‘As I remember, you wanted to lean on him. Aye, that’s what you said… lean on him. I’ll ask you this once, Lennox. Did you kill him? And before you answer, I want you to know that I do understand how these things happen. Things get out of fucking hand.’
I bet you do, I thought.
‘So, Lennox, tell me the truth,’ Sneddon continued. ‘Did you do Parky?’
‘No. If you’d seen the state his face was in you would know that. I’m not that vicious.’
‘Okay, let me see your hands.’
I held them out and felt a chill travel from the chair and into my bowels. The knuckles of both hands were raw from my rapid descent down Parks’s plumbing.
‘Now listen,’ I said. ‘I had to make an escape from Parks’s place down the drainpipe. Plus I had to schlep through half the bushes in Kelvingrove Park. I didn’t get these from torturing Parks.’
Sneddon stared hard at me for a moment. I glanced over at Twinkletoes, who still wasn’t smiling. I involuntarily wriggled my toes in my shoes.
‘Okay,’ Sneddon said at last. ‘I believe you. You didn’t get those knuckles beating a man to death. Your hands would be all swoll up like fucking balloons.’
Thank God for the voice of experience, I thought.
‘That doesn’t mean you didn’t beat him to death with something else,’ said Sneddon. ‘But I believe you.’
I tried not to look too relieved.
‘Parky made me a lot of fucking money, Lennox. I am displeased about someone killing one of my best earners. Very fucking displeased.’
‘I’m sure you are.’
‘You’ve got a new job. Forget the McGahern thing. Find out who killed Parky. And find out quickly.’
‘To be honest,’ I said, ‘I don’t think I should forget the McGahern thing. I think Parks’s death is connected. Coincidences make me uncomfortable. I tend not to believe in them, having the logical view of the universe that I do.’
‘What coincidences?’
‘That we have a conversation and you tell Parks to expect me. I arrive and Parks is freshly dead. Coincidence one. Then I have to make a back-door run for it because the police have been tipped off at that exact moment. Coincidence two.’
‘So someone was trying to put you in the frame?’
‘Well, you felt you had to ask me if I’d killed him, didn’t you? What worries me is that they gave my name to the police. Or they’ll give it when they realize that I wasn’t caught at the scene.’
‘Wait a minute…’ Sneddon frowned. ‘What you fucking mean about Parks getting killed after I arrange a meeting for you? You saying I set it up?’
‘No… No, not at all.’ I held my hands up. ‘Parks could have told someone. Or word got out somehow. All I mean is the whole thing fitted together just that little bit too conveniently. I’ve been getting that a lot, recently. And all to do with Tam and Frankie McGahern and Lillian Andrews. But I need to think it all through. My first concern is not to end up hanged for Parks’s murder.’
‘You seen leaving?’
‘Not that I know of, but all it would take is a couple of public-spirited citizens to have been looking out of their windows while I was doing a Sherpa Tenzing on Parks’s back wall. And a couple of passers-by saw me clamber out of Kelvingrove Park.’
‘Did they get a good look at you?’
‘Probably just what I was wearing. I’ve got the suit in the boot of my car. But I think I maybe left a strip of it on Parks’s drainpipe. I’m going to dump it.’
‘When you drop him off back at his car, pick up the suit,’ Sneddon said to Tiny. He turned back to me. ‘We’ll incinerate it. As for this morning when Parky was snuffed, you took your car in for repair at one of my garages. I’ll give you the name and address and two mechanics who’ll say you were there.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. But the idea of my avoiding a murder charge based on a dodgy Sneddon-supplied alibi didn’t exactly fill me with confidence. And if the police never got the real killers, then it gave Sneddon something on me. I wondered if the suit would be incinerated, after all. But I was in no position to negotiate.
‘So you’ll find out who snuffed Parky?’ Sneddon lit another cigarette. He offered me one and I took it.
‘If I can,’ I said as if I had a choice in the matter. ‘And Tam McGahern. Like I said they’re linked.’
Sneddon reached into his jacket and I tried not to flinch. He took out a thick wedge of folded fivers and handed it to me.
‘That’s on account,’ said Sneddon. ‘And it’s non-refundable. I want a fucking result, Lennox. This is a head-hunt, are we clear?’
I nodded.
‘You find who did Parky,’ said Sneddon, ‘and I’ll deal with the rest.’
‘Fair enough,’ I said, putting the cash, uncounted, into my pocket. I thought of Mr Morrison’s post boxes. I had the uncomfortable feeling that I would be supplying a name for one of them. One way or another. Sneddon had made it clear he wasn’t going to accept failure.
Tiny Semple drove me back to where I’d left my car parked near the Horsehead. He was much more chatty on the way back.
‘It’s funny you getting out of Parky’s place that way,’ he said as we drove.
‘How so?’
‘He was more used to having some fucker up his back drainpipe…’ Tiny chuckled baritonely.
I wasn’t really in the mood for gags. As we had driven away from Sneddon’s secret rendezvous, I could have sworn, looking in the wing mirror, that I saw Twinkletoes come out and put a pair of bolt-cutters in the boot of one of the other cars.
They hadn’t been needed, after all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
For the next two or three days I kept a profile lower than a foreskin at a rabbinical convention.
I waited for the knock on the door, or my face, before being dragged down to St Andrew’s Street. My experience had been that the City of Glasgow Police found certain inconsequential details, like evidence, totally unnecessary when investigating a case. McNab, like some Solomon with a cosh, had the wisdom and vision needed to decide who was guilty. After that it was only a matter of time and bruised knuckles until the suspect realized they had been wrong all along to think that they had had nothing to do with it.
But no knock had come. And if I had been under surveillance I certainly would have known about it: stealth and subtlety were not Glasgow CID’s strong suits.
The Park Circus brothel was closed. It wouldn’t have mattered if Sneddon had put a caretaker in and kept it open: the papers were full of lurid headlines about Arthur Parks’s death. That meant that the punters it had served wouldn’t be seen near it. It also meant that no number of brown envelopes would stop the police being forced to take action and close it down.
It was a tense few days for me, not least because the papers had carried a description of a tall man in a brown suit seen in the area immediately after the murder. That was as far as the description went. But it was enough for me to sweat about. I just hoped that Sneddon had gotten his incinerator fired up. But I was edgy for another reason. In the same paper that had carried the news about Parks’s murder there had been another, smaller article about a death in Edinburgh. In this case, no foul play was suspected, at least from a third party. A leading Edinburgh surgeon had tragically taken his own life. He had shot himself in the head with his former service revolver. He had been one of the leaders in the field of maxillo-facial reconstructive surgery, the article stated. Alexander Knox.
Coincidence three. Within a day or so of Parks being topped, a leading plastic surgeon who had been amenable to doing Tam McGahern a favour or two had just decided to blow his own brains out.
It was over a week after Parks’s death that the police did come calling. I was in the Horsehead Bar when Jock Ferguson appeared at my elbow. He accepted my offer of a whisky. A good sign. There’s a kind of etiquette with coppers: they don’t tend to drink with you before they work you over.