The Quiet Death of Thomas Quaid: Lennox 5 (35 page)

‘We are, Captain Tarnish. But why do I get the feeling there’s a doubt you’re giving me the benefit of?’

‘Let’s just say I hope you’re being perfectly open with me.’

‘And I hope the same of you.’

A heartbeat’s pause. Then Tarnish nodded towards my pocket.

‘That,’ he said wearily, holding my gaze, ‘wouldn’t happen to be the ledger bound in red morocco you mentioned, would it?’

‘That sounds very much like an accusation.’ I instinctively took a step backward. It was a gesture worthy of Roy Rogers and I could almost hear a saloon honky-tonk stutter to a mid-tune halt. Tarnish caught my intention and laughed.

‘Just show me. Please.’

I shrugged and took the copy of
The Outsider
from my pocket and held it up for him to see. ‘I’m improving my mind. Satisfied?’

‘Like I said, it would be unfortunate if you were holding anything back from me. Anything. Goodbye, Captain Lennox.’

‘Goodbye, Captain Tarnish.’

*

I left with him. I wouldn’t look at the book until later. I got into the Sunbeam and drove off, heading back towards my apartment. After we were back over the river, I could see Twinkletoes McBride’s Cresta in my rear-view; he followed me all the way along Great Western Road.

‘Coming up for a drink?’ I asked when we were both parked in the car park outside my apartment building. McBride frowned as much as the narrow band between his heavy brow ridge and low hairline allowed.

‘Mr L,’ he said earnestly, ‘I watched for them men with Tarnish. You was right: they was waiting around the corner and he got in with them and they drove away. There’s something I’ve got to tell you about them.’

I placed a hand on his shoulder and smiled. ‘Let’s go in and get a drink, Twinkle—’

‘No listen . . . this is important. I’ve got to tell you . . . it’s something about Tarnish and his men.’

‘It’s okay, Twinkle.’ I steered him in the direction of the apartment building entrance. ‘I already know . . .’

*

After Twinkletoes left – after he told me what he had to tell me and I told him how I already knew – I sat alone in the apartment with my whiskey. I set the book down on the coffee table. I poured myself another bourbon and sat looking at the book without touching it, as if it were a locked box, its secrets still fastened tight within. A Pandora’s Box.

I took a sip, then a breath. I opened the book.

I flicked through it all. Nothing. I lifted it up, holding the coverboards like wings and shaking it so that anything trapped in the pages would fall out. Still nothing. Finally, I turned every page individually, methodically, scanning each printed face for notes or highlights. Still nothing. Not even a page corner turned over as a bookmark.

I laid it back down and stared at it.

‘Maybe, one day, this’ll be a book that will speak to you too.’

Except it wasn’t saying anything. Its simple cover of orange geometric shapes told me nothing, other than the title, the author’s name and that it had an introduction by Cyril Connolly.

After all of that, after all of my investment of significance into an offhand remark; after all my manoeuvres and shenanigans and fancy footwork to retrieve it – maybe all Tommy had meant was a literary recommendation: that he really thought it was simply a book I should read, but he hadn’t wanted to lend it to me at the time.

I leaned back in the club chair and lifted my glass to the air.

‘Thanks, Tommy. Thanks a bunch for the book recommendation.’ I gave a bitter laugh then drowned it with a swig of booze.

It was like Tommy had answered me. It was the weirdest experience, but the rest of what he had said to me that night fell suddenly back into my head:
‘And most important of all, always remember that you can never judge a book by its cover. This book particularly.’

I picked up the hardback again and slipped off the paper dust jacket. And there it was, on the inside of the paper cover in faint yellow pencil; written small and so lightly that its impression wouldn’t show through the paper; written specifically for me to read: the words of a dead, quiet man.

*

As I had asked him to, Twinkletoes had arranged with Archie and Tony the Pole that we meet up at Tony’s transport caff. A gloomier than usual Archie was waiting for me, squeezed into the corner of one of the café’s booths by the Neanderthal bulk of an equally grim-faced Twinkletoes McBride. When I arrived, Tony the Pole was behind the counter helping Senga, who hypnotized me with her ability to balance a fan of multiple plates in one hand, a cluster of white china tea mugs in the other, while simultaneously squinting through the smoke of her lip-clenched cigarette and containing wet rumbles of rheumy coughs. Not a drop was spilled, even during her worst consumptive spasms.

I wondered idly if she’d trained at Maxim’s in Paris.

Tony the Pole beamed at me and came around from behind the counter. We weaved our way through the tables populated by a smattering of early-morning lorry drivers sitting gloomily over their fry-ups and coffees or teas, contemplating arduous journeys to Aberdeen or London, Birmingham or Plymouth. None of them faced a journey as operose as that which lay ahead of me and my cobbled-together club of allies.

Tony and I slipped into the booth, across the table from Archie and McBride. It was the furthest booth from the other customers and I reckoned we were safe from being overheard.

‘I know everything now,’ I explained. ‘Tommy left it all for me – but I had already worked some of it out. There’s more that Tommy couldn’t have known about, like Tarnish and his men. But before we get down to that, I need to tell you about what happened last night.’ I turned to my business partner. ‘Archie, this is all stuff you might not be comfortable with, as an ex-copper. If you want to give this particular conversation a miss, I quite understand.’

‘I take it we’re talking about criminal acts?’ he asked lugubriously. There again, he asked everything lugubriously.

‘Not committed by our side,’ I said. ‘No, wait . . . that’s not strictly true. We committed a criminal act in
concealing
worse crimes committed by others.’

Archie shrugged. ‘I’ve already done the same by chucking evidence into Mugdock reservoir. I’m in this already, so I may as well be in it up to my neck. Anyway, with what you said was done –
is
being done – to those children, and who you suspect is doing it, I don’t know if I believe in the law any more.’

‘Okay,’ I said and ran through what had happened, telling Tony and Archie about Pops Loeb and the two hirelings.

‘A fucking shame, about that old Jew,’ said McBride in doleful support of my tale. ‘Very
igg-noh-mine-ee-us
for an old gent like that getting chibbed to fuck all over the coupon the way he was. Real shame.’

We all paused, staring at Twinkletoes; I decided if McNaught came out of everything on top and I ended up dead, then I’d get Twinkle to deliver my
yule-loggy
. If, knowing what I now knew, McNaught really was the boss.

‘What did you find out from Tommy?’ Archie asked.

I took a folded sheet of paper from my pocket. I had carefully copied out the names that Tommy had written in his hidden epistle. I handed it to Archie.

‘These are the names that were listed in the diary I saw briefly, and more,’ I said. ‘You already know who some of the names are. The others are mostly, but not all, highly placed people: mostly senior army officers, two MPs, three Glasgow Corporation councillors, prominent law officials, even a couple of police. I have to say it’s all very ecumenical: you’ll find clergymen from both denominations very well represented.’

‘Shit . . .’ The normally inexpressive Archie looked shocked and shook his head. ‘It’s like a list from
Who’s Who
, instead of a list of perverts. How did these people get together? I mean, did it come up at the golf club that they all like fiddling with kiddies?’

‘It’s staggering, right enough,’ I said. ‘If you look down the list, the reason Robert Weston – the young lad who chucked himself in front of a train – didn’t get a fatal accident inquiry becomes pretty clear.’

‘Jesus . . .’ Archie muttered, staring at the page. He looked back at me, his expression still one of disbelief. ‘
That
Arbuthnot?’

‘The one and the same,’ I said.

‘Ledd me zee . . .’ said Tony the Pole; Archie handed him the paper.

‘Everything revolves around St Andrew’s School. That’s where most, maybe all, of the children involved come from.’

‘And zees people – zey are all involved?’

‘Yes.’

‘Zis iz dangerous shide here, Lennox. Very dangerous shide.’

‘You want out, Tony?’

He looked insulted. ‘Like fugg . . . you zink I let zees bhazdardz gedd avay vid shide like ziss? You dell me vatt I godda do . . . I do it.’

‘Okay. Handsome Jonny now has a real dog in this fight, so he’ll be doing whatever he has to. Tony, I know you’re retired, but I need you to break in somewhere. Open a safe.’

‘You vant me to steal zomething?’

I shook my head. ‘No, not quite . . .’

I cut quite a dash. I could be accused of being superficial, but to me the world seemed to be divided between those who had to hire or borrow an evening suit, like Jock Ferguson, and those who owned their own made-to-measure tuxedo and patent blacks. Like me. I could have done with looking less conspicuous, though, given the venue, and I’d been the object of a few bleary-eyed off-duty stares since I’d arrived. On the other hand, lanky Jock Ferguson, in his ill-fitting borrowed outfit, looked like he should be taking orders for drinks.

Ferguson had said that he wouldn’t be staying the distance and would get a taxi home later. He still expressed great suspicion about my motives in wanting to attend the retiring Chief Inspector MacIntyre’s retirement smoker, but didn’t push it.

I’d driven us both to the hotel in the city centre. It was reasonably upmarket and not the type of place you’d usually associate with stripper-and-a-comic stag-dos. But, there again, if the party concerned was the City of Glasgow Police, and you wanted no future trouble with your licences, you pretty much had to put up with it. Even with that, the management had done everything it could to seal hermetically the function suite from the rest of the hotel. When Ferguson and I arrived, we entered directly through a side entrance into the function hall.

The air was steel-blue thick with cigarette smoke and fumed with the stink of free-bar whisky and boiled chicken and vegetables. There were two bars, running the length of each side, working to full capacity, and the main floor area was filled with round tables, each with six or seven bow-tied men around it. The whole space was filled with the ringing clamour of drunken male voices as bawdy conversations were shouted in competition with each other. The attendees, as far as I could see, were all City of Glasgow Police CID officers, most of whom I reckoned were above the rank of sergeant. The night was still young, but many were already fully drunk, the rest halfway there. And this, I guessed, was more decorous than the usual soirée for the ordinary police ranks: it was well known that your average pillaging Viking or pirate would find City of Glasgow Police smokers uncouth.

The room was dully lit, except for the spotlight focused on a small raised stage at the far end of the room. A platinum blonde stripper who was on the obese side of voluptuous was going dully and expressionlessly through her routine, while an equally expressionless drummer beat a tattoo on a snare drum and cymbal. It had several of the audience at the closest tables droolingly captivated, but it was one of the most singularly un-erotic things I’d ever seen. And I’d dated a lot of Scottish women.

‘Jesus . . .’ muttered Ferguson beside me. ‘I’m in hell . . .’

‘I’ll get us a couple of drinks,’ I said. ‘We’ll need them.’

‘Thanks,’ said Ferguson when I came back and handed him his glass of blended gut-rot. I had an orange juice; when I’d asked the young barman in his tartan waistcoat and bow tie for a bourbon, he looked at me as if I had come from Mars. When I suggested a Canadian Club, he clearly thought I was looking for a membership, not a drink.

‘By the way,’ said Ferguson, ‘we found Jimmy Wilson. You know, you were asking about him. We were looking for him at Quaid’s funeral to serve his warrant . . .’

‘Oh,’ I said, keeping my eyes on the stage and my cool under control.

‘Aye . . .’ said Ferguson. ‘It’s a damned shame.’

‘What is?’

‘He’s dead. He was in his brother’s car when it went off the road – way down near the border. His brother and sister-in-law too. The three of them burned in the wreck. My guess is they were heading for England and going too fast. The car went up in flames.’

‘That’s a shame,’ I said and sipped my orange juice. Jimmy Wilson, his brother Davey and Davey’s pregnant wife fell into my recall in total, perfect, painful detail. The world shifted beneath my feet and for a moment I thought I was going to throw up. Instead I focused on the stripper’s dead, heavily made-up face as she went through her act.

‘Oh, and I checked out what you asked,’ said Ferguson.

‘Sorry, what?’

‘You asked me the other day to check out any notable break-ins on that date. I did.’ He handed me a folded note from his pocket.

At that point, the stripper revealed all that she had to reveal and several tables exploded into catcalls, drowning out any chance of conversation with Ferguson.

After the stripper quit the stage, followed by her accompanist with his snare drum tucked under his arm, a younger CID man came on and acted as master of ceremonies. He fawningly introduced the next act, emphasizing what a great privilege it was to have a star of stage and television appear.

Ferguson leaned his head towards mine to be heard above the drunken applause. ‘You know the funny thing about that list of break-ins?’ he asked.

‘That our star attraction here was a victim of a break-in that night?’ I said, slipping the note into my pocket without looking at it.

Ferguson gave a start, surprised; then suspicion settled in his expression. ‘How the hell did you know about that?’