The Long Glasgow Kiss

‘I’ll ’phone back at ten.’ I hung up. I decided to make a point of putting a face to the voice that had been at the other end of the line. I had already decided I would dislike Humphrey Whithorn’s face as soon as I saw it.

I walked back to where I had parked. I didn’t pay much attention to the Wolseley parked three cars back from my Atlantic until an unnecessarily large man in a formless raincoat and a too-small trilby planted himself on the pavement, squarely in my path. Another appeared at my side, smaller but still robust, and with the kind of face you would avoid looking at in a bar. Or anywhere else. I felt the second guy’s firm grip on my upper arm, just above the elbow. I could tell right away that these were no policemen. They were somebody’s goons.

‘Okay, Lennox,’ said the raincoat. ‘Mr Costello wants to see you. Now.’

I felt relief. Of sorts. Having to deal with any muscle is tiresome, but normally compliance comes from knowing who’s behind the muscle. Costello didn’t carry that kind of weight and I made a bored, irritated face.

‘Does he now?’ I said. For some reason, the image of Barnier’s homely, insistent little secretary came to my mind and I decided to follow her example. ‘I’m a busy kind of guy. Tell Costello to make an appointment.’

The fingers around my arm tightened and I turned to the second guy and smiled. They were hard men. Men who were in the business of hurting. But Jimmy Costello was not famed as a criminal mastermind and his lack of genius extended to the quality of goon he recruited. They had probably been following me all day and I wouldn’t have spotted them in the rain. There had been a dozen suitable places for them to have made their move on me. This was not one of them. A stupid choice of place to pick me up off the street. We were in the middle of the business district, admittedly at eight forty-five in the evening, but outside a well-respected eatery. And there was a district police station two blocks away. No, this was as dumb a choice as they could have made and the ideal place for me to kick off. But they were too stupid to realize it and the goon with the vice grip on my arm looked as sure of himself as his partner did.

‘Now,’ he said with a vicious-looking grin. ‘Are you going to come quiet or come the cunt?’

There was something I found out about myself during the war. It was something I could have done with not finding out for the rest of my life. Something ugly and dark. I lay awake at nights wondering if the war had created it, or if it had been there all the time and it might never have been awoken if the war hadn’t come along. As I stood there with two violent thugs trying to coerce me into a car, I felt it begin to stir deep inside; and greet me as an old friend.

‘Listen, guys,’ I said in a friendly voice, but quiet. Quiet so they had to strain to hear it. ‘I’m not coming with you. And if you try to make me, someone’s going to get hurt. Tell Costello if he wants to see me, he can pick up the ’phone like everybody else. If he’s peeved because I smacked his kid about, then tell him sorry … but I don’t give a crap.’

‘Whadyou say?’ The big guy in the raincoat frowned and leaned forward, which is what I wanted him to do. I only had one arm free so I swung a kick at the spot on his raincoat where I reckoned he kept the family jewels. My reckoning was dead on and he folded. The guy with my arm yanked me backwards, again what I expected him to do. I went with it. Keeping your distance from your attacker isn’t always the best strategy in a street fight and I rammed into him, bending him backwards onto the bonnet of the Wolseley. I fell on top of him, face-to-face. He got a punch in and jarred my head with it, making black and white sparks dance for a split second across my vision. With my free hand, I had grabbed my hat as it came off from the punch. I pushed it into and over his face, covering his eyes and pulling it away just as my brow slammed into his nose.

I was just mentally complimenting myself on my excellent management of the situation when a mule kicked me to the right of my spine, just above the kidney. I heard two lungfuls of air pulse out of me and I was in that panicked, winded place where filling your body with oxygen fills the universe. The big guy in the raincoat who had kicked me grabbed my arms and pulled me back from his bonnet-sprawled partner. I was still struggling to catch a breath but knew if I didn’t pull myself together I was in for a kicking. Suddenly the big guy let go of me and I leaned forward, my hands resting on my knees, and pulled long deep breaths into my emptied lungs. I turned to see something that didn’t make any sense, then turned my attention back to my bloody-faced chum who was pulling himself up from the bonnet of the Wolseley. I now knew I only need concern myself with him: the thing that hadn’t made sense when I had turned around was seeing Alain Barnier behind me, very efficiently beating the crap out of the rain-coated thug.