Craig Russell - Dead men and broken hearts

He stood up slowly and painfully, handing me both pieces of paper. I checked them over again.

‘There you go, Lennox. You’ve got it all. Happy?’ A raw hatred peeked through the curtain of his fear.

‘I’m a cheerful kind of guy.’

Annan put his socks and shoes back on, each movement slow and stiff except for his fingers, which shook almost uncontrollably. Twinkle had scared him good, all right.

He straightened up and started to walk past me. I stopped him with a hand on his chest.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I’m not going to hang around. Or do you want me to come with you when you pick up the money… is that it? You’ve got the confession. You don’t need me any more.’

‘Oh, I think we do, Dennis.’

He looked from me to Twinkletoes. ‘What is this? I thought we had a deal…’

‘Well, that just goes to show you, you can’t trust anyone. You’ve been conned, Annan. We’re going to tie you up again, nice and tight, and tell the coppers where to find you. And we’ll give them the bank details and your confession.’

‘But that confession’s not admissible, like you said…’

‘True. But it points the police in the right direction to get evidence that they can use.’

‘You bastard!’ Annan looked like he wanted to hit me, but he was too yellow.

‘Yep, Dennis,’ I said, in a calm, conversational tone, ‘I’m going to give the police everything you’ve given me. You maybe won’t swing for Sylvia’s murder, but you’re going to spend a long, long time sleeping lightly in an eight-by-four cell with someone called Big Boabie who’s hung like a mule and gets frisky after his cocoa.’

I thought of Sylvia Dewar with her head smashed in, of her husband’s lonely walk up the stairs with a length of electrical cable. And I thought about all of the crap I’d been through. How chasing a ghost Frank Lang had involved me with a very-much-alive Ferenc Lang. Annan had no direct involvement with the Hungarian thing, but there would have been no Hungarian thing without him.

I wanted to give him a beating. One that he’d never forget. Instead I shoved him backwards and onto the chair.

‘Tie him up good and tight, Twinkle,’ I said.

Turned out I wasn’t that person any more, after all.

After we left Annan tied up again in his chair, I sat in the car, quiet for a moment, letting myself calm down. Twinkletoes sat silently beside me. When it came to the etiquette of violence, Twinkle was the equivalent of Barbara Cartland. After a while I turned to him and smiled.

‘Thanks, Twinkle, you did great in there.’

He beamed at me.

‘And I’ve got to hand it to you,’ I said, ‘your psychological approach with the bolt cutters really works. For a moment there even I thought you were going to start cutting off his toes.’

McBride looked at me vaguely for a moment, uncertainty in the childlike eyes beneath the Neanderthal brow.

‘You know… the way we were bluffing in there…’ I explained

‘Oh aye…’ he said eventually, slowly. ‘Bluffing… That’s right, the piss-eye-co-logical approach. That’s what we was doing.’

I smiled again and started the car up, making a mental note to be clearer in my intentions in future.

I asked Twinkletoes if I could hang on to the Cresta for another day or so and he said it was no problem. I dropped him off at his house. Before he got out of the car, he paused and turned his huge Easter Island face towards me.

‘Are you gonna be all right, Mr. L?’

‘Sure, Twinkle. Everything’s going to be fine. You’ve helped me clear up the Frank Lang thing. I don’t know what I’d have done without you. All I have to do now is sort out this other business.’

‘After that, is that you going to be in the clear and that?’

‘It is.’

‘And will you still want me to do jobs for you?’

‘Of course. You can count on it.’

‘Mr. Lennox… there won’t be any other stuff like today, will there? You know, with the bolt cutters? I’m sorry and that, but it’s just I’m kinda trying to put all of that shite behind me…’

‘Trust me, Twinkle, I know the feeling. And no, it’s not going to be like that again.’

He grinned and got out of the car.

I drove off, shaking my head in disbelief. An ex-gangland torturer, possible killer and all round thug had just expressed concern that I was perhaps the wrong company to be keeping.

After I dropped Twinkletoes, I stopped at a pay ’phone and called Jock Ferguson at his home. I waited while he bombarded me with curses, threats and then instructions about handing myself in.

‘I will,’ I said. ‘But I’ve still got unfinished business. And that’s what I’m ’phoning about. I’ve left a package for you. I’ll give you the address in a minute. It’s a long-firm fraud specialist called Dennis Annan, but you’ll know him as… well, as a matter of fact, you’ll know him by a couple of names. The first is Frank Lang, neighbour to the recently deceased Mr and Mrs Thomas Dewar. Except there never was any Frank Lang. It was all set up by Annan as part of his scam. The second name you know him by is Paul Lynch, Connelly’s deputy.’

‘Lynch and Lang are the same person?’

‘Yep. They’re both Dennis Annan.’

‘What was the scam?’

‘Frank Lang was supposed to be a shadowy go-between hired to deliver cash from a special fund on behalf of Joe Connelly’s Amalgamated Union of Industrial Trades — providing relief funds for labour and trades union organizations in oppressed countries. Except the labour organizations were bogus and the cash was being diverted to accounts for the non-existent Frank Lang.’

‘You have proof of this?’

‘The ledger with all of the details in it is waiting for you with Annan, who’s all trussed up for you like a Thanksgiving turkey. Oh, and his car is parked outside. It’s a green Morris Traveller, one of those jobs that looks half-car, half-garden-shed. If you show it to Maisie McCardle she’ll confirm it was the car she saw being used by the neighbour she knew as Frank Lang. By the way, Lang killed Sylvia Dewar. He’s signed a confession and that’s waiting for you too.’

‘Tell me where he is and I’ll meet you there,’ said Ferguson.

‘No can do, Jock,’ I said. ‘Not when Dunlop still has me in his sights for Andrew Ellis’s murder. You deal with Annan, I’ll deal with Ellis’s killers.’

‘You’re going to get yourself killed, Lennox. Come in and we can sort this all out.’

‘I’ve told you Jock, can’t do it. But if you want to do me a favour, there’s a guy called Larry Franks being held in the Newton Mearns cells for police assault. Get him out. And I don’t mean bail. He clobbered a copper to get himself arrested deliberately because… well, let’s just say if the story gets out it’s going to reflect badly on the City of Glasgow Police. I need this as a favour and you owe me one. And you’re going to owe me plenty more when I’m finished. I know who killed Andrew Ellis and I’m going to find them.’

Ferguson started to protest, but I silenced him.

‘Everybody has been trying to cut out a piece of me, the police as well, and I’m too tired and too pissed off to argue. In the meantime, you go and pick up Annan.’ I gave Ferguson the address.

‘Lennox,’ he said, ‘if it’s any consolation, I’ve been trying to keep the heat off.’

‘I know, Jock, and it is. I have to go. I’ll talk to you later. But listen, when you pick Annan up, everything you need will be there with him, but I have to tell you he’s not looking any too pretty.’

‘Okay…’ he said. I could hear him take a breath to say something else, so I hung up.