‘Because Tam had been their real target and because of the games he and Frankie played with poor Wilma Marshall, Frankie had been pretending to be Tam that night and ended up getting the lead enema. Tam knew that whoever was after him, they were serious professionals. He was trying to prove that they’d got the right target and leave him alone. He obviously knew enough about me to guess that I would tell him to stuff his job and give him an excuse to jump me and take a hiding in front of a police audience.’
‘So who is it that’s after him? That’s what I’m paying you to find out.’
‘With the greatest respect you’re not paying me enough. These guys are real professionals, like I said. They gave my office a going over and you would hardly have noticed it. And the way they took out the first McGahern brother was slick. Funny thing is the second killing wasn’t. And the guys who jumped me in Argyle Street were more brawn than brains.’
‘You saying you don’t want the job any more?’
I sighed. I wished that I could say I didn’t. ‘No. The truth is that there’s a connection between this and something else I’m working on.’
‘Something I should know about?’
As I fed the pay ’phone with almost all of the change in my pocket, I related the whole story of John and Lillian Andrews to Sneddon. The only thing I had changed slightly in all I had told Sneddon was the chronology to disguise the fact that I hadn’t let on right away about Bobby’s splitting headache: if Sneddon thought that I hadn’t been delivering hot-off-the-press then I might have got a bit of a slap from a couple of his boys. Nothing to put me in hospital, but enough to make me less forgetful in future. And, of course, I thought it prudent not to mention my little bathtub windfall.
I actually felt better for going through the whole story. Saying it out loud even helped me see the whole thing more clearly. Again Sneddon stayed quiet other than the odd grunt throughout. I ended the conversation by retracting my declaration of independence. Maybe Twinkletoes would be useful to have on call. It was a call for help: I didn’t hold back on telling Sneddon about John Andrews warning me that I had been set up just like him. Sneddon could have gloated – I had been pretty self-righteous about my independence – but he didn’t.
‘I’ll put a couple of guys on your tail. Twinkletoes and another guy you don’t know. His name’s Semple.’
‘Is he more subtle than Twinkletoes?’
Sneddon laughed at his end of the line. ‘Naw. Not much. But he’s the kind of punter you want around if shite occurs.’
‘That’s what I need at the moment, to be honest. But tell them to stay in the background unless there’s trouble.’
‘I’ll fix it up.’
‘Okay, thanks,’ I said.
I was just about to hang up when Sneddon added: ‘By the way, what does he look like? Mr Morrison, I mean. I’ve never actually met him face-to-face.’
‘Oh… pretty much as you’d expect,’ I said. ‘Big. About six-three. Hard-looking bastard.’
‘Mmm,’ said Sneddon. ‘Figures.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
Sneddon was as good as his word. I turned in early that night and when I opened the curtains in my digs the next morning I saw a dark Austin 16HP, about seven or eight years old, parked on the street outside, about fifty yards up and on the other side of Great Western Road. One man behind the wheel. Of course it might not have been Sneddon’s men, but the vague feeling I had had over the few days before had suggested that if someone was following me, then they were too good for me to catch sight of.
After breakfast I drove west along Dumbarton Road and out of the city. The dark Austin 16HP dutifully followed. It only took me fifteen minutes to reach Levendale House. It was a vast place that had been designed and built as an expression of vast wealth and superiority. It had started life as a stately home: the kind of place you usually saw sitting in the heart of some majestic and beautiful Highland estate. Except it didn’t: it sat on the outskirts of Bishopbriggs.
War fucks everything up. More than that, it fucks people up. And that’s what Levendale House had become: a refuge for the seriously fucked up.
The funny thing about when the war was over was that everybody wanted to talk about it. Eulogize about it. And when they weren’t talking about it they were watching films about it, all of which seemed to star John Mills. It was as if there was some collective desire to convince each other that it had actually been a big adventure that brought everybody together and had brought the best out of even the worst.
Which was, of course, a crock of shit.
What people didn’t want to see was the shadow of misery the war had cast behind it: the tangle of damaged humans in its wake. But there were people who were prepared to look that truth in the face and deal with it every day. The people who worked at Levendale House looked after the broken bodies and broken minds of boys who had been thrown into the mincer and come back old men. Blind, crippled, mad.
The duty sister at Levendale, a tired-looking woman in her fifties, showed me into a bright day room with a view over the house’s vast gardens. I guessed she was the same sister I had spoken to on the telephone. She had asked me what my connection to the patient was and I had explained we had a friend, an old comrade, in common.
‘Did you know Billy before… well, before he was wounded?’ she asked with a concerned look. I got the feeling that her concern was as much for me as her patient.
‘No. As a matter of fact I didn’t. Like I said, we have a mutual friend who I’m trying to track down. We lost touch after the war. But I never met Pattison before.’
‘That’s maybe just as well. I think it’s best that I prepare you… Billy’s wounds were severe and extremely disfiguring.’
‘I’ve seen my share,’ I said.
The sister left me in the day room. I took in the huge windows opening out onto the gardens, the wood panelling, the ornate cornicing. The Victorian architect of this house had imagined a patrician family spending mornings in this room, secure in their place within the governing machinery of a British Empire on which the sun never set. But two wars had turned the world on its head and the Empire on its ass and now Levendale House and its elegant morning room were home to wounded ex-servicemen who had no place anywhere else.
The sister’s warning was not overdone. When she returned she pushed a wheelchair into the room. It was clear that Lance Corporal William Pattison and a grenade had encountered one another at very close quarters. What I couldn’t work out was which had taken the biggest bite out of the other. One side of Pattison’s face was gone and his mouth had been reduced to a lopsided, lipless slit. Whatever arts and crafts they encouraged here, playing the trumpet was not going to be an option for Pattison. Taut new skin had been stretched over where the right side of his jaw, his right cheek and eye should have been.
The left side of his face was pretty messed up too and gave the impression that someone had pushed all the features around and hadn’t managed to get them exactly where they had been before, added to which there had clearly been extensive burning to what was left of his face. Lon Chaney had nothing on this guy. The mask twisted into a grimace and I realized that Pattison was trying to smile at me.
‘I don’t get a lot of visitors,’ he said. You don’t say, I thought. His voice was wet, the words chewed in his half mouth. Like I had told the sister, I’d seen my share, but looking at Pattison made me feel pretty sick. I did my best to smile. I consoled myself with the fact that even if my smile was half-hearted, it was twice as good as Pattison would ever manage. ‘Sister says you know Tam.’
‘Our paths crossed,’ I said. I realized that Pattison didn’t know that McGahern had died. I decided not to say anything for the moment. I’d see how the conversation went. The poor fuck had enough to contend with.