The Wind Chill Factor (22 page)

“Well, I could only speak from my own knowledge,” he went on, “and based on that I told your brother that the name of Cooper had never come up and, actually, why should it have? I am the managing director. Brendel would not be interested in remote ownership.”

“You satisfied Cyril on that point, then,” I said. The fire was baking my shins. I got up and stood with my back to the window. A brass ship’s clock struck eleven o’clock. The fog outside was thick as ever.

“Well, then, what about Brendel’s wife? Frau Brendel? Did you ever meet her?” My breath was short. I couldn’t help it.

Dumfries shook his head like a man trapped into a magical show. “Same damned thing your brother wanted to know. He was more urgent about it, though … yes, the answer is yes, I met her. The second time Brendel came to Glasgow, to visit the Trade Fair, I dined with them, just the three of us—that would be three days before your brother arrived. It was at Guy’s”—he recognized the curiosity in my face—“a very nice restaurant, Mr. Cooper, our best, actually. Brendel treated, too, and insisted on tying the business knot, so to speak. Altogether a memorable evening. Champagne … and, thank God, no Thistle and Heather whiskey.” He made a face.

“All right.” I interrupted him. “Tell me about Frau Brendel, whatever you remember about her.”

“Ah, Frau Brendel. Lise was her name. Lise. …”

I flinched inwardly at the name, the similarity to Lee. “She’s not an easy woman to forget, I assure you, Mr. Cooper, but rather difficult to describe. Quite exceedingly beautiful … but quite remote. Not in the least unfriendly, but, this sounds absurd to say after one meeting—I realize that—but she seemed a rather sad woman.” He caught my eye. “Do you know what I mean by that? Not sad-sad but not a happy person. She smiled and carried off all the amenities of entertaining one of her husband’s business friends, but when she didn’t think you were looking, when her face was in repose, there was a rather sorrowful expression.”

“Sorrowful?”

“She is a good deal younger than her husband, very solicitous toward him, more like a daughter, actually.” He leaned back and crossed his long, thin legs and blew a smoke ring which hung before him like a mobile before drifting away, disintegrating. “It’s rather awkward, saying this—”

“Yes?”

“Herr Brendel is a very elegant man, bits of jewelry, excessively well tailored, speaks in hushed little whispers—very effete—I don’t want to say more than that.”

“He’s a homosexual?”

“Well, not in so many words, no,” Dumfries said, clearing his throat. “But he blurs the line, if you know what I mean. He’s handsome, well preserved like a woman of a certain age. He has that kind of artificially tanned face. It looks creamed and kneaded and so extraordinarily immaculate—as if he’s had his eyebrows trimmed.” Dumfries laughed nervously. “What I mean to say is simply that that might explain Frau Brendel’s aura of loneliness, solemnity, the frown that comes over her in repose. It is as if she is anesthetized against laughter, the normal gaiety, silliness. She does not have an absolutely overwhelming sense of humor, you know.”

“You told my brother all this,” I said.

“Yes. He was very persistent and wanted to know where he could find Brendel—”

“And—where can I find Brendel?”

“I can only tell you what I told him. Namely, that Brendel’s home office is Munich. And I know that his firm also has offices in London. He was no longer here in Glasgow when your brother arrived.”

“Did Cyril say what he was going to do about Brendel? Did he tell you why he was so interested in this photograph?”

“No, and I didn’t pry into it. But it did make an impression on me, you know. I thought about it afterward and I wondered if it wasn’t the woman he was curious about—was it a former lover? Someone he knew or had known, who had meant a great deal to him.” He smiled calmly. “Which is about what I would conclude from your questions.” The smile faded. “But now, I don’t know. His death. Or the other people you say have been killed. Are they all connected? Is this photograph a part of it?” He picked it up again and seemed to be searching it for new meanings.

“Mr. Dumfries, you’ll probably be much better off not knowing.”

“About the firm,” he said. “Is there anything you want done right away?’

“Not a thing, Mr. Dumfries,” I said. “Carry on as you have been.”

“Well, take care of yourself. …” He hesitated, touched the knot of his tie.

“Do you know what Cyril did after he left you?”

“No, I never heard from him again, which wasn’t unusual. My reports were filed but there was no word from him personally and I simply assumed that he was wrapped up in something important.”

“Well, he was,” I said.

The newsroom of the Glasgow
Herald
was artificially bright and hot and smelled of sweat and typewriter ribbon. There was a steady clatter of typewriters, teletype machines, the throb of presses somewhere in the building’s innards. The floors were dirty, the desks old and battered, the conversation salty and harsh, and I felt as though I’d walked into a performance of
The Front Page.

Alistair Campbell was leaning back in a wooden swivel chair, staring morosely into an antique black typewriter. Smoke climbed steadily from his corncob. He was wearing heavy tweeds and a cardigan underneath his coat. His hair was wiry and red, his head tiny, his face crimson, his tie brown: he gave the immediate impression of having been left too long in the fog and rain, of having rusted.

There was a vague aroma of scotch in his vicinity, mixing with a peculiarly acrid tobacco. Apparently he was making good use of his Thistle and Heather.

“Mr. Campbell?”

He bit off a cough. “Aye, Campbell. And who might you be?” He cast a fisheye my way from beneath enormous bushy eyebrows which were sandy like his hair. Behind the smoke his eyes, tiny and nut-brown like glittering Spanish peanuts, flicked across me.

I told him my name and asked him if my brother had called on him.

“Cyril Cooper, eh? Yes, indeed, Mr. Cyril Cooper did call on me, all in a lather, said he’d come directly from Jack Dumfries. And I suppose you’ve done the same.”

“I have, yes. I want to ask you a few questions.”

“About the scotch deal with the Germans.” He nodded the little head and took the pipe out of his mouth, flashed yellow, stained teeth.

“Right again,” I said. “You have a good memory, Mr. Campbell.”

“I do have a good memory, laddie, right enough, but any bloody twit could remember what I’m remembering. This is definitely not the sort of thing you forget.” He shook his head and stood up, a diminutive man not five and a half feet tall. He brushed his hand across his freckled forehead and we shook hands.

“Can we talk, Mr. Campbell?”

“Ah, by all means.” He looked quickly about us. “But not here. I suggest we repair to a friendly and inconspicuous pub of my experience. Where we’re not so likely to be overheard. This place”—he gestured in disgust—“you never know who’s listening.”

He gave me the name of a pub which sounded vaguely familiar and told me directions. “And, a word of advice.” He fixed me with those bright ferret’s eyes. “Be careful, very careful. Take a taxi to your digs, lay low until it’s time.” He winked a beady eye, avuncular, and squeezed my arm. “Word to the wise, eh?”

Campbell’s melodramatic warning brought on a nervous stomach.

Be careful of what, for Christ’s sake? It sounded as if he knew how violent my life had become. Yet he obviously hadn’t known of Cyril’s death or any of what had happened.

Finally the hour came and I stood at the polished bar in the appointed tavern. I was a few minutes early, fussing with my pipe and matches, watching the door with its leaded glass when he came in. He stood inside the doorway, in the smoky haze, wearing the foulest mackintosh I’d ever seen. Recognizing me, he elbowed his way up to the bar and ordered two pints of bitter, knocked the bowl of the corncob into an ashtray.

He frowned and sucked foam from his bitter. At last he said: “The kind of thing I’ve got to tell you”—he shook his head—“I don’t know. …”

“Did you tell my brother what you’re going to tell me?”

“Aye, I did that—and come to think of it why don’t you ask him?” The eyes glittered cannily past the smoke.

“He’s dead. Murdered.”

He blanched, what had been pink about his face turned a dirty gray, his tongue wetted his cracked lips.

I explained briefly and he listened, subdued, as if a bad headache had got the better of him. I told him how I’d learned his name, why I’d come. He eventually recovered his composure and lit the corncob.

“It’s dangerous people you’re fussing with, laddie.” He kept on repeating it. “You’ve no idea. …” He stared at me across the pints of bitter and jerked his freckled hand at the doorway of the tavern as it swung open for a moment. Outside, the mist and fog were thick, erasing for a moment the dirt which was Glasgow’s trademark.

“It’s dangerous out there.” It was his theme. His bushy eyebrows drew together in a scowl. He sucked at the pipe. The tavern was thick with smoke and smelled of soaked Dundee woolens.

“Your brother,” he resumed, “wanted to know about Brendel, Frau Brendel, whatever I knew about them—and I knew a good deal, most of which I’d come upon by sheer chance, things I’d pieced together … things I’ve never mentioned to anyone but your brother.” He sniffed. “Mainly because I’d just figured them out. The stuff of nightmares, laddie.” He squinted up from his bitter. “But who’d believe me?”

He peered into the pipe’s dead ashes, drew the sleeve of his mac beneath his nose, and drained the last of his pint. He snuffled, cupped his hands around the hot stained bowl of his pipe. He spoke very quietly, staring straight ahead past the barman into the steamy mirror. “Now, listen carefully. Buy a ticket on the midnight train bound for London. Check out of your hotel and leave your bag at the railway station. Get yourself some supper, eat hearty. Then meet me and we’ll go over it.”

He gave me an address scribbled on a greasy scrap of paper: a tenement in the area called the Gorbals. He told me that Glaswegians insisted with perverse pride that it was the worst slum in all Europe. “Ten o’clock, exactly,” he said, getting his scarf straightened, turning his pipe upside down. He jammed his soiled tweed hat down on his ears, shoved the folded newspaper into the pocket of his mac, and disappeared in the crowd arguing soccer near the door, a small and wet and grim figure.

I finished my own pint feeling weighed down by the residue Campbell had left. “The stuff of nightmares,” he’d said. I swallowed the last bitterness and pushed past some brawny lads between me and the door. A hand grasped my arm, a voice spoke my name, “I say, Mr. Cooper—” It was MacDonald, the nervous man from the airplane the previous night. His red face, flushed in the heat, split with a Clara Bow smile. His eyes watered and he dug a fist at them like a small child.

“MacDonald,” I said. We shook hands.

“I see you took my advice.” He beamed.

“I beg your pardon?” His voice was too soft. Everything about him was soft but the wiry Harris tweed.

“This pub,” he said as I bent to listen. “The one I recommended and here you are, first night in Glasgow and we meet here. Join me in a pint before you go, won’t you? Can’t leave me to drink alone, can you?”

I was sweating and so was he. The mirror behind the bar was steamed. MacDonald’s head gleamed. We had the pint at the bar and I strained to hear: he seemed to be talking about insurance, the calls he’d made during that day. “And how’s your stay going?” He loosened his tie.

“All right, it’s all right.”

He offered up the bitter. “Well, happy days!” He smiled. “How did you find the pub, for heaven’s sake? It’s off the beaten track.”

“A friend brought me here.”

“The little reddish man? Looked like a monkey?”

“That’s the one.”

“Ah, well, then—he’s a good friend, bringing you here. I like the smell of the place.” He chatted on. We had another pint, drowning in our own sweat.

MacDonald finally bade me goodnight with the hope that we’d meet again what with things coming in threes and all.

The rain had turned to snow, had slowed traffic, and that was why I was late for Alistair Campbell. The taxi driver gave a curious snort. “Gorbals,” he muttered and pulled away from the curb, but immediately we were trapped in a series of minor traffic jams, wheels spinning on the cold wet streets. Two automobiles with dented fenders sat at odd angles to the curbstones. Without uttering a sound, he was regarding the inconvenience with a singularly dour Scot’s gaze.

Darkness overtook us. The buildings were dense and dark behind a thick curtain of snow.

“I have an appointment—” I began. My throat was sore from the abrupt change in climate, jet lag was creeping up on me with a mallet, I was cold and tired, and the bitter left a rank aftertaste.

“Aye, you’ve an appointment and you saw the traffic, as well, din’t you?” he said and I slumped back on the seat and shut up.

The tenement was indistinguishable from the rest. Standing on the sidewalk when the taxi was gone, I felt awesomely alone. It was dark, the snow hung like tinsel scarves in the dim glow of a streetlamp at the end of the block. There was no welcome here. My footsteps were muffled in the snowfall. It was colder.

The low doorway opened two steps up off the entryway, which smelled like a sewer, like urine and garbage and poverty. Water dripped at the end of the entryway. Odd, low shapes loomed in the courtyard beyond. I opened the door which squeaked shrilly in its warp and rust, went inside, and stood in the silent hallway. One bare light dangling from the tip of a frayed black cord burned halfway along the hall’s length. It swung in the draft I made. My shadow leaped, enormous, against the wall. Upstairs, rear, Campbell had said.

My flesh felt clammy inside my clothing and I had a stitch in my side, under my heart. I felt feverish behind my eyes.

I made my way in the half-light down the hall toward the stairway. Who lived in such a place? Whispers came, then silence, a horn honking, the squeal of a cat tracking in the new snow. I smelled cooking and beer and I went up the stairs, which creaked angrily.