Free Dead Men and Broken Hearts: A Lennox Thriller (Lennox 4) by Craig Russell

policeman, Donald Taylor was tall; about an inch and a half taller than me. He had been a Detective Constable in Central Division for four years and for three of those had been supplying me with information in return for unreceipted donations. I was not the kind of citizen that many Glasgow coppers would want to be seen hob-nobbing with – the exception being the newly promoted Detective Chief Inspector Jock Ferguson, who was above bribery and suspicion as well as being the closest thing I had to a friend. Consequently, I arranged to meet Taylor down by the river, under the shadow of a forest of shipyard cranes.
    ‘Tanglewood, you say?’ Taylor took the cigarette I offered him and frowned. ‘Nope, I can’t say it means anything to me.’
    ‘I’ve a couple of names I’d like checked out. They’re not connected but I need to know if either has been naughty at any time. Or anything else you can dig up on them.’ I handed Taylor a folded slip of paper with Ellis’s and Lang’s names on it. It was folded around a five-pound banknote and Taylor slipped it into his coat pocket without looking at it.
    ‘Are they likely to have form?’ he asked.
    ‘Doubt it. One’s a businessman, the other’s a union official.’
    Taylor frowned. ‘I’ll have to be careful with the union bloke.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘You can have more than one kind of record, Mr Lennox. Checking out the criminal records in the Collator’s Office is straightforward enough, but a lot of these union boys are Communist Party members and the Special Branch boys have their own rogues’ gallery. Ask the wrong questions about the wrong people and you can end up being questioned yourself. Shady bunch, Special Branch.’
    ‘See what you can do, anyway, Don.’ I paused for a moment, thinking about what he had told me. ‘Listen, I should maybe warn you that the first name, Ellis, belongs to someone with a Hungarian background. Pre-communist, but he was born there. I guess that could be vaguely political too.’
    Taylor looked worried. Purposefully worried. I took the hint and handed him another five.
    ‘Like I said, see what you can find out for me and it will be much appreciated.’ I smiled my gratitude, which was as genuine as his worry had been: there was nothing more nauseating than a bent copper, even if you were the one doing the bending. ‘Any other tidbits that might be of interest?’ I asked.
    ‘They’ve got a lead on that jewellery robbery in the Arcades last month.’
    ‘Really?’ I said conversationally. ‘Who’s in the frame?’
    ‘Now, Mr Lennox, you know I couldn’t tell you that,’ he said. What he meant was he couldn’t tell me unless I paid him for the information. There had been a time when I would have paid well; it was the kind of news that you could sell on at a profit.
    ‘I don’t move in those circles any more, Don, you know that. If you can’t tell me, don’t. I’m just interested that’s all.’
    I could see that I had just pulled the rug from under him. He had valuable information that was valuable only to people he could never deal with directly. He was looking for a broker, and my days as a middle-man were behind me.
    ‘The reason I’m mentioning it, Mr Lennox,’ he said, ‘is that it concerns someone that I think you know well.’
    ‘I know a lot of people well, Don.’
    ‘The Jew, Cohen.’ The cocky look on Taylor’s face told me that he really did have goods to sell. Goods I didn’t want to buy but, like it or not, I did owe Handsome Jonny Cohen a favour.
    ‘What’s the information?’
    ‘A name. A name of someone who’s going to turn Queen’s Evidence.’
    I nodded. The police had obviously got something on one of Cohen’s people and were trading his hide for Jonny’s.
    ‘Well?’ he asked. I thought about old loyalties. About scrapes I’d been pulled out of. About thirteen months of trying to put distance between me and where I’d been. What I’d been.
    ‘I’ll pass, Don,’ I said with