The Long Glasgow Kiss Read online

  The Austin reappeared and pulled up next to me. It was a Sheerline; too fancy for the police. Something vast and dark unfolded from the passenger seat and cast an improbably large shadow in the lamplight.

  ‘Hello again, Mr Lennox …’ Twinkletoes McBride said in his earth-rumbling baritone and smiled at me. I straightened up from the wing of the Atlantic. This was interesting.

  ‘Twinkletoes? What are you doing here? I thought it was the police. Why are you tailing me?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask Mr Sneddon that,’ he said earnestly. ‘I’m sure he can elucidate you.’ Twinkletoes pronounced every syllable deliberately: ee-loos-ih-date.

  ‘Still reading the Reader’s Digest I see,’ I said amiably.

  ‘I’m improving my word power …’ Twinkletoes beamed. I imagined how much more interesting his expanded vocabulary would make the experience of having your toes lopped off with bolt cutters – Twinkletoes’ speciality as a torturer and the origin of his nickname. Or ehh-pee-thett as he would probably call it.

  ‘An expressive vocabulary is a true treasure,’ I smiled.

  ‘You’re not fucking wrong there, Mr Lennox.’

  ‘Mr Sneddon wants to see me now?’ I asked. I unlocked my car. ‘I’ll follow you.’

  Twinkletoes stopped smiling. He swung the back door of the Sheerline open. ‘We’ll bring you back to your car. Afterwards. If that isn’ae in-con-veen-ee-ent.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, as if he was doing me a favour. But the thought did run through my head that I might return unable to count to twenty on my fingers and toes.

  Twinkletoes McBride may have been sadistic and psychopathically violent to order, but at least he was a friendly sort of cuss. The same couldn’t have been said of the driver of the Humber, a thin, meagre and nasty-looking thug with bad skin and an over-oiled Teddy Boy cut. I’d seen him before, lurking menacingly in the presence of Willie Sneddon. To give him due credit, lurking menacingly was something he did extremely well and it made up for his lack of conversational skills.

  We drove out of the city, west, passing through Clydebank and out along the road to Dumbarton. The only car on the road. The ugly tenements eventually gave way to open country and I began to feel uneasy. A free taxi ride from Twinkletoes McBride in itself was enough to make you wary, but knowing who had summoned your presence was enough to start the lower parts of your digestive anatomy twitching. Twinkletoes was one of Willie Sneddon’s henchmen. Willie Sneddon was the King of the Southside – one of the so-called Three Kings who ran almost all the crime worth running in Glasgow. Willie Sneddon was bad news of the worst kind.

  When we turned off the road and headed up a narrow farm track, I started to think that the news was about to get worse. I even found myself casting an eye over the car door handle, reflecting that at this speed jumping from the car wouldn’t be a break-neck job. Getting caught by Twinkle and his taciturn chum, though, probably would be. Willie Sneddon was the kind of social host to become piqued if you declined his invitations: once I’d started running, if I wanted to hang on to my teeth, toes and maybe even my life, I’d have to keep running until I was back in Canada. We jolted over a pothole. I calmed down. It made no sense that Sneddon had anything unpleasant planned for me other than his company, which, in itself, would fill my unpleasantness quota for the month. I had done nothing to offend Sneddon or either of the other two Kings. The truth was, I had tried to avoid doing work for them as much as I could over the last year.

  I decided to sit tight and take my chances.

  The farm track ended, as you would expect, at a farm. The farmhouse was a large Victorian granite job, suggesting a gentlemanly sort of turf-turner. Beside the house was a huge stone barn that I guessed was not being used for its original purpose, unless it was home to an equally gentlemanly breed of cattle: the two small windows in its vast flank were draped in heavy velvet that glowed ember-red in the night and yellow electric light shone from under the heavy wooden barn door.

  Twinkletoes and Happy Harry the driver conducted me from the car to the barn. I could hear voices coming from inside. A lot of voices. Laughter, shouting and cheering. Twinkle pressed an electric bell push and a peephole slid open as we were checked out by whoever was on the other side.

  ‘I’ve never been to a milk bar speakeasy before,’ I said cheerfully to my less-than-cheerful driver. ‘Does Sneddon have an illicit buttermilk still in here?’

  He replied by lurking menacingly at my side. Twinkle pressed the bell push again.

  ‘Maybes we shou’ try da udder door,’ I said in my mock-New York gangster voice and smiled. It only served to confuse Twinkletoes and deepen the menace of his companion’s lurk.

  I had half expected the doorbell to be answered by a heifer in a dinner suit. As it turned out, I wasn’t far wrong: a bull-necked thug swung open the door. Stepping across the threshold was like diving into a pool; we were immersed in a humid fug of cigarette smoke, whisky fumes and sweat. And the faint copper smell of blood. A simultaneous wave of noise and odour-heavy warmth washed over us: men shouting in anger-edged eagerness, the odd female voice shrill and penetrating. The barn wasn’t exactly full of people, but they were elbow-jostle crowded in a circle around a raised platform upon which two heavily muscled men were beating the bejesus out of each other. Both were stripped to the waist, but they wore ordinary trousers and shoes rather than boxing gear. And no gloves.

  Nice, I thought. Bare-knuckle fighting. Unlicensed, unregulated, illegal. And more than occasionally fatal. I had never really understood the need to pay to watch a bare-knuckle fight in the West of Scotland. In Glasgow particularly, it seemed to me redundant, like asking a girl out on a date in the middle of an orgy.

  Twinkletoes put his hand on my shoulder and I nearly buckled under the weight. ‘Mr Sneddon says we was to get you a drink and tell you to wait till he was ready.’

  A girl of about twenty with too much lipstick and too little frock stood behind the crepe-draped trestle table that served as a bar. Unsurprisingly, she had no Canadian Club and the Scotch I took as a substitute had the same effect on the lining of my mouth that I imagined it would have on paint. I turned back to the fight and took in the audience. Most of the men wore dinner suits and the women were all young, showily dressed, and anything but wife material. The look of the men turned my gut: that pink, scrubbed, fleshy-faced look of accountants, lawyers and other lower-middle-class Glaswegians out slumming it. This was their little charabanc ride to vice. I guessed there were more than a few Glasgow Corporation bureaucrats and even a copper or two here by personal Sneddon invitation. The stench of venality mingled with the sweat and booze-tinged air.

  A cheer from the crowd drew my attention back to the fighters. I didn’t mind a boxing match myself, but this was not sport. No skill other than using your face and head to break your opponent’s knuckles. The face of each fighter was the mirror image of his opponent: white skin puffed and swollen and smeared with spit, sweat and vivid streaks of blood; eyes reduced to slits, hair sweat-plastered to their scalps. And both faces were expressionless. No fear or anger or hate; just the emotionless concentration of two men engaged in the hard physical work of doing harm to another human being. Each punch had the sound of either a wet slap or an ugly, dull thud. Neither man made an attempt to dodge his opponent’s blows; this was all about beating the shit out of each other until someone fell down and didn’t get up. Both fighters looked exhausted. In bare-knuckle there are no rounds, no breaks for rest or recovery. If you were knocked to the ground you had thirty seconds to get back up to ‘scratch’, the scored line in the centre of the fighting area.

  There’s something about bare-knuckle fighting that holds your unwilling attention, and I found myself focussed on the brutality on the raised platform. The fighters seemed oblivious to everything around them. Probably everything before them and after them. I remembered the feeling from the war. In combat you have no past, no history, no future; no connections to the world outside. You’re not even
connected to the men you kill in any human way. I recognized the same dislocation in these two men. One was slightly smaller but heavier-set than the other. Blood from his nose was back-of-the-hand smeared across his upper lip and cheek and one distended eyelid was purpling up and threatening to close over his eye. It looked as if it was only a matter of time before his larger opponent would be able to take advantage of his compromised vision, but the smaller man suddenly swung an ungainly but brutal left hook. It connected with the bigger fighter’s cheek with a sickening snap. Even across the barn and through the cigarette haze I could see the big man had stepped out of his body for a moment and his arms hung limp at his side.

  The spectators roared delight and fury, depending on whom they’d placed their money, and the smaller guy slammed a nose-breaking jab into his opponent’s face. Blood cascaded over the big man’s mouth. More roars from the crowd. This was the end. The smaller fighter had the smell of victory in his bloody nostrils and tore into his adversary, his bare-fisted punches slapping loudly into the bigger man’s ribs and gut. Another roundhouse left sent a viscous arc of blood and saliva through the air and the big man dropped like a felled tree.

  There was no congratulation for the winner or commiseration for the loser; the serious business of settling bets got underway and there was another jostle around Sneddon’s illegal bookie and a couple of enforcers. Sneddon would be happy: the disgruntled faces hanging back outnumbered the beaming, eager grins of the winners.

  After a while, everyone made for the bar and I eased back into a corner with my gut-rot Scotch and contemplated the success I had made of my life. It had so very nearly gone wrong. A few different choices and I could have ended up wealthy and contented three thousand miles from Glasgow, missing out on the edifying experience of watching two bruised apes beat the crap out of each other in a Scottish barn.

  Twinkletoes returned with a shortish, compactly built and hard-looking man wearing a suit that was well tailored and expensive without being flash. His blond hair looked freshly barbered and there was a brutal handsomeness in the face. Unfortunately, the ugly deep crease of an old razor scar on his right cheek clearly dated from a time before he could afford the kind of expert needlework evident in his clothes.

  ‘Hello, Mr Sneddon,’ I said.

  ‘Do you know where you are, Lennox?’

  ‘Hernando’s Hideaway?’

  ‘Aye … very fucking funny,’ Sneddon said without a smile. ‘This is my newest little sideline. You see the fight?’

  ‘Yeah. Lovely.’

  ‘Pikeys …’ Sneddon shook his head in wonder. ‘They fight like fuck for pennies. They would do it for the love of it. Mad fuckers.’

  ‘And you run a book on it …’

  Sneddon nodded. ‘It’s been a good night.’

  ‘I’ll bet …’ I said. Old Ben Franklin once said that the only certain things were death and taxes. But that was before Sneddon’s time, otherwise it would have been death, taxes and Willie Sneddon’s hand in your pocket.

  ‘I’ve had the place six months. It took a while to fix it up. I got the house, the barn, the whole fuckin’ farm because some toff bet more on the ponies than he had in readies. Wanker. It’s quite poetic that I run a wee gambling thing here, considering I got it because of gambling.’

  ‘Aye Mr Sneddon, that’s eye-ron-ic,’ said Twinkletoes at Sneddon’s side.

  ‘Was I fucking talking to you?’ Sneddon glowered up at Twinkletoes who loomed above his boss. Twinkle made a hurt face and Sneddon turned back to me. ‘Anyway, I’ve kept this place pretty quiet. I don’t even think Cohen and Murphy know about it yet. So keep your mouth shut.’ Sneddon referred to the other two Kings: Handsome Jonny Cohen and Hammer Murphy.

  I took a moment to ponder why everybody felt that they had to tell me to keep my mouth shut all the time. ‘If they don’t know about it, then I’m sure they soon will,’ I said. ‘This is a village masquerading as a big city. Nothing stays quiet for long.’

  ‘Like Small Change MacFarlane getting his coupon smashed to fuck …’ Sneddon smiled. Or moved his face around in an attempt. The result was something cold, hard and careless.

  ‘Yeah … just like. My God, it doesn’t take long for word to get around. MacFarlane’s not cold yet. Is that why you had Twinkletoes and smiling lad pick me up?’

  Sneddon cast a glance over his shoulder at the crowd. ‘Let’s go over to the main house. It’s quieter …’

  I’d been to Sneddon’s house in Bearsden, a mock-baronial mansion with manicured gardens, a few times. This place was totally different. As soon as I stepped into the entrance hallway I knew that this was a business premises. From the outside it was a Victorian farmhouse; inside it was a Victorian brothel, all thick velvet crimson drapes, chaises-longues and Rubenesque tits in frames on the walls. The living room of the house had been converted into a bar with scattered sofas. On one a working girl sat with a bored expression as a drunken customer drooled and pawed inexpertly at her. Mel Tormé crooned from a record player in the corner, and the bar was manned by another girl in her early twenties who, too, had applied too much make-up and too little frock.

  ‘What do you think?’ asked Sneddon in a tone that suggested he didn’t give a toss what I thought.

  ‘Nice ambience. Brings out the romantic in me.’

  Sneddon snorted an approximation of a laugh. He tapped Twinkletoes on the chest and nodded in the direction of the drunk and the girl. Twinkletoes obliged by conducting them out of the lounge.

  ‘So what’s a nice boy like me doing in a place like this?’ I asked. Sneddon told the girl behind the counter to pour us a couple of whiskies and I noticed she brought a single malt up from beneath the bar. The good stuff.

  ‘You was at Small Change’s place tonight. What business do you have with him? Was he getting you to do a bit of sniffing for him?’

  ‘The only sniffing I’ve been doing has been around his daughter. All pleasure, no business.’

  ‘You sure?’ Sneddon narrowed his eyes. It made him look all brow, which was an advantage in Glasgow. Athens had been the cradle of democracy, Florence had given the world the Renaissance, Glasgow had refined, to a precise art, the head butt. The Glasgow Kiss, as it was affectionately known amongst the nations of the world. ‘I would be put out if you was being less than square with me.’

  ‘Listen, Mr Sneddon, I would think a long time before I’d lie to you. I know Twinkletoes didn’t get his name because he dances like Fred Astaire. I’m attached to my toes and I like to think it’s a mutual arrangement. And anyway, I was asked the same thing tonight by Superintendent McNab.’

  ‘McNab?’ Sneddon put his glass down on the bar. ‘What the fuck is he involved for? I thought it was a robbery gone wrong.’

  ‘It’s a big case, I guess. Small Change was high profile,’ I said, hiding how impressed I was with the speed and accuracy of Sneddon’s intelligence-gathering operation. Then I realized I was part of it. ‘Anyway, he took a lot of convincing that I wasn’t involved with MacFarlane.’

  ‘So you had nothing to do with Small Change or his business?’

  ‘Like I said, I’m seeing his daughter, that’s all. What’s the problem?’

  Sneddon waved his hand at me as if he had been flicking away an annoying fly. ‘Nothin’. It’s just that I had some business going on with Small Change.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Sneddon gave me a look. ‘Listen, Lennox, if you’re hanging around MacFarlane’s place, you can maybes help me out.’

  ‘If I can …’ I said and smiled, hiding the sinking feeling in my gut.

  ‘Keep me up to date on what the coppers are getting up to. And, if you get a chance, see if you can find anything like Small Change’s diary. Appointment book. Whatever he kept details of meetings in. Or maybe a log book with events and stuff in it.’

  ‘May I ask why?’

  ‘No you fucking can’t.’ Then he sighed, as if relenting to a child’s demand for ice cream. ‘Okay … I had a meet
ing with Small Change this afternoon. A project we was working on together. I’m moving into the fight game … not like tonight – something more than a couple of pikeys knocking the shite out of each other. Real boxing. I was talking to MacFarlane about a couple of fighters. Things could get complicated if the police found out.’

  ‘And what was Small Change bringing to the table?’

  ‘It’s not important. Listen, this deal was nothing big. I just don’t want that kind of police attention. I never want police attention. But specially not if that fucker McNab’s heading the case. Can you check it out for me or not?’

  I made a big deal of thinking it over. ‘I’m not trying to be funny, Mr Sneddon, but if I had an appointment with you, I don’t think it’s the kind of thing I’d put in a diary. I mean … that could be evidence, like you say. I don’t think MacFarlane had the kind of business that he would want recorded somewhere.’

  ‘That’s because you don’t think the way me and MacFarlane do. I have a diary. Every fucking appointment, every talk I have with Murphy or Cohen goes into it. Like you say, evidence. King’s Evidence if I ever need it. Cohen and Murphy do the same thing. Insurance. And I know that MacFarlane had a mind like a fucking sieve … only when it came to things like that. As a bookie he could tell you what was running where and when and what the odds were, right off the top of his head. But stuff like meetings he’d have to write times and dates down or he’d forget.’