Craig Russell - Dead men and broken hearts

‘You seem to be very well informed about me.’

Hopkins laid a proprietorial hand on top of the buff file. Whether it signified he felt owned the file or the subject of the file was hard to say.

‘Why were you following the young lady?’

‘Business, Mr Hopkins. Mine and not yours. You deal in secrets, I deal in confidences. I’m not prepared to betray a professional one on account of a cup of lousy coffee and a Rich Tea.’

‘I see,’ he said. ‘I deal in facts, in information. One of the facts is that the Hamburg police — and our own Redcaps, for that matter — still have an open file going back to Nineteen Forty-five. A young man called Dietrich Holzmann was found floating face down in the Alster Lake with a broken neck. Holzmann was the front man in a major black-market operation, but he had a partner. Not so much a silent partner, as an invisible one who was suspected to be an Allied officer stationed in Hamburg. British… or Canadian. The German police would really like to talk to that officer.’

‘So this is how you win friends and influence people? By threatening them with the bent arm of the law?’ I asked without ire. ‘May I ask you a question?’

‘Please feel free…’

‘You spirited me off the street…’ I looked at my watch, ‘… thirty-five minutes ago. You and I have been together for all but fifteen of those thirty-five minutes. You haven’t once asked my name or to see some I.D., yet you are impressively well versed in every particular of my military service, both on-and off-the-record, and you seem to know all my personal details right down to my inside leg measurement.’

‘We picked you up because you were going to compromise our surveillance of the girl. I didn’t say that we were unaware of your involvement until today.’

‘So, because I innocently stumble onto your cricket pitch, you threaten me with a free ticket back to Hamburg.’ I stood up. ‘If you have anything to pass on to the German police, the Redcaps, the Mounties or my tailor, then I suggest you do it. In the meantime I’m leaving…’

‘You’re free to leave if you wish,’ he said. ‘But, I would strongly recommend you stay and answer my questions. We both know we don’t have to look as far as Germany to find something inconvenient in your past. There are answers to questions the City of Glasgow Police would be grateful to receive.’ He paused, watching my face while his remained unreadable. ‘You are a very special kind of man, Mr Lennox. Not unique, however… I have met you many times before. Different faces, different cities, different languages, but the same type of man.’

‘And what type of man is that?’

‘A man who leaves behind him a trail of dead men and broken hearts.’

‘Dead men and broken hearts?’ I smiled appreciatively. ‘Very lyrical.’

‘As a matter of fact, I did read it in a book. But that is exactly what you have left behind you. Here in Glasgow too. If you want, I can be very specific about the dead men part.’

I said nothing.

‘Listen, this doesn’t have to be about threats,’ he cradled his coffee cup as if sitting in a vicarage parlour, ‘There are also opportunities for us both.’

‘What kind of opportunities?’

‘We could use someone like you. On occasion. You have… skills… we could use. But, for the moment, I really do need to know why you were following our surveillance suspect. Then, hopefully, we can discuss opportunities for future cooperation — or at the very least get out of each other’s hair.’

I weighed him up; Hopkins was as in control of the situation as it was possible to be. But, there again, he had had a lot of experience. The pattern on his tie told me he would be expert at getting more out of someone in five minutes with a cup of tea and a digestive biscuit than the average Glasgow copper could beat out of a suspect after a month of swinging a rubber hosepipe. I sat back down.

‘So why were you following that particular young lady?’ he asked again.

‘The truth? No politics, no cloaks and no daggers. A marital fidelity case, plain and simple. I saw her with the husband in question. I was just following it up.’

‘I see,’ said Hopkins. ‘We seem both to be in the business of assessing fidelity, of one kind or another. And you are working on this case at the moment?’

‘I am… I mean, I was… It’s complicated.’

‘You are either being paid to follow this woman around Glasgow or you’re not. I don’t see anything complicated in that.’

‘The wife paid me off. She said she was happy with her husband’s explanation.’

‘So why are you still following the girl? Why not the errant husband? If you are going to do some pro bono tailing, that would make more sense.’

I had the answer, of course: a simple coincidence involving two men called Frank Lang. But Connelly’s union wouldn’t appreciate being brought to the attention of someone like Hopkins.

‘Look,’ I said, trying to sound appeasing, ‘I understand I’ve trodden on toes — but all that’s happened is I’ve innocently stumbled into a much bigger deal than anything I’m interested in.’

Hopkins sat with his hand still resting on the file, his expression unreadable beneath the cloak of his polite smile.

‘Okay,’ I nodded again to his neckwear. ‘Unless I’m mistaken, that’s an Intelligence Corps tie. I’m guessing you’re now with the Security Service or MI5 or whatever it is they call themselves these days and your job is to keep tabs on Johnny Foreigner on British soil. Am I right?’

‘In spirit if not in substance. Who was your client?’

‘You know I can’t tell you that. But I promise you that whatever your interest in this girl or her chums, it has nothing to do with why I was following her.’

‘My department does indeed deal with monitoring the activities of foreign nationals. Specifically emigre, refugee and other expatriate groups active within the UK.’ He opened the file and slid a large head-and-shoulders photograph across the table to me. The woman I had seen with Ellis. In this official picture, however, her hair was scraped and tied back and her face was naked of make-up under the harsh, uncompromising light of a flashbulb. She still looked a knock-out.

‘This is the woman you were following?’

I nodded. Hopkins slid a second photograph across to me.

‘Do you recognize this man?’ he asked, his eyes locked on my face.

I made a big deal of studying the photograph before shaking my head. Too big a deal, from the weary expression on Hopkins’s face.

‘You were seen talking to this gentleman in a cafe in the West End of Glasgow just two days ago. Listen, old boy, I really would rather avoid any unpleasantness so I would ask you not to insult my intelligence.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘So I’ve seen him. But it wasn’t an arranged meeting. He pulled the same stunt as you and introduced himself and made it clear he was pretty up-to-date with my social calendar too. So he followed me to the cafe and you followed him. You know something? I must wander about Glasgow blissfully unaware that I have an entourage bigger than the Queen’s.’

‘What did he discuss with you?’

‘He asked me to keep my nose out of his business. I guess he knew that I’d seen my client’s husband with her…’ I stabbed a finger at the photograph of the woman. It was a lie, of course, and I didn’t mention that my call to Tabori the Hungarian consul was really what had spiked Matyas’s interest. I had to keep Hopkins away from my looking for Frank Lang for Connelly. But for all I knew, Hopkins knew all about that as well.

‘And he told you his name?’ Hopkins asked as he topped up his coffee cup.

‘Just his first name. Matyas. Matthew.’