‘Mr Cohen tells me that you’re looking for Claire Skinner.’ He grinned widely. Franks had an accent, difficult to place but there was a touch of London in it. And a touch of something much farther away. It was something you encountered every now and then. The war still cast a long shadow and, even though all but one of the Displaced Persons camps that had been spread across post-war Europe were now closed, there were still huge numbers of people building new lives in new places. Whatever Franks’s history, it hadn’t seemed to suppress his good nature. ‘Can I get you a drink? On the house?’
‘Thanks, but no. And yes, I am looking for Claire. Jonny said you have an address for her?’
‘There you go…’ Franks grinned again and handed me a folded note he took from his waistcoat pocket. I noticed something on his forearm and he tugged his shirtsleeve down, casually. ‘But getting into Fort Knox would be easier.’
‘What do you mean?’ I unfolded the note; it had an address in Craithie Court, Partick, written on it.
‘It’s a pussy pound,’ he said, matter-of-factly and without a hint of lasciviousness. ‘A hostel for unmarried women run by Glasgow Corporation. It’s only a couple or so years old. Claire has her digs there. But they’ve got a matron and she’ll have your bollocks if you try to get in. Strictly no gentlemen callers. You’d maybe be better trying to catch her here the next time she’s singing.’
‘When would that be?’ I asked.
‘To be honest, it might not be for a week or more. I’ve got a new combo booked in for the next two Fridays.’
‘No… I need to see her before then.’ I stared at the note for a moment, my mind elsewhere. ‘I’m looking for Sammy Pollock. Or Gainsborough, as he seemed to prefer to be known. Claire’s boyfriend. Have you seen him lately?’
‘That wanker?’ Franks grinned. ‘No. Not for a couple of weeks.’
‘The last time he was seen was here. There was a bit of a disagreement outside the club, about two weeks ago. Did you see or hear any of that?’
‘No…’ Franks pursed his lips pensively. ‘No, can’t say I did. And nobody mentioned it either.’
‘Right, I see.’ I pocketed the note. ‘Thanks. And thanks for the offer of a drink. I’ll take you up on that the next time I’m in.’
‘Sure.’ His smile was still there but had changed. He was reading my mind and I was reading his. It said: I don’t need your sympathy.
I walked out of the stuffiness of the Pacific Club and into the stuffiness of the Glasgow evening. The taxi was still waiting for me. I got into the back and told the driver to take me to Blanefield. I sat in silence for the whole journey, thinking about Larry Franks’s cheery manner. And the number I’d seen tattooed on the inside of his forearm.
When I got out of the taxi, I could have sworn that Davey Wallace was in exactly the same place, in exactly the same position, as when I’d left him in the morning. We sat together in my Atlantic and he ran through twenty minutes of detailed notes. Twenty minutes of detailed nothing. He was a good kid all right and keen enough to make mustard makers the world over question their calling.
‘You free to do the same shift tomorrow?’ I asked. ‘Maybe a bit longer too?’
‘Sure, Mr Lennox. Anytime. And you don’t need to bring me up here. I know where it is and I can get the tram.’
‘Okay. Meet me up here a bit later. Make it six tomorrow. Nothing’s going to happen during the day, I reckon. How about your work? Will you still be okay for the early shift?’
‘No problem, Mr Lennox.’
‘Good,’ I said. Of course it wasn’t a problem. Having to cross the Himalayas wouldn’t have been a big enough problem to keep Davey away. I gave him a fiver. ‘You get off home now.’
‘Thanks, Mr Lennox,’ said Davey with reverent gratitude.
This was not a good use of my time. I sat watching Kirkcaldy’s place for three hours without anything happening. Then Bobby Kirkcaldy arrived, presumably after a day at the gym in Maryhill. He turned more than a thousand pounds’ worth of Sunbeam-Talbot Sports, its soft-top folded down, into the drive. Kirkcaldy was a successful professional boxer, but even at that he seemed to be able to stretch his finances impressively. Maybe he had a paper round.
I leaned back in the driver’s seat, sliding down to get some support for my neck, and tilted my hat over my eyes. No point in being uncomfortable. It still felt clammy and I had the window wound open, but the air outside was clammy and sluggish and there was no breeze to cool me down. I was going to have trouble staying awake. I turned on the radio but all I could get was Frank Sinatra talking his way through another forgettable tune. I decided to keep my brain active by going over where I was with everything.
There was a tie-in with Small Change’s murder all right. Bobby Kirkcaldy was up to his neck in something that didn’t follow Queensberry rules. There was a connection between Small Change and Kirkcaldy through Soutar. Here I was trying to avoid getting any deeper into dodgy dealing and all the time I was being sucked deeper and deeper into Small Change’s murder.
In the meantime, my other case — my one-hundred-per-cent legitimate case — was getting nowhere. I decided I would try to get in touch with Claire Skinner the next day, but I knew it wouldn’t get me anywhere. Sammy Pollock had dropped off the face of the earth. It took some doing, and I was beginning to worry that it was the kind of dropping that could only be done professionally. And then there had been Jock Ferguson’s reaction to the name Largo. If it was the same Largo who Paul Costello claimed to know, then it was someone outside the normal gangster circle, yet someone important enough to be instantly recognizable to Glasgow CID.
I wasn’t given to much deep personal reflection; maybe because I had seen in the war where deep personal reflection got you: mad or dead. But sitting there in a car outside a probably crooked boxer’s house in the countryside outside Glasgow, I suddenly felt homesick.
Blanefield sat above Glasgow. The sun was lower now in the sky and filtered into tones of gold, bronze and copper through the haze above the city in the valley below. I experienced another of my reminiscent moments: Saint John had similar sunsets. The industrial heart of the US lay in Michigan and the dense, grime-filled air would drift north and west, exploding the Maritime Canadian sun into garnet beams and spilling red into the Bay of Fundy. But the similarity ended there. I thought back to those days before the war. Things had been different. It seemed to me people had been different. I had been different.
Or maybe I hadn’t.
A car pulled up behind me. A bottle-green Rover. I didn’t need to turn around to see that the driver was Twinkletoes. Either that or there was an unscheduled eclipse of the sun. He came around to the passenger door of the Atlantic and tapped on the window. I opened the door and he got into the car, causing me to be impressed with the Atlantic’s suspension.
‘Hello, Mr Lennox…’ Twinkletoes smiled. ‘Are you well?’
‘I’m well, Twinkle. You?’
‘In the pink, Mr Lennox. In the pink. Mr Sneddon sent me up here to take over watching Mr Kirkcaldy’s place. Singer’s going to take over from me until morning.’
‘It’ll be a long night, Twinkle.’
‘I’ve got the radio,’ he said. ‘I find jazz has a molly-fying effect on my mood.’
‘I’m sure it does. Who do you like listening to?’
‘Elephants Gerald, mostly,’ he said with a smile.
‘Who?’
‘You know… Elephants Gerald. The jazz singer.’
‘Oh…’ I said, trying not to smirk. ‘You mean Ella Fitzgerald.’
‘Do I? I thought it was Elephants Gerald. You know, one of them jazz names. Like Duke Wellington.’
‘Duke Ellington, Twinkle,’ I said. I noticed the smile had fallen away from his face. It was time to go. ‘But I could be mistaken. Enjoy, anyway. I’ll catch you later.’