The Long Glasgow Kiss

I had encountered the fractured White family when looking for a place to stay. Mrs White had advertised the place in the Glasgow Herald. With only a Navy widow’s pension to survive on, Fiona White had come up with a drastic but practical solution: she had the upstairs of the house converted into a more or less self-contained flat and put it up for rent, with an insistence that the successful tenant be able to display exceptional references. My references had been the most exceptional you could buy from a forger and Mrs White had accepted me. What I couldn’t quite work out was why she had let me stay, given that I had had a couple of late night visits from the local constabulary over the last couple of years. But, there again, the place wasn’t cheap and I was sedulously prompt with the rent each week. The truth was that I could have easily moved on to a better place, but I had become fond of the little White family. Anyone who knew me wouldn’t have been at all surprised that my first thought when I had met the pretty young widow was that maybe I could console her. And she was the type of woman you really wanted to console. But, as time went on, something unpleasantly chivalrous had crept unbidden into my attitude towards her and I felt somewhat protective of the sad little family downstairs.

There was a wall ’phone on the stairs that we both shared and when I got back to my digs I ’phoned Lorna. I had hoped to satisfy her with a call but she was insistent that I come round.

Doing the gentlemanly thing was getting to be a bad habit and I drove across to Pollokshields. When I arrived at the house, I was surprised to find my Hebridean chum back on guard duty at the front door, ‘chust forr the laydees peace hoff mind’ he sang reassuringly to me.

I sat between Lorna and Maggie, the atmosphere so charged that I expected to be struck by lightning at any time. I comforted. I soothed. I made my talk as small as it was possible to make it, avoiding anything that might remind us all that we were just twenty-four hours on from a brutal murder. Maggie made some tea and offered me a cigarette from a hundred-box on the coffee table. I noticed the brand was Four Square, made by Dobie of Paisley.

‘That’s not what you were smoking the other night,’ I said. ‘The fancy cork tips.’

‘Oh those?’ She shrugged. ‘Jimmy got me them. It’s not my usual brand.’

Reaching into my jacket pocket, I pulled out the stub I’d lifted from Sammy Pollock’s hall stand ashtray. I held it out to Maggie so she could see the twin gold bands around the filter. She frowned.

‘That’s them all right. Where d’you get that?’

‘It’s a case I’m working on. Missing person.’

‘Is the missing person French?’

‘Not that I’m aware. Why do you ask that?’

‘Montpellier, that’s the brand. French. Jimmy got half a dozen packets from someone. Probably smuggled. Maybe that’s why you’ve found someone else smoking them. Maybe someone’s smuggled a lorry load in.’

‘Could be.’ I turned to Lorna. ‘Have the police got any news? Have they said anything about the investigation?’

‘Superintendent McNab has been back,’ she said. Her eyelids looked heavy and settled-in grief had dulled her expression. ‘He asked some more questions.’

‘What kind of questions?’

‘Who Dad had seen over the last few weeks. If anything unusual happened.’

I nodded. Willie Sneddon was right to keep his meeting and dealings with Small Change quiet. ‘And did anything unusual happen recently?’

‘No.’ It was Maggie who answered. ‘Not that either of us knew about. But Jimmy played his cards close to his chest. He kept anything to do with business to himself.’ She paused for a moment. ‘There was only one thing … not worth mentioning…’

‘Go on …’

‘Someone left a box for him. A delivery.’

‘I remember that,’ said Lorna, frowning. ‘It was strange. A wooden box with nothing in it but a couple of sticks and a ball of wool.’

‘Wool?’

‘Yes,’ said Lorna. ‘Red and white wool all bound up together.’

‘Doesn’t sound significant,’ I said. ‘Did the police go through your father’s stuff again? I mean in his office?’

‘No. Why?’

‘I just wondered.’ I shrugged and sipped my tea. ‘Did your dad keep an appointment book at home?’

‘Why are you asking?’ It was Maggie who cut in, more than a hint of suspicion in her voice. The thing about suspicion is that it can be infectious and I found myself wondering why she felt the need to be cautious.

‘Like I said to you before, the police aren’t the most imaginative bunch. Maybe they didn’t think to check for an appointment book at his home.’

‘Jimmy didn’t need one,’ said Maggie. ‘He kept everything up here …’ She tapped a demi-waved temple. ‘He didn’t need an appointment book.’

‘That’s what I thought … Never mind.’

‘Do you think it would help?’ asked Lorna, without any of her stepmother’s suspicion.

‘Maybe. At least we would know who he had seen on the day he died.’ I decided to drop it. Maybe Maggie’s answer would be enough to get Sneddon off my back.