Craig Russell: Lennox

The goon in the drainpipes opened the car door and led me into Sneddon’s mansion. Like some thug parody of a butler, he told me to wait in the mock-Gothic hall. Sneddon let me stew for half an hour before he emerged from the snooker room. He was making a point. I was now at his pleasure and could not leave without his permission.

Willie Sneddon was one of the Three Kings who ran Glasgow. The Bearsden mock-baronialism that surrounded us may have been Sneddon’s castle, but his kingdom sat on the South Side. He was not a particularly big man, and he was expensively and surprisingly tastefully dressed. But at the very first glance you could tell that this man was all about violence. His build was stocky but not heavy. Muscular. Sinewy, as if he had been woven from rope. Added to that, someone had in the distant past permanently creased his right cheek with a razor.

‘What the fuck do you want, Lennox?’ He fired the greeting over his shoulder as he led me into a study lined with books he would never and probably could never read. I was not invited to but I sat down anyway.

‘I had a run in with Frankie McGahern,’ I said, lighting a cigarette.

‘I heard it was him that had a run in with you,’ answered Sneddon with perfect Govan grammar. ‘You kill him, Lennox?’

‘I’m in the clear for that. Someone else did him. Who, is the big question. And that’s what I want to talk to you about. I wanted to ask you if you knew anything about what happened to his brother.’

‘You accusing?’

‘No, Mr Sneddon. Not accusing, just asking. I can’t see any reason why you would have Tam McGahern killed. Or Frankie. But no one knows this town like you…’

‘Oh aye? I suppose you’ve not talked to the other Kings?’

‘As a matter of fact I haven’t. I came to you first.’ It was the truth and he knew it. He could check it out easily enough. Although he tried to hide it, I could tell he liked the idea that I somehow rated him above the other two Kings. I failed to mention that I just happened to be in the neighbourhood.

‘I know fuck-all about Tam McGahern’s killing. Of course I wouldn’t tell you if I did and normally I wouldn’t give a fuck if you believed me or not. But I really don’t know and I don’t like not knowing. I don’t need to tell you that knowledge is power in this town. I’m not the kind of man that appreciates the lack of either. Who’s paying you to look into this?’

‘No one.’

Sneddon raised an eyebrow dubiously. This could easily turn into another beating for information I didn’t have.

‘I mean it. No one. I think that Frankie McGahern wanted me to find out who killed his brother but I wasn’t interested. That’s why things turned ugly. I’ve been warned off by the police. I guess I’m contrary that way, but when someone tries to warn me off with a beating, I tend to get stubborn.’

Sneddon nodded slowly, a cold appraising glint in his eyes. He seemed to make up his mind about something.

‘Well, you’re being paid now. You find out who snuffed Tam and Frankie and I’ll pay you.’

‘Like I said, I’m looking into this for myself-’

‘Not any more.’ Sneddon’s tone informed me that the discussion was over. He reached into a drawer of his walnut desk and pulled out a dense, neat roll of fivers. ‘This’ll keep you going. There’s a hundred there. I’ll pay you another two hundred if you deliver the name to me first.’

I took the money. ‘You know I can’t guarantee I’ll succeed. I never guarantee results. You know that.’

‘Then I’ll be a hundred quid poorer. But you only get the other two hundred if you deliver the name.’

‘Okay,’ I said as if I had a choice in the matter. ‘Thanks. I’ll see what I can find out. But I’ll have to talk to the other two Kings. Things may get complicated.’

‘We’ll cross that bridge when you come to it, Lennox. Just remember who’s paying you. You find out something, I hear it first. And if I say no one else hears about it, that’s the way it’ll be.’

‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘Maybe we can start with you telling me something more about Tam and Frankie. I don’t know much about them at all. Never had to come across them.’ I rubbed the back of my neck, remembering how difficult it had been to convince McNab of that fact.

‘Not much to tell,’ said Sneddon. ‘Couple of wee Fenians on the make. You know the type: one generation away from shiteing in a Galway peat bog. They were trying to carve themselves a wee empire. More Tam than Frankie. Tam was hard, ambitious and sharp as a tack. Frankie was just…’ Sneddon frowned as he sought an appropriate comparative. ‘Frankie was just a wee cunt.’

‘I would have thought that they’d have divided the action up equally, being twins and all.’

‘Aye, you would have thought that. But the brains weren’t divided equally. Tam and Frankie were only identical twins in the way they looked. Like I said, Tam was the brains… and the muscle… of the operation. He was a clever wee fucker, by all accounts. Frankie wasn’t. Tam ran things and looked after Frankie. Threw him scraps from the table.’

‘So they were close?’

‘How the fuck am I supposed to know? Not my type of people, if you catch my drift. But I did hear one story about how Frankie leaned on some whore who was operating her business independently. Tam found out and gave Frankie a real hiding. But then there’s another story about how Tam paid a fucking fortune to have some nobody take a rap and do six months inside for Frankie. Just so Frankie didn’t have a record.’

‘Frankie’s got no criminal record?’

‘None.’ Sneddon lit a cigarette without offering me one. ‘Neither of them has. Tam because he was smart. Frankie because it was as if Tam went out of his way to keep Frankie’s record clean. But, like I say, he wasn’t above giving Frankie a hiding.’

‘What operations did they run?’ I asked.

‘Three bars — the Highlander, the Imperial and the Westfield — and a couple of bookies; they did a few half-decent hold-ups and they ran security for a whore-house. And they had a small-time protection thing going on. But, like I say, Tam McGahern was a cunning wee shite. He always had some kind of scam going on. We tried to keep track of what he was up to but he always was too slippery.’

‘Okay,’ I said and stood up, lifting my hat from Sneddon’s ornate desk. ‘I’ll see what I can find out. But it may be tricky. A lot of people are nervous about the whole McGahern thing. Reluctant to talk.’

Sneddon leaned to one side in his chair and shouted ‘Twinkletoes!’ past me and out into the hall.

Suddenly the light in the study dimmed, as if the door had been closed. I knew, without turning, that it hadn’t: it was just that Twinkletoes McBride was standing in the door frame.

‘You’ve met Twinkletoes before, haven’t you, Lennox?’

‘Not in a professional capacity.’ I smiled weakly and turned to nod a greeting to the beast in the doorway.

‘Hello, Mr Lennox,’ Twinkletoes said in his troll baritone, smiled and sat down on the chair by the door. He was a friendly cuss. Not too bright. Read comic books. Occasionally quoted from the Reader’s Digest. Tortured people for Sneddon.

‘This is going to be a tough nut to crack, Lennox,’ said Sneddon. ‘People aren’t keen to talk. I want you to use Twinkletoes if that happens.’

‘Listen, Mr Sneddon… that’s not really my style. No offence, Twinkletoes.’

Twinkletoes McBride sat smiling silently, a dark mass of friendly menace in the corner. Conversation was not his strong point: his reputation was for getting other people to talk. The origin of the epithet ‘Twinkletoes’ lay in his methods as Sneddon’s torturer. These involved the removal of the victim’s socks and shoes, the use of a pair of bolt cutters and McBride’s recitation, with a surprising use of ironic humour, of ‘this little piggy went to market’. Apparently Twinkletoes would leave the big toe of each foot until last.