The Long Glasgow Kiss

It took me only a couple of minutes to get to the Merchants’ Carvery in the city’s business district. It meant that I was early and I decided to wait in the car until just before eight. The Merchants’ Carvery was Glasgow’s attempt at class: it sat looking out over a square of park in the middle of a grid of Georgian and Victorian terraces. As the Carvery’s name suggested, the city’s wealthy traders and industrialists had once occupied the surrounding houses; now most had been converted into offices. Sitting parked outside, I made a little wager with myself that I would be able to pick out Barnier when he arrived. As it turned out, the only people I saw going into the restaurant was a middle-aged couple. Both dressed in tweed.

The Merchants’ Carvery was one of those places designed, or more correctly decorated and furnished, to intimidate. A place you were meant to feel out of place. To me, it was overdone; way overdone. The plush red leather of the booths was just that little bit too plush and much too red. If the Carvery had been in Edinburgh, it wouldn’t have been quite so overdone.

I went in and handed my hat over again, this time to an attendant in a white waist-length jacket and pillbox cap. He was, without doubt, the most geriatric bellboy I’d ever seen and I worried that he would buckle under the weight of my fedora. I told him I was there to meet with Mr Barnier and he nodded towards a tall man standing at the bar with his back to me. It was going to take us an age to cross the lounge so I thanked my elderly hop and gave him a two-shilling tip: I reckoned that the weight of half-a-crown would tip him in more ways than intended.

‘Monsieur Barnier?’ I asked the man’s back and he turned to face me. Alain Barnier was not what I had expected. For a start he was tall and light-haired, not quite blond, with greenish eyes. To me he looked more like a Scandinavian or German than a Southern Frenchman. His skin tone wasn’t dark either, although I knew he had lived in Glasgow for at least a couple of years; but there again, no one could be as pale as a Glaswegian. Scots were the whitest people on the planet; and Glaswegians came in pale blue tints, except for those who had been burned scarlet by unaccustomed exposure to the big fiery ball in the sky that had, until a couple of hours ago, made a mysterious appearance that summer. Barnier was a striking man, handsome, with deep creases under his eyes that suggested a lot of smiling, but there was something a little cruel in his features. I estimated his age to be about forty.

Other than his slightly golden skin tone, there were a couple of other things that gave Barnier away as a foreigner. His clothes were expensive but not showy. And not tweed. His suit was extremely well-tailored in a pale grey, lightweight flannel, run through with a faint white pinstripe. It didn’t look like a British cut. Added to that, he was immaculately groomed and wore a neatly trimmed moustache and goatee beard that gave a point to his chin. My first thought was of a Cardin-coutured fourth Musketeer.

‘My name is Lennox, M. Barnier,’ I said in French. ‘We spoke on the telephone this afternoon.’

‘I was waiting for you. Drink?’ He beckoned to the barman with a casual authority that Scots find difficult. ‘Two cognacs,’ he said in English.

‘Please …’ he said, reverting to his native tongue and indicating one of the plush leather booths at the back of the lounge bar. We sat down. ‘You speak French very well, M. Lennox. But, if you don’t mind me saying so, you have a strong accent. And you speak slowly, like a Breton. I take it you’re Canadian?’

‘Yes. New Brunswick. The only officially bi-lingual province in Canada,’ I said, and was surprised at the pride in my voice.

‘But you’re not a Francophone yourself?’

‘That obvious?’

Barnier shrugged and made a face. He was French. I expected it. ‘No … not particularly. But you have a strong accent. I assumed English was your first language.’

‘Where are you from yourself, M. Barnier?’

The drinks arrived. ‘Toulon. Well, Marseille originally, then Toulon.’

I sipped the cognac and felt something warm and golden infuse itself into my chest.

‘Good, no?’ he asked. A smile deepened the creases around the eyes. ‘I supply it. It is one of the best.’

‘It tastes it. I had some of the bourbon you supplied Jonny Cohen. That was excellent too.’

‘Ah, yes … you mentioned you knew M. Cohen …’ Barnier looked at me over the rim of his brandy glass. ‘By the way, you rather annoyed my Miss Minto.’

‘Really?’ I said, raising my eyebrows and trying to look as innocent as I had been at sixteen when my father had interrogated me about some missing cigarettes and whisky. ‘We seemed to be getting on so well. I learned a new word – key lan – or is it two words?’

There was something in the mention that stung Barnier. He quickly hid it. ‘I can’t have you upsetting her. Miss Minto is a very … determined lady who is essential to the efficient running of the office.’