‘I didn’t say I thought that. I’ve just been asked to make sure. And I just wanted to talk to Billy Dunbar about it and thought you might have a more up to date address for him.’
‘Leave Billy out of it,’ said Sneddon. ‘He was a good bloke. Someone you could trust. But he went straight fucking years ago and just wanted left alone. The coppers gave him the hiding of his life and he didn’t tell them anything. I mean, they get handy with their fists a lot of the time, but this was different. What they did to Billy, and a few others, was nothing less than fucking torture. But there wasn’t nothing for him to tell.’
‘I see. So you don’t know where I could find him?’
‘How many fucking times do I have to tell you?’
I stood up. ‘Sorry to disturb you, Mr Sneddon.’
Sneddon said nothing and remained seated. I made my way back to the door.
‘You want my opinion?’ Sneddon called across an acre of Axminster. I turned.
‘About what?’
‘About how the government could resolve the Cyprus crisis … what the fuck do you think about, for fuck’s sake? About Gentleman Joe Strachan.’
‘Okay …’ I said tentatively.
‘Whoever it was they found at the bottom of the river, it wasn’t Gentleman Joe Strachan.’
‘Why do you say that? I thought you said you didn’t know him, so what makes you think it’s not him they found?’
‘I took his place, Lennox. If Joe Strachan hadn’t disappeared it would be him sitting here, not me. He was a fucking legend in this town. And the Empire Exhibition robbery is the kind of job that every gobshite dreams of pulling off. Textbook stuff.’
‘Except the fact that a copper was blown away,’ I said, trying to imagine what textbooks Glasgow criminals read.
‘Aye … that’s where it all went tits up. Listen, Lennox, I took over all of Strachan’s operations after the war, or at least the ones we knew about. That guy was all planning. And brains. So I can put myself in his place — because I have put myself in his place, if you know what I mean. So let’s say I’m Gentleman Joe … there I am, I’ve just pulled off three of the biggest fucking robberies ever, and, like you say, the last one’s left a copper dead. Even if the bobby hadn’t been killed, the coppers are going to be after you like shite off a shirt tail. Matter of pride, you see: no copper wants his patch to go down in history for the biggest job pulled successfully.
‘So, like I say, there I am, having pulled this job, with a stack of cash that doesn’t need laundered and fuck knows what else from the security van. But I’ve done a copper so I am fucked as far as Glasgow’s concerned. I’ve got three men with me on the job. Maybes it was one of them that done the copper, maybes it was me. Anyway, I’m the only name the cops are likely to have, so I divide up the loot, taking a bigger share for myself, because I’ve got to start somewhere new. Maybes one of the others kicks up about it, so I top him, dress him up in my clobber, shove the initialled cigarette case that I’m never seen without in his pocket and dump him in the river. If he isn’t found, fine. If he is, the cops think that there’s no point to keep on looking for me.’
‘You’ve certainly thought this one through, Mr Sneddon,’ I said.
‘Aye, I have. I got my chance because Strachan dropped out. So aye, I’ve thought it through. Mainly because I’ve always had half an eye on the bastard resurfacing, but not in the way those bones did. But now …’ He held his arms wide to indicate his surroundings. ‘Now I’m putting all of that behind me. I’m a businessman now, Lennox. I’ve got kids who’ll be able to take all of this over without having to take the shite the police have tried to give me over the years. So if Gentleman Joe Strachan comes back from the grave, then it’s Murphy’s and Cohen’s lookout, not mine.’
‘You’re that sure that he’s not dead?’
Sneddon shrugged. ‘Like I said, I never met him. Didn’t know him. But what I knew about him makes me think he was too slippery a shite to end up topped by one of his own. Too slippery and too dangerous. By the way, I don’t think Billy Dunbar ever had anything to do with him either. So you’re barking up the wrong tree there as well.’
‘Well, thanks for your time, Mr Sneddon,’ I said. ‘Like I said, I just thought you might be able to point me to Dunbar.’
‘Well I can’t, so fuck off.’
I left Sneddon in his palace of commerce, wondering if he concluded meetings with the Rotary Club in the same way.
Glasgow had three main railway stations, each a gargantuan Victorian edifice: Queen Street, St Enoch’s and Central Stations were all within walking distance of each other but divided the nation’s destinations between them. If all roads led to Rome, then all railroads led to Glasgow city centre. Each of the stations was connected to its equivalent in London, binding the two most important cities in the British Empire together: Queen Street ran the service to King’s Cross, St Enoch’s to St Pancras, and Central Station ran the Euston connection. And each station had a huge, grand hotel attached to it.
My offices were directly across Gordon Street from Central Station and the dark, grandiose mass of the Central Hotel that was stone-fused into it. The Central Hotel was the kind of place where you were more likely to bump into a movie star or minor royalty than the average Glasgow punter; which was ironic, given that I was going to question a movie star about his bumping into minor royalty. The Central Hotel had had personages as stellar as Winston Churchill, Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly under its roof; not to mention Roy Rogers and Trigger. Trigger, apparently, had had a suite to himself.
The receptionist ’phoned up to Macready’s suite and I was asked to wait until someone came down for me, so I cooled my heels in the hotel lobby. At least I was cooling them on expensive marble.
When I had telephoned from my office to arrange the meeting, I had spoken to a young woman with an American accent and enough frost in her voice to make the Ice Age seem balmy. She had been expecting my call, obviously having been prepped by Fraser.
I had just sunk up to my armpits in red leather and was reading a newspaper when I heard the same frosty tone. When I looked up I found myself in the full frigid glare of a Nordic goddess of about twenty-five … and thirty-six-twenty-four-thirty-four. Her pale blonde hair looked more natural than permed and the full, deep-red lipsticked lips accentuated the Prussian blue of her eyes. She was dressed in a grey business suit and white blouse and was all curve and legs so long I was surprised when they stopped at the ground. I found myself staring at her figure. She found me staring at it too and the frost in the pale blue eyes dropped a few degrees more.
‘Mr Lennox?’ she asked, with only slightly less distaste than if she had sunk a stiletto heel into dog droppings.
‘I’m Lennox,’ I said, and somehow resisted adding and I’m your slave forever.
‘I’m Leonora Bryson, Mr Macready’s assistant.’
‘Lucky Mr Macready …’ I smiled a smile a wolf would have thought uncouth and fought my way out of the red leather armchair.
‘Follow me, Mr Lennox,’ she said and turned on her heel.
She had made it sound like a command, but the truth was that following her could easily have become my second favourite pastime. She had a narrow waist which emphasized the swell of her thighs and ass. And I use swell in every sense of the word. I was disappointed when we reached the elevator and the lift man slid the concertina door open for us to enter. He was a stunted little Glaswegian with a drawn, dour face, but he held my gaze for a split second as Miss Bryson entered the lift. Oh, I know, pilgrim, I thought as we exchanged the look. I know.
When we got out, Leonora Bryson led me along a labyrinth of corridors lined with expensive wood panelling. I wasn’t worried about finding my way back: I would simply follow the trail of drool I was leaving behind. The doors to the rooms we passed were so widely spaced that you could tell that these were the hotel’s suites. Stopping at one of the doors, she swung open a hundred pounds of oak without knocking and we stepped into a room so big that just a Glasgow mile and a half away it would be expected to house three families. That was the thing about Glasgow that had always struck me most: not just that there was a huge chasm between rich and poor, which was something you found in just about every British city, but that Glasgow seemed to do it on a bigger, louder, cruder scale. Wealth here was un-Britishly ostentatious and brash as if trying to out-shout the deafening poverty all around it. I was no Red, but, despite old Uncle Clem’s very British post-war welfare revolution, sometimes the injustice of it all really got to me.