The Long Glasgow Kiss (17 page)

But Bridgeton was different from the other areas of the city in one way. It distinguished itself in the intensity of its hatred for its neighbour. This was the most ultra-loyalist Protestant, Catholic-hating part of Glasgow.

A few weeks before, as it was on the Twelfth of July each year, Bridgeton had been a mustering ground for the pipe bands, drummers and marchers who celebrated the victory of Protestant King William of Orange over Catholic King James at the Battle of the Boyne. And once they had mustered, they would march triumphantly through the streets of Glasgow. Especially the predominantly Catholic streets. Surprisingly, the curmudgeonly Catholics didn’t seem to get into the spirit of things and refrained from joining in with songs containing lyrics like ‘
We’re up to our knees in Fenian blood, surrender or you’ll die’
.

But Glasgow was nothing if not a city of balance and fairness, and there was an ultra-republican Catholic, Protestant-hating part of Bridgeton too. The Norman Conks, the Catholic counterparts of the Billy Boys, had been concentrated in the Poplin Street and Norman Street part of Bridgeton. Their speciality, as well as offering the same skills for plastic surgery with open razors as the Billy Boys, was throwing Molotov cocktails made with paraffin or petrol at the marchers on the Twelfth. Or occasionally the odd ‘sausage roll’: human excrement loosely wrapped in a sheet of newspaper.

I sometimes wondered how Rio could compete with Glasgow’s carnival atmosphere.

As I walked through Bridgeton, however, there were no marching bands and little in the way of a carnival atmosphere. In fact, even on a pleasant summer’s day, I couldn’t imagine anywhere less festive. I certainly was glad I hadn’t brought the Atlantic with me. There were no other cars parked in the street in which MacSherry resided, and a knot of five or six children, faces grimy and feet bare, were playing maliciously around a streetlamp. As I walked past one block doorway, a man of about thirty stood watching me from beneath the brim of his cap. He was wearing a collarless shirt and a waistcoat, his shirtsleeves rolled up to expose forearms that looked woven from steel cable. He had his thumbs looped into the pockets of his waistcoat and leaned against the doorway, his heavy-booted feet crossed at the ankles. It was the most casual of poses, but for some reason he gave me the idea he was some kind of guard or lookout.

The only other person I passed was a woman of about fifty who emerged from a house further up the street. She was as wide as she was tall and dressed in a formless black dress. Or maybe it was just the body beneath that was formless. She had a headscarf tied tight around her head and her legs were naked, her stockings having been rolled down into beige bracelets around her ankles. She was wearing dark tartan slippers on her feet. Something had caused the skin of her legs to mottle a purplish red and I suddenly felt the need to foreswear ever touching corned beef again. She walked past me and eyed me with even more suspicion than the shirtsleeved sentinel I had just passed.

I smiled at her and she glowered back. And just when I was about to tell her how pleased I was that Dior’s New Look had at last made it to Glasgow.

I found the tenement I was looking for and climbed up the stairwell. It was the weirdest thing about Glasgow slums: you could have eaten your dinner off the flagstone stairs or the doorsteps of each flat. Glaswegians took an inordinate pride in cleaning communal areas – closes, stairs, entrances. There was normally a strict rota, and failure to have a sparkling doorstep or landing would result in the offending housewife becoming a social pariah.

The MacSherry flat was on the third floor. The landing was as spotless as I had expected, but there was some kind of unpleasant smell wafting about in the air. I knocked on the door and it was opened by a woman in her sixties who made the female I’d passed on the street look positively svelte.

‘Hello, could I speak with Mr MacSherry, please?’

The fat woman turned from me wordlessly and waddled back along the corridor, leaving the door open behind her. She tortured some vowels in quick succession, which I took to be ‘It’s someone for you.’

A man in his late sixties or early seventies emerged from the living room and came to the door. He was short, only about five-five, but he was compact and wiry with a heavy head topped with white bristle. There was something about him made me think of an older Willie Sneddon. Except Sneddon’s razor scar was delicate needlepoint compared to the criss-cross of ancient slashes on MacSherry’s cheek and forehead. Like Uncle Bert Soutar, this was a man whose history of violence was written all over his face, but in a different vernacular.

‘What the fuck do you want?’

I smiled. ‘I wondered if you could help me. I’m looking for information on somebody. Someone from the old days.’

‘Fuck off,’ he said, without anger or malice, and pushed the door shut. I stopped it by jamming my foot between it and the jamb. Old MacSherry opened the door wide and looked deliberately down at my shoe and then back up at my face. He smiled. It was a smile I didn’t like and I contemplated the ignominy of having the crap beaten out of me by an Old Age Pensioner.

‘Sorry,’ I said swiftly and held my hands up. ‘It’s just that I’m willing to pay for the information.’

He looked at my foot again and I removed it from the doorway.

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Do you know … or
did
you know someone called Bert Soutar?’

‘Aye, I knew Soutar. What’s it got to do with you? You’re not police.’

‘No, no … nothing like that. I represent a group of investors who have an interest in a sporting event. Mr Soutar is involved with this event and we’re just doing a check into his background. You see, Mr Soutar has a criminal record.’

‘You don’t fucking say.’ Irony was not his strong suit.

‘I do say,’ I continued as if I had missed his sarcasm. ‘Not that that is, in itself, a problem. But we’d like to know the kind of people we’re dealing with. Did you know Mr Soutar well?’

‘You said you was willing to pay for information.’

I took out my wallet and handed him a five-pound note, keeping a second fiver in my hand. ‘Maybe we could …?’ I nodded along the hall.

‘If you like,’ said MacSherry, and he stood to one side to let me in.

The living room was small. Cramped. But again surprisingly clean. A large window with no curtains looked out over the street below and there was a bed recess, a typical feature in Glasgow tenements, in one wall. The furniture was cheap and worn but there was the occasional item that looked incongruously new and expensive, and I was surprised to see a small Pye television squashed into one corner of the room. It had a set-top aerial sitting on it, its twin extendable antennae each stretching at a wild angle from the other. I understood MacSherry’s reluctance to let me into the flat: the mix of new and old was the difference between the legitimately owned and the knocked off.

The fat woman whom I’d guessed was MacSherry’s wife left the room. It was clear that business was often conducted here.

‘Are you a fucking Yank?’ MacSherry had a charming, welcoming manner about him. I guessed I wasn’t going to be offered a cup of tea.

‘Canadian.’ I smiled. It was beginning to make my jaw ache. ‘About Soutar …’

‘He was a Billy Boy. And a boxer. He fought bare-knuckle. Hard cunt. I know what this is all about. It’s about his nephew. Bobby Kirkcaldy. That’s your fucking sporting event, isn’t it?’

‘I’m not at liberty to say, Mr MacSherry. Soutar was a member of the Bridgeton Billy Boys about the same time as you, is that right?’

‘Aye. I didn’t know him that well, though. He was a mental bastard with a razor in his hand, I can tell you that. And with his fists. But then when it got all military, you know, when the Billy Boys started having morning drills and stuff like that, he fucked off. He hated fucking Fenians but he liked making money more. He was still boxing though. It was after he cut them coppers, that was him finished.’

‘I thought you said he’d left the Billy Boys?’

‘He had. This wasn’t a rammy. It was after a match, right enough, but he was breaking into a credit union. He had some fucking mad idea that the mounted polis would be too busy dealing with the rammy. But two coppers caught him in the back close of the building. From what I heard, Soutar got lippy with them and they was going to give him a bit of a doing. That was his biggest problem, too fucking mouthy for his own good. Anyways, he always kept two razors in his waistcoat pockets. The two cops made a move on him and he cut them both. Popped an eye on one. You seen the state of his face?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He must have taken more than his fair share of beatings in the ring.’

‘That’s got fuck all to do with boxing. Bert Soutar was too light on his feet to get battered like that in the ring or in a bare-knuckle fight. No, that was the fucking polis that did that to him. They half-killed him. Took fucking turns with him. You see, it was a message … you don’t cut a Cossack.’ MacSherry referred to the Sillitoe Cossacks, the gang-busting mounted police squad set up by the then Chief Constable of Glasgow, Percy Sillitoe. ‘When Soutar came out of prison he gave up the Billy Boys. Apparently he was a model prisoner inside and got out after six years. And he came out with big ideas. He said he wasn’t interested in the Billy Boys any more. He said there was no money in it. And he was finished as a boxer. The beatings he took in prison fucked up his face. He couldn’t take any more damage, and couldn’t get a licence ’cause of his face and ’cause he was an ex-con. It was about then that he started hanging around with some Flash Harry who filled his head with all kinds of money-making schemes.’

‘Who was the Flash Harry?’

‘I didn’t know him at the time. He wasn’t from Bridgeton and I think he was younger than us. Quite a bit younger. But, like I say, flash as fuck. Soutar and this bloke got into the boxing game for a while. Fixing up fights, in more ways than one if you get my fucking drift. Never saw him after that, but I don’t think the partnership lasted. Soutar just disappeared and MacFarlane became a big fucking success.’

‘MacFarlane?’

‘Aye. Small Change MacFarlane. That was the Flash Harry. Became a big-time bookie. Fuck all good it did him considering he ended up having his coupon smashed to fuck.’

I sat and nodded as if I had been processing the information, hiding the fact that a dozen possible combinations of people and events were now running through my head. The flat door was still open and I heard voices out on the hall. The old fat woman and a male voice. Time to go. I stood up and handed MacSherry the other five pounds.

‘It’s not enough,’ he said.

‘What?’ I put on my best confused expression. I wasn’t confused at all.

‘Another ten.’

‘You’ve been paid for your time, Mr MacSherry. More than adequately paid.’

He stood up. I heard a sound behind me and turned to see the collarless sentinel had been the voice out on the landing and was now blocking my exit through the hallway. He smiled maliciously at me.

‘Another ten. Hand it over. In fact, let me save you a lot of trouble. Just hand over your fucking wallet.’

I weighed up the situation. Sticky. The old guy would have been tough enough to deal with on his own, but the younger man tipped the scales well and truly against me.

I shrugged.

‘Okay. I’ll give you all the money in my wallet. It’s nothing to me. I just claim it back from the investors I was telling you about.’ I frowned pensively then made out as if an idea had suddenly struck me. ‘Why don’t I just get them to come and see you in person. You can sort out remuneration with them. Mr William Sneddon is my employer. Mr Jonathan Cohen is the other investor.’ I kept my tone friendly, as if I really didn’t mean it as the threat it was. ‘I know Mr Sneddon is very angry about people interfering in his business arrangements. So I’m sure he’ll take your request for more payment seriously. Very seriously.’

MacSherry looked over my shoulder at the younger guy and then back at me. ‘Why didn’t you say you worked for Mr Sneddon? Maybe you’re just pissing down my back and telling me it’s raining.’

‘If there’s a working callbox anywhere in this shithole, then we can take a wander to it and you can ask him yourself. Or I could simply ask for Twinkletoes McBride to come down here and convince you of my credentials.’ I dropped the friendly tone. It was a careful balancing act. Some people don’t have the sense to know when to be scared. I’d have bet my last penny on MacSherry being one of them.

He gave a jerk of his head in a signal for the younger man to let me past.

‘Thanks for your help, Mr MacSherry.’ I turned and walked out of the flat casually and unhurriedly.

But I didn’t take my hand from the sap in my pocket until I was out on the street and around the first corner.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHT

By the time I had waited for a tram it was nearly six before I got back to my office. It was turning into another oppressive evening, the air clinging, humid and heavy, and I felt my shirt collar damp at the nape of my neck again. Davey Wallace called me at six on the dot, as agreed. Davey couldn’t drive and I told him to stay put and wait in the Atlantic until I came up. I decided I’d probably take a taxi up to Blanefield and get it to take Davey back home. Riding in a taxi was one of the luxuries in life most Glaswegians only ever experienced on special occasions. Before I went up to Blanefield, I ’phoned Sneddon. I told him what had happened at MacSherry’s place.

‘He knew you was there for me?’ he asked.

‘Not to start with. But I told him later.’

‘Fucking slum rats. I’ll arrange a lesson in respect.’

‘You better send a mob, then. From what I can see, the old guy still has a crew of sorts. And he has a reputation that must have been earned.’ I neglected to tell Sneddon that MacSherry had backed down at the first mention of his name. I was pissed because the old man had tried to turn out my pockets. A lesson in respect, as Sneddon said.

‘Aye? Well, I’ll arrange a change of scenery for him. I bet he doesn’t get out of Bridgeton much,’ said Sneddon, reminding me of the promise Superintendent McNab had made me. There was so much local colour here; maybe ‘fucking off back to Canada’ would do my health a bit of good.

‘I did get something interesting out of the whole encounter,’ I said. ‘Did you know that Bert Soutar went into business with Small Change MacFarlane? Some time around the start of the war?’

‘No …’ I could tell Sneddon was doing the same jigsaw puzzle in his head that I had done in Bridgeton. ‘No, I didn’t. Do you think it’s significant?’

‘Well, this hot deal that turned into a fairy story about boxing academies … it could be that Small Change was covering up the detail and not the principals. Maybe it
was
something to do with Bobby Kirkcaldy. And maybe the deal was brokered through MacFarlane’s old chum Soutar.’

‘But MacFarlane was going to broker the deal to me.’ I could tell that Sneddon was laying down the fact to see what I would do with it.

‘Let’s not forget Small Change had his skull cracked like an egg,’ I said. ‘My guess is it was all about this deal. He was at the heart of it and was playing for the big money, not for some commission. And I suspect Uncle Bert is involved some way.’

‘You think he battered Small Change’s coupon in?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe. But I don’t see why he would, unless something went pear-shaped with the deal, whatever it was. But maybe it was whoever’s been leaving warning messages for Kirkcaldy. One thing I’m sure of is that Kirkcaldy doesn’t appreciate the attention we’ve been giving him. Speaking of which, can I borrow a couple of bodies to take turns watching Kirkcaldy’s place. I’ve just got the one guy and me.’

‘Okay,’ said Sneddon. ‘You can have Twinkletoes. You two seem to get on.’

‘Yeah …’ I said. ‘Like a house on fire … Thanks. I’ll let you know when I need him.’

After I hung up I locked the office and took a taxi down to the Pacific Club. Like the last time I had been here they were just starting to get the place ready for the evening’s trade. The manager Jonny Cohen had running the place was a small handsome Jew in his early forties called Larry Franks. I’d never met Franks before but he seemed to recognize me; he came over and introduced himself as soon as I arrived. He had his jacket off and his sleeves rolled up.

‘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.’

I left Twinkletoes sitting in Sneddon’s Rover, watching the Kirkcaldy house, reassured by his promise that he would be most
abb-steamy-uzz
in performing his sentry duties. I went straight back to my flat. Again, as I closed the common entrance door behind me, I heard the sound of the television in the Whites’ flat being turned off. I headed straight up the stairs to my rooms and set about making myself some real coffee and ham sandwiches with bread that should have been used at least two days before, unless I had intended to use the slices as building materials.

I had just sat down to start eating when I heard the downstairs doorbell ring and Fiona White answer it. There was a brief exchange then the sound of heavy footsteps coming up the stairs. It wasn’t that I was inhospitable, but I was not in the habit of receiving callers at the flat. In fact, one of the reasons I had established the Horsehead Bar as my out-of-hours office was because I kept this place pretty much off the radar of everyone I dealt with. So, before I answered the knock on the door, I went to the dresser drawer where I put my sap whenever I hung up my suit jacket and slipped it in my pocket. I opened the door, stepping back as I did so, and found Jock Ferguson framed in the doorway. There was another man behind him. Bigger and heavier. He was stretching a pale grey suit with extremely narrow lapels over huge shoulders and had a straw trilby type thing with a broad blue hatband on his head. He had a big face that was a little too fleshy to be handsome and his skin tone was several summers darker than the locals. The one thing that was missing was a sign around his neck proclaiming
God Bless America
. Seeing Ferguson at my door and in such strange company took me aback for a moment.

‘Jock? What are you doing here?’

‘Hello, Lennox. Can we come in?’

‘Sorry … sure. Come on in.’

The big American grinned at me as he entered. He took off his pale straw hat and revealed the most amazing haircut I had ever seen. His salt and pepper hair had been crew-cut, clipped almost to the skin around the back and sides but bristled upwards on top. What made it truly amazing was the skill of his barber in making it perfectly, absolutely flat across the top. The picture of a hairdressing engineer, scissors in one hand, spirit-level in the other, leapt to mind.

‘Lennox, this is a colleague of ours from the United States. This is Dexter Devereaux. He’s an investigator, like you.’

‘Call me Dex,’ said the grin beneath the flat-top.

I shook the American’s hand, then turned to Ferguson. ‘You said Mr Devereaux is an investigator like me …’ I asked. ‘Or do you mean an investigator like you?’