‘And you’re outside now?’ he asked. ‘How sure are you that Downey is in the tenement?’
‘I’m not sure at all, but I think it’s a pretty safe bet. What I need to know from you now is how you want me to handle this. If I go in there and Downey is there, and if the photographs and negatives are in there too, do you want me to promise the money and set up an exchange? Or do you want me to use direct negotiations to secure the negatives right now?’
‘I don’t approve of blackmail, Mr Lennox, no matter how it is couched. And I certainly disapprove most vehemently of anyone profiting from blackmail. I would like Mr Downey, as I mentioned, to be left in no doubt how seriously we take this matter. So I suggest you deal with this using your own, special, initiative.’
‘Understood, Mr Fraser,’ I said and hung up. As I stepped out of the kiosk, I slipped my hand into my raincoat pocket, just to check I had my own, special, initiative with me.
I decided to quell any naughtiness pretty quickly, should Frank get wound up, so by the time I knocked on the tenement flat door, I had already threaded my wrist through the leather loop of my sap.
I instantly recognized the boyish face at the door from the photograph Fraser had shown me. He was small and light framed and gazed at me apprehensively with his soft eyes. No trouble there.
‘Hello, Paul,’ I said cheerfully as I pushed past him and into the flat and checked the hall for Frank. ‘How’s the camera club?’
‘Frank!’ he shouted anxiously along the hall and his muscly boyfriend appeared through a doorway into the passageway and bounded towards me. He was a big boy, all right, so I swung my sap and caught him a textbook blow across the temple.
Frank’s muscle bounced like rubber, first against one wall in the narrow hall, then the other, before he dropped.
‘Say goodnight to the folks, Gracie,’ I said as he hit the floor.
Paul started to scream and I slapped him hard to shut him up. I grabbed him by the throat and slammed him against the wall.
‘It’s playtime, Paul,’ I said between clenched teeth. I was fired up. I had to be fired up because I hated what I was doing: Paul was no fighter and I saw nothing but raw terror in his eyes. Despite everything that I might have become, I had no appetite for picking on the weak. But this was business.
‘Now,’ I said slowly and menacingly. ‘I’m going to let go your throat, but you make nice and quiet, like you’re in a library, got it?’
He nodded furiously. Desperately.
‘Because if you don’t, you’re going to wake up in the fractures ward. Are we simpatico?’
He gave a strangled yes and I let him go. Frank was making a rattling snoring sound when he breathed, so I bent down and checked him out. I put him in the position we’d been taught in the army and the snoring stopped. While I was down there, I retrieved my business card from his trouser pocket and tried not to think that he would probably have enjoyed me searching for it if he had been conscious.
‘Is he dead?’ Downey asked, his voice high and quivering. Nice line of work, Lennox, I thought.
‘No. He’ll be fine. He might not be as bright as he was, but, hey, that’s brain damage for you. Now, listen. I reckon he’s out for a couple of minutes tops. If he starts to come round while I’m still here, I’m going to have to send him bye-byes again, understand? And that could mean he’ll spend the next fifty years pissing his pants and dribbling on his shirt. So, unless you’re not a true Glaswegian and actually do have a fondness for vegetables, you’ve got two jobs to do. The first is to put those photographs into my hands, and I mean everything: every print, every negative, everything. The second thing, and this is going to be by far the more difficult, is to convince me that I have got everything there is to get. Because, if I’m not convinced, then I’m going to get tetchy with you and Veronica here. And if I find out, after I’ve gone, that I haven’t left with everything, I will find you and your chum again, but next time I’ll come with some friends, and we’ll all have a real party.’
Again he nodded furiously and I knew from the look on his face that he would do exactly as I told him.
‘They’re in there …’ He nodded down the hall to a closed door at the far end. I grabbed him by the shirt front and heaved him down the hall, tearing the shirt in my fist. He fumbled with the keys he took from his pocket and I snatched them from him.
‘Which one?’
‘That one …’ he pointed and I saw how much his hand shook. I was beginning to get a bad feeling about this. Paul Downey just did not seem the type to mastermind this kind of blackmail scam. Nor did his boyfriend, for that matter, despite the muscles.
I opened the door and told Downey to put on the light, which he did, bathing the small room with red light. A darkroom, but my first inspection revealed it to be a swiftly improvised one. There was a table with developing materials and trays against the wall next to a small plan chest and a cupboard, and prints hung on clothes pegs from a makeshift drying line.
‘Okay, Paul, hand them over.’
He opened the cupboard and took out a shortbread tin, all red tartan and photographs of Edinburgh Castle — the Scots were the only nationality I knew that bought their own tourist tat.
I tipped out the contents: prints of the photographs Fraser had shown me and a few more, plus a blue airmail envelope stuffed with strips of acetate. The negatives. But the Macready photographs weren’t all he had in the box: there were two more sets of photographs, each partnered with a blue airmail envelope of negatives. I spread them all out on top of the plan chest. One set featured a prominent Glasgow businessman whom I recognized instantly, despite the fact he wasn’t exactly showing me his best side in the pictures. An upstanding member of the Kirk involved in charity work, which he publicized widely. In the black and white images, he appeared as a bleached mass of pale flesh in between a thin boy whom I recognized as Paul Downey and another youth.
The third set troubled me. No sex, no illegal activity, nothing that I could see would warrant payment of blackmail money. All the photographs were simple shots of a group of well-dressed men leaving what looked like a country house. The photographs had been taken from a distance and several were close-ups of one man in particular. The closeups had been taken with a zoom lens and were grainy, but from what I could see the man looked in his fifties and vaguely aristocratic in a foreign sort of way, with a goatee beard and skin that was a tone darker than his companions, even in the black and white pictures.
‘Is this everything?’ I asked Downey.
He nodded. I took a step towards him. ‘I swear!’
I looked again at the picture of the well-dressed, vaguely-aristocratic-vaguely-foreign-looking man.
‘What’s all this about?’ I asked. ‘Who is this?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Downey. He was telling the truth: I could tell from the quiver in his voice and his obvious fear that I would not be convinced by the truth. ‘I was paid to take photographs of these men. I had to hide out in the bushes. I was told to take photographs specially of the man with the goatee beard. I don’t know what it was all about.’
‘Who paid you?’
‘A man called Paisley. But I think he was working for someone else, I don’t know who. And I don’t know why anyone would pay what he paid for these photos.’
‘You’ve already delivered them?’
Downey nodded.
‘So why…?’ I nodded towards the prints and negatives.
‘We thought we could maybe make some more money out of them. There was obviously something important about these photographs and we thought there might be a chance to make a bob or two in the future.’