Craig Russell - Lennox

‘Come on, guys,’ I said. ‘A joke’s a joke. No harm done.’

‘Lennox is right,’ said Handsome Jonny with a handsome smile. ‘Where would we all be if we didn’t have a sense of humour?’

‘Edinburgh?’ I quipped. Sneddon and Murphy turned their murderous glares on me in a way that suggested I was about to quip my way into an early grave. At least I’d gotten them to agree on something. Now was the time to move on.

‘Anyway,’ I continued. ‘Much as I hate to break up this meeting of The Brains Trust, I think we should be talking about what I’ve found out, instead of tearing lumps out of each other.’ As I spoke, Jonny Cohen walked around Tiny Semple and placed himself between Sneddon and Murphy.

‘Lennox is right,’ he said. ‘If we start on each other then we’re all fucking doomed. Let’s not kid ourselves that there’s only the three firms in town. There’s a fourth… the polis. It would suit the coppers down to the ground if we went weak on them. We’d better listen to what Lennox has to say.’

Again the room seemed too bright, the colours too intense, the edges too sharp.

‘I gotta sit down,’ I said and slumped into a leather armchair. Jonny brought me some water from the jug on the bar.

‘Is he fucking okay?’ asked Sneddon. I was touched by his solicitous tone.

‘I’m fine,’ I said. I took a gulp of the water. ‘You know what I like about you guys? You’re exactly who you say you are. I know that each one of you is you, and a thorough-going crooked bastard.’

‘Lennox…’ Jonny said warningly.

‘No,’ I said as happily as I could manage, ‘that’s a good thing. I mean it as a compliment. You see every other bastard I’ve had to deal with has been someone else. Not who they said they were.’

‘Lennox, you’re not making any sense.’ Jonny’s tone was now one of concern. Not concern that my health had deteriorated, but that it was about to — suddenly and irrevocably — if I didn’t appease Sneddon and Murphy.

‘But there you have it,’ I said. ‘Nothing made sense. Frankie McGahern having a go at me with McNab there to witness it didn’t make sense. Frankie hanging around to get the shite mashed out of him in his garage didn’t make sense. But it does if nobody is who you think they are. It’s pretty obvious when you think about it. Twins. Tam the brains, the decorated Desert Rat, ex-Gideon Force… then Frankie the no-hoper.’

‘This is your theory that it was Frankie who got it up the ass above the Highlander, not Tam?’ asked Sneddon. I was relieved to see him pour a drink from the whisky bottle, instead of brandishing it at Murphy.

‘It was Frankie. To start with I thought it was a mistaken identity: that it was a simple accident that Frankie was there instead of Tam. They played this game, you see. According to Wilma, the part-time chippy who was there that night, Tam persuaded Frankie to sleep with her every now and then, just to see if she could tell the difference. A laugh. But that wasn’t it at all. Frankie was set up just like John Andrews and half a dozen others. Frankie was Tam’s twin brother. His flesh and blood. But all he meant to Tam was a face the same as his and therefore his ticket out of a tight spot. Tam had a big job planned: the robbery of all of these Sterling-Patchett machine guns. But because of the buyers he had lined up for them, he was getting heat from a mob who would never give up till they found and killed him.’

‘It didn’t take them long,’ said Jonny. ‘If “Frankie” was Tam, then he still got it within a few weeks.’

‘Again, no one is who you think they are. Tam McGahern is still very much alive.’

‘So who the fuck was that with their face smashed in…?’ Sneddon realized the significance of what he’d said and let the sentence die.

‘Exactly. Their face smashed in. And Tam McGahern had gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure that neither his nor his brother’s fingerprints were on file. My guess is the schmuck with the caved-in puss was Tam’s former commanding officer. A waster called Jimmy or Jamie Wallace. Wallace provided a lot of the intelligence and background knowledge for this deal. He also provided a corpse about the right size and colouring.’

‘But this isn’t like the twin thing,’ said Murphy. ‘First time round it’s someone who looks fucking identical to the real guy. The second time they’re going to see they’ve got the wrong punter. Or are you telling me they was all fucking triplets?’

‘No. But I am telling you that the guys who did the hit above the Highlander didn’t do the second killing. That was Tam McGahern himself. He mashed Wallace’s face and dressed him up as Frankie.’

‘So McGahern is hiding out somewhere?’ asked Jonny. ‘Or he must be out of town. God knows he couldn’t show his face in Glasgow.’

‘I was out with this girl the other night,’ I said. ‘We went to see a Jack Palance film and she said I reminded her of him. I said there was a good reason. Some Ukrainian-American bomber pilot with an unpronounceable surname refuses to bail out of his burning bomber. Very heroic but his face gets burned to fuck. Months of plastic surgery later they still can’t get it quite right and the skin is too tight over his face. But it gives him this unique look. Goodbye Volodymyr Palahniuk, hello Jack Palance. The reason I look like him is I took the tail-end of a grenade blast in the face. I end up with a tight-looking face, prominent cheekbones, et cetera.’

‘Really?’ said Murphy, his eyes wide with amazement. ‘That is abso-fucking-lutely fascinating. Now, are you going to get to a fucking point? Because if you don’t, I’m goin’ to get the boys here to dance on your face. Then you can entertain every cunt with the story of how you ended up looking like Lon fucking Chaney.’

‘The point is that Tam McGahern isn’t showing his face in Glasgow, because he doesn’t have it any more. Tam and Sally Blane, or Lillian Andrews as she now calls herself, set up this honey-trap operation and trapped a lot of important people. Including, I reckon, a top copper. Anyway, one of their targets was a plastic surgeon called Alexander Knox. Tam doesn’t hit him for money. Just a new face. He’d already fixed up Lillian’s face after a car crash and was dragged into doing a patch-up on one of Tam’s army buddies. But I reckon Tam wasn’t acting out of loyalty for a comrade… he just wanted to see how good Knox was. The point is, Tam McGahern is walking around with a new identity and a new face to go with it.’

‘And just how did you come up with all of this?’ asked Sneddon.

‘What can I tell you? I’m a genius. Added to which I got some of the story from a high-class chippy who calls herself Liz. Except my money is on her being someone else, like every other bastard. Just like Tam played at being Frankie and Sally played at being Lillian, I think Margot Taylor, Sally’s sister, is playing at being Lizzie. That, in turn, means that what I got out of her is at least half fiction.’

I paused to take another sip of water.

‘I do think there was a car crash and someone’s face got mashed up a bit, but I don’t think Margot died. But I could be wrong. The important thing is that Margot and Sally-cum-Lillian helped Tam set up this honey-trap. But they weren’t alone. Arthur Parks was involved. He was directing customers and a couple of his better girls to the operation. I started off thinking that once Tam and Lillian had got what they wanted out of the operation, Arthur Parks was surplus to requirements, so they killed him. But that doesn’t fit with the way he died. Parks was killed by someone who wanted information out of him. It wasn’t a quick death. My thinking is that it was either Tam’s new business partners or the highly professional mob who thought they’d got him that night above the Highlander. Ronnie Smails got his from the same killer as Arthur Parks.’