I was given my chance by the Whispering Death.
To be more precise, I was given my chance by the Number Thirteen Whispering Death to Clarkston. I acted on instinct more than anything else. My police escort was leading me across the street when the trolleybus, its electric motor silent, surged out of a wall of grey-green smog. On seeing us, the driver sounded his claxon and the police constable pulled me back towards the pavement.
It was more an instinctive reaction — the fly’s impulse to pull against the spider’s web — than a conscious decision to escape. I yanked my arm hard, pulling the copper with me into the path of the trolleybus. He shouted something obscene and let go of my sleeve and I threw myself in the other direction, placing the trolleybus between me and the uniform, Dunlop and Ferguson.
I could hear Ferguson shouting behind me but I lunged forward. I tripped up over my own feet, made larger and more cumbersome by the unlaced army boots, and came down hard onto the cobbles of the street. I picked myself up instantly and ran headlong toward the other side of the road.
And right into the path of a taxi.
Fortunately, the cab was travelling slowly because of the poor visibility and I suffered no injury other than the slurs on my mother’s virtue bawled out through the window by the driver. One of my boots had come off and I kicked the other one free and ran on in my sock soles. It made my feet slip on the cobbles, but when I made it to the opposite pavement, dodging in front of the parked police car, I got full purchase and was able to sprint. There were shouts and the sound of running behind me and the blast of a horn told me that one of my pursuers had also run out in front of a vehicle.
Running full pelt in the smog had a certain edge to it, like playing Russian roulette. With only a three- or four-yard visibility, there was the constant risk of a bone crunching collision with another pedestrian, a lamppost or an unpredicted wall. It also had its advantages: there could only be two of them after me, Jock Ferguson and the burly uniformed constable. I reckoned Shuggie Dunlop’s running range was even more limited than the visibility. They couldn’t see me now; I had become hidden behind a curtain of smog within a few yards, but unfortunately not before seeing the direction I took. That meant they wouldn’t have had to split up and each take a direction, and both Ferguson and the uniform would be heading this way. I thought about re-crossing the road and heading back the way I had come, but that was too obvious and there was always the chance that they were each taking one side of the street.
I took a random right into an alley and sprinted full pace, again hoping I didn’t tumble over an obstacle. I came to another alley, cutting across the first, so I took another right. Eventually I reached the gloomy, indistinct mouth of the alley and found myself in what I guessed was a bigger street, although it was difficult to tell in the smog-tightened pool of visibility. I took off again at random, eventually slowing to a trot, my stocking-soled feet silent on the pavement.
Peering into the smog around me, I occasionally picked out the sounds of footsteps and the indistinct bloom of hand-held flashlights. No one was looking for me here — the torches were those of pedestrians equipped for the smog, following a wall or a pavement edge to find their way. Ferguson, Dunlop and the uniformed policeman had no chance of finding me now and, if they had split up, I guessed they’d struggle to find each other, blind in the smog. But they weren’t the only ones who were lost. I had no idea where I was.
I found another alley way and dodged into it, moving the few feet back from the street necessary to be concealed from view. My feet were beginning to hurt, not so much because I’d been running on stone and asphalt without shoes but because of the cold that was beginning to penetrate deep into the bone. That was something I needed to sort out sooner rather than later. I leaned my back against some stonework and made a conscious effort to calm myself and think through my situation. Apart from the small inconvenience of being a wanted man on the run, dressed in a prison outfit, hunted by the police and without any kind of footwear, it was all going swimmingly.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Think, Lennox.
I kept repeating it to myself, trying to push back the panic. After all, I’d been in worse situations.
There had been some kind of cockeyed logic behind my escape. I wasn’t kidding myself that I could live the rest of my life as a fugitive, even if I did somehow get back to Canada, but I knew that my prospects were no more sunny if I had stayed put with the police. I had to find the answers myself, and I couldn’t do that from a cell. I even toyed with the idea that Ferguson had taken me to the Hopkins building, even though he already knew there was no one there, just to give me a chance to make a break for it. I dismissed the thought: no matter how sympathetic he was to my plight, Jock Ferguson was a straight-down-the-line copper. Creative thinking or expedient dodges were not in his makeup.
And I tried not to think about the little lecture Ferguson had given me about flight being an indicator of guilt.
I tried to look on the bright side: I may have looked grubby, dishevelled, black-eyed, unshaven, shoeless and probably half-mad, but I comforted myself with the thought that this was Glasgow, so there was no problem with me looking out of place.
There really were genuine advantages to my situation. The smog was a godsend: Ferguson wouldn’t call out search parties, knowing it would be a fool’s errand. I could bet, however, that every patrolling beat bobby would have my description the next time he made the routine call from his police box to check in with his station. It all meant that I had time, but not much. And, of course, the smog was as much an encumbrance to my escape as it was to their manhunt.
I had to get my bearings.
Glasgow’s artery was the Clyde. And, like all arteries, it had a pulse. There was always loud activity on the river or along its shores. If I could get to it, I could get some kind of bearing.
I strained the smog for the sounds of the river. Nothing. Just the bleating of car and bus horns as drivers warned each other of their snail’s pace approach in the smog. Guessing that the sounds of traffic would indicate the city centre, I took it as a bearing and headed in the opposite direction, again dodging the sounds of footsteps in the fog. I still managed to scare an older couple when I nearly bumped into them. The old man drew his wife to him as they both took in my appearance with startled, terrified eyes. I mumbled an apology and stumbled on, leaving them shocked and puzzling as to whether I would turn back into Dr Jekyll before midnight.
I reckoned I must have been heading toward the Trongate, but when I found myself following the flank of a massive, ornate building, and could hear the rhythmic sounds of chugging locomotives, I realized that I must have staggered across the street without recognizing any landmarks and was now at the back side of the St Enoch Station. Again I paused, resting against the wall and massaging my feet, one by one. This was good and bad: I was nearer the river but also closer to Buchanan Street. More people. And more coppers.
I pushed off again, heading into the maze of streets and alleys behind the station. A sign told me I was in Dunlop Street. Now I could clearly hear the horns and claxons of barges and tugs navigating the smog-bound water. If I handled this right, I might even find the suspension footbridge near Custom Quay and get over to the south side of the Clyde, where I could either get lost in the warren of the Gorbals or trace my way along the river.
I paused at the end of the street, which opened out onto Clyde Street and the riverfront. I checked both ways as much as I could: the smog had gotten no denser but nor had it lifted; I guessed it had settled in for the night and that gave me some added comfort.
Down here, next to the river, the streets would be empty at this time of night, particularly on a night like this. All the sounds of activity came from the Clyde. I turned right and, after a few yards, ran across the street to the riverside, following it until I could make out the stone arch of the suspension footbridge. The suspension bridge across the Clyde was like a scaled down version of the Clifton Suspension
Bridge, with two stone-built arches, one at either end, supporting the steel cables that held the bridge in place. Again I paused to listen out for the sounds of anyone about before passing through the arch and walking quickly across the bridge.
I saw the uniformed copper at the same time he saw me, when I was halfway across the river. It was the black silhouette of his high-crowned peaked cap in the grey-green smog that identified the approaching figure as a policeman. To him, I would have just been a shape in the gloom. But, as soon as he got close, even with my prisoner jacket hidden beneath the army coat, he would see my shoeless feet and generally disreputable mien. In Glasgow, ‘don’t like the look of you’ was grounds enough for a copper to feel your collar until something more substantial could be trumped up. In my case, no trumping-up would be needed. I turned on my heel so fast it was practically a pirouette; my thinking was that, in this miasma, the copper wouldn’t be sure if I had been heading towards him at all, or if he had simply caught up with someone walking in the same direction as him.
‘Hey… you…’ he called out and I picked up the pace, hunching my shoulders and pulling my coat collar up. My balletic skills had clearly not been up to scratch.
‘Hey you… I’m talking to you! Wait there a minute!’ I heard his hobnails match my pace. I didn’t look over my shoulder, instead breaking into a sprint, back the way I had come. More shouts and I could hear him running after me. I had to open enough distance for the smog to cloak me again, but the heavy greatcoat was holding me back.
I had to risk it: when I broke through the stone archway I turned sharp right, then jumped the railings on the riverside, hoping there was enough bank to stop me careering straight into the Clyde. There was, and I dropped flat into some foul-smelling, oily muck. It was all over my hands and, in a moment of desperate inspiration, I smeared my face with it. My hair was black and the mud on my face should make me less easy to spot. I lay low and listened as the copper ran past on the other side of the railings.
I was just about to congratulate myself on my quick thinking when I heard the metal segments in the soles of his boots grate as he came to a sudden halt.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The policeman was only feet away from me and, even in the smog, if he turned and looked down, he would see me. At that range, I doubted very much if my improvised camouflage would do much to conceal me. I tried to ease back and down the slope, but I was afraid that doing so would cause a sound, any sound, to attract the beat copper’s attention.
I watched him. He was a big lad, right enough, youngish, probably in his early twenties. He used a bicycle-type lamp to shine around him as he searched for me. He was too green to know that the only use a flashlight has in the smog is when it’s pointing at the ground; pointing it into the mist only served to make the smog more impenetrable. For some reason that only a physicist could explain, it reflected any light directed at it.
I could tell he was listening intently. But, as I had hoped, he was searching in the wrong direction, thinking I’d run off along Clyde Street. The big question was this: had he challenged me because he had been alerted to look out for me, or was it simply because he had seen a suspicious-looking character who clearly had tried to avoid him? If it was the first, then I had trouble; if it was the second, he would probably give up and go back to patrolling. The one thing that made me hopeful was that he hadn’t blown his police whistle to attract other coppers.
After what seemed an interminable time of peering into the smog and listening, he shook his head irritatedly and headed back towards the footbridge. I watched him until he was swallowed up again by the smog.
There was no point in trying to cross by the bridge, so I turned around and slid down the embankment on my backside, again trying to make sure I didn’t end up in the Clyde. As it turned out, there was a towpath running along close to the river. I guessed that it had been used at one time for horse-drawn barges, although it was elevated and separated from the waterline by a high, brick-reinforced embankment. I offered up a small prayer to whatever gods were looking after me: the towpath meant I could move without being spotted. Hopefully.
My feet didn’t hurt any more, something that caused me concern not relief. They didn’t hurt because they were numb. Sitting down on the towpath, I eased off my mud-caked sock and felt my right foot. Like the left, it had the body temperature of an iceberg and was insensitive to my massaging.
I needed to get sorted out. And quick.
I hobbled along the towpath, not encountering anyone or anything other than the occasional scuttling sound of rats scattering as I approached. As I approached the Jamaica Bridge, I was aware that I was right in the heart of Glasgow, but passing through below street level. I kept going along the path, trying to ignore the strange experience of walking on feet that couldn’t feel the ground beneath them; but the combination of physical numbness with the enclosure of my senses by the smog, the quiet fluid sounds of the river and the distant noises of the city above me all conspired to add to the feeling of unreality.
For some reason, the song You Take the High Road started running through my head. The song was about the ancient Celtic belief that while the living travel on the surface of the earth, the dead take the ‘Low Road’, passing underground; and only occasionally do the two paths meet, when the ‘Low Road’ travellers reappear as ghosts. As I walked smog-blinded and cold-numbed along the towpath, I started to wonder if this was what it was like to take the Low Road.
In a time of crisis, I sure knew how to cheer myself up.
As it happened, I had to come up to street level when the towpath ended, not passing under the bridge but leading back up to the main road. I crossed the road and tramway at Jamaica Bridge, but as soon as I was on the other side, I found my way back to the waterfront on the Broomielaw. I paused, questioning the logic of sticking to the river. This was no forgotten towpath anymore, but the point at which the Clyde became the factory floor of the city, and I found myself with quays to my left and grimy warehouses and store-yards to my right.
I had a decision to make: whether to take to the city streets and try to cross to the west side in as plain view as the smog afforded, or stick to the waterfront and risk running into nightshift workers on the Clyde. Of course, there was a limit to what I had to fear from Glaswegian dockside workers swinging hammers or swinging the lead on the backshift, and the smog was still a cloak I could hide behind, but there was another concern: the River Police.
The Clyde was as important a thoroughfare as any road — more so — and the City of Glasgow’s River Police regulated it with vigour. Patrol boats scoured the river constantly with nothing more to do than fish out of the water the odd corpse that the Glasgow Humane Society had missed, or check the lighting on the Clutha tugs, barges and other boats that plied their trade on the waterway. And if there was anything to watch out for more than a keen-as-mustard copper, then it was a bored one looking for something, anything, to break the monotony of their shift.
I heard voices.
I stopped in my path and listened, straining to pinpoint who was talking, where they were, and what they were talking about.
I eased forward, careful not to break into view. From what I could make out, I had stumbled into a nightshift of river workers. There was a faint amber glow in the fog and I guessed they had a brazier burning, as if the smog needed any more thickening. On my left, I could just about perceive the outline of a quay jutting out into the river. I was faced with a stark choice: either walk on past the workers, as close to the quayside as I dared, or double back and lose a lot of the advantage I had gained by using the towpath. I worked out that walking past them would normally not have presented a real problem: they would assume I was another worker making my way to my shift further along the river and my grubby appearance would not be deemed anything unusual, but going to work a nightshift in November in your sock-soles would raise an eyebrow even here in Glasgow. I decided not to risk it and retraced my steps twenty yards or so. I head
ed away from the water, across a patch of greasy grass and mud, weaved my way through stacks of empty wooden barrels and between two brick warehouses, all the time seeing these objects loom in and out of my tiny pool of smog-edged awareness.
Back on the Broomielaw, I would have been in full view of any cars passing along the riverfront, if it hadn’t been for the dense smog remaining my ally. I made a mental note to write to my MP and ask him to oppose the implementation of the Clean Air Act.
Foggy or not, it still wasn’t safe for me to be back on the streets. The murk could hide coppers just as well as it concealed me. I had to get across town as fast as possible, ideally dropping back down to the waterfront as soon as I passed the clutch of bridges that connected the north and south sides in the city centre, each bridge a broad and normally busy roadway to be crossed. Moving as quickly as I could on my numb feet and in the smog, I only came into view of one passing tram and a couple of cars, but at a distance where I would have been just another shadowy figure in the gloom. My only big error was when I walked directly past a police box, burgundy-red in Glasgow when they were blue everywhere else. The roof-mounted light was flashing red, forlornly trying to summon the beat policeman in the gloom and indicating he had to ’phone into his station from the box. Unless the copper was within ten yards of the box, there was little hope of him seeing the beacon; but worrying that the call he had to make would be about me, I quickened my pace anyway and crossed the road. I passed through Anderston, back down to the riverfront. And right into a crowd of people.
For a moment, I thought I was hallucinating. There was a line of sixty or seventy people snaking across the quayside in the fog — men, women, even several children. What caused me greater concern was the uniformed men in peaked caps and holding flashlights, who seemed to be shepherding the others into a queue. It took me a moment to realize the uniforms were not those of policemen, and that the others in the queue were carrying luggage.
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