Ferguson gave me a look.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I understand that. But before we start a manhunt, tell me why you’re on your own.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know what I mean. Not even a beat bobby with you.’
He turned to Fiona White and smiled. ‘Could you excuse us for a moment, please, Mrs White?’ Then turning back to me: ‘Let’s go upstairs. I’ll help you pack …’
My raincoat had taken the worst of the damage: there was a bad tear at the seam of one arm, and a sleeve and the back of the coat were smudged with tarry, black streaks where I’d skidded over the cobbles in the alley. My hat, one of my best Borsalinos, was still lying somewhere in the alley. Despite my suit being unmarked, I wanted to change it, along with my shirt, as you always want to do after you have been in a fight.
Jock Ferguson sat smoking in the lounge while I washed, changed and packed. Standing at the washstand, I looked at myself in the mirror. A faint discolouration haloed the sticking plaster on my cheek, but there was no swelling and I didn’t look too bad. I guessed that I had bled enough to prevent serious bruising.
An odd idiosyncrasy of my personality was that I was a sharp dresser: I always bought the best clothes I could afford. And often clothes I couldn’t. I packed a dozen shirts, not wanting to have to come back to pick up more, and two changes of suit, four silk ties and half a dozen handkerchiefs. I also packed a brand new pair of brown suede shoes with composition soles, which were just the latest dab. I had decided to take a leaf out of my dance partner’s book.
After I had my clothes packed, I called through to Ferguson to check he was okay and I apologized for the delay; he responded with something grunted. What I was really doing was checking where he was, and that he wasn’t about to appear in the bedroom doorway while I took a copy of H.G. Wells’s The Shape of Things to Come from the bookshelf and dropped it into my case. I then got down on my hands and knees and, stretching my arm under the bed, eased up two loose floorboards and reached into the floorspace. Taking the oilskin-wrapped bundle, I gave it another wrapping in an old shirt and dropped it into the case next to the book.
‘Okay, Jock …’ I said when I reappeared in my sitting room, ‘let’s have it. Why are you flying solo?’
For the first time since I’d known him, Jock Ferguson looked ill at ease.
‘I need to ask you one thing, Lennox,’ he said firmly. ‘Have you discussed your interest in the Gentleman Joe Strachan business with anyone else, other than me?’
‘Ah …’ I said. ‘I see you’ve followed the same line of thought that I have. The answer is no, I have another case on and I have been dealing with that since we spoke. I have discussed the Strachan business with no one other than you.’ Of course I had: with Willie Sneddon, but I knew that if Sneddon had wanted to frighten me off, it would have been more direct. I also knew that Sneddon kept his own counsel. In any case, I felt it best not to let Ferguson know that I’d been in touch with a King.
‘That’s what I thought …’ Ferguson said glumly. He sat on the edge of the sofa, leaning forwards, his elbows resting on his knees.
‘And you only spoke to your fellow officers about it, and then I get jumped and warned off. That’s what’s bothering you, isn’t it?’
‘It doesn’t make sense …’ He shook his head. ‘I suppose I can understand you being warned off because there are officers who are so determined to find the rest of the gang … but waving a gun about …’
‘Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves, Jock. I really think that it is unlikely to have been a copper at all. There’s always another side to every story. You suggested it yourself — my clients, Isa and Violet. Maybe they told someone that they were planning to hire someone to look into the discovery of dear old dad’s remains. They told me that they had asked around and my name had come up. It could be that someone has simply done some two and two arithmetic.’
‘And …’ asked Ferguson, reading my mind.
‘And Violet does have a husband who looks like he knows all the moves.’
‘Name?’
‘Robert …’ I struggled to remember the married names the twins had given me. I had got used to thinking of them as Isa and Violet Strachan in my head. ‘Robert McKnight. Mean anything?’
‘Not offhand. I’ll check it out. Discreetly. In the meantime I’d keep a low profile if I were you, Lennox.’
‘I’ll do my best. While I’m doing a Greta Garbo, can you have someone keep an eye on Mrs White? And give her a number to call …’
‘Fair enough, Lennox. I’ll come up with something. Probably a prowler, like you said. Just make sure you don’t sneak round the back if you need to come back for anything. And Lennox …’
‘Yeah?’
‘You’re really pushing it. Your luck with me, I mean. I could get my jotters handed to me if it was found out that I’ve covered up an assault with a firearm.’
‘I appreciate it, Jock. If anything comes out of this that leads to a big collar, you can bet your name’s on it.’
Fiona White was waiting in the hall, her arms folded and her face set hard.
‘Is this really necessary?’ she asked as I put my suitcases down in the hall.
‘It’s safer. I don’t want you and the girls involved in this. I don’t think anyone would dare show their face here again, but it would be best if I moved out.’
‘I will keep your rooms for you, Mr Lennox. I’m assuming this is a temporary arrangement.’
‘I would like it to be, Mrs White.’
The three of us stood awkwardly for a moment. Ferguson handed her a card on which he had scribbled down his home number as well as the St Andrew’s Square contact number.
‘I’ll arrange for the beat constable to check on you,’ he said. ‘But if you see anyone suspicious hanging around, ’phone me right away.’
‘I’ll ring with a contact number once I’m settled,’ I added. She nodded abruptly. Ferguson and I carried the cases out to my car.
It was still as foggy as hell. Or maybe in hell they complained about it being as foggy as Glasgow. I dumped my bags at my office and sat at my desk until it got dark and I had to switch the lamp on. The other offices were emptying and I smoked my way through half a pack of cigarettes and contemplated, not for the first time, how crap my situation was. My face hurt like a son of a bitch every time I placed even the gingerest of fingertips on it, but from what I could see from my reflection in the broad blade of my letter opener, it still hadn’t swollen. My side next to the small of my back still ached nauseatingly, but it was no longer a solo performance: all the wrenches and impacts of our scuffle in the smog were now singing in unison.
The darkening smog rubbed itself against my office window. I decided against venturing far to search for a hotel and was beginning to imagine the extra aches I would wake up with if I slept on the polished floor of my small office. Added to that, performing my ablutions in the toilet that was shared with the four other offices on my floor and the floor below did not appeal to me.
On an impulse I picked up the ’phone. I was surprised that the person I asked for took my call.
‘Hi,’ I said, failing to keep the weariness out of my voice. ‘It’s Lennox. Listen, I’m across the street in my office. I have a favour to ask … could you meet me in the lounge bar in ten minutes?’
And, to my further surprise, she said she would.
Leonora Bryson was late. Which was fair enough. There was an etiquette to these things: a woman couldn’t be seen waiting around in a bar for a man. You had to do the waiting. And women like Leonora Bryson knew that any man would wait for her, for as long as she wanted him to wait.
When she arrived in the lounge bar of the Central Hotel, she was again dressed in a formal skirt with a matching jacket and pale blue blouse beneath it. It was something that, on most women, would have looked almost drab, but on her it looked sexier than a bikini on Marilyn Monroe. She certainly attracted enough attention as she
entered and I could have sworn I heard the marble bust in the corner give a gasp. I was waiting for her at the bar and suggested we take a seat at one of the tables. I asked her what she would like to drink. I was not surprised that she ordered a daiquiri, but was amazed that the Glaswegian bartender knew how to make it.
‘You look like you’ve been in the wars, Mr Lennox,’ she said, indicating the dressing on my cheek with a tilt of her daiquiri glass. There wasn’t the same frost in her voice, but there wasn’t any warmth either.
‘This? Yeah, stupid really … I walked into something in the smog.’ I neglected to explain that the something had been solid muscle with a gun.
‘Yes, I know …’ she said, suddenly animated. ‘I’ve seen some pretty bad smog in San Francisco, but this stuff is unbelievable. I mean, it’s not just dense, it’s tinged green.’
‘They colour it for the tourists. San Francisco … is that where you’re from?’
‘No … I’m from the east coast, originally. Connecticut.’
‘Then where you were brought up was a heck of a lot closer to my home town than it was to Hollywood. I was raised in New Brunswick.’
‘Really?’ she said, with an interest so tiny that you would have needed the Palomar telescope set to maximum magnification to spot it. ‘What is it you wanted to talk to me about, Mr Lennox?’
‘I need somewhere to sleep tonight …’
The final syllable had not taken form before the temperature dropped a thousand degrees.
‘No, no …’ I held my hands up. ‘Don’t get the wrong idea … With the smog and everything, and my office just over the way, I wondered if you could swing a special rate for me here. Just for tonight. It’s a bit rich for my blood normally but needs must …’
She appraised me with the glacial blue eyes and for a moment I killed the time thinking about what Rhine maidens and Valkyries might get up to in Valhalla. She seemed to make up her mind about me.
‘Actually,’ she said, ‘we have a spare room at the end of our hall. We had it for one of the studio executives, but he’s flown home early. We have kept the booking open in case we needed it. I guess tonight we do.’
‘I’ll pay, of course …’
‘No need.’ She took a long, thin cigarette of a brand I’d never seen before from a specially made silver case. I held out a light for her the instant it met her lips. She took a draw and nodded a perfunctory thanks. ‘It’s paid for whether you use it or not. And, anyway, you’re working for Mr Macready. Just tonight?’
‘Just tonight.’
‘Was there anything else, Mr Lennox?’ She frowned at me over her sipped daiquiri, as if my presence was seriously compromising her enjoyment of it.
‘As a matter of fact there was. How much do you know about why I’ve been employed by the studio? About Mr Macready’s situation?’
‘Everything,’ she said blankly. ‘I am Mr Macready’s personal assistant. To do my job, I need to know everything that’s going on, good or bad. I am how Mr Macready connects with everybody and everything around him.’
I was about to say he’d done some pretty enthusiastic connecting himself, but let it slide. ‘Did you know about his … tastes before this incident?’
‘Of course.’ A little defiance now. And resentment.
‘Where were you when Macready was at the cottage with his friend?’
‘I was at the hotel. Not this hotel … the one up north. Up past that big lake. We were there for the shooting.’
‘And Macready gave you the night off?’
‘That’s right. He was in the bar of the hotel drinking with Iain.’
‘When I asked him about it, he said it was a spur of the moment decision to go to the cottage.’
‘That’s what he told me,’ she said, holding me in a blue glacier gaze. ‘Iain’s family owned the estate we were shooting on and the cottage was one he used now and again. He paints, you see. An artist.’ She said the word with disdain. ‘Mr Macready said that Iain suggested they go to the cottage to continue drinking.’
‘But as a guest of the hotel, Macready could order drinks after closing time …’
Leonora Bryson shrugged. ‘I don’t think drinking was what was on either of their minds. Why is this so important?’
‘Have you seen the photographs?’
A split second of outrage, then the storm passed. ‘No, Mr Lennox, I haven’t.’
‘I have. I had to. They were taken with some kind of hidden camera. In a wall void or something. I can’t tell for sure because the other party … Iain … is not, I’ve been told, to be made aware of this difficulty. That means I can’t examine the cottage. But it was an elaborate set-up. That means organization. Planning in advance.’
‘And that doesn’t fit with them going to the cottage being a spur of the moment thing … is that what you’re saying?’
‘Exactly. But that leads to the conclusion that his Lordship’s — or is it his Dukeship’s? — son and heir was in on the setup. And that simply doesn’t make any sense at all. He — and his father — have as much to lose as John Macready. More, probably.’
‘So where does that leave you?’
‘Tracking down the blackmailer. Paul Downey. Believe it or not, Miss Bryson, this city is a tough place to stay hidden in. And I’ve got the kind of contacts who can tell me exactly where to look.’
‘So why haven’t you spoken to these contacts? Shouldn’t you be bumping into more mysterious objects in the smog, instead of sitting here?’
‘It’s not as simple as that. These contacts I have are, to be frank, criminals. If there’s a crooked way of making a buck, then these guys have done it. With something as delicate as this, I have to be careful about what I say and to whom.’ I noticed she had finished her daiquiri and beckoned to the waiter. ‘May I get you another?’
‘No.’ When the waiter came over she ignored my protests and told him to put the drinks on her room bill. ‘I’ll ask reception to give you the key for the room.’
‘Fine, thanks,’ I said. ‘I’ll nip over to my office, if I can find it in the fog, and pick up my bags.’
‘Bags?’ She arched an eyebrow.
‘I keep some stuff in my office.’
It was a lame answer and she saw through it. I could see her reappraising the wound on my cheek.
‘Mr Lennox, I do hope that we can rely on you. I have to tell you that I was not in favour of you being hired. From what Mr Fraser told us about you, you have a lot of colour in your background. I wouldn’t like to think that that colour could interfere with you sorting this mess out for us.’
‘It won’t. For your information, Miss Bryson, it is exactly that colour that could lead me to Downey and the photographs. May I ask you a question?’
She shrugged.
‘What is it about me that you dislike so intensely?’
‘I’ve not given you that amount of thought, Mr Lennox. But if you’re going to push me on it, there isn’t anything in particular I dislike about you. It’s probably true to say that I dislike everything about you.’
I smiled. ‘How wonderfully simple yet all-embracing.’
‘I think you have made all kinds of judgements about John. You think of him as less of a man because of what he is. Well, I can tell you that John Macready is more of a man than you’ll ever be. I can tell to look at you the type you are. Arrogant, pushy, violent. You use women and have no conscience about it. You had only met me for a few minutes and you tried your moves on me. Men like you make me sick.’
‘I see,’ I said and drained my drink. ‘If I ask you for a reference after this job is over, would you mind awfully leaving that bit out?’
She laughed, but it was a twisted laugh full of distaste. ‘And you think you’re so funny. So smart. Well, make sure you’re smart enough to sort this mess out, because I’m going to make sure you don’t get a penny more until you do. Good night, Mr Lennox.’ Turning abruptly, she marched out of the lounge.
I stood there, somew
hat stung by her comprehensive character assassination of me.
But it didn’t stop me watching her ass as she walked off.
I brought my cases over from my office and a porter carried them up to the room for me. I tipped him too much as I always tended to do when dealing with Glaswegians. They always chatted and joked with you, and the fact that they weren’t doing it for the tip, just because it was in their nature, always made you tip more.
The room was a smaller encapsulation of the luxury I’d seen in Macready’s suite and I decided, not for the first time, that I was definitely in the wrong business. Once I was alone, I locked the door and slid the heavy safety chain into place. Opening my suitcases, I took out the bundle and the copy of The Shape of Things to Come and laid them on the bed. I unwrapped the shirt and the oilskin from the bundle and took out the heavy, top-break Webley thirty-eight and the box of ammunition. After I’d loaded it, I thumbed down the safety, rewrapped it in the oilskin and shirt and put it back in the case. I spent more time with the copy of H.G. Wells’s chef d’oeuvre. I opened it and checked the contents: the pages had been hollowed out and in it were tightly rolled fifty-pound notes and a small bag with a handful of diamonds.
This was my Nibelungengold. It had started off with the money I had made in Germany. I had been lucky to get out of the occupation zone with it: the military police had neither understood nor appreciated my spirit of private enterprise or my trailblazing in establishing post-war trading partnerships with the Germans. Then, while I had been in Glasgow, I had been able to add to my little trust fund significantly, given the fact that the people I had been working for were not the most assiduous bookkeepers. Between us, we had eased the taxman’s workload significantly.
My move out of my digs, temporary or otherwise, had not been the main reason for me bringing my leather-bound trust fund with me: I had, for a long time, worried about the security of keeping it in my digs. I couldn’t put it in a bank without the inland revenue taking notice, and carrying it around in a suitcase or keeping it in my office were not viable options either. However, since I had been doing the wages run, I had opened a business account with the commercial house who banked the wages cash. I had also rented a safety deposit box. I was due to do the run tomorrow, and I decided to deposit the gun and the cash in the box.
The Deep Dark Sleep l-3 Page 9
