Craig Russell - Lennox

Twinkletoes pulled his hand back again. I stopped him with a gesture.

‘Let me try again. Arthur Parks and Tam McGahern. What’s the connection?’

‘How the fuck would I know?’ Dumfries was seriously scared. I understood his fear. I had been scared during my last chat with Sneddon, with Twinkletoes merely lurking in the background. The difference was there was no way I was going to let Twinkletoes indulge his little hobby. The threat should be enough.

I felt uncomfortable about how things had gone. After all of this was over, I would need to operate in this town. For now, I was acting as if I were one of Sneddon’s heavies.

‘I seriously hope you’re not pissing down my back and telling me it’s raining, Danny. This is big shit. As you’ll have gathered, you don’t have Murphy’s protection when it comes to this. And if you’re holding out you’ll have all of the Three Kings on your case.’ I turned to Twinkletoes. ‘Take a break; watch these two. Danny and I are going to have a chat. Where’s your office?’

Dumfries nodded to the back of the club. He showed me into a dingy office and switched the light on. The desk was covered in paperwork and the ashtray spilling over with butts. He still looked scared.

‘Take it easy, Danny, for fuck’s sake. Sit down. I just need information. I’m sorry about Twinkletoes’s enthusiasm, but I’ve been told to travel with him. You okay?’

‘Like you fuckin’ care.’ He slumped into his captain’s chair. I sat on the corner of the desk.

‘This is simple, Danny, just like I said. Tam McGahern got iced because he was treading on the wrong toes. Just whose toes I don’t yet know. But it involved blackmail.’

‘It’s got nothing to do with me.’ Dumfries sniffed and wiped the blood from his nose with a handkerchief. I gave him a cigarette and he lit it with a heavy gold pocket lighter. His hand shook.

‘Listen, Danny. I saw what happened to Arthur Parks. And what happened to Frankie McGahern. These guys are pretty handy with a tyre iron and they like their victims to suffer first. Really suffer. If you’re involved with this, your only way out is by having the protection of all Three Kings. The other thing is that if I don’t give Sneddon what he wants, Twinkletoes out there will give us both a pedicure. So tell me the truth and don’t hold anything back.’

‘I fuckin’ swear I’m telling you the truth,’ he said. I believed him.

‘Okay. But it’s going to be difficult to convince my lumbering chum out there. You better start thinking fast and push out a few names I can squeeze. If you were to start blackmailing punters, who would you use?’

Dumfries stared at the wall for a moment, smoking briskly.

‘What do you think they were up to?’ he asked at last. ‘Blackmailing punters with photographs of them on the job?’

‘I guess so,’ I said.

‘There are a few chancers out there who are handy with a Box Brownie. But if I was going to do something like that, there’s a guy I would use. Ronnie Smails. His main business is taking dirty pictures, but word has it that if you want someone set up, he’s the man to talk to.’

‘Does he work for any of the Kings?’

‘Naw. He’s too fucking far down in the gutter for them to bother with. Trust me, Lennox, you talk to Ronnie Smails for five minutes and you want to have a shower afterwards. He’s a low-rent pornographer and all-round creeping-Jesus.’

I nodded, but found it difficult to imagine Danny Dumfries looking down on anyone from the rarefied atmosphere of the flea-pit he ran. ‘Where can I find Smails?’ I asked.

‘He has a studio in Cowcaddens. He has a front of doing baby pictures, portraits, that kinda stuff. I don’t know if he’s your man, but he’s who I would go to.’ Dumfries wrote down an address and handed it to me.

‘I’ll pay him a visit. You okay?’

Dumfries nodded, but a sparkle of hate flickered in his eyes.

‘Listen, Danny, I’m sorry about the rough stuff, but you shouldn’t have called on your heavies. I can’t control Twinkletoes. I’ll talk to Sneddon and Murphy. Maybe get you a little compensation. Okay?’

Dumfries nodded.

‘Just make sure you don’t ever fucking come back here, Lennox.’

I didn’t think I’d need Twinkletoes to deal with Ronnie Smails, and after the cosy scenes in Dumfries’s club, I thought I’d give him the afternoon off. I went back to my digs first, called a buddy in the Port of Clyde and arranged to meet that night at the Horsehead Bar for a pint and a chat.

I drove to Cowcaddens and found Smails’s place: a two-roomed shop on the ground floor of a soot-blackened tenement building. There was a printed card in the corner of the grimy window that gave rates for family and wedding photography and provided the last resting place for half-a-dozen flies. Next to it a freshly married couple gap-tooth-grinned out of a yellowing photograph. The bride was a head taller than the groom, and either the dark suit he wore had been borrowed from an even shorter chum, or he preferred his ankles to be well ventilated.

I tried the door but it was locked and no one answered my knock. Smails was out, probably assisting Richard Avedon on an Audrey Hepburn shoot. I decided to come back later.

Jimmy Frater and I had got to know one another through a chance meeting in a bar on a foggy night. I hadn’t been in Glasgow long and we both stank a little of the war. It was one of these evenings where light chat reveals a common history, which turns into a gloomy recognition of a similarly damaged soul. The difference between us was that Frater had somehow managed to drag his life back onto some kind of track. He worked for the authority that ran the Port of Clyde and had proved to be a valuable asset on the odd occasion.

I ordered a pint of heavy for Frater and a rye whiskey for myself while I waited for him to arrive. Frater, unlike me, was the dependable, solid sort. I knew I could rely on him being on time for our meeting.

‘You get a chance to look at those codes I gave you?’ I asked after he had arrived.

‘Tell me you’re not up to something illegal, Lennox.’

‘I’m not up to something illegal,’ I said. ‘I’d tell you that anyway, of course, but in this case it happens to be true. In fact if I’m right about these codes, then I’ll be handing the information over to the police.’

‘Okay,’ Frater said, but didn’t look entirely convinced. ‘You were right. All of these relate to CCI shipments from the port. Three different ships, each appearing several times, but different manifests.’

‘What was the cargo?’

‘Machine parts. Mainly agricultural. Two shipments were oil drilling equipment. The one thing all of the shipments had in common was their destination. Aqaba, in Jordan. That help?’

‘Kinda,’ I said. Truth was it was a big help: proof of the Middle East connection I suspected.

I drank a few more with Frater, who made his apologies and said he had to get back to his wife and kids. That suited me because I wanted to catch Smails that night. The other reason was that nothing depressed me more than success and happiness.

Ronnie Smails’s studio was still in darkness when I arrived back. I guessed that he lived above the premises, but the first-floor flat was also unlit. I tried the studio door again and found it still locked.

I waited until a Corporation tram rattled past and cast a look up and down the street before turning my attention to the panel of four small glazed panes in the door. I picked at the putty around one of them and it crumbled to the touch. I set about easing the pane out of the door with my penknife. Eventually it came away and I squeezed my hand through and un-snibbed the door. With the blinds down, I reckoned it was okay to switch the lights on.