Craig Russell - Dead men and broken hearts

‘I don’t know to what you are referring, Mr Lennox, but I shall put everything you have said to Mr Lang. In the meantime, I would be obliged if you could desist from your enquiries. I want you to understand that it is not you or your interest we fear, but that you may draw the attention of others who do pose a significant danger.’

‘Let me guess… I would be advised to drop it for my own sake too?’

‘You have nothing to concern yourself about from us. But yes, there are forces at work here that you too would be advised to avoid.’ He gave a valedictory nod of the head that was so formal I missed the sound of clicking heels. Maybe he was wearing crepe soles.

I watched them go. And they watched me watching them. They were obviously itchy about being followed. Like someone else in my recent past.

I ordered another cup of bitter froth and tried to remember what I had done with a page I had torn out of my notebook, the page on which I’d written the address of where I had seen Andrew Ellis and the girl.

I wasn’t sure what kind of welcome deposed Hungarian premier Imre Nagy was going to get when he arrived in Moscow, but I guessed it would be marginally warmer and less awkward than the encounter I had with Fiona White in the hallway.

It was obvious that she had been avoiding me, and given the effort she made for our eyes not to meet, I guessed that she wouldn’t be making contact with any other part of my anatomy for the foreseeable future. To be honest, I was less than grownup about it myself and the few words I had exchanged with her had been brusque and ill-mannered. I told her not to worry, I would be out of the flat as soon as I possibly could, and that I had already viewed some alternative accommodations. To be fair, I had caught her off-guard, having come home in the middle of the day. I excused myself with the charm of an adolescent and went up to my rooms.

An odd thing about me, something that many would find unexpected, was that I was pretty fastidious when it came to neatness. Not just in dress, but in every aspect of my life. I had always been a little like that, but it had become something of an obsession during the war. My military career in itself could have been described as untidy, and — after I had been encouraged to resign my commission — there were certainly more than a few loose ends left in Hamburg that the military police had taken an unhealthy interest in. Nevertheless, I had developed this habit of keeping myself and my immediate surroundings in order. I put it down to the experience of war, or more particularly the type of experience of war that I and most of the First Canadian Army had had. People talk about the harsh reality of war, but when you got right up close to it — and I had gotten as close to it as it was possible to get — war is so brutal and chaotic that it seems unreal. Maybe my orderliness had been all about locking out the chaos and misery by keeping one part of my life controlled and ordered.

Whatever the reason, while I might have come close to being cashiered for black market activities and other peccadillos of one sort or another, I would never have been brought up on a charge of having my tunic unbuttoned.

So, when I went into my rooms, I had to negotiate around the crates and chest into which I had already started to pack my books and other stuff, in preparation for quitting my flat. I was yet to empty the wastepaper basket and I found the Garnethill address I had torn out of my notebook.

Even though the day was yet to reach the pivot between morning and afternoon, the November day outside was gloomy and I switched on the table lamp. I took the crumpled note over into the pool of yellow light and smoothed it flat on the occasional table.

The Staedtler-Moran International Company Limited.

The name certainly did not sound Hungarian, but it certainly wasn’t typically Scottish either. There was no clue to what particular trade the Staedtler-Moran International Company Limited plied and there had been no signs of life when I had passed Ellis and his dishy foreign friend that night.

But it would still be worth a look.

I knew of a solicitor whose offices were not far from Garnethill and I went in with the name of his firm scribbled down on a piece of paper. My plan was to claim to be lost and looking for the solicitor, clearly having gotten the address wrong. The genuine office was far enough away for no one at Staedtler-Moran to recognize the name, but if someone did get suspicious, or decided to be extra helpful by looking it up in the ’phone book for me, they would find a nearby solicitor of the name I claimed to be looking for.

In the event, the elaborate subterfuge was unnecessary.

There was no smog or dark to cloak my surroundings this time. In fact the clouds had parted but, if anything, the cold, hard sunlight seemed to etch the dark buildings with a harsher and more uncompromising hand. It took me a while to pinpoint the exact doorway again: Glasgow’s smog created a palette and a landscape all of its own and things always looked disorientingly different in the clear light of day. Eventually a dulled bronze plaque informed me that I had again found Staedtler-Moran International.

I stepped into a fluorescent-tube-lit entry hallway of shiny green and white porcelain-tiled walls and a dull linoleum floor. In front of me, a flagged stone staircase arced up and into darkness. The offices of Staedtler-Moran were to my right and when I entered, I found a reception desk blanked off with opaque glass, with a kiosk type window at the far end. It was a common form of reception in Scottish commercial premises and it always made me feel I should be buying a railway ticket. A sign above a button instructed me to Press for Attention. I did.

The receptionist pulled open the small sliding section of window that allowed us to hear each other, but her face was framed in a circle of clear glass in the frosted pane. I could hear the clatter of typewriters behind her.

‘May I help you?’ She was a girl of about twenty-two or three and had clearly taken an instant shine to me, which always made things easier. I ran through my demi-fiction of looking for the solicitor’s office and it became obvious she was not going to be the suspicious or inquisitive type. She was, bless her, as dim as she was homely and blinked at me through horn-rimmed bottle-bottom glasses that were so heavy that she had to continually push them back up her nose with mouse-like twitches while her mouth gaped slightly.

She did not, of course, recognize the solicitor’s firm I claimed to be seeking and she explained that the Staedtler-Moran International Company supplied bakery equipment to ‘bakeries throughout the Scottish Central Belt and beyond’.

‘And what about the International in the name?’ I asked. ‘Do you have offices abroad.’

‘Not really,’ she said dully, as if worried that it might disappoint me.

‘Do you sell equipment to bakeries in other countries?’

‘No.’

‘I see.’

‘We have an office in Motherwell…’ she chirped hopefully.

I thanked her and took my leave. She watched me balefully through the small clear circle in the frosted glass. I opened the door that led into the hall just as someone who must have come down the stairwell was leaving through the main door to the street.

My little goldfish was delighted when I reappeared at her window.

‘Are there other offices upstairs?’ I asked.

‘Oh yes, but not the name you was looking for,’ she said, again eager to please.

‘I didn’t notice a plaque outside for any businesses except yours,’ I said.

‘There’s only one,’ she said. ‘It’s some kind of small concern and I don’t know its name. It’s something to do with foreign languages, I think. Translations or something like that.’