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

the wild for the last three nights, so there’s been nowhere or no one to follow him to. If you’ve only got until the end of the week, then I think we’re scuppered.’
    ‘I think so too,’ I said, infected by Archie’s dolefulness. I ran through where I was with the union thing with him, for no other real reason than to hear myself say it out loud. It didn’t sound any better.
    ‘What’s in the ledger?’ Archie asked.
    ‘That is something I am going to have to find out,’ I said. ‘Connelly is being unusually coy about it. My guess is that the missing money has been donated by supporters of the union who would rather keep their names out of the public eye, and the ledger details the payments. It sounds to me like blackmail, but Connelly denies that. Maybe Lang intends to sell it to the newspapers, but it is technically stolen property … What is it, Archie?’ I noticed him purse his thin lips as he held me in his bloodhound stare.
    ‘A list of union supporters? Joe Connelly and his union have hired us to track down a missing jotter with the names of a few Reds in it?’
    ‘You don’t think it’s likely?’
    ‘Well,
Chief
, that’s relative. Compared to Twinkletoes’s chances of winning Brain of Britain, it’s likely. Compared to there being something in that ledger that is a lot more important or embarrassing, it’s not.’
    ‘I know what you mean,’ I said. It had been troubling me since my meeting with Connelly and Lynch. Not what had been said, but what hadn’t been said. ‘By the way, are you happy enough to do this week’s run with Twinkletoes?’
    ‘Delighted. He gives me a warm glow of security. And it’s nice to reminisce. I arrested him for breach of the peace, aggravated assault, resisting arrest and police assault back in Forty-seven, you know.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Mmm. Old times. It gives us something to chat about.’
    I tried to imagine Archie and Twinkletoes chatting, but the effort made my head hurt.
    * * *
     
    Some people make a big show of their learning. Bookshelves dressed with the ‘right’ novels with unbroken spines, learned spoutings in the tap room, the dropping of the right names in conversation. The Mitchell Library was Glasgow’s very public, very brash statement of erudition. It was big. Very big. The largest public reference library in Europe.
    I worked my way through the Commercial Reference Library and came away with details of Ellis’s company, as well as Hall Demolitions, the company he had worked for before setting up his own outfit. While I was there, I also checked out the public records on the Amalgamated Union of Industrial Trades: no mention of Frank Lang anywhere among the names of union officers.
    Glasgow’s air is usually too heavy and sluggish for the wind to waste effort on, but that afternoon, as autumn oozed indistinctly into winter, it had decided to make its presence felt. As I came out of the Mitchell Library and stepped into a chill, damp swirl of rain and grime, I tightened my elbow-grip on the leather document case tucked under my arm and with my other hand clamped my protesting Borsalino to my head.
    It was at times like these that I reflected on how, at the end of the war, I may have been directionless and feckless, but could not work out why I hadn’t chosen to be directionless and feckless in Paris or Rome or anywhere with a better climate. Which was hardly a restrictive criterion.
    I pushed through the wind, the rain and the grim-faced crowds, steering a course back to my office.
    Andrew Ellis wasn’t the only one who was skilled at spotting when he was being tailed.
    I didn’t feel like going back to my digs and there was a kindof aimlessness about me when I left the office. I was still smarting about what had happened with Fiona White. I’d been all kinds of cad and swine with women, it was true, but I had been straight with Fiona White. It stung hard to be on the receiving end for a change.
    I found myself in a fish