The Long Glasgow Kiss

When I walked in I was greeted by a secretary who I guessed hadn’t been hired for her shorthand skills. Her hair was the kind of blonde that comes out of a bottle and her figure was the kind that comes out of a teenager’s wet dream. She parted crimson lips and flashed white teeth at me and showed me into the inner office.

Jack Collins sat behind a desk and a dense screen of blue-grey cigarette haze. When I went in, he had been running a finger down a ledger column and yanking at the crank handle of an adding machine. He was in shirtsleeves, his cuffs kept clear of ink and paper by arm garters positioned above his elbows and just beneath his biceps. Seeing Jack Collins close confirmed my first impression of him: he was smooth, expensively tailored, and groomed to an exceptional degree for a city where panache was defined by beating the coal dust from your flat cap before you took a girl up a darkened alley. He was a lean man, his face long, and his features elegant if a little too fine. His thick black hair was immaculately combed back from a broad, tanned brow, and he sported a pencil moustache that was so neat that he must have trimmed it on the hour.

‘Someone to see you, Jacky,’ said the blonde secretary over my shoulder.

‘Senga,’ he said wearily, looking past me. ‘How many times have I told you to get their names first?’

‘I’m Lennox,’ I said helpfully.

‘I know,’ he replied, looking back to ‘Senga’ and making an impatient gesture of dismissal. ‘It’s okay, you go back to whatever it is you have to do. Close the door behind you.’

‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘I’m training her up at the moment.’

‘I can imagine that would be taxing,’ I said, and sat down opposite him. He stubbed out a cigarette and lit another immediately. ‘Sorry,’ he said, and pushed the packet towards me. ‘Help yourself.’

‘No thanks,’ I said, and took my cigarette case out and lit one of my own. ‘I don’t smoke filters. They’re French, aren’t they?’ I nodded to the ashtray bristling with filter stubs. Each had two bands of gold around them.

‘Yes. Montpelliers. I don’t usually smoke them but I got a job lot from an importer friend of mine. You’re the chap who’s been seeing Lorna, aren’t you?’

‘Your half-sister … yes.’

He stared evenly at me. Cool and unruffled. ‘You know about that?’

‘That you’re Small Change MacFarlane’s son? I’m sorry, but it’s not the big secret you think it is. Half of Glasgow knows.’

‘I see. What can I do for you, Mr Lennox?’ Still relaxed. Collins was either extremely cool or he had been expecting my visit.

‘I’ve been looking into a few things concerning Bobby Kirkcaldy. I thought you might be able to cast some light on them.’

‘Really? Why me?’

‘You know something, Jack … Do you mind if I call you Jack? You know something, Jack, I’m quite a philosophical cove. I reflect on the nature of things. One of the things I’ve been reflecting on is the nature of coincidences.’

‘Oh?’ He put on an unimpressed act. Or maybe it wasn’t an act.

‘Yeah … Just like nature abhors a vacuum, I abhor a coincidence,’ I said.

‘What kind of coincidence do you have in mind?’

‘Well, for a start, you are the semi-secret and completely illegitimate son of Small Change MacFarlane. The population of this city is over two million, yet your father’s murderer just happens to train in the gym downstairs. In fact, his defence is based on the claim that he got an anonymous telephone call to the only place with a ’phone where he could be reached. In the gym downstairs. And then there’s Bobby Kirkcaldy, who’s famous for his rigorous training regimen. And where does he train? In the gym downstairs. Then, of course, there’s the fact that every bookie in town is smarting because Bobby Kirkcaldy folded in the middle of a fight that he was expected to win easily. Every bookie, that is, except you.’

‘I’m not a bookmaker.’

‘Not officially, but you and Small Change had a real MacFarlane and Son thing going. I’m guessing that you’ve taken over his book. That’s why there was no paperwork worth a damn for the police to find. My God, you must have moved quickly. And I have to say your grief over your father didn’t impede your business acumen, did it?’

‘You’re becoming very offensive, Mr Lennox. And what makes you think that I didn’t lose out? Everybody expected Bobby Kirkcaldy to walk that fight.’

‘A friend of mine seemed to think that there was someone in the know. Someone who didn’t so much hedge his bets as get Capability Brown to landscape them.’

‘You shouldn’t believe everything Tony the Pole tells you,’ said Collins with a sneer. He was a bright boy, right enough.

‘I don’t understand everything that Tony the Pole tells me. And before you go pointing fingers, I did a lot of asking about and everyone says it was you who scooped on the fight. There are a lot of fingers pointing at you.’

‘What is it you want from me, Lennox?’ He leaned back in the chair, elbows resting on the arms, slender fingers interlocked beneath his chin. A pose of contrived concentration.