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

interrogation of the job reminded me, not for the first time, that there was a keen intelligence working behind the calm, quiet exterior. He read my mind.
    ‘I’m thorough, eh? You’re wondering how, if I’m so careful, I spent so much time in chokey?’ he asked when we’d finished the business of the day.
    ‘I was, as a matter of fact.’
    ‘I’m a journeyman, a tradesman – maybe even a craftsman. Like every tradesman I served an apprenticeship.’
    ‘And part of that apprenticeship was getting caught?’
    Before he could answer, the door of the bar opened and two young women, a blonde and a brunette, walked into the lounge. Dressed-up factory girls, their mayfly youth and freedom squeezed between school and marriage, they were young, sleek and unexceptionally pretty and looked around the bar with the Friday-night-hungry eyes of willing prey. They saw us looking at them and leant heads together, exchanging a giggled something.
    Tommy turned back to his drink and me and shrugged. ‘Occupational hazard. I made stupid mistakes – it’s all part of learning your trade. And even if you don’t make stupid mistakes, this is a risky business. There’s always the chance that there’ll be a copper where he shouldn’t be, or an alarm pad that you missed. It’s been years since I’ve been caught and I intend to keep it that way. But when you’ve not been caught for so long it can make you sloppy. Even with a job as easy as this, all it takes is one bit of bad luck. One foot put wrong. That’s why I plan everything out to the last detail.’
    ‘I couldn’t do it. The prison time, I mean,’ I said and I meant it: there had been a couple of times, including in Hamburg, where prison had become a distinct possibility.
    Tommy was distracted while he exchanged mating rituals with the blonde of the two women who now sat at the opposite side of the lounge, but deliberately in eyeline. Tommy had a naturally easy way with women. He seemed genuinely interested in them, in what they had to say. Me? Women seemed to expect me to be bad; being a polite Canadian, I didn’t like to disappoint them.
    ‘Prison’s just a place, like any other,’ he said eventually. ‘People ask me how I put up with it, I ask them how they put up with
this
. . .’ He waved a hand to indicate our surroundings. ‘The truth is, Lennox, we’re all born into a prison. Just some walls are easier to see than others.’
    ‘And some prisons are easier to live in.’
    He smiled and shook his head. ‘You’re wrong, Lennox, all prisons are the same. Remind me to tell you about my old da—’ Tommy broke off as he looked past me, grinned and raised his glass. I turned in the direction of the two girls.
    ‘Anyway, Lennox old chum,’ he said, draining his glass, and rising from the table, ‘business over. I think it’s time we had our bells rung . . .’

5
    I had done enough bedhead rattling for one day but stayed long enough as support act while Tommy worked his gentle magic on the blonde. The brunette seemed to be happy to be paired off with me and she was a cute enough girl, but I was tired and I wanted to get home to bed.
    She got all swoony over my ‘American’ accent and I got the impression that, if I’d made the obligatory moves and for-appearances persuasions, she would have happily accompanied me, but once I’d made final arrangements to meet with Tommy to do the job, I made my excuses and left.
    For form’s sake I asked the brunette for her 'phone number. Explaining that she wasn’t on the 'phone, she scribbled her name and address down on a handbag-scrabbled-for piece of paper and eagerly handed it to me. I was tired and tempted to point out that I’d be looking for a shag, not a pen-pal, but instead smiled gallantly and took her note.
    I could have given David Niven tips on how to be a gentleman.
    The weather outside was still sluggishly warmish but there was what Glaswegians, with their usual poetic turn of phrase, called a