Dead men and broken hearts l-4 Page 31
‘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.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
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.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
I was still a hunted man. I had given Ferguson everything he needed to clear up Sylvia Dewar’s death, but no one had seriously been looking at me for that. They were after me for killing Andrew Ellis and — until I could find out what or where Tanglewood was and who Ferenc Lang was — I would remain the number one suspect for Ellis’s murder.
I headed back to the barge and cleaned up. I made up some sandwiches from the stuff McBride had brought me and ate them slowly, thinking through what I was going to do next.
I folded out Ellis’s map again, calculating times and distances. From his home in Bearsden, which was on the right side of the city, to the mark on the map and back, allowing for an hour’s meeting, the timings fitted with those given to me by Pamela Ellis. This was the regular rendezvous, not somewhere in Garnethill. They had changed venue the night I found Ellis with ‘Magda’ simply because of the smog, I guessed. Or maybe he had picked her up at the translation bureau to go on together to some other location. But this place on the map was their principal trysting point. I would have bet all my money on it.
Dear Mrs Ellis,
The enclosed money was placed in my trust by your husband to be given to you in the case of his death or disappearance. His primary concern was always that you be catered for should something happen to him. He instructed me to tell you that under no circumstances were you to inform the police or anyone else about this money.
Nothing can make up for the loss of your husband, but the enclosed was his way of ensuring some comfort in the future.
Yours,
A Wellwisher
I folded the note and placed it in the parcel before wrapping it up, writing the address and securing the package with string.
Then, after washing the dishes, I fell into bed. It was going to be a big day tomorrow.
My moustache was coming in well, and again I complemented the tweed and flannel outfit with the navy duffle coat before heading out to a camping store I knew about in the West End of the city. It was the kind of place that catered for the serious canvas-shelterer and I picked up a good quality bivouac, a camping stove and gas canister, a trenching tool, sleeping bag, as well as a kitbag and canteen. From the outdoor clothing section, I picked out the kind of pullover anorak favoured by Sir Edmund Hillary, archaeology field-trip students and secondary modern geography teachers. My biggest expense, more than the tent, was a pair of heavy walking boots.
The salesman insisted I try them on with a pair of heavy socks and walk around the store with the boots on. I appreciated his professionalism: I already knew from my army days that the wrong size of boots could end up crippling you. In the army your boots, after your gun, were your most important piece of kit. What was more, my feet were still painful from my sock-soled flight across Glasgow and needed the best protection I could give them.
Adding three pairs of heavy socks to wear with the boots and an oiled wool turtleneck that would have stood up on its own, I picked out a pair of waterproof trousers and another flat cap, something I would normally not be seen dead in. I really was pushing my luck, making the salesman’s day by buying the whole camping caboodle. In November. And that meant he would remember me.
I fed him some baloney about buying the tent as a Christmas present for my nephew, and I was getting myself kitted out because, although I’d never been camping before, I had promised to take my nephew on a trip to the Trossachs in the spring, as soon as the weather improved. It was all a strain, because I went through the whole process putting on a vaguely Glaswegian accent. Or at least what I thought would sound like a Glasgow accent, but somehow came out more Boston Irish than anything else.
He’d probably remember that too.
When he took me to the cash desk to pay for the gear. I thought I caught the girl at the desk eyeing the bruises on my face, despite me doing my best to present everyone with my unblemished side as much as possible. The salesman was so pleased with my custom that he insisted on helping me out with the stuff, ignoring my repeated assurances that I could manage myself by making a couple of trips to the car. I had deliberately parked the Cresta out of sight of the shop, but my continued insistence on carrying the stuff myself would soon become in itself suspicious.
Piling the clothing into the back seat, I got the salesman to place the tent and the rest of the hardware in the trunk of the car. I’d forgotten that the bolt cutters were in there, but my overly helpful assistant seemed to pay them no heed, pushing them to the back as he carefully organized my purchases in the trunk.
I repeated my act in a grocer’s in Milngavie, on the way out of the city, picking up some extra provisions. It was getting better. The trick, I learned, was not to work at it too hard. So instead of trying to do an impersonation of a Glaswegian, which always turned out bizarre, I used my natural voice but bent the Canadian a little and rolled the r’s more. If there was one thing I could say for the fugitive lifestyle, it was that it exposed talents and abilities you didn’t know you possessed. Music Hall now beckoned along with the laundry business as a possible postprison career.
The grocer’s was one of a small knot of shops in the centre of Milngavie, so I called into the newsagent-cum-tobacconist kiosk in the middle of the small square. The hunch-shouldered kiosk man tucked behind the counter with his paraffin heater was small and mean-looking and eyed me with suspicious loathing. I tried not to read too much into it, because that, I had found, was one of the two standard customer service ethics in Scotland: you were served either with intense hostility or embarrassing servility, with no middle ground between the two extremes. But, again, I thought he had examined the bruising on my face just that little bit too closely. I asked for four packs of cigarettes, two boxes of matches and a local newspaper.
It was all over the front page.
The police, the headline stated, were investigating the murder of Andrew Ellis, who was found dead from stab wounds in a city centre office. Ellis, who was a prominent member of the city’s business community, had left a widow but no issue. Police were now keen to ascertain the whereabouts of…
And there it was. My name. The fact that I was a Canadian national. And a pretty damned good description. The only thing I was grateful for was that there was no mention of my bearing any marks or bruises on my face.
I folded the paper under my arm and paid the newsagent as matter-of-factly as I could. Then, looking behind him, I saw a rack of pipes. As if acting on a whim, I asked him for the most expensive of the pipes and a tin of ready-rub. It would go with my new image of the Scottish outdoorsman, I thought.
Maybe I was being paranoid — or more paranoid, as that had become more or less my permanent state of mind — but I was pretty sure that the little, hostile tobacconist was watching me from his kiosk as I walked back to the car. Fortunately, I had again taken the precaution of parking out of sight.
Heading first west to Dumbarton, then north to Loch Lomond, I pulled up in a lay-by off the road once I was out of town. This was one of the main routes north from Glasgow and there was a fair amount of traffic passing in both directions, so I couldn’t very well step out of the car, peel off my clothes and change. Instead, I struggled in the confines of the Cresta, wriggling into the waterproof trousers over my flannels.
Sliding over to the passenger side, I opened the door and swung my legs out, out of sight of the traffic. I slipped a heavy pair of socks over the silk ones I already had on and laced up the hiking boots. After my barefoot experiences, it felt good to have something so solid on my feet. I took off my jacket, slipped on the oiled wool turtleneck and planted the waxed flat cap on my head. I left the smock-anorak for the moment. My new outfit opened up the opportunity to be worn with either the duffle coat or the tweed jacket, as well as the anorak, depending on the particular rugged dash I was trying to cut.
The main thing, though, was that my new outfit and equipment had been chosen for purely practical reasons. Scotland — this real Scotland — in November could be lethally unforgiving.
My main hope was that the bivouac in the trunk would not have to be pressed into service, but if my mission lasted longer than I hoped, then I was going to have to take care of my own accommodations. And, anyway, I had in my time spent plenty of nights under canvas with more than the inclement weather to worry about.
I drove up the side of Loch Lomond, a massive expanse of water and the biggest lake in Britain. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, but I had to drive carefully as the roadway sparkled white with frost. After the gloom and grime of Glasgow, it made everything look fresh and crisp and clean. It was funny, I thought, how any sun — even hard, warmth-less sun — lifted your mood.
Halfway up the loch, I stopped at a roadside tearoom with a view out over the water and ordered
some cheese sandwiches with coffee. The woman who served me was in her early forties, with fresh, pale skin and dark blonde hair. She was slim but sexy and I promised myself a return visit in happier times; but there was something about her nagged at my gut. I realized that she reminded me, in an odd way, of Fiona White. She had only one other guest in the place and I had to dance around her questions about where I had come from, where I was going, what I was going to do there… the routine building blocks of conversation she must have used with every guest she chatted with. I had given up on trying to sound Glaswegian or Scottish and simply sought to neuter my speech to a standard English.
She had probably seen the way I had looked at her and it was obvious she didn’t mind at all and we chatted about nothing, all the time laying out our stalls in the indirect and abstract way you do before you seal the deal.
What the hell, Lennox, I suddenly said to myself, do you think you are doing?
I paid her and left.
I may have been picking up many of the skills of the fugitive; making myself forgettable was not one of them.
I cleared the top end of Loch Lomond and was well into the Highlands by the time the sun started to play peek-a-boo behind the mountains.
I stopped a couple of times to check Ellis’s map and make sure I didn’t miss my turning, but in the event I did. In the gloaming the landscape had started to melt into soft shapes and splashes of dull red light and shadows, and I drove past the exit and had to drive farther along the ribbon of lakeside road before I found a spot safe enough to execute a three-point turn.
It wasn’t really surprising that I had missed it — a narrow, bush-flanked mouth that led off the main highway and up and away from the loch. I turned and followed it up a steep hillside and across an empty, darkening landscape of umbrous hills and deep gorge. There was one thing that was for sure: I wasn’t being tailed. This was the Scotland of glens empty of anything other than sheep, wildcats, adders and eagles, and I would have spotted other headlights ten miles away.