‘I asked Small Change’s wife… widow… she said he didn’t keep one. She said he did keep everything in his head. The police took some stuff away with them.’
‘They warrant it?’
‘No… no warrant. Maggie MacFarlane gave them the okay. By the way, she’s already had a gentleman caller. Jack Collins. You know him?’
‘Oh aye… I know Collins. Small Change had him as a partner in one of the bookie shops. And small-time fight arranging.’
‘Is there any reason that I should be looking at Collins for anything?’
Sneddon laughed in a way that suggested he was out of practice. ‘You could say that. Why don’t you look at Collins for a family resemblance… MacFarlane used to do business with Collins senior. He was a greyhound breeder and racer. A successful one. Truth was Small Change was supposed to have been doing more business with Collins’s mother, if you know what I mean.’
‘Small Change is Jack Collins’s father?’
‘Aye. And he knows it. Rab Collins died of a heart attack twenty-odd year ago. Since then Small Change paid for Jack to go to a fancy school, all that crap.’
‘I see.’ I made the kind of face you make when you’ve tried every combination but you still can’t get the safe open. There was a silence and Sneddon studied me for a moment. I hadn’t realized until then that scrutiny can be aggressive. Something was going through his head. Something was always going through his head, but this was tying up his attention and his expression.
‘Okay,’ he said eventually. ‘Here’s the thing… I told you I met with Small Change earlier that day.’
‘The day he was killed?’
‘Yes. Well, you know the way Small Change wasn’t totally legit, but he was more legit than not. Kinda the way you are. Well, like you, Small Change would do the odd deal with me, or Cohen or Murphy. He never did nothing that would get him lifted by the police. Nothing that he could be tied in directly, like. He was as slippery as snail shit in the rain. He liked to be the middle man. The one who arranges everything, and then he’d get an arranger’s fee or a percentage of what came out of it.’
‘And he was fixing you up with something to do with the fight game. That’s what you told me.’
Sneddon made a face. ‘I know. And to start with I thought it was. We were supposed to be meeting to talk about Bobby Kirkcaldy.’
I raised my eyebrows. It was all coming together. But what was coming together still wasn’t clear. ‘I thought you said that Small Change had nothing to do with Kirkcaldy. He wasn’t in that league.’
‘Aye. Aye… right enough. That’s what I thought. But he wanted to talk to me about some deal he wanted to broker. He said Bobby Kirkcaldy was involved. Not as a fighter. As an investor.’
‘So, you went to see Small Change. What did he say the deal was?’
‘That’s the thing. I went up to Small Change’s place… just as arranged. Got Singer to drive me and wait outside in the car. But when I got there Small Change was shiteing himself. He was white as a fucking sheet. He tried to cover it up but when he poured me a drink his hands were shaking like fuck. Then he comes out with all of this shite about being sorry to have cost me a wasted journey, but the deal he wanted to set up had gone south.’
‘Did he tell you what the deal had been?’
‘No. Or at least he spun me some shite about Kirkcaldy setting up a boxing academy in the city but that the finance on his side had fallen through.’
‘And you don’t believe that? Sounds possible.’
Sneddon shook his head. He spread his hands out on the walnut desk top, fingers splayed, and looked at them absently. ‘You know the business I’m in, Lennox. The bookies, the protection, the whores, the bank jobs, the fencing. You know what my business really is? Fear. It’s fear what keeps the whole fucking thing together. I have spent most of my life filling my pockets by making the other guy fill his pants.’ He leaned back in his chair and stared hard at me. ‘So when I say that Small Change MacFarlane had had the frighteners put on him, I know what I’m talking about.’
‘So did you challenge him?’ I asked. ‘Did you ask him what was really going on?’
‘No. There was no point. I could tell that it would have done fuck all good. Someone had done a real job on MacFarlane. I could have brought Singer in from the car and he would still have kept shtoom.’
I nodded. It was a good point. If someone had been able to out-menace Sneddon and out-lurk Singer, then there was something serious going on. Sneddon had a cigarette box on his desk: it looked solid silver and was so big it should have had fifteen pirates sitting on it. He flipped it open, took out a cigarette and nudged it across the walnut aircraft carrier in my direction. I helped myself and used the matching silver desk lighter to light us both.
‘And he ended up dead the same night,’ I said.
‘Yep.’ Sneddon screwed his eyes up against the smoke. ‘That’s why I want that appointment book.’
‘Not just to keep the cops from knowing you saw Small Change the day he died. You want to know who he saw before you.’
‘Aye. It’s maybes not even in the diary. And you say his wife says he doesn’t keep one anyhow.’
‘That’s what she said. Now I get why you wanted me to sniff around.’ I paused for a moment. I was like the clown in the circus standing dumbly till the plank the other clown is swinging around hits him on the back of the head. It hit me. ‘Oh yeah…’ I said. ‘Now I get it. That’s why you’ve got me involved with the Bobby Kirkcaldy crap. It’s the same deal, isn’t it? You want me to find out if Kirkcaldy is tied up with whatever deal Small Change was brokering.’
‘Aye. And my guess is that it’s fuck all to do with boxing academies or shite like that. Especially with what you’ve said about this dodgy fucking uncle he has in tow.’
‘And the nooses and stuff?’
‘Maybes it’s connected — with the deal I mean, and nothing to do with the fight what’s coming up.’
‘I see…’ I drew on the cigarette and contemplated the silver-grey writhes of smoke. ‘Now this takes me into dodgy territory. You too, for that matter. The police are all over Small Change’s murder and I was left in no doubt by Superintendent Willie McNab that his wife will be wearing my balls as earrings if I start sniffing around.’
There was the sound of aged wood on wood as Sneddon pulled open a desk drawer. He reached in, took something out and tossed it onto the desk in front of me. It was a large white envelope. It was tucked shut, not sealed, and it was stuffed thick. Rewardingly thick.
‘Buy yourself some new balls.’ Sneddon nodded to the envelope.
I picked it up and slipped it into my inside jacket pocket without opening it. It tugged satisfyingly at the material of my jacket, balancing the weight of the blackjack in my other inside pocket. I was going to have to start taking a satchel to work.
‘You’re right, the police are all over MacFarlane like flies on a turd.’ Sneddon exposed his talent for colourful metaphor. ‘And I ask myself why the fuck that is. He was an important bookie, but the cops on the case are too many and too high-up.’
I nodded. It fitted. I had wondered about McNab’s involvement myself. ‘So you think the police are onto whatever deal it was that Small Change was setting up?’
‘If that’s the reason, then it’s something really fucking big. And if it’s really fucking big, I really fucking want to know about it. You’ve got contacts in the police, haven’t you?’
‘Yeah…’ I said reluctantly, wondering how much Sneddon knew about my arrangement with Taylor. Then the tug of the heavy envelope in my jacket pocket reminded me not to be too reluctant. ‘So do you. Probably better than mine.’
‘Listen…’ Sneddon leaned forward and narrowed his eyes. Again he was all brow. ‘I’ve already fucking told you: I don’t want to be connected to this. That’s why I’m going through you. You want the money or not?’
Taking a last, long draw on the cigarette, I stubbed it out in a boulder of crystal ashtray, picked my hat off his desk and stood up.