I could have staked the place out, of course, but it might have been hours before the spooked Downey would venture out. Or maybe he had already moved on. I stood at the corner, smoking and watching shoeless kids sail newspaper boats on the iridescently oily surface of rain puddles.
I had just decided to risk knocking some doors when I saw Downey at the far end of the street, carrying a large brown paper bag of groceries. He hadn’t seen me and I ducked around the corner and waited for him to reach me.
I really did feel sorry for the guy. When he turned the corner, he looked as if he had walked straight into the Grim Reaper himself, which was pretty much who he thought I was. He started as if he was about to make a run for it but I grabbed his arm and hauled him up against the wall. He dropped the grocery bag on the cobbles.
‘You killed him!’ he shouted. ‘You killed Frank! You’re going to kill me!’
The kids playing in the gutter stopped playing and watched us, but with a dull curiosity that suggested they had seen it all before.
‘Stop shouting, Paul,’ I said in a calm, even voice, ‘or I’m going to have to slug you, and I really don’t want to do that. I’m not going to hurt you and I didn’t hurt Frank.’ I frowned. ‘Well … okay … I did hurt Frank, but it wasn’t me who killed him. And I’m not connected to the people who did. Got that?’
He nodded furiously, but in that I’m-too-scared-to-listen way.
‘Paul …’ I said patiently. ‘You need to understand what I’m saying. I’m not here to hurt you. Believe it or not, I’m here to help you. To make sure you stay safe. Do you understand?’
He nodded again, but it had sunk in this time. Now his expression clouded with suspicion. I let him go.
‘I want to help you, Paul … to put an end to all this mayhem and fix things so that you can stop running. But first of all I need to talk to you so that I can try to understand what’s going on better. Can we go up to your place?’
‘I’m staying with a friend. We can’t talk there.’ Again his look and his tone were laced with suspicion.
‘Okay …’ I picked up the groceries and handed them to him. My car’s parked at the station. We can talk as we walk …’
I had given Downey his groceries to carry as an encumbrance, or at least an early warning, if suddenly dropped, that he was going to make a run for it. But as we walked he listened to everything I told him, including how my involvement had been simply to retrieve the photographs and negatives of John Macready. I lied by telling him that I suspected Frank had been killed by people working either on Macready’s behalf or on behalf of the Duke to protect his son. The truth, of course, was that I knew damned well that it had been Leonora Bryson and the lawyer Fraser who had organized the killing.
We got back to the car and I told him to get in, which he did, but only after casting an anxious eye around us. I did a bit of casting myself and got in after him. He sat there, small and slight and clutching his now crumpled grocery bag, more child than man.
‘Why did you get into all of this business, Paul?’ I asked. ‘You’re just not cut out for it.’
‘It was Frank’s idea to start with. Then Iain came up with this plan to fleece Macready. I never thought people would start getting killed. I never knew that Frank …’
He broke off and started to cry. I looked the other way, out of the window, embarrassed. And trying to avoid getting angry with him because he had embarrassed me. He stopped after a while.
‘Listen, Paul,’ I said. ‘I don’t think this is all just about the Macready photos, either. I think you ended up in possession of something valuable and dangerous and you didn’t even know it was valuable and dangerous.’ I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out the envelope Ferguson had given me. I took out the photograph and handed it to Downey.
‘You remember this?’ I asked. ‘I think your life is in more danger because of this photograph than the whole business with Macready. I believe this is someone who has made a great effort never to have his face or anything about him recorded, anywhere.’
‘Who is he?’ asked Downey.
‘I am pretty convinced that this is someone called Joe Strachan, although everybody seems to want me to believe it isn’t. Everybody wants me to think it’s someone called Henry Williamson, but I don’t know if he ever existed. What I can’t work out is why the people who have lied to me about it, lied to me about it.’ I thought back to the twins’ reaction, or lack of it, to the photograph when I had shown it to them.
‘The name means nothing to me,’ said Downey. ‘I don’t know anything about this man except I was given a description of him and told to try to get a picture of him.’
‘By this man you say hired you? The man who called himself Paisley?’
‘Yes.’
‘How did he find you?’
Downey looked afraid. Or more afraid. ‘I didn’t tell you everything,’ he said and looked as if he was expecting me to hit him.
‘It’s all right, Paul,’ I said. ‘You can tell me now.’
‘Mr Paisley turned up when we were setting up the camera in the cottage. You know, the way Iain had asked us to do so we could get pictures of him and Macready. Somehow Mr Paisley knew all about what we had planned. He said he would make sure that the police got to know what we were up to if we didn’t do as he asked. He also told me that he knew all about my betting debts and who I owed the money to. He said he could make that all go away, that he could square everything with the loan shark and he wouldn’t come after me any more for interest.’
‘He seemed well-informed.’
‘He knew everything. He said we could go ahead with our plan and we would end up keeping anything we made instead of handing it over to the shark.’
‘He didn’t ask you for a cut, for a percentage?’
Downey laughed. ‘It would have been small change for him, from what I could see. He arrived in a huge Bentley and his clothes were very expensive.’
‘He was alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you went along with him, just like that?’
‘Yes. Even with the clothes and the car, you could tell he was someone you didn’t want to mess with. He looked hard. And dangerous. He had this scar on his cheek, like he’d been in a razor fight.’
‘Right or left cheek?’
Downey thought for a moment. ‘Right. The other reason we didn’t kick up was it seemed easy money. We were on the estate anyway and Mr Paisley said that the man I was to look out for should turn up in the next few days.’
‘And all you were to do was to take a photograph of him?’
‘That’s all. The best I could manage. Mr Paisley said that we would be paid well, but if we ever talked to anyone about it, we’d end up dead. Do you think it was him who killed Frank?’
‘Honestly? No, I don’t think so. Tell me, Paul, is there any chance that the man you photographed spotted you? Knew that you’d taken his picture?’
‘No. Or at least I don’t think so.’
‘No, nor do I,’ I said, remembering how difficult it had been, even with years of army training and combat experience, to give him and his goons the slip in the woods.
‘What happens now?’ he asked.
‘You have to disappear for a while. And not to where you were. The people who are after you now wouldn’t take long to track you down. I’m going to take you out of town. We’ll find you somewhere to hide out. But you hide out, is that clear?’
‘Clear.’
Largs was on a narrow strip of coastline squeezed between the sea and a massive shoulder of rock known as the Haylie Brae, which rose precipitously behind it. It was a dismal day and the rain started to come down in sheets, turning everything into sleek shades of grey.
Before I drove all the way down the Ayrshire coast to Largs, I had not made any ’phone calls or asked anyone for help or advice. Not even Archie. I had no idea why I had picked Largs, which was a good thing: no one else could put together a logical sequence that
would lead them to my random choice. Although I supposed there was some logic to it: I had had it in the back of my head that a coastal resort was ideal for anonymous and by-the-night accommodation and I had had a vague notion to make for one of the many guest-houses that lined the promenade. The only thing that concerned me was that most Largs guest-house landladies exercised the kind of discipline and adherence to regulation that made the average glasshouse sergeant-major look easy-going. And two men booking a room off-season, particularly when one of them was Downey, could end up attracting the attention of the police.
After the war, the British had developed a renewed passion for caravanning, which had started to gain some popularity in the Thirties. Now there were caravan parks springing up alongside any seaside resort or on Highland estates, where holiday-makers could enjoy the experience of sitting in cramped conditions looking out at the rain, instead of sitting at home in cramped conditions looking out at the rain. I suppose I understood it in a way. The trips abroad so many had been obliged to take in the previous decade had probably blunted the nation’s wanderlust.
I had gotten the idea as we approached Largs along the ribbon of coast road. Between Skelmorlie and Largs a large open field, backed by a curtain of cliff, had been converted into a caravan park. A drive led to a cabin that bore a sign telling you that it was the ‘reception office’. Half of the field beyond was occupied by ten to a dozen identical two-tone cubes arranged in ranks, looking out over the sea to the hulking grey mass of the Isle of Arran. On the other half of the field, next to the identical caravans, was a largely open space, populated by two boarded up, larger caravans. I guessed one side of the park was for visitors bringing their own vans, while the other was for caravans to rent. Across from the ‘reception’ shed was a largish, red-sandstone villa.
I told Downey to stay put in the car while I went into the park’s office cabin. There was no one there, but a sign above a large hand-bell, the kind ye olde worlde town criers would use, instructed me: IF NOBODY’S HERE IT DON’T MEAN A THING, PICK ME UP AND GIVE ME A RING.
So I did.
A minute later, a woman in her early thirties came across from the villa, hurrying as much as her tight pencil skirt and high-heels would allow. She had light brown hair and pale grey eyes and a smile that told me I could be her special guest. That made things easier and I flirted as I booked in. I explained that the caravan would be occupied mostly by my young friend, who had been ill and needed the sea air to recuperate.
‘We get a lot of that from Glasgow,’ she said, nodding gravely but keeping her eyes on mine. ‘So, will you be staying at all yourself, Mr Watson?’ she asked, reading the fake name I’d entered into the register. ‘I’m Ethel Davison, by the way.’
‘I hadn’t planned to,’ I said, hamming up the wolfishness as I shook her limp hand. ‘But maybe I should keep an eye on my friend.’
‘We’ll look after him. I’m here all of the time and my husband is here when he’s not at work. He works nights,’ she explained helpfully.
‘I wouldn’t worry too much about my friend. He has a pile of books and really wants solitude as much as the sea air, which is why I chose your site. It really is a lovely spot you have here,’ I said, and looked appreciatively out of the cabin’s window to the sea, just as a beer lorry rattled past the road end.
I gave her a week’s rent in advance, which she was delighted with. ‘If your friend needs to stay longer, that’s not a problem at this time of year,’ she said. ‘Or if you wanted a caravan for yourself, we could do a special combined rate …’
I smiled and told her it wouldn’t be necessary, but I really would make sure that I checked on him regularly. Probably in the evenings.
After she showed me where the communal toilets and washhouse was, she took me over to the caravan. Like the others, it was cream on top and black below, with flat flanks but a belly swell at the front and back. Inside it was clean and still had a smell of newness. There was a horseshoe of seating at one end and she demonstrated how it folded down into a bed. I could easily have encouraged her to demonstrate some more, but Downey was waiting in the car and I had a lot of business to deal with.
Once I had gotten Downey settled in the caravan, I drove into Largs and picked up provisions for him, as well as half a dozen cheap paperbacks. Warning him not to set foot anywhere further than the toilet block, I told him I would check on him regularly and left him to it.
I ’phoned Willie Sneddon’s office from the post office in Skelmorlie but was told that he was out and would not be back that day. I tried him at home, but his wife told me he would not be home until later that evening. Telling her who I was, I said I would try to get hold of Mr Sneddon later. I thought about cruising a few of his places to see if I could find him, but decided to leave it for now.
I had other business.
The address Jock Ferguson had given me was in Torrance, an uninspiring small town to the north of Glasgow and a couple of hours from Largs. Stewart Provan’s house was a substantial looking, stone-built bungalow that small Scottish towns were full of: statements that the occupiers were financially comfortable but without imagination or ambition. It was the architecture of mediocrity. I guessed that, in Provan’s case, it was a statement of anonymity.
He answered the door himself. He looked in his early fifties but I’d already worked out that he would be sixty at least. He was dressed in flannels, a Tattersall shirt and a navy cardigan — the uniform of Britain’s lower middle-classes — but his face didn’t quite fit. No scars, no broken nose, no cauliflower ears: just a lean hardness that told you this was not someone to mess with. I thought I detected his shoulders sag a little when he saw me on the doorstep and an expression of resignation on his face. Not for the first time, I felt as if my arrival had been expected.
‘Yes?’ he said, and cast a glance past me, down the path and to where my car was parked on the street, as if he was looking to see who was with me.
‘Mr Provan? I’d like to have a word with you, if you don’t mind.’
‘Here? Or …’ He nodded towards the car.
‘Here would be fine, Mr Provan,’ I said, trying to work out who he thought I was who would take him away in a car. Not the police, I reckoned.
‘I take it you know what this is about?’ I decided to milk it a little.
‘I know. I’ve been expecting you. Ever since the bones were hauled up. You’d better come in.’ He stood to one side, with even more of a resigned sag of the shoulders. I stepped into the hall and past him.
I was hit with such force that I flew forward and halfway up the hall, coming to rest face down on the floor, having sent an umbrella stand flying and scattering its contents all over the floor.
From the explosion of pain, I reckoned he had kicked me in the small of my back. He was on top of me in an instant, his knee pinioning me to the floor, pressing down on the exact same point on my spine that he had kicked. He looped his forearm under me and used it as a choking bar on my throat. My air supply was shut off and I knew I had seconds before the lights went out. Finding his hand, I seized his little finger and yanked it forward, hard. I knew I’d dislocated it, but he knew I only had seconds left and he ignored the injury. I twisted the finger round hard and he found it impossible to ignore. He eased the pressure off just enough for me to twist my shoulders sideways and throw him off balance. I slammed him into the wall, then again, and managed to get free enough to ease up on one knee. My hand fell on a robust walking stick that had spilled from the stand; grabbing it, I swung it blind but hit my target. I swung round and hit him again, this time across the side of the head. The stick didn’t have enough weight to put him out, but another couple of blows dazed him enough for me to get to my feet.
I snatched the Webley from my waistband and levelled it at him. He was slumped on the floor, half propped-up against the wall, and he gazed up at me with a strange look. Like some kind of resigned, contemptuous defiance. It was that look that told me all I needed to know. He
thought I was his executioner.
‘Wife?’ I asked. I knew there was no one else in the house, or they would have come running because of the racket we had made.
‘Dead. Seven years.’
‘You’re alone?’
He nodded. ‘Just get on with it.’
‘You think Joe Strachan sent me, don’t you?’ I said.
‘Ghosts can’t send killers, can they?’ He laughed, low and bitterly. ‘I thought he would do it himself. Like the others. I knew it was him. I always knew it was him.’
‘I’m not who you think I am,’ I said.
He frowned as he watched me ease the hammer back on the Webley and tuck it back into my waistband. I could see he was unsure what to do, so I left my hand resting on the gun butt.
‘Who are you then?’
‘A mug. A mug who was hired to clear up the truth about Joe Strachan, but I think I was maybe really hired just to muddy the waters. Now, I’m not here to kill you or take you for a spin in the trunk of my car, and I’m not a copper. So can we maybe relax a little?’
He nodded, but I left my hand on the gun. It was beginning to dawn on me that I really had struck gold.
‘This is a nice little place you’ve got here,’ I said. ‘It must have set you back a bob or two. I take it this was all bought with the money from the Empire Exhibition robbery?’
Provan wiped blood from his nose and laughed again. Bitterly. I guessed it was the only way he knew how to laugh.
‘I didn’t get a penny from that robbery,’ he said. ‘Not a penny.’
The Deep Dark Sleep l-3 Page 23
