The Quiet Death of Thomas Quaid: Lennox 5 (20 page)

‘Quiet Tommy Quaid didn’t strike me as a
Weltschmerz-
y kind of guy.’

‘Nor me. Jock . . .?’

He sighed again, went back to his desk and made an internal call, still without sitting down. He asked for the details of the case and flipped open a pad. He was obviously getting quite a bit of information and he scribbled it down on the pad.

‘Robert Weston. Seventeen years old. Lived for the last year in a lodging house, before that he was a boarder at St Andrew’s School. It’s a school in darkest Ayrshire for military kids, mainly orphans.’

‘Which Robert Weston was?’

‘I believe so.’ He handed me the note he had taken and punctuated our conversation by switching off his desk lamp.

‘I’ll get out of your hair,’ I said. Ferguson came around the desk to follow me out. He reached past me and took a suit on a hanger down from the hook on his office door. It was a formal dinner suit with black tie. I hadn’t noticed it when I had come in.

‘You moonlighting in the dance halls?’ I asked. ‘A shilling a tango?’

‘Retirement do at the end of the week.’ He looked gloomy. Gloomier. ‘Chief Inspector Bob MacIntyre, a senior who’s been around since Methuselah was in nappies. He got an extension on compulsory retirement. One of Willie McNab’s old buddies. You remember Superintendent McNab, don’t you?’

I smiled. He was being sarcastic, of course. I had taken a beating at McNab’s behest, much worse than the one I’d heard dished out to the tramp downstairs.

‘Black tie is a bit formal for a police smoker, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘I didn’t think you were the stripper and stag movie type.’

‘Christ knows I’m not, but it would be preferable to this. It’s going to be quite a do. Frantic Frankie Findlay is appearing as a special favour. An old buddy of MacIntyre, our retiring chum, apparently.’

‘Frankie Findlay?’

‘I know,’ Ferguson said wearily. ‘But I have to show face . . .’

‘This may sound strange, Jock, but could you swing an invite for me?’

Ferguson managed to look dumbfounded and suspicious at the one time. ‘What, you’re a fan?’

‘God no. It would be good to build some bridges, make some new contacts in the force.’

Ferguson’s face darkened. ‘For Christ’s sake, Lennox, do me a favour and don’t insult my intelligence. You and I are going to have problems if you start playing me for an arse. What’s your angle?’

‘Okay, Jock, I’m sorry.’ I could see he was genuinely angry. I told him about Tommy having a ticket stub to Findlay’s show at the King’s and it not making sense. ‘I just wanted to see the guy up close.’

‘Well, you can buy a ticket to one of his shows. There’s no way I’m going to let you use me so that you can snoop around at a police function. You’re pushing our friendship too far, Lennox.’

I was about to respond when Ferguson’s desk 'phone rang. He scowled at me, making it clear that he would have missed the call and would have been on his way home if he hadn’t been stuck talking to me. He leaned over his desk and picked up the receiver without putting down his cellophane-wrapped dinner suit or his briefcase.

‘Oh, hello, Bob,’ he said, and looked at me, as if I should understand his surprise. ‘What? No, I don’t have any direct interest, it just came up in conversation and I couldn’t remember the lad’s name . . .’ Ferguson listened for a while, still looking over at me and frowning. After a while he said: ‘No, that was all. Just couldn’t remember the name.’

After he hung up, Ferguson left his hand resting on the receiver in its cradle.

‘Talk of the devil . . .’ he said, thoughtfully. ‘That was Bob MacIntyre, the chief inspector I was talking about.’

‘The one whose retirement the monkey suit is for?’

Ferguson nodded. ‘He was asking me why I’d asked for details of that boy’s suicide.’ His frown deepened. ‘What the hell has it got to do with him? I didn’t think, but there was actually no reason for him to have an interest. And Christ knows how he knew so quickly that I’d been asking.’

‘He didn’t investigate the death?’ I asked.

‘God no. Not his area. But there again, we never get to hear what his crowd are into.’

‘His crowd?’ I asked.

‘Special Branch,’ said Ferguson as he steered me to the door.

This time I knew it wasn’t my imagination. The light was finally fading by the time I got back to my car and I decided to take a swing by the lock-ups down by the river. I was heading towards the Broomielaw when two cars that had been behind me turned off at Greendyke Street. And there, suddenly exposed, was chummy in the two-tone Consul. I gave no indication that I’d seen him and turned into Clyde Street. He didn’t make the turn with me, and I guessed he had pulled over and was waiting for some other cars to hide behind. But it was quiet at that time of night and he clearly decided he would have to rely on distance rather than camouflage; in my rear-view mirror, I saw him take the corner about a hundred yards behind me, no lights.

I guessed he expected me to try the storage shed site again, so I decided not to let him down and headed in that direction. He was doing his best not to be seen, holding back to the point of risking losing me, his thinking clearly that he knew where I was heading and could pick me up again if he lost sight.

I decided to make things interesting for him. I indicated right, before turning up a side street. Once out of sight around the corner, I floored the pedal and accelerated as fast as the Wyvern would allow, pulling up at the kerb about fifty yards along the street. I got out and locked the car and ran back up the street, seeking out some kind of cover before chummy made the road end. The street was narrow and not residential, flanked on either side by huge sandstone warehouse-type buildings and offices, all about five storeys high. They threw the street into shadow and made the most of the gloaming. The only form of illumination was a couple of wall-mounted street lamps that gave off an insipid, nauseous orange light. There were no signs of life or light from any of the buildings and I congratulated myself on my excellent choice of ambush spot.

I was running out of time, so I ducked into the only half-decent cover I could find: a deeply recessed doorway, shaded by a heavy stone lintel and pillars on either side. It was very similar to the cover my attackers had used three weeks before. Shrinking back as far as I could into the shadows, I checked the Wyvern. I’d parked it outside the main entrance to a shut-up warehouse, making it look like I had gone inside.

And there he was. The Ford Consul, its headlights now on full, turned into the street but pulled up just inside the corner, the engine still running. The driver was obviously holding back and assessing the situation. This was clearly no dimwit.

After what seemed an age the car started moving again and slowly made its way along the street; I squeezed myself into the smallest shadowed place in the doorway as the car passed and I couldn’t make out the driver, or whether there was more than one person in the Consul. It slowed even more as it passed the parked Wyvern; they were checking it out.

Thinking it through, I decided I would wait until they got out of the car, hopefully only one of them and with his back to me, then I would pull the same stunt on him that had been pulled on me three weeks before.

This time, I promised myself, I would show a little more restraint. I steeled myself for action.

The car drove on. It headed for the far end of the street, turned the corner and disappeared. So much for steeling myself. I stayed put, though, just in case the car came back. And it did. It reappeared and turned back into the street, heading towards me. I quickly shifted position so that the opposite side of the doorway shielded me but, even at that, there was a good chance I’d be picked up by the Consul’s headlights. But he stopped at the other end of the street, switched off his lights and sat. No one came out of the car.

After five minutes, I saw the spark and flare of a match, then the ember glow of a drawn-on cigarette. Just one. After ten minutes, I realized my ruse had worked that little bit too well, and the guy in the car was waiting for me to re-emerge from the warehouse and drive off.

I was pretty much at a loss about what to do. Another painfully slow ten minutes passed and I stayed hidden. Thankfully, the guy in the car must have gotten pretty fed up too, because he got out and headed towards my parked car on foot. I guessed that he was on his own and that there were probably no hulking, non-smoking passengers left sitting in the car. He was wearing a narrow-brimmed hat and a lightweight summer raincoat, and I could see the man wasn’t too tall or robustly built. But there was something about his movements that seemed familiar.

I decided he wouldn’t present too much of a danger, especially if I caught him unawares, approaching from behind. He stopped at the Wyvern and tried the door. His back was half-turned towards me and I eased out from the concealment of the doorway and made my way as silently as possible towards him. He leaned forwards and peered into my car, cupping his hands around his eyes and against the glass. I decided to make the most of his encapsulated attention and grab him from behind.

I closed the last five yards in a sprint and seized a fistful of raincoat and jacket collar, knocking the hat from the small man’s head.

It was the shock as much as the pain.

A bolt of intense pain seared through my barely healed ribs as the small man’s elbow found its mark. I realized that I still had a hold of his coat collar, but he in turn had an iron grip on that wrist.

Suddenly my feet were off the ground and swinging through air, and I found myself slamming into the greasy pavement. I came down on my back and right side and my breath pulsed out of me. He had levered me clean off the ground and over his shoulder. With rat-like speed and agility, he dropped a knee onto my chest, squeezing the last of my breath from me and leaving me sucking air desperately. Just to add to the fun, the blade edge of his hand slashed across my throat, shutting off my airway for a split second.

I no longer knew where he was or what he was doing; I made no effort to defend myself further. Every ounce of my being was focused on that single existential need: to breathe. To pull air through a constricted throat into empty lungs.

I guess he had grabbed my collar and dragged me across the pavement, because when I started to breathe more easily, I found myself propped up in a sitting position against the warehouse wall. I looked up and saw the small man standing over me, his stance one of readiness, his hands balled into fists.

‘You had enough?’ he asked. He had one of those working-class English accents I always found difficult to place, but I guessed somewhere south rather than north. I nodded. It had been a long time since I’d been bested in a fight and I was struggling with the etiquette of it – and with the embarrassment of having taken a hiding from someone who looked like he should be wearing jockey silks and whipping a thoroughbred around Aintree.

Two things dawned on me. The first was I remembered where I recognized the swift, rat-like movements from: he was the same small guy I’d seen at Tommy’s funeral, trying to merge into the background; the one who had asked Jennifer if Tommy had seen any of his old army comrades recently. The second was that this small, slight man had been very professionally trained and could have done a lot more damage to my throat if he had wanted to. My money was on him having been a commando.

I started to ease myself up and if I had had any remaining thoughts of resistance, he put them out of my head: he reached into his coat pocket and I found myself looking at the business end of a Webley revolver.

‘We’ll take my car . . .’ he said with a smile that was more a rodential baring of teeth, and tossed me the keys with his free hand. ‘You drive.’

‘Where to?’ I asked with the kind of amenability that comes from having a gun dug into the side of your belly.

‘You know where to go.’ He sat in the passenger seat but turned sideways, facing me.

‘Just tell me where you want to go,’ I said wearily. My ribs hurt like hell again and my throat still felt tight and raw. ‘It’s been a long day.’

‘The lock-ups. Tommy Quaid’s lock-up.’

No big surprise there, I thought.

‘So I show you the way to the right lock-up, you get the key, McNaught clears it all out and I take a dip in the Clyde – that it?’

‘Just drive.’

I did, despite the sparks and flashes that still danced across my vision. I needed to think. To work out a strategy: one where there was a future in which I would still be breathing. As soon as McNaught’s henchman got the key and knew which lock-up it fitted, I would become decidedly surplus to requirements.

‘Your boss McNaught. Was he in the same unit as you and Tommy? Is this what this is all about?’

My passenger remained silent.

‘All of that at the ironworks . . .’ I persisted. ‘It was all a smokescreen, wasn’t it? There were no trade secrets, nothing to be stolen. It was just a credible place for Tommy to take a tumble. Somewhere out of the way with minimal security.’ A thought struck me and with it I felt a surge of anger. ‘You’re pretty handy when it comes to unarmed combat, aren’t you, chum? It was you, wasn’t it? It was you who broke Tommy’s neck on that roof, nice and clean and quiet, then chucked him over the side.’

Again the small murine man stayed silent. We were getting nearer the lock-ups and with every hundred yards we drove I felt my life shorten by a year. One way or another, I would have to make my move soon. Despite my furious strategizing, before any plan took a definite form we had already arrived at the entrance to the lock-ups. And the end of the road for me.

‘Pull in and stop,’ he said, jabbing me in the side with the gun. ‘Over by those sheds. We need to talk.’

I did what I was told, turning into the lock-ups and pulling over into the shadow between two storage sheds. Maybe this was it, here and now. Maybe it was just the key, not the location of the lock-up, that he needed. Maybe I had already outlived my usefulness.

‘You have the key?’ he asked. I said nothing. He jabbed again. ‘The key to the storage shed?’