The Long Glasgow Kiss

‘In cash terms it is. Heroin is worth a hundred-and-fifty bucks a gram. That works out at nearly five hundred dollars per pound weight. Each forty-pound shipment Largo sends over is worth twenty thousand bucks. I don’t know what that is in limey money. The exchange rate I got was two dollars eighty cents for a pound sterling so work it out yourself. This stuff is literally worth twice or three times its weight in gold.’

‘So it would be reasonably easy to hide it in other stuff and lose it in a ship’s cargo manifest,’ I said, imagining a small rank of ugly jade demons.

‘I told you that already. It’s like the A-bomb. Small package but big punch when it hits the streets. What you got, Lennox?’

‘Maybe nothing … A hunch … that’s all at the moment. But I think part of Largo’s last shipment was stolen by some of the local boys. Amateurs who are scared out of their wits. It means I might be able to give you Largo and some of the dope.’

‘Lennox, if you’re sure about this …’

‘I’m not, Dex. I’m not sure of anything. Like I say, a hunch, and it would waste your time chasing it. If it turns out to be worthwhile, I’ll hand over everything to you and you can lead the local police by the hand to make the arrests. But I need to get someone out of the picture first. Thanks for the gen, Dex. I’ll be in touch.’

I hung up before Devereaux could pressure me any more. I was putting a picture together in my head and I needed to concentrate. I also needed time to follow up a few things.

There was one thing getting in the way of everything: Small Change MacFarlane’s murder. It nagged and nagged at me and I couldn’t work out why. I had all but accused Maggie MacFarlane of a bedclothes entanglement with Jack Collins, but I had no reason to imagine it as anything more than that. I somehow couldn’t cast Jack Collins as a smitten Walter Neff, and Maggie, although she was a satisfying piece of art, was no Barbara Stanwyck. I had asked Lorna, as subtly as I could, about insurance policies and a will. Both Maggie and, to a much lesser extent Collins, would benefit right enough, but the lion’s share went to Lorna. Under Scottish Law, Maggie, as the surviving widow, would have a reasonable case in challenging MacFarlane’s provisions but, according to Lorna who certainly was not free from suspecting her stepmother, Maggie had made no suggestion that she would.

But it all still bothered me.

I’m paid to stick my nose in. More often than not, I’m paid to stick it in where noses aren’t welcome. My most irritating habit was sticking my nose in where it wasn’t welcome when I wasn’t being paid for it. When I walked into the Vinegarhill camp, my nose had never felt so shunned. I was seriously concerned that it was going to be put out of joint.

I had performed an act of faith parking the car in Molendinar Street, trying not to think what odds Tony the Pole would give me against it being in one piece, or even being there, when I got back to it. The traveller camp was set up on a barren, grubby walled square, entered by a double iron gate, permanently open, next to the sugar works. There were a handful of modern touring, car-drawn caravans, but the vast majority were the traditional vardo or burton wagons: painted, horse-drawn jobs with arched roofs, that went hand-in-hand with everybody’s romantic image of gypsies. The rough humps of bender tents domed between some of the wagons.

There was no enticing odour of simmering goulash or impassioned violin-playing to accompany my arrival. These travellers did not hail from the Hungarian plain or Carpathian mountains, unless the Hungarian plain and the Carpathian mountains had a view of Galway Bay. And the most romantic thing I saw were two unleashed mongrels copulating over by the works’ wall. A handful of kids without shoes rampaged about the camp, and I was aware that a couple of young men had moved in behind me as soon as I had entered the yard.

That would normally be my cue to reach for my sap but, in a place like this with people like these, it would have been an inadvisable move. A painfully inadvisable move. Instead, I would have to talk my way out of here, like the cavalry captain with the white flag sent into the Indian encampment to parley. I strode across to where an older man leaned against a wagon, smoking a pipe. As I did so I passed a vardo wagon with the shutters drawn and deep crimson ribbons wrapped around the shafts and tongue.

‘I’m looking for Tommy Furie’s father,’ I said, when I reached the old man. ‘Could you tell me where I could find him?’

‘The Baro? What do you want with him? Who the fuck are you?’ The old man stopped leaning and took the pipe from his mouth. He spat a greeny viscous glob which splashed close to my shoe. Jimmy Stewart or Randolph Scott were never treated like this.