Craig Russell - Dead men and broken hearts

‘Nice place you have here,’ I said amiably when Lang’s neighbour came back from her kitchen, tea tray in hand.

‘Aye…’ she said, almost as if bored with the thought. ‘Better than our last place.’

‘Do you mind if I ask how much your TV cost you? I’m thinking about getting something similar.’

She shrugged. ‘Don’t know. It’s from RentaSet.’

‘I see,’ I said, and wondered how much of the Brave New World around me was on HP terms. ‘My name’s Lennox, by the way.’

‘Sylvia…’ she said. ‘Sylvia Dewar.’

‘You said Frank Lang went off with some men. When was this?’ I took the duck egg blue cup and saucer she handed me. Melamine, not china.

‘A week ago. No… nine days ago. Last Wednesday morning. About ten, ten-thirty.’ There was a change of wind and the cloud of suspicion drifted back over her expression. ‘What’s this all about? Like I said, you’re no union man.’

I laid a business card on the coffee table in front of her. ‘I’m an enquiry agent, Mrs Dewar. But I am working on the union’s behalf. Frank Lang has… well, he hasn’t exactly gone missing. Not yet, anyway, not officially… but the union have been trying to reach him and they are concerned about him.’

‘Oh… I see.’ She thought for a moment, pursing her lips. I noticed the lipstick was fresher than it had been when she went into the kitchen. ‘So you think these men he went with came and took him away against his will?’

‘I don’t know, Mrs Dewar — ’

‘Sylvia. You can call me Sylvia.’

‘I don’t know, Sylvia. You saw them. You saw Lang go with them. Did it look to you like he was unwilling to go?’

‘No. Not at all. He clearly knew them and they were chatting as they went to the car. And they certainly didn’t look like union men, either. They came in a big car. Expensive-looking.’

‘Do you know the make?’

She laughed. ‘I don’t know one car from the other. All I know is it wasn’t the type you usually see around here. And that it was dark red or brown.’

‘I see. Have there been any other odd comings and goings, recently?’

‘Not really. Frank Lang keeps himself to himself and is hardly ever at home. No wife, no family. The only time we know he’s there is when we smell his cooking.’

‘His cooking?’

‘I think he cooks fancy stuff. French, or something else foreign. That’s what it smells like, anyway. And he keeps all of these spices and things in his cupboards. Other than that I couldn’t say — my husband has more to do with him than me. He gets the impression that Frank spends most of his time attending meetings and talks, that kind of thing. Although I think he likes to dance.’

‘Dance?’

‘He went out every Saturday night. Always in a nice suit. A friend of mine said she saw him at the Palais. He was very good, she said.’

‘I see…’

‘Do you like to dance, Mr Lennox? I like to dance.’ The wistful expression gave way to bitterness. ‘Tom — that’s my husband — Tom doesn’t dance.’

‘Would it be worthwhile me coming back to talk to your husband? I mean if he had more to do with Mr Lang?’

Something frosted in her expression. ‘No… I don’t think that would do anyone any good. Tom does have more to do with Frank than I do, but not that much more. Anyway, there’s not much point talking to my husband about anything. He gets lots of stupid ideas in his head.’ Sylvia paused and eyed me. ‘Tom’s at work at the moment. He won’t be back until six tonight.’

‘The union told me that they had carried out a few enquiries of their own,’ I said, ignoring the invitation in ten-foot high neon. ‘Has anyone else been here to talk to you?’

‘No,’ she kept me held in her gaze. ‘Only you.’

I stood up. ‘Well, thanks for your time, Sylvia. If anything else occurs to you, please give me a ring. Obviously, I’d appreciate it if you got in touch right away if and when Mr Lang returns home next door. My number’s on the card.’

‘You haven’t finished your tea…’ she protested.

‘It was fine, thanks, but I have to go. Thanks for your help.’

‘You could stay for a while longer, couldn’t you?’

She got up from the sofa, stepped around the table and stood close to me. Too close. She couldn’t have signalled her meaning more clearly if she had been waving semaphore flags at me from two feet away.

‘Sorry…’ I smiled and put on my hat. ‘I’ve got to go.’

As I made my way back to the car, two thoughts struck me. The first struck me like a shovel across the back of the head: I had just declined a chance of guilt-free, no-complications sex. Something I would never have turned down before. But since Fiona had come on the scene, of course, it wouldn’t have been guilt-free.

The second thought was more of a nagger, like an eyelash in your eye: if Sylvia Dewar had nothing to do with Frank Lang, how come she knew what he kept in his cupboards.

The following night I took Fiona and the girls to Cranston’s Cinema de Lux on Renfield Street to see The Ten Commandments. I had suggested we go to see The Searchers, but the girls would not have gotten in so, in the absence of a babysitter, I sat and watched an American-accented Moses argue the toss with a Russian-accented Pharaoh while a Max Factored Nefretiri smouldered. I was maybe getting paranoid, but as Chuck Heston climbed down the mountain with commandments in hand, I couldn’t help wondering if it was a ploy by Fiona to remind me just how many of them I had broken.

But I had more to bother me that night. When I had come home from work and tapped on Fiona’s door to remind her of the time of our date, I could tell there was something wrong. Her face was pale to the point of being ashen and there was something distracted about her manner, as if something massive and heavy was sitting in the path of her concentration. I asked her what was wrong but she dismissed the question, saying that she hadn’t slept too well the night before, that was all. But I knew there was more to it. Much more. She had become increasingly distant over the last month.

When I had called again to pick up her and the kids to take them to the picture house, Fiona looked better and sounded cheery at the prospect of watching the movie. But there wasn’t really a block that I hadn’t been round several times and I recognized the deceit of her good cheer.

Chuck parted the Red Sea for the Chosen and I cast a glance at Fiona. It did nothing to reassure me. Whatever her thousand-yard-stare was focused on, it wasn’t the screen or the peril of the Israelites. I rested my hand on her forearm and felt it tense, as if she had stifled a start. She turned to me and smiled.

‘It’s good, isn’t it?’ she said, and turned back to the screen.

After the movie, we stopped off at Giacomo’s to get the girls an ice cream. I had a coffee from one of those machines that hissed like a steam train but Fiona had nothing.

‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ I asked and rested my hand on hers. She pulled her hand away as if scalded and cast a meaningful look at the girls. I had broken the cardinal rule: no shows of affection, or any other kind of behaviour that might suggest a romantic involvement, in front of Elspeth and Margaret.

‘I’m fine,’ she said through her teeth, then, with the same ersatz jollity as before, started to talk to the girls about the movie.

Something was wrong. Very wrong.

I had intended to push Fiona for a truthful answer about what was going on when we got home, but she used the girls as a shield, saying that she needed to get them to bed. I got no invitation to come in for a drink or a cup of coffee and Fiona kept me on the threshold.