Craig Russell - Dead men and broken hearts

After I’d finished and paid at the cashier’s desk, I pulled my coat collar up and the brim of my hat down and shouldered my way into the rain. My ‘shadow’ across Sauchiehall Street turned his back to me and started to read a tattered bus timetable with sudden and profound interest.

I made my way through the crowds back in the direction of my office. The Atlantic was parked a couple of streets away but I decided to do my own little test to see how far my new chum would follow me. I turned right and crossed Blythswood Street. As I casually checked the traffic, I caught a quick glance of him bustling around the corner. He was a reasonably big guy, maybe five-ten but heavy-set. He was wearing a pale grey raincoat, a matching hat and a harassed expression.

I cut into Sauchiehall Lane, one of the intersecting alleyways that run parallel to the grid layout streets of Glasgow city centre. It was lined with the unadorned brick and steel-doored backs of the buildings that faced onto Sauchiehall Street and Bath Street, and in the rain the cobbles were greasy and treacherous underfoot. I trotted along the lane to put some distance between me and him.

He had a round, fleshy face and large eyes, and if it had not been for the smudge of trimmed moustache above the plump lips he would have looked like an overblown baby. The big eyes got bigger when he saw me waiting for him and he stood for a moment, startled.

Then he took a swing at me.

‘You bastard!’ he shouted, as his fist arced wide and as predictably as if he’d sent me a three-sheet telegram about his intentions. I blocked his punch easily with my left forearm and planted my own in the cushion of his belly just below the breastbone. He doubled up and I slammed one into the side of his head. His feet slipped on the cobbles and he fell against the wall, still clutching his gut. It was quick and easy and all of the fight went out of him. The problem was — or at least always had been since the war — that the fight never seemed to go out of me. Once I had gotten started, I found it difficult to stop. But now, as I lined up another blow, I looked down at the doubled-over guy gasping for breath. He was as good at fighting as he was at tailing people, and with a sigh I hauled him up and pushed him against the wall. His hat had come off and I could see he was bald, with only a band of close-cropped hair from temple to temple. It made him look even more like some kind of overgrown infant. The fight might have gone from him, but when our eyes met, his still burned with hatred.

‘You bastard…’ he repeated breathily. ‘You stay the hell away from her. Stay away from her or I’ll kill you.’

I grabbed the collar of his coat with both hands and slammed him against brickwork.

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ I demanded. ‘Why are you following me?’

‘You know why, you shite.’

‘Cut out the name-calling, bud, or I’ll slap it out of you. Now… what the hell is wrong with you and why are you on my tail?’

‘I know it’s you. I know you’ve been… You and her. I found your card in her handbag…’ He reached into his coat pocket and I grabbed his wrist, easing his hand slowly into view. It was my business card, all right.

‘Listen, I have no idea what this is all about,’ I protested. I had been chased by more than one angry husband in my time, but it had been a while since I’d given anyone cause.

‘You’ve been carrying on with my wife, that’s what it’s all about, as if you didn’t know.’

‘Who’s your wife?’

‘Don’t try to come on all innocent,’ he blustered and straightened himself up. He was trying to regain some dignity, but it was still well beyond his reach. ‘You know who she is… that is unless you’ve got a string of marriages you’re wrecking, you bastard.’

I gave him a backhander, hard across the face. ‘I told you to watch your mouth. What’s your wife’s name?’

‘Sylvia Dewar. I’m Tom Dewar, her husband.’ His eyes fell with the last word. The shame of a cuckold. I let him go.

‘Sylvia Dewar?’ The pieces began to fit. I let go of his coat and he tried to smooth the crumples out of it and his pride. ‘Listen, friend, I only met your wife the other day. On business. And I’m sure as hell not playing footsie with her.’

‘No?’ he looked at me defiantly. A shaky sneer on his swelling face.

‘No.’

‘Then someone is. And I found your card hidden in her handbag.’

‘Didn’t you think to ask her who I was? Or do you just jump on the first mug you think your wife’s spoken to?’

‘She would just have lied if I’d asked her. She’s a liar as well as everything else. I know all about it. There are ways of knowing. It’s been going on for months.’

‘Not with me, it hasn’t.’

He stared at me, the bitterness and anger still burning in the large, watery eyes. But I guessed that was the way he looked at the whole world and he was clearly less sure about his accusation. I bent down, picked up his hat and handed it to him.

‘Listen, Mr Dewar,’ I said, ‘I think we should grab a coffee. There’s a place around the corner.’

We got some odd looks as we walked into the cafe. The harsh neon ceiling lights threw up the oily smears on Dewar’s coat and the angry swelling on his temple where I’d bopped him. We took a table in the corner and a glum, meagre, middle-aged waitress took our order for two frothy coffees as if it had been a personal insult.

‘Okay, here’s why your wife had my card…’ I explained all about my work for Joe Connelly and the union and his concern for Frank Lang’s welfare. I gave him all the main points of what I’d discussed with his wife, but, given that he’d recently taken a swing at me for stealing some of his apples, I missed out the part where Sylvia had offered me the whole fruit bowl. I ran through what she had told me about Lang going away with the men in the fancy car.

‘She never said anything about that to me,’ he said. ‘And I’ve never seen any fancy cars outside. All I know is he’s not been back to the house for a week or more.’

‘Do you believe me?’ I asked. ‘I promise you that I haven’t seen your wife before or since and our meeting was strictly business.’

Dewar stared at me. He knew I was telling the truth, but there was desperation in his eyes, almost as if that believing it had been me, that being able to put a face to his wife’s secret lover, made it easier somehow.

Eventually, he shook his big, baby head glumly. ‘But there is somebody. I know it. I even thought it could have been Frank next door but he’s hardly ever there.’

‘Quite,’ I said, but thought about how his wife had known what Lang kept in his kitchen cupboards. I had recognized something in Sylvia Dewar, something I had seen in many of the women I had known. The type of women I had known. My guess was that Dewar was making a mistake in looking for one offender. Given the fact that I had nearly become one of them, there had probably been more than one notch on Sylvia Dewar’s bedpost. I looked at Dewar, slumped at the table, the spirit leaving him just as the fight had. Despite the fact that he had just tried to take my head off, I felt sorry for him.

‘Sylvia… you see, Sylvia isn’t the kind of woman that goes for someone like me,’ he said, desperation in his voice. ‘I couldn’t believe it when she went out with me and then said she would marry me. But I make a good wage and I give her a good life. I like to buy her things. She likes me buying things for her.’

‘Mr Dewar…’ I said as soothingly as I could manage. I was not good with other people’s unhappiness. ‘You don’t have to — ’

‘I’m sorry about today. But I’m going out of my mind with this. I suspect everybody and when I found your card…’