Craig Russell - Lennox

‘Don’t trust him if he offers you a lollipop,’ I said as they left the room. The small businessman’s cheeks flushed bright red. I made no effort to disguise my disgust.

The other two girls were scowling at me when another man came into the room. Not a customer. Arthur Parks was an ugly fucker. He was about five-eleven and immaculately dressed, but he wore bottle-bottom glasses that exaggerated the size of his eyes. His bottom lip curled up, fish-like, over his top and there was evidence of a badly done repair to a congenital hare-lip. When he spoke, it was in a camp baritone.

‘Ah, Mr Lennox,’ he boomed, extending his limp hand theatrically. Everything he did, he did theatrically. ‘What can I do to help you?’

I handed him the photograph of Lillian Andrews that her husband had given me. Parks took it between manicured fingers. The flamboyant turquoise ring on his little finger matched his heavy cufflinks. I wondered if the set was completed with earrings.

‘Recognize her?’

‘Mmmm… very nice.’ It was like a teetotaller commenting on a fine wine. For all Arthur Parks sold pussy, he had no interest in it. His last stretch in prison had been for buggery in the gents’ toilet at Central Station. I thought I saw a split-second of recognition in his expression but then it was gone. Or he had covered it up quickly.

‘Well… Do you know her?’ I asked.

‘No. No, I don’t.’

‘You didn’t look too sure.’

He looked at the photograph again. Made a show of studying it.

‘No, I don’t know her. It was just that she reminded me of someone. But it can’t be her. Who I’m thinking of was blonde. And she’s dead.’

‘Tell me about her.’

‘Forget it, Mr Lennox, it cannot possibly be Margot Taylor. It’s just there is a rough similarity. Margot died three years ago. She was one of my girls but I found out she was doing her own thing in her spare time. She got a bit of a slapping for it and then I kicked her out. About six months later she was killed in a car crash. One of her punters was drunk behind the wheel. Served her right. If she hadn’t messed me about she would still have been working here. Safe.’

‘How alike is this woman to Margot?’

‘Not that much. She just kind of reminded me of her. Around the eyes.’ He handed me back the photograph. ‘Sorry. Can’t help you.’

I put the photograph back in my wallet. ‘One other thing. Did you ever get the McGahern brothers in here?’

‘God no…’ he laughed. Theatrically. ‘Wouldn’t let ruffian gobshites like that into my establishment.’

‘Do you know anything about an independent brothel that the McGaherns supplied security for? Somewhere in the West End.’

‘Not really,’ said Parks. ‘I heard something about it… potential competition and all that. But it didn’t seem to last long and as far as I could tell it wasn’t taking business from me. Anyway, sorry I can’t help you.’ Parks nodded in the direction of the older prostitute on the sofa. ‘Would you like to spend some time with Lena? On the house.’

The vaguely aristocratic-looking Lena responded by tilting her head back and parting her red lips provocatively. I’ve seen that Rita Hayworth movie too, Lena, I thought.

‘No thanks, I’ll pass.’ It wasn’t that I didn’t find Lena attractive. Parks misread my refusal and gave me his own version of a Rita Hayworth pout. ‘I don’t fuck whores,’ I said. ‘Or pansies.’

The next morning a spring sun was trying to break through but an ill-tempered early-morning Glasgow was telling it to fuck off and shrouding it in factory smoke. I had break-fast in a transport caff on Dumbarton Road before heading up into Bearsden about eight thirty. There was a steady flow of commuter traffic in the opposite direction, reflecting the fact that the majority of Glasgow’s privately owned cars resided in the leafy driveways of Bearsden.

I parked around the corner from the Andrews residence and loitered in the street as inconspicuously as I could until I saw John Andrews’s Bentley slide out of the drive with the sound of water over pebbles.

Lillian Andrews opened the door with the blank expression of someone expecting to see a postman on the threshold. She was wearing a pastel-blue sweater with a double row of pearls tight at her throat, dark-blue Capri pants and low-heeled mules. It was a reasonably conservative outfit, but she looked sexier in it than most women would dressed only in French lingerie. There was the tiniest flicker of recognition in her eyes, then it was swept instantly away. She was good. Very good.

‘Yes?’ she asked uninterestedly. For a moment she nearly convinced me that we had never before encountered each other.

‘Hello again, Mrs Andrews. I’m glad to say that the smog seems to have lifted.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said and started to close the door. ‘I don’t buy anything from door-to-door salesmen.’

I got my foot jammed in the door just in time and leaned my shoulder into it so hard that she nearly fell over backwards. We stood just inside the threshold and her dark eyes burned with hate.

‘Get out! Get out now!’

‘I need to talk to you, Mrs Andrews.’

‘What about?’ She backed towards the hallstand and picked up the receiver of the ivory-coloured telephone. ‘If you don’t get out, then I’m ’phoning the police.’

‘You could do that,’ I said, taking off my hat. ‘But there again, the police know me. They know that the information I give them is pretty accurate.’ I smiled, thinking of the ruddy-cheeked farmer’s boy who had worked hard to make sure it was. ‘So I’m sure they will be interested in why your husband is running so scared and why you ambushed me in the fog the other night.’

‘You know my husband?’ She put the ’phone down.

‘You didn’t know that the other night, did you? I know all about your little disappearance and reappearance act. What I want to know is why you bushwhacked me and who it was that parted my hair for me.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never seen you before in my life.’

‘Don’t mess me about, Lillian.’ I closed the door behind me. ‘There’s something about this whole set up that stinks. If you don’t tell me what it’s all about maybe I should talk to your husband.’

She laughed. ‘Go right ahead.’ No bluff.

I grabbed her wrist and dragged her into the living room. I suppose in Bearsden they called it a lounge. It was furnished in Contemporary style: sofa and armchairs slung so low that you needed a lift to get out of them; low-level light-wood coffee table; geometric wrought-iron and hardwood room divider; the small grey eye of a brand-new television set watching us from the corner. I threw her down onto one of the chairs. For a suburban housewife she didn’t seem particularly perturbed by the rough stuff. She eyed me with the same hate in her dark eyes. Not fear. Hate.

‘Listen, Lillian, you can pretend all you like, but we both know it was you with your hand round my dick immediately before the lights went out. All you were interested in was to find out if it was my hard-on following you or whether I had another reason for watching you. Well, I did. A professional reason which I’m not going to share with you. But what started out as professional curiosity became very personal very quickly after your goon tried to fracture my skull.’ I sat down opposite her and dropped my hat onto the sofa next to me. ‘So, what’s the story?’

She stared hard at me but the hate was dissipating. She gave a cynical laugh as if something had just fallen into place for her.

‘You’re working for John, aren’t you? He’s been paying you to snoop on me, hasn’t he?’

I didn’t say anything but she nodded to herself.