Dead Men and Broken Hearts: A Lennox Thriller (Lennox 4) (16 page)

I watched them go. And they watched me watching them. They were obviously itchy about being followed. Like someone else in my recent past.

I ordered another cup of bitter froth and tried to remember what I had done with a page I had torn out of my notebook, the page on which I’d written the address of where I had seen Andrew Ellis and the girl.

I wasn’t sure what kind of welcome deposed Hungarian premier Imre Nagy was going to get when he arrived in Moscow, but I guessed it would be marginally warmer and less awkward than the encounter I had with Fiona White in the hallway.

It was obvious that she had been avoiding me, and given the effort she made for our eyes not to meet, I guessed that she wouldn’t be making contact with any other part of my anatomy for the foreseeable future. To be honest, I was less than grownup about it myself and the few words I had exchanged with her had been brusque and ill-mannered. I told her not to worry, I would be out of the flat as soon as I possibly could, and that I had already viewed some alternative accommodations. To be fair, I had caught her off-guard, having come home in the middle of the day. I excused myself with the charm of an adolescent and went up to my rooms.

An odd thing about me, something that many would find unexpected, was that I was pretty fastidious when it came to neatness. Not just in dress, but in every aspect of my life. I had always been a little like that, but it had become something of an obsession during the war. My military career in itself could have been described as untidy, and – after I had been
encouraged
to resign my commission – there were certainly more than a few loose ends
left in Hamburg that the military police had taken an unhealthy interest in. Nevertheless, I had developed this habit of keeping myself and my immediate surroundings in order. I put it down to the experience of war, or more particularly the type of experience of war that I and most of the First Canadian Army had had. People talk about the harsh reality of war, but when you got right up close to it – and I had gotten as close to it as it was possible to get – war is so brutal and chaotic that it seems unreal. Maybe my orderliness had been all about locking out the chaos and misery by keeping one part of my life controlled and ordered.

Whatever the reason, while I might have come close to being cashiered for black market activities and other peccadillos of one sort or another, I would never have been brought up on a charge of having my tunic unbuttoned.

So, when I went into my rooms, I had to negotiate around the crates and chest into which I had already started to pack my books and other stuff, in preparation for quitting my flat. I was yet to empty the wastepaper basket and I found the Garnethill address I had torn out of my notebook.

Even though the day was yet to reach the pivot between morning and afternoon, the November day outside was gloomy and I switched on the table lamp. I took the crumpled note over into the pool of yellow light and smoothed it flat on the occasional table.

The Staedtler-Moran International Company Limited.

The name certainly did not sound Hungarian, but it certainly wasn’t typically Scottish either. There was no clue to what particular trade the Staedtler-Moran International Company Limited plied and there had been no signs of life when I had passed Ellis and his dishy foreign friend that night.

But it would still be worth a look.

* * *

I knew of a solicitor whose offices were not far from Garnethill and I went in with the name of his firm scribbled down on a piece of paper. My plan was to claim to be lost and looking for the solicitor, clearly having gotten the address wrong. The genuine office was far enough away for no one at Staedtler-Moran to recognize the name, but if someone did get suspicious, or decided to be extra helpful by looking it up in the ’phone book for me, they would find a nearby solicitor of the name I claimed to be looking for.

In the event, the elaborate subterfuge was unnecessary.

There was no smog or dark to cloak my surroundings this time. In fact the clouds had parted but, if anything, the cold, hard sunlight seemed to etch the dark buildings with a harsher and more uncompromising hand. It took me a while to pinpoint the exact doorway again: Glasgow’s smog created a palette and a landscape all of its own and things always looked disorientingly different in the clear light of day. Eventually a dulled bronze plaque informed me that I had again found Staedtler-Moran International.

I stepped into a fluorescent-tube-lit entry hallway of shiny green and white porcelain-tiled walls and a dull linoleum floor. In front of me, a flagged stone staircase arced up and into darkness. The offices of Staedtler-Moran were to my right and when I entered, I found a reception desk blanked off with opaque glass, with a kiosk type window at the far end. It was a common form of reception in Scottish commercial premises and it always made me feel I should be buying a railway ticket. A sign above a button instructed me to
Press for Attention
. I did.

The receptionist pulled open the small sliding section of window that allowed us to hear each other, but her face was
framed in a circle of clear glass in the frosted pane. I could hear the clatter of typewriters behind her.

‘May I help you?’ She was a girl of about twenty-two or three and had clearly taken an instant shine to me, which always made things easier. I ran through my demi-fiction of looking for the solicitor’s office and it became obvious she was not going to be the suspicious or inquisitive type. She was, bless her, as dim as she was homely and blinked at me through horn-rimmed bottle-bottom glasses that were so heavy that she had to continually push them back up her nose with mouse-like twitches while her mouth gaped slightly.

She did not, of course, recognize the solicitor’s firm I claimed to be seeking and she explained that the Staedtler-Moran International Company supplied bakery equipment to ‘bakeries throughout the Scottish Central Belt and beyond’.

‘And what about the
International
in the name?’ I asked. ‘Do you have offices abroad.’

‘Not really,’ she said dully, as if worried that it might disappoint me.

‘Do you sell equipment to bakeries in other countries?’

‘No.’

‘I see.’

‘We have an office in Motherwell …’ she chirped hopefully.

I thanked her and took my leave. She watched me balefully through the small clear circle in the frosted glass. I opened the door that led into the hall just as someone who must have come down the stairwell was leaving through the main door to the street.

My little goldfish was delighted when I reappeared at her window.

‘Are there other offices upstairs?’ I asked.

‘Oh yes, but not the name you was looking for,’ she said, again eager to please.

‘I didn’t notice a plaque outside for any businesses except yours,’ I said.

‘There’s only one,’ she said. ‘It’s some kind of small concern and I don’t know its name. It’s something to do with foreign languages, I think. Translations or something like that.’

‘Okay …’ I said as I headed back in haste to the main door, waving my thanks and leaving my homely little goldfish in her circle of glass.

I just made the street in time to catch a glimpse of the figure that had passed as I had opened the office door into the hallway. She was just disappearing around the corner at the top of the rise. I sprinted up the street to the corner, closing just enough space for me to keep her in sight when I rounded the bend without drawing attention to the fact that I was following her. I could have been wrong, of course, but it had been the odd mismatch of hat and coat that I had recognized more than anything else.

And her shape. I had not had a chance to see her face, but her figure looked right to me. As right as it was possible to be right.

There were, I had been told, whisky connoisseurs whose tastebuds were so attuned, they could identify each and every distillery; and wine buffs who could pin down a wine’s source almost to the specific vine. When it came to appreciation of the female form, I displayed pretty much the same set of skills. Once a set of curves had registered with me, it wasn’t just imprinted in my memory, it was card-indexed, cross-referenced, categorized and star-rated. Even though I had only ever seen it through the weight of her unfashionable coat, hers was one
chassis that had been given its own reference section.

She walked with a steady pace, determined but not rushed, and it was no ordeal to follow her from behind, but I was concerned that there was no one else around on the street. Maybe I was flattering myself, but I felt pretty sure that if she got a good look at my face, she would recognize it as the one who had disturbed her and Ellis in the smog.

She crossed Sauchiehall Street and I trotted along behind her. There were more people about and I relaxed a little, feeling I could take better cover in the foliage of other pedestrians. When we reached Charing Cross, she walked directly to the taxi rank and I picked up the pace. I was on foot, having abandoned the Atlantic at almost exactly the same place as I had that night in the smog, and there was a real danger I was going to lose her if she jumped into a cab.

Which was exactly what she did. I sprinted to the next taxi in the rank and jumped into the back.

‘Follow that car …’ I said breathlessly.

The cabbie turned in his seat and presented me with the kind of leathery face that you could only cultivate in a boxing ring.

‘Are you trying to be funny?’

‘Right now, no … but I do have my lighter moments. Hurry up, or we’ll lose them.’

‘That taxi that that young lady just got into?’

‘That’s the one. What’s the problem here?’ I looked past him and through his windshield. Her cab had turned west along Sauchiehall Street and was about to disappear from view.

‘Listen pal, this is the way it works: if you have a destination, then give it to me and I’ll take you there. If not, get out of the cab.’

‘I really need you to follow that taxi before we lose it, it’s important.’

‘I don’t know what your game is,
sir
,’ he said, his tone heavy with menace. ‘But I’ll repeat the way this all works: you give me a legitimate destination and I’ll take you there. Then I charge you in accordance with the City of Glasgow Corporation’s Hackney Fare Regulations: anywhere in the city for two shillings for the first mile, plus fourpence for each additional quarter of a mile, first five minutes of waiting free, thereafter fourpence for each completed period of five minutes. Luggage not exceeding fifty-six pounds in weight is free, excluding bicycles, perambulators and-or children’s mail-carts. Maximum quantity of luggage one hundred and twelve pounds weight. Have you got it? If you’ve any complaints, please address them, quoting my driver number, to the Chief Constable, Traffic Department, twenty-one Saint Andrew’s Street, Glasgow, C-one. Alternatively, you can shove them up your arse.’

I sighed and handed him a business card. ‘I’m an enquiry agent and I’m on a case. Now would you
please
try to catch up with that taxi.’

‘I don’t care if you’re Dick-Fucking-Barton … I’m not taking you to follow some lassie without her knowing. Try reading the Sunday papers, pal. With these murders going on, you’re lucky I don’t just take you straight to the polis.’

I sank back into the seat, the fight gone from me. A couple of months before, three woman had been shot to death in their beds, the kind of murder never committed in Scotland, and now all of Glasgow was looking over its shoulder for a crazed killer in the shadows.

‘You sure are a by-the-book kind of guy, aren’t you?’ I said dully.

He replied by getting out of his cab and coming round to hold the door open for me.

‘If you don’t have a destination,
sir
, then I suggest, with the greatest respect, that you fuck off.’

‘Is that the wording from the Regulations too?’ I asked as I got out of the taxi.

‘I’m paraphrasing.’

I looked along Sauchiehall Street. The cab was gone.

‘Thanks a bunch, friend,’ I said. I thought about getting him to drive me back to Garnethill, but the idea of paying him two bob stuck in my throat. I walked across Charing Cross and back towards where I’d left the car. At least this time, I thought hopefully, it wouldn’t have been sabotaged.

I was half way up Garnett Street when I stopped to take in the view. The sun was still bright but now hung lower in the winter sky and the dark glass of Glasgow’s smoke-hazed air split it into a spectrum of golds and reds. Standing there watching the sky above the city, I lit a cigarette and took a long, slow pull on it.

I should have known better than to indulge in reflective moments.

I was so busy meditating on how industrial pollution makes for great sunsets and savouring my slow smoke that I didn’t notice until the last minute the brand new Rover as it gleamed to a halt beside me. I found myself flanked by a couple of brushed and polished burly types.

There are two types of heavy one was wont to encounter in my line of work: the professional criminal thug whose weight is all muscle and fist; then there are those who carry the weight of authority invested by the state. Policemen, mainly. I knew I was looking at the latter kind.

A third man slid out from the front passenger seat. He was taller but less built than the other two. His tailoring, unlike theirs, was the kind that was priced in guineas, not pounds. He was wearing a country set type herringbone-tweed overcoat and a matching flat cap. He wasn’t wearing plus-fours – I checked, the thought having run through my head that this could have been a press gang for shooting party ghillies. From the outfit and the casually authoritative demeanour, I guessed that his education had involved dreamy spires and his school, like his tailoring, had been paid for in guineas.

He had also been enjoying a smoke and I didn’t like the business-like way he dropped the cigarette onto the kerb and crushed it under the heel of a burnished Oxford brogue.

‘Would you be so kind as to get into the car, Mr Lennox,’ he said in an accent so cut-glass it made Waterford Crystal look slapdash. The heavy to my left showed me a warrant card. He was a policeman all right, but one of the secret denomination. But I guessed the public-school boy was slumming it. He was no Special Branch copper; he was something other.