The Deep Dark Sleep

by Craig Russell

  ‘Well, just for a moment, pretend it isn’t. Let’s say that that really was Strachan, and he was there, fully accredited, as an army major. How could that come to be?’

  ‘It couldn’t,’ said McNab.

  ‘Now play along, Superintendent. Let’s take Strachan’s presence as an absolute fact. How could he have achieved that?’

  ‘Well …’ Ferguson pulled on the word thoughtfully. ‘We know that he had experience of passing himself off as an officer. And doing it very well.’

  ‘Which means it’s entirely conceivable that he was seen dressed as a major …’

  ‘But Lochailort was one of the most secure military installations in the country. It would take more than a uniform, a plum in your mouth and an authoritative demeanour to get in there.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Which is where the whole thing falls down,’ said Ferguson.

  ‘Let’s go back to the Triple Crown robberies. What if they were only a means to an end? From what I’ve been able to find out, Strachan would disappear for months on end. Just drop out of sight. What if he had spent months, years, establishing another identity elsewhere? Maybe more than one. What if his plan had been to use the proceeds from the Triple Crown robberies to fund something else, somewhere else?’

  ‘Like what?’ asked McNab.

  ‘Maybe just a different life somewhere else. The quality of life he imagined he deserved. Or maybe the proceeds were to be reinvested in another job: something even bigger than the Exhibition robbery … a mail train or gold bullion or the Crown bloody Jewels, I don’t know. But then, two things happen. One, things don’t go to plan during the Exhibition robbery and a copper is killed, so if Strachan’s plan was to use the money to become Glasgow King Pin, then it’s a complete wash-out. Two, Hitler invades Poland and everything is turned on its head. The whole of the country is on a war footing and pulling any big jobs becomes ten times more difficult. But I suspect something else happened. I’m not sure what, but I suspect that maybe Strachan’s officer act was part of whatever identity he set up for himself and somehow fantasy and reality fused and he ended up roped into some real unit.’

  ‘Have you heard of Fairy Tale Frankie Wilson?’ asked McNab, dully. I shook my head. ‘Inspector Ferguson here has come across him, haven’t you, Jock? He’s a compulsive little bastard. A compulsive thief and a compulsive liar. We call him Fairy Tale Frankie because he can’t keep it simple. When he’s trying to lie his way out of something, he keeps tripping up over his own lies, so he keeps inventing new, more outrageous lies to cover up. Before you know it his lie about why he had a jemmy in his pocket becomes a full-scale epic with a cast of characters that would send MGM into bankruptcy. But you just have to keep on listening, because it’s so bloody entertaining. I have to tell you, Lennox, even Fairy Tale Frankie couldn’t come up with anything as ridiculous as you’re suggesting.’

  ‘You could be right.’ I shrugged. ‘But we’re not dealing with the usual Glasgow criminal type here. And you can’t deny that that was no ordinary thug who jumped me in my office.’ I shook my head irritably as other thoughts crammed in. ‘Why are there no photographs of Strachan, anywhere? I’m telling you, he was planning his disappearance for a long, long time. This is no fairy tale, Superintendent. This is a whole new ball of wax.’

  After McNab left, I smoked a couple of cigarettes with Jock Ferguson and talked the thing to death some more. We were interrupted by Dr ‘Sonny’, who gave me the all clear to go. Archie was waiting for me downstairs and shook hands with Jock Ferguson when we arrived.

  ‘Look after him.’ Ferguson managed to make it sound like an order.

  ‘I’ll keep him away from windows,’ said Archie dolefully.

  I said goodbye to Ferguson, latching on, as casually as I could manage, something that I had been relieved had not yet raised its head.

  ‘By the way, Jock, what was all that about a murder case the other night? Govanhill, I think it was McNab said.’

  I had put the question as conversationally as possible, but it still sounded clunky.

  ‘Why you asking?’ he asked, but with no more suspicion than usual.

  ‘Just curious.’

  ‘We think it was some kind of fairy killing. A pool lifeguard called Frank Gibson who was well known in those circles apparently.’

  ‘How was he killed?’

  Jock Ferguson looked at me suspiciously.

  ‘Like I said, just curiosity.’

  ‘Morbid bloody curiosity. He had his throat cut. From behind. Whoever did it set the flat on fire. The whole tenement nearly went up with everybody in it. Why the hell would he set the place on fire after he’d killed Gibson?’

  I shrugged to signal the limit of my curiosity, but I was thinking of the burnt furniture thrown into the back court. The answer, I felt, was obvious: fire wipes out evidence. I thought too of all of the other envelopes stuffed with negatives. Maybe Downey and Gibson had been pulling the same stunt with God knows how many others. And where was Downey now?

  The kind of business I was in called for discretion. A low profile. Showing my guest the window had gotten me onto the front pages of the Bulletin, the Daily Herald, the Daily Record and the Evening Citizen. The Glasgow Herald confined me to page four. The Bulletin had a photograph of my office building with my window boarded up, and an arrow indicating the route taken by my guest to the street: just in case the Bulletin’s readers were unfamiliar with the workings of gravity.

  Archie had the papers in his car when he came to pick me up. Archie’s car was pretty much as you would expect from Archie: a black Forty-seven Morris Eight into which he seemed to have to fold himself like a penknife. We didn’t talk much as we drove across the city and down to the Gallowgate. My mind suddenly filled with the fact that I had killed a man; that my actions, not for the first time, had ended a human being’s existence. I told myself that I had not had much choice in the matter. The truth was that I had had some.

  Archie clearly sensed I was not in the mood for chat and we drove in silence back to my temporary lodgings. The door opened without being knocked and we were greeted sullenly by Mr Simpson. My landlord’s demeanour had shifted from suspicious to outright hostile.

  ‘I’ve chchread all of this schhhite in the papers. People being flung out of windowsch. We’ve got windowsch here. You’re that Lennochsch, aren’t you?’

  ‘I am,’ I said and noticed my bags, packed, sitting behind him in the hall. ‘But I’ve committed no crime. I was the victim of the attack, not the perpetrator. So your windows are safe.’

  ‘I don’t want no trouble. No trouble. You’ll have to go.’

  ‘Would it help if I told you I thought the guy had an Irish accent?’ I asked, deadpan. When he didn’t answer, I leaned past him to pick up my bags. He flinched as I did so and I gave him a wink.

  ‘Top o’ the mornin’ t’yah!’

  ‘Where now, boss?’ asked Archie, once we were back in the car. His voice remained dull but there was a twinkle in the large hang-dog eyes.

  ‘Great Western Road,’ I said. ‘But stop at a phone box on the way so I can warn my landlady.’

  The world had turned on its axis a few times since I’d last spent a night in my digs, but I had somehow expected to pick up where I had left off; and specifically where I had left off my tearoom conversation with Fiona White. But things had moved on without me, somewhat.

  The telephone had been engaged and I hadn’t been able to warn Fiona White that I was on my way back. And when we pulled up at my digs I noticed two cars I didn’t recognize parked outside. The first was a dark grey Humber. It had no police markings and the driver and passenger were in civvies, but it could not have looked more like a police car if it had flat feet. I felt the distinctly novel emotion of being pleased to see a police car outside my home: Jock Ferguson, or maybe McNab himself, must have arranged it. The second car was a black three- or four-year-old Jowett Javelin PE. Too flash for the police.

  Lying in my hos
pital bed, I had played the movie of my return home in my head: Fiona White would be all nervously-contained agitation when I arrived. She would have read about the Defenestration of Gordon Street, but it would be clear she was glad to see me, and see me in one piece. A nervous little smile would play across her lips and I would have the almost uncontrollable urge to still it with a kiss. Instead I would let her fuss around in the kitchen and make Archie and me some tea.

  After Archie left, we would settle into the routine of before, drifting slowly towards whatever it was we both wanted our relationship to become.

  But I could tell as soon as she answered the door that my sudden and unannounced return perturbed Fiona White. She looked startled and awkward and almost hesitated before admitting me and Archie.

  I didn’t like him as soon as I set eyes on him. The main reason was, for a second, I thought I recognized him, then realized he could not be the person I took him for, because the person I took him for was dead. The face was not the same, of course, there was just a strong family resemblance to the picture on the mantelpiece above the fire. The picture of the long dead naval officer.

  ‘You must be the lodger …’ he said smilelessly as he stood up when we entered the living room. Tea for two with best biscuits on the coffee table. He was tanned and dressed too lightly for Glasgow and had a just-arrived-from-abroad look to him.

  ‘You must be the brother-in-law …’ I said flatly.

  ‘We’ve been reading all about your … escapades. I must say that I’m not happy about you staying here at Fiona’s. Do you know that I was accosted by a policeman when I arrived here?’

  ‘Really? Well, you see, they’ve been told to challenge anyone who has a suspicious or dodgy look to them. And I don’t really see what my rental arrangements with Mrs White have to do with you.’

  ‘Well, as my sister-in-law and with my brother no longer here, I feel an obligation to Fiona and the girls’ welfare.’

  ‘I see,’ I said. ‘And it’s taken ten years for this sense of obligation to grow on you?’

  ‘I’ve been away. Abroad. Working in India. But now that I’m back, I think it’s fair for you to know that things may change around here.’

  ‘I see,’ I said. ‘Do you take the same size slippers as your brother?’

  He looked stung but I knew he didn’t have it in him to take it further.

  ‘That’s quite enough from both of you,’ said Fiona. ‘James, I am quite capable of organizing my own affairs. Mr Lennox, you’ve had quite an ordeal. I’m sure you want to get some rest. I’ll fix something to eat about six, if you want to join us.’

  I stared at her for a minute. ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘My pleasure.’

  I nodded to Archie and we headed up to my rooms. I was tired and pissed off and really wanted to smack the sneer off the smug bastard downstairs. But in the meantime I had bigger fish to fry.

  ‘I think your landlady is going to have to buy a bigger table,’ said Archie.

  ‘What are you talking about, Archie?’

  ‘If both of you are to get your feet under it.’

  ‘Oh yes, very funny.’

  ‘You okay here, chief? I can hang around if you want.’

  ‘No, Archie, that’s fine. I’m going to take a spin up to Billy Dunbar’s tonight to show him that photograph, but I can fly solo on that. You take the night off.’

  I lay on my bed, smoking and aching. After about an hour I heard the front door open and voices. I went to the window and saw James White walk out to the Javelin. He turned and waved to Fiona and then looked pointedly up at my window. I looked pointedly back. The sight of him, his middle-class stability and his likeness to a long dead junior naval officer gave me a bad feeling in my gut. I had a vision of Fiona White’s future and no matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t see me in it.

  I washed and changed. Suit, shirt, underwear, everything. It was something about hospitals I could never understand: you came out of them smelling of carbolic yet you always felt dirty. I went downstairs at six and had a meal of fish, peas and potatoes with Fiona and her daughters. I tried to chat as much as I could but the truth was I was still pretty shaken up by what had happened in my office. Fiona frowned when she saw me take some prescription pills with my meal; the bandage and dressing on my arm was concealed by my shirt sleeve and she did not know how badly I’d been injured, if at all. But the other thing that nagged at me throughout the meal was the smug presence of a dead man’s brother.

  After we finished, I helped Fiona take the dishes through to the kitchen but she told me to sit. The girls settled down to watch television and I closed the kitchen door.

  ‘Are you okay with this, Fiona?’ I asked. ‘I know that reading about what happened must have been a shock.’

  She stopped washing the plate she was working on and leant against the edge of the sink, her back to me, and looking out of the kitchen window to the small garden at the back.

  ‘This man. You killed him? I mean it wasn’t an accident?’

  I was about to say it was a little of both, but the infuriating thing about Fiona White was that she brought out the honesty in me. ‘Yes, I killed him. But it was in self-defence. He ambushed me in my office and tried to cut my throat. He was the same guy who jumped me in the fog.’

  She turned to me.

  ‘So it’s safe for you to be back here?’ She made it more of a statement than a question.

  ‘That’s not one hundred per cent certain,’ I said. ‘I don’t for one minute think that this man was working on his own. But I can’t imagine whoever was behind the attack risking anything so … so visible again. Anyway, it looks like we have serious police protection now. But there is still no way I want to put you and the girls at risk. I can find new accommodation for the time being …’

  ‘No,’ she said, but as if she had to think about it and without emphasis.

  ‘It’s not always going to be like this, Fiona,’ I said. ‘Things have got all mixed up. I thought this kind of thing was behind me. I guess I was wrong.’

  ‘You don’t have to explain,’ she said. ‘But you know I can’t be part of that world. I can’t bring the girls into that kind of world.’

  ‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘But that’s what I’m trying to put behind me. Things will get better, like I said.’

  ‘I know they will,’ she said and smiled.

  But we both knew my fate was sealed.

  It had still been just within banking hours so, on the way back from the hospital, I had had Archie stop off at the bank. News of my adventures had obviously reached the bank and when I walked in it was the kind of entry that you would expect a gunfighter to get walking into a Western saloon. MacGregor himself dealt with my request to access my safety deposit box. He was overly chatty but nervous, as if making a conscious effort to avoid the word ‘window’ or any reference to catching a taxi. I was glad I had the goods on him, otherwise I reckoned I would have already lost the bank job. As it was, my knowledge of his sordid private life would do little to save me if the board of governors set their minds to get rid of me.

  But there again, they maybe liked the idea of their cash being guarded by a life-taker.

  I had taken the Webley from the safety deposit box and had tucked it into the waistband of my trousers. I knew that if McNab found out I was walking about his town heavy with an unlicensed gun, the recent thaw in relations would turn out to have been a false Spring. But if someone tried to kill me again, I wanted to have more than a hat stand in my hand. When I had gotten back to my digs, and after my pleasant exchange with James White, I had put the Webley under my pillow.

  It was about eight-thirty when I put my jacket and hat on, went down to the hall telephone and ’phoned Isa. We arranged that I would meet her and Violet the next day.

  I knocked on the Whites’ door and told Elspeth to tell her mother that I would be out for the evening. When I drove off, I was relieved to see that the dark grey Humber stayed on point outside the house, instead of
following me. But I guessed my outing would be noted and radioed in.

  Before I headed up north and into the country, I stopped at a telephone kiosk and called Murphy.

  ‘You heard what happened?’ I asked.

  ‘About you throwing that cunt out the fucking window? I believe it may have come to my fucking notice. I thought you was supposed to be discreet? So who was he?’

  ‘The same guy I told you and Jonny Cohen about. The one who jumped me in the fog.’

  ‘So what are you telling me, that you want your fucking money?’

  ‘No. Maybe. I don’t think so. Listen, I’m not at all sure that this guy was this so called Lad of Strachan’s. Unless Gentleman Joe sent him for elocution lessons, that is. He was English.’

  ‘Aye? Fucking reason enough to throw him out the window.’

  ‘Listen, Mr Murphy, could you tell Jonny Cohen about this? I’ve got to look into something else, and it might just tell us whether Strachan is alive or not. I’m also going to try to find out if this guy was the Lad or not.’

  After I hung up, I drove out of Glasgow. The sky was heavy and dull but it felt good to get out of the city and into an open landscape. I guessed that there would be no one in the estate office at that time of evening, allowing me to dodge any encounter with the sexually repressed, tweed-clad Miss Marple. When I reached the estate, however, I found the gates closed and padlocked.

  Running through the rough map of the place I had in my mind, I headed further on up the narrow ribbon of country road. A high dry-stone wall running along the side of the road marked the border of the estate. Eventually I found a lane that led to a disused entry, but this had been bricked up. At least the Atlantic was off the road and reasonably concealed, so I decided to risk my suede loafers and hounds-tooth suit by climbing the wall. I dropped down the other side into a mulch of old fallen leaves, twigs and branches. Ahead of me was a dense swatch of evergreens that the late evening light failed to penetrate, but I reckoned that if I walked straight ahead and managed not to break an ankle, I would come out onto the path that had led from the estate office to Dunbar’s cottage.