‘So where does that leave you?’
‘Tracking down the blackmailer. Paul Downey. Believe it or not, Miss Bryson, this city is a tough place to stay hidden in. And I’ve got the kind of contacts who can tell me exactly where to look.’
‘So why haven’t you spoken to these contacts? Shouldn’t you be bumping into more mysterious objects in the smog, instead of sitting here?’
‘It’s not as simple as that. These contacts I have are, to be frank, criminals. If there’s a crooked way of making a buck, then these guys have done it. With something as delicate as this, I have to be careful about what I say and to whom.’ I noticed she had finished her daiquiri and beckoned to the waiter. ‘May I get you another?’
‘No.’ When the waiter came over she ignored my protests and told him to put the drinks on her room bill. ‘I’ll ask reception to give you the key for the room.’
‘Fine, thanks,’ I said. ‘I’ll nip over to my office, if I can find it in the fog, and pick up my bags.’
‘Bags?’ She arched an eyebrow.
‘I keep some stuff in my office.’
It was a lame answer and she saw through it. I could see her reappraising the wound on my cheek.
‘Mr Lennox, I do hope that we can rely on you. I have to tell you that I was not in favour of you being hired. From what Mr Fraser told us about you, you have a lot of colour in your background. I wouldn’t like to think that that colour could interfere with you sorting this mess out for us.’
‘It won’t. For your information, Miss Bryson, it is exactly that colour that could lead me to Downey and the photographs. May I ask you a question?’
She shrugged.
‘What is it about me that you dislike so intensely?’
‘I’ve not given you that amount of thought, Mr Lennox. But if you’re going to push me on it, there isn’t anything in particular I dislike about you. It’s probably true to say that I dislike everything about you.’
I smiled. ‘How wonderfully simple yet all-embracing.’
‘I think you have made all kinds of judgements about John. You think of him as less of a man because of what he is. Well, I can tell you that John Macready is more of a man than you’ll ever be. I can tell to look at you the type you are. Arrogant, pushy, violent. You use women and have no conscience about it. You had only met me for a few minutes and you tried your moves on me. Men like you make me sick.’
‘I see,’ I said and drained my drink. ‘If I ask you for a reference after this job is over, would you mind awfully leaving that bit out?’
She laughed, but it was a twisted laugh full of distaste. ‘And you think you’re so funny. So smart. Well, make sure you’re smart enough to sort this mess out, because I’m going to make sure you don’t get a penny more until you do. Good night, Mr Lennox.’ Turning abruptly, she marched out of the lounge.
I stood there, somewhat stung by her comprehensive character assassination of me.
But it didn’t stop me watching her ass as she walked off.
I brought my cases over from my office and a porter carried them up to the room for me. I tipped him too much as I always tended to do when dealing with Glaswegians. They always chatted and joked with you, and the fact that they weren’t doing it for the tip, just because it was in their nature, always made you tip more.
The room was a smaller encapsulation of the luxury I’d seen in Macready’s suite and I decided, not for the first time, that I was definitely in the wrong business. Once I was alone, I locked the door and slid the heavy safety chain into place. Opening my suitcases, I took out the bundle and the copy of The Shape of Things to Come and laid them on the bed. I unwrapped the shirt and the oilskin from the bundle and took out the heavy, top-break Webley thirty-eight and the box of ammunition. After I’d loaded it, I thumbed down the safety, rewrapped it in the oilskin and shirt and put it back in the case. I spent more time with the copy of H.G. Wells’s chef d’oeuvre. I opened it and checked the contents: the pages had been hollowed out and in it were tightly rolled fifty-pound notes and a small bag with a handful of diamonds.
This was my Nibelungengold. It had started off with the money I had made in Germany. I had been lucky to get out of the occupation zone with it: the military police had neither understood nor appreciated my spirit of private enterprise or my trailblazing in establishing post-war trading partnerships with the Germans. Then, while I had been in Glasgow, I had been able to add to my little trust fund significantly, given the fact that the people I had been working for were not the most assiduous bookkeepers. Between us, we had eased the taxman’s workload significantly.
My move out of my digs, temporary or otherwise, had not been the main reason for me bringing my leather-bound trust fund with me: I had, for a long time, worried about the security of keeping it in my digs. I couldn’t put it in a bank without the inland revenue taking notice, and carrying it around in a suitcase or keeping it in my office were not viable options either. However, since I had been doing the wages run, I had opened a business account with the commercial house who banked the wages cash. I had also rented a safety deposit box. I was due to do the run tomorrow, and I decided to deposit the gun and the cash in the box.
But I might just pick up the gun again after the run.
After I had hung up my suits, I locked both cases, the gun and the cash in one, shut them in the wardrobe and went back down to the bar. I spent an hour and a half smoking, drinking bourbon — which was good, but clearly wasn’t of the calibre of the whiskey Macready had served me — and talked semi-drunken crap to the bartender. This was a better class of bar and bartender, so I made an effort to talk a better class of semi-drunken crap, and he did a pretty good impression of being interested. I had a great deal of admiration for bartenders and their unique skills.
I returned to my room before I started to see in plural, stripped down to my trousers and undershirt, washed my face, lay down on the expensive candlewick and smoked some more.
I must have dozed off. I woke up suddenly and had that wave of nausea you get when you’ve surfaced too quickly from a fathom of sleep. I sat up, swinging my legs off the bed, still not knowing what it had been that had woken me. My head was throbbing and my mouth felt furry. I heard it again: a knock at the door. Soft, but not tentative.
For a split second I thought about getting my gun from the case in the wardrobe, but elected for the sap that I’d slipped under the pillow. I couldn’t see how my chum from the smog could have traced me to the hotel.
‘Who is it?’ I slipped the chain from its housing and placed one hand on the latch, while the other hung at my side, weighted by the sap.
‘It’s me. Leonora Bryson.’
I opened the door and she stepped in. She was in her dressing gown.
‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘Is something wrong? Has something happened?’
She closed the door behind her and, unsmiling, pushed me back into the room. As I stood there, she unfastened the gown and let it slip from her shoulders. She was naked underneath. The natural detective in me guessed we weren’t going to discuss the case again. Leonora Bryson’s body was a work of art in a way that made Michelangelo’s efforts look shoddy. Every part of her was faultlessly, firmly, shaped. I found myself staring at her perfect breasts.
‘I don’t understand …’ I said, still failing to make eye contact. I perhaps should have stopped staring at her breasts, but, having been presented with them, it somehow would have seemed churlish or unappreciative not to: like being in the Sistine Chapel and refusing to look up at the ceiling.
‘Don’t talk,’ she said, still unsmiling. ‘I don’t want you to talk.’ She closed the distance between us and fastened her mouth on mine, pushing in with her tongue, making her command redundant. I was totally confused by what was happening, but decided to go along with it. I’m obliging that way.