As I drew near, both rear doors of the police car swung open. Superintendent Willie McNab emerged from one side, Jock Ferguson from the other. I put my best surprised face on, which was probably as convincing as the last time I had used it, when on my birthday my mother had presented me with the sweater I’d seen her knitting for three weeks.
‘Gentlemen… what can I do for you?’
‘You’re an early riser, Lennox,’ said McNab sourly.
‘You know what they say: birds and worms and that sort of thing.’
‘Get in the car, Lennox.’ McNab stood to one side and held the door open. I imagined it would be the first of many doors that would be closing behind me. My mouth was dry and my heart pumped madly, but I kept as much of an outer cool as I could.
‘Can I get my jacket?’ I jerked a thumb in the direction of my lodgings. As I did so, I could see Fiona White’s face at the window of her flat.
‘Go with him…’ McNab said to Ferguson, who shrugged and followed me in.
‘What’s this all about?’ I took the opportunity of having Ferguson on his own as we climbed the stairs.
‘You’ll see…’ he said. And I knew I would.
We didn’t head towards police headquarters in St. Andrew’s Square. Instead, as I sat crushed between McNab and Ferguson in the back seat of the police car, we headed out towards the river and the bonded warehouses.
‘Where are we going?’ I asked, as if I had no idea. We took a turn down onto the cobbled road and past the railway arch where I’d hidden the Atlantic.
We didn’t stop.
Instead, we drove on until we saw a uniformed constable with zebra-striped traffic cuffs over his tunic. He seemed to be standing on an unbroken piece of grass verge, but as we drew nearer he signalled us to turn in. The barely discernible mouth of a largely overgrown, cobbled access road, just wide enough for the Wolseley, opened up for us and we bumped our way down to the shore. The lane widened into an open area as we reached the water. This had obviously been a working quay, but the Luftwaffe had made a good job of making it inoperable for the rest of the century. Vast concrete blocks, like broken teeth, thrust out of the overgrown grass, rusting metal cable projecting, twisted, from their broken ends. At one corner of the site an earthmover sat, its shovel resting heavily on the ground. On what looked like it had originally been the quay’s loading area, four police cars and an ambulance, which must have struggled to negotiate the lane, huddled close to the water. Whatever this was, it didn’t look like it was about my break-in to Barnier’s office.
McNab and Ferguson led me over to where the other vehicles were parked.
‘He was found here this morning by workers clearing the site for more bonded warehouses,’ said Ferguson. ‘We reckon he’s been dead a day at least.’
‘Who? What’s this got to do with me?’ I asked, genuinely confused. I saw that the rear of the ambulance was open and there was a body inside, covered with a grey blanket, lying on the ambulance stretcher.
‘What’s it got to do with you?’ McNab sneered at me. ‘That’s what I want to know. According to our leads, you’ve been looking for this fellah for the last week or so. Now he turns up dead.’
My gut gave a lurch. I did a little time travelling into the future and imagined myself in front of Sheila Gainsborough, trying to find the words to tell her that I’d found her brother all right. Dead.
So John Largo was no spook. No shadowy figure without substance. And he had caught up with Sammy Pollock at last.
McNab pulled back the blanket. ‘You know him, I take it?’
‘You take it right,’ I said with quiet resignation as I looked down at the body. The quiet resignation was to disguise my surprise. And my relief. ‘That’s Paul Costello.’
Costello’s eyes were wide open. There were grains of dust and dirt on them and looking at them made me want to blink. His face was bleached of colour and his hair dishevelled. The paleness of his skin was in stark contrast to the vividness of the gaping wound that arched, like a clown’s smile, across his throat. He was very, very dead.
‘Why were you looking for Costello?’ asked McNab. He snapped the blanket back over the dead face.
‘His father Jimmy asked me to,’ I answered honestly, if not wholly. ‘Paul Costello went missing a few days ago. Without warning and, more importantly, without cash.’
‘Aye,’ said McNab, his voice loaded with suspicion. ‘Inspector Ferguson here said you told him that when he came up to see you with that Yank, Devereaux.’
‘That’s right.’
‘And that was because you were bandying the name Largo about. So tell me, is this Largo’s work, d’you think?’
I looked at the blanket-draped corpse. ‘I honestly don’t know. But if Largo is as big and as dangerous a crook as Dex Devereaux seems to think, then my guess would be yes.’
‘Aye? Well thanks for your valuable insight, Lennox. Next question: who the fuck is this celebrity client of yours? The relative of the other missing person?’
I sighed. ‘Like I told Inspector Ferguson, I can’t compromise client confidentiality.’
‘Client confidentiality my arse…’ McNab took a step closer to me. I didn’t need to look to know his hands had already balled into fists. Whatever happened here would be only the beginning.
‘If I tell you, will you keep her out of it? Unless there’s a direct involvement, I mean?’
McNab laughed. An ugly, mocking laugh. ‘Do you think that I have to negotiate with the likes of you, Lennox? I’ll do whatever the fuck I want, talk to whoever the fuck I want. This is a murder enquiry, you clown.’
‘And then some. Let’s face it, Superintendent, someone is playing a very big game in this town. Bigger than anything the local talent is capable of putting on. Now you can walk all over me and feel like the big bollocks, and I’ll do exactly what you want and walk away from the whole thing. No skin off my nose. But if we work together you could end up getting the credit for breaking the biggest case this city’s seen in years. Remember that Dex Devereaux can’t make the arrest here
…’ I looked meaningfully at Ferguson. ‘Yes, Jock, I know Devereaux’s FBI. I knew the moment you brought him into my place.’ I turned back to McNab. ‘I’m not being funny, but this case involves things you don’t understand. You don’t understand them because this kind of crap has never washed up in Glasgow before. Okay… here it is: my client is Sheila Gainsborough, the singer. Now you can let me deal with this side of it or you can dirty her carpet with your size tens. But, if you do, then count me out.’
‘I’m a policeman, Lennox.’ McNab looked at me as if inspecting something noxious that he’d just scraped from his shoe. ‘Doesn’t that mean anything to you? I don’t have to wheel and deal with the likes of you. I’ve got hundreds of officers I can rely on. Real policemen. Not Canadian gobshites.’
‘Okay,’ I said and shrugged. ‘Your call.’
‘Just a minute…’ Jock Ferguson stepped between us. ‘Lennox has got a point, sir. And we don’t have someone like him we can call on.’
‘He works for fucking crooks, for God’s sake, man. How do we know that he’s not delivering information to them instead of us?’
‘I am working for one of the Three Kings,’ I admitted. ‘But not on this, on something else. And the job I’m doing for him is legitimate private investigation work. I know you have a low opinion of me, Superintendent. I don’t blame you, sometimes I share it. But I’m not a crook. Anyone who hires me knows I won’t break the law for them.’ I stopped. It was a pretty speech. I particularly liked the bit where I’d sworn my adherence to the law. Apart from the laws pertaining to breaking and entering and police assault, that was.
‘Sheila Gainsborough?’ McNab asked. ‘How the hell did you get a client like that?’
‘I move in the best circles, Mr McNab. Now, can I deal with the Sammy Pollock/Sheila Gainsborough side of things?’
McNab examined me long and hard. ‘For the meantime, Lennox. But just remember this is a murder investigation now.’