‘You got something to tell me?’ He raised an eyebrow. I raised my pulse. Maybe he wasn’t here to socialize.
‘Like what?’
‘Come off it, Lennox, you must be up to your eyes in all of this shite.’
‘Shite?’
He turned to face me full on, placing his glass down in a businesslike way and leaning on the bar’s brass rail. ‘Don’t fuck me about, Lennox. There’s no way that Willie Sneddon hasn’t hired you to look into Arthur Parks’s death.’
‘Oh, that…’ I said and tried to wipe the and-I-thought-you-were-t alking-about-me-being-a-prime-suspect-for-this-murder expression from my face. I didn’t think I had succeeded that well because Ferguson’s broad forehead creased in a suspicious frown.
‘What else did you think I was talking about?’ he asked.
‘I wasn’t sure, that’s all,’ I smiled and took a withering slug of the Scotch I’d ordered because Big Bob was out of CC. ‘The problem with working in the sewer is that there’s a lot of shite to choose from.’
My act of self-deprecation seemed to do the trick and he leaned both elbows back on the bar. ‘Willie McNab is trying to tie this one up fast. He has a theory.’
‘Oh?’
‘We had a discussion about homosexuals.’ Ferguson grinned, uncharacteristically. ‘McNab finds the whole concept beyond understanding. I don’t think he likes to admit that there are any in Scotland.’
‘I’ve heard that theory before,’ I said. ‘That like all the snakes being driven out of Ireland by St Patrick, St Andrew drove all of the queers out of Scotland and they became…’
‘… the English,’ we said in unison and laughed.
‘I’m being serious though,’ said Ferguson. ‘McNab has all of these theories about Parks’s killing. He thinks it was some kind of sado-masochistic homosexual thing. The only thing he knows about homosexuality is that it’s illegal and those guilty of it usually display excellent clothes-sense. His theories are beginning to border on science-fiction. Like they’re Martians or something. Do you know, he’s like Queen Victoria… he really doesn’t believe there’s such a thing as lesbianism. “How’s that going to work?” he said. “All sockets and no plugs.”’
‘Why does he think Parks’s murder is sado-masochism?’ I asked. ‘How did he die?’ Clever Lennox.
‘Not nice, Lennox,’ Ferguson grimaced. I couldn’t tell if it was the memory or the Bells that was doing it. ‘Someone had beaten seven shades of shite out of him. Tied him to a chair first. His face was battered to fuck.’
‘I take it you don’t go for the bondage-buggery theory?’
‘I knew a guy in the war. A decent guy and a good fucking soldier. He blew his brains out because it came out he was homo and he was going to be court-martialled. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t swing from those branches myself, but I don’t feel the need to persecute people because of the way they were made. And it pisses me off the amount of police and court time that goes into persecuting them. They’re not criminals. They’re the way they are. That’s all. And I don’t think they go around howling at the moon or worshipping Satan. And I don’t think that what I saw in Parks’s flat has anything to do with where he put his dobber.’
‘Nor do I,’ I said. Not-so-clever-Lennox. ‘From what you’ve said, I mean.’
‘So, by my reckoning, Sneddon’s hired you to look into Parks’s killing.’ Ferguson was talking like a copper again. ‘But you’ve got this all tied in with the McGahern thing. Which brings me to the main point.’
‘I rather thought it might.’
‘I allowed you a little slack on Lillian Andrews. Now she’s completely disappeared. I told you, Lennox. I told you I needed to talk to her about her husband’s death.’
‘Which is still officially an accident?’ I asked.
‘Which couldn’t be more beside the fucking point. You know he was murdered. I know he was murdered. What I want to know is why and by whom. But Lillian Andrews has fucked off. Abroad, I believe, and I don’t have enough of a case to persuade McNab she’s worth pursuing. So let’s start with exactly what you have heard about Parks’s killing and everything you know about Lillian Andrews.’
‘Okay,’ I said, as if he’d wrested it out of me. ‘Sneddon asked me to sniff about. But it’s a non-starter. This is like the McGahern killing – everybody knows it wasn’t any of the Three Kings. From what we’ve heard, there was nothing nicked from the flat?’
‘Nothing. But that’s meaningless. If you’d seen the state of Parks you’d understand that they weren’t interested in stealing from him. It’s what he knew they wanted. Now that makes me really curious. I don’t, for a minute, believe that Sneddon doesn’t know what it’s all about.’
‘He doesn’t. Trust me, Jock,’ I said without irony. ‘This looks more and more like Parks had his own little deal going on somewhere and it all came unstuck.’
‘So did his jaw,’ said Ferguson. I kept my expression as if I didn’t know what he meant.
‘As for Lillian Andrews,’ I said with a shrug, ‘I have absolutely no idea where she has gone or what she’s doing. But I feel totally outmanoeuvred. The truth is I’m no further forward than when we last spoke.’
Ferguson stayed for another round, then left. After he left I ordered a double and downed it in one. I felt relieved. Big time. But something nagged at me: why did I feel that I hadn’t been exactly pressed as hard as Ferguson could have pressed me?
I left the Horsehead shortly after Ferguson and went looking for a prostitute. Purely in pursuit of my investigation.
Lena, the girl whom Parks had offered me weeks before, was not the kind of girl to work the streets. Too pretty and too ‘classy’. Until she opened her mouth to speak, apparently. She had a bad case, Sneddon had told me, of ‘Gorbals Gob’. Officially, Lena was taking a sabbatical until things cooled down: she was still under Sneddon’s ‘protection’, whether Parks was around or not. But a week is a long time without business and Sneddon suspected that Lena and a few of the other girls were entertaining some of their established clients in their own places.
The address Sneddon had given me for Lena was over a pub in Partick. I parked the Atlantic across the street from the bar. It sat in a gloomy block of tenements with sooty windows, but had a neon-tube cocktail glass, tilted at a cheery angle, blinking wanly through the Glasgow rain. I could be in Manhattan, I thought.
I crossed the road and walked up the ‘close’ as the Scots called the narrow alleys between buildings. It stank of urine and reminded me of the set up at the Highlander Bar owned by the McGaherns. I climbed the back stairs to the door of the flat above. The red curtains drawn over the grimy glass of the only window made it glow like a malevolent ember. I didn’t knock but turned the handle. It was unlocked and I stepped into a small, clean kitchen. There was a toilet off and I reckoned the door ahead of me led into the only other room in the flat. I swung the door open and walked in on Lena and a fat middle-aged businessman reclining together on her sofa. Lena was dressed as a nurse. Or more accurately half-dressed as a nurse. I could have been wrong, but from what I could see I didn’t think she had any medical training, unless mouth-to-dick resuscitation was a legitimate form of life-saving.
‘Honey!’ I uttered in outrage. ‘You told me you got that extra money from taking in sewing!’
They both scrabbled to their feet and fat boy panicked. He pulled his trousers up, grabbed his jacket and rushed past me and out of the flat, giving me as wide a berth as he could as he passed.
Lena wasn’t giving me her Rita Hayworth look this time.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ she screamed. Her voice was thin and scratchy. Like Sneddon had warned, despite her classy looks, Lena had the elocution of a true Gorbals Gal. Then her eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘I know you… you was round at the Circus. You was the guy Arthur was speaking to.’
‘That’s me,’ I said and sat down in the armchair opposite. Lena grabbed a gown and covered her best assets.