De Jong here and his two Arab pals. Of course he’s down to one now. I helped his other dusky chum out with a change of career. He’s applying for the post of Chief Eunuch of the Harem now. And I know all about the set up you had running for a year. The shipments to Aqaba. I know about Parks and Smails.’ I turned back to the Dutchman. ‘That was your handiwork, wasn’t it? Or more accurately it was the Son of the Sheik here that did it… or his cousin before he started singing soprano. You panicked when McGahern killed John Andrews and then Lillian dropped out of sight. You knew Parks was a partner so you tortured him to find out what was going on. Smails got it afterwards, when you two had kissed and made up. A favour for McGahern to make up for Parks, I’d guess. And I know all about Alexander Knox and your army chum here. How am I doing, so far?’
‘You’re doing fine,’ said Lillian. She had been standing to one side smoking a cigarette and watching. She dropped the cigarette and crushed it with the toe of her black velvet court shoe. ‘But this is all guesswork. A yarn you’re spinning to save your neck.’
‘Oh yeah? Tell that to the Mossad boys when they get here.’
Three blank faces looked back at me. But I could tell that had shaken them.
‘We’ve got Jackie Gillespie,’ I said. ‘He’s making quite a recovery. Your aim ain’t what it used to be, McGahern.’
‘Bollocks,’ said McGahern. ‘Now I know you’re lying.’
‘Really? Then how come I know that the two soldiers didn’t die in an exchange of fire? That they were a couple of scared teenage conscripts and you executed them then shot Gillespie immediately after, trying to catch him unawares? You got him in the right side, didn’t you?’