The Long Glasgow Kiss

‘Could you ask the same people what significance a wooden box with pieces of wood and red and white wool might have as well? About nine inches square, I’d say.’ I described the box Lorna told me had been delivered to her father shortly before his death. ‘The wool was rolled up into a ball.’

‘Certainly, old man. In fact I’m just along the corridor from the very person. Can I call you back in ten minutes?’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘What about the description and drawing of the dragon I gave you?’

‘As I thought, it’s a Chinese Qilin.’

‘Actually, you’re wrong …’ I sounded rather smug. ‘Not a Qilin, it’s a Vietnamese Ky-lan, if my information’s correct.’

‘Probably is,’ said McClelland. If he was impressed with my knowledge of the finer points of oriental mythology, he hid it well. ‘It is a Sino-Vietnamese character. It looks fierce but it’s one of the good guys. It brings you luck and wealth and looks after the good and the honourable.’

‘I can tell,’ I said. ‘My luck’s been just dandy since I first saw him.’

As good as his word, Ian McClelland called back ten minutes later.

‘A Baro is a clan chieftain,’ he explained. ‘A real bigwig in Romany circles. And I hope you didn’t find that box you were talking about … the one with the wool in it.’

‘No I didn’t … why?’

‘It’s a bitchapen … it’s a kind of gift, but not the kind you want to get. Everyone in the gypsy tribe touches it and passes on everything ill or evil into it. It rids them of ill-fortune but whoever finds the bitchapen gets the lot.’

‘Thanks, Ian,’ I said. ‘That makes a lot of sense.’

I met up with Dex Devereaux for a drink in the bar of the Alpha Hotel. I told him about Sammy, Paul Costello, Claire Skinner, their little jade demon friend and the charming country retreat they all shared. But for the moment I kept my suspicions about Alain Barnier and his possible connection to John Largo quiet. I had one very good reason to keep quiet: the big American was a good guy, but, at the end of the day, he was a copper. The last thing I needed was the City of Glasgow Police connecting me with Barnier. They may not have been the Brains Trust, but it wouldn’t take much thinking to place me at the Barnier and Clement office on the night of the break-in with a sap in my hand and a semi-conscious Highlander at my feet.

Maybe they would pick up Billy the night watchman’s glasses for him. The City of Glasgow CID must have had a leading neurologist working for them: they had a remarkable record of suddenly curing witnesses of bad vision and unreliable memory.

After I said goodbye to Devereaux, I drove up to see Lorna and check how she was. Again, she responded as passionately as a bank manager and Maggie MacFarlane was positively frosty. There was no sign of Jack Collins when I called. Lorna made some tea and we sat in the lounge drinking it, me doing my best to say the right solicitous things and Lorna remaining sullen and unresponsive, her expression one of barely concealed resentment. She knew I was going through the motions and would have given anything for a way out. And we both knew that if the roles had been reversed she would have been the same. Neither of us had signed up for emotional involvement.

I spent the next two days keeping tabs on Alain Barnier. Because I had so many other things to juggle, including squeezing in a daily visit to Davey, it was an inter alia kind of surveillance and therefore pretty hit or miss.

What made following the Frenchman especially difficult was that he was hardly a creature of habit. On average he would only spend two or three hours of each day in the office, and not always the same two or three hours. The rest of the time he spent doing his rounds of clients, mainly hotels and restaurants. Wines and spirits were not his sole stock in trade: he also did a fair amount of visiting antique dealers, a handful in Glasgow and several more in Edinburgh.

Following Barnier was time-consuming and seemed largely pointless, but there was always the chance that he would lead me somewhere that would be one step closer to John Largo. Although, as Barnier went about his mundane daily business, I found myself doubting that this debonair, cultured and educated Frenchman could have anything to do with an international peddler of narcotics.

I was maybe getting cocky, but I actually took to parking the Atlantic under the same railway arch that I had used on the night of the break-in. From there I could see the gates into the bonded area and pick up Barnier’s Simca whenever he left his office. He emerged at three-thirty in the afternoon; leaving early was something he did quite often, squeezing in a few client calls before driving home to Langbank.