‘Yeah?’
‘I hope you heard me when I said you shouldn’t let this shite distract you from the thing with Bobby Kirkcaldy.’
‘I heard you, Jonny.’
Davey Wallace turned up at my office at ten-thirty, just as I’d asked him to in the message I’d left with Big Bob. He was wearing the same too-big and too-old suit that he wore to the Horsehead. He had a red tartany type tie and a white shirt and he had topped the lot off with a wide-brimmed grey fedora that had a couple of decades’ worth of shape bashed out of it. At least, I thought, I now knew what a private detective is supposed to look like.
Davey’s grin when he walked into the office was impossibly broad and gleeful, making me wonder if I had done the right thing in bringing him in. He was just a kid. And a good kid at that. But it was his choice.
‘Now you’re clear on what you’re doing? And more importantly on what you’re not doing?’
‘I got it, Mr Lennox. I won’t let you down.’
I reached into my desk drawer and pulled out a coarse linen bag. It was heavy, filled with pennies. I tipped some out onto the desk.
‘Take this bag with you. You’ve got enough coppers there to ’phone Australia. If anything happens, call the numbers I gave you and they’ll get a message to me as soon as they can.’ I tossed the bag in my palm a couple of times, assessing the weight. ‘And keep the drawstrings pulled tight when you’re not taking money out. This cash bag won’t break and it makes one hell of a cosh if you run into trouble. You got that?’
‘I got it, Mr Lennox.’
‘But I don’t want you to take any risks, Davey. Just keep an eye on the Kirkcaldy place and let me know if anything happens. And remember… note down times and descriptions of anyone you see coming or going.’
I went back into my desk drawer and tossed a black reporter’s notebook over to him. He caught the notebook and then stared at it, wide-eyed, as if I’d just handed him the Keys to the Kingdom.
I drove up to Blanefield and parked the Atlantic along the street from Kirkcaldy’s place. It was difficult not to be conspicu — ous, but the car was far enough away and still had a clear enough view of the entrance to the Kirkcaldy residence. I gave Davey a couple of quid, a packet of cigarettes and a lamppost to lean on. He took the duty so seriously that, when I left him, I found myself worrying that he might not blink until I returned.
I left the car where I’d parked it, giving Davey the keys so that he could take shelter if it started raining. The weather had now definitely reverted to type and the milky sky periodically darkened into a glower: I didn’t want to be responsible for Davey contracting pneumonia or trench foot, both of which were possibilities in the West of Scotland climate. Before I left him on sentry duty, I called at Kirkcaldy’s house. The boxer wasn’t in, but Uncle Bert Soutar answered the door. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt that exposed arms writhing with tattoos, some of which had unhelpful suggestions for the Pope. If dourness could be measured on a scale, then Soutar was a bass baritone. He nodded glumly and closed the door when I told him that the youth at the corner was with me and not connected to whoever had been carrying out the vandalism.
I knew of course that there would be nothing significant for Davey to report that afternoon. The kind of shenanigans that had been going on with Kirkcaldy were the kind of shenanigans you got up to under cover of darkness.
While Davey was earnestly leaning and diligently watching the Kirkcaldy place, I went to ’Pherson’s on Byre’s Road for a trim and shave. Old man ’Pherson knew his stuff and I came out with my face tingling and with a parting that made Moses’ Red Sea work look sloppy. Afterwards I took a tram back into town and made a few fruitless ’phone calls from my office in pursuit of Largo.
Maybe it was because Jock Ferguson’s name had come up in conversation with my tame copper chum Donald Taylor, but, almost on an impulse, I picked up the ’phone and dialled the number for St. Andrew’s Square headquarters. Obviously, Detective Inspector John Ferguson knew nothing of my ‘accommodation’ with one of his junior officers and he sounded surprised to hear from me all right. Surprised and maybe a little distrustful. I have no idea why I bring that out in some people, especially coppers. He did concede he was free at lunchtime and we agreed to meet up at the Horsehead Bar. Ferguson and I hadn’t spoken much in nearly a year.
It was one-thirty by the time I got to the Horsehead and the lunchtime crowd had already smoked the atmosphere into a density you could cut with a knife. If I were to describe the ambience of the Horsehead, I would say it was eclectic. There were clerks, uniformed in regulation pinstripe, shoulder-to-shoulder at the bar with workmen in flat caps and Wellington boots. It has to be said that no one could accuse Glaswegians of not being fashion-conscious, and a few of the workies had rolled their Wellies down from calf- to ankle-length as a concession to the warm weather.
I spotted a man in his late thirties over by the bar. He had his back to me but I recognized his tall, angular frame and the dull grey suit he always seemed to wear, year round. Some policemen need a uniform, even after they’ve transferred to CID. I understand it in a way: the need to take off your job when you got home. I squeezed shoulder first into the bar next to Ferguson. The man who had been standing next to him eyed me with that casual, disinterested hostility that you only seem to find in Glasgow hostelries. I smiled at him then turned to Ferguson.
‘Hello, Jock.’
Ferguson turned dull grey eyes that matched his suit on me. Jock Ferguson had anything but an expressive face: it was practically impossible to work out what was going on in his head. I’d seen more than a few men come out of the war with the same absence on their faces. And I somehow had always known that Jock Ferguson had a similar kind of war to mine.
‘Long time no see,’ he said, without smiling. And without offering me a drink. We were going through the preliminaries. ‘Where have you been keeping yourself?’
‘You know, keeping my head down. Divorce cases, company thefts, that kind of thing.’
‘Still doing work for Glasgow’s disreputable element?’
‘Now and again. Not as much as before. Things aren’t what they used to be, Jock. Gangsters have embraced the free market. I can’t compete with the rates your colleagues charge.’
Something set harder in Ferguson’s face, but he clearly decided to let it go. Before, he would have laughed off a jibe like that because he knew I was referring to coppers other than him. But this was not before.
‘I heard you were asking a few questions about me, Lennox. After that business last year. I could be accused of being paranoid, but that would suggest to me that you think I had something to do with all that shite. Is that what you think?’
I shrugged. ‘I just got to chatting with a couple of your colleagues. Are you telling me that you didn’t have anything to do with it?’
He held my gaze. Neither of us wished to define what it was that had happened. The truth is that he shouldn’t have even known about the events in a dockside warehouse that ended with me having a bullet in my side and someone very special to me lying dead at my feet, her face blown off. Events that would not have taken place if information hadn’t been leaked by a copper.
‘Anything that happened had nothing to do with me. That’s what I’m saying, yes.’
‘Okay. If that’s what you’re saying, then I believe you, Jock.’ It was a lie. We both knew it was a lie but it was a form of words that allowed us to move on. For the moment. ‘So… how are things?’
‘Busy. McNab has dumped this train death on me. And he’s piling on the pressure. This new smart-arse pathologist has got him farting fire. You know McNab, shite killing shite doesn’t interest him unless it’s all straightforward and easy, which it usually is.’
I nodded sympathetically. The idea of working for a wroth McNab was a frightening thought. For a second I felt the weight of his hand on my chest. ‘So how’s the investigation going? Any leads?’