I went upstairs and was enveloped in a blue fug of cigarette smoke. The club was busy, with the usual mix of earnestly non-conformist types with chin beards and roll neck sweaters, trying to live the Beat lifestyle they’d started to read about in art magazines. Except they lived in Glasgow, not San Francisco or Manhattan. There was also a smattering of the usual suspects with the sharp suits and the hard look that told you that, even if you didn’t recognize them as known faces, it was better not to bump into them and spill their drinks. And there were still the businessmen, but of a different type. This version would listen to the music as earnestly as the Beat types, with God knew what going through their heads about who they should have become instead of who they were.
Don’t get me wrong, the decor and general atmosphere was still a Glaswegian painter and decorator’s concept of chic and cosmopolitan, and the environment was only slightly less sham and shoddy than the usual hostess joint, but the music and the dimmed lights lifted the tone way above the expected and gave the place an ambiance that daylight and silence would rob from it.
Martha, one of the hostesses I’d played catch-me-tickle-me with, was working the bar. She was a medium height Gene Tierney type, with dark hair, green eyes and an impressive repertoire; we exchanged a few lines before she told me that Murphy was waiting for me in a private room at the back. She frowned as she told me, in the way everyone frowns at the idea of Hammer Murphy waiting for you. She told me when she finished and asked if I wanted to come out to play, but I told her I couldn’t tonight. Even though I could. It puzzled me that I found myself thinking of Fiona White and I began to seriously worry that if I got any deeper involved with her I might catch a bad case of fidelity.
There was a Savile Row suit stuffed with muscle and latent violence in the back room. I was surprised to see Murphy was on his own — not that Michael ‘Hammer’ Murphy was someone who needed protecting, but he usually kept a couple of psychopathic goons on hand just for show.
‘Hello, Mr Murphy,’ I said. ‘Thanks for taking …’
‘Shut the fucking door …’
I shut the door and sat down opposite him.
‘Is fucking Strachan fucking dead or not?’
Murphy was not one to stretch his adjectival or adverbial vocabulary. He was a small man in height, but in every other way he projected a giant malevolent presence. He was still sporting the Ronald Colman moustache that he had the last time I’d met him and his hair was expensively and immaculately barbered. But that was as Hollywood as it got: Murphy was an ugly bastard, that was for sure. He was the only man I had ever encountered whose face looked like a deadly weapon. His nose had been broken so often it had given up all ideas of symmetry or where it should really be on his face and the small eyes were set deep into the type of padded flesh that comes from frequent exposure to fists. The man was all violence. He seethed with it. Murphy made you feel threatened just by sitting still.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘And that’s the truth. There are as many people convinced he survived the Empire Exhibition robbery as there are others who believe those were his bones at the bottom of the Clyde.’
‘Who’s fucking paying you to find out?’
‘Now you know better than that, Mr Murphy. I really can’t say, Mr Murphy. You know where I stand on client confidentiality.’
‘Aye, I suppose … And I fucking respect that about you, Lennox, I really fucking do. And I really want to save you the fucking embarrassment of betraying some cunt’s faith in you … so, here’s an idea: why don’t I get a couple of the boys to smash your fucking kneecaps to fuck so’s you can’t fucking stand anywhere on client confidentiality or fucking fuck all else.’ He paused for a moment’s sarcastic reflection, then wagged his finger. ‘I tell you what, just to keep your fucking honour in one fucking piece, we’ll do your fucking ankles and elbows as well.’
‘Isa and Violet, Strachan’s twin daughters. That’s who hired me.’ I did not for a moment feel embarrassed about folding instantly. My father had always told me to find something you were good at and make a career out of it. To say Murphy was really good at threatening physical violence, would be like saying Rembrandt was quite good at drawing.
‘What the fuck do they want to know for?’
‘They just want to know if their father is dead or not.’ I left it at that, skipping the bit about the cash dividend every anniversary of the Empire Exhibition job. Murphy was big on aggression and violence, and certainly had a kind of animal cunning about him, but he was no Einstein and I gambled he would settle for my half-truth.
He was about to say something when the door swung open. I reckoned this would be the goons now and my joints began to itch. But it wasn’t. A tall, dark-haired man walked in. He had a Cary Grant cleft in his chin and was almost as preposterously handsome as John Macready. I recognized him instantly.
‘Hello, Jonny,’ I said as I stood up and shook his hand. ‘How’s it going?’
‘Fine, Lennox …’ said Handsome Jonny Cohen as he came in and sat down next, but not close, to Murphy. ‘Just fine. And you?’
‘Can’t complain,’ I said, trying not to look too relieved at his arrival. It hadn’t seemed to surprise Murphy and I guessed they had arranged it. But I got the feeling that Cohen had arrived a little too early and it all became clear to me: Murphy had wanted to threaten and, if necessary, beat as much out of me before Jonny arrived. But Murphy knew Jonny and I were close, even if he didn’t know why. What I couldn’t get was why Murphy had summoned Cohen at such short notice.
‘Can I get you a drink?’ asked Cohen.
‘We’re not fucking here to fucking socialize,’ said Murphy. ‘Forget the fucking drink just now and let’s get down to fucking business.’
‘Business?’ I asked. ‘I just came here to ask about your involvement with Gentleman Joe Strachan …’
‘That is business, Lennox,’ said Cohen. ‘Joe Strachan still casts a long shadow in Glasgow. Michael here ’phoned me to say you wanted info about Strachan.’
Michael … I had had no idea that things were getting so cosy between them. Of the other two Kings, it had always been Willie Sneddon that Jonny Cohen had seemed to favour, often bringing Murphy to the point of reopening the gang war that the Three King Deal had been brokered to end. Now the Catholic and the Jew were on first name terms.
‘I don’t get it,’ I said. And I didn’t. ‘What’s it to you, Jonny?’
‘Michael, me and Willie Sneddon have run things in this town almost since the end of the war. We had our problems, as you know, but there’s been no trouble between us since Forty-eight. And that peace has proved very profitable for us all.’
Aye,’ said Murphy with a sneer. ‘More profitable for Willie fucking Sneddon than either of us.’
Then I saw it: Jonny Cohen fired a warning look across at his thuggish new best pal, as if Murphy had contravened an agreement they had made before meeting me. So this was what the old pals act was about. Willie Sneddon was coming out on top, as he always did with any deal, and Cohen was keeping the lid on Murphy’s resentment. But it was much, much more dangerous than that. Sneddon, the Kingpin of Kingpins, was easing himself out and into legitimate enterprise. And criminal nature abhors a vacuum.
‘Anyway, as I was saying,’ continued Cohen. ‘The three of us have done all right for ourselves. Things have been pretty good, all in all. But not one — not for a single minute during all of these years — did we stop looking over our shoulders to see if Strachan was going to make a reappearance.’