Lennox by Craig Russell

Author:Craig Russell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery & Detective, General, Fiction, Suspense, Thrillers, Crime
ISBN: 9783838701370
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2009-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY

Sneddon was as good as his word. I turned in early that night and when I opened the curtains in my digs the next morning I saw a dark Austin 16HP, about seven or eight years old, parked on the street outside, about fifty yards up and on the other side of Great Western Road. One man behind the wheel. Of course it might not have been Sneddon’s men, but the vague feeling I had had over the few days before had suggested that if someone was following me, then they were too good for me to catch sight of.

After breakfast I drove west along Dumbarton Road and out of the city. The dark Austin 16HP dutifully followed. It only took me fifteen minutes to reach Levendale House. It was a vast place that had been designed and built as an expression of vast wealth and superiority. It had started life as a stately home: the kind of place you usually saw sitting in the heart of some majestic and beautiful Highland estate. Except it didn’t: it sat on the outskirts of Bishopbriggs.

War fucks everything up. More than that, it fucks people up. And that’s what Levendale House had become: a refuge for the seriously fucked up.

The funny thing about when the war was over was that everybody wanted to talk about it. Eulogize about it. And when they weren’t talking about it they were watching films about it, all of which seemed to star John Mills. It was as if there was some collective desire to convince each other that it had actually been a big adventure that brought everybody together and had brought the best out of even the worst.

Which was, of course, a crock of shit.

What people didn’t want to see was the shadow of misery the war had cast behind it: the tangle of damaged humans in its wake. But there were people who were prepared to look that truth in the face and deal with it every day. The people who worked at Levendale House looked after the broken bodies and broken minds of boys who had been thrown into the mincer and come back old men. Blind, crippled, mad.

The duty sister at Levendale, a tired-looking woman in her fifties, showed me into a bright day room with a view over the house’s vast gardens. I guessed she was the same sister I had spoken to on the telephone. She had asked me what my connection to the patient was and I had explained we had a friend, an old comrade, in common.

‘Did you know Billy before … well, before he was wounded?’ she asked with a concerned look. I got the feeling that her concern was as much for me as her patient.

‘No. As a matter of fact I didn’t. Like I said, we have a mutual friend who I’m trying to track down. We lost touch after the war. But I never met Pattison before.’

‘That’s maybe just as well. I think it’s best that I prepare you … Billy’s wounds were severe and extremely disfiguring.

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