Craig Russell - Lennox

‘What?’

‘I don’t think it was Tam that was with me that night. It was Frankie. It was Frankie that got shot at the door.’

‘Wilma… it couldn’t have been Frankie who was shot. I had a run in with Frankie McGahern five weeks later.’

‘They thought it was a big joke.’ Wilma’s eyes glossed with tears. ‘They did it to me before. Swapped places. Pretended to be each other. It started a couple of months before that night. Tam would tell me to meet him at the flat above the Highlander but sometimes it was him, sometimes it was Frankie that turned up. But Frankie’d always pretend he was Tam.’

‘And you’re sure it was Frankie who turned up that night?’

Wilma nodded. ‘Big joke, eh? See if the stupid tart can tell the difference between the identical twins.’

‘But you could.’

‘Frankie was… he was different from Tam.’ She blushed and a tear ran across her cheek.

‘Wilma… are you absolutely sure about this?’

‘As sure as a woman can be. But I never said. They found stuff in his clothes that proved he was Tam. That’s what I couldn’t understand. I thought maybe I was wrong. So I played along with it.’

I stared out across the grounds of the sanatorium. Things started to fit together only to fall apart again. Frankie dead in the flat above the Highlander. Tam the one who picked a fight with me and ended up dead later that night in the garage in Rutherglen. Tam was a tough nut with a war combat record to more than match mine. If it had been him that night, then he had deliberately taken a beating to convince the world that he was Frankie. But why? Frankie was a nobody. Only the name Tam McGahern carried enough clout to build a crime empire. Something else struck me: Jimmy Wallace, the hanger-on Bobby had talked about, must have been in on it. He didn’t clear off until after the second murder because he knew. He knew it had been Frankie, not Tam who had died the first time around. The second killing had been Tam and it had signalled to Wallace that it was time he got lost.

‘Who brought you here, Wilma?’

A nurse walked by, looked at us, then at her pocket watch and frowned pointedly. Wilma looked agitated again. ‘I don’t know who they are, but they paid me money. Told me to keep quiet. They check up on me. You better go.’

‘Tell me exactly what happened that night.’

‘Not now. Come back.’

‘When?’

‘Visiting hours are three till four thirty tomorrow. Come back then. But I’m not promising anything. I just want out of this mess.’

‘What mess, Wilma?’

She shook her head, clearly very scared. I let it drop.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Wilma.’ When I stood up she looked relieved. I decided to temper her relief. ‘And Wilma… make sure you’re here. And no nasty surprises. I expect to be your only visitor. If I see anyone who looks remotely like a goon, then I’ll take the next train back to Glasgow and make sure anyone who wants to find you knows where to look.’

I left her sitting in the gardens. I knew there was a pretty good chance that Wilma wouldn’t be there when I went back the next day. But I couldn’t hang around the sanatorium and I guessed it would be difficult for whoever put her there to arrange her removal at short notice. And she was maybe scared enough to do what I had told her to do.

The last thing I needed was to kill twenty-four hours in Perth. Perth time counted five times longer than anywhere else. My elderly driver dropped me off at the hotel and I had a dismal lunch in the dining room. I was served a lamb cutlet which compensated for its lack of size by having a consistency so resistant to knife or tooth that it could have had industrial applications. I was halfway through the cutlet when a tall and solidly built young man asked with a broad smile and in an accent that was hard to place if he could join me.

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Help yourself.’

‘You’re Canadian, aren’t you? I can tell from your accent.’

I tried not to make my smile too weary. ‘Yes. I am.’

‘Pleasure to meet you. The name’s Powell… Sam Powell.’ He extended a tanned hand across the table. Tans weren’t something you saw a lot of in Scotland. I shook it. Powell radiated an irrepressibly cheerful disposition. His big smile exposed perfect teeth and he had the big-amiable-lug-type handsomeness of the actor Fred MacMurray. The dislike I took to him was as profound as it was instant. ‘I’ve spent a lot of time in Canada myself,’ he explained with an eagerness that was as unstoppable as a runaway freight train. ‘Tractors are my business. The company I work for is Anglo-Canadian. I’m in sales.’

‘I see,’ I said. The waitress came over to take his order. There were only two options for the main course. I sat in malicious silence and smiled as he ordered the cutlet.

‘Are you here on business, Mr…?’

‘Lennox,’ I said: there had seemed no need to use anything other than my real name when checking into the hotel. ‘Yes. Kind of.’

‘What business are you in, if I may ask, Mr Lennox?’ No conversational mountain was too steep for this guy to climb.

‘Insurance,’ I lied. The most boring business in the world usually drops into the path of a conversation like a railway sleeper. Fred MacMurray’s younger brother was not deterred.

‘Really? Fascinating. General or motor?’

‘All types. I deal with claims.’ I was rescued by the arrival of his cutlet. His mouth would be fully occupied from now on.

I left untouched the gelatinous grey sludge that was served as dessert and excused myself from Powell’s company.

‘It was nice meeting you, Mr Powell.’ My joviality was genuine. I was free of him. He stood up, shook my hand and smiled his broad, Hollywood-perfect smile. I was happier than I can describe to see a particularly tenacious-looking piece of cutlet gristle jammed between two teeth.

I decided to find another bar in town for a drink rather than risk running into Powell again in the hotel’s lounge.

Unfortunately I had to run the gauntlet of Powell’s cheeriness at breakfast the next morning. I decided that the hotel proprietress — a stern, joyless, meagre woman of about fifty, who in temperament was the antithesis of Powell — must have been a secret sadist, subjecting me to the twin tortures of the hotel’s food and Powell’s company.

I dodged his inquisitiveness again and after I checked out stood outside the hotel and smoked. It was a bright sunny spring morning and I left my coat with my bag in the hotel and arranged to pick them up later when my vintage driver and taxi came to collect me again. I walked along the river and thought about Wilma Marshall. It was more than possible that she had put me off until today for a reason; that she needed to get in touch with someone. Whoever that someone was, they had a lot of the answers I was looking for.

I nodded and said hello as I passed a smartly dressed older man in a houndstooth sports jacket with a matching cap and military tie. He walked past mute, as if he hadn’t heard or seen me.

My money had been on the police having placed Wilma in the sanatorium, but the police didn’t pay witnesses to stay out of sight. Whoever it was had access to a lot of resources, including maybe a compliant doctor. As I walked I considered what she had said about the callous trick the McGahern twins played on her, taking turns to screw her and pretending always to be Tam. It seemed like a senseless, if supremely cruel, subterfuge.

Perth’s single cafe was its only concession to modern times and I called in for a coffee before heading back to the hotel to pick up my stuff and meet the taxi. The hotel proprietress was at the counter when I returned. Her shapeless black dress, flat shoes, the keychain around her waist and her unsmiling, weary demeanour made her look more like the warden of a women’s prison than a convivial hostess.