Craig Russell - Lennox

If I sound critical of Scotland’s divorce laws, don’t get me wrong: I had good reason to be grateful for them. Whenever I wasn’t working for one or other of the Three Kings, I helped middle-class couples dance through the legally required pantomime of divorce. It was usually still the husband who sacrificed his reputation, even if he had not been the unfaithful partner. He would fall on his sword, as it were, even if his wife had been falling on someone else’s.

May helped me out with my divorce cases. The required choreography was that I would arrange for May and the husband to book into a hotel together, pull nightclothes over their daywear, get into bed together and I would turn up with a member of the hotel staff to witness that the delicto was indeed flagrante. The maid or the under-manager would then sign a statement and get their cut of the proceeds and the soon to be ex-spouse would shuffle off. There wasn’t a sordid business that wasn’t more sordid or more business.

I took a taxi from the Horsehead across town to May’s. I would be able to walk back from her place to my digs afterwards. May poured me a whisky as soon as I arrived and we sat down on the sofa together. She wasn’t pretty, but she used make-up to make the most of her regular features. From the neck down, however, she was a piece of art. When I arrived she was wearing a white blouse and black pencil-skirt that hugged the most huggable parts of her.

‘How are things, Lennox?’ she asked.

‘Fine. You?’

‘The usual. You got a job for me?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘At least not yet. And probably not a divorce when it does come up.’

‘So what can I do for you?’ she asked. The hint of weariness annoyed me.

‘I just came by to say hello,’ I said. ‘Do I need a reason?’

‘Not if you don’t say so.’ She got up and poured herself another gin. I was still nursing my Scotch. It was something I’d noticed about May: that she always took a couple or three before we got down to business. Not gassed. Just enough for her to take the edge off what we both knew we were going to do. It was a thought that did my self-esteem no end of good.

‘Still working in the hotel?’

‘Still.’

There was probably some law of physics that prevented the small talk getting any smaller and after my second whisky and her fourth gin, I moved in on her. She led me into the bedroom before heading into the bathroom to fit her cap. I stripped and lay on the bed smoking a Player’s. The wallpaper was yellow and floral-patterned, although I guessed it had been white once: May smoked even more than I did. There were scattered attempts at gentility with the furniture and the knick-knacks. Suddenly I felt depressed.

May lightened my mood by coming back in naked except for her stockings and garter belt. She lay down next to me on the bed and we became consumed in our act of heightened apathy. At least I put my Player’s out first: in Scotland that made me Rudi Valentino.

Afterwards she made some coffee and brought it through to the bedroom. I lit a cigarette for her and one for myself.

‘Do you never feel like a new start?’ she asked out of nowhere.

‘This is my new start,’ I said and blew a wispy circle of smoke towards the cracked plaster of the ceiling. ‘I started off life rich and content. There’s only so much of that a man can take. My life is so much more colourful now. Mainly black and blue.’

‘I’m being serious. I want to get out of this town, Lennox. I want to get married and have kids before it’s too late.’

‘May…’

‘Don’t get in a sweat,’ she said and laughed bitterly. ‘I’m not proposing. I didn’t come up the Clyde on a banana boat. I know exactly what I mean to you, Lennox. But sometimes I need to talk. Don’t you need to talk sometimes?’

‘Oh yeah. I talk. I talk myself silly.’

‘I want to get out of Glasgow. Get out from behind that fucking hotel bar. Go somewhere where no one knows anything about me. Somewhere cut off from everywhere else. Like South Africa or Australia. Or the middle of the bloody African jungle.’

‘You should think about Paisley,’ I said. ‘It’s even more removed from civilization but you can get to it by bus.’

‘I’m being serious. This city is shite. My life is shite. Everybody here thinks they know who I am. What I am. They know fuck all about me. Everyone in this ugly fucking city thinks the universe revolves around Glasgow. They just can’t see past it. And the truth is this isn’t a city: it’s a village. Full of petty, stupid, bigoted shits. I hate it. Fucking hate it.’ She bit into the crimson of her lower lip.

I stroked her arm. ‘Why don’t you just leave?’

‘And do what?’ she said, pulling away. ‘I need money, Lennox. The kind of money that working a bar or helping you with your divorce scams doesn’t bring. I don’t suppose you know any lonely rich widowers?’

The gag startled me for a moment. ‘I did. One. But he’s not looking in the lonely hearts any more.’

There was something nagging away at me. Everything Lillian Andrews did was carefully thought out and planned. A lot of that probably came from her association with Tam McGahern: ‘Mafeking’ Jeffrey had told me that McGahern’s war record showed him to be intelligent, organized and a natural strategist. But what got to me more was what May had said about no one in Glasgow thinking beyond the city’s tenement-fringed horizon. It was becoming clear that that was exactly what Tam had been all about.

Everything I had heard about the high-end, West End brothel that no one knew anything much about didn’t make sense. I had seen the house they had used. You had to know where to find it. I thought of the affected Kelvinside housewife who had answered the door. I couldn’t imagine her type redirecting clients who had lost their way: ‘Oh, Eh’m ehfraid you hev the wrong door, the whooorhouse is three along, between the deyntal prehctitioner and the hayccountent…’ Lillian’s well-connected clients knew exactly where to go. So who was pointing them in the right direction?

I used the ’phone in the hall and called Willie Sneddon. I shared my thoughts with him and asked if I could lean on Arthur Parks.

‘You think Parky was involved with this other outfit?’ Sneddon asked.

‘I don’t know. But someone was sending the right kind of client up there. Parks works the top end of the business; maybe he was creaming the best off for this special set up.’

‘Naw…’ said Sneddon after a moment’s silence. ‘Parky would know that I’d nail him to the fucking floor if he pulled a stunt like that.’

I winced. From what I’d heard of Sneddon’s enforcement techniques, he wasn’t speaking metaphorically. ‘Maybe it was worth the risk,’ I said. ‘Or maybe the clients he was redirecting wouldn’t have been seen in his place anyway.’

‘A sideline is a fuckin’ sideline,’ said Sneddon. ‘No one works for me and runs their own wee business on the side. Parky’s not your man.’

‘I’d still like to lean on him. Maybe take Twinkletoes or Tiny with me.’

‘No way. Parky’s one of my best earners. I don’t want him… upset.’

‘Then let me at least talk to him again,’ I said. ‘Maybe he’s not the supplier. I have to admit that when I showed him a photograph of Lillian Andrews, he seemed genuinely not to recognize her, although she did remind him of someone else. But maybe he’s heard something more. Or there’s something he’s not telling me.’

‘Like I said, Lennox, I don’t want Parky upset. You know how fuckin’ antsy these mattress-munchers can be. Just find out what you have to find out without getting him worked up. And leave Twinkle and Tiny out of it. And I wouldn’t go round at this time of night. These are his big business hours. Parky shuts up shop between seven in the morning and three in the afternoon. I’ll ’phone him and tell him you’ll be round to disturb his ugly sleep tomorrow morning. I’ll advise Parky to be cooperative. That should be all you need.’