Craig Russell - Lennox

I took the powders and drained my teacup. Mrs White took my empty cup but made no effort to refill it. ‘Very good, Mr Lennox.’

The journey to Perth was one back in time. The ancient city was not the most cosmopolitan of places and it felt as if it had been untouched by the war or the changes that had happened to the social structure of Britain afterwards. The forties and the fifties had got lost in the mail.

There was only one taxi outside Perth’s railway station. It was one of the boxy types from the early thirties. The driver too was surprisingly elderly. I asked him to take me to the nearest half-decent hotel. There was no point in me going up to the sanatorium now. The evening visiting time would soon be over and it was some distance outside town, up in the hills above Perth. Although I had concerns about the vintage of both driver and conveyance, I asked the elderly taxi man if he could pick me up at ten the following morning.

The hotel he took me to was by the Tay, and I had a room overlooking the river. The bed was comfortable enough and the street outside quiet enough but I had trouble sleeping. Every time I closed my eyelids disparate thoughts and images bounced against them. Again I saw Lillian Andrews semi-naked, sensuously wreathed in fog; I saw the desperately off-hand and totally unconvincing demeanour of her ill-matched spouse; the professional manner in which she had used sex as the lure for her ambush in the smog, not knowing the reason for me tailing her, but knowing that I was.

Why was everything so complicated? Why did I make everything so complicated? I knew that I wasn’t going to let the Andrews thing go. There was no money in it. No one but me wanted me to push it further. But I would push at it. Until something gave and opened up a picture that made sense to me. Or maybe my inability to let it go was just a case of hurt pride at being bushwhacked from behind. I tried to put it from my mind. For the moment. I had a bigger fish to fry, and one that would pay off. But my head hurt from the blow and the thoughts still crowded in. It took me an age to get to sleep.

My elderly taxi driver turned up exactly on time. When I gave him the address of the sanatorium, far out in the hills above the city, he eyed me suspiciously.

‘That’s a long way by taxi.’

‘I guess so.’

‘It’ll cost a lot.’ It was obvious that he was worried about collecting his fare. I handed him three half-crowns.

‘I’ll square up with you for the rest afterwards. I’ll need you to wait for me until I finish my business at the sanatorium.’

As we drove up into the hills the sun came out as if to showcase the beauty of the countryside for a visitor. The sanatorium itself sat in vast grounds that rose steeply to the plateau on which the vast Victorian edifice sat. The shields of manicured grass exploded into vast beds of rhododendron bushes. It seemed that every window in the building had been thrown open and there were banks of deckchairs ranged around the walls and on the flat part of the grounds. I could understand why. After Glasgow I could feel the difference in the air myself. Breathing is an unconscious act and you never think about the air you pull into your lungs, but up here each breath was like a sip of cold, clear mountain water.

The staff-nurse at reception eyed me with the usual superciliousness as I explained that yes, I knew it wasn’t visiting time but no, I couldn’t come back later because my boss had insisted I was back in work that afternoon but I really did want to see my cousin. She checked the name again and told me to take a seat in the garden and they would bring her out to me.

I had expected a frail waif with pale skin coughing Lady of the Camellias-like into a handkerchief. Specifically a pale-blue one with lace trim.

Wilma Marshall was altogether more robust-looking. She was older than I had been told. Twenty-two or — three. She was brunette, about five-foot-one and as far as I could tell through the all-concealing dressing-gown had padding in all the right places. Her face was naked of make-up or lipstick and pretty, not anything outstanding, but I could see what Bobby had meant when he said she had a ‘touch of class’. But my guess was she had been little more than a diversion for Tam McGahern. One of the many he could enjoy by dint of his position.

I stood up and smiled as the nurse escorted her across the lawn.

‘Wilma,’ I said as they approached. ‘You’re looking so much better.’ She looked confused, as you would expect when faced with someone who clearly wasn’t the cousin she’d been expecting to see. But she let it go and said nothing to the nurse.

‘Thank you, nurse,’ I said and waited till she had gone out of earshot before asking Wilma to sit down.

‘What is it?’ Wilma spoke in a thick Gorbals accent and the ‘touch of class’ evaporated. Her brow creased and she bit her fleshy bottom lip. ‘I thought you people said you were going to leave me alone.’

Now I understood why she had played along: she clearly thought I was someone else.

‘We will,’ I said, riding the wave for as long as I could. ‘It’s just that we’ve got to be careful.’

‘I’ve told you everything I know. And I’ve said I won’t talk to anyone else about it.’ Her frown deepened. ‘Why are you here?’

‘I know you’ve told us everything, Wilma. And I know that it’s an ordeal for you to go through this again.’ I talked like a copper: instinct was telling me that was who she thought I was. ‘It’s just that every time we go through it, there might be something more you remember.’

‘What do you mean? What are you talking about?’ Her pale brow creased even more. I was asking the wrong questions. Whoever she thought I was or represented, it wasn’t the police. Her eyes narrowed with suspicion and then she looked over her shoulder to see where the nurse was.

‘Listen, Wilma,’ I said as calmly and authoritatively as I could. ‘It’s my job to find out who killed Tam McGahern. And to make sure you’re kept safe and protected.’

I could see all the alarm bells ringing in her head. ‘Who are you? What do you want? Are you from the police?’

‘I’m a friend, Wilma. I want to help you out. Like I said, it’s my job to find out who killed Tam. I just want to ask you a few questions about that night.’

‘How did you find me?’ Wilma’s expression shifted from suspicion to uncertainty to fear. ‘No one’s supposed to find me.’

‘I found your handkerchief in the flat above the Highlander. It was spotted with blood. I didn’t think of it then, but later I guessed that it might have something to do with TB.’

‘I can’t talk to you. You have to go.’ She was becoming more agitated.

I placed my hand on hers. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of, Wilma. No one else knows that you’re here. I’m not going to tell anyone about you. I just need to know who it was that shot Tam.’

‘I want you to go.’ Wilma stood up. ‘I didn’t see anything or anybody that night. I just hid until they were gone.’

‘That’s not what Bobby, Tam McGahern’s pet monkey, told me. He said you clocked them from the window. What is it, Wilma? Did you recognize them? Was it someone you knew from the Imperial?’

She looked around as if checking the rhododendrons for spies. ‘I can’t do this. Not now. I need to think. Come back later.’

‘Listen, Wilma, I know you’re scared. But I need to know what I need to know. And I can’t leave you in peace until you tell me who put you here and what it is you saw or heard that they want to keep quiet. Tell me and I’ll disappear. I promise. But if you don’t…’

Wilma frowned and bit her bottom lip again. ‘It wasn’t Tam.’