The Quiet Death of Thomas Quaid: Lennox 5 Page 14
And sometimes, like now as I stood staring dumbly at the sky when the evening sun shone in the middle of a Glasgow summer, the light and the air reminded me of autumnal evenings back home and tended to provoke a dull melancholy in me. But this time, the vague homesickness and gloominess were tinged with something else.
Maybe it was thinking about the pre-war me that did it, the bright-eyed Kennebecasis Kid who was yet to be fucked up by a war on another continent. If I were honest, I had felt pretty sorry for myself during and after the war, blaming all my subsequent wrongs and woes on being dragged into a conflict where I would see all that was bad in men and all that was worse in me. Everything I had done wrong since, I blamed on the world, not me.
But the truth was that I’d had it pretty good before the war: I had been brought up in comparative wealth, in a big century home, and educated at the Collegiate in Rothesay, which was as upper as the crust came in Maritime Canada. I’d had a happy childhood and youth, had had a promising future. A lot of men had started with less than me, had gone through the same as I had, and had come back from it to fulfil the promise of their futures.
And whenever I thought about Quiet Tommy Quaid, my excuses to myself just didn’t fly. He had had a tough war too. But Tommy had had a tough peacetime before it; an unjust background of deprivation and want. He had forged his way in a world much more challenging than the one I had known.
The simple fact was that Tommy was a better man than me.
Only one of us beat men half to death when his anger was sparked; only one of us treated women as disposable assets. Sure, Tommy had been every bit the bedroom swordsman I was, but his attitude to women had been different. One evening out on the tiles, when we were perhaps only halfway into our cups, Tommy had explained his attitude to women. He liked them. Not just in the usual way – not just in the way I liked women, and I had done a lot of liking. I was yet to see his book collection, but there had been a hint of Tommy’s erudition that night. He had asked me if I knew the works of Stendhal, and told me that the French author was famed for both the extent of his womanizing and the strength and depth of the female characters in his writing.
‘Stendhal liked women,’ Tommy had explained. ‘They interested him, he valued them. He listened to them. In many ways he thought them superior to men. A true ladies’ man, in every sense. I sometimes think I’ve got a bit of that going. I enjoy being with women. Spending time with them.’
‘So you go out with women because of their minds?’ I had laughed, knowing Tommy’s reputation.
‘I go for the whole package. The works. Not always, of course, but life’s too short to spend with people who don’t interest you. And as for brains . . . I’m telling you, Lennox, there’s nothing sexier than an intelligent woman.’
Something fell into place.
The memory of that conversation with Tommy made me scrabble about in the glove box of the Wyvern, where I’d put his diary to stop its weight ruining the line of my jacket.
Having only given it a cursory glance while I had been waiting for Tony the Pole, I now took the time to go through the diary more thoroughly. There were a couple of names in the address section that I didn’t recognize, but most were female acquaintances of Tommy’s – including a barmaid I had acquaintanced myself on more than one occasion. I considered contacting her to see if it yielded anything useful about Tommy, but I guessed it wouldn’t, nor would most of the other women in the book. Gynophile or not, I didn’t see Tommy confiding anything of value to a barmaid or cinema usherette.
I found what I was looking for in the back of the diary: the address entry brought to mind by my memory of what Tommy had said that night. It was headed ‘Nancy’, without a surname, and was in the west end of town, near the university. This was the N Tommy had visited every week. I decided not to 'phone the number listed, but instead to call in person: it was always easier for someone to hang up on you than to close the door in your face.
I fired up the Wyvern and lumbered along Great Western Road, still checking my rear-view.
*
The address was that of a ground-floor flat, midway along a four-storey-plus-basements blond sandstone terrace in Cecil Street. There was only a handful of cars parked along its length and I guessed most of the occupants were either staff or students who mostly walked or cycled between home and the nearby university.
I recognized her as soon as she opened the door. She was the woman of tearless grief I’d seen at Tommy’s graveside. In her early forties and tired, her eyes were shadowed and her face pale. It was difficult to tell if she was simply weary from the labours of the day or from the travails of life in general, but I guessed that the sudden absence from her life of a quiet, handsome man had something to do with it.
Just as I remembered from the funeral, her hair was dark and cut unfashionably short. She was dressed in a knit jumper and tweed skirt that suggested when it came to choosing her wardrobe, functionality always won over fashion. Despite the unflattering clothes, I could see her figure was still slim and good and the ghost of a pretty, happier girl lingered. Her face was naked of make-up and full of character and I could see she was a handsome woman with a special kind of attractiveness. Her unlikely connection with Tommy started to seem more likely.
I had practised my opening gambit on the way from the car; being a stranger at the door was always an obstacle to overcome; revealing yourself to be a professional snooper often turned that obstacle into a drawbridge. I had decided to keep things personal rather than professional, introducing myself as a friend of Tommy’s, not an enquiry agent, and then explaining that his sister had asked me to look into his death.
‘I’ve been expecting you,’ she said dully, before I had a chance to say anything; then, standing to one side, ‘You had better come in, Mr Lennox.’
I followed her mutely into the apartment, leaving my unwrapped opening gambit on the doorstep. The walls of the narrow hall were decked with modern art prints and politically themed posters for the CND and the Communist Party of Great Britain, a framed cinema poster for Battleship Potemkin, as well as an ugly, modernist one for Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and her Children. By the time we made it to the living room I had worked out she wouldn’t be joining the local branch of the Women’s Institute any time soon.
‘You know who I am?’ I asked.
‘Tommy told me about you.’
‘And you were expecting me?’
‘He said there was a chance you would come. If anything happened to him.’
‘He told you he thought something would happen to him?’ This was getting interesting. Whatever else had been going on between them, Tommy – who confided in so very few – had trusted this unlikely confidante.
‘He said he was mixed up in something dangerous. That there were people who might wish him harm. He told me that if anyone ever came asking about him – including anyone official – I was to plead ignorance. Except you. He told me that you were to be trusted.’
‘How did you know it was me? How did you recognize me?’
‘Tommy described you. He said you were a good man – someone I could rely on – but you looked bad. A little like the actor Jack Palance. It’s not that common a look in Glasgow.’
I shrugged. Comparisons with Hollywood stars were indeed rare in Glasgow. Although I thought I’d spotted Lon Chaney a couple of times.
‘I don’t know your name,’ I said. ‘Other than you’re Nancy.’
‘Nancy Ross,’ she explained. ‘I’m a lecturer at the university.’
‘Did Tommy say who he thought might wish him harm?’
‘He was vague about that. Specific enough to scare me, but vague enough to leave me in the dark. But he said they were powerful people. Not criminals – or at least not the accepted kind of criminals. He said these were people in positions of real power.’
‘What kind of positions?’ I asked. ‘Military . . . army?’
‘Like I told you, he was vague about them. He never
said anything specific enough to make me think they were military. But he said I should understand what he meant. Can I get you something to drink?’
‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble,’ I said, but she was already over at the sideboard on which there was a tray with tumblers and bottles of sherry, whisky and gin. I obviously wasn’t going to be offered tea or coffee. She poured herself a heavy-handed measure of gin, only letting it get a sniff of tonic. She waved the gin bottle at me but I shook my head: I was an Olympic-level drinker, but I’d learned from experience not to drink with those who use alcohol to self-medicate. It was clear that booze was the anaesthetic Nancy Ross used to blunt the sharp edges of her loss.
She indicated an aged leather armchair and invited me to sit; I took in the room as I did so. The side table beside the armchair was heaped with magazines and periodicals, topped with the current issue of Tribune. Two of the walls were filled with floor-to-ceiling bookcases and there were books anywhere else there was a free surface: philosophy and political textbooks mainly, with heavyweight-looking fiction dotted through them, some in the original French or German. Like her non-membership of the WI, it was clear that Nancy wasn’t the Agatha Christie or Barbara Cartland kind of girl either.
‘What do you think he meant when he said you should know who he was talking about?’
‘My subject is political philosophy. My whole life is devoted to the study of the acquisition and use – and abuse – of power. I suppose that’s what he meant. If it was, then it suggests people in all kinds of positions – people who are part of the Establishment. Maybe people in direct political power. Whoever they are and wherever they are, Tommy had something on them. And whoever they are, they have a long reach.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Tommy left something for you. A sealed envelope. He told me not to open it, for my own safety, but to keep it for you. It felt like there were documents and other stuff in it. The strange thing is he told me not to get in touch with you. You had to come to me. If you hadn’t found your way to my door within three months of anything happening, I was to put the envelope unopened into another one and send it to the editor of the Glasgow Herald. But he said that wouldn’t really do much good. Whatever I did I was to make sure the envelope couldn’t be traced back to me.’
‘And you didn’t open it?’
She shook her head. Another gulp.
‘Well . . .’ I said somewhat impatiently. ‘Can I have it?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s gone. Disappeared. Two days after Tommy died, my flat was broken into while I was at the uni. Broad daylight.’
‘You reported it to the police?’
Her laugh was almost a snort. ‘The police? The police would love a chance to have a sniff around my stuff. The other police. The secret police. The kind of police we’re not supposed to have on this sceptred isle. Do you know I had someone from Special Branch at the door only a couple of months ago? He sat right where you’re sitting and questioned me about all my trips abroad. He knew everything about me. Every academic contact I had in Europe, every man I had ever been involved with. Other things . . .’ She lowered her eyes for a moment, then took another swallow of gin. ‘Anyway, there was no point in me reporting the break-in.’
‘Why?’
‘Because only I could tell there had been one. Whoever it was, they were very professional, very clever. The only thing that had been taken was the envelope Tommy had left for you.’ She walked over to the bookcase behind her and pulled a volume from the shelf. Holding it out to me, she opened the cover to reveal it was a dummy, the inside a box. ‘This is where it was. They must have gone through everything, taken every book from the shelves, before they found it. It must have taken hours.’
‘Maybe they knew exactly where it was hidden.’
‘No, they didn’t. That’s how I knew someone had broken in.’ She waved an arm at the books on the shelves and scattered on tables and the desk by the window. ‘All this looks like chaos to you, to everyone, even did to Tommy – but I have this weird memory for books, where I put them. They tried to put everything back the way I had it, but I could see where one title was out of place here, another there. And there were other, tiny hints that someone had been in the flat.’
I thought about what she had said. If she was right, whoever had broken in had had skills very similar to Tommy Quaid’s. ‘But the only thing missing was the envelope Tommy had left for me?’ I asked.
‘Yes. I think you can see why I didn’t report it. At best I would sound like a paranoiac. And anyway, I’m not at all sure it wasn’t Special Branch themselves who broke in.’
‘You said this Special Branch guy knew all the men you’ve been involved with. What about Tommy? Was he mentioned?’
‘No. Tommy was the only one who wasn’t. I felt he was conspicuous by his absence.’
‘What did Tommy say about the visit from the Special Branch?’
‘He told me not to worry, but I could see he was shaken up by it. And you know Tommy, very little had the power to shake him. He told me to forget all about it.’
‘Why would Special Branch have a particular interest in you?’
‘I was a member of the Communist Party when I was a student, but I quit years ago. Since then I’ve been a member of the Labour Party, but very much on the left. But I wouldn’t be flavour of the month even with Labour Central Office. I’m a Bevanite. That’s not a problem up here in Scotland, but the Labour Party down south prefers pink to red. I hate Gaitskell and what he’s done to the party. A Tory in socialist clothing. Special Branch think the rest of us get our orders direct from Moscow.’
‘But that’s not enough for them to make house calls – either openly or surreptitiously.’
‘One of the men I was involved with, before Tommy . . .’ She lowered her eyes. ‘He was a Czech. He was over here on a university exchange and we got involved while he was here. He was only interested in people who were communist party members and I think I was pretty naive not to pick up he was more than an academic. I’ve been . . . scrutinized ever since.’
‘Where does Tommy fit into all this?’ I asked. ‘What was he to you?’
‘You mean what was I to Tommy? You’re struggling to see what someone like Tommy would have to do with someone like me?’ There was no bitterness in her tone or in the dully frank way she looked at me. It was blank, disinterested, detached.
‘I’m just trying to establish how well you knew him.’
‘We were lovers. For the past four years. Tommy would come into my life for three to four hours, one evening a week. And during those three or four hours he would make me feel like there was no one else in the world who mattered to him. I know Tommy was involved with a lot of women, but I think – or I like to think – he was closer to me than any other woman he was involved with. I think I knew him better than anyone. Which means hardly at all.’
I knew exactly what she meant.
‘How did you meet?’ I asked. There was a sofa facing me – or at least the shape of a sofa beneath a draped candlewick spread – and she sat down on it, balancing her gin on the arm.
‘The Mitchell Library, of all places. Tommy was looking for the same book as me. I bet you didn’t know he was interested in political philosophy?’
‘No I didn’t, but it doesn’t surprise me in the least. There were a lot of things I didn’t know about Tommy until recently. Tommy had depths. I don’t think any of us who knew him knew him completely. He was a clever guy. A clever man born in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
‘Was he? Tommy would argue he was who he was exactly because of his time and place. But yes, he was one of the brightest people I have ever known.’ Her voice shook a little; the gin was losing the battle to keep her grief contained.
‘Apart from his interest in political philosophy,’ I asked, ‘did Tommy ever express political leanings? I mean, did he share your views, for example?’
I nodded.
‘Well Tommy believed that any power corrupts. He believed in direct, not representative, democracy. He said as soon as someone has a position of influence or power, they instantly abuse it to one degree or another. So no – he hated all politicians and authority figures equally. If I were to give Tommy’s political views a name – which he never would – then I would say he was an anarchist. An anarcho-syndicalist. Or maybe just bitter. His contempt for those in authority seemed to get much worse shortly before he died.’
‘Any particular reason?’
‘Oh yes – there was a particular reason all right. I could see that. But Tommy being Tommy, he kept it all locked up and to himself.’
She took another sip of gin. ‘Are you sure you don’t want a drink?’
I shook my head. ‘Did you and Tommy ever go to the theatre together?’
‘We didn’t go out much. Tommy would come here and we would stay in, mostly. Talk. I did take him to the Citizens a couple of times. Brecht. The truth is Tommy found theatre pointless, frivolous. He said we already lived in an acted-out fantasy.’
‘Did he ever suggest he’d be interested in variety shows? At the King’s or the Alhambra? Frantic Frankie Findlay?’