The Quiet Death of Thomas Quaid: Lennox 5 (31 page)

And McNaught was coming to exorcise me.

I had wanted to sort this one out though. My one regret was those kids I’d seen in those photographs: the terror and the pain in their faces. I had made my own silent covenant with them, that the people who had done that to them would suffer. But now the justice I had promised would never come to pass.

Truth was, it probably never would have, anyway.

There was the sound of a car outside; after a while there was a gentle knock on the outside door. My new English friend took the gun out from his pocket and pointed it at me, almost wearily, and nodded to the Scot, who went to answer the door.

There was no move I could make. The Englishman had his gun pointed across the coffee table at my gut. There was nothing you could do when you were gut-shot.

I turned and watched as the Scot came back in, followed by a tall, lean man. Dressed in a lightweight houndstooth sports jacket, Tattersall shirt, knotted plum silk necktie, cavalry twills, and oxblood brogues, he had that landed, privileged look. His very dark hair was swept back from a widow’s peak and his features were sharp and angular, giving him a severe, vaguely devilish look – very oddly like an older version of me. No one else came in. No McNaught.

Things fell into place: I realized that this wasn’t the game I thought I was playing and tried to disguise the huge sense of relief I felt. I started to rise, but the Englishman in the chair opposite gave a ‘tut-tut’ and waved the barrel of his automatic: I made an apologetic gesture and eased back into the red leather.

‘Good evening, Captain Tarnish,’ I said to the tall man in the country-set outfit.

The Englishman opposite me again pocketed his gun, got up and vacated the armchair so Tarnish could take his place.

‘Good evening, Captain Lennox.’ Tarnish returned the military courtesy in a cultured, somewhat louche Scottish accent, but didn’t look me in the eye, instead casually plucking at the pressed-to-a-knife-edge crease in his cavalry twills to make sure they didn’t bag or wrinkle as he sat. ‘I wonder if you’d mind telling me what it is you were looking for here?’

I held my hands up. ‘Okay, listen . . . before you start with the wet rags in the mouth or the bamboo under the fingernails, I’ve got some bad news for you: there is no Nazi loot. No hidden treasure. Whatever you think Tommy Quaid stole during the war, it’s all just a tall tale.’

Tarnish spoke over his shoulder to his two associates. ‘A wet rag in the mouth . . . we’ve never tried that one, have we, boys?’

‘No, sir,’ said the Englishman. ‘First time for everything though.’

Oh
goodie
, I thought, this is going to be fun.

‘Listen, I’m telling you – it’s not even that I don’t know where Tommy hid it . . . there was nothing to hide. No loot. You and your chum Baines are chasing something that doesn’t exist.’ I tried to put some force behind the statement.

‘So you’ve met Dave Baines?’ asked Tarnish.

I sighed. ‘Yes.’

‘And would you know where Sergeant Baines would be now?’

I sat silent for a moment, probably open-mouthed as I played through in my head all the ways of saying
‘Actually, Baines is dead – and here’s the funny thing, you’ll really like this – I was the last one to see him alive, just like I was the last to see Tommy Quaid alive, another one of your wartime compatriots. And I know this is going to sound odd, but the thing is that after Baines was murdered – by somebody else, obviously, not me – I burned his body so no one could recognize it. You know, to some people who didn’t know better, that would maybe look a little suspicious and they’d almost think I’d killed them both to get my hands on this phantom Nazi loot. Ha, ha, ha.’

‘Where is Dave Baines, Mr Lennox?’ Tarnish repeated with elegant impatience.

‘Dead,’ was all I could think to say.

‘And would you have happened to be there when he died, by any chance?’

If it was a guess, it was a good one. I nodded. ‘In body if not in spirit. Someone came up behind me and put me to sleep. I didn’t see who.’

‘And these people you didn’t see – they killed Baines and left you alive?’

This was going
so
well.

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘I was meant to take the blame for his murder. Tommy Quaid had hidden something – the something that he was killed for. But that something had nothing to do with anything taken during the war. I found it when I was with Baines. Whoever was looking to get it back bushwhacked us; they killed Baines, put me out, then they took what I’d found, the only evidence, away with them.’

‘And all this happened in the storage sheds down by the Clyde?’

I looked at Tarnish, surprised. ‘You know about that?’

‘We were keeping an eye on Baines. And on you. You made the job easier by getting together. But we already knew about Quaid’s lock-up. Tell me truthfully, did you kill Baines?’

‘When I woke up Baines was already dead: someone had cut his throat. Commando style. When I woke up I was covered in Baines’s blood and had the knife they’d used to kill him in my hand. It was a frame-up and I had to destroy the evidence so I set light to the storage shed. I know how that all sounds, but no, I didn’t kill Dave Baines.’

‘No,’ repeated Tarnish. ‘I don’t believe you did.’

‘At the risk of sounding like a stuck record,’ I said, ‘there really is no stolen wartime loot. What I found in that storage shed was something else completely. And definitely no treasure. I don’t know what you’ve heard about Tommy scoring big with stolen Nazi booty, but it’s all bull.’

‘I know,’ said Tarnish.

‘You know?’

‘Tommy Quaid was with us throughout the war. I know there was no job pulled; no “personal enterprises”. Trust me, we had our hands too full with achieving our objectives and simply staying alive – which most of the unit didn’t. Baines, on the other hand, was transferred elsewhere and heard all kinds of rumours – or maybe he started one himself. There’s a mythology in war, as I’m sure you know yourself. A grain of speculation became an obsession with Baines. An imagined Holy Grail.’

‘Okay, now I’m confused. You know I didn’t kill Baines, and you know there’s no hidden loot . . . so what are you doing here?’

‘The same thing you are. We’re here for Tommy Quaid.’ Tarnish reached into his pocket and took out a slab of hallmarked silver and, snapping it open, offered me a cigarette before taking one himself. He lit us up. ‘I got a message from Tommy shortly before he died,’ he continued. ‘We were a tight unit during the war but we had to endure some terrible things . . . we had to
do
some terrible things. That kind of experience binds men together. But after the war things were different: seeing each other just reminded us of all the stuff we’d been through, of all the others who didn’t make it – so we agreed never to meet up. But we also agreed that the exception was if any one of us ever needed help – then the rest of us would be there for him. The letter I got from Tommy said he needed help. It said he was in danger and he needed me to take charge of something for safekeeping.’

‘And do you have it?’ I asked.

Tarnish shook his head. ‘We didn’t get here in time. By the time I was in touch with Fraser and Mayhew here, and we got to Glasgow, Tommy was already dead. Anyway, how could I have it? I thought you said whoever put you out in the storage shed and killed Baines took everything . . .’

‘Apparently not. There’s a red leather ledger that wasn’t with the other stuff. Our chums are clearly still very keen to get their hands on it.’

‘I see.’ Tarnish paused, thinking something through; then he said: ‘You know, I have to admit that I did find it rather
troubling
that you just happened to be there when two of my former squad members were killed.’

I shrugged, concealing my worry that he’d read my mind when I’d been running through the explanations. ‘Trust me, you’re not as troubled about it as I am. I need you to know that Quiet Tommy Quaid was my friend.’

‘I know that. That’s why you’re still alive. When Tommy got in touch he told me you were the one man in Glasgow he trusted.’

I said nothing. Truth was, it had stung me: I believed Tommy had said that about me; about the man who had led him to his death. I snapped out of it and tried to process the information – the pile of information – I’d had dumped on me.

‘So you’re here to seek revenge for Tommy?’ I asked. ‘That’s stretching the old chums thing a bit, isn’t it?’

Tarnish looked at me with an elegant, faint disdain. There really was something about him that reminded me of me. In that moment I realized that when Tommy had said I reminded him of a natural-born killer he’d known during the war, it had been Tarnish, not Baines, he had been talking about. The vague mistrust I’d felt since starting the conversation hardened into something more solid.

‘There’s me, Mayhew and Fraser here – and there was Tommy,’ said Tarnish. ‘Four of us – five if you count Baines who was only with us for a short time. Four of us out of a unit of fifteen; that’s all that survived the war. Does that explain it?’

It did and I nodded.

‘But Tommy was very different from the rest of you. He was one of the most peaceable, amenable men I’ve ever known. One of the least violent.’

Tarnish looked meaningfully over his shoulder at his comrades, both of whom smiled knowingly.

‘Am I missing something?’ I asked.

‘Tell me, Mr Lennox, was Tommy known as “Quiet Tommy Quaid” here?’

‘Yes . . .’

‘Do you know why?’

‘I don’t know for sure, but the story here is that it was because if the coppers ever caught him, he would always “come quiet”. And of course Tommy was a master at getting in and out of places silently. That and the fact that he never hurt anyone – never used violence in any of the jobs he pulled.’

‘That’s not the reason. That’s not the reason at all.’ Tarnish leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. ‘He had that nickname before he came back to Glasgow. He picked it up during the war. It’s true that his ability to get in and out of secure places without detection did have something to do with it – what we used to call in the war a “penetration specialist”.’

‘Tommy certainly was that,’ I said and grinned. Tarnish looked at me wearily and I felt like a schoolboy admonished by the headmaster.

‘That’s why I recruited Tommy in the first place,’ he said. ‘Because he was such a skilled burglar and, if we needed, could be in and out without leaving traces. But that wasn’t the main reason he was known as “Quiet Tommy”.’

‘So why was he?’

‘Tommy had other skills,’ said Tarnish. ‘Skills that in peacetime he probably didn’t know he had. You’re maybe going to find this difficult to believe but, if ever the squad needed someone taken out quickly and silently, then we’d get Tommy Quaid to do it. He killed with ease, even with grace, and always without a sound. Tommy Quaid’s speciality was the quiet death.’

I shook my head. ‘You’re right: I do find that difficult to believe. Impossible, in fact. I knew Tommy as well as anyone, and he was no killer. More than that, he hated violence.’

‘Oh it’s true, all right. He may not have been a killer in civilian life, but in the field he was one of my best. I’m not saying he relished it, but I also can’t say he was disturbed by it. Tommy was quiet in every way. He kept his thoughts and emotions to himself.’

‘That I can imagine,’ I said.

‘You’re maybe right that he hated violence, I’m sure he did. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t good at it.’ Tarnish paused to take a contemplative pull on his cigarette. ‘There was this one time in particular. We were well behind enemy lines when a young German soldier stumbled right into us by accident. I say soldier, but this was near the end of the war and this kid was
Volkssturm
– you know, children and old men drafted to defend the fatherland at the last ditch. He was nothing but a mere boy, lucky if he was seventeen, and very frightened. We couldn’t take him prisoner because we were so far behind enemy lines, we couldn’t tie him up and leave him to be found, and no one had the heart to kill the kid.

‘We started debating amongst ourselves, what to do with him. And the more we talked the more clearly terrified the boy became. He had probably already worked out he had to die and that we were arguing about who was going to have to do the job. While we were arguing, Tommy Quaid came up behind the boy without making a sound, reached round and stabbed him through the heart, supporting him, almost cradling him, as he fell to the ground.’ Tarnish shook his head. ‘It was the quietest and gentlest killing I’ve ever witnessed. Quaid ended the boy’s terror, and his life, with the least possible pain and distress. It was probably the most generous act I witnessed in the whole war. But also the most disturbing. Quiet Tommy Quaid.’

It was difficult to hear – and difficult to imagine Tommy as a killer, even a compassionate one – but it squared with some of the things he’d said, and not said, about his time during the war. Again there had been more meaning in the spaces between words. It made me ashamed of the way I had used the war as an excuse for the violence I had committed since, when Tommy had put it all behind him. But maybe, in the unnatural context of war, Tommy really had had more in common with Baines. I brought the thought into the open:

‘So where does Baines fit into this? He told me that he and Tommy were close.’

All three men laughed, loudly.

‘Tommy hated Dave Baines,’ said Tarnish. ‘Hated everything about him. Tommy was everything that Baines wasn’t, and vice versa. Baines was a self-centred opportunist. Most of the rumours of stolen loot probably came from him telling his story to anyone who would listen.’ Tarnish leaned back in his chair again. ‘Now, Captain Lennox, I’ve levelled with you, why don’t you level with me? Why don’t you take me through the whole story, from start to finish, including what it was you were looking for here?’

So I did. I told him the whole story, starting with McNaught and the offer he had made in my office, through the events at the foundry, all the way to that evening and my coming back to Tommy’s apartment. There were details I left out, like Twinkletoes’s and Handsome Jonny Cohen’s involvement. I also missed out everything to do with Davey and Jimmy Wilson and the goons at the garage.