She led me into a panelled meeting room and I tried to resist looking at her ass. Resistance turned out to be futile. She offered me tea, which I declined, and asked me to wait for a few minutes while she found out if Mr Brodie was free.
A few minutes passed before a burly man in a business suit appeared at the door.
‘Mr Scobie?’ he boomed at me. ‘I’m Fraser Brodie.’ I could tell he was from Ayrshire from his eighteenth-century accent and the fact that he bellowed his hello as he extended his beefy hand. Ayrshire people are by nature one-hundred-decibel speakers: it comes from centuries of shouting across fields or up mineshafts at each other. He had thick, curling dark hair and woolly eyebrows and had the ruddy complexion of a lusty shepherd. I somehow imagined him striding purposefully across the Ayrshire countryside while the more virtuous ewes in his flock ran for cover.
‘I believe you are interested in a couple of the properties we have available for sale through our estate agency department.’
‘I am indeed,’ I said, minimizing my Canadian accent and handing him one of the dummy business cards that supported the fiction of Walter Scobie, of Scobie, Black and MacGregor, Accountants, Edinburgh. ‘But I have to point out that the purchase is not for myself, but for one of my clients who is moving his business to the West. I cannot say too much at the moment, but he may have a need for industrial premises in the Glasgow area, also.’
‘I see,’ Brodie smiled broadly. ‘And which of the properties are you interested in?’
‘A house you have in Bearsden. Ardbruach House, I believe is the name of it.’
‘Oh yes. Yes, of course. Give me a moment…’ He sorted through some files and handed me a typed-out sheet with a photograph attached. It was the Andrews place, all right. ‘Actually…’ he said thoughtfully, but loudly, ‘it is something of a coincidence that your client should be interested in acquiring commercial premises as well; the vendor of Ardbruach House is also about to place a substantial commercial estate up for sale. Offices in the city and dockside warehousing. Would that be the kind of thing your client would be looking for? Or perhaps it would be more manufacturing… if so we have-’
I held my hand up. ‘I’m afraid I’m not currently at liberty to say, Mr Brodie. Suffice it to say that my client’s is a name you would recognize…’
Brodie beamed, imagining I represented some Edinburgh financial magnate. He wouldn’t have if he had known who my client really was. Even here, deep within the comfortable yet unyielding folds of the Scottish Establishment, the name Willie Sneddon would have had the resonance to have him permanently stain some pinstripe. ‘I quite understand,’ he said knowingly. And loudly.
I read through the particulars of the house.
‘Tell me, Mr Brodie,’ I said. ‘As you can imagine I am au fait with property prices across the Central Belt, not just in Edinburgh. It strikes me that Ardbruach House is being offered at a very reasonable price. In fact, this “offers over” figure seems to me considerably underestimated… at least a thousand below what I would expect. We will be doing a thorough survey of the property, so it does no one any service not to disclose any potential problems…’ My mouth was beginning to ache from talking multisyllabic shite.
‘Goodness no,’ said Brodie, suddenly concerned. I was surprised he hadn’t said heaven forfend. ‘I assure you that there is nothing wrong with the property. The price has been set at a lower starting point because my client is keen to attract as much interest as possible.’
I smiled. ‘Do you mind?’ I asked and took my silver cigarette case out, offering Brodie one. I lit us both. ‘I have to be honest, Mr Brodie. I suspect that your client, for one reason or another, is looking for a quick sale. That is something we may be able to accommodate, and at or around the asking price, subject to survey. But I need to know if that is indeed the case.’
I was good. I was projecting so little personality that I was even beginning to convince myself that I was a bona fide Edinburgh accountant. Brodie stared at me with a frown for a moment. He was working something out. Or he was counting sheep in his head. Finally he said:
‘My client is tying up the estate of her recently deceased spouse. It is a distressing time and she is most keen to settle matters as soon as possible.’
‘I see,’ I said, tilting my head back and blowing a jet of smoke towards the ceiling. ‘Then I think we can do business. Would it be possible to talk to your client?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ said Brodie apologetically. ‘I’m afraid Mrs Andrews is out of the country.’
‘I see…’ I said in a tone that suggested it was a problem. He didn’t respond: he was clearly concerned that I was going to walk, so I guessed he really didn’t know where she was. I let the air between us stew in silence. Then I said, ‘My client is also looking for a house for his general manager. He – I mean the general manager – had his eye on a property you had to sell on Dowanside Road. I wondered if it were still for sale.’ I took a sheet of paper from my pocket and handed Brodie the address of the former brothel.
‘Oh, yes…’ said Brodie, raising an eyebrow, which given it was as dense and woolly as a sheep’s fleece was no mean achievement. ‘I’m afraid I can’t help you there; it’s been sold, unfortunately.’
‘Who was the vendor?’ I asked. ‘That was why the general manager chose that specific house – he thought he knew the people who owned it.’
‘Mrs McGahern,’ said Brodie. The Neanderthal shield of his heavy Ayrshire brow slid a little over his eyes in suspicion. I guessed why: he was thinking, by my reckoning, that it was a hell of a coincidence that I should name these two properties: one owned by Lillian Andrews, the other owned by a war widow, Mrs McGahern. Who just happened to be Mrs Andrews’s sister. Brodie looked at my business card from beneath the overhang of his brow. I stood up.
‘Well, thank you, Mr Brodie,’ I said and we shook hands. ‘I certainly think we can do business over Ardbruach House.’
The woolly eyebrows lifted a little and he smiled. I promised to be in touch and left.
I ’phoned Sneddon from a telephone box on Great Western Road and brought him up to date. He sounded less than pleased that I was still following the McGahern trail, despite what I had to say to him about Arthur Parks, Lillian Andrews’s sister Margot and the big Dutchman.
‘Just find out who killed Parky,’ he said. ‘I don’t care how you do it.’
‘Listen, Mr Sneddon, I really think we’re dealing with something much bigger here. And I think it could be a threat to you and the other two Kings.’
‘You saying someone’s trying to take over?’
‘No. As a matter of fact I don’t think they are. I don’t think they’re even interested in Glasgow. But they’re working from here and I think they’re going to bring a shitstorm down on you all just by stirring up the police.’
‘What’s it got to do with Parky?’
‘I don’t know yet. But he was involved somehow. And I have a bad feeling that these stolen police uniforms have something to do with it. There’s a bigger picture than the one we’re seeing. I have a sort of half-theory about this that I need to work out. If you were to set up a blackmail operation, I mean compromising people who could afford to pay, who would you use?’
‘I’m not into that shite,’ said Sneddon. ‘It brings civilians into the picture.’
‘But if you did, who would you use?’
‘That’s the problem. I’d talk to Parky about it. There’s that wee shite Danny Dumfries, I suppose. But I wouldn’t trust him. He’s tied in with Murphy.’
‘Oh yeah… I didn’t think that would be Dumfries’s kind of thing.’
‘Maybes no, but he gets involved in all kinds of shady shite that we wouldn’t touch.’
Sure, I thought, life must be one long moral dilemma for you.
‘They must have been hard bastards,’ said Sneddon, changing the subject. ‘I mean, to do that to Parky.’
‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘No disrespect to him, but I would imagine a cutting bit of sarcasm would have brought Parks to his knees.’