The Quiet Death of Thomas Quaid: Lennox 5 (25 page)

BOOK: The Quiet Death of Thomas Quaid: Lennox 5
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I could tell she meant it. I slipped the envelope back into my pocket. ‘I’ll keep it for you, in case you change your mind.’

Then she asked the question I hoped she wouldn’t ask. ‘The photographs. What was in them that was so terrible?’

So I told her. I sat staring out of the windscreen, not looking at her, and told her exactly what I had seen. Once more Jennifer cried and I comforted her.

When she was finished, I started the car and we drove down to Newton Mearns.

*

In keeping with Handsome Jonny Cohen’s movie star looks, he lived with his wife and kids in a huge, modernist sprawl that would have looked more at home in Hollywood than Newton Mearns. The house – designed by some London architect who had since become a ‘name’ – sat elevated with a view out over its neighbours and the countryside beyond. It certainly was a lot of real estate and as I swung the Alpine up the long, sweeping driveway, I reflected on how I was going to have to break the whole
crime doesn’t pay
thing to Jonny.

The man who answered the door was tall, dark-haired, with a cleft in his chin that would have made Cary Grant feel inadequate. Jonny Cohen really was absurdly handsome and, despite being a crime boss and erstwhile armed robber, he had the kind of look you instinctively trusted.

His wife joined him and they both beamed a welcome at us. I did the whole introductions thing for Jennifer’s benefit. It was all very suburban and our conversation was light and unburdened by the weight of what we were really doing there. The only hint of something other than a social call had been the couple of Jonny’s heavies we’d passed on the drive who did their best – which wasn’t that good – not to look conspicuous.

Jonny and his wife left Jennifer and me alone in the marble-floored hallway while I took my leave of her.

‘You’ll be safe here,’ I said. ‘Once I get things sorted out, we can get you home, or wherever you want to go.’

‘Wherever I want to go?’

‘You said you were thinking of moving out of London. Maybe now’s a good time for a change of address.’

‘I think a change of address is something you should think about too,’ she said. ‘This is all too dangerous. If I’d known, I would never have got you involved.’

‘You didn’t get me involved: I was already involved. I was set up for this long before I met you. And anyway, I’m doing this for myself, for Tommy.’

‘Are you sure you can’t just go to the police? That’s their job. That way at least you wouldn’t be putting yourself at risk.’

‘There are coppers involved in this. Probably at a high level. Going to the police would only put me at more risk not less. I’ll be fine. The Cohens will look after you. They’re good people.’

‘Didn’t you say he was an armed robber?’

‘And Tommy was a thief, but still one of the best men I’ve ever known. These
are
good people. The people I’m up against, the people who arranged Tommy’s killing, are the ones who are supposed to be good. The ones we’re supposed to look up to and trust. Tommy was right: the world is absurd.’

‘Look after yourself,’ she said.

I looped my arm around her waist, pulled her to me and kissed her. It took me as much by surprise as it did her. Then she kissed me back.

She was still standing in the doorway as I headed back down the drive, passing two Jewish thugs in forty-guinea mohair suits, pretending to be gardeners.

*

It was another Clydeside summer’s day sketched out in charcoal against a bright sky. Oblivious to the sunshine, the dark finger of pier stretched out into the even darker Clyde. Jock Ferguson was waiting at the end, as I had asked him to. He was staring down into the river and when I came to stand beside him I followed his gaze. The stone pier sank into water dressed in a dark rainbow sheen of slicked engine oil; a scurf of brownish-white froth marked where greasy stone and greasy river met and outlined boat-washed tangles of floating, half-rotted wood. The skeleton of something iron-framed jutted rust-boned out of the water.

‘It never ceases to amaze me,’ he said without greeting.

‘What does?’

‘The stuff that finds its way into the river. Do you see it?’

‘What? That rusting metal thing?’

‘No, next to that, just under the surface. You can just make it out and no more . . .’

I leaned forward and peered into the water. The sunlight bounced off its oil-sleeked veneer. ‘I can’t see anything, Jock.’

‘Look . . . there . . .’ he said impatiently and pointed.

I saw an indistinct shape, angled in the water. It took me a while to make sense of its dark geometry, but attached to it further down, barely perceptible and streaked with grime and algae, I made out the vague pattern of a keyboard.

‘Shit . . .’ I said. ‘An upright piano?’

‘Like I say, it never ceases to amaze me what gets dumped in the Clyde. All kinds of secrets.’ Ferguson turned to me pointedly. ‘You’re someone who has a lot of secrets. I sometimes wonder how many of them you’ve dumped into the river. I tell you now, Lennox, this had better be good. And why all this cloak and dagger shite?’

‘I need you to get me into that police smoker.’

Ferguson made a point of looking startled. ‘You amaze me, Lennox. You really have the brass neck to ask that again? I gave you my answer and I gave it to you pretty clearly, as I recall.’ He turned and started back along the pier.

‘I’m not asking, Jock,’ I said. ‘I’m telling you I need you to get me into that smoker.’

He turned, his face suddenly stone-dark like the pier. ‘You fucking what?’

‘I need you to listen to me, Jock, because I’m not going to say this again. You’ll either help me or you won’t. I am keeping you in the dark about something – but I’m not keeping you in the dark because I’m up to something shady, but to keep you safe. I know you suspect I’m halfway crooked and most of your colleagues think I’m all the way crooked, but I’m telling you I really am on the side of the angels with this one. Whatever suspicions you may have about me, you must have seen something worthwhile to recommend me for the bank run. I’m asking you to trust me again.’

His expression changed and he came back to stand beside me. ‘What have you got yourself into, Lennox?’

‘Something big and something that stinks. Something rotten. And there’s a good chance I’ll not come out of it breathing.’

‘Has this something to do with Quiet Tommy Quaid?’

‘The less you know the better, trust me. I’m asking you for a favour, Jock. Maybe the last I’ll ever ask you. I need you to do me this favour and answer a couple of questions. After that I need you to forget everything I asked of you. The favour I need is for you to get me into that police smoker.’

‘And your questions?’

‘Okay . . . I’m guessing me telling you that I’m into something big isn’t news to you – you already know I’ve attracted heavy attention. I need you to tell me the truth, Jock: when Archie and Twinkletoes do the bank run again this week, they don’t have anything to worry about with that blue van that followed us last time, do they? You know damned well it wasn’t full of armed robbers.’

Ferguson looked at me for a moment, his expression unreadable. ‘Yes. Yes I do.’

‘Special Branch?’

He shook his head. ‘Not our lot. But it was a Home Office registered vehicle. Like I said, London. I got a shout from upstairs demanding I explain why I was asking about that registration number. I had to tell them the truth: that it had been spotted following a cash van and was suspected of carrying armed robbers. I was told in short order that there was nothing to worry about and to drop the subject pronto if I knew what was good for me. They didn’t exactly give me the “matter of national security” shite, but it was implied.’

‘Trust me, Jock, this has nothing to do with national security.’

‘Then what has it to do with? You asked me to trust you, why don’t you trust me?’

‘Because you’re a good man. The same way Quiet Tommy Quaid was a good man. The problem with you good men is that you always try to do the right thing – or worse, the right thing in the right way – and that could very easily cost you your career or even your life. I’m afraid the only type of man who can deal with this is someone who is a little bit rotten inside. Someone who can do the right thing in the wrong way. We both know that’s me. And if it turns to shit . . . well, let’s face it, I’m not that much of a loss to the world.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Lennox—’

‘Can you get me into that smoker or not?’

‘What are you going to do there?’

‘Don’t worry, nothing dramatic. I’m just going to be there. Show face. Trust me, that’ll be enough.’

‘Okay. I’ll get you in. Do you need anything else?’

I handed Ferguson a note with a date on it: it was the same date as the show for which Tommy had had a ticket stub.

‘I need to know if there were any break-ins that night,’ I said. ‘Either private residences or commercial premises – but you can ignore anything low-grade. I’m talking about something worthwhile being taken or the victim being someone important.’

‘So this
has
to do with Quiet Tommy Quaid?’

‘Will you check it out for me or not, Jock?’

He looked at me in that odd blank way of his, then nodded. ‘Anything else?’

‘There’s a guy calls himself McNaught – although if that’s his real name mine’s Mitzi Gaynor. Military type, probably ex-officer. Built like a brick shithouse. The most noticeable thing about him is he has a facial wound, probably picked up during the war – makes his face look lopsided. Ring any bells?’

Ferguson thought for a minute. ‘None. Do you think he’s police?’

I shook my head. ‘If he is, he’s of the secret variety.’ I found myself using the same vocabulary as Nancy Ross. ‘But again not local Special Branch. I suspect he’s connected to my pals in the blue van. But I get the odd feeling he is unofficial – some kind of independent dirty-tricks contractor, but he’s tied in with the powers that be, that’s for sure.’

‘Is that what you’re telling me? That your opposition in all this is “the powers that be”?’

‘People connected to them, yes. But I need you to believe me that I’m the cowboy wearing the white hat here. Crimes have been committed, Jock. A series of the worst kind of crime you can imagine – crimes that
are
punishable under the law, except they’ll never see the light of day. And it’s people in positions of authority who have committed them. They’re beyond your reach. Beyond the law.’

‘Nobody’s beyond the law.’

I gave Ferguson a you-really-can’t-be-that-naive look and his assurance withered under it. He stood silently watching the oily rainbow swirls on the water for a moment. ‘Are you telling me there are City of Glasgow Police officers involved?’

I sighed. ‘You don’t want me to answer that. I won’t answer that.’

Again he stared silently down at the water.

‘Looking for the rest of the orchestra?’ I asked.

‘No – just for what’ll be left of my career if you screw up.’

‘I wouldn’t worry, Jock,’ I said. ‘If I screw up, I’ll be down there keeping it company.’

3

Sometimes it’s the silences, the spaces between the words, you have to listen to. A cold shiver had run through me when Jock Ferguson had talked about secrets I might have dumped in the Clyde: there was one for sure, a big secret from a couple of years back, and I wondered just how much Ferguson knew, or suspected, about that sunken secret. The main thing was that he hadn’t challenged me about, alluded to or otherwise mentioned the fire in the lock-up and the done-to-a-crisp remains found inside. It wasn’t there in his words and it wasn’t there in the spaces in between.

The fire and burnt corpse down by the Clyde were an obvious connection for him to make, but only if ownership of the storage shed could be traced back to Tommy Quaid; knowing Tommy I guessed that, when he had rented the storage unit, he had made sure to brush his footsteps very thoroughly from the sand.

Ferguson was a difficult man to read. I trusted him – but I trusted him only as much as I could trust a policeman, and it worried me what his copper’s instincts would do with the vague ghosts of truths I had given him. I was testing his loyalties: he had worked out that there were police officers involved, but knew they were involved in something so corrupt that I was prepared to risk my neck over it. Whatever happened, I just hoped Ferguson had the sense not to stretch his own neck out too far.

*

Despite it now being the start of August, Glasgow, as was its wont, had grown bored with summer and decided to try out a different season. It became suddenly cooler but remained muggy, and Glasgow’s sky took on its customary pallor: a sheet of pale grey in which clouds had no individual form was pulled over the city like a shower curtain. Every now and then, thick globs of viscous rain were spat against the Alpine’s windscreen.

At least, I thought as I drove out of the city and southwards into Ayrshire, the weather is becoming more sympathetic to my mood.

Sometimes, if you wanted something to happen, you had to give the world a bit of a helping hand; give a little push to get things rolling.

It was time to let the dog see the rabbit.

*

St Andrew’s School was about twenty minutes south of Ayr on the coast road. It sat on the edge of a bulge of land that shouldered its way into the sea. The drive had taken me an hour and a half and would have been pleasant if the weather had been in the same mood of only a day before. As it was, the greens of the Ayrshire coast and the blues of the sea had been muted to greys by the opaque sky and a thin coastal fog.

The school was set against the backdrop of the Firth of Clyde and the distant, southern tip of the Isle of Arran. That should have made it an appealing locale, but it was set against a backdrop of the Firth of Clyde and Arran in the same way Castle Dracula was set against a backdrop of peaceful mountains and woodland. The dark grey building looked more than forbidding: it was as if its Victorian architect had been briefed to scare the bejesus out of any poor kid unfortunate enough to be sent there. Five storeys high with baronial-type towers at each corner, the school sat square and fort-like, with its back turned to the rippling grey shield of sea; I couldn’t work out whether the imperative had been to keep strangers out or keep its inhabitants in.

BOOK: The Quiet Death of Thomas Quaid: Lennox 5
10.99Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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