The Long Glasgow Kiss

We walked into the bar. It was noisy and it stank. The air was thick with cigarette smoke, stale sweat and whisky fumes. A woman with unnaturally black hair was making shrilly unpleasant sounds in the corner, accompanied by an out-of-tune piano. The Empire Bar was the kind of place you would have described as spit-and-sawdust; if they had bothered with the sawdust. I allowed myself to be guided to a corner table, guessing that Prince Rainier and Grace Kelly wouldn’t be waiting for me there. They weren’t: a short, fattish man in an expensive but ill-fitting suit was at the table, looking at me glumly as I approached with my escort. He had thick Irish-black hair that needed a cut and a pencil-moustache over a slack, ugly mouth.

‘I believe you wanted to speak with me,’ I said without a smile and sat down without being asked. Unlike Sneddon, Cohen or Murphy, Jimmy Costello didn’t warrant a respectful tone. But, there again, it was exactly that kind of attitude that had gotten me into some of my stickier moments over the last couple of years.

‘You want a drink?’ Costello asked, his tone neutral.

‘Whisky.’

Costello nodded to my dark-haired abductor, who headed off through the fug and throng to the bar, leaving us alone. Maybe this wasn’t going to be the adventure I thought it would be. The singer over by the piano seemed to enter a paroxysm of passion. She was a thick-bodied woman in her fifties, about as curvaceous as a beer barrel, with a round, white face, small eyes, hair that was too dark and too long and lips that were too red. She was clearly a singer of the traditional sort, insofar as she was following the age-old Glasgow tradition of adding an extra syllable to every lyric and then singing them through her nose. A Glasgow pub is the place to be if you have an aversion to consonants. The singer informed me and anyone else within a five-mile radius that – apparently – the pipes, the pipes were calling Dhmnnaa-anny Bhee-hoy.

My escort arrived with two whiskies and a pint of stout, then left us alone again.

‘You gave my boy Paul a hiding,’ said Costello. No anger. He sipped his stout and looked at me with little interest.

‘He asked for it, Jimmy. He went for a blade. Is this what this is all about?’

‘No. And that’s not why I sent Tony and Joe to pick you up the other day either. All of that shite … it was unnecessary.’

‘Like I told your monkeys, if you want to talk to me, pick up a ’phone.’

‘Listen, Lennox, don’t fuck about with me. I’m letting the thing with Paul go. I’m letting the thing with Tony and Joe go… and believe me, Tony and Joe don’t want it let go … So stop talking to me like I’m a piece of shite. You’ve made it clear what you think of me, but you’re on my ground now. I could hand you over to the boys and send you home with your nose out of joint.’

I was about to answer when the singer in the corner reached new heights of volume and tunelessness. ‘Dhmnnaaany Beh-ho-oy… dnhe beh-ipes, dnhe beh-ipes harr caw-haw-hing …’

‘You could try,’ I said. ‘I’m working for Willie Sneddon. And that’s one nose you don’t want to put out of joint. So let’s cut the crap. What do you want?’

‘Why did you beat up Paul?’

‘I thought this wasn’t about that.’

‘It isn’t. Not directly. I just need to know why you and him had words. Was it about this Gainsborough boy?’

‘Sammy Pollock is his real name. Yes it was, as a matter of fact.’

‘He’s missing?’

‘Yes.’

‘So’s Paul.’

There was a moment’s silence. Or there would have been if Govan’s answer to Maria Callas hadn’t continued to pipe up.

‘Fuh-hum glemn to glemn … hend de-hown dnhe mowmn-teh-ain say-hide … dnhe suhmner his ge-hon, hend hall dnhe flouw-wurs fawhhaw-ing …’

‘What do you mean missing?’ I asked.

‘What the fuck do you think I mean? He’s missing. He’s not around and no one’s seen him for three days.’

‘And you think I’ve got something to do with that?’

‘No. That’s not why you’re here. I want you to find him.’

‘I’m busy.’

‘Aye … and one of the things you is busy with is finding the Gainsborough boy. It’s all connected. Paul was going around with him. They had big ideas. Fuck knows what, but they had big ideas.’ Costello’s ugly mouth drooped even further beneath the moustache. ‘That’s all Paul has … is big ideas. No fucking guts or brains to make anything of them ideas.’

I sipped the whisky. In comparison, the stuff they had served at Sneddon’s pikey fight was nectar.

‘Diss heyoo, diss heyoo ewho mnuss ge-ho, hend heye mnuss stuhhay …’

‘And you have no idea where he’s disappeared to or why?’ I asked.

Costello shook a sullen, ugly head.

‘The two monkeys who brought me here … what are their names?’

‘What?’ Costello looked confused. ‘The dark-haired one is called Skelly. His pal is called Young. Why?’