I was back in the war.
The speed of thought seems to me the most unquantifiable thing: faster than the speed of sound, even the speed of light, even if Albert says it ain’t so. But what happened to me as I stepped through the door of my Glasgow office took me instantly back to a place where you killed without thought or lost your own life.
He had been behind the door and when I came in he hooked his arm around me from behind and dug his fingers into my eye and cheek, pulling me sideways and down. If I had not been taught the same dance steps, that would have been the end of me, but without having to think it through, I knew a knife was heading for the side of my neck. I caught his forearm with a knife-hand blow. It had enough strength to block the blade, but not much else. I stepped sideways towards the knife, counter to instinct, trapping his arm between my shoulder and the wall. His hand still dug into my face and his thumb was trying to seek out my eye socket. I brought my other hand, which still held the keys, down and back and into his groin.
He gasped and the grip on my face loosened. I grabbed his knife hand and slammed it against the wall. My brain registered the shape of the knife: the long, slender, deadly but rather beautiful profile of a Fairbairn-Sykes. I was in trouble. Big trouble. Only one of us was coming out of this alive. He clung on to the knife, so I kept his knife hand pinioned to the wall with my left hand while slamming my right elbow into his face, five or six times within a couple of seconds. I had enough of a look at his face to see an old, ugly scar on his forehead and recognize him as the guy who had jumped me in the alley. Except this time there was no chat.
His nose burst and there was blood all over his face, but he didn’t pay any attention to it. It was something that I always found hard to explain to anyone who hadn’t experienced this kind of combat: it takes a lot to hurt you. Shock and a gallon of adrenalin blocks sensation until it’s all over. Then it hurts.
I knew I had to deal with the knife. I aimed a blow at his wrist with my Yale key, the only weapon I had, but my attacker brought his knee up into the small of my back and pushed me forward. He was a strong bastard all right and I lost my grip on his wrist and spun around to face him. He held the knife flat, face-up, textbook style. He slashed at me. Again, he wasn’t trying to stab me, like some street thug would do. He was looking for the quick kill: a slash across my thigh, neck or forearm to sever the femoral, brachial or carotid artery. Then you just step back out of harm’s way and watch your opponent bleed out in seconds. Textbook stuff.
I rolled over the top of my desk. Every time he came at me, I moved around the desk, keeping it between me and him, like we were playing a childhood game of tag. I felt something wet on my hand and looked down to see blood blooming on my shirt cuff and the back of my hand running red. He’d got me, but on the wrong side of my arm. I needed a weapon. By this time I had done a full circuit of the desk and he was now behind it, where I usually sat. The only thing I could grab was the hat stand behind me. I held it in front of me, stabbing at him like a retiarius gladiator with a trident. He made a move to get around the desk so I jabbed the base of the hat stand at his face and it jarred as it hit bone. One of his eyes had all but closed, swollen from one of the blows with my elbow and I could tell his vision was compromised. I jabbed again, this time slamming into his chest as hard as I could. My captain’s chair caught the back of one of his legs and he fell backwards into the window, smashing the glass. I pushed again, forcing him through the window. He grabbed the window frame on either side with both hands to stop himself falling through, dropping the F-S knife as he did so.
He gave me the look. The look that says ‘I give up’.
Still, I kept the pressure on his chest with the hat stand.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Who do you work for?’
‘Forget it, Lennox. Just call the police and let’s get this over with.’
Like me, he was trying to catch his breath and this time there was no attempt at a half-assed Glasgow accent. He spoke with an English accent, beautifully modulated, received pronunciation. I wondered for a moment if the BBC Home Service had an elite commando announcer unit.
‘What’s this? Name, rank and serial number stuff?’ I jabbed him again and the bloodied fingers of one hand slipped from the window frame. He scrabbled to regain his grip.
‘Okay, Commando Joe, I’m only going to ask this one more time: who sent you? Joe Strachan? Where is he?’
He laughed as heartily as he could manage, blowing a bloody bubble from one nostril of his shattered nose.
‘Or what? You going to kill me in cold blood.’
‘Something like that. So tell me … where’s Joe Strachan?’
‘You honestly think you’re going to get anything out of me? I’m telling you nothing, Lennox, and no one else is going to make me talk.’
‘You haven’t met Twinkletoes McBride,’ I said. ‘He’s an associate of mine, and he didn’t get his name because of his skills on the dance floor. So talk before I call him around with his bolt cutters.’
A smile I didn’t like spread across his busted and bloody face. ‘You know something, Lennox? I don’t think you’re in any state to call anyone. You’re doing nothing, Lennox. In India, they used to have a saying, he who rides a tiger may never dismount. You can’t reach my knife without letting go of the hat stand; you let go of the hat stand, I get to the knife first. Whatever happens, we go another round.’
‘You didn’t win the last time,’ I said, ‘and you had the element of surprise.’
‘But you’re bleeding, Lennox. Nothing that can’t be patched up, but you’re weakening. I doubt you’ll even be able to hold me off with this thing for much longer. All you can do is stand there and shout for help and hope someone comes.’
‘You know something, you’re absolutely right. It’s a conundrum, but I tell you what, I have an answer to it.’
‘Oh yes?’ He kept that arrogant smile on his face. ‘And what would that be?’
‘That you shout for help … On the way down.’
I thrust forward with all of what was left of my strength. The smile went and the one unswollen eye widened in the bloody mask of his face as he scrabbled to keep his grip. I pushed again and his bloodied fingers slipped from the window frame. He toppled, screaming, out of the window.
I heard a screech of tyres and a woman’s shriek. I went to the window and looked down into Gordon Street where he lay smashed on the deeply dented roof of a taxi.
It was, I thought to myself as I stepped back in to call the police, one way to catch a cabby’s attention. More effective than whistling.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Pushing people out of third-floor windows, apparently, contravenes some Glasgow Corporation bye-law, so I spent most of the next two days in the company of the police.
The first night was spent in the Western General, with a boy in blue sitting guard at my side. For my own protection, Jock Ferguson less than reassured me.
Despite the fact that I was perfectly capable of walking, I was confined to a bed, but not in the ward, instead ending up in a room on my own. My guess was that the police had insisted on it.
I was in good hands. If you are going to have a stab or slash wound, my advice would always be to try and arrange to have it in Glasgow. Glaswegian hospitals have an unparalleled experience of stitching up knife, razor and bottle-inflicted injuries. I even heard of a guy admitted with multiple wounds from a machete. Why a Glaswegian would have a machete was beyond me; I was pretty sure I hadn’t come across dense patches of jungle or rainforest during my time in Glasgow.
The wound to my arm was deep. A doctor who looked twelve and reddened every time I called him ‘Sonny’ told me that they had had to stitch muscle as well as skin. I could expect some nerve damage, he told me, as if it had been my own silly fault.
I gave a formal statement under caution to Jock Ferguson, witnessed by my uniformed nursemaid. I followed exactly the advice I had given Fraser and told the police the real sequence of events
, describing my him-or-me struggle and how it ended with him falling through the window. Except I omitted to mention that it had taken me several shoves to get the bastard through, or that we had chatted for a while before he caught his taxi.
My heart sank when McNab joined us, squeaking a chair across the hospital floor. A professionally dour-looking detective stood behind him, at the door, with a briefcase in his hand. Not carrying your own things was obviously another privilege of rank.
McNab read through the statement I had dictated to Ferguson and signed.
‘Funny thing is,’ he said, pushing his hat up and away from his eyes, ‘that we have witnesses who report glass falling into the street some time before the victim fell.’
I didn’t like that word. Victim.
‘Could be, Superintendent. We were smashing into everything.’
‘And there were bloody handprints on the frame of the window, as if the victim had tried to hang on to prevent himself from falling.’
There it was again. That word.
‘He grabbed at it as he fell. In fact, that was when he dropped the knife. But his hands were too bloody to get a grip: that’s why he fell.’
‘Mmm. I see.’ McNab nodded to the detective behind him who handed him a roll of white cloth. Unwrapping the cloth, he revealed the knife. It had an evidence tag on it. And some blood. Mine. Flecks of it had stained the cloth.
‘This knife?’
‘That’s the one.’
Now, after the adrenalin of the fight had left my system, draining every last ounce of energy from me, the sight of the blade that had sliced into my flesh made me feel sick.
‘Aye …’ said McNab contemplatively. ‘This would be a commando knife, would it not?’
‘A Fairbairn-Sykes Fighting Knife, yes. Standard commando issue. The Canadian special forces were armed with a variation of it, the V42 Stiletto. An inferior version of it.’ I nodded to the knife and again felt my gut lurch. ‘What you have there is the world’s best close-quarters combat knife. And the guy who jumped me was an expert with it. Who was he, anyway?’
Jock fired a look at the Superintendent that wasn’t returned. ‘We don’t know. Yet.’
‘Let me guess, no ID?’
Jock Ferguson shook his head. ‘No ID, no driving licence, no labels or tags on his clothing to say where he came from … no cards, letters, chequebook.’
‘You any ideas?’ asked McNab.
‘He wasn’t local, I know that. He pretended to be, to start with, but he was English. And officer class. Listen, I was fighting for my life. It really was him or me. Am I going to be charged with his death?’
‘You’ve killed a man, Lennox. That’s a pretty big thing.’
‘I’ve killed plenty, Superintendent, but back then it wasn’t such a big thing at all.’
‘Well, we’ll have to submit a report to the Procurator Fiscal and you remain under caution. The evidence does seem to point to self-defence, like you said. But you can expect a lot of close attention over this. Some back alley razor gang killing is one thing, dropping well-dressed officer types onto the Gordon Street taxi rank is something else. You know the press is all over this?’
‘I can guess. How are you handling the “mystery man” aspect?’
‘We’re not. We’re just saying that the dead man has yet to be identified.’ McNab turned to the detective at the door. ‘Why don’t you get a coffee in the canteen, Robertson. Five minutes.’
After the detective had left, leaving me with McNab and Ferguson, I eased myself up on the bed. A copper like McNab reducing the number of witnesses to an interrogation was something that brought out the suspicious and nervy aspects of my character.
‘Listen, Lennox,’ said McNab, ‘I know you don’t go much for my way of doing things, and you know what I think about your involvement with the so-called Three Kings, but this is the hardest city on the face of the planet and you have to be hard to police it. But this whole thing you’re involved in is way beyond my ken. And I do not like things occurring inside the city boundary but outside my ken. It attracts unwanted interest.’
‘Such as?’
‘Special Branch.’ It was Jock Ferguson who answered. ‘What took place between you and our mystery dead man was text book SOE or commando stuff. It’s even been suggested that he was some kind of intelligence man.’
‘British Intelligence have taken to assassination attempts on Her Majesty’s loyal subjects? I doubt it. And if they did, it would have been done more discreetly than that.’
‘Well, it was professional enough for it to look like something specialist,’ said McNab. ‘And that means Special Branch are treading on my patch. And I don’t like anyone treading on my patch.’
‘But I take it you’ve told them that we all know what the link is? Gentleman Joe Strachan. That guy began by trying to warn me off the Strachan case, then he tried to remove me personally and permanently. This isn’t anything to do with the Empire robbery any more … it’s to do with whatever happened after the robbery. During the war.’
‘I still can’t buy that story about Strachan being an officer,’ said McNab. ‘And God knows I want to believe it wasn’t him we found at the bottom of the Clyde. But it just doesn’t make sense. He was a criminal on the run. And wanted for a policeman’s murder.’
‘That’s all true. But Isa and Violet seem convinced that their father was a war hero of some kind, while the official records show he was a deserter, an officer impersonator and paybook fraudster. But there are rumours that he traded off a spot in front of a firing squad for dangerous reconnaissance patrols. He also seemed to have regular contact with someone from his army days called Henry Williamson, who doesn’t seem to be connected to anything criminal in Glasgow.’
‘What are you getting at?’ asked McNab.
‘I really don’t know. There’s something nagging at me about it all. Let’s face it, there have been more than a few times we’ve seen the words with military precision used in headlines about robberies since the war. The one thing compulsory army service did was give your average crook the kind of discipline and training to make them all the more efficient at carrying out hold-ups.’
‘Hold on a minute …’ Ferguson laughed. ‘Last week we had a raid on a diamond merchant in the Argyle Arcades: one man with a fake pistol. He was caught because he thought the jeweller had activated some kind of automated dead-bolt on the door. What really happened was he kept pulling the door instead of pushing it. This despite the fact that there was a big brass doorplate engraved with the word PUSH. We’re not up to our eyes in master criminals or commando raiders yet, Lennox.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘But you do know what I’m talking about. My point is that what if Strachan was ahead of the game … what if he came out of the First War with skills, and maybe contacts who could have helped him plan better, more efficient robberies and other crimes.’
‘Leading up to the Triple Crown and culminating with the Empire Exhibition robbery?’ asked McNab.
‘Well, that’s the other thing. What if the Empire Exhibition robbery wasn’t the end but still the means to an end?’
‘I don’t get you.’
‘What if Strachan had something even bigger and better planned? Listen, here’s the way we’ve always seen it: Strachan puts together three huge robberies with an eye to becoming the sole King of Glasgow, but a copper is killed and things become too hot for Strachan, so he takes the cash and a powder and drops permanently out of sight, yes? Then a tangle of bones dressed in his clothes and with his monogrammed cigarette case is hauled up from the bottom of the Clyde, so all that changes. Now we have a fall-out amongst thieves, which is what you lot were putting together, where one or maybe all of Strachan’s accomplices realise their untilnow genius boss has put a rope around all of their necks. So this one or all of the gang kill Strachan, take his share and dump him in the river.’
‘It makes sense,’ said McNab defensively. Thinking is something policemen find h
ard work and hate it when their labours are picked apart.
‘Sure it makes sense,’ I said. ‘And it still might be the case, but we’ve got this witness who swears it was Strachan he saw in Nineteen forty-two, at Lochailort, and in an army major’s uniform.’
‘Bollocks,’ said Jock Ferguson. ‘I still think that’s shite.’
‘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.’
The Deep Dark Sleep l-3 Page 18
