Craig Russell - Dead men and broken hearts

While McBride was out at the car, I put a cigarette between Annan’s lips and lit it for him.

‘I’ll tell you something about Twinkletoes,’ I said. ‘He’s a good bloke. Not too bright at times, but a good bloke. But I’ve never really seen him at his worst. A lot of other people have had a very different perspective on Twinkletoes, but they’ve never really put it into words, mainly because they’ve been too busy screaming and begging or losing consciousness through lack of blood. Do you know why he’s called Twinkletoes?’

Annan shook his head vigorously, seeming to have lost the power of speech.

‘Well, you’re about to find out…’ Taking the cigarette from his lips, I dropped it on the floorboards and crushed it out. Then I knelt down and with one hand untied the laces on his right shoe, holding his struggling ankle in place with the other. I slipped off the shoe and sock. Then repeated the process with the other foot.

‘What are you going to do?’ Annan’s voice was loud and shrill and crackled with fear.

McBride came back. A long-handled pair of bolt cutters, fetched from the Cresta’s trunk, hung from his beefy grip. Seeing him come into the room, filling it like an ocean tide filling a bay, even I felt scared. The high-pitched, barely audible sound I heard coming from Annan was somewhere between a whimper and a squeal.

‘Do you want me to do his big toes as well, Mr. Lennox?’ Twinkle asked matter-of-factly, as if he was a jobbing gardener enquiring about which hedges to trim.

‘What do you want me to DO?’ Annan screamed at me. ‘Just tell me, for fuck’s sake. Please… please get that fucking ape away from me!’

Twinkletoes moved forward, silent. He crouched down at Annan’s feet. Annan’s small toe looked tiny between Twinkle’s forefinger and thumb. He started to struggle furiously but fruitlessly against his bonds.

‘I know you killed Sylvia Dewar,’ I said. ‘You thought you were free and clear when Tom Dewar killed himself after finding her. Even I thought it was a murder-suicide. But the pathologist’s times of death didn’t fit. And I know that when you were playing your occasional bit part of Frank Lang, Sylvia played a supporting role. What was the deal? Was she part of your setup? I know she had previous for dishonesty.’

‘STOP HIM!’ Annan screamed, his pale, small toe now in the black jaws of Twinkletoes’s bolt cutters.

‘Just a minute, Twinkle. Let’s hear what he has to say.’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ said Annan, his eyes still wild. ‘She wasn’t part of it. I didn’t even know who she was to start with… just this married tart who kept coming to the door whenever I was there. I wasn’t interested. The whole set up with the house was just to have an address for Lang. The only reason I made regular visits was to keep up the pretence.’

‘But that meant showing your face.’

‘People don’t remember me, don’t recognize me. And I kept my visits to the minimum.’

‘So what happened with Sylvia Dewar?’

‘I thought she was just some randy housewife who kept pestering me, so I gave her what she wanted. Just a couple of times. Then she hit me with it. She remembered me but I had forgotten her. She knew me from this shitty job I’d done when I’d first got into the business. She knew my name wasn’t Lang and she asked what scam I was working. I made up some shite about an insurance company. She said she wanted a cut or she would tell the police I was renting the place under a false name and that I was a confidence trickster. We both knew that the coppers would never get me, but it would fuck up my cover story, meaning it would fuck up the job and the score.’

‘So you played along. Screwing her and promising her a cash payout.’

‘Don’t make it sound like I was taking advantage. She shagged anything in trousers. She was a whore and she treated her husband like shite. I felt sorry for him, but I was just one of many.’

‘But then you smashed her skull in with an ashtray.’

‘She started saying she wanted away from her husband and if I didn’t give her a cut, she’d tell the police everything. I knew Tom Dewar was going nuts and I reckoned he’d get the blame, but they wouldn’t hang him or anything. I mean, they’d find it difficult to panel a fucking jury in Glasgow that she hadn’t shagged at least one of them. I didn’t think he’d kill himself, I swear I didn’t…’

‘Dead men and broken hearts…’ I said, more to myself than Annan.

‘What?’

‘Something someone said to me recently.’

‘Listen…’ he said, glancing anxiously at Twinkletoes who was still patiently poised. ‘We can do a deal here. You can end up rich. Really fucking rich. You can keep all the money — all of it — just give me a chance to get away.’

I turned to Twinkletoes. ‘Untie him.’

‘What about…?’ McBride nodded to the toe.

‘Untie him, Twinkle.’

Annan twisted his lipless mouth in a smile that made me want to hit him again. ‘You won’t regret this,’ he said as McBride laid the bolt cutters aside and set to loosening his bonds. I took two blank sheets of foolscap I had brought in my jacket pocket and unfolded them. I laid the sheets on his lap and handed him my fountain pen.

Annan looked nervously over his shoulder at Twinkletoes, then to me, trying to work out what I was going to do, and I could see a glimmer of hope in his eyes.

‘On the first sheet, I want you to write down all of the account numbers and the corresponding bank details for every account you’ve set up. And don’t think about flannelling me. If I for one second think that there is a single figure or account number that’s bogus, then I’ll let Twinkle get back to work on your pedicure…’

‘You won’t regret this, Lennox. I promise you… you can have it all.’

‘Well, I want a little insurance. You’re going to write down a full confession to the murder of Sylvia Dewar. Everything you’ve told me, but also all of the specifics about times and dates. Oh, and I want your fingerprint in ink next to the signature. Again, no lies or bending the truth, or you’ll never tiptoe through the tulips again.’

‘Wait a minute… I can’t do that… they’ll hang me.’

‘Only if I give it to the police. If everything goes well with making withdrawals from the accounts, then you’ve nothing to worry about. And, anyway, a confession under duress isn’t admissible in court.’

‘So…’ said Annan, still rat-clever and cautious despite his situation, ‘what you’re saying is if you get the money, you burn that?’

‘Is it a deal?’

‘How do I know you’ll burn the confession?’

‘You don’t. You’ll just have to trust me. I’m Canadian after all. The clean living and maple syrup makes us grow up straight and true.’

Rubbing his raw, untied wrists, Annan’s little rat eyes darted about, as if looking for an escape route. Eventually, he started to write. Half way through he asked for a small red notebook from the pocket of his coat. Leaving him guarded by McBride, I got it for him, flicking through the pages and seeing rows of letters and numbers. It was some kind of cypher. Referring to the notebook, he scribbled down the details I needed.

He handed the sheet to me.

‘Now the confession. And I want all the details of the union scam in it as well.’

It was clear he saw no way out of it and he started to write. Every now and then I checked over his shoulder to make sure he was telling it how it was. When he was finished, both sides of the sheet were filled with handwriting. I got him to rub ink on the tips of his thumb and forefinger and pressed them down on the paper.

‘Sign it and date it,’ I said. And he did.