The Deep Dark Sleep l-3
Page 27
Sneddon looked stunned by the news.
‘Billy was a good bloke. A good friend.’
‘Your father killed him. Your father killed a lot of people, some of them innocents who just got in the way.’
‘Listen, Lennox. Joe Strachan is exactly the person I described to you. All of that was true. I saw him in action, up close. If I had stayed with him, I’d have turned out the same, maybe worse. I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of: doing that gamekeeper was one of them. But now, I’m trying to put that all behind me. Joe Strachan was no father to me. He used me like he used everyone else. Like he used my ma. It’s because of him I ended up in that fucking orphanage and everything that happened to me there. The only reason he left me that cash was because he didn’t want to kill me if he could avoid it. But if he felt it was necessary, he would have put a bullet in my head the same as everyone else. If you think I was trying to find dear old daddy out of sentimentality, then you’re wrong. I needed to know if he was out there or not. So I could stop looking over my shoulder.’
I nodded. Sneddon had used the same expression that Provan had used. Right before he was flambeed in his Morris Minor.
‘So what are you saying?’ I asked.
‘If you do or say anything to link me to the Empire Exhibition robbery, I’ll make sure you’re dead within the day. Other than that, I don’t care what you do. If you bring Joe Strachan down and can do it without involving me, then you do so with my blessing.’
I lost count of the number of times Twinkletoes apologized to me on the way back to the hospital car park.
‘It’s okay, Twinkle. Like you said, it was just business. Nothing personal,’ I assured him, while struggling with the concept of how having someone ram their fist halfway through your internal organs was less than personal.
I decided that I should check my wound before I drove out of the hospital car park. Although the gymnastics in the warehouse had made it bleed some, the stitches seemed intact and I decided against going back into Casualty. In any case, I had no idea how I would have explained damaging it again in such a short space of time.
I drove back to my digs. There was no Jowett Javelin parked outside and Fiona White came out when she heard me at the door.
‘How are you, Mr Lennox?’ she said awkwardly and formally. She was wearing a lilac print blouse and I could smell that smell of lavender from her neck.
‘I’m fine, Mrs White. And you?’
‘Just fine. I thought …’ She frowned earnestly. ‘Well, I thought I ought to let you know, we’ve agreed that James will come round once or twice a week to take the girls out. We decided that it would be good for them. And, to be honest, it gives me some time to myself. He is their uncle after all.’
‘As I told you before, you don’t have to justify yourself to me, Fiona,’ I said. ‘So long as you and the girls are happy.’ I smiled wearily. I was tired. And sore.
‘Right …’ she said. ‘I, er … I just wanted you to know that that is all there is to it. I get the idea that you perhaps thought there was more to it. That there was some kind of … em …’
‘It’s fine, Fiona, I get the idea. Thanks for putting me in the picture. It’s important that we know where we all stand. Do you mind if I am equally unequivocal?’ I asked.
‘Of course not,’ she said.
I pushed her against the wall more roughly than I had intended. She looked startled, frightened even, and she made a half-hearted attempt to push me away as I fastened my mouth on hers and kissed her the way I’d been waiting to kiss her for two years. And it was good. Boy, was it good. And she kissed me back.
When I let her go she was kind of slumped against the wall, staring at me. But she didn’t slap me, she didn’t scream, she didn’t give me notice to quit.
‘Like you said, I just feel it’s important that we all know where we stand, Mrs White. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and freshen up. It’s been a tough day and I need to go out this evening on business. But I need you to know that I am happy to continue this discussion any time you feel like it.’
She said nothing and I left her standing there, leaning against the stairwell wall, and went up to my rooms to clean up. I heard one of the girls call to her and the door close as she went back into her flat.
I stopped off at a transport cafe on the way down to Largs and ate something that was described as a steak with the same accuracy as Hemingway was sometimes described as literature. The tea was strong enough to tan leather but it was hot and wet and it did something to revive me.
I called in to see Paul Downey and he just about jumped out of his skin when I opened the caravan door. I had brought some groceries and newspapers and sat and chatted with him for a while in that way that people who have absolutely nothing in common chat.
On the way out, the woman who owned the caravan park came trotting out of the sandstone villa. As she trotted, her breasts bounced unencumbered by support beneath her blouse and I imagined a brassiere hastily removed and stuffed behind a cushion before she had come out.
‘Ah, Mr Watson,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Have you been visiting your friend?’
‘I have, Mrs Davison. He’s very much enjoying his stay here.’
‘Oh that’s good. I’m so pleased.’ She moved in close to me and I got a lungful of cheap, overdone perfume. ‘While you’re here, could I offer you a cup of tea?’
I looked across at the villa. If I went in there, I knew no tea would be drunk. But she was attractive and her cheap perfume was working on me and the taste of Fiona White was still on my lips and I was messed up and confused and bruised all over from everything that had happened so I thought, what the hell?
‘I’d love to, Mrs Davison,’ I said and let her loop her arm through mine and lead me to the house.
‘Please,’ she said coquettishly. ‘Call me Ethel …’
Do I have to? I thought. Do I really have to?
It was difficult to believe, but the Finnieston Vehicular Ferry had not, in fact, been designed by William Heath Robinson. When I had seen it for the first time, it struck me as the most bizarre piece of navigational engineering I had ever seen: somewhere between the skeleton of a Mississippi river-boat and a giant, floating hamster cage. The reason for its unusual appearance was actually its ingeniousness. It could operate throughout the day and evening, whether it was high or low tide — and here the Clyde was tidal — because it had a steam-driven elevating car deck that could be adjusted to the exact height of the quay it docked at, irrespective of the water level at that time.
When I arrived at the ferry next morning there was no smog in the city, but a thickish fog skulked low on the river without the conviction to rise up over the banks and into the streets. The fog turned the improbable superstructure of the ferry into something even more black and gothic. Mine was the only car on the first crossing of the day and there was only a handful of foot passengers. Fraser boarded at the last minute and walked over to where I stood, looking down at the fog fuming on the dark surface of the Clyde.
‘A rather gloomy crossing, don’t you think, Mr Lennox?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. It beats crossing the Styx, I guess. But there again you would know more about that than I would, wouldn’t you, Mr Fraser. It would appear that you have paid the boatman to take more than a few people across that river.’
‘Listen, Mr Lennox, you have got the wrong end of the stick about all of that. This really is a bad business, a thoroughly bad business. Things have just gone far too far. It really is just too unfortunate.’
‘Unfortunate? You pay me silly sums of money and I lead your killers to where Paul Downey is hiding out, except your boys aren’t as good as you think they are and they kill the wrong pansy.’
‘You don’t understand …’ For once Fraser wasn’t full of cocky assurance. ‘Things have got out of hand. I don’t know … you think you know people, you think you understand where you are with them. That there’s some kind of bond between you
. Then someone comes along and turns the world on its head.’
‘You’re talking about Joe Strachan?’
Fraser turned from looking out over the water. ‘Help me, Lennox. Protect me. I didn’t know any of this was going to happen. Leonora Bryson asked me if I knew anyone who could follow up on the Downey thing and I put her in touch with Colonel Williamson. The deal was that if you found Downey, Williamson’s men would double check that you had got all of the negatives. And they would perhaps be more forceful in making the point than you had been. I had no idea that Miss Bryson asked them to go further than that.’
‘I was forceful enough. Downey and Gibson were no threat to you, or Leonora Bryson or John Macready. The truth is that Williamson, as you call him, was only too happy to oblige Leonora because he had a good reason to see Downey dead. He wanted to make sure there were no more copies of this photograph …’ I took out the picture that had been my constant companion these last few days. ‘This is Williamson, right?’
‘Right.’
‘Wrong,’ I said. ‘This is Gentleman Joe Strachan, armed robber, murderer and all round bad bastard of the first water.’
‘I know,’ said Fraser. ‘Colonel Williamson persuaded me to put pressure on you to drop all other jobs so you could focus on the Macready case. It didn’t take a genius to guess that what he really wanted was for you to stop looking for Joe Strachan. I worked it out from there. I couldn’t believe it at first … I’ve known Colonel Williamson since the war. And I couldn’t work out how he could have got security clearance for the work he did during the war, based on a fictitious identity.’
‘So how did you square that circle?’
‘If there’s one thing I’m good at, Mr Lennox, it’s paperwork. And every life leaves a paper trail. When it comes to following documentary traces, I’m like a native tracker.’
‘Let me guess: Henry Williamson isn’t a fictitious identity.’
Fraser shook his head. ‘No. He was a South African, educated at an exclusive boarding school in Natal. Parents both dead, no brothers or sisters, and any other kin distant both in terms of relationship and geography. He served as an officer in the Great War, then nothing much on record for twenty years, other than his being a shareholder in various companies and buying two properties: a townhouse in Edinburgh and a large country property in the Borders. Then, just before hostilities break out, he renews his commission in the army, but with a totally different regiment from the one in which he served during the Great War.’
‘Let me guess again,’ I said. ‘He re-joined the army in Thirty-eight? Right about the time of the Triple Crown robberies?’
‘Exactly. You have to believe me, Lennox, I had no idea until then that the person I had known for all of these years was anyone other than Colonel Williamson.’
‘So when did you meet him?’
‘In Nineteen forty. He had been stationed at Edinburgh Castle and was moved up to Headquarters staff at Craigiehall, sometime between re-enlistment and Nineteen forty he had been promoted to full Colonel. He was put in charge of “special training” for hand-picked units of the Home Guard. I was selected to command a unit and, effectively, he became my senior officer. I tell you, Lennox, there wasn’t a thing about the man that didn’t ring true. There were even officers who remembered meeting him in France during the First War. How he managed that I can’t imagine, and it was the one thing that I still have trouble with. I just can’t reconcile that with him being a fake.’
‘It’s not that complicated. During the First War, Strachan was a deserter and an officer-impersonator, pretty much in the same way as Percy Toplis was. From what I can gather, he was a popular member of the officers’ mess. There were bound to be others who would remember him, whether he used the name Williamson or not.’
Fraser nodded. ‘I worked out that, at some point between Nineteen eighteen and Nineteen twenty-nine, the real Williamson must have died — probably murdered by his imposter, who stepped seamlessly into his life.’
‘That’s my guess too,’ I said. ‘After that, I reckon Strachan merely maintained the identity, without being too active within it. Although his daughters told me that he would disappear for long periods. Anyway, back to the war … what exactly were you and Strachan involved in?’
‘Officially the only Scallywag units were stationed along the south coast of England, where everyone thought the German invasion would take place. But it was worked out that large deployments of paratroopers and amphibious troops could be dropped or landed in the more remote parts of the Highlands and Scottish coastline. So the Duke of Strathlorne was put in command of special operations training for Auxiliary Home Guard units in Scotland.’
‘And after the war, you, Strachan and the Duke all remained tight in your little special forces club.’
‘Something like that. I was proud of what I did, Lennox. You have no idea what we were trained to do. If the invasion took place, we were to carry out sabotage and assassinations. Any senior public official who collaborated with the occupation was to be eliminated: politicians, council heads, even police chief constables. We had hidden arms dumps all over Scotland and enough rations to last us seven weeks.’
‘And what were you supposed to do after the seven weeks?’
Fraser laughed bitterly. ‘It was the same arrangement as the Scallywag units on the south coast of England … they gave us all seven weeks’ rations because they had worked out that we would all be dead before then.’
‘And these arms dumps … have they all been cleared out?’
‘No. Not at all. No one except the units themselves know where the dumps are. It’s the same all across Europe. The Duke is in contact with other organizations, including Gladio.’
‘I see,’ I said. I was beginning to understand.
‘The danger is still there, Lennox. Except it’s not the Nazis any more, it’s the Soviets. And they ground the Nazi war machine into dust; how long do you think it would take them to sweep across Europe? The only defence we have is the bomb.’
‘And the stay-behinds …’ I said. ‘So that is what this is all about. You and your Home Guard chums are still playing at soldiers. This isn’t just about Strachan protecting himself, it’s about protecting the Duke. Including protecting him from the kind of scandal his son was likely to cause.’
‘That’s about the size of it,’ said Fraser.
‘And Strachan — or Colonel Williamson — is in charge of security, is that it?’
‘Something like that. He recruits men straight out of the army: commandos, paratroopers, that kind of thing. New blood.’
‘I guessed as much,’ I said, thinking about the new blood splashed all over my office and the taxi below.
‘But of course,’ continued Fraser, ‘his loyalty to the Duke is phoney … everything he does is for his own purposes.’
The dark, grimy flank of the quayside and the brooding mass of the fifty-ton Stobcross crane loomed out of the fog and into view; the ferry was near docking.
Fraser reached into his coat and I did the same.
‘Take it easy, Lennox, it’s just this …’ he said, handing me a fat envelope. ‘There’s a thousand pounds in fifty pound notes in there. I want you to have it, Mr Lennox.’
‘Why is it everybody wants to shove vast sums of money into my lap? What’s the deal? What do you want from me?’
‘Like I said, I need you to protect me. Keep my name out of all of this. And more. I’m not so naive as not to know that I am a marked man, so I’m going to disappear for a while. I’m taking my family with me. Somewhere out of the country. But I want to come back. I want it to be safe for me to come back.’
‘I can’t guarantee that,’ I said, but pocketed the envelope. He owed me at least that much. ‘But I intend to take Strachan down, one way or another.’
The ferry docked.
‘Get into my car,’ I ordered Fraser. ‘And I’ll tell you what we’re going to do.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
In the bedroom, I opened the top drawer of the chest and laid the Webley in it. Reaching under the bed, I eased up the loose board and retrieved a box of shells for the revolver and a small leather roll-case. I unrolled the case on the bed and took out a hunting knife, still in its sheath and a set of brass knuckles. I laid these in the drawer with the gun and shells. Next, I found both my saps and laid them in next to the other weapons. They would stay there until tonight. I stripped off my shirt and examined the dressing on my arm. It was fresh and clean, but I would double bind it tonight, just to have that little extra support.
Back in the living room, I sat down at the bureau and wrote three letters: one to Jock Ferguson, detailing absolutely everything that had happened over the past two weeks and giving him the lowdown on a few other aspects of my colourful career. The second was to Archie, instructing him to take over my business. The third was a short note to Fiona White. I stuffed the money that Fraser had given me into the envelope for Archie. In with the letter to Fiona White, I placed my bank safety deposit box key and a letter of instruction to MacGregor, the bank’s Chief Clerk, informing him that I had taken Mrs White into my confidence in all matters relating to my investigations and she was to have unfettered access to the deposit box.
Once all the envelopes were sealed, I put them all into a larger brown envelope, on which I had written: IN THE EVENT OF MY DEATH.
I had undertaken cheerier tasks.
I shut the envelope up in the bureau, but didn’t lock it, then went through to the bedroom and lay on my bed, smoking. Maybe it was because I was trying to fill my head with anything at all other than the night that lay ahead of me, but I started to think about home. Thinking about Canada was something I tried not to do too much, but now I indulged myself. I thought about the ‘Kennebecasis Kid’ as I always called that self I had been before the war: young, idealistic, blissfully ignorant of the crap life can throw at you. Stupid, probably. I thought about the killing I had done and the killing I had seen throughout the war. About how it had changed me into something I didn’t like.