Craig Russell - Dead men and broken hearts

She was a piece of art, all right. I found myself thinking about Pamela Ellis’s desperate wish to find out why her husband was acting so strangely, and her vague hope that there was something more, or less, than simple adultery behind his behaviour. But I had the answer standing right there in front of me: the kind of woman who would make Ellis, me, or any man with a pulse, act strangely.

‘What a night!’ I said to them both as casually as I could manage. ‘Sorry… I nearly walked straight into you. You can’t see your hand in front of your face in this muck.’

They both stared at me wordlessly, like a couple of entomologists studying a bug. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I detected a hint of suspicion in Ellis’s eyes. He looked past me in the direction I had come, as if he could see through the smog, and I wondered if he was trying to work out if my face and the headlights that had been in his mirror since Maryhill Road were connected. I thought about claiming to have lost my way and asking exactly where we were, but I decided it would be best to move on as quickly as possible.

Ellis had seen me for only a matter of seconds, but I could almost hear the click of the camera shutter in his memory. The girl’s too. There was something about the set-up I didn’t like; secretive rather than furtive, conspiratorial rather than adulterous. A subtle difference.

I walked on in the opposite direction to my car and into the smog, hoping that I would be able to find my way back. I reached a corner and another doorway, in which I sheltered while lighting a cigarette. I only began to make my way back after I had finished my second smoke. This time I approached much more slowly, ready to pull back if I heard voices, but when I eventually reached the steps, Ellis, the girl and the Daimler were all gone.

I made my way up the steps to the doorway of the building. The sandstone arch, like most stonework in Glasgow, was sooty black, but I could see that this was not a tenement or any other type of residence and the building probably housed some kind of offices. Perhaps the girl had not come from inside and this had been a randomly chosen meeting point, but I guessed that she lived not far from here. I found a brass plate next to the door and noted down a couple of the company names, simply to allow me to find the exact address in the telephone directory and find my way back when the smog had lifted.

I headed back to my car.

I sat for a moment and tried to work out what it was that was nagging at me about Ellis and the girl. It was something more than the way they didn’t gel as partners in extra-marital crime. I shook my head trying to loosen the thought from my brain, turned the ignition key and thumbed the starter button.

This time, I didn’t even get a splutter out of the engine, just a dull, dry clunk.

It took me an hour on foot to fumble my way to a rank of stationary taxi-cabs with drivers intent on staying stationary. It was only after a twenty-minute wait and a slight easing of the smog that one of the cabbies reluctantly agreed to take my fare.

The White flat was in darkness and silence when I got back and I went straight up to my rooms. It had been a confusing day and my head buzzed with unconnected thoughts like bees trapped in a jar. It was nearly two a.m. before I fell asleep.

I dreamed that night. It was the dream that I thought I had stopped having; the dream I used to have every night, for months and years after the war had ended. But it had been a long time since I’d last dreamt it, and I woke cold and afraid with the ghost of another man’s screaming echoing in the room.

A bad omen.

For some reason, I had become a member of the RAC earlier that year. Maybe because I liked watching their uniformed patrolmen wobble on their motorcycles as they passed because they were compelled, on seeing the bumper badge, to salute me. There were times I loved the British.

After I had breakfast, I checked out in the directory the address of the company names I had noted and used the hall telephone to call the RAC. I gave the address in Garnethill, not far from the synagogue, where my Austin Atlantic sat broken down. I explained that I would take a taxi there right away and would be waiting for their patrolman.

As it turned out, a helmeted and goggled RAC motorcyclist was already at the Atlantic when I arrived. He saluted — which I appreciated — and asked me if I would ‘be so kind as to pop open the bonnet for me, please, sir’.

I did what he asked and tried the starter again while he disappeared behind the shield of the open car hood. Again a dull clunk. The RAC man came back into view, and, although he maintained his polite formality, something had shifted in his demeanour.

‘Is there a problem?’ I asked, innocently.

‘Would you mind having a look at the engine, sir?’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘But I gotta tell you that I know nothing about mechanics.’ I followed him to the front of the car and leaned in to look at the engine, succeeding in getting motor oil on my tie.

As I had said, I knew practically nothing much about engines, but I knew enough to be aware that spark plug cables were not meant to be neatly sliced in two.

I looked at the patrolman helplessly.

Fifteen minutes later, I had a new set of leads installed and was heading towards Bearsden.

Pamela Ellis was surprised and uneasy to find me standing on her doorstep and hastily ushered me into the house. I half expected her to stick her head out through the door and check the street in both directions to see if anyone had seen me.

I had seen the house often enough from the outside: an unremarkable Victorian sandstone box with bay windows and a steep-pitched roof, typical of area and class, and the interior pretty much reflected the conformity of the exterior. In almost every way, the Ellis lounge was the opposite of the front room I had shared with hostess-with-the-mostess Sylvia. But both made a statement. Just as the Dewar home had been all about the modern and synthetic, about change and the Future, about melamine, Formica and polyester, the Ellis home was about solidity, tradition and continuity. The lounge Pamela Ellis showed me into was flock-wallpapered and furnished with solid reproduction furniture with the odd genuine antique. There was no space-age decor here, and above the fireplace was the expected Farquharson print with the expected sheep in the expected sunset.

‘I thought you would ’phone first, Mr Lennox,’ she said, still flustered, as she invited me to sit. ‘I’m afraid you’ve caught me on the way out — Wednesday night is my weekly bridge night. I never miss it.’ She looked at her watch. ‘The girls will be expecting me at eight-thirty.’

‘I won’t keep you, Mrs Ellis,’ I said. ‘But I have to tell you there have been developments. I felt we needed to talk as soon as possible and I knew that your husband would be at work.’ I broke the news to her that her husband had indeed, been meeting with another woman. There were tears — tight, restrained, Scottish tears — then composure.

‘Is she younger than me?’ she asked eventually.

‘Mrs Ellis…’

‘Is she?’

‘Yes. But I need you to listen to me, Mrs Ellis. I can’t explain why, exactly, but this still may all not be what it seems to be.’

‘In what way?’

‘I don’t think your husband really is having an affair,’ I said with less certainty than I had intended.

‘Are you telling me that my husband sneaks out to meet attractive young women because they really are demolition customers?’ She gave a small, bitter laugh.

‘I watch people all the time. It’s my job. And after a while you start to develop an instinct about the way people behave. The way they act when they’re around other people, the messages you get from a dozen little things. I don’t sense a romantic involvement between your husband and this woman. And it’s not just a hunch. Mr Ellis has been taking very special care not to be followed and last night, when I returned to my car, it had been hobbled so that I couldn’t follow him when he left. By the way, I’m afraid I’ll have to charge you for a set of jump leads.’