Port Glasgow was Scotland’s equivalent of the Painted Desert, and when I came out onto the road again there were three Teddy Boy Comancheros waiting by my car. My gut feeling was that there was nothing professional or organized about this encounter: it had nothing to do with my tailing of Barnier and was just your run-of-the-mill Scottish small-industrial-town thuggery. I reckoned that they were all about nineteen. They clearly identified themselves with the emerging Teddy Boy fashion, but none of them had been able to put together a complete assembly. Instead one wore the thigh-length jacket, one had drainpipe trousers and the jacketless third thug had had to settle for a bootlace tie.
Between them they had enough oil in their hair to lubricate a battle ship and an array of skin conditions impressive enough to keep a dermatologist on a stipend.
‘This your car, pal?’ the youth with the Teddy Boy jacket asked. He was clearly the leader; maybe that was why he’d got the jacket. He was leaning against the wing of the Atlantic and looked relaxed. A bad sign. Confidence in any kind of physical encounter is half the battle. The other two just looked at me with a dull-eyed lack of interest, as if this was something they did every day, which it probably was.
‘Yeah, this is my car,’ I sighed, brushing the worst of the leaves and mud from my suit trousers.
‘We’ve been looking after it for you,’ said one of the others. I had to concentrate hard: I hadn’t brought my Greenock phrase-book with me. It had taken me years to understand the Glasgow accent. But Greenock was beyond the pale.
‘I appreciate that,’ I said with a smile. I took my keys out of my pocket and headed to the door. No rush now. I was going to have to let Barnier get away. I had more immediate problems. The leader in the Edwardian jacket slid along the wing and positioned himself in front of the door.
‘Well, it’s like this. You could’ve come back here and found your tyres all flat and fuck knows what else. But we was here to make sure nobody touched it. So we think that you should maybes give us a couple of quid, like.’
His two mates took up position on either side of me, squaring their shoulders. Not much to square.
‘Yeah?’ I said. ‘Very enterprising of you. But the trick is to ask for the money first, Einstein.’
He furrowed his brow. Not anger, just uncertainty about the insult. I realized he didn’t have a clue who Einstein was. I was going to have to learn to keep my references simple. I sighed and reached into my pocket and the frown on his pimply brow eased. It shouldn’t have.
They were just kids. I knew that and I didn’t want trouble. But I knew they would have beaten the crap out of me so they could empty my pockets and probably steal the car, given half the chance. In the army, I learned that if there’s a threat, you have to neutralize it. And I’d done more than my fair share of neutralizing. So I decided to feel sorry for them later.
I drew the sap out of my inside pocket and, again in a single, continuous movement, backhanded the lead Teddy across the temple with it. The youth on my right lunged forward and I jabbed out the hand I held my car keys in. The key split his cheek and chipped against his teeth. He screamed and staggered back, clutching his bleeding face. The third thug reached into his pocket and started to pull out a razor. I swung the sap at him, not taking time to aim properly. By luck it caught him on the side of his weak chin and he dropped stone-out. The first guy started to ease himself up from the ground and I dissuaded him with the heel of my Gibson across his mouth. The thug with the keyhole in his cheek was running back down the hill, still clutching his face and crying.
Pulling the lead hooligan out of my way, I got into the Atlantic and headed back down Lyle Hill. Halfway down I passed the running, crying youth. I rolled down my window and, beaming a smile at him, asked him if he needed a lift. I guessed he preferred to walk because he just stared at me wildly, turned on his heel and started running in the opposite direction, back up the hill.
I pulled over to where Barnier had parked. The monument was set in a rectangle edged with railings and a gate repeating the cross of Lorraine motif. I got out and stood, taking in the view for a moment before reading the inscription on the base of the monument:
THIS MONUMENT IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF THE SAILORS OF THE FREE FRENCH NAVAL FORCES WHO SAILED FROM GREENOCK IN THE YEARS 1940–1945 AND GAVE THEIR LIVES IN THE BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC FOR THE LIBERATION OF FRANCE AND THE SUCCESS OF THE ALLIED CAUSE
On the other panels, specific Free French vessels were mentioned: the submarine SURCOUF, the corvettes ALYSSE and MIMOSA. But, as everyone knew, while the monument may have been officially dedicated to all of the Free French sailors who had been based in Scotland during the war, it had a very special significance for a particular group of Frenchmen. And related to a particular event. Something that had happened before the Free French forces were officially formed. Something that happened right here, within sight of the spot where the monument now stood.
And Alain Barnier seemed to be connected to it.
I didn’t see the road as I drove back to Glasgow. And I didn’t think much about what had brought me to Greenock. Someone was poking away again at that curled-up sleeping thing and had switched on the light in the room at the back of my brain. I saw a name. Maille-Breze.
But the ghosts of dead French seamen weren’t the only things that were nagging at me. I should have been happy that I had stopped beating on the three thugs as soon as they no longer represented a threat to me. That I had displayed an element of restraint. Even a few months earlier, once I had the advantage, I would have given them a serious hiding. A hospital hiding. I should have been happy. But I wasn’t.
The truth was that I had still enjoyed it.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It was a good seat. It wasn’t ringside. It wasn’t two, three or even four rows from ringside. But as I sat there in my black tie and tux, I had a pretty good view of the fight even if I had an even better view of the back of Willie Sneddon’s head as he sat ringside with his guest, a Glasgow Corporation councillor and head honcho of the Planning Department. The only thing that impeded my view was the curtain of tobacco smoke that hung in the air. It hung more heavily over the front two rows. The cigar class rows.
I sat next to my dates. Sneddon had been able to swing an extra couple of tickets for me and I had done my own little bit of suborning hospitality. Jock Ferguson was the kind of copper usually immune to inducement, but he had leapt at the chance to see the title fight. And it would do me no harm to patch up the bridge between us a little. Everyone knew, because the movies told us so, that the FBI was incorruptible, and anyway Dex Devereaux was not, officially, a peace officer while on this side of the Atlantic. So he had nothing to lose by accepting my invitation.
It had been remarkably easy to get the tickets from Sneddon. As soon as I told him I wanted to sweeten a couple of coppers, he handed over the tickets without a word of complaint.
I sat there and watched as the fighters — Schmidtke first, then challenger Kirkcaldy — made their way into the ring. Schmidtke was a German and there remained a huge anti-German sentiment throughout Britain. But despite all of the problems of poverty, sectarianism, violence and drink that afflicted them, Glaswegians were a warm bunch. I had been brought up in Atlantic Canada amongst open, friendly people. Maybe that’s why I liked it here. In any case, there was no booing or jeering when Schmidtke entered the ring, just a polite, restrained applause. There was an explosion of cheering and whistling as soon as Kirkcaldy entered the ring. There is no greater passion in Glasgow than pride, and Kirkcaldy was their boy.