Craig Russell - Dead men and broken hearts

And in this kind of dance party, being sure of yourself was everything.

‘Do you know what your problem is, pal?’ he asked me.

I sighed. ‘Let me guess, you’re going to tell me.’

‘Okay boys,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘You know what to do…’

Party time.

I put my hand on the door handle. I intended to slam him hard with the door and get out into the open where I’d be free to move. For as long as I was capable of moving. I noticed that his little gang had all moved around to the back of the car, leaving their leader on his own. A mistake.

‘Half choke,’ he said. ‘That’s your problem.’

‘What?’

‘Half choke. Pull the choke out half ways and me and the boys’ll give you a push.’

I did what he said and he joined his friends at the back of the car. I steered the car as they eased it forward until it was facing the right way. My Teddy Boy chums then picked up the pace and the Atlantic lurched as I eased off the clutch, the engine kicking into life. I drove on a few yards, leaving them behind, then stopped, revving the engine a few times.

Leaving the motor running, I got out and walked back to where they stood, wheezing and bent over. Glasgow’s climate, dirty air and its passion for tobacco meant that the city was yet to produce an Olympic sprinter.

‘Thanks guys,’ I said and tossed an unopened packet of Players I’d taken from the glove box to the leader with the bad skin, the small eyes and the three pints of grease in his hair. Between gasps, he waved his enthusiastic thanks and I drove on.

Glasgow.

After ten years, I still didn’t have it figured.

There was no point in me trying to find Ellis. By now he would have reached the city centre and could have taken a dozen different directions. For all I knew he could be happily on his way to Edinburgh, if it was possible for anyone to be happy about being on their way to Edinburgh. When I got back onto Maryhill Road I decided to head back to my digs. It took me on the same route Ellis had been on so I kept my eyes open for the Daimler, but it was nowhere to be seen.

It was late and I didn’t want to use the shared ‘phone in the hall at my digs so, as I drove back, I applied my mind to the needle/haystack conundrum of where I could find a urine-free telephone kiosk in Glasgow on a Friday night. Against my better judgement I headed into the city centre and to the Horsehead Bar. Of course, it was now far after closing time.

Which meant nothing.

When I walked into the Horsehead it was packed. This was called a ‘lock-in’ and all of these good citizens were, in the eyes of the licensing regulations, bona fide ‘guests of the management’. It was the job of the police to make sure that this was the case and that the till, whose drawer had been left open, did not accept cash for drinks. From the number of uniformed and plainclothes coppers propping up the bar, it was a responsibility the City of Glasgow Police clearly took very seriously. And they were putting the bar staff to the test by accepting pints and shorts without paying for them. Funny thing was, something always seemed to distract their attention at those crucial moments when other ‘guests of the management’ handed over cash.

I was no great hand at physics, but I knew that most scientists held that air is not solid. The atmosphere inside the public bar gave a lie to that otherwise universal scientific truth. Coming in from the cold night, the air inside was dense, sweat-and-whisky humid, blue-grey with cigarette smoke, and it wrapped itself around my face like a stale barber’s towel.

I ploughed a channel through the fug to the bar, its long sweep of oak, punctuated by slender brass taps for adding water to whisky, hidden from me behind a curtain of hunched shoulders and flat caps.

‘Not seen you for a few weeks, Lennox.’ Big Bob the barman poured me a Canadian Club from a bottle that had clearly sat untouched since my last visit. ‘The Horsehead too downmarket for you these days?’

‘Too many people look for me here, Bobby. The wrong kind of people.’ It was my own fault: at one time I’d set up the Horsehead as an unofficial office. Somewhere those who didn’t keep business hours could find me.

‘Aye… I suppose I know what you mean. Handsome Jonny Cohen was in here a couple of nights back.’

‘Oh?’

‘Aye. Just for a quick pint, he said. As if he ever comes in here for a quick pint. But he came in with a couple of knuckle-draggers.’

‘Looking for me?’

‘Not that he said. But let’s just say you came up in conversation. Asked me when you was last in. I said you didn’t come in much any more. I thought you and Cohen were tight.’

I nodded. Of the Three Kings, Handsome Jonny was the one I trusted most, which wasn’t saying much. But Jonny and I had a history and I owed him. No matter how much I owed him, he was still someone who lived in a landscape I was trying to distance myself from.

‘No one else?’

‘Naw.’ Bob nodded towards the glass in my hand, the bottle still in his. Drinking was something done at a trot in Glasgow. I drained the whisky and he poured me another.

I noticed a knot of drinkers at the far end of the bar gathered around a younger man who was clearly holding court. His appearance struck me right away: he was small but stocky, coatless, and dressed in a white shirt and black suit. His tailoring — combined with a pale complexion made striking by the black of his hair and dark eyes — made him look colourless, monochrome. I couldn’t hear what he was giving forth about, but each pronouncement was greeted with slaps on the back, cheers and encouragement from the older men. Monochrome Man was clearly basking in their admiration. However, what he was unable to see but I could, was the exchange of glances between the older men as he spoke and they encouraged him.

‘Who’s the bigmouth?’ I asked.

‘Bigmouth right enough,’ answered Bob. ‘He’s only in here after hours because the boys enjoy taking the pish out of him. We call him Sheriff Pete — he puts on the cod Yank accent and tells everyone he’s from New York.’

‘And he’s not?’

‘Maybe he is.’ Bob pursed his mouth as if considering the possibility. ‘If New York is just outside fucking Motherwell.’

The small man caught me looking at him and held my gaze for a moment, his face expressionless, before turning back to his audience. They were laughing at him all right, but I had seen something in that brief look that I didn’t like. Something bad. I held out a ten-shilling note to Bob. ‘Do me a favour and give me change for the ‘phone.’

‘Chasing skirt again, Lennox?’ He pushed the coins across the counter to me.

‘This is business, Bob. Strictly business.’

I went out to the pay telephone that hung on the wall by the door. After confirming that Ellis had not returned home, I started by explaining to Pamela Ellis that I was having to ’phone from a public bar, lest she thought the raucous background noise indicated that I was slacking and drinking on the job. I don’t think I did much to allay her fears.

‘You say you lost him, Mr Lennox?’

‘I’m afraid I did. Or, more correctly, he lost me.’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand…’

‘I have to say it’s not a good sign, Mrs Ellis. There’s no doubt in my mind that your husband was taking measures — quite expert measures — to ensure he was not being followed. He deliberately led me all around the houses, literally.’

‘So he is up to something… is that what you’re saying?’

‘I’m afraid it is. Quite what that something is, I promise you I’ll find out. If you still want me to.’

‘More than ever, Mr Lennox.’