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

then another, and a third that took him back out onto Maryhill Road. I let him take the last turn without following him, instead driving deeper into darkest Maryhill.
    Now the alarm bells in my head were deafening. I had peeled off from his tail when he took the last left because his little manoeuvre had clearly been to check if the headlights in his rear-view mirror were there by coincidence or by design. It was a pretty fancy move for a run-of-the-mill Glasgow businessman to pull, even if he
was
on his way to see his piece of skirt on the side.
    I pulled up at the kerb to give Ellis a few minutes before trying to catch sight of him again, although that was unlikely and probably unadvisable if he was on the lookout for a tail.
    Mine was the only car in a grey-black tenement-lined street that had the picturesque charm of an abattoir yard. The gloom was punctuated every twenty yards or so by the insipid sodium glow of a streetlamp and I noticed, three standards down, a knot of youths in Teddy Boy gear gathered around the lamppost, smoking cigarettes with the expected dull indolence of adolescence. They turned their attention to the car, exchanged a few words and started to move in my direction. I decided now was maybe a good time to move on, in pretty much the same way as a wagon full of settlers in Cooke’s Canyon, on seeingApaches silhouetted against the hilltops, would have decided it was a good time to move on.
    Despite patriotic chest-beating to the contrary, British engineering was not, it had to be said, a wonderful thing. Why the design and construction of an even moderately reliable automobile lay beyond the nation that had come up with the Industrial Revolution was a puzzle that I found myself addressing, in slightly more colourful language, as my Atlantic stalled in the middle of the three-point turn, leaving me stranded and straddling the cobbled street.
    I glanced, as casually as I could, towards the advancing Teddy Boys. Five of them. I could handle myself pretty well – a little too well, to be honest – but the arithmetic was against me. As I slipped the column shift into neutral, turned the key off then on again, and stabbed with my thumb at the starter button on the dash, an image flashed through my mind of my scalp adorning the mantelpiece of a Maryhill tenement while the residents whooped and pow-wow-danced around the coal scuttle.
    The Atlantic wheezed rhythmically, threatened to cough into life, but spluttered to a stall. I repeated the procedure, aware that the gang of young thugs was almost at my door. This time the engine caught. I put the car into gear and gave it some gas. Time to go.
    The engine died again.
    There was a tapping on the window. A long face with small eyes and bad skin was leaned in towards the glass. He sported a Teddy quiff that clearly needed more grease to maintain than the average ten-axle freight locomotive. I was outnumbered, I had no sap or any other kind of weapon with me. I decided to play nice, for the moment. I rolled down my window.
    ‘Nice motor, pal …’ The Teddy Boy’s small eyes glittered hardas he spoke without removing the minuscule stub of a still glowing roll-up from his almost lipless mouth.
    ‘Thanks,’ I said.
    ‘Austin Atlantic A90, isn’t it?’
    ‘That’s right,’ I said. I noticed the others nodded approvingly at his superior knowledge.
    ‘Aye … that’s what I reckoned. I thought they was all for export to the Yanks.’
    ‘No … not all of them. I picked this one up in Glasgow. Second hand.’
    ‘You a Yank?’ he said, frowning at my accent in a way I didn’t like.
    ‘American? No. I’m Canadian.’
    ‘Canadian?’ He turned to his pals. ‘Hear that? He’s a Canadian …’ Then to me. ‘I got an uncle and cousins in Canada …’
    ‘Hasn’t everyone?’ I quipped. It was something that came up a lot when people found out I was a Canuck. Almost everyone in Glasgow had a relative who’d recently emigrated to Canada. Since the