‘There’s not. And I didn’t mention it because it means fuck all. It was obviously someone trying to put me off. It didn’t work. It was never going to work, and they’ve given up.’
‘What about you, Gramps?’ I turned to Soutar. Deep within the folds and creases and pads of puffed flesh, his eyes glittered hard and black. ‘What do you think? Do you think it’s someone trying to spook Mr Kirkcaldy? I mean, I’m asking you for your expert opinion.’
‘What the fuck is that meant to mean?’ he asked nasally.
‘I mean fight fixing. You know a thing or two about that. I was talking to an old amigo of yours… Jimmy MacSherry. He was reminiscing about the old days.’
‘Do you have a point?’ asked Kirkcaldy.
‘Just that Uncle Bert here has had a colourful past. Am I right in thinking that you were involved with a bookie? Rumours of fight fixing?’
‘You should mind your own business…’ Soutar hid the threat in his tone with the subtlety of a turd hidden in a teacup.
‘But it is true, isn’t it?’ I said, pushing my luck. ‘You got involved with a kid on the make. My guess is he became a bookie. Small Change MacFarlane?’
‘What the fuck has that got to do with anything?’ Kirkcaldy moved closer. It wasn’t a threat: he was preparing to stop old man Soutar in his tracks if he moved to have a go at me.
‘I don’t know.’ I shrugged. It was true. ‘Maybe nothing. MacFarlane’s dead and they’ve got his killer. But maybe something. And if there is, I’ll find out.’
I left them in the gym and made sure that I let myself out. There was something about the idea of taking the walk back along the hall with Soutar behind me that gave me an itch between the shoulder blades.
I walked back up to where the cars were parked. I could see Devereaux was still holding court with Davey, who continued to hang on every word.
‘Problem?’ asked Devereaux as I came up to them. He obviously had a talent for reading faces. Or minds. The FBI probably ran classes in it at Quantico.
‘Dissatisfied customer. I would appear to be over-delivering my service.’
We left Davey buzzing and I drove Devereaux back to his hotel.
‘Thanks for doing that, Dex,’ I said, as Devereaux got out of the car. ‘Davey’s got nothing. He’s stuck in a shitty home, with a shitty job with shitty prospects. You’ve made his year.’
‘You’re welcome, Lennox. He’s a good kid. But now you owe me.’
‘Anything I hear, you hear.’
‘Okay, Lennox. Look after yourself.’
I watched Devereaux, a huge man in a loud suit and a straw trilby, cross the street to the hotel. Whatever else the FBI taught its agents in Quantico, how not to be conspicuously American wasn’t part of the curriculum.
After I dropped Devereaux back at his Buchanan Street hotel, I parked and walked a few blocks to the Imperial Hotel. I wasn’t after another drink.
May Donaldson and I had an arrangement.
May was a divorcee. Glasgow was not New York or London high society and the Glaswegian view of divorce was less than sophisticated. It didn’t matter that she had been blameless: any divorce, for any reason, and in any class, placed a woman well and truly on the outside of Presbyterian respectability. May and I had done a few rounds together, it was true. But I liked to think that I had never actually used her. I also liked to think that Santa Claus really existed. I found May where I knew she would be, tending bar in the lounge of the Imperial Hotel. May had a knockout figure but a forgettable face, often wreathed with a kind of sadness or weariness. When I walked into the bar she was wearing a conservative white blouse and black skirt, the hotel’s required uniform. The aim was to put the title waitress rather than barmaid in the minds of patrons. May had poured me a bourbon before I reached the bar.
‘What’s up, Lennox? You got a job for me?’ she asked with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
‘Yep… but not the usual,’ I said. May did the odd job for me where she would turn up at a prearranged time and lie, fully clothed, beneath the covers in a hotel bedroom. Next to her would be a fully clothed middle-aged male. I would walk in with a member of the hotel staff and a couple of months later we would all speak of the event in a divorce courtroom as if it hadn’t really been the pantomimed sham that everyone knew it was. The British allowed divorce, but in a British way: bureaucratic, long-winded and more than a little shoddy. Which suited me fine. I had made a lot of money from staged infidelities to support divorce cases.
‘Oh?’ May looked at me with so much suspicion in her expression that she clearly thought I was going to offer to buy her mother for the white slave trade.
‘Don’t worry, nothing dodgy. I’m trying to contact a young woman who lives in one of the Corporation hostels. There’s a matron there who won’t let me in and I can’t park myself outside until she shows.’
May arched an already arched eyebrow.
‘It’s not what you think,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a missing person case and this girl is maybe the last one to see my guy before he disappeared. I’d like you to call on her and ask her to meet with me so I can ask her a few questions. If she can tell you where to find the guy then that’ll do just as well.’
‘When?’
‘When do you finish here?’
‘My shift ends at nine.’
I looked at my watch. It was eight-fifteen. Of course, I could have stayed and drunk my bourbon and chatted to May until her shift ended, but that would have been awkward for both of us. ‘Okay, I’ll pick you up then.’
I drank half the bourbon for appearances’ sake, paid for it, and headed back to my car. Considering May and I had been intimate on a number of occasions, I found something depressing about the sterile, businesslike exchange I’d just had with her. But then, when I thought about it, our intimacy had often been sterile and businesslike.
I tried Lorna again from a callbox at the corner of Bath Street. Still nothing. I looked at my watch again. I had this business with May and Sammy’s putative inamorata, Claire, to sort out. It would be ten before I could head out to Lorna’s.
I killed the half hour and went back to pick up May. She came out wearing a lightweight coat and smart black hat. They looked new but I’d seen them on her more times than I could remember. While the rest of society was coming out of austerity, a divorcee in Glasgow working behind a bar had to learn to stretch her wardrobe.
I put the radio on as we drove to Partick. Mel Torme was singing ‘Harlem Nocturne’ and it made me think of everything Devereaux had told me about his bosses, who were convinced that Devereaux’s particular Harlem nocturne wouldn’t play in Peoria. They were wrong and Devereaux was right.
The Velvet Fog sang, and saved both of us the effort of conversation. I don’t know what it was that was going on between May and me, but it was mutual. It was as if we were both on the brink of becoming other people. Putting a past behind us. And each represented an embarrassing reminder to the other of who they had been.
We were halfway to Partick when May confirmed my thesis. ‘I’ve met someone, Lennox,’ she said tentatively. ‘A widower. He’s older than me but he’s a good man. Kind. He’s got two children.’
‘Does he come from Glasgow?’ I asked. If she said no, I would know that the chump was a ticket out of the city. May had made it very clear in the past how much she hated Glasgow. In the past, in the pluperfect, and in the present perfect continuous.
‘No. He has a farm in Ayrshire. You know that my ex-husband was a farmer?’
‘You mentioned it,’ I said. Several drunken times, I thought. ‘Does he make you happy?’
‘He stops me being unhappy. That’s enough for me. We need each other. I get on well with his kids and they’re at an age where they need a mother.’
‘Okay…’ I smiled at her. ‘I’m happy for you, May. Really. I take it there’s a reason you’re telling me this?’
‘I can’t do any more work for you. After tonight, that’s it. George doesn’t know that I’ve done these divorce cases with you and he can’t find out. We’re going to make a clean break, get right away from the past.’