Dead Men and Broken Hearts: A Lennox Thriller (Lennox 4) Read Free Page A

She had the Celtic dark auburn hair and green eyes that yousaw a lot of in Glasgow, but her high cheekbones and firm jaw spoke of some other history. She was slim, and of late I had thought perhaps a little too slim, but what upholstery there was was in all the right places.
    ‘Don’t stand at the window without a shirt on,’ she admonished me. That was the tenor of our relationship; out of view and behind closed curtains.
    I sighed and came away from the view of the wet and grey Glasgow weekday afternoon and sat on the edge of the bed, pulling on my shirt: pale blue with a faint gold stripe, French cuffs. My taste for expensive tailoring was, I knew, something Fiona both appreciated and resented. Another sign of her good old-fashioned, deeply-embedded, Calvinism. Not that I was complaining about all of that pent-up repression: what had surprised me – overwhelmed me – about Fiona was that taking her to bed had been like removing a high-pressure lid. Explosive.
    But there again, our relationship had been full of surprises: like the way I had come to feel about her. Something nauseatingly honourable and deep. And I had tried so hard to keep all of my dealings with women as superficial and unembellished as possible.
    As a culture, Scotland might have been more sexually repressed than a monastery with a view of a nudist beach, but I had, it had to be said, enjoyed a staggering amount of success with the opposite sex during my time in Glasgow. I put it down largely to the lack of sophisticated competition, the average Scotsman’s concept of foreplay generally being: ‘Come here a minute and grab hold of this …’
    ‘Will you be eating downstairs tonight?’ she asked me, becoming my landlady once more.
    ‘Are you
sure
you’re all right? You look tired.’ And she did.Her face was paler than usual and there were shadows beneath the green eyes.
    ‘I told you, I’m fine.’ She forced a smile. ‘Do I set a place for you?’ It had become the custom for me to join Fiona and her daughters for the evening meal most days.
    ‘No, not tonight,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a job on. Following a wandering husband. I’ll probably be late.’
    She nodded, and finished getting dressed.
    ‘Do you want me to make up some sandwiches and a flask for you?’
    ‘That would be fine, thanks, Fiona,’ I said with a smile even more forced than hers. Nothing illustrated the chasm that still existed between us more than her asking me if I wanted sandwiches and a flask. Fiona did not seem to be able to distinguish the role of enquiry agent from that of a night-watchman. She perhaps had a point.
    She turned and headed out towards the landing. I took her by the elbow and turned her around, kissing her on the lips. She responded. Just.
    ‘Don’t tell me my irrepressible boyish Canadian charm is fading …’ I said.
    ‘Lennox,’ she said, easing herself back from me. ‘We can’t go on like this. It’s not right.’
    ‘What’s not right about it?’ I let her go. ‘I thought you were happy.’
    She cast a glance towards the bed we had shared until a few minutes before.
    ‘This isn’t me, Lennox. I can’t be the kind of woman you’re used to.’
    ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’ I protested, although I knew exactly what she meant.
    Her look hardened. ‘Please do not swear at me. That’s something else I’m not used to. What I’m saying is that this isn’t right. It’s not right for me. I never wanted to end up …’ She left the thought hanging in a silence that stretched longer than it should.
    ‘You know how I feel about you,’ I protested.
    ‘Do I?’
    I let her go. ‘What is this all about? What is it you want from me?’
    ‘Nothing, Lennox. Absolutely nothing.’ The expression in her face now stone-hewn. ‘I’ll get your sandwiches ready.’
    Archie McClelland had the kind of face that Bassett hounds, undertakers and professional mourners would probably have described as unnecessarily lugubrious. A