Craig Russell - Lennox

After they wheeled Pattison away I desperately needed to get out of the care home. I stood outside the front door and took a few deep breaths of non-Glasgow air. There was no sign of the Austin 16HP and I guessed it was parked outside the grounds. When I got into my car I sat without starting it for a few moments. I tilted the rear-view mirror so I could see the faint web of scars on my left cheek. Someone like Pattison’s doctor had once fixed me up. But that was the difference that being a few feet further away from an exploding grenade meant. I could have ended up like Pattison. Easy. I sat for a moment and thought up a few more gags about his badly rebuilt face, laughing quietly to myself. That way I could maybe kill the ache in my gut and the sting in my eyes every time I thought of the poor bastard.

When you’d had the kind of war I’d had, you learned to laugh at suffering. So long as it wasn’t yours. If you laughed at it, then maybe it wouldn’t reach you. Get you. And if you believed that, then that was the biggest joke of all.

The Austin 16HP picked me up again and followed me back into town. It stayed about three cars back in an attempt at discretion. I had no doubt that Sneddon’s men were handy with a pair of bolt-cutters or cracking open kneecaps with a claw hammer, but surveillance wasn’t their strong suit. It didn’t matter; I was glad to feel that there was someone looking over my shoulder.

I had a date for that night. I took Jeannie, a small, dark and curvy waitress I had picked up, to see Sudden Fear with Jack Palance and Joan Crawford at the Regal in Sauchiehall Street. Jeannie insisted on the Glaswegian propriety of not sitting in the back row: a public indication of her respectability. The truth was that I was more interested in seeing the film than moist fumblings in her underwear, and we both knew that that would follow anyway in the sweaty, steamed-up confines of my Austin Atlantic.

In Glasgow having a push-bike you paid for yourself rather than nicking it made you flash. Having a car elevated you to Hollywood-level glamour. The fact that my car was a stylish Austin A90 Atlantic Coupe had been more instrumental in winning me pussy than my gentle demeanour, debonair wit and good looks.

‘You look a bit like him,’ Jeannie commented as we came out of the cinema into night air that was too cold for the time of year.

‘Who?’

‘Jack Palance. You’re better looking, but you do look a bit like him.’

‘You think?’ I smiled. I looked at Jeannie. I certainly couldn’t have compared her to Joan Crawford, or even Gloria Grahame who had, as always, played the cheap good-time girl. When I had first seen Jeannie there had been something about her reminded me of Carmen Miranda: dark hair and eyes, olive skin, full sensual lips. But when I’d picked her up that night I realized that the something about her had probably been the half bottle of rye whiskey I’d drunk and the dim smoky light. As I looked at my little waitress and reappraised the dark eyes, olive skin and full, sensuous lips, the closest comparison I could come up with was Edward G. Robinson with a permanent wave. Suddenly my ardour diminished. ‘Yeah, I’ve been told that before,’ I said in response to her Jack Palance remark. ‘There’s a reason for it.’

‘Oh?’

‘Long story.’

I was parked further up Sauchiehall Street, closer to the Locarno Ballroom. We walked back.

‘It’s a great car,’ she said as I held the door open for her. Then, come-hither-ingly: ‘Could we go for a drive?’

‘Sure,’ I said. My plan had been to drive Jeannie out of the city, park up on Gleniffer Braes, where there were great views of the city, and trick her into a blow-job. But try as I might I couldn’t get out of my head the image of Little Caesar chomping down on a cigar. It was then I saw the dark-coloured 16HP parked a few cars back. Sneddon was taking my protection just a little bit too seriously. Take the night off, guys, I thought.

‘Gimme a second; some friends of mine…’ I said to Jeannie and I walked up to the 16HP. I could see it wasn’t Twinkletoes and I guessed it was the other thug whom Sneddon had promised to lend me. The guy behind the wheel started his engine as soon as he saw me approach. I noticed that he had a large dressing on his cheek and it was then that I recognized him: he was one of the goons who had jumped me in Argyle Street. Specifically he was the fella whose cheek I had split open with the length of pipe. It was clear he was in no mood for a rematch without his pals and he slammed into reverse, braked, ripped teeth off his gears and sped off down Sauchiehall Street. I ran back to my car and tore out after him.

The 16HP squealed into Blythswood Street and headed down towards the river. He ripped across the junction with Bath Street and just missed being side-slammed by a Rover. I swung around the tail of the Rover but a gap had opened up between us. He reached the Clyde end of Blythswood and swung a left without slowing onto the Broomielaw.

I had to brake hard for a truck which stopped in my path while the driver bawled out of his cab and accused my mother of all kinds of acts, all indecent, some illegal and at least one of which I thought was physically impossible. I bumped up onto the kerb to navigate round him. It was only when I checked out of my side window that I realized that Jeannie was still sitting next to me. She was staring at me, eyes wide and mouth slack with shock.

‘Get out,’ I said as gently as I could. ‘I have to catch this guy. It’s business.’

She still sat stunned. I reached over and opened the door and gave her a shove towards the street. ‘Out! Quick!’ She got out wordlessly and stood on the pavement still gawp-mouthed. ‘I’m sorry, Jeannie… I’ll call you…’

I floored the accelerator and fired the Atlantic along Broomielaw in the direction of Paddy’s Market. The 16HP was nowhere to be seen but I knew if I made the right decisions I could close on him. He had either turned back into the city towards Glasgow Cross or had crossed the Clyde into the South Side. I put my money on the South Side: he would stand more risk of getting snarled up in the city and me catching up.

I swung across the Albert Bridge. Crown Street was empty of cars. From here he could have taken the Carlisle road or headed back towards Govan and the Paisley road. Or he could even have headed off into the Gorbals, but I reckoned that would have been a bad move: actually, anyone heading off into the Gorbals, at any time, for any reason, was a bad move. In his case an Austin 16HP would have looked as much at home in the Gorbals as a priest in an Orange Hall.

On a hunch, I turned towards Govan and followed Paisley Road West. Again I drove as fast as I dared but still caught no sight of the 16HP.

I stopped under the railway bridge, switched the engine off and rolled down the window. The street was silent except for a Number Nine Corporation tram that trundled its way past heading from Paisley to Maryhill. Sam Costa and his ludicrous moustache grinned inanely at me from a tattered poster, advising me that Erasmic shaving lather was just right. The night air had a texture to it, like the cold greasy soot that smeared the railway arches.

He was gone. He could have taken any one of a dozen different directions after I had lost him dumping Jeannie on the pavement. I thought back to that moment and felt like shit, as I usually did when it came to reflecting on how I’d treated women.

There were thousands of Jeannies in this city: uncomplicated girls with crap lives who looked to the dance halls and the cinemas for a scrap of glamour. All they wanted was a few moments while they were still young in which they could pretend that they wouldn’t, after all, end up swapping the grey drudgery of working in a factory or at best a shop for the grey drudgery of slaving for a man who would show them little affection and no respect and leave them with an army of kids to care for. The monotony of their week punctuated only by loveless whisky-drenched fumblings on a Saturday night. Or maybe the odd beating.