Dead men and broken hearts l-4 Page 12

  ‘You’ve got it, Jock. Now what is it you want to know?’

  ‘He told you he was a bank robber and safe-cracker?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Any details?’

  ‘No. None. It would all have been crap anyway.’

  ‘And he bought you this drink?’

  ‘Yeah. A whisky. I couldn’t get out of it.’

  ‘And you say he paid for it out of a wad of cash?’

  ‘Only after he waved it around for half an hour for all to see.’

  ‘What kind of cash? I mean the age and denomination of the notes?’

  I gave Ferguson a look.

  ‘Seriously, Lennox, try to remember. It’s important.’

  I thought for a moment, trying to rebuild the picture in my head. ‘Now you come to mention it, they were all brand new notes. Crisp new fivers.’

  Ferguson’s expression changed to something that I felt in the back of my neck. Whatever it was he wanted, I’d just given him it.

  Coming home at two-thirty in the morning was something I hadn’t done for a while. As I knew it would be, Fiona’s apartment was in darkness. No point in me tapping on her door for a wee small hours heart-to-heart. Even if that was exactly what I felt like doing.

  I felt even more like a heart-to-heart when I reached my rooms and found an envelope addressed to me in Fiona’s handwriting pushed under the door.

  I took it through to my small living-room and, switching on the table light, sat down and opened the letter. Here, at last, I thought, was the explanation I had been waiting for.

  Except the envelope didn’t contain any explanations. Instead it held a glowing reference for me as a tenant. And a one month notice to quit my flat.

  I had intended to march down first thing the following morning, dismissal notice in hand, and challenge Fiona to give me a good reason — any reason — for her asking me to leave. But when she answered the door, she looked so pale and drawn and tired that the fight went out of me. Her pretty eyes above the high cheekbones were shadowed, as if she hadn’t slept at all the night before. There was something about her frailty, about the obvious pain I was somehow causing her, that struck me harder than anything she could have said. I told her I was sad she felt the way she did but I would, of course, honour her wishes. The only thing I asked for was that we had a chance to talk; to meet somewhere away from the house to talk the whole thing through. She was too important to me for me to just walk away from, I told her. Whatever it was that had gone wrong, I wanted a chance to discuss it.

  ‘Okay,’ she said softly. ‘But not for a while. I need to get some things sorted out first. It may be quite some time, Lennox, but I will explain. I promise you I’ll tell you everything, when the time’s right.’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Looking for another place to stay was a distraction I could have done without, but I followed the logic that a new flat might just be something I might actually manage to find. I certainly wasn’t having any success in locating Frank Lang.

  I took the morning off to look at places I’d circled in the local classified ads. Circled, then crossed out. The ones that weren’t cold and grubby were run like borstals by middle-aged landladies who were probably on some Israeli wanted list. I knew I had time to look around, but staying on longer than necessary at Fiona’s would be unpleasant for both of us.

  The last place of the morning — a basement flat in a West End tenement — started me seriously considering a boat ticket back to Canada.

  At least there would be no danger of romantic involvement with the landlady there: she lived in the street-level apartment above the flat for rent and was a short, stocky woman in brogues, with pitch-black hair coiled in a bomb-proof permanent and whose too-pink make-up powder had gathered in tiny clumps on her incipient moustache. Zapata in drag showed me the flat while quizzing me about my religious allegiances with what she clearly thought was undetectable subtlety. The basement flat was clean, but dark in the November morning and smelled dank; at the front it had bars on windows that looked out on nothing but a sooty brick wall and the steps leading up to street level.

  Life in Glasgow above street level was grim enough and the idea of a subterranean existence there plunged me into nearpathological depression.

  I was pretty dejected and took my circled classifieds to a coffee bar with steamed up windows in Byres Road, where I sat over a cup of bitter froth, desperately trying to seek out alternatives. There was one. But it was so absurd I laughed out loud. I circled it anyway.

  ‘It is an awful day, isn’t it?’

  A man in his thirties, still hatted, sat down at my table. I noticed he hadn’t brought a coffee over from the bar.

  ‘Terrible,’ I said. I drained my coffee. ‘At least it’s not snowing. Excuse me…’

  The guy at the table placed his hand on my forearm as I stood.

  ‘Please, Mr Lennox. I’d appreciate a moment of your time.’

  I looked at him but didn’t sit. I also took in the two other men sitting at the table behind my new friend. They sat with untouched coffees, watching me. I sat back down. A busy Glasgow cafe wasn’t somewhere they could pull a stunt and I was safer here than out on the street.

  ‘You have been asking around about one of our friends, Ferenc Lang, I believe.’ He took his hat off and laid it on the table, revealing a wedge of thick, blond hair. He had a long, thin face with a long nose that had a kink in it where it had been broken at some time or another. Strangely, it didn’t make him look tough, but seemed to add to his faintly aristocratic look. When he spoke, there was something foreign flowing through it. I guessed it was the Danube.

  ‘Or Frank Lang, as he seems to prefer these days,’ I said. ‘Yes, I would like to speak to him.’

  ‘I’m afraid that won’t be at all possible, Mr Lennox. Mr Lang is a very private person and he does not appreciate your intrusion into his affairs. For good reason, I have to say.’

  ‘So you and your chums here have come along to warn me off… is that it?’

  ‘No. Not warn. Ask. We would be obliged if you forgot all about Mr Lang.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s not possible. You see, naturally inquisitive as I am, my interest in Frank Lang is professional, not personal. I’m being paid to find him. But I guess you already knew that.’

  He nodded the long head slowly, as if considering my words carefully. ‘By whom, may I ask?’

  ‘You may not. Confidentiality is everything in my business, but I’m sure Mr Lang could have a pretty good guess about who’s looking for him and why.’

  ‘Perhaps he could,’ said the blond man. His English was near perfect: near, but not quite.

  ‘You are Hungarian?’ I asked.

  ‘I am Hungarian. As is Mr Lang, as you already know. He is also a great patriot. You know what is going on in our country at the moment?’

  ‘Of course I do. Exactly what kind of patriot are you? I’m trying to work out how much red there is in the flag of your particular brand of patriotism. Do you work for the Hungarian government?’

  ‘Now what makes you ask that?’

  ‘Just that this little encounter… please, don’t get me wrong, charming as it is…’ I held up my hands and smiled appeasingly. ‘But this little encounter seems to coincide with me talking to Mr Tabori, the Hungarian consul in Edinburgh. Now what was it that I said to him that has provoked your interest? My asking about Ferenc Lang, or Frank Lang, or whatever he wants to call himself — or was it because I mentioned Tanglewood?’

  ‘Mr Lennox, I understand that in your particular line of business, you have to have a suspicious mind, but let me assure you that I am not here to issue ultimatums or threats.’

  ‘Just appeal to my better nature? Then why do you have two goons with you? And why didn’t you call into my office?’

  ‘People are dying in Hungary. Others are being thrown into prison or driven from their homes. The Soviets are sending a message to the whole of Communist Europe that any m
ove towards liberalization will be crushed mercilessly. And that message, Mr Lennox, is being written in Hungarian blood. If we seem cautious in how we approach you, it is simply because we have to be. We are watched. The communists would give anything to find Ferenc Lang. And they would use any means to do so. And anybody.’

  ‘You’re telling me that I’m being used as an instrument of the great socialist revolution?’ I laughed.

  ‘Ask yourself who you are working for. And what they are paying you. Your enquiries could end badly for a truly good man.’

  ‘And what do I get out of it if I do drop this enquiry?’

  The blond man laughed bitterly. ‘I see… it’s like that. We don’t have much, but I suppose we could reimburse you for your trouble.’

  I held up my hand. ‘I wasn’t canvassing for a bribe. I’ll think about what you’ve said. What’s your name?’

  ‘Matyas will do. It’s Hungarian for Matthew.’

  ‘Well, Matyas, I understand that there is a lot of stuff going on with your people at the moment, but we’re on the shores of the Black Clyde, not the Blue Danube, and what I’ve been asked to investigate is a simple case of theft. I have been engaged to avoid the embarrassment, principally to your friend Frank Lang, of having to get the police involved. Now, I’m sure you would much rather that the police did not start sticking their noses into you and your friends’ goulash club.’

  ‘Theft?’ Matyas looked genuinely confused. ‘Ferenc Lang is accused of having stolen something?’

  ‘That’s a surprise to you? He is. And there’s a definite time limit on how long I have to return the property and resolve differences between the parties concerned.’

  ‘This is nonsense. Absurd. Do you not see that this accusation is trumped up? A pretence to get you to pursue Ferenc and find him for them?’

  ‘I admit it could just be a possibility,’ I said. I didn’t want to tell him that the chances were his Lang wasn’t really the one I was after. ‘So here’s the deal…’ I pushed my card across the table to him. ‘Telephone me at my office to arrange a time and a place for me to meet with Frank Lang. I’ll show him mine if he shows me his. And you have my word I won’t discuss any of this with my client until after Lang and I have met. But one thing: let’s make the meeting in a public place.’

  ‘How do we know that you won’t inform your client, or the police, if it’s supposed to be a criminal matter?’

  ‘You don’t. But I’ve given you my word and I’m a Canadian. We make Boy Scouts and Quakers look like ne’er-do-wells.’

  He looked puzzled. I had clearly stretched his English or Middle European sense of irony to its limit.

  ‘You just have to trust me,’ I said.

  He looked at me for a minute, then pocketed the card before standing up. His two escorts did the same.

  ‘All right, Mr Lennox. We will be in touch. I doubt if Mr Lang will agree to this, but I will put it to him nevertheless.’

  ‘What I want most of all is to have the stolen item returned to me, so that I can give it back to the party concerned.’

  ‘I don’t know to what you are referring, Mr Lennox, but I shall put everything you have said to Mr Lang. In the meantime, I would be obliged if you could desist from your enquiries. I want you to understand that it is not you or your interest we fear, but that you may draw the attention of others who do pose a significant danger.’

  ‘Let me guess… I would be advised to drop it for my own sake too?’

  ‘You have nothing to concern yourself about from us. But yes, there are forces at work here that you too would be advised to avoid.’ He gave a valedictory nod of the head that was so formal I missed the sound of clicking heels. Maybe he was wearing crepe soles.

  I watched them go. And they watched me watching them. They were obviously itchy about being followed. Like someone else in my recent past.

  I ordered another cup of bitter froth and tried to remember what I had done with a page I had torn out of my notebook, the page on which I’d written the address of where I had seen Andrew Ellis and the girl.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I wasn’t sure what kind of welcome deposed Hungarian premier Imre Nagy was going to get when he arrived in Moscow, but I guessed it would be marginally warmer and less awkward than the encounter I had with Fiona White in the hallway.

  It was obvious that she had been avoiding me, and given the effort she made for our eyes not to meet, I guessed that she wouldn’t be making contact with any other part of my anatomy for the foreseeable future. To be honest, I was less than grownup about it myself and the few words I had exchanged with her had been brusque and ill-mannered. I told her not to worry, I would be out of the flat as soon as I possibly could, and that I had already viewed some alternative accommodations. To be fair, I had caught her off-guard, having come home in the middle of the day. I excused myself with the charm of an adolescent and went up to my rooms.

  An odd thing about me, something that many would find unexpected, was that I was pretty fastidious when it came to neatness. Not just in dress, but in every aspect of my life. I had always been a little like that, but it had become something of an obsession during the war. My military career in itself could have been described as untidy, and — after I had been encouraged to resign my commission — there were certainly more than a few loose ends left in Hamburg that the military police had taken an unhealthy interest in. Nevertheless, I had developed this habit of keeping myself and my immediate surroundings in order. I put it down to the experience of war, or more particularly the type of experience of war that I and most of the First Canadian Army had had. People talk about the harsh reality of war, but when you got right up close to it — and I had gotten as close to it as it was possible to get — war is so brutal and chaotic that it seems unreal. Maybe my orderliness had been all about locking out the chaos and misery by keeping one part of my life controlled and ordered.

  Whatever the reason, while I might have come close to being cashiered for black market activities and other peccadillos of one sort or another, I would never have been brought up on a charge of having my tunic unbuttoned.

  So, when I went into my rooms, I had to negotiate around the crates and chest into which I had already started to pack my books and other stuff, in preparation for quitting my flat. I was yet to empty the wastepaper basket and I found the Garnethill address I had torn out of my notebook.

  Even though the day was yet to reach the pivot between morning and afternoon, the November day outside was gloomy and I switched on the table lamp. I took the crumpled note over into the pool of yellow light and smoothed it flat on the occasional table.

  The Staedtler-Moran International Company Limited.

  The name certainly did not sound Hungarian, but it certainly wasn’t typically Scottish either. There was no clue to what particular trade the Staedtler-Moran International Company Limited plied and there had been no signs of life when I had passed Ellis and his dishy foreign friend that night.

  But it would still be worth a look.

  ***

  I knew of a solicitor whose offices were not far from Garnethill and I went in with the name of his firm scribbled down on a piece of paper. My plan was to claim to be lost and looking for the solicitor, clearly having gotten the address wrong. The genuine office was far enough away for no one at Staedtler-Moran to recognize the name, but if someone did get suspicious, or decided to be extra helpful by looking it up in the ’phone book for me, they would find a nearby solicitor of the name I claimed to be looking for.

  In the event, the elaborate subterfuge was unnecessary.

  There was no smog or dark to cloak my surroundings this time. In fact the clouds had parted but, if anything, the cold, hard sunlight seemed to etch the dark buildings with a harsher and more uncompromising hand. It took me a while to pinpoint the exact doorway again: Glasgow’s smog created a palette and a landscape all of its own and things always looked disorientingly different in the clear light of day. Eventual
ly a dulled bronze plaque informed me that I had again found Staedtler-Moran International.

  I stepped into a fluorescent-tube-lit entry hallway of shiny green and white porcelain-tiled walls and a dull linoleum floor. In front of me, a flagged stone staircase arced up and into darkness. The offices of Staedtler-Moran were to my right and when I entered, I found a reception desk blanked off with opaque glass, with a kiosk type window at the far end. It was a common form of reception in Scottish commercial premises and it always made me feel I should be buying a railway ticket. A sign above a button instructed me to Press for Attention. I did.

  The receptionist pulled open the small sliding section of window that allowed us to hear each other, but her face was framed in a circle of clear glass in the frosted pane. I could hear the clatter of typewriters behind her.

  ‘May I help you?’ She was a girl of about twenty-two or three and had clearly taken an instant shine to me, which always made things easier. I ran through my demi-fiction of looking for the solicitor’s office and it became obvious she was not going to be the suspicious or inquisitive type. She was, bless her, as dim as she was homely and blinked at me through horn-rimmed bottle-bottom glasses that were so heavy that she had to continually push them back up her nose with mouse-like twitches while her mouth gaped slightly.

  She did not, of course, recognize the solicitor’s firm I claimed to be seeking and she explained that the Staedtler-Moran International Company supplied bakery equipment to ‘bakeries throughout the Scottish Central Belt and beyond’.

  ‘And what about the International in the name?’ I asked. ‘Do you have offices abroad.’

  ‘Not really,’ she said dully, as if worried that it might disappoint me.

  ‘Do you sell equipment to bakeries in other countries?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘We have an office in Motherwell…’ she chirped hopefully.