The Deep Dark Sleep

by Craig Russell

  It was a scene that bordered on the surreal: McNab, Jock Ferguson and I chatting like a bunch of old women over cups of tea and digestive biscuits. I did most of the talking and told them almost everything I had, again skipping the details of my nature trek in the forest. I did tell them that I’d been to see Billy Dunbar, accompanied by Archie, a reliable witness to the fact that Billy and his wife were both breathing when we left.

  One thing that I had been expecting was to be hit with my possible connection to the death of Frank Gibson, Paul Downey’s muscular innamorato, but either Jock Ferguson hadn’t made the connection between Downey and Gibson, or he had forgotten that I had asked about someone with that name.

  I placed the photograph on the desk.

  ‘I could have sworn this was going to turn out to be Gentleman Joe Strachan, but it’s not. It’s a guy he used to know. A friend of his called Henry Williamson. From what I’ve heard, he’s straight, but I’m pretty sure the guy who fell out of my window was working for him.’

  I stabbed the photograph with my finger. I hoped the emphasis would prevent them asking exactly why I suspected him of being the brains behind the attack. McNab stared at the photograph and frowned. It gave me a bad feeling. The kind of bad feeling you get when the husband of someone you’ve got playful with stares at the smudge of lipstick you’ve got on your shirt collar.

  McNab picked up the phone on the desk and tapped at the cradle before sighing and walking out of the room without a word. Ferguson looked at me and shrugged.

  McNab came back in and sat down, staring at the photograph.

  ‘What’s up, Superintendent?’ asked Jock.

  ‘I’ve asked Jimmy Duncan in records to come up and join us. He works part-time as a civvy clerk, but was on the force until three years ago. He was senior man when I joined as a probationer. There’s not a face in Glasgow that he can’t put a name to.’

  We sat in expectant silence for five minutes, then a heavy-built man in shirtsleeves, wearing ugly health service hornrimmed glasses and with a shock of white hair walked in. He may have been pushing sixty, but he had the look of someone you would not want to tangle with.

  ‘What is it, Willie?’ asked the retired constable-turned-filing clerk, as if the Chief Superintendent was still his probationer.

  ‘We don’t have any photographs of Joseph Strachan on file, do we? But you saw him, didn’t you, face to face?’

  ‘Aye, Willie, I did, but that was thirty year back and I didn’t see him for long. Didn’t talk to him or anything like that …’

  McNab handed him the photograph. ‘Is that Joseph Strachan. Or could be Joseph Strachan now?’

  Duncan looked at the picture for a long time.

  ‘I don’t know, Willie … I really couldn’t say. It really isn’t a good photograph and people change a lot in twenty year.’

  ‘I’ve been told that the person in the picture is called Henry Williamson,’ I said. ‘Does that name mean anything to you?’

  Duncan looked at me as if I’d spoken to him in Albanian, then McNab gave him the nod that it was okay to answer.

  ‘Naw …’ He shook his head thoughtfully. ‘I can’t say that it does. Not as far as records is concerned.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, there was a Henry Williamson who had dealings with us right at the beginning of the war. Involved in the Home Guard.’ He looked at the picture again. ‘But I couldn’t say if this is him either. But again I only saw him the once and in passing. I had to drive Chief Superintendent Harrison over to Edinburgh for a conference about the Home Guard. Over at Craigiehall … you know, army headquarters.’

  ‘Home Guard, you say?’ Jock Ferguson chipped in. He didn’t look up from his tea cup and I could tell he was trying to hide the question behind a curtain of casualness. I just hoped McNab had not seen through it as easily as I had.

  ‘Aye, that’s right,’ said Duncan. ‘Like I said, Chief Superintendent Harrison was the force liaison with the Home Guard. Of course he was just an inspector back then.’

  Ferguson looked across at me, but without much of an expression. I got his meaning though. That morning I had been jumped in the fog, the only people who had known about my interest in Strachan had been Willie Sneddon, who was unlikely to have mentioned it to anybody, and the police officers with whom Jock Ferguson had made casual inquiries.

  And one of them, as he had told me, had been Chief Superintendent Edward Harrison.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  When I was leaving my digs in the morning, I bumped into Fiona White as she was coming out of her ground floor flat. Bumped into in the sense that I had the distinct impression she had been waiting to hear my footfall on the stairs before coming out.

  It was a sad little exchange. I was still mixed up about her and the sudden appearance of her dead husband’s brother, or substitute, or whatever the hell he was. She was trying to frame something that she had not fully thought through: some kind of reassurance, I guess, but we were both all at sea. After all, anything that there was between us had been, until then, unspoken – if you excluded my soliloquizing the year before. And that had done more to formalize whatever we had between us than anything else. She told me that James was just concerned, as the girls’ uncle, for their well-being and there was not much else to be said. I said that it really was none of my business and that, I could see, stung her.

  It was thus that our little stairwell exchange ended and I headed out to the Atlantic, feeling like crap. Always a good way to start the day.

  I got to the office in time to let the joiner and glaziers in. They took most of the morning to replace the window. I hadn’t been allowed to repair it until then, but once the coppers had all of the photographs and fingerprints they wanted, I had got the go-ahead to replace the temporary boarding with new glazing. For the rest of the day, my office stank of putty, resin and the strangely lingering odour of workman sweat.

  I took out a note pad and did a quick calculation of where I was with the money I had earned; none of it likely to come to the taxman’s attention. It was a lot. A whole lot. The John Macready case had been ridiculously overpaid. It annoyed me that people giving me unreasonably large sums of tax-free cash brought out the suspicious side to my nature. It annoyed me intensely. But it did.

  I was now officially off the Macready and Strachan cases. I had narrowly dodged taking a long sleep in a shallow grave in the forest and I had more than enough cash to do whatever I should be doing with my life. Now, Lennox, I kept telling myself, is the time to leave well alone.

  It appeared I was as deaf to internal dialogue as I was to instinct.

  I found out from Donald Fraser that Macready and entourage were leaving town and flying back to the US the next day. I ’phoned Leonora Bryson and asked if we could meet for a coffee.

  ‘I really don’t see the point,’ she said. ‘Whatever happened between us, I don’t want you to think that it means anything.’

  ‘Oh, believe me, sister, you’ve made that crystal clear. But this is business. A little epilogue to my investigation, you might say.’

  I could tell from her tone that she was unsure what to do; she eventually agreed to meet me. But in my office.

  She turned up quarter of an hour later. She was wearing a less formal outfit that hugged her figure. I guessed that every man she had passed on the short walk across from the Central Hotel was now wearing a neck brace. She wore a silk patterned headscarf instead of a hat.

  ‘So, Mr Lennox. What’s on your mind?’ She squeezed an impressive amount of boredom into the question. She should have looked at her watch to underline the point, but she didn’t.

  ‘It’s more what’s on my conscience, if I’m honest. I know this woman, Martha. She’s a nice girl but I haven’t treated her well.’

  ‘Am I supposed to be surprised? Or interested?’

  ‘Oh I think you should be interested. I’ve treated her badly because I’ve used her as a substitute for someone else. Someone
I care about but, if I’m honest, I know I will never be able to be with. You said on the ’phone that what happened between us didn’t mean anything. It did. It meant a lot. I have to tell you, there was a lot of aggression in there, sweetheart.’

  Leonora Bryson stood up. ‘I don’t have to listen to this. I knew all along you were no gentleman, but this …’

  ‘Save the outrage, Leonora and sit down. Or I might just suggest to the police that they stop you getting on that plane tomorrow.’

  She said nothing. Still defiant, still standing.

  ‘The way I was with Martha … I realized it was the same way you were with me. I’m sorry, Leonora, I really am … I can’t imagine what it must be like to be so much in love with someone you are with every day in life, but with whom you can never have any kind of relationship.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ But she sat back down.

  ‘You are completely, totally, insanely in love with John Macready. God knows any man on the planet should get down on his knees in thanks to have a woman like you worship him. But, let’s face it, Mr Macready gets down on his knees for a whole different set of reasons. All that impressive equipment you’ve got there, completely wasted on him. He’s blind to you. And he’s blind to the fact that you would do anything to protect him.’

  ‘You really are a small man, Lennox. A sordid, poisonous little man.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘I’m not really the best person to defend my own character. But I don’t like people getting killed when they don’t deserve it. Frank Gibson, for example. You got the wrong guy there, didn’t you? I don’t know who it is you have working for you here, but you called them right after I ’phoned you from outside Gibson’s flat. You couldn’t rely on me getting hold of absolutely everything. There could have been another darkroom somewhere, more negatives, more prints. And you wouldn’t let anyone damage the man you love. Get rid of the blackmailer and you get rid of the blackmail. But when your people got there, there was only Frank. My guess is that Paul Downey did a runner as soon as I left. Whoever you used has probably been on Downey’s trail ever since.’

  ‘What do you want, Lennox?’ she said coldly. ‘Sex? More money?’

  ‘I have more than enough money, thanks. And, though I cannot believe I’m hearing myself say this, I’ll pass on the sex. It’s probably best anyway, at least until the Infirmary sets up a post-coital ward in its casualty department. Anyway, don’t worry, I can’t prove anything. The police maybe could, given time, but your secret is safe with me.’

  She tried really hard not to look relieved. ‘So what is it you want from me?’

  ‘Three things. I can’t see a striking woman like you cruising Glasgow’s underworld in search of professional killers, so I want to know who did the stalking and killing for you.’

  She remained silent.

  ‘The second thing I want to know is if they have found Downey, and if so if he is still converting oxygen into carbon dioxide. If he is still alive, then I want to know where he is, or at least to find out where to pick up the trail.’

  ‘And the third thing?’

  ‘The third thing is the most personal, and I want an honest answer. Was the guy who left my office via the window here on your instructions? Did you pay someone to kill me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It would make sense. How could you know that I wouldn’t blab about John Macready? Or that I had maybe pocketed a couple of keepsake negatives myself? After all, I know how much the studio is prepared to fork out to protect their star’s reputation.’

  ‘I thought about it, but no. The one thing that we all knew about you, whatever else seedy you’ve got going, was that you wouldn’t cheat on a client. So no … whatever happened here has nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Okay … I believe you. What about my other questions. Where did you get the hired help?’

  ‘Fraser, the lawyer.’

  ‘Fraser?’ I failed to keep the surprise out of my tone. I’d been doing so well up until then with my omniscient detective act. The truth was I had not been at all sure I was on to anything at all.

  ‘He knows people,’ she said. ‘From the war.’

  ‘But Fraser was in the Home Gua …’ The sentence died on my lips. I felt like throwing myself out of the window, I had been so stupid.

  ‘And is Downey dead?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you know where he is?’

  She didn’t answer but instead reached over my desk and pulled my telephone towards her. As she did so I could see the swell of her breasts in the cleavage of her silk blouse. I decided I was too quick to turn down offers and that a short spell in casualty would not have been that bad.

  She spoke a few words into the receiver and scribbled something down on my desk blotter. Her last words were to call the dogs off.

  ‘They’ve tracked him down to this address,’ she said. ‘Nothing will happen to him. But if he ever tries to sell any photographs of John, I promise you, Lennox, I’ll make a call across the Atlantic and I’ll be giving my contacts two names.’

  Standing up and walking around the desk, I stood over her and read the address. It was in Bridgeton. Poor bastard.

  I grabbed Leonora by the flesh of her upper arm and hauled her to her feet, pushing her hard and fast across the room until her back hit the wall.

  ‘I don’t hit women, Leonora. Just one of these odd little quirks about me,’ I said. ‘But if you ever threaten me again, I don’t care how many continents I have to cross, I’ll come over and slap you senseless. Then, after that, I’ll give the police every scrap of evidence I’ve got to see if they can pin anything on you. You got that?’

  She nodded, but her eyes were clear of fear. She was a real piece of work, all right. I let go her arm.

  ‘And let me be clear about this … if I hear that anything – and I mean anything – untoward happens to Paul Downey then, again, I will go to the police with everything I know. Now I may not have enough for them to make a case, but it will be one hell of a scandal and everything you’ve fought so hard to avoid coming out will be splashed across the newspapers.’

  I backed off. I felt bad about the rough stuff, but I reacted badly when people threatened me. And, anyway, given my experience with Leonora, she probably considered it foreplay. ‘Another bit of advice, Miss Bryson: when you get on that plane tomorrow, I strongly recommend you make sure it’s a one-way ticket and never, ever set foot on British soil again. Got that?’

  She straightened herself out before answering. She was trying to retain her dignity, but the truth was she had never lost it.

  ‘You’ve expressed yourself very well, Lennox. But don’t worry, I have no intention of setting foot in this shitheel country ever again.’

  ‘One more thing,’ I said as she was leaving. ‘Not a word to Fraser. I don’t want you tipping him off that I know about your little arrangement.’

  She turned at the door and nodded curtly. Then she was gone.

  I sat and stared at the window, out at the black stone and iron lacework of Central Station, contemplating what had just happened and the information I’d been given. The war had been over for ten years, but it still loomed large in everything, casting its shadow into every corner of life. I had forgotten, even when Jock Ferguson had asked the old retired copper about Harrison, that Fraser had been in the Home Guard.

  I was considering my next move when someone walked into my office; just like McNab, without knocking. I considered getting a sign.

  ‘Hello, Jock,’ I said. ‘I was just thinking about you.’

  He came in and sat down opposite me. As he did so, I saw that he had noticed the address written on my blotter and glanced at it absently before tossing his trilby on top of it.

  ‘Here’s your photograph back.’ He handed me an envelope. I had let him and McNab keep the picture of Joe Strachan or Henry Williamson or whoever the hell he was, but on the understanding that they copied it and gave me back the origi
nal. I had been relieved that they had not pushed too much to find out exactly how I’d come by it.

  ‘You get anything on the guy in the picture?’ I asked.

  ‘Nope. He remains a mystery man. But I have some good news – and I have to point out that I haven’t shared it with Superintendent McNab yet – I think I’ve tracked down someone who might be able to cast a little light on the matter.’

  ‘Oh … who?’

  ‘Stewart Provan.’

  ‘Wait a minute … I recognize that name …’ I scrabbled about in my drawer and found the sheet of paper the twins had sent me with the names that had been found on the note behind furniture. There it was, the fourth name on the list. ‘How did you find him?’

  ‘Pure chance. He’s living under the name Stewart Reid now. Changed his name by deed poll. But with ex-prisoners, we get notified of change of names and residence. I got the name from old Jimmy Duncan, who you met the other day. Told him I wanted to track down anyone who was suspected of being an associate of Joe Strachan. He came up with Stewart Provan, which led to Stewart Reid.’

  ‘Any form since the Thirties?’

  ‘None. Like Billy Dunbar, he’s gone straight.’

  I nodded, not wanting to add that I could guarantee that Dunbar would never break the law again.

  ‘And you have an address for him?’ I asked.

  Ferguson nodded indulgently and handed me a slip of paper with Provan’s details on them.

  ‘I appreciate this, Jock.’

  Ferguson shrugged. ‘Just don’t let McNab know I’ve tipped you off. Having said that, what is it that’s going on between you and McNab? It’s almost like you’re on the payroll. You’re not, are you? I mean, he’s not paying you snout money?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Jock. Let’s just say the Superintendent has come to a greater appreciation of my finer qualities. Now, what do you reckon to this Home Guard connection? Do you really think that this Chief Superintendent Harrison tipped off whoever it was that came after me?’