Dunbar referred to the petrol coupon it would have cost to make the trip up from Glasgow. Petrol rationing had ended five years before, but the expression had lingered.
‘Okay,’ I said resignedly. ‘Thanks for your help anyway.’ I handed him a card. ‘That’s my office number if anything should occur to you.’
‘It won’t.’
‘Fair enough,’ I said wearily. ‘Mr Dunbar, I hope you know we weren’t trying to tie you into anything or anything like that. Our interest is quite simply to let a family know if the body recovered from the Clyde is that of their father, that’s all. I’m sorry we disturbed you.’ I handed him a five pound note. ‘That’s for your time. I have to say there would have been more if you had been able to help.’
I lifted my hat an inch and turned, leaving Dunbar staring at the fiver in his hand. Archie followed me, looking disappointed, which really didn’t signify anything in Archie’s case.
‘That’s that, then,’ he said.
‘Not quite. He has something to tell us. Something he really wants to tell us. And I think I already know what it is, but I want to hear it from him. That’s why I’ve left my number.’
‘Wait!’
‘Yes, Mr Dunbar?’
‘I was telling you the truth, I didn’t have anything to do with the Empire robbery or any other Strachan job. And I’ve never seen Strachan since before I went to prison.’
‘But?’
‘But I’ve got some information that will cost you twenty-five pounds.’
‘That all depends on what it is,’ I said, but started to walk back towards Dunbar, making a show of taking my wallet out.
‘It’s about the body at the bottom of the Clyde.’
‘You can tell me who it was?’
‘No. But I can tell you who it wasn’t …’
CHAPTER TEN
Dunbar reluctantly agreed to my request that his wife make us all a nice cup of tea and we could sit and discuss the information he had. Dunbar was certainly no matinee idol, and from the frugality of the cottage’s interior, he clearly didn’t have two pennies to rub together, so I was expecting his wife to be homely.
I was in for a surprise. Mrs Dunbar, who greeted us with a hostile glare and a grunt when we introduced ourselves, would have needed a team of Hollywood’s finest plastic surgeons and cosmeticians to get her even within sight of the outermost suburbs of homely. Hers was the kind of ugliness that one normally took pity on, but my brief exposure to her personality relieved me of that burden. I could understand now why Dunbar had been so reluctant to admit us and I promised myself to bring a scythe and a polished shield the next time I visited the cottage.
‘So, Mr Dunbar,’ I said after his wife left the room: we were clearly not going to get a cup of tea. ‘So, what is it you have to tell me?’
‘Money first.’
‘No, Billy, I’ll pay you afterwards. I know you’re going to tell me that it wasn’t Gentleman Joe at the bottom of the Clyde. I knew that from your reaction when I told you about the remains right at the start. So you don’t have much to bargain with, other than telling me how you know. But I promise you you won’t be short changed, so spill some beans.’
‘I volunteered for the army when war broke out, but they wouldn’t have me: my age and my record went against me. So I ended up working here, on this estate, for the Duke. With so many men away at war, he was so short staffed he would take on anyone.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘The hell of war … making do with only three under-butlers must have scarred him for life.’
‘Don’t talk about His Grace that way. He did his bit in the war. And he’s been good to me. If I hadn’t found this place, I’d probably have had no choice other than to go back on the rob.’
‘Okay, Billy, don’t bust a lung. Just tell me your story.’
‘Well, during the war the Duke was hardly ever here. He was one of the top commanders in the Scottish Home Guard. And he got me into it. The Home Guard, I mean.’
‘Great …’ I said. ‘So you could guard railway stations and that kind of thing?’
‘Well, no.’ Something dark clouded Dunbar’s expression, as if he really didn’t want to go into what he was about to go into. ‘Did you serve in the war?’
‘Yes. Canadian First Army. Captain.’
‘Canadian First, eh? You fellows had a rough time of it, all right. I know what you must think of the Home Guard. A joke. Old men with brooms instead of rifles, unfit for duty boys guarding libraries and church halls?’
‘No, as a matter of fact that’s not at all what I think.’
‘Well, for the first time in my life, my criminal record worked for me, not against me. The Duke called me up to the big house and I was interviewed by him and three other officers. They told me my special skills could maybe be useful.’
‘In the Home Guard?’ I tried to keep the incredulity out of my voice.
‘In the Auxiliary Units.’
Now that took me aback. I reappraised Dunbar. He was a tough enough looking nut all right and it wasn’t that incredible.
‘What are the Auxiliary Units?’ asked Archie.
‘Officially they were members of the Home Guard,’ I explained. ‘Especially in places like this, where there are a lot of men used to working in the open and with a knowledge of the terrain. But they had special training and duties. Didn’t you, Billy?’
‘We was called Auxiliers. Or Scallywags. Like Mr Lennox said, we was officially attached to Two-Oh-One Home Guard Scotland.’
‘But I thought all the Scallywags were based along the south coast of England,’ I said.
‘Aye, most were, but there were Scallywags in every part of the country. We was a special unit up here. You see, the Highlands were so fucking empty of people that they were worried that the Germans would drop agents and paratroopers into the Highlands in force to cause shite up here while the invasion took place somewhere else. A sort of Arnhem in reverse.’
‘It was preparation for the invasion that never came,’ I explained to Archie. ‘Forget everything you think of when you think of the Home Guard. These guys were highly trained assassins and saboteurs, but you would never have known. Farmers, doctors, teachers, postmen … gamekeepers. If the invasion took place and ended in occupation, the Scallywags were to kill anybody who could be of use to the Nazis.’
‘There’s still explosives ammunition and guns hidden,’ said Dunbar. ‘We was to create as much fucking mayhem as possible. We was to be issued with seven weeks’ rations if the invasion happened. The powers that be reckoned that after two weeks of action, we’d all be fucking dead.’
‘This is all very interesting, Billy,’ I said, ‘but what has this got to do with Gentleman Joe Strachan?’
‘I was getting to that. We was sent to Lochailort, way up in the middle of fucking nowhere on the west coast. It was where all the special units got their training. This wee fucking Highland village full of Beaverette armoured cars and machine gun posts all over the shop. The navy base there was where we was trained. You have no fucking idea the things they taught us. How to cut throats so that the fuckers dropped without a sound, how to make homemade bombs and them flame fougasses.’
‘What’s a fougasse?’ asked Archie.
‘A big fuck-off improvised incendiary. Five or ten-gallon barrels of petrol buried or hidden with a detonator attached. Some could be as big as fifty gallons. Anti-tank and personnel carrier stuff. Torches everything and everybody to fuck. I saw three of our boys burn to death in training when one of those fuckers went off accidentally. Anyway, we got all of this training. Hand-to-hand combat. Defendu, have you heard of it?’
‘Defendu … the Fairbairn system? Yes, I’ve heard of it,’ I said. ‘In the Canadian army we had Arwrology, which was pretty much the same thing.’
‘Aye. Defendu was invented by that bloke that designed the commando knife. But if you came from Glasgow you didn’t need to learn Defendu, we already had fuck-you.’ He laughed at his ow
n joke. I made an impatient face.
‘Anyway, we was there for six weeks solid training, then back for another six. There was all kinds of brass hanging around the place, from every secret outfit you could imagine. We was under the command of the Special Operations executive, but there were commandos, Special Air, Special Boat brass, and others from units that I’d never heard of. It was during our second stint at Lochailort that I saw this officer, a major, with a group of others. One of the other officers this bloke was talking to was His Grace, who was a colonel. The officer I saw was one of ours … I mean he was Special Operations. And the other officers including His Grace was all attached to Scallywag training.’
‘Joe Strachan?’
Dunbar looked surprised that I’d jumped his conclusion.
‘I found out quite a bit about Strachan,’ I offered in explanation. ‘Do you think he was genuine? I mean a real officer and not just passing himself off as one?’
‘You was in the army, you know what them special bases are like with security. Naw, if Joe Strachan was wearing a British Army major’s uniform in that camp, then Joe Strachan was a British Army major.’
‘Aw, come on …’ Archie snorted. ‘A Glasgow hoodlum like Strachan an army major? I thought you had to be an officer and a gentleman, not an officer and a gobshite …’
I held up my hand to stop Archie. He stopped, but his eyebrows protested for a few seconds more.
‘Could you have been mistaken?’ I asked Dunbar.
‘Maybe. But I got a really good look at the fucker. I did one of them double takes. I mean, everybody’s supposed to have a double, aren’t they. Look at Monty. If this bloke wasn’t Gentleman Joe, he was his bastarding twin.’
‘I’m not being funny,’ said Archie, ‘but it maybe was his twin. You say Strachan’s daughters are twins, and twins run in families …’
‘Naw,’ said Dunbar emphatically. ‘Joe Strachan maybe became a man of mystery, but he was born in the Gorbals and there are no fucking mysteries or secrets there, when you’re crammed into a tenement with four families on each fucking floor. Strachan had two sisters and a brother. No twin. I’m fucking telling you, I saw Gentleman Joe Strachan as large as life and twice as fucking ugly, swanning about with a bunch of top brass and crowns on his shoulder boards.’
‘When was this?’
‘Forty-two. Summer of Forty-two.’
‘You tell anyone else about this?’
Dunbar looked at me contemptuously. ‘After the hiding I took in a police cell because they thought there was the slightest fucking chance that I might know something or someone that could lead them to someone else who might know more about Joe Strachan? Naw … I kept my mouth shut. Nobody knows what I saw. Until you, that is.’
There it was. Gentleman Joe hadn’t, after all, slept the deep, dark sleep. Of course, it didn’t mean he was still alive. If he had been attached to Special Operations, then he could be sleeping the dark sleep at the bottom of some canal in Holland or river in France. But even that thought — Joe Strachan as an officer in SOE — didn’t make the slightest bit of sense.
Dunbar had told us what he had to tell us and small talk, even expletive-laced small talk, was not his forte, so it was time for us to leave. As I got up a thought came at me from out of nowhere; or at least from somewhere deep in the back of my brain where it must have been taking slow form during my chat with Dunbar. Actually it was more an image than a thought. For some reason the picture I had retrieved from Paul Downey came to mind.
‘Are you around most nights, Billy?’ I asked. ‘I have a photograph I’d like to show you. I think there’s a good chance, given what you’ve just told me, that it could be the only picture in existence of Joe Strachan. Can I come back and show you it?’
‘Aye … I suppose,’ said Dunbar grudgingly. ‘But I usually go to the pub on my night off.’
‘I’ll not be back for a day or two, but it’ll only take a few minutes, Billy,’ I said. ‘And I’ll make it worth your while. Oh, and there’s one more thing before I go — and this has got nothing to do with Strachan — it’s just something I’m curious about because of something that came up recently. Do you know the Duke’s son, Iain?’
‘Aye, I know him all right.’
‘What’s he like?’
‘He’s a wee shite. Nothing like his father. Absolutely nothing like. A fucking waster.’
‘And?’
‘And what?’
‘Come on, Billy, we both know he’s a shirt lifter.’
‘Listen, I’m not going to say anything that could harm his father. God knows His Grace doesn’t have to seek his trouble with that wee bastard already. Whatever dirt you’re after, you’ll not get it here.’
‘Fair enough, Billy, but tell me what you can. Believe it or not I’m trying to protect, not damage, the family name.’
‘Iain is so different to his father that you sometimes wonder if His Grace is his father at all. They don’t look alike, they don’t behave alike, they don’t have the same values.’
‘With the greatest respect, Billy, you’re just a gamekeeper here … how do you know all this?’
‘Everybody knows it. Everybody knows everything about everybody else. When you work for a family like this, in a place like this, there are no fucking secrets.’
‘Iain has a cottage on the estate, is that right?’
‘Aye, he calls it his studio, the wee prick. He thinks he’s fucking Picasso or some shite.’
‘And he entertains there?’
‘Aye.’ Dunbar eyed me knowingly. ‘He entertains there all right.’
‘Have you ever seen anybody odd hanging around the cottage?’
‘You’re fucking joking, right? When have I not seen someone odd hanging around. There are always oddballs and freaks up there. The artistic set, Iain calls them. Artistic my arse.’
‘No, I mean anyone other than that lot. You’ve been around, Billy, you know the type, anyone who looked like they might be trouble.’
‘Can’t say I have, why?’
‘Duke Junior’s got himself into a little trouble, that’s all. I’ve been trying to sort it out, for his father’s sake, so to speak.’
‘Right, well that’s a different fucking story … if there’s anything I can do to help, just give me the fucking word …’
‘Thanks, Billy, I’ll bear that in mind. But it looks like it’s all sorted out now in any case.’ I stood up from the table. I took out my wallet and peeled off twenty-five pounds. I could see Billy’s eyes light up and I knew that it was double what he’d been expecting, but I kept peeling until I had put fifty on the table.
Spread the wealth, Lennox, I thought. Spread the wealth.
‘You do know, you’ve maybe just been taken for a ride,’ said Archie helpfully, once we were on our way back to Glasgow. ‘I tell you what, if I tell you a lot of shite about how I saw Adolf Hitler in a bookie’s in Niddrie, will you give me fifty quid?’
‘No, because it’s obviously not true: Hitler would give himself up to the Israelis before living in Niddrie. I saw the look on Dunbar’s face when I told him about the body in the Clyde. I knew there and then that he didn’t believe it was Strachan’s.’
‘So, you actually believe Strachan is hob-nobbing with the upper-crust and been made an officer in the army? “Here you go, Strachan, old boy, let’s forget all about that minor unpleasantness of the policeman you murdered, and the fact that you were a deserter in the First War, and we’ll all go and have some tea and tiffin in the officer’s mess”?’
‘Leave the sarcastic wit to me, Archie. I know it doesn’t make any sense, but I believe Dunbar saw what he said he saw.’
‘Listen, boss, I don’t want to tell you how to do your job …’
‘Heaven forfend, Archie.’
‘… but you all but waved that cash in front of his face. He obviously felt he had to tell you something. And that bollocks about Strachan being an officer was the best he could come up with at the time.’
‘No, Archie. The best he could have come up with would have been to say he saw Strachan at that bookie’s in Niddrie you saw Hitler in, or on a street in Edinburgh or a railway station in Dundee. The thing that makes me believe he’s telling the truth is exactly that it is so unbelievable. Dunbar’s been interrogated by the police so often in his life that he knows that if he’s going to tell a lie, make that lie simple and credible. You know that.’
‘So where does that leave us? Where do we go from here?’
‘Well, I’ve got a few names I want you to check out, from the list Isa and Violet gave me. Watch who and where you ask though, Archie. In the meantime, I’m going to have to make a couple of visits I’ve been putting off.’
I met Fiona White for tea at Cranston’s. We sat in the Art Nouveau tearoom and ordered tea and salmon sandwiches. She was wearing a smart outfit that I hadn’t seen her in before and what looked like a new hat. I also noticed that she was wearing a deeper shade of crimson lipstick and more make-up than I’d seen her wear before. I was flattered by the effort.
‘How are your new digs?’ she asked, a little awkwardly.
‘Very exclusive,’ I said. ‘I have to be constantly careful that I don’t bark, talk in brogue or tan too deeply.’
She made a puzzled face. A pretty, puzzled face.
‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘It’ll do me in the meantime. It keeps me dry, unless I get too close to the landlord when he’s talking.’
‘I see,’ she said. ‘There’s been no one around the house. No one suspicious, I mean,’ she added. ‘I’ve noticed the local bobby keeping an eye on us, but there really hasn’t been anything to cause me any concern.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. I’m sorry that you’ve been inconvenienced by all of this, Mrs White.’
The Deep Dark Sleep l-3 Page 15
