Craig Russell - Dead men and broken hearts

The cop Franks had sent to sleep came round and his partner eased him up and into the second police Wolseley. Then they were gone.

Once they were left alone, the three men had a discussion. One of them disappeared around the back of the building, coming back with the guy in the camel coat. He was obviously being quizzed about the chances of me having dodged out the back and past him and there was some vehement shaking of his head. Then they all seemed to be talking about the Cresta. I guessed that they were trying to work out why — if I’d managed to slip out before they closed their trap — I hadn’t taken the car.

There was a lot of pointing to the open fields and trees beyond the parking area and then the tall boss man turned and scanned the flats, as if to check they weren’t being watched. I ducked back. When I inched forward to see again, he was trying the handle of the door of the Cresta, only to find it locked.

I was desperately cold but I knew it was maybe going to be a long, chilly wait. At least I could be reasonably confident that the only person I was likely to encounter up here on the roof would be Captain Oates out for a stroll.

I watched them. The tall man who had been driving the car took a few steps towards the building. He looked up at Franks’s top-floor apartment, then back at the Cresta parked behind him. I felt a chill that ran deeper than the cold night. He was trying to work it out. Put it together.

Once more he looked back to Franks’s apartment, then again at the car, tracing steps I hadn’t taken. Still trying to work it out.

Then he looked up at the roof.

Or at least, from this distance, it seemed to me as if he was looking up at the roof. Of course, I was at the far side of the three blocks, and he was looking up at where I had been, rather than where I was now. But if he made the connection, worked it out, then there was nowhere for me to go.

I held my breath, not wanting to give my position away by it fuming into the cold air. If they came up for me, was I ready to use the gun? I was pretty certain they were the Hungarians, but what threw me was the man in charge being able to pass himself off as a senior copper. And I couldn’t see a Bela Lugosi type pulling that off.

The tall man continued to stare at the roof, then down to the entrance, then back to the Cresta. He turned his back to the flats and looked out over the fields. That’s it… I willed the thought into his head… out there, that’s the way I went.

Another discussion. They were clearly debating the value of splitting up and searching the fields and woods for me. If they did that, my guess is they would leave one guy by the Cresta, just in case I came back for it. I now had no doubt that they weren’t genuine coppers. No one disappeared to make a ’phone call to organize a search party; but there again, they’d maybe given me up as a lost cause.

Then they went.

The tall man slammed the flat of his hand down on the wing of the Cresta and barked some orders at the others. They all simply piled into the car and were gone. Up here, elevated above the streets in the chill, clear night, I could hear the engine, the only car on the road, as it faded into the distance.

I waited a while before crossing the roof back to the first block of flats, this time taking more care to make my footsteps light and quiet. One of the reasons I believed the party wagon had rolled out of town was because they were in full view of the apartments, and the little show put on by Franks and the uniforms would probably have woken several of the occupants. I didn’t want to attract any more attention.

I retraced my steps, crawled back through the roof void and eased back the hatch. Convinced the coast was clear, I lowered myself gingerly and dropped as quietly as I could onto the landing outside Franks’s apartment. I had to leave the hatch open behind me.

My breathing hard but controlled, I stood for a moment on the landing, gathering myself. I tried Franks’s door, in case it had been left unlocked in the haste of arresting him. Not that there was anything inside I needed; I had gotten all of my stuff together before leaving. It was locked up tight and I headed down the stairwell to the entrance hallway.

I dashed to the Cresta, started her up and drove off into the night.

My route was, to say the least, circuitous. Instead of taking the main road back to town, I drove south, only staying on the A77 until I was out of Newton Mearns and could cut across country on back roads. I dodged Eaglesham and then East Kilbride, Scotland’s first New Town, another Brave New World of soulless concrete and unshared bathrooms for Glasgow’s displaced working classes.

My plan was to take a long, slow loop to the east, then back north. It meant I would end up driving into Rutherglen and right through the middle of the city in the middle of the night, not something that was advisable given my current fugitive status. In fact, driving around anywhere at this time of night increased my chances of being stopped by some bored nightshift copper. Lying low could be as risky an option: sleeping in the car in some secluded spot was just as likely to arouse police suspicions, were I unlucky enough to be stumbled upon.

I decided to risk the second option and turned into what looked like a farm track. After a few yards I came to a large barn-type thing, wall-less but with an arched corrugated iron roof supported on wooden shafts — some kind of empty dry store. I bumped the Cresta over chilled-hard mud, lights off, and parked under the shelter, killing the engine.

And waited.

I hadn’t planned to fall asleep, but I found myself in one of those dreams where you know you’re dreaming but can’t get out of it.

In my dream, steel-helmed Werner Goldberg, the ‘Ideal German Soldier’, sat at a baize-covered card table playing Canasta with Frank Lang — or at least the Frank Lang of the photograph supplied by Lynch and Connelly — as well as Matyas, who insisted on being called Ferenc. I sat at the table too, but hadn’t been dealt a hand and was there mainly to settle a dispute about whose turn it was to play. Except I kept getting confused about how many people were really at the table. Then, when I next looked, there was only one.

‘I thought you needed a partner to play Canasta,’ I said.

‘You do,’ he said. ‘I am my own partner. But you’ve known that for some time now.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ve known for some time now.’

When I opened my eyes it was beginning to get light, which, at this time of year, meant it was already getting on in the morning. I checked my watch. Eight-thirty. I got out of the car, took a shivering leak against the barn post, then drove back into town.

The roads were reasonably busy and, by the time I reached Rutherglen, the Cresta was camouflaged by lorries, buses and cars heading into the city. I stopped at a call box and ’phoned McBride, asking him to meet me at the barge, but to make doubly sure he wasn’t followed.

I exerted even more caution than usual when I got back to the barge. The team who had followed Franks and me into Newton Mearns had been good, and my head ached from the drive back, constantly aware of every vehicle around me, every turn that I did not take alone.

I heated up some water in the kettle and washed and shaved, again sparing my upper-lip the razor to allow the moustache to start back. I desperately wanted to get changed out of the tweed jacket and flannels. Normally, I would never have worn the same suit of clothes two days running, but I decided sartorial offences were the least of my concerns at the moment. I did pull a clean set of underwear and a shirt from my stores in the forward cargo compartment, stuffing my worn clothes into a canvas bag. Laundry was one of the challenges of a fugitive life that most people don’t consider. Launderettes were becoming all the rage and maybe, if I got out of all of this crap, I could open up a specialist service for today’s man-on-the-run. I brewed some tea and drank it, considering the business opportunity that offered itself. Laundry on the Lam struck me as a good name for my enterprise.