The Long Glasgow Kiss

I muttered a curse when I saw he had noticed my approach and was vaguely wafting a hand about to wave me down. It’s a rule: you don’t look too desperate for another man’s help; you’re signalling in another member of the same auto club to provide the assistance that you would provide him, in the same circumstances.

Despite my efforts to the contrary, I am a Canadian. That means, no matter how hard I had tried to cure myself of it, I suffer from the congenital, chronic and truly Canadian ailment of politeness. I may have gotten lippy with gangsters and cops, slapped the odd uppity hooligan, and I may have fornicated, cursed and sworn on occasion, sometimes the same occasion; but I had helped so many little old ladies across the street that the Boy Scouts had taken out a contract on me.

This guy clearly needed help. I had to stop to help him. I was being so Canadian that it didn’t occur to me for a second that this could have been a more discreet and subtle attempt by Jimmy Costello at abduction. There again, discreet and subtle were not traits you associated with Costello.

‘Having trouble?’ I asked as I pulled up next to him and rolled down the window.

He smiled. ‘Thanks for stopping.’ He opened the door of the Atlantic and dropped into the passenger seat before I could say anything. It was then I noticed the small crescent-shaped scar on his head. I was doing a split-second inventory in my head, trying to remember where I’d filed who had mentioned a fiveeight man with dark hair and a crescent-shaped scar on his forehead, when he produced a gun from his trouser pocket. I recognized it as a Webley point-three-two Pocket Hammerless. The youngest it could have been was 1916. It could have dated back to the turn-of-the century.

‘This is some kind of joke, right?’ I said, with a derisive eyebrow raised at the revolver. But at the same time I was assessing my chances of coshing him with the flat, spring-handled blackjack I had in my inside jacket pocket. When people point guns at me, I get tetchy. I decided it was best to go along with my new chum for the moment. There would be time to discuss my attitude towards being held at gunpoint. Later.

‘There’s nothing wrong with this gun, pal.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with my eighty-two-year-old great-uncle Frank, but I wouldn’t bring him along on an abduction.’

‘Trust me, Lennox. This Webley fires just fine.’

‘I’m sure it did when Mata Hari used it to scare off the Kaiser when he was chasing her around a banquet table. Where are you taking me? An antiques fair?’

The dark-haired goon sighed. ‘Listen, Lennox, let’s not put it to the test. Mr Costello wants to talk to you and the last time you got an invite you cut up rough.’ He was better spoken than the average Glaswegian. He was also a cool enough customer. My efforts to rile him and stall until another car came along weren’t working. I could see over his shoulder that a second goon had come out of hiding and was dropping the hood on the Zephyr Six.

‘What’s your pal got? A flintlock blunderbuss?’ I said, cracking the joke with a smile to hide the fact that I was weighing up my chances of breaking his neck before he could pull the trigger.

‘He’s going to follow us. You can drive out to the pub to meet Mr Costello. Mr Costello told me to tell you to take it easy. There’s no need to kick up a fuss. You got all heated up and messed up Tony and Joe and it was all unnecessary. This isn’t what you think.’ He gave an angled nod to indicate the road ahead. ‘Let’s go.’

I looked at the gun. It could still do the job, right enough. A bullet is a bullet, even if firing it would probably take off a couple of his fingers. ‘So you’re telling me this isn’t all about Paul Costello?’

‘You’ll have to talk to Mr Costello about that, but no. Or not in the way you think.’

‘Okay,’ I said and sighed. ‘Where to? The Riviera Club?’

‘No …’ My passenger grinned at me; his teeth were nicotine yellow and pitted. ‘We’re to take you out to the Empire. Just for a talk, like. Nothing heavy. So don’t make trouble.’

‘Me?’ I said in an offended tone. ‘I’m like Rab Butler … I’m all for consensus.’

My passenger directed me across the Clyde and we drove into Govan. Black tenements loomed on either side and he told me to park outside a public house emblazoned with a sign that declared this was the Empire Bar. The sun was now hiding behind the tenements and dressed in a winding-sheet of thin grey cloud. But gloom was something you associated with Govan.

‘Oh look,’ I said cheerily as we got out. ‘The sun is setting on the Empire.’ My companion replied by jerking his head towards the bar. The gun was pocketed now but he rested his hand in the same pocket. The Ford Zephyr Six pulled up behind us and the second guy got out. He was about an inch shorter than his colleague, with hair the colour of dirty sand. Both of them were just the way Sheila Gainsborough had described them.