The Long Glasgow Kiss

I was tired and I was aching but I had three ’phone calls to make. It was getting dark, darker than it had been for weeks, and there was something in the late evening air that spoke of a colder season on its way. I parked by the side of the Clyde and took the shattered jade demon out of the trunk and carried it down to the water’s edge. I took a couple of the waxed-paper bricks out and held them, one in each hand. I was always looking for a way of making a buck. Here, in my hands, I had an entire retirement fund. I guessed I would even get a tidy finder’s fee if I returned the narcotics to Largo. I also knew that it was only a matter of time before Kirkcaldy’s predictions came true and the streets of Glasgow would be awash with the stuff. But there was some money that was just too dirty, even for me. I took my lock-knife from my pocket and, one by one, cut open the bricks and shook out great clouds of white powder. I watched the clouds of white powder drift away on the evening breeze, and the wrappers as they drifted away on the dark, sinewy surface of the water.

I made my calls from a telephone box on the corner of Buchanan Street. The first was to someone everybody seemed to think of as a phantom: I told John Largo that he had an hour before I told Dex Devereaux where to find him. Without going into the specifics, I told him that all accounts had been set straight and he had no scores left to settle in Glasgow. I recommended an immediate change of climate. Probably somewhere sunny.

The second call was to Jock Ferguson at home. I told him to meet Dex Devereaux at his hotel in half an hour and that it would mean he would get the John Largo collar.

My third call was brief and to the point. I tried ringing Jimmy Costello at the Empire Bar. He wasn’t there but I got him at the Riviera Club. He asked me impatiently what I wanted. I understood his impatience: he had asked me to find his son for him and he had turned up dead. I was making a habit of it.

‘Are Skelly and Young there?’ I asked.

‘Aye, so fucking what?’

‘They’re there right now?’

‘Aye …’ His impatience grew. ‘I’m looking right at them.’

‘Then you’re looking right at the men who killed Paul. Or at least gift-wrapped him for someone else to kill. And don’t worry, all other accounts have been settled.’

‘If you’re fucking lying …’

‘I’m not. Skelly and Young stitched up Paul and Sammy Pollock for money. That’s a fact. What you do with that fact is up to you.’

There was a pause at the other end of the line. I could hear a band in the background. The melted-together sounds of many people talking and drinking.

‘I’ll deal with it,’ said Costello, and I knew that he would. ‘Lennox?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Thanks.’

I was as good as my word to Largo and stood outside the Alpha Hotel for half an hour before I went in and asked for Dex Devereaux. The night porter had been very reluctant to let me in and even more reluctant to disturb Mr Devereaux.

‘It’s very important,’ I said and pushed a couple of pound notes into the pocket of his waistcoat. ‘Tell him I have the address he’s been looking for. Mr Largo’s address.’

I sat down and waited. It took less than ten minutes for a dishevelled Dex Devereaux to appear in the lobby. Dishevelled except his flat-top haircut, which looked as precision-engineered as ever. I handed him the note with the address.

‘You sure about this?’ He held up the note.

‘That’s him. That’s his address.’

I left Devereaux, passing a flustered Jock Ferguson as the night porter let me out and him in.

‘Dex’ll explain,’ I said elliptically. I was in an elliptical frame of mind. I had another call to make. The one I dreaded most. I got back in the Atlantic and drove out to the West End, to Sheila Gainsborough’s apartment.

*

It was two weeks later that I met John Largo. Dex Devereaux had been as good as his word and had paid me the thousand dollars for the information, but when they had arrived at Largo’s place, he had flown the coop. He must have been warned off, Jock Ferguson had said to me, without a hint of suspicion.

Largo was waiting for me, hanging back in the shadows, as I came out of the Horsehead Bar. He kept his hand in the patch pocket of his suit jacket and I suspected he was holding something more than his change. That was okay. I understood his caution.

‘I wanted to thank you,’ he said.

‘What … for turning you in?’

‘For giving me a chance. How did you find me?’

I took out my cigarette case and offered him one. He took it with his left hand, keeping his right in his pocket.

‘You’re too sentimental,’ I said. ‘I followed you to the Lyle Hill monument. I guessed there was some connection to the Maillé-Brézé. So I did some checking.’