Craig Russell - Dead men and broken hearts

‘A call from a pub doesn’t prove anything.’

‘Yes, Jock,’ I said forcefully, ‘I’m well aware of that.’ Another thought struck me. ‘Wait… she made a call to my digs. She ’phoned to tell me her husband had just gone out. Fiona White took the call before passing it on to me.’

‘Did she tell Mrs White who was calling?’

‘No. But at least it’s proof of contact.’

‘If we can track the call down with the GPO. Even then it doesn’t prove much other than a woman ’phoned you from Andrew Ellis’s home. The fact is his wife flatly denies hiring you and that leaves you following her husband around for reasons of your own. A husband who ends up dead in your office.’

‘She’s lying. This Hungarian group killed her husband and have probably threatened to do the same to her if she talks. You convict me and they’re free and clear. I’ve been set up very professionally and they’re not about to let Pamela Ellis unhitch it all.’

‘Listen, Lennox, this all smacks of you holding back on me. Like you held back on me about your involvement with the Dewars. I have to tell you that we also have witnesses — the doormen — who say you and Sylvia Dewar left the Locarno at almost the same time. Separately, but within a couple of minutes of each other. The same night you get into a tussle in the street with Sheriff Pete outside the Barrowlands over an unnamed woman.’

‘Jesus, Jock… now you’re really clutching at straws.’

‘The truth is I’ve got a lot to clutch at.’

‘Well,’ I said with as much confidence as I could muster, ‘the one thing you don’t seem to have been able to come up with is the most important thing of all: a motive. Say one or both of the Dewars was murdered by a hand other than Tom Dewar’s own; say the Ellis killing, which is completely unconnected in any way to the Dewar deaths, went down the way you’re suggesting it did, the question remains, why? What possible motive would I have for either killing?’

‘On the night before he was murdered, Andrew Ellis’s business premises were broken into. As you know, he was in the demolition business but the target of the raid wasn’t the secure explosives locker. The night watchman was held at gunpoint, tied up and had his public spiritedness pistol-whipped out of him. The one thing he could tell us about the raiders was that they carried the whole job out with military precision. And they communicated by hand signals, not speaking once.’

‘What’s this got to do with me?’

‘The raiders stole fifteen thousand pounds in wages cash from the office safe. Everything this team did was highly professional and showed they had really done their homework. They knew the money would be there that night and the night watchman said they seemed to know their way around perfectly. Almost as if they had had someone on the inside.’

‘Well, don’t you see?’ I said, suddenly energized. ‘All of that with the hand signals… that’s exactly what you would do if your team had voices that would be remembered, either because they would have to talk in Hungarian or Bela Lugosi English. Maybe Ellis himself was their man on the inside, either because he sympathized with them or because he was coerced. I’m telling you, Jock, you find who carried out that robbery and you’ll find who murdered Ellis.’

‘So, let me get this straight,’ Ferguson spoke slowly and deliberately, as if laying down one thought after the other like paving slabs, ‘Whoever took the cash that night murdered Ellis? That’s what you’re saying?’

‘Exactly!’ I held my hands out then let them fall onto my thighs with a slap.

Ferguson reached into the folder again. This time he laid a package on the table next to where he’d left both my business cards lying. The package had been wrapped in brown parcel paper and tied with string, but the police had obviously opened then loosely re-wrapped it. Ferguson eased back the paper to reveal an inch-and-a-half thick brick of banknotes. Fivers.

I hadn’t known what had been inside it, but I recognized the wrapping paper, the string and the size of the package. With everything that had happened with Ellis and subsequently, I had forgotten the package Magda had passed on to me from Ferenc Lang.

‘We found this in your coat pocket. The serial numbers match the stolen cash.’ Ferguson leaned back and folded his arms. ‘Like I said, Lennox, you’ve been holding back on me and now, most definitely, is not the time to be holding back. So let’s have it. Everything.’

And that was exactly what I gave him.

I talked solidly for an hour or more. I didn’t think about what I was saying or pause to consider how believable or ludicrous it sounded. I just talked. And, just as I had with Hopkins and as I had promised Ferguson, I gave them everything. Including Hopkins.

I could see from their faces, especially Dunlop’s fat one, that the Hopkins story was a big fish for them to swallow, but I gave them the names of the two Special Branch men who had kept Hopkins company. If there’s only one thing a copper will take at face value, it’s another copper’s word. As I spoke, Ferguson wrote the odd note into his notebook and the WPC scribbled everything in shorthand onto her pad.

Like I say, I gave them everything. Almost.

I left one small detail locked up safe and sound. They knew I had moved out of my digs and into the Paragon Hotel, and that would be enough for them. At least for now. I hoped to hell that Ferguson — because it certainly wouldn’t be Dunlop — wouldn’t catch on to the fact that I couldn’t have all of my stuff at the hotel. They had bigger and more pressing issues they wanted to deal with so, for the meantime, I decided to keep quiet about the barge I had rented to stow my stuff. After all, it could come in handy.

‘So you were working on these two cases simultaneously?’ Ferguson asked when I eventually paused to draw breath. ‘The job Connelly and his union took you on to do and the potential infidelity case you say Pamela Ellis hired you for.’

‘That’s right. For a while I thought there was a connection between them: that, by coincidence, the same Frank Lang the union was looking for was the same Frank or Ferenc Lang who is behind this Hungarian emigre group.’

‘And they’re not?’

‘No. I was looking for a coincidence where none existed. And it led me straight into all this crap. Pamela Ellis became very keen to drop me from the case, feeding me this all-a-big misunderstanding and how-could-she-have-been-so-stupid bull. Whatever it was that made her want me to drop the case is the same reason she’s now claiming she never hired me in the first place. I don’t know how or why, but Andrew Ellis was playing cloak-and-dagger games with this Hungarian outfit and they have something — everything — to do with his death. I just stumbled into their little game because of a simple case of mistaken identity — but my guess is that they thought I was investigating them and whatever they’re up to specifically. Dangerous people, Jock.’

‘Well, if the link between the cases and the two Frank Langs is coincidental, then you are the unluckiest man I know when it comes to coincidences. It just so happens that, completely independent of each other, both end up with people dead. Murdered.’

He had a point.

‘Could someone get me a change of clothes from my hotel?’ I asked when it was time to go back to my cell.

‘No can do, Lennox,’ said Ferguson. ‘We’ve already cleared out your closets and the science boys are examining them for evidence.’

‘I see,’ I said. Ferguson knew my taste for fancy tailoring and would realize they were looking at only a travelling wardrobe, when he got the report back listing the stuff examined.