The Quiet Death of Thomas Quaid: Lennox 5 Read Online Free PDF Page A

Irene was gone, I took a bath and dressed in a fresh set of clothes: I’d been down in London that spring and had picked up a couple of seersucker shirts I was particularly fond of – white with a navy chalk stripe – and I put one on with a knotted plum silk tie. I had been lucky, after a lot of searching, to have found a tailor in Glasgow capable of rising to the challenge of the new Continental style and he had made me a lightweight, mid-grey single-breasted Prince of Wales check suit.
    I finished the outfit off with a pair of burgundy wingtips: a French chum had once told me that black shoes should only be worn to weddings and funerals and the custom had sort of stuck with me. Similarly I’d given up on wider-brimmed Borsalinos and the hat I chose from the coat-rack on the way out was a narrow-snap-brimmed trilby, which was becoming the fashion in the world outside and a decade ahead of Glasgow. Before I left the flat to meet with Quiet Tommy Quaid, I checked myself in the hall mirror by the door: I was looking good. Empty, but good.
    I would maybe have chosen a different outfit if I’d known what lay ahead.

4
    Quiet Tommy Quaid was dressed every bit as sharply as I was.
    Like me, Quaid wasn’t the type to give away much about himself, but from what I’d been able to find out he had spent a not inconsiderable chunk of his early adult life behind bars and his childhood had been in some shitty mining village in the distant back of beyond, or somewhere even worse, like Lanarkshire.
    But, as I saw him sitting with his drink over in the corner of the lounge bar, I could easily have believed he was the scion of some noble lineage out slumming it for the night. It was the leisurely expectation with which he sat – a quiet patience that said the world was there for him, not the other way around – that gave him the composed, graceful ease of an aristocrat. Only the lingering Motherwell in his accent when he spoke gave away a less illustrious background. That, and the fact that the deep-blue suit he wore – Continental-cut with cuffless trousers – was far too elegant for the British aristocracy. The thought again crossed my mind that I should maybe give Tommy my measurements for the next time he went skylight shopping.
    We were a couple of swells, all right, and whenever Tommy and I met we did so in the few bars in Glasgow where you didn’t order a punch in the puss with your pint to save time and formality. So, for our business discussion, we had arranged to meet in a less-rough-than-the-usual bar in the West End, close to one of the dance halls. Drinking sessions with Tommy had usually ended up with us scoring a couple of women, but this was business and an element of discretion, sobriety and unaccustomed moral continence was called for.
    As I came in, Tommy saw me through the blue-grey smoke haze, stood up and waved. When I reached him I saw he already had a Canadian Club sitting waiting for me on the table. We drank a couple or three before we got down to business.
    ‘The Saracen Foundry?’ Tommy’s confused reaction when I’d filled him in on the details matched mine when McNaught had told me.
    ‘I know.’ I shrugged. ‘Not what you imagine as the typical target for industrial espionage, but it’s the client’s money.’
    ‘Speaking of which . . . ?’
    ‘Four hundred for you – a hundred now and the rest paid on delivery. I get a finder’s fee and you deal only with me. Not my decision, but it’s the way the client wants it.’
    ‘Four hundred . . . that’s a lot for a job like this.’
    ‘You think it’ll be easy?’
    ‘Piece of pish, as my dear old da used to say.’ He frowned. ‘Seems far too easy for that kind of cash.’
    I shrugged. ‘Whatever these plans are, they obviously have a lot more value than we would think. I guess whoever’s behind my contact is paying a premium to get the job done as professionally as possible. No mistakes and no obvious trail for the coppers to follow.