I drove out of Dennistoun and had lunch — if you could call it that — at the Horsehead Bar. I ordered a pie and a pint and while I was proving valid the scientific principle that oil and water don’t mix, I spotted Joe Gallagher, a journalist friend, at the other side of the bar. I use the word friend loosely, not just in terms of this guy, but generally for the acquaintances I had made in Glasgow since I first arrived in the city. Drinking buddy would have been a better description in Joe’s case.
The price of information from journos is much cheaper than cops on the take. Usually a pint and a whisky chaser opens the channels of communication, so I made my way round to Joe’s side of the bar and asked him what he was having.
I left half an hour later. My newspaper chum had told me that he had interviewed Kirkcaldy on a couple of occasions. Smart kid, in Joe’s opinion. He had mentioned the battered old minder who seemed always to be at Kirkcaldy’s shoulder.
‘Yeah… calls him his uncle, I believe…’ I had said.
‘Some uncle,’ Joe had muttered. ‘That’s Bert Soutar. Bad sort.’
It was eight-thirty on the dot. I pulled into the long, uphill drive that led through gardens dense with thick, glossy-leaved shrubs and trees and up to Sneddon’s mansion. It was a pleasant evening. The deepening blue of the sky didn’t seem to suit as a backdrop for the Victorian architecture of Sneddon’s place. Gothic and the normal Scottish climate — and the Scottish character — were meant for each other. Even Sneddon’s black Bentley R-type seemed to lurk on the drive; I parked behind it and went up to the house, half-expecting Vincent Price to answer the door and ask me in to see his waxworks. Vincent Price would have been good: my ring of the bell was answered by Singer opening the door and silently standing to one side to let me into the hall.
Sneddon didn’t do his usual trick of keeping me waiting and I was led into his study. The bookshelved walls were heavy with learning and the room had a rich smell of walnut and leather. I somehow didn’t think that Sneddon spent much time in here acquainting himself with literature.
‘You got something for me already?’ Sneddon sat down behind a tree-and-a-half of desk. I’d seen smaller aircraft carriers. He was wearing a well-tailored blue pinstripe three-piece with a handmade white and blue striped silk shirt, and a pale and plum red tie. It could have been the outfit of a Surrey stock-broker, but all it did was emphasize the razor scar and the hard, vicious face behind it.
‘I saw Kirkcaldy yesterday,’ I said.
‘And?’
‘There’s nothing for me to go on. He can’t tell me anything. This is a watch and wait job. You’ve got to catch whoever’s doing this in the act.’
‘So watch and wait.’
‘I can’t be there twenty-four hours a day. And I would have thought that you’d maybe want a couple of your guys to be there to mete out some extemporary retribution when they do show up again.’
‘I hired you because I want you to find out what’s going on. I mean what’s really going on.’ Sneddon’s hard blue-grey eyes were fixed on mine, as if trying to communicate a deeper meaning.
‘I see. So Jonny Cohen’s not the only one who thinks there’s something more to this.’
Sneddon looked over my shoulder and past me, jerking his head in a gesture of dismissal. I turned and saw that Singer had been standing, silently of course, by the door. I had thought he’d left us alone after he’d shown us in, so if he’d been lurking for my benefit, then it had been a wasted effort.
‘I’ve got a lot of fucking money riding on Kirkcaldy,’ Sneddon said after Singer had left, closing the heavy door behind him. ‘More than you can imagine. What did he tell you?’
Referring to my notebook, I ran through the facts as Kirkcaldy had related them to me. When I had finished and closed the notebook, Sneddon kept his hard eyes on me. He raised a questioning eyebrow.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘You want to know what I think, rather than what I found out. All right… Bobby Kirkcaldy went out of his way, several times, to tell me that I was wasting my time. That it was no big deal. He positively leapt on the notion that this was all just some bollocks to put him off his game before the big fight. And he reassured me that it would do no such thing.’
‘So?’
‘It was like he wanted to brush the whole thing off. Brush me off. How did you find out about this anyway? Did Kirkcaldy tell you?’
‘No, he didn’t. His manager told me.’
‘And Kirkcaldy had complained to him about it?’
‘No, as a matter of fact.’ Sneddon’s face remained impassive. ‘His manager turned up at the house and saw the car covered in red paint. He asked Bobby what was going on and got the same tale you did.’
‘Yeah…’ I offered Sneddon a cigarette. He shook his head impatiently. I took my time lighting mine. ‘Kirkcaldy is very dismissive about the whole thing. I asked him if it could be something personal — a grudge, an old enemy from the past, that kind of thing, and not related to the fight — he made a big show of thinking about it before telling me he couldn’t think of anybody. Now if it were me and someone was leaving dead birds, nooses and crap like that on my doorstep, I think I would already have done a lot of thinking about anyone who might have an old grudge to settle. I don’t think I’d need someone to come along and put the idea to me first.’
‘So you think he knows what this is all about?’
‘I’m not saying that, but let’s face it… Jonny Cohen smells something fishy about the whole thing, so do I. Now you seem to smell a rat. What do you know about Kirkcaldy? I mean apart from his abilities in the ring?’
‘Not as much as I’d like. You seen him fight?’
‘Couple of times, yeah.’
‘I know enough about the fight game to know that being a winner — I mean a real winner — is as much about what you’ve got up here as how hard you can hit.’ Sneddon tapped his temple with his forefinger. ‘And Kirkcaldy has got it all. He boxes clever. But more than that, he’s ambitious.’
‘Well, I thought you would have wanted that in a fighter you’re backing.’
‘Aye… I do. But what worries me is how much ambition he’s got outside the ring.’
‘Listen, Mr Sneddon…’ I leaned forward and rested my elbows on my knees. ‘There’s no point in you being elliptical…’
‘What the fuck does that mean? You been at the Reader’s Digest with Twinkletoes?’
‘It’s clear to me that you have suspicions that you’re not sharing. The other thing is, you could have dealt with all of this with your own men, sitting it out until whoever is doing this shows up to pull another stunt. But you got me involved to see if I smelt the same rat that you and Jonny Cohen clearly have. So why don’t you tell me what it is you really want me to find out?’
Sneddon moved his mouth into the ugly shape he took for a smile. ‘Maybe I like being epileptic…’
‘Elliptical…’ I corrected, and wished I hadn’t. The coarse approximation of a smile dropped from Sneddon’s face. ‘Bobby Kirkcaldy has a shadow with him all the time. An old guy with a mashed-up face. Kirkcaldy calls him Uncle Bert. I’ve checked him out and it turns out he’s an ex-razor gangster called Bert Soutar. Bridgeton Billy Boys back in the Thirties.’
‘I remember the Billy Boys,’ said Sneddon. I had no doubt that he did. The Billy Boys had been a Protestant sectarian gang, organized along military lines. Sneddon had only one weakness in business, one gap in his calculating objectivity. He was a bigot to the bone. ‘But I’ve never heard tell of a Bert Soutar.’
‘He did time.’
Sneddon made a face and shrugged. ‘Cutting up a few Fenians doesn’t make him Al Capone. You think it’s significant?’
‘It suggests Kirkcaldy perhaps isn’t as up-and-up as he seems. Maybe Uncle Bert is connected to dodgy dealings. It could explain the warnings.’
‘Okay,’ said Sneddon. ‘Keep on it and see what you can turn up. I asked you about something else. Small Change’s appointment book. Have you looked for that?’