Dead Men and Broken Hearts: A Lennox Thriller (Lennox 4) (31 page)

‘They obviously think that you would be stupid enough to make straight for her as soon as you escaped … Oh, but hold on a minute, that’s exactly what you did …’ Another wryly doleful look.

‘But if they think that’s what I’d do, then they must realize it would be to try to get the truth out of her?’

‘Or to silence your partner in crime, in case she turns Queen’s against you to save her own neck. If you have a clarty mind like Detective Inspector Shuggie Dunlop.’

I sighed. I had hoped to have gotten the truth out of Pamela Ellis and have her believe that between us, the police and I
could guarantee her safety. But that just wasn’t going to happen any time soon.

‘Cheer up, boss,’ said Archie, cheerlessly. ‘You’ve got me and Twinkle here on the case. And I suspect we aren’t your only friends.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘As soon as you did a runner, I was hauled in by Jock Ferguson. He knew I didn’t know where you were, but he went through all the motions. But, while I was in there, he made a point of telling me all of Shuggie Dunlop’s
Double Indemnity
theories about you and Pamela Ellis. I mean, he really went into detail, like he was laying the whole case out for me. He also gave me the usual warnings about what to do and not to do if you got in touch.’

‘Sounds pretty much what you’d expect,’ I said.

‘Except he then starts to tell me all of this stuff that I really shouldn’t know and if he ever found out that
you
found out about it, he’d know it was me who told him. So
I
was to make sure I never told
you
what he’d found out, if you catch his drift.’

‘Bastard …’ growled Twinkle.

‘No, no …’ I explained over my shoulder. ‘It’s his way of getting information to me.’ I turned back to Archie. ‘What did he tell you?’

‘Shuggie Dunlop may be the one-line-of-enquiry type but Jock isn’t. He’s obviously been following up a few leads on his own. You were right that Andrew Ellis was born in Hungary, but his family were no penniless peasants; more like political refugees. It’s all confusing, you know, the history over there: there were all types of revolutions and counter-revolutions and a hell of a lot of bloodshed. There was a Red Terror, as they called it, then a White Terror – or maybe the other way around – anyway,
there were left-wing extremists and right-wing extremists and each took turns at seizing control and murdering the others.’

We were now several blocks away from the Ellis house and Archie pulled into the kerb.

‘Anyway, Ellis’s family were involved with one side or the other and ended up having to skip the country. Ellis grew up in poverty in Glasgow knowing he should have been living the high life in Hungary.’

‘Where did Ferguson get all of this from?’

‘There’s a sister. Didn’t have much to do with Ellis, lives in Edinburgh. He got it all from her. You know how Ellis’s wife told you he had to volunteer for bomb disposal because the army was sniffy about him being born in what became an Axis country?’

‘Yeah …’

‘Well, they were sniffy about more than that. Ellis tried to get in as an officer, but the army wouldn’t have it. All his young adult life, he was a member of this Scottish-Hungarian friendship society. It even paid for him to travel to Hungary on at least one occasion. Turns out he got himself involved with some kind of youth movement when he was over there. Jock doesn’t know the colour of the movement’s political complexion, but whatever it was, it didn’t ring the right bells with the army enlistment people here.’

‘I see …’ I thought through what Archie had said. ‘Did he say anything about Hopkins, the government man who seemed to know all about Ferenc Lang and his outfit. And all about me, for that matter.’

‘Mmm … To be honest, Jock thinks you’ve been played for a mug. He thinks that
Hopkins
as he called himself was just trying to find out what you knew about the Hungarian outfit. The
office was just some kind of short-con set-up. The clincher for Jock was you saying that Hopkins was wearing an Intelligence Corps tie, which there was every chance of you recognizing. Or, as Jock put it, nothing short of wearing a big collar badge that said “I am a spy, but keep that secret.”’

‘Yeah … That makes sense,’ I said sarcastically. ‘Hopkins is really a Hungarian who just happens to speak perfect, cut-glass English. And because I’ve been spotted following their girl – instead of simply bundling me into the back of a van and taking me to a quiet back alley or abandoned cellar somewhere where they could simply beat the truth out of me – they decide to pick me up with fake-but-perfect police IDs, move into a phoney office with dozens of extras to make it look more convincing, and then get more facts on my background than even I know – all in the time it takes to drive me there? Sure, that sounds credible.’

‘I take it you and Jock aren’t as one on this then?’

‘You take it right. I’m telling you, Archie, Hopkins was the real deal. Maybe not in the way he put himself forward, but he was a professional interrogator and had access to official files. I don’t know what the hell is going on with them doing a midnight flit, but it was no elaborate short-con. Why go to all that trouble?’

Archie sat and stared out through the windshield for a moment. ‘Well,’ he said turning to me at last, ‘if Jock and the City of Glasgow Police can’t nail down Hopkins or his louche pals …’

‘Louche?’ asked Twinkle from the back.

‘Louche,’ Archie repeated. ‘It means sinister or shadowy.’

‘Loooosh …’ McBride stretched the word out, relishing it. ‘Shadowy or sinister. Aye … I like that. How do you spell it?’

I spelled it for him while, with a stub of pencil that looked preposterously small in his huge hand, he scribbled the word into a small notebook he took from his coat pocket.

‘Loooosh …’ he savoured the word again, then said, ‘Sorry … ’, when he saw Archie’s impatient face.

‘If Jock can’t track them down,’ continued Archie, ‘then I don’t think you have much chance while doing your Richard Hannay act.’

‘There was a clerk from the solicitor’s or estate agent’s … the other night when we went to the office. He is obviously responsible for the let or sale of the building. Collins was his name. Is there any chance you could have a word, Archie? He must know something about the set-up. They couldn’t have just broken in in broad daylight and put together that phoney setup. Collins must know something.’

‘Sure,’ said Archie. ‘I’ll track him down and see what I can squeeze out of him.’

‘Excuse me for
inter-jetting
…’ Twinkle leaned forward, resting his forearms on the seat backs and shifting the car’s centre of balance. ‘But if you don’t mind me saying, I think I’d be better
squeezing
information out of this wee shite Collins. It’s what I do, like.’

‘I know, Twinkle,’ I said. ‘But the last thing we need is to put some office worker in traction. Or remove his toes with bolt cutters.’

‘Oh no,’ said McBride, almost offended. ‘I wouldn’t do that. I would use the
piss-eye-cho-logical
approach.’

‘And what does that involve?’

‘Showing him the bolt cutters and tellin’ him what I’m going to do, without actually doin’ it.’

‘You know something,’ said Archie. ‘Maybe if Twinkletoes was
with me I’d get farther, quicker than if I was on my own. And we don’t have a lot of time.’

‘Aye … Erchie could go with me. Make sure I don’t lose the rag and that.’

‘Okay …’ I said reluctantly. ‘But remember Twinkle, no rough stuff. And no bolt cutters … even the psychological kind. Just stand beside Archie and look menacing.’

‘And what are your plans?’ Archie asked me. ‘A fugitive life in one of the darkest and most inhospitable regions of the world where the law has no reach? Venezuela? The Congo? Dundee?’

‘The first thing I have to do is to catch up with Larry Franks at the Paradise Club. He was checking out some names for me.’

‘This to do with the Hungarians?’

‘Actually, no. I’m still trying to track down the original Frank Lang. The one the union hired me to find.’

‘If you don’t mind me saying,’ said Archie, ‘your current predicament may make carrying on as usual with work a mite tricky.’

‘I’m doing it for me, not Connelly or his union. Shuggie Dunlop is determined to pin a murder on me. If he can’t make Ellis’s stick, then he’ll try to nail me for Sylvia Dewar’s. But that’s not the real reason I want to find Frank Lang. Something stinks about the whole union thing.’

‘But I thought you said the two Frank Langs are unconnected?’

‘They are. I stumbled into one while looking for the other. But there are two people dead who were connected, if not very closely connected, to Frank Lang.’

‘And the Hungarians?’

‘I need to get into the Ellis house or his office or both. His wife told me when I first spoke to her that he had to write everything down. Sometimes it was just a one-word scribble or
a doodle, but he couldn’t function without notes to himself. There must be something, somewhere, that might give me a hook on where to find our Magyar chums, or even what the significance of the word Tanglewood is.’

‘So you’re just going to ask the policemen nicely to let you in to the Ellis home and poke around – the policemen who are only there to make sure your feet don’t touch until you’re in a cell?’

‘That’s a wrinkle all right. I’ll have to think of something.’

‘And I don’t see you faring any better at Ellis’s company. Remember, it’s just been turned over by a gang of mime artists. Security is even tighter than it was before.’

‘Yes, Archie … I know that too. Listen, shouldn’t you be somewhere else offering words of comfort … to someone called Job?’

‘Just trying to keep you out of the cells, boss. You get caught in the Ellis house, then it’s not exactly going to do your case much good, is it?’

‘Then I’ll make sure I don’t. Talking about getting caught, we should split up. Twinkle, I’ll take you up on two of your offers. If you don’t mind, I will borrow your car and Archie can get you home. But I’ll also call on your
moral support
when it comes to getting some answers. In the meantime, I don’t want either of you to be caught giving succour to a fugitive.’

I saw Twinkle reach for his notebook again and I spelled out ‘succour’ for him. When I asked, he confirmed with deep pride that he was indeed
on the telephone
, and I got a note of his number. I told Archie I would keep in touch too.

‘I’ll leave Collins the estate agent to your tender mercies,’ I said. ‘Twinkle, you know where to find me. Let me know what you get out of him.’

‘What are you going to do in the meantime?’ asked Archie.

‘In the meantime? I’ve got to see a woman about a dog.’

Old Charlie Darwin would probably have some naturally selective reason for the way we instinctively hate the ugly. Me, I always thought that ugliness tended to come in two types: the pitiable kind, where you sympathized with the person in much the same way you would a three-legged dog, and where you consoled yourself that they were most probably ‘lovely on the inside’; and then there was the loathsome ugly, where you sensed that the homeliness on the outside was merely the reflection of their inner obnoxiousness.

Maisie McCardle’s ugliness was definitely of the latter kind. Her too-long face was all points and angles. If she had painted it green, she could easily have had a career chasing Dorothy and Toto around Oz.

When she opened the door to scowl at me, the odious little pug who had taken a leak against my car appeared at her ankles, yapping shrilly. It screwed up its ugly little face too, and I wondered if they spent the long winter evenings together in front of the fire, scowling at each other.

This was going to be fun.

Her scowl soon evaporated and was replaced by an expression of alarm when she recognized me as the suspicious-looking character she had ratted on to the police. I had taken certain
precautions before coming up: going back to the barge and changing out of the gear McBride had brought me and back into one of my more usual suits, hat and coat from my water-borne store-room. I had also, reluctantly, shaved off my incipient moustache. Maisie McCardle was clearly observant in a way that made the average eagle seem myopic and I didn’t want her to pass on to the police any changes in my appearance. I would start again on the moustache the next day. In fact, it would be good for the police to hear that I had made no attempt to change my look. I had also made sure that I parked Twinkle’s car out of sight. I was aided in my mission by the fact that, as far as I could see, there had still been no mention in the papers of the police looking for me.

‘Mrs McCardle?’ I said. ‘Please don’t be alarmed. My name is Lennox and I am an enquiry agent.’ I handed her my card. ‘I am working on the same case as the police. I’m afraid I was the person who found poor Mr and Mrs Dewar’s suicide.’ I knew that the police would not have offered an opinion on the nature of the deaths and chucking in the word ‘suicide’ probably took the gleam off my axe-murderer’s axe for her. She hadn’t slammed shut the door, so I kept talking. ‘I know you mentioned my being here before to Inspector Dunlop and Chief Inspector Ferguson, but I can assure you I am working
with
the police on this.’

Maisie eyed suspiciously first my card and then me. She was either weighing up my authenticity or checking to see if I was wearing ruby slippers.

‘Although I am helping the police in trying to get to the bottom of why Mr Dewar did what he did,’ I said, pressing on, ‘there really was no connection between the tragedy at the Dewars and the case I was investigating originally, which concerned your other neighbour, Mr Lang.’

I let it hang there. My experience had been that the naturally observant were usually the pathologically inquisitive, and I could see that her interest had been piqued.

‘Mr Lang?’

‘Yes. Mr Frank Lang. I was engaged by his employers to make sure nothing untoward has befallen him. You see, Mr Lang has been missing for some weeks now.’ I fidgeted theatrically on the doorstep, as if performing on too small a stage. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Mrs McCardle, but Chief Inspector Ferguson told me what a wonderful eye witness you were – that nothing gets by you – so I thought you would be able to help. I wonder if I may …?’ I nodded in the direction of the hall behind her. Her eyes narrowed for a moment, but the flattery and her curiosity got the better of her caution.