The Quiet Death of Thomas Quaid: Lennox 5 (39 page)

Another mystery that was unexpectedly solved was that of who had jumped me that night outside the pub. It turned out to have nothing to do with Tommy Quaid.

Jennifer and I started to fulfil our promise of a normal relationship. About a week after everything had been dealt with, I took her out for dinner and a show in the West End. I was parking outside the restaurant when I saw a taxi pull up across the street and Irene Christie got out, all glammed up for a night out. A heavy-built, joyless-looking man, who I knew instantly was her husband, got out of the taxi behind her. The same thought that had struck me that night hit me again:
fuck-me-he’s-the-spit-of-Victor-McLaglen.

*

It took them three days to find Frankie Findlay’s drifting yacht. There was a heavy smudge of blood on the yacht’s boom, which suggested that it had swung and struck Findlay on the head, knocking him into the water. His body was never found, and everyone was mystified as to why he had suddenly left the police function he’d been attending, gone home and changed out of his evening suit, which lay scattered on the bedroom floor. His wife confirmed that his sailing clothes were missing. When his car was found abandoned at the quayside and his boat missing, they had started a sea search for him.

It was all very mysterious, but when rumours started to circulate about Findlay’s being one of the names on Arbuthnot’s list, the whole thing was dropped.

Newly retired Chief Inspector Bob MacIntyre didn’t get a chance to enjoy much of his retirement. His wife had expressed concern about his increasingly anxious state of mind, his constantly seeming preoccupied, which caused him to drink even more heavily than usual. He was making his way home from his local Masonic Club, apparently the worse for wear, when he fell victim to a hit-and-run driver while crossing a deserted street. Neither the vehicle that hit him nor its driver were ever traced. Jock Ferguson told me that the boys who attended the scene said that MacIntyre must have been hit by something the size of a van or truck.

The word ‘mince’ had been used.

What was confusing was that it looked almost as if the vehicle had reversed back over MacIntyre after hitting him, but for some reason this wasn’t pursued and it was treated as an accident.

We hadn’t gotten around to discussing what should happen to the retired Special Branch man, so I asked Jonny Cohen and the others if they had been responsible for MacIntyre’s death, but no one knew anything about it.

It would have appeared that we weren’t the only ones doing some housekeeping.

With Findlay, Sullivan, Arbuthnot and MacIntyre dead, and with the other names on the list disappearing from public life, Jonny Cohen, Twinkletoes, Archie and I all got together at Tony the Pole’s transport caff. Rather than feeling celebratory, we were all surprisingly subdued: there really weren’t any winners in a game like this, just those left still standing.

‘We didn’t get them all,’ said McBride, gloomily.

‘We got the ones that matter, Twinkle. The others will be looking over their shoulders for the rest of their lives.’

‘We didn’t get all the ones that matter,’ said Jonny Cohen. ‘I still want McNaught.’

‘McNaught wasn’t the linchpin we thought he was,’ I said. ‘But leave him to me. I’ll get him.’

‘I want that pleasure,’ said Cohen.

I shook my head. ‘I gave you Tarnish. McNaught’s the one who set up Quiet Tommy Quaid. I may never find him, but if I do, he’s mine.’

It took me over a month to track down Gresty, the ENSA actor I had seen in the photograph with Findlay. Guessing that he had some kind of record, I asked Jock Ferguson if he had any details on a J.P. Gresty.

John Philip Gresty had been convicted twice of petty theft, once on an assault charge. His record card stated his profession as ‘unemployed actor’. Ferguson had asked no questions, nor had he passed any comment when he handed me the file on Gresty, which included a photograph. It confirmed that it was the same face I’d seen with Findlay in the wartime photograph. Or nearly the same face.

I found Gresty in Edinburgh, living in a run-down flat on the third floor of a Craigmillar tenement. I watched him for a full day and night and it was enough to see that there was nothing to the man’s life. He was unemployed and his only social activity had been to buy a bottle of cheap sherry from a corner shop. It was a worn-down stub of a life. The life of a nobody, a loser.

He looked shocked to see me standing there when he opened the door. Then flustered. Whatever the truth of his real identity or background, he was still a big guy and had a record of violence. I decided not to take any chances and waved the Webley vaguely in his direction.

‘Now let’s not get all silly,’ I said. ‘Do you mind if I come in, Mr McNaught?’

John Philip Gresty had a face that some event had robbed of its symmetry, making it lopsided. Standing there in the doorway of a low-rent apartment, looking worn-down and frightened, he certainly didn’t have the military bearing he had had the day he had walked into my office and announced himself as Mr McNaught. And this time he wouldn’t have a script to follow.

He backed away from me into the apartment, which I took as an invitation to follow him in. Gun in one hand, I had a brown paper bag tucked under the other arm. I nudged it upwards a little and inside glass clinked on glass. ‘I’ve brought us something to drink.’

It was a depressing place. A single room served as a kitchen, dining room and living room, a sink and gas cooker in one corner, a bedroom and a small bathroom off. The walls were dressed in a dark wallpaper that had been gloomy when it had been put up, probably before the war, and had darkened to a toffee colour with decades of cigarette smoke and fireplace soot. The furniture looked like Noah had refused to have it on the ark and there was only one piece of soft furnishing: an ancient settee of threadbare chintz.

Like Tommy’s apartment, there was no real hint of the personality occupying this space; except in this case, I suspected it had more to do with poverty and the lack of personal belongings. There was one, strangely pathetic, personal touch: a framed photograph on the mantelpiece of Gresty as he had been before his face had been messed up. The glass and frame were clean and dust-free, as if the photograph received care that the rest of the flat missed.

The only other personal touch was a couple of immaculately pressed suits, a lovat raincoat and two pairs of shoes – one black, one burgundy brogues – polished till they gleamed.

I waved Gresty over to the settee and told him to sit, keeping the gun on him. Pulling over one of the dining chairs from the table, I sat opposite him. He asked me how I’d found him and I told him.

I took a bottle of Scotch from the paper bag and placed it on the floor in front of him.

‘A present,’ I said. ‘Do you have glasses?’

I kept the gun on him while he fetched the glasses from the sink in the corner, set them on the floor between us and filled them from the bottle. He winced as it went down.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘They were all out of single malt.’

He looked at me steadily and quietly, but I sensed a tremor running through him, like a faint electric current. I guessed he knew what was coming.

‘I take it it was Findlay who paid you to act the part of McNaught?’

‘Aye.’ His natural voice was broader Scots than the one he’d used the day he’d visited me in my office and set the whole ball rolling. ‘But I didn’t know what was going on until later. Honest. All that stuff with kids . . . I wouldn’t have had anything to do with it if I had.’ His shoulders slumped and he sighed. ‘That’s not true . . . I’d have done it anyway. I needed the money. I don’t get acting jobs because of this . . .’ He pointed to his face. ‘Not the romantic lead type any more, you could say. Or even comedy.’ He looked at me; at the gun in my hand. ‘I’m sorry about your friend, by the way.’

‘Did you know they were going to kill Tommy Quaid?’

‘That was the plan. Frankie got me to hire those two monkeys. They were supposed to be waiting for him at the foundry, but it was all taken out of our hands.’

‘Help yourself . . .’ I twitched the barrel of the gun towards the whisky bottle. He didn’t need telling twice. I had left my glass untouched. ‘Why was it taken out of your hands?’

‘Frankie had those pictures and all those names and details as an insurance policy. He had set the whole thing up for them – where they met, getting the kids from that school. A bunch of sick perverts, if you ask me – but they were all powerful, really powerful, men. Frankie felt reasonably safe because he was so much in the public eye, but he was always a bit worried that the members of his little club might start to think he knew too much. I don’t think it was a real worry, because he was into all of that sick shite anyway, but that’s why he kept the goods on the others locked up in his safe.’

‘What’s that got to do with what happened at the foundry?’

‘You see, to start with Frankie was shitting himself, realizing someone had all of that stuff. That’s why he hired me. He knew me from doing troop entertainment shows together in the war. He also knew that I’d been in trouble with the police since, and that I couldn’t get any acting work because of my face. He said he had the perfect part for me and my face was an advantage. It was just the three of us – me and the two boys – and we were to try and get the stuff back. But one of Frankie’s pervert chums was the shipyard owner, Sir John MacIlwain. We were drawing blanks and Frankie was getting, well,
frantic
like his stage name says. He went to MacIlwain and told him what had happened.’

Gresty paused to top up his drink. He looked over to me, the bottle in his hand, seeking permission. ‘Go ahead,’ I said. ‘In fact I insist.’

He poured himself another. My first still sat untouched.

‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘the old guy said – I mean old man MacIlwain – that he had an idea about who could have pulled off the job and gave us Thomas Quaid’s name. When I checked around, it seemed like Quaid was definitely the most likely suspect.’

I nodded, remembering what Jennifer had told me about how MacIlwain’s pre-war insurance claim, and consequently Tommy’s prison time, had both been inflated.

‘We came up with the plan to lure Quaid somewhere where his death could look like an accident. After that we would turn over his place and get the ledger back. No one would know that it had never contained the negatives. And that’s how you got involved. Frankie did his homework – or got someone to do it for him – and found out you and Tommy Quaid were tight, and heard all the rumours of him doing work for you. Frankie knew Quaid would be on the lookout for someone coming after him, but he would trust you.’

Once more, I had to fight down the rage that rose at the idea that I’d been a collaborator, albeit unknowingly, in Tommy’s death. ‘I thought you said your boys didn’t do it . . .’ I said.

‘They didn’t. After Frankie told him about the break-in, MacIlwain went straight to the others and told them that Frankie had been secretly keeping the goods on them. One of the others was a high-up in Special Branch—’

‘Chief Inspector Bob MacIntyre?’

‘I don’t know his name, but he had connections and he knew that Quaid’s old commanding officer worked for military intelligence, or counter-intelligence, or some shite like that. He was an expert in dealing with scandals, apparently, brushing evidence of MPs’ indiscretions and stuff like that under the carpet. He came up north with some of his men and they took the whole thing over. But Frankie kept me and the boys on.’

‘Why, if it was all out of his hands?’

‘He still had the negatives, but had to keep them safe from the others. Everyone had to think the negatives were missing. Frankie told us we had to make sure the military types didn’t get to the stuff and find out the negatives weren’t there.’

‘And that’s why you went after Jimmy Wilson?’

‘Aye . . .’ Gresty’s voice was becoming slurred. ‘But we weren’t up to it. I’m an out-of-work actor and the other two were a couple of thick-as-shite ballroom bouncers. The military types took it out of our hands. Again.’

‘Have another drink,’ I said.

‘No . . .’ He smiled wanly and the damaged side of his face didn’t join in. ‘I’ve had enough.’

‘Have another drink,’ I said. With my free hand I took the two unopened bottles of whisky from the bag. With the other I cocked the hammer on the pistol.

‘Oh . . .’ he said. ‘I see. It’s like that.’

‘It’s like that.’

I could see he was trying to shake off his incipient drunkenness. ‘Listen, it doesn’t have to be. I’m sorry for what happened, but when I first got into it I didn’t know what was planned. I got out of my depth.’

‘It does have to be like this,’ I said. ‘Don’t bother with the glass, just drink from the bottle.’

Gresty looked around his grubby room, at his meagre possessions, at the smart clothes incongruously hung on the improvised rail. He was saying goodbye.

‘There’s no other way?’

‘There’s a queue of people wanting to get to you. Or get to McNaught, the character you played. Trust me, you’re lucky that it’s me. The others wouldn’t give you as easy a passage. It’s the bottle or . . .’ I raised the gun.

He lifted the whisky bottle by the neck and drank from it, keeping his eyes on me as he did so. Half the bottle went down like water.

‘How?’ he asked.

‘The bath,’ I said. ‘When you’ve drunk so much you won’t know what’s happening. A quiet death.’

He stared at me for a moment. Then he said, quietly, ‘Okay.’

By the time he’d finished the first bottle, he was very drunk. A cold drunk. The drunk of a man desperately clinging on.

‘Will you feel bad about this?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Yes, I’ll feel bad, but there’s no other way. The way this was played from the start, the losers don’t get to walk away.’

‘It’s okay,’ he said, slurring. ‘Don’t feel bad about it. Wasn’t much of a life anyway. Shite, in fact. I’m a bad sort. Worse – I’m a shite actor.’ He waved his finger at me, the bottle still in his hand. ‘But I was good with you, wasn’t I? I had you convinced . . . the whole ex-officer, hard bastard thing. I carried that off. I
was
fucking good at that.’