The Long Glasgow Kiss (33 page)
Read The Long Glasgow Kiss Online
Authors: Craig Russell
‘And, of course,’ he concluded the thought for me, ‘there are many words that are spelt differently but sound the same …’
‘Dex Devereaux had an informant who heard mention of your name. He just reported it how he heard it,
John Largo
. But when I was going through the court records, I found the statement given by Capitaine Jean Largeau of the
Fusiliers Marins
. After that I guessed your career must have become so colourful that you adopted the name Alain Barnier.’
‘It was prudent at the time. I have another name now. And another port. You have succeeded in making Glasgow –’ he struggled for the right word – ‘…
untenable
for me.’
‘I can’t say I’m sorry about that. I don’t approve of your business, Jean.’
Largeau shrugged the same Gallic shrug that he had as Alain Barnier. ‘America is corrupt, my friend. I did not create the corruption, I merely profit from it. And I do not force these blacks to use my goods. I supply a need.’
‘They’re going to hang the gypsy boy, you know,’ I said, changing the subject. ‘The boxer, Tommy Gun Furie.’
Largeau made an expression of incomprehension.
‘For Small Change MacFarlane’s murder. He pled guilty, on his lawyer’s advice, but they’re going to hang him anyway. Which is a shame, because I don’t think he killed Small Change.’
‘Ah …’ Largeau shook his head slowly. ‘I’m afraid I’m not familiar with the case. But with these itinerant people, they are normally guilty … of something.’
We talked for a few more minutes. Two men standing chatting outside a Glasgow bar. We wished each other well and he took his hand from his pocket to shake mine. I left him standing there and drove off. When I looked in my rear-view mirror he was gone.
I don’t know why I didn’t turn Largeau in to the police, or at least why I gave him a chance of getting away before I did. I think it was probably one of those
there but for the grace …
moments. The war had done things to us both and I had very nearly turned out the same way.
But I hadn’t.
E
PILOGUE
Maggie MacFarlane, the Merry Widow of Pollokshields, took the disappearance of Jack Collins with the same stoicism as she had her husband’s demise. I guessed I would never know just how much she knew about, or was involved with, his business dealings. Jack Collins wasn’t mentioned once when I called up to see Lorna and there seemed to be some kind of peace between the two MacFarlane women. I reckoned it had about the same chance of lasting as the new armistice in Indochina.
I told Lorna that if she needed anything, I was there for her. It was goodbye and we both knew it. She was a big girl and could look after herself – one of the things that had brought us together was that we had both been carved from the same wood – but I was beginning to question how I handled women.
Willie Sneddon coughed up my fee in full. I had gone up to see him with Singer and we had told him the whole story. Or I told him the whole story and Singer backed me up with nods every time Sneddon looked to him for confirmation. Sneddon took his losses on the chin, but made his displeasure clear when I told him what we had done with Kirkcaldy instead of handing the boxer over to him. But Sneddon was better off out of it: a few days later the papers were full of the discovery of Bobby Kirkcaldy’s body, which, they reported, had been subjected to a protracted and brutal assault. I braced myself for a visit from Jock Ferguson or, worse still, Superintendent Willie McNab.
There was a sudden outbreak of infectious amnesia in Glasgow: the witnesses who could place Tommy Gun Furie near Small Change MacFarlane’s place on the night of the murder recanted. The charges against Furie were dropped. I found myself wondering how many of the witnesses had been getting doorstep deliveries.
Against her injunction, I called around to May Donaldson’s later that week. I waited outside until she got home from work and I was sure she was alone. Her face darkened when she opened the door to me.
‘Lennox, I told you …’
‘Don’t worry, May,’ I said. ‘I’m not staying. I just came to give you this …’ I handed her a white vellum envelope. It was a nice envelope. Classy-looking. Her eyes grew wide when she opened it.
‘What’s this?’
‘It’s five hundred pounds. Consider it a wedding present. Another wedding present. You deserve a good start.’
‘I can’t accept this, Lennox. You know I can’t.’ She held the envelope out to me but I pushed it back.
‘Yes you can. It’s something I earned and I’m not happy about what I did to earn it. Don’t worry …’ I said, reading her look. ‘It’s not dirty money. In fact I was paid from the coffers of global law enforcement.’
‘Still, I really can’t take it …’ she protested, but with significantly less enthusiasm. ‘How do I explain this to George?’
‘Tell him you’ve inherited something from a relative you didn’t know about. I’ll send you a letter with my official heading on it, if you like.’
She looked at the envelope with the bulge of money pushing it wide. It looked like some split-open vegetable. A cash crop. ‘Lennox …’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘There is something I’d like you to do for me. Maybe I should come in and explain …’
I was waiting when Davey Wallace got out of hospital. The swelling had gone down but his face was still a dark spectrum of bruises. He walked slowly but gingerly, as if treading on hot coals. I guessed that anything but the gentlest footfall would jar through his cracked ribs. Somehow, he managed to grin his usual grin at me. That hurt more than if he’d swung a punch at me.
I held open the car door for him. He got in and we drove across the city. Davey told me that he didn’t want me to worry about him and that he would be ready to do work for me again in a couple of weeks. And he would have plenty of time, he told me: he’d been laid off from the yard.
I didn’t say anything. Instead I drove down to the river and parked on a scruffy patch of cleared bomb-site. I helped Davey to the water’s edge and we sat on a wall beneath the bristling black branches of shipyard cranes. A puffer belched blackly as it drifted past us.
We sat there for more than an hour while I talked, without a break. I talked about my home in Canada and about the war. I talked about when I’d been Davey’s age and everything I thought the world had held for me. I talked about things that I hadn’t talked about to anybody before, and I told Davey that. I talked about Sicily and Aachen, about the friends I’d seen die and the enemies I’d killed. About the bad things I’d done because you had to do bad things in war, and the bad things I’d done even when I didn’t have to do them. I laid out my life for him. And for me.
When I finished, I handed him an envelope. The same classy, vellum type I had given May. I told Davey about Saskatchewan, about open prairies and hot summers and snow as deep as your chin in winter. I told him he should quit watching gangster movies and watch more Westerns.
‘Two friends of mine are moving out there. May and George. They’ve got a huge farm out there and they’ll need someone to help out. There’s a ticket in there for you to travel with them and five hundred pounds in sterling. That goes a long way in Canadian dollars, Davey.’
‘Why are you doing this, Mr Lennox?’
‘Because you’re a good kid, Davey, and I was a good kid once. Or I like to pretend to myself that I was a good kid once. You deserve something better than this …’ I gestured to the black, oily Clyde, to the cranes around us, to the dark city behind us. ‘I’ve put a letter in there as well. It gives my folks’ address and details in New Brunswick. I wired my dad and he said he’ll stand as sponsor for you if immigration need it.’ I put my hand on his shoulder. ‘But you won’t. Canada wants good kids like you.’
‘I don’t know what to say, Mr Lennox. If there’s anything I can ever do …’
‘What I want you to do is have a good life. Marry one of those strong, pretty Ukrainian-Canadian girls with sky-blue eyes, rosy cheeks and butter-coloured hair they’ve got in Saskatchewan and have a dozen blond kids.’
Davey sat silently in the car on the way back, the white envelope on his lap. He didn’t speak until I pulled up outside his digs.
‘I’ll never forget this, Mr Lennox. Never.’ His face was determined. Almost grim.
‘Good,’ I grinned. ‘I don’t expect you to. Maybe one day I’ll come out and visit.’
*
After I left Davey, I drove back to Great Western Road. Something churned in my gut and I knew it was because, out there by the river, I had faced things with Davey that I hadn’t faced since the war. It had liberated me and burdened me all at the same time. But at least, for once, I knew for sure what my next move was going to be.
I parked the Atlantic outside my digs, walked up to the door, unlocked it and stepped into the hallway. But I didn’t go up to my flat.
Instead, without hesitating, I knocked firmly on Fiona White’s door.
A
CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to offer my heartfelt thanks to the following people for their help and support: Wendy, Jonathan and Sophie; my agent Carole Blake, my editor Jane Wood, as well as Jenny Ellis and all at Quercus; my copy-editor Robyn Karney; Louise Thurtell at Allen and Unwin; Marco Schneiders and Helmut Pesch at Lübbe Verlag, as well as all of my other publishers around the world; also to Colin Black and Chris Martin.
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