‘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.’
‘But you were one of the team?’
‘Who the fuck are you, anyway?’
‘Lennox. Like I said, I’m an enquiry agent. I was hired by Strachan’s kids to find out what happened to their father.’
‘Kids? Which kids?’
I frowned. ‘What do you mean, which kids?’
‘Gentleman Joe was one for the ladies. There are Strachan bastards all over the shop.’
‘These ones are legitimate. His twin daughters.’
Provan looked at me as if weighing up the truth of what I was saying. ‘Can I get off the floor?’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘But no more funny business. I’m no threat to you and I’d like it to be mutual.’
‘Fair enough.’ He got up. ‘You all right?’ he asked and nodded to my hand. I looked down: there was blood on the back of it. I guessed our little tussle had popped a stitch or two on the knife wound. I decided I really should think about a different line of work. Maybe Bobby McKnight could get me a job selling used cars.
‘I’ll live. Incidentally, that was a present from a commando type who had been sent to dissuade me from pursuing my enquiries. I guess that was who you were expecting to turn up.’
‘Come through to the kitchen.’ Provan led the way. ‘I think we could both do with a drink.’
On the assumption that the sun was above the yardarm somewhere on the planet, I agreed and followed. Provan took two tumblers that looked more suited for milk than whisky down from a kitchen shelf. He told me to sit at the kitchen table. The kitchen was a widower’s kitchen right enough: bachelor Spartan but with sad, faint vestiges of a past-tense femininity.
‘Blended okay?’ he asked me as he reached into a cupboard.
‘The way I feel, wood alcohol would do the trick.’ I rested my unbloodied hand on my wounded forearm. I would have to go back to the hospital. When I looked up, it was into the black eyes of a sawn-off shotgun. He must have kept it as a reminder of his previous life. I’d heard that Max Bygraves still kept his carpentry tools. It was good to have a trade to fall back on.
‘Okay, Lennox, just lay both hands flat on the table.’ Provan spoke authoritatively, but without heat. ‘There’s no reason for anyone to get hurt, but I don’t want you getting any ideas about taking me into the police or delivering me up to Strachan, if he really is still alive.’
‘Do I still get the whisky?’
Provan smiled, but it looked wrong on his face, as if he was out of practice. He kept the sawn-off trained on me but poured us two massive belts with his free hand.
‘I reckon you’re on the level,’ he said after taking a slug without wincing, which was impressive: my first sip of the cheap blended whisky had shrivelled up every sphincter muscle in my anatomy. ‘I read about you in the papers. Was that the fella … the one who took a dive from your window?’
‘That was him. And if it hadn’t been him, it would have been me. He wasn’t taking prisoners. Listen …’ I leaned forward and he refocused his aim on me. I made a placating gesture. ‘Take it easy. Like you said, no one needs to get hurt. What I was going to say is that I need your help here. There’s no way I can force you to tell me, and there’s no way I can prove to you that I won’t repeat what you tell me to the cops, other than my word that I won’t. But the more you tell me, the more likely I am to be able to bring this thing to an end.’
Another bitter laugh. ‘You don’t stand a chance, Lennox. You’re lucky that you survived the attack on you. You won’t be so lucky the next time. I won’t be so lucky the first.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know. To begin with I thought I’d run. Run and hide. Get the lawyer to sell this place for me. Then I decided there was no point in running, they’d just find me. I’d made up my mind to stay put and just take what was coming to me. But then, when you turned up, it was like a survival instinct took over …’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I noticed. Can I smoke?’
‘Yes, but move really slow. This thing has a hair trigger and I don’t want to have to redecorate.’
I took his point and eased my packet of Players from my jacket pocket and offered him one. He shook his head.
‘Tell me what happened,’ I said after I’d lit the cigarette and snapped shut my lighter. ‘Everything, starting with the robbery.’
‘Why should I?’
‘Because it would help me, and helping me might just help you. This has gotten very personal with me and I want to make sure it’s Strachan, if that’s who’s behind it all, that gets what’s coming to him. And if he does, you don’t, if you get me.’
‘I get you. What do you want to know?’
‘You said the others … what others? And what happened to them?’
‘Johnny Bentley, Ronnie McCoy and Mike Murphy. They were the other members of the outfit. We did the Triple Crown robberies together.’
‘What? Hammer Murphy was part of the gang?’
‘No. This was another Michael Murphy. Hammer Murphy wouldn’t have anything like the brains or finesse Gentleman Joe needed from us all.’
‘I see,’ I said. I had undergone the unpleasantness of Murphy’s company for no good reason. ‘So what happened to them?’
‘All dead. One by one, over the years. Bentley died in a car crash and McCoy was killed by a hit and run driver. Mike Murphy disappeared on the night of the share-out and my money is on him being dead too.’
‘So none of them slipped off quietly in their sleep, that’s what you’re telling me?’
‘The police wouldn’t connect their deaths because they had no idea they were all part of the Exhibition Gang, as the newspapers took to calling us. And anyway, whoever did them took his time: there was five years between Bentley and McCoy’s deaths and six between McCoy’s and Murphy’s. And that left me.’
‘So you think it was Joe Strachan who killed all three?’
‘Not necessarily. I don’t even know if Strachan is alive. There was another member of the outfit, you see.’
‘The Lad?’
‘You know about him?’ Provan looked genuinely surprised.
‘All there is to know, which isn’t much.’
‘Well, if it isn’t Strachan, then it’s the Lad who killed the boys.’ By now Provan had drained his tumbler in a few gulps but the whisky hadn’t seemed to have any effect on him.
‘I suppose I had better start with what happened at the Empire robbery …’
&nbs
p; CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It seemed that we were settling down for a long account, and I don’t like guns pointing at me. It’s a prejudice based on their habit of going off, even when the person holding the gun has had no intention of firing it. During the war, I had seen too many men killed or wounded by their own side, just because someone had been forgetful with a safety catch or had been waving their weapon around carelessly. I communicated my prejudice to Provan and reminded him that he was loath to redecorate the wall behind me and he agreed to put the shotgun down, provided I kept my hands where he could see them. He sat down opposite me at the table and started on his memoirs.
‘I suppose you remember the Exhibition?’ he asked.
‘Before my time. I only came to Glasgow after I was demobbed. But I believe it was quite something.’
‘Aye. It was. They poured tons of cash into it. They were trying to prove something; just what it was they were trying to prove is beyond me. Maybe it was that Glasgow had taken such a kicking in the Depression and they thought that trying to convince us all that everything wasn’t all messed up after all and we weren’t going to spend the rest of our lives in squalor. The other thing was that everybody knew back in Thirty-eight – aye, well everybody except Neville Chamberlain, that is – that Hitler was going to keep stirring the shite until it spilled out into another war like the Great War. All this shite about the Glory of the Empire … I think they were trying to kid us on that everything was going to get better and stay the same at the same time. That we would always have colonies and dominions with Glasgow at the heart of it all.
‘Whatever the reason, they built this entire fake world on Bellahouston Park. Most of it looked like that H.G. Wells film, The Shape of Things to Come, while the rest of it looked like bloody Brigadoon or some bollocks like that – some kind of imaginary, romantic Scotland with a loch, a castle and a Highland village. Anyway, Joe Strachan had read up all about it right at the very beginning when it was just being planned. He worked out that there would be thousands in workers’ wages every week and even more in cash takings from the public. That was his big thing – his special gift – he could always see where the big money, the best takings, could be. No one else had his eye for it. He gathered us together and talked us through the Triple Crown.’
‘You, this guy Murphy, Bentley, McCoy, and the so-called “Lad”. What was his name?’
‘I don’t know. I never knew his name, never knew his face. And when you ask if Murphy, Bentley and McCoy were there, I know now that they were, but at the time they could have been anybody. None of us knew anything about the others. We all knew what Strachan looked like and he knew our faces, because he had recruited us, but he made us meet up at the old Bennie Railplane track, up by Milngavie.’
‘Why there?’
‘It was abandoned but somewhere we could all find. I also think that Strachan liked a bit of drama. If there was one thing he did have going against him, it was that he was a flash bastard. Anyway, there was this disused building that had been part of the original station they had built. We were told to turn up there, fifteen minutes apart. When we did, there was this guy on the door with a balaclava hiding his face.’
‘The Lad?’
‘Aye. That’s how he was introduced by Strachan later. Anyway, he was armed and gave each of us a balaclava to wear before we entered the building.’
‘So he saw your faces?’
‘Aye. But we never saw his and we didn’t see each other’s. Strachan said that it meant no one could identify any of the gang, other than Strachan himself, if they got caught. And it was made clear that it didn’t matter what prison we were locked up in, if we fingered Strachan, we wouldn’t last a month.
‘So, anyway, we all gather there, wearing these balaclavas and calling each other by an animal name: I was Fox and the others were Wolf, Bear and Tiger. Load of shite, but that was the way Strachan ran things. Like it was the fucking army. And we couldn’t complain, because it worked. Strachan then set to going through what we were going to do. He had four smaller robberies planned, but these were just practice runs, and to get funds to finance the bigger robberies. All he told us about these bigger robberies was that the first two would be the usual type of job, but on a much bigger scale than anyone had ever seen. But the third was going to be something so different, so unexpected, that they wouldn’t know what had hit them and the police wouldn’t know where to start looking. Oh, there was one thing we did know about each other – that none of us had any kind of serious form that would make us suspects.’
‘Did he tell you then that it was going to be the Empire Exhibition?’
‘Naw. I got the feeling that the first four jobs were more than practice or to raise funds. I think he was testing us out, to see how we worked as a team; to see if he could trust us. It was only after that that he gave us the details of the Triple Crown. But there was a lot more weird stuff. Every time we met, it was up at the Bennie Railplane, and every time we had to turn up at different times so that we didn’t see each other without our masks on. I really didn’t see how we could keep it up. Even with the test jobs, we were all masked up and in the back of a van. We were told that anyone who took his mask off and let the others see his face would be shot there and then. And if you knew Gentleman Joe Strachan, you’d believe it. It was then that it started to dawn on me: the real reason for the masks and the codenames and not being allowed to talk to each other. Strachan and the Lad were tight; they knew each other; the rest of us were useful if we did what we were told, but if we started to talk to each other, we could maybe plan a double-cross. Divide and fucking conquer, that’s what it was.
‘But we were happy. We got a big slice each from the practice jobs and we had all seen how Strachan’s planning worked better than any boss we’d had before. And we knew that if we pulled off the Triple Crown, we’d never have to work again. But like I said, it was all pretty weird. For three months we had to meet up every Tuesday night and Strachan would drive us up into the fucking wilds and make us do all of these exercises and combat practice. Again, like in the army. Anyway, one night we were disturbed by this gamekeeper, who obviously thought we were night-time poachers. He approached us, waving his shotgun at us, but Strachan put on his army officer palaver and before you knew it this poacher was tugging at his forelock and calling him sir. But the Lad had been on lookout and, while Strachan was talking to the gamekeeper, the Lad came up behind him, completely silent, and cut his fucking throat. In the bat of an eye and without breaking his step.’
‘I see …’ I said, casting my mind back to a more recently deceased gamekeeper with a slashed throat. ‘What happened to the body?’
‘We took it back in the van. What happened to it after that I don’t know: Strachan and the Lad disposed of it, I suppose. But on the way back, Strachan stripped the body and left the keeper’s shotgun and all the clothes that weren’t blood-stained by the side of this fast flowing stretch of river. I said to Strachan that it didn’t make sense, that no one would believe that the gamekeeper had gone for a midnight dip in a dangerous stretch of river, never to be found. In any case, I says, it’s not like the sea … anyone drowned in the river would be washed up somewhere downstream.
‘Strachan says to me that that doesn’t matter. That the less sense it makes the more of a mystery the gamekeeper’s disappearance will be. Country people love a mystery, he says, and they’ll make up all kinds of stories about the gamekeeper running off with a woman or crap like that. No one will think about it being a simple murder because he disturbed someone in the woods.
‘After that, things got tense. Me and the other boys had been shaken up by the way the Lad had done the gamekeeper in cold blood. I started to think that maybe the loot from the big jobs would only be split two ways and the rest of us could end up taking a nap at the bottom of the Clyde.’
‘Did you do anything about it?’ I asked.
‘I’ll get to that,’ Provan answered me impatiently. ‘So we do the fi
rst two of the big three and everything goes to plan. But there’s no talk of a divvy-up of the takings. We’re told we have to wait until after the Exhibition Robbery. Then, says Strachan, we’ll get everything that’s coming to us.
‘But one of the other guys slips me a note. It’s got the address of a pub in Maryhill and a day and a time we’re to meet. Strachan is such a twisted bastard that I worry that it’s a set-up to test our loyalty or security or God knows what. But I go along anyway. I stand in the pub like a fucking lemon because I’ve got no idea what he looks like and he’s got no idea what I look like. I’m just about to leave when this bloke comes up and asks if I’m Mr Fox. I say I am and he tells me that he’s Mr Bear. Turns out he’s Johnnie Bentley. He tells me that he gave the same note to Mr Wolf and Mr Tiger, but he can’t tell if either of them are there yet.
Half an hour later we goes up to this fella sitting on his own nursing a pint. Right enough it’s Mike Murphy. Ronnie McCoy sees the three of us together and works out we’re his furry workmates. We leave the pub and sit in the bus stance for two hours talking everything through. Turns out that the other two have the same thoughts I did and reckon that we’re going to get shafted by Strachan and the Lad.’
‘So you decide to do some shafting yourself?’ I asked.
‘Not there and then, but we meet four or five times after that. We had to be careful because there was no way of knowing if Strachan had his Lad following us. Christ knows we would never have been able to recognize the bastard. Anyway, we agree that after the Exhibition Robbery, we’ll deal with the pair of them. Problem is that we have no idea when and where we’re supposed to meet to split up the cash, but we guess it’s going to be the Bennie Railplane, so we agree that, whatever time we’re given by Strachan, we’ll all turn up, tooled-up, fifteen minutes earlier.
To start with, we agree that if we can just make sure that we get our fair share, as Strachan promised we would, we’ll leave it at that. But we have to see the Lad’s face so’s we know who to be looking over our shoulders for. But then Johnnie Bentley says about the gamekeeper and how there’s no chance that Strachan or his masked monkey will let us get away with holding them up. So eventually we agree that we have to kill them both. It was a big step. Not one of us was a life-taker, not like them other two, and it would be murder. You hang for murder. Anyway, it all became academic after what Strachan does during the robbery.’
The Deep Dark Sleep Page 24