I told him who I was and what I wanted to talk to him about. I braced myself for his reaction, but it took me off guard anyway. Furie was remarkably soft-spoken and politely asked me into his caravan. There was a distinctive odour inside the caravan. Not dirty or unpleasant, just distinctive. The caravan seemed huge in comparison to the vardos I’d seen outside. It was wood-panelled and had a small kitchen, a lounge, and a room closed off by a door. I assumed the bedroom lay through there.
Sitting at the far end on a built-in sofa was a large, dark-haired, doleful-looking woman in her forties. We sat and, without word or glance, she stood up and left the wagon, squeezing past me to reach the door. It was an accustomed exit; it was clear that when Furie had business to do, the womenfolk left. He offered me a whisky and I took it.
‘I saw some ribbons tied onto one of the wagons as I came in. Red ribbons.’ I decided to be conversational. It often paid to ease into the main business. ‘Is that a celebration thing?’
‘You could say…’ Furie gave a bitter laugh. ‘We’ll have the same on this wagon soon. When they hang my boy.’
‘Oh… I see.’
‘It symbolizes death,’ explained Furie. ‘And mourning. Red and white are the Romany colours for mourning.’
‘Who died?’
‘I don’t know. It’s a Nachin family I don’t know.’
‘Nachin?’
‘Scottish gypsy. We’re Minceir, from Ireland. The travellers from England are called Romanichals and the ones from Wales are called Kale. But everyone here is either Minceir or Nachin.’
‘I see,’ I said. I lit a cigarette and offered him one, which he took but tucked behind his ear.
‘They’re going to hang my boy for something he never done, Mr Lennox,’ Furie said in his soft brogue. ‘It’s a fit-up, that’s what it is. Then you’ll see the red ribbons on this caravan.’
‘Tommy hasn’t even stood trial yet, Mr Furie, far less been found guilty and sentenced. If he didn’t do it, then they’ll find it difficult to prove he did,’ I lied.
‘Well, he never done it. But that’s just what you expect me to say anyway, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘You think that I’d deny it even if I knew he done it. We’re all liars and thieves, after all. Isn’t that right?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘But you was thinking it anyway, wasn’t you?’
‘As a matter of fact I wasn’t. I don’t know anything for sure. But there’s something bothering me about MacFarlane’s murder. Maybe your son is being framed for it, but if he is, who by and how?’
‘He’s a traveller. That’s all the reason they need.’
‘With the greatest respect, no, it isn’t. There’s much more to this than your son being the wrong type in the wrong place at the wrong time. What do the police say happened?’
Furie ran through it all. Tommy Furie had been one of the boxers whom Small Change MacFarlane had been involved with developing. Reading between the lines, Small Change had been organizing bare-knuckle bouts and running a book on them, and it struck me that there was maybe another reason behind Sneddon wanting me to find any hidden log kept by the deceased bookie. I wondered who had started the regular bouts out at Sneddon’s recently acquired Dunbartonshire farm. Sean Furie explained that his son had started to work as a sparring partner at a couple of the gyms and that Small Change had gotten him a number of legitimate ring fights. Small Change was notoriously tight with his cash and there had been a dispute over payment for a bout. Tommy Furie had complained to Small Change, several times, and in front of witnesses.
‘He was at the gym that night that MacFarlane was murdered,’ said Sean Furie. ‘It was one of his regular nights. He got a ’phone call at the gym telling him to go up to MacFarlane’s house to collect the money he was due for the fight.’
‘MacFarlane ’phoned him?’ I asked.
‘No. It was someone who worked for him. Or so he said. Tommy didn’t get a name. Or can’t remember. Tommy’s a good boy, but not too clever.’
‘I see,’ I said, trying to hide my surprise at the revelation.
‘Tommy went up to the house. He’d never been there before but had the address like. So he went up. Got the tram there and back. He said no one answered when he knocked but the front door was open. He went into the room and found MacFarlane on the floor. Dead. Tommy’s not as tough as you’d think and he panicked. On the way out he knocked over a lamp and picked it up to put it back.’
‘So the police have his fingerprints on the lamp?’
‘Aye, they have.’
‘What else do the coppers say they’ve got on him?’
‘The tram conductress remembered him on the way back. All agitated like. And they’ve got his fingerprints at the house. In the room where MacFarlane was murdered.’
‘That’s it?’
‘It’s enough,’ said Furie, ‘to convict a pikey.’
‘No it’s not. What does the lawyer say?’
‘To plead guilty so he doesn’t get hung.’
‘Brilliant…’ I shook my head. ‘I suggest you get another lawyer.’
With the kind of thing I had planned — the kind of thing that could end you up on the wrong side of a set of sturdy bars — preparation was everything.
I had a small black holdall, which I brought through to the living room and placed on the table. Taking a double page out of the Glasgow Herald, I laid it out next to the holdall. I put a set of heavy-duty wire cutters, a pair of black leather gloves and a black turtleneck sweater into the holdall. I had two corks saved from empty bottles. Taking one at a time, I lit a match and set light to them, allowing them to smoulder for a good while before blowing them out and setting them down to cool. In the meantime, I placed the rest of my toolkit in the holdalclass="underline" a pair of black plimsolls, a bicycle lamp, a short crowbar-style tyre lever and both my saps.
Once the charred corks had cooled I folded them neatly into the sheet of newspaper and placed them in the holdall. I paused for a moment to reflect on my highly professional selection of equipment. If I were to be stopped by a policeman curious enough to look in my bag, there was enough in there to get me a three-month stretch for intent.
I had deliberately chosen a darker suit, which was probably too heavyweight for this time of year but appropriate for what I had planned for later.
I had a lot of time to kill before I could put my plan into action, but I had to load the stuff into the car now rather than have Fiona White hear me leave the house in the dead of night.
I dumped the bag in the trunk of the Atlantic and drove to the MacFarlane place in Pollokshields, picking Lorna up about seven. I took her to the Odeon Cinema in Sauchiehall Street, where we watched Gregory Peck in The Million Pound Note. A trip to the pictures may have seemed inappropriate, but I was trying to take her mind off her troubles, if only for a couple of hours.
Lorna didn’t say much before, during or after the picture and thanked me politely without inviting me in when I dropped her off. As I was leaving, I noticed Jack Collins’s Lanchester parked in the drive.
Willie Sneddon was a man of habit. Exact habit. Sometimes peculiar habit.
I had arranged to meet with him at the Victoria Baths, where he regularly took a steam bath and swim. The Victoria Baths was a temple of sandstone, marble and porcelain in the west end of the city. It had a swimming pool beneath an Italianate cupola, Turkish baths, steam room, massage tables and a lounge. It was a private club but members could sign in guests. A lot of the guests who were signed in here were Corporation councillors and officials, senior cops and the odd MP. Most left with their pockets heavy. There were allegedly more planning permissions, and public house and club licences granted here than in the City Chambers.
I waited for Sneddon in the foyer. I never swam in the Baths myself, and certainly never in any of the municipal pools, ever since I discovered that ‘swimming pool’ and ‘urinal’ are synonyms in Glaswegian. At least I had company while I waited: Twinkletoes McBride was already there, intimidating the staff and passing bathers. It was purely unintentional and passive; he was intimidating sitting down.