‘No. No appointment. When will he be back?’
‘You’ll need an appointment to see Mr Barnier.’
‘My eyes work just fine without an appointment. When will he be back?’
She had large, round, green eyes set into her round face and she used them to stare at me as if I had been a congenital idiot. ‘An appointment…’ She came close to the kind of syllable by syllable pronunciation favoured by Twinkletoes McBride.
‘The sign says Barnier and Clement. Is Mr Clement here?’
‘ Monsieur Clement,’ she said, correcting my pronunciation, dropping the hard ‘t’ at the end of the name and sounding it out as ‘ Clemmong’ in the way that only the Scots can murder the French language, ‘does not work here. He is based in our French office.’
‘I see…’
There was the usual hinged lid arrangement on the counter and, swinging it open, I stepped through the counter and onto her side. The round green eyes grew rounder.
‘You’re not allowed in here…’
‘I’ll wait,’ I said, and sat down behind one of the desks, pitching my hat onto a pile of papers. ‘Probably best, seeing as you can’t tell me when he’ll be back or where I could find him.’
My dumpy girlfriend with the round eyes and thin lips lifted the hatch on the counter, as if holding it open for me. ‘You can’t wait.’
‘There you go underestimating me again. I can wait. I’ve done it before. Lots of times. In fact, between you and me, I’m rather good at it.’
She picked up the telephone on her desk and dialled a number. She turned her back on me and spoke into the mouthpiece in a hushed but agitated voice. After a moment she turned and held the receiver out to me wordlessly.
I smiled cheerfully at her: we were getting on so well.
‘You are looking for me?’ The voice on the other end of the line spoke perfectly articulated English. The French accent was distinct, but not heavy.
‘Mr Barnier? I wondered if we could have a chat.’
‘A chat about what?’ No suspicion or guardedness. Just impatience.
‘I’m trying to get in contact with someone. You may be able to help me find them.’
‘Who?’
‘I’d rather we discussed this face-to-face. And as soon as possible, if you don’t mind. Where could we meet?’
‘For whom are you looking?’ he asked again, with the acquired perfect grammar of a non-native English speaker.
‘Sammy Pollock. You maybe know him as Sammy Gainsborough.’
There was a pause at his side of the connection. Then, in the same contraction-less, formal English: ‘There is something about this which suggests to me your interest is professional rather than personal, yet you did not identify yourself to Miss Minto as a police officer.’
‘That’s because I’m not. If I had it would have been impersonation. I’m not very good at impersonations. Except Maurice Chevalier, but I’m sure, as a Frenchman yourself, you’d be able to see through that one.’
‘I do not have the time for this. What is your name?’
‘Lennox. You do know Sammy Pollock, don’t you, Mr Barnier?’
‘I do. However, I do not know him well. Insufficiently well, in fact, to know anything about his whereabouts.’
‘I’d still like to talk to you, Mr Barnier.’
‘I am afraid I am too busy for this. I cannot assist you with your enquiries. And these are enquiries, are they not? I take it you are some kind of private detective?’
‘I’m just helping someone out, Mr Barnier. Sammy Pollock has gone missing and I’m trying to ascertain his state of health and whereabouts. I would be obliged if you could spare me a few minutes. There may be something you know that seems insignificant to you but that could help me track Sammy down.’
‘I am sorry. As I said I do not have the time…’
‘I quite understand. I’ll explain to Mr Cohen. It was he who suggested I speak to you.’
I got what I wanted: a small silence at the other end of the line. Barnier was putting things together in his head. Whether they came together in an accurate picture or not, I didn’t really care.
‘Do you know the Merchants’ Carvery in the city centre?’ he said at last, a sigh spun through it.
‘I know it,’ I said. The Merchants’ Carvery was a no-riff-raff kind of bar and restaurant. In a riff-raff kind of city. Barnier obviously had style and the cash to back it up. I couldn’t see someone like that being involved with Sammy Pollock. Even less with scum like Paul Costello. But it had to be checked out.
‘Meet me there at eight p.m.,’ he said. ‘In the bar.’
‘Thank you, Mr Barnier. I’ll be there.’
I drove back towards the town but before I got to the centre turned up the North road towards Aberfoyle. My head hurt, a dull, persistent throbbing in the temples and behind my eyes. Glasgow had pulled a curtain over the sun, a thin, dark-flecked veil of cloud. The temperature stayed hot, however, and the air around me seemed denser, heavier. I knew that the pain in my head was a warning of a storm coming. Getting out of the city didn’t do much to ease the oppressive air that was now playing my sinuses like an accordion. After about fifteen minutes I was up around the Mugdock area where Glasgow yielded to open countryside and scattered, expensive houses. The sun had broken through again, but the pre-storm heaviness continued to hang in the air and the sky to the west was the colour of shipyard steel.
Bobby Kirkcaldy’s place wasn’t the most expensive, but it was a huge step up from his origins in Motherwell. But then again, having a toilet indoors, and one that you didn’t have to share with four other families, was a huge step up. Truth was I quite admired Kirkcaldy as a boxer. He had started off welterweight, later moving up to middleweight but retaining a certain grace and lightness on his feet. I had seen him fight twice and it had been like watching two completely different boxers. Kirkcaldy was one of those boxers who, while probably no mental giant in any other way, seemed to possess a profound physical intelligence: a constant process of interpretation and fine re-calibration to match every move his opponent made. It was as if he could read any fighter within the first minute of a round and adapt his style to suit: if he was up against an infighter, Kirkcaldy subtly increased his range, forcing his opponent to stretch outside his preferred zone; if Kirkcaldy was up against an outfighter, he closed in with tight jabs, forcing his opposite number always backwards and onto the ropes.
One of the fights I had seen had been against Pete McQuillan. McQuillan was a slugger and bruiser; a stump of a man who struggled to stay in the middleweight bracket and in terms of style was just one step up from the pikey bare-knuckle boys. McQuillan winning a fight — and he had remained undefeated until then — depended either on a knockout, or his doing so much devastation to his opponent’s face that the referee stopped the match. Then he had been matched with Bobby Kirkcaldy. It had been an amazing thing to watch: McQuillan viciously scything empty air while Kirkcaldy had danced around him, placing stinging jabs with absolute precision. It took McQuillan to a place he’d never been before: the distance. Kirkcaldy had been the unanimous points winner. Now he was the clear favourite for the European Middleweight Championship and would be meeting the West German Jan Schmidtke.
And I would be there. I had a ticket.
The house was roughly the same size as MacFarlane’s in Pollokshields but was more recently built, maybe in the Twenties or Thirties, and it benefited from a more prestigious geography. It had also benefited from whitewash, which made it look bright and foreign in the sunlight. The front door faced south but was shielded by a Deco arch edged in earth-red brickwork. The whitewash walls beneath the red tiles and the terracotta brick detailing was an ambitious attempt to give the house an almost Mediterranean look, which in Scotland was an achievement akin to making Lon Chaney look like Clark Gable. I wasn’t sure how much of the credit should go to the architect and how much to the alien climate that seemed to have invaded the West of Scotland.