Craig Russell - Dead men and broken hearts

‘Well,’ I said, ‘can I at least have a pair of laces for these boots? I can hardly keep them on my feet.’

‘No laces.’ Dunlop made his first and only contribution to the interrogation. ‘Suicide risk. We don’t want to find you strung up like Dewar, do we?’

‘No?’ I sneered back at Dunlop. ‘I thought that was exactly the point of this exercise.’

They put me back in my cell and I was given a bread roll with some kind of gelatinous luncheon meat in it and another cup of near-boiling, sugary tea. Practically no one in Glasgow over the age of twenty had a full set of teeth, and I could have sworn I felt a fizzing in my mouth as my dental enamel started to dissolve.

I ran a hand over my jaw and it rasped on the stubble. Unshaven, bruised from my encounter with the two guys on the stairwell, without a comb for my hair and in my fetching prisoner’s ensemble, I must have really looked the part of a guilty and desperate felon. I tried not to think of the stakes I was playing for and did my best not to imagine the kiss of three-quarter inch, white Italian hemp around my neck.

It wouldn’t come to that. It couldn’t come to that. They may have had circumstantial evidence, but surely not enough to prove a case beyond reasonable doubt. But, there again, I certainly wouldn’t be the first innocent man to drop through a trapdoor in Barlinnie Prison.

I found myself reflecting on the irony that there had been more than one thing for which I could have hanged. And about how much I hated the idea of dying here, in Glasgow.

It was already dark outside and my cell was bathed in the sickly yellow light of the caged ceiling bulb when Jock Ferguson came to my cell, around four-thirty in the afternoon. He came alone and waited till the custody man’s footsteps had faded before sitting on the edge of my bunk and offering me a cigarette.

‘You don’t really believe all of this crap, do you, Jock?’

‘The truth? No. Everything I know about you tells me that you didn’t kill Ellis. But as a police officer I’m having a really hard time finding anything to put you in the clear. Listen, Lennox, there’s only the two of us here and it’s off the record. Is there anything you’re not telling us? Have you been doing your usual and got into bother because you’ve been shagging other men’s wives?’

‘You’re not really being serious…?’

‘It’s the only possible link and it’s the one that Dunlop is putting forward.’

‘I wondered why he was so quiet in the interview room… he was obviously plum tuckered out from doing all that thinking.’

‘I wouldn’t be so glib about it, if I were you. Dunlop’s theory is the only thing at the moment that makes any sense. More sense than anything you’ve told us so far. You do realize I shouldn’t be giving you any kind of inside dope on this, don’t you?’

I nodded. ‘I appreciate it, Jock.’

‘The way Dunlop has this playing is this: Sylvia Dewar was well known for enjoying the company of men other than her husband. You have a reputation for chasing any piece of skirt. So Dunlop has it that you and Sylvia Dewar were carrying on together. And he has a witness who places you at the Dewar house a week before the deaths and at a time when Thomas Dewar would be at work and you and Sylvia would be alone. Then Dewar jumps you in Sauchiehall Street Lane, exactly as you said, because he suspects you’ve been sleeping with his wife. Except, in Dunlop’s version, Dewar’s jealous rage is entirely justified and that, I have to say, does sound more credible than him ambushing an innocent man just because he found a business card in his wife’s purse.’

‘Okay… go on…’

‘Dunlop has you painted as this manipulative Don Juan who moves in on Pamela Ellis too. Now, even Shuggie Dunlop admits Pamela Ellis is a little too old and too plain for you to take an interest in her for her own sake. Instead, he has you moving in on her so that she becomes your accomplice in knocking off her husband for his business, money and insurance payout. But you get caught and Mrs Ellis gets scared and denies all knowledge of you. The clever part in Dunlop’s theory is that it explains any telephone or other contact between you and Pamela Ellis as two accomplices planning a murder. In fact, the more difficult it is to find evidence of contact, the more it points to you going out of your way not to be seen talking to each other.’

‘So why did I kill Sylvia Dewar?’

‘Sylvia Dewar finds out about your affair with Pamela Ellis, gets jealous and blackmails you for a cut of the proceeds. She already has a previous conviction for dishonesty. You have to keep Sylvia quiet and prevent her from spilling the beans to Ellis about you and his wife, so you cave in her head with the ashtray, making sure you don’t leave prints. Then Dewar comes home and, distraught, kills himself. You come back in the evening to find out why no one is talking about Sylvia’s murder, or maybe because you’re worried you’ve left something incriminating behind. Probably the business cards, but you can’t find them.’

‘Because they’re cunningly hidden in a wallet and an address book?’ I snorted.

‘I didn’t say it was my theory. And remember you’ll be playing to a Glasgow audience. Murder juries here are not used to the accused being sophisticated in his thinking. I have to tell you, I think Dunlop’s line could run…’

‘You really think this will end up in front of a jury? What about everything I told you today?’

‘We’re checking into all of that,’ he said. ‘But I have to tell you it’s not piecing together very well.’

‘Did you speak to the union?’

‘We talked to Paul Lynch. He had a pretty good stab at trying to disavow you, but Joe Connelly confirmed that they had hired you to look for Frank Lang and some missing items. What is it?’ Ferguson read the expression on my face.

‘Nothing… just I’m relieved. Connelly and Lynch were almost obsessive about meeting me in secret and I thought they would deny knowing me.’

‘Like I said, that little shit Lynch was thinking about it, but I reminded him of the penalties of obstruction, false information, that kind of stuff. Connelly is just pissed off that we were there at all.’

‘And the rest?’

‘The rest still isn’t too good. Pamela Ellis still denies having hired you, even though I told her we were getting her ’phone records. And the Hopkins thing… well, I’ll talk to you about that later. We’re going to go out for some fresh air.’

‘So we’re travelling out of Glasgow…’ I said with dull malice.

A uniform came for me half-an-hour after Ferguson left. He was capped, coated and gloved and he handed me an army surplus greatcoat, one of those things with fabric so dense it could probably have stood up by itself. He led me down the cell passage to where Ferguson and Dunlop, also both in their outdoor wear, were waiting for me. Dunlop’s tent-sized raincoat emphasized his bulk.

‘We off camping boys?’ I asked gleefully and Ferguson shot me a warning look.

It was only just before six, but it was night outside. Despite the heavy army coat I felt the bite of the chilled air. I still didn’t have laces for the one-size-too-big boots and I struggled to keep them on my feet as I walked to the black police Wolseley. I felt something more than the chill in the air: a tightening in my chest warned me, as it always did, of a coming fog, and there was no sparkle to the streetlights or car headlights as they were dulled by something gathering in the dark air.

Sitting in the back of the police car between Dunlop and the burly uniformed constable would be tolerable providing our journey was short enough that I didn’t need to breathe till we arrived. Ferguson sat in the front. I was surprised that they hadn’t handcuffed me and wondered just what, exactly, my legal status was. I hadn’t been charged yet, but I had been cautioned before giving my statement, and it was clear that Dunlop was trying to build a case against me that would stand up in court.