Craig Russell - Lennox

‘Your friend Mr Powell left something in his room, Mr Lennox. A pen. I have his address. He signed the register with his business address so I can send it on to that, but I thought you might be seeing him soon.’

‘I’m afraid you’re mistaken… I don’t know Mr Powell. I only met him at dinner yesterday.’

She gave me her women’s-warden look. ‘But Mr Powell said he knew you. He specifically asked to be seated with you.’

I frowned. ‘Maybe he mistook me for someone else.’

At that point my driver arrived at reception, took my bag and we headed out to the taxi.

‘See Uncle Joe’s dead,’ was the taxi driver’s opening gambit.

‘Uncle Joe?’ I was genuinely confused for a moment.

‘Uncle Joe Stalin. Stalin’s popped his clogs. It was on the Home Service this morning.’ It was the cheeriest I had seen my little driver, but that was about the extent of our conversation during our half-hour drive to the sanatorium.

‘Wait here again,’ I said as I got out in front of the vast Victorian edifice. I had the feeling I wouldn’t be long. It was a prettier, friendlier nurse on the reception desk this time, but she frowned when I asked about Wilma.

‘She’s not here,’ the nurse explained. ‘She discharged herself this morning, first thing. I’m surprised you didn’t know. You’re her cousin, you say?’ Her frown darkened with suspicion. ‘It was her brother who picked her up.’

‘Her brother? Are you sure?’

‘I was on the desk myself.’ I could see she was on the point of calling someone. She clearly didn’t believe I was Wilma’s cousin.

‘Must have got our wires crossed,’ I said and frowned as if annoyed. I thought for a moment. ‘You’re absolutely sure it was her brother… he’s a big, good-looking guy… looks a bit like a younger version of Fred MacMurray… you know, the Hollywood actor?’

The suspicion evaporated from her expression. ‘Yes, that’s him.’

It was late by the time I got back to Glasgow. The Perth spring had evaporated and Glasgow was shrouded in yet another smog. November through to February was the worst time for smog in the city, but it lurked ready to fall at any time of year and the temperature had taken a dramatic drop during the day.

As I had sat in the train watching the weather through the window change its mood, I had thought about Powell. I was certain he was behind the professional job done on my office and that vague feeling I’d had that someone who knew what they were doing was on my tail. Powell was a professional and I would have been unaware of his involvement if he hadn’t flagged it up for me. For some reason that I couldn’t quite figure, he had been making me aware of his presence.

After I got off the train I headed, bag and all, to the Horsehead Bar. I needed a little Glasgow cheerfulness after Perth. Big Bob came over and poured me a rye whiskey from the only bottle of non-Scotch they had in the bar.

‘How you doing?’ he asked without his usual smile.

‘Fine. What’s up?’

‘One of Willie Sneddon’s boys was in here earlier. Looking for you.’

‘Twinkletoes McBride?’

‘No, just some wee bampot they send on errands. He said to tell you that Sneddon wants to see you. If you ask me, Lennox, you play in the wrong part of the playground. I don’t know why you get involved with the likes of Willie Sneddon.’

‘It’s my business, Bob. You know that by now. Sneddon and I are old playmates.’

After I finished my whiskey I headed out to a telephone box and ’phoned Sneddon. I gave him an update on progress so far, which was less than he had expected or I had hoped to give. Mainly because, for some reason I didn’t fully understand myself, I wasn’t ready to pass on Wilma’s conviction that it had been Frankie who had been executed on the stairwell of the flat: all I had was Wilma’s intuition and it was a claim that could cause all kinds of shit to start flying. I decided to keep it under my hat for the meantime. When I had finished my report Sneddon reciprocated: he had had practically all his people trying to sniff out something to report back to me. Nothing.

‘So you think this punter in the hotel snatched Wilma?’ Over the telephone, without the benefit of mock-baronial surroundings and expensive clothes, Sneddon sounded the Govan hardman he was.

‘I’m sure of it. Does he sound like someone you know?’

‘Naw. He sounds like someone you’d remember. And I make it my business to remember faces. He sounds too smooth for Hammer Murphy’s outfit. Could be one of Cohen’s mob, but I doubt it. Maybe he’s an amateur, though from what you’ve said it sounds unlikely. Or some out-of-town firm.’

‘He’s no amateur. He’s a professional all right, but something about him doesn’t fit with being a gangster. No offence.’

‘None taken,’ Sneddon said without irony. ‘I’ll check with the boys, see if he rings any bells.’

There was nothing more to be said but I paused for a moment before hanging up.

‘Mr Sneddon, have you heard of a woman called Lillian Andrews? I don’t know what her maiden name would have been.’ I gave him a description of Lillian’s knockout looks and figure. ‘Like our guy in Perth, she’s a real professional. And tough with it. But not someone that would ever have had to work the streets.’

‘There are a lot of sexy-looking girls out there, Lennox. And I don’t know every tart in Glasgow. But from what you’re saying, she’s got too much class to be working one of Danny Dumfries’s clubs. She’s not working Blythswood Square… if she was an indoor whore, then you should talk to Arthur Parks. I’ll tell him to expect to hear from you.’ I smiled. Sneddon preparing Parks meant that I would get total cooperation. ‘Is this woman connected to the McGahern thing?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘But she is connected to something that’s getting in the way, Mr Sneddon. I appreciate your help.’

‘Lennox…’

‘Yeah?’

‘Make sure you keep me up to date on what you find out about Tam McGahern. I don’t like surprises.’

I hung up feeling more than a little uneasy. If Wilma had been right about Frankie, not Tam, being the first to die, then I had a pretty big surprise up my sleeve.

The next evening I was in the one place in Glasgow you were guaranteed a date. If you had enough money on you.

I told a doorman who was all neck that Mr Parks was expecting me and he let me into what had been a drawing room at one time.

Park Circus was in the West End of Glasgow and broke up the otherwise Victorian monotony of Glasgow’s architecture with a circle of impressive Georgian townhouses. Most were still single dwellings, occupied by moderately wealthy families, but some had been subdivided into flats. Arthur Parks owned this particular townhouse in its entirety, but had divided it into a large apartment for himself on the upper levels and two smaller flats, one on the ground floor and the other in the basement. From both he conducted one of the most lucrative trades in the world. And, proverbially, one of the oldest.

I was in the ground-floor flat. There were three girls in the reception room I was shown into, all of whom stood up when I came in. One would have been around thirty and the other two were much younger. One looked no more than nineteen. They were all pretty and curved in the right places and all smiled alluringly. I held up my hand.

‘Sorry, girls, I’m here on business, not pleasure.’ Their smiles disappeared as quickly and mechanically as they had appeared and they sat down again on the sofa, resuming the conversation they had been having when I came in. I sat down in a large leather armchair and lit a cigarette. A small, bald, bird-like businessman in an immaculate suit came in and they repeated their performance. I reckoned the businessman was pushing sixty, but he chose the youngest of the girls.