Craig Russell - Lennox

‘Jimmy Wallace?’

Bobby read my thoughts and shook his head. ‘It’s a dead end. Jimmy didn’t do Frankie and he definitely didn’t do Tam. It’s just that Jimmy dropped out of sight the night Frankie got done.’

‘Did Jimmy Wallace work with you? I mean, was he part of the McGahern team?’

‘Naw. Nothing like that. Wallace was a wanker. Upper-class wanker. He was always trailing around after Tam. Tam put up with it though. Wallace was never short of a bob or two even though he drank like a fucking fish. Gambled too. I got the feeling Tam saw him all right with cash.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. Tam just seemed to put up with him for some reason. They were supposed to have been in the army together. In the desert.’

‘And you reckon Jimmy had nothing to do with either murder?’

‘Naw. No way. He was devoted to Tam. Mainly because Tam was his meal ticket. I don’t know what they had going on in the past, but it was like Tam felt he owed Jimmy or something. Tam wouldn’t have put up with the shite Jimmy talked otherwise.’

‘So why did he do a runner after Frankie was killed?’

‘Search me.’ Bobby shrugged and smoothed back the broken wings of greased hair. His fingers still trembled. ‘When Tam died he lost his meal ticket. Or maybe he thought he was going to be next.’

I thought about it for a second then shook my head. ‘Doesn’t make sense. If that were the case then he’d have fucked off after Tam was topped. Why hang around until Frankie had his head turned to jam?’

Bobby shrugged again but looked at me apprehensively. He clearly thought I was going to give him another smack for not being able to explain the contradictions in what he had said.

‘Where does Jimmy Wallace live?’ I asked.

‘Sorry, Mr Lennox. I don’t know that either.’

‘Before Tam got killed, were there any new faces around, or did anything unusual happen?’

Bobby looked at me blankly. I could tell he was trying to think of anything he could give me to avoid another slap. I saw something drop into his memory.

‘Jackie Gillespie came around a couple of times.’

‘The armed robber? Was Tam planning a robbery?’

‘I don’t know. But I saw him in the Highlander with Gillespie three, maybe four times. Tight and talky.’

‘Gillespie…’ I spoke to myself more than my new chum. ‘Gillespie is a heavyweight. More than a bit out of the McGaherns’ league.’ I shook the thought from my head. ‘Anyone else?’

‘There were two guys I never seen before. Tam got me to drive him sometimes and he met with this big fat guy who was staying at the Central Hotel. Jimmy Wallace went with him.’

‘Can you remember anything about this man?’

‘Naw, no’ really. Except I thought he was foreign or something. I only saw him from a distance, like, when he came out of the hotel with Tam, but the way he looked, the way he dressed and that.’

‘And the other stranger?’

‘He was different. A greasy-looking wee fucker with a droopy eyelid.’

I grinned at the idea of Bobby calling anyone else a greasy-looking wee fucker. ‘What business did McGahern have with this guy?’

‘I don’t know. Honest. But this guy was afraid of Tam. The other guy, the big fat foreigner, didn’t seem to be, and Jackie-fucking-Gillespie’s scared of nobody.’

I left Bobby in the flat and headed back out onto the street. I thought about what he’d told me. The foreigner and the guy with the droopy eye Bobby had mentioned probably weren’t significant. Just business. But Jimmy Wallace intrigued me. It was a name I hadn’t heard before, but from what Bobby had said that wasn’t surprising. He hadn’t been an active member of the McGahern crew, but it seemed as if he’d been on the payroll. I also thought that Bobby had dismissed him too easily as the killer. He may have been a wanker, as Bobby had put it, but as an ex-Desert Rat it was a safe bet that he knew how to handle himself a hell of a lot better than Bobby or his chums could. It was also quite likely that Wallace had killed during his active service. And the question remained as to why he had only cleared out when Frankie died and not when his patron, Tam, had been rubbed.

That wasn’t all that jarred with me. The unhurried manner of the killers bothered me. It was professional. If you run or speed off in a car from a killing, people get your number or clock enough to give a description. If you’re in no hurry, onlookers tend not to look on, but keep their heads down in case you haven’t finished shooting. And if you seem cool and unworried, then potential witnesses are afraid you may come back for them at a later date if they talk.

Very professional indeed. Just like the going over my office had been given.

It’s difficult to stay lost in Glasgow. Like Jock Ferguson had said to me, it wasn’t really a city, just a giant village. But Wilma Marshall was making a decent job of it. I had tracked down her family home: parents and two sisters squeezed into a two-roomed flat in a rat-warren of tenements, with a toilet shared by three more families on the stair landing. The Marshall home could almost have been described as a slum: all it needed was a little fixing up to qualify. Nearly three-quarters of Glasgow’s homes could have been described the same way. It was the kind of place a girl would do anything to get away from. It was the kind of place that gave birth to the kind of vicious ambition that had driven generations of Glasgow hardmen and gangsters. And maybe a couple of businessmen.

I didn’t approach the Marshall family: the risk of them going straight to the police, if that was who had Wilma, was too great. I couldn’t even stake out their flat: Glasgow tenements teemed with life, human and otherwise, and there would be too many eyes watching the constant coming and going and my car, or just me, would stick out like a sore thumb on the street outside.

But, like I said, Glasgow is not a place to stay lost in.

It was a Friday afternoon that I saw her in Sauchiehall Street. Not Wilma Marshall, whom I should have been looking for, but Lillian Andrews, the wife of the nervous little businessman with the damp handshake and the carnation and the unconvincing story to cover up her disappearance and sudden reappearance. I had studied the photograph Andrews had given me, and I recognized Lillian Andrews instantly. She was tallish with dark hair and a full mouth lipsticked deep red. The expensive cloth of the tailored jacket and pencil skirt cleaved to her deadly curves. The fox-fur stole around her shoulders would have cost more than the average Glaswegian earns in a year. Her features were regular but short of beautiful. However Lillian Andrews was without doubt one of the most sexually attractive women I had ever seen. She oozed sex-appeal from every pore.

She caught me looking at her as I passed her in the street and her full lips twitched a small smile. Not encouragement, but acknowledgement of the only natural response a warm-blooded male could have to her. Of course she didn’t recognize me, having no idea that I was the man her husband had hired and then un-hired to find her. But I dodged her eyes. I didn’t know why: I was off the case and she was clearly no longer missing, but for some reason I hadn’t wanted her to notice me.

Lillian was with a female friend, a shorter woman with gold-blonde demi-waved hair. Lillian Andrews’s companion was almost as attractive but not quite as expensively tailored as she was. I turned to look into one of the shop windows, still sparse despite rationing having been almost completely lifted: austerity was a state of mind that seemed to linger with dark comfort in the Scottish psyche. I waited until they were about twenty yards away and a reasonable number of shoppers had curtained me before I started to follow them.