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

lanky six-foot three, Archie was tall for anywhere, which meant he was a giant in Glasgow, and he compensated for his height by perpetually stooping. He even stooped sitting down, as I could see through the rectangle of rear window of his ten-year-old Morris Eight as I pulled up behind it.
    Archie had parked at the corner of the street, far enough from the Ellis home as not to be seen from the windows. He popped open the passenger door as I approached and I slid in next to him.
    ‘How’s it going?’ I asked. The gaze he turned on me was so doleful that I felt myself beginning to sink into clinical depression.
    ‘Dynamite came home straight from the office and hasn’t set foot outside since.’
    ‘Dynamite?’
    Archie nodded his large high-domed head, his bald pate fringed with an unkempt horseshoe of black hair. ‘DynamiteAndy the demolitions man. I have christened the subject of our surveillance thus.’
    ‘Thus?’
    ‘Thus.’
    ‘Do you often come up with nicknames for people?’
    ‘I find it does something to ease the mind-numbing tedium of my employment by you.’
    ‘I see. You could just get another job,’ I said.
    ‘I would miss the sparkle of our chats,’ he replied. Archie’s dry wit had probably been the undoing of his police career. That and his brains. A surfeit of wit and intelligence was an encumbrance in the police, particularly when it highlighted the deficit of both amongst your superiors. What had finished his career for once and for all, however, had been a fall through a factory roof while chasing burglars. That had not been one of his brightest moments.
    ‘You get on home, Archie,’ I said. ‘I’ll take over. If lover-boy doesn’t go out by nine-thirty or ten, I’ll pack it in myself for the night.’
    ‘I bet Humpty Go-cart doesn’t worry about getting home for his jim-jams and Ovaltine. As a private eye you don’t set the example I had hoped for.’ He nodded a pale brow in the direction of the Ellis residence. ‘D’you think our chum is up to some kind of marital malarkey?’
    ‘Most likely.’
    ‘Doesn’t look the type to me, whatever the type is. At least from a distance. And if he has a fancy woman on the side, then she’s not exactly putting a spring in his step.’
    ‘What makes you say that?’
    ‘He doesn’t look a cheery chappy, that’s all. Just an impression I get.’
    ‘Well, we’ll find out in time, hopefully.’ I opened the car door. ‘I’ll see you later.’
    Archie gave an American-style salute.
    I was just about to go when a thought made me lean back into the car. ‘Tell me, Archie, you wouldn’t have a nickname for me, by any chance?’
    ‘No sir,’ he said. ‘That would be disrespectful. No references to lumberjacking whatsoever.’
    After Archie left, I moved my Austin Atlantic forward a few feet and filled the space vacated by his car. I sat for an hour as, with increasing frequency, greasy globs of rain smeared the windshield and made stars out of the streetlamps. I switched on the radio and listened to the baneful baying of a dying dinosaur: the death throes of the British Empire. The news was full of Britain’s humiliation as its last, fumbling attempt to remain at the centre of the world stage – its intervention in the Suez Crisis – stumbled on. And while one empire was dying another was flexing youthful muscles: Suez competed for radio time with the latest on the Hungarian Uprising. It was an inspiring beacon of hope in the gloom of Soviet domination, apparently. It was just unfortunate that the West chose to look the other way. Oh, Brave New World …
    I drank some of the tea Fiona had made up for me; it tasted odd and tinny from the vacuum flask but at least it was hot. The Glasgow climate decided to lighten my mood by turning the tap up on the rain, which now drummed angrily on the roof of my Atlantic. It was going to be a long, damp night. I decided it was far too inclement for adultery and that I would maybe head home earlier