‘Oh, why?’
‘Rommel got to him first. If you want to find him you’ll have to go and play hunt the thimble in the North African desert. A German land mine sent his head in the direction of Tobruk and his arse towards the equator.’
‘Great. Thanks for checking it out anyway. There’s one other thing, Jock …’
‘Oh, really, there’s another thing you need from me? Why am I not bloody surprised?’
‘I’ve got another name needs checking. Could you see if you’ve got anything on someone called Paul Downey? I think he’s an actor. And part-time photographer.’
‘Why the hell not? I’ve got nothing else to do other than pander to your every whim. Is this connected to the Strachan thing?’
‘No, nothing like that,’ I said. ‘It’s a completely different case. Someone’s kid keeping the wrong company, that sort of thing.’
‘And you say he’s an actor?’
I shrugged. ‘That’s what I’ve been told. Or photographer, or both.’
‘Okay, I’ll check it out. But I’m warning you, Lennox, I’ll be looking for a few quid pro quos for this. Next time I ask you for some straight information, I expect to get some information. Straight.’
‘Fair enough,’ I lied convincingly.
‘And Lennox?’
‘Yeah?’
‘You’ve made a good job of keeping your nose clean of late. Don’t go sticking it back in the shite; it brings out the worst in you. You understand what I’m saying?’
‘I understand, Jock,’ I said. And I did.
My last business meeting with Willie Sneddon had been in a brothel and bare-knuckle fight venue he had acquired. He was nothing if not creative in combining enterprises. This place, however, was a completely different ball of wax.
The offices of Paragon Importing and Distribution were down near the Queen’s Dock in a vast commercial palace of redbrick that had been soot-grimed a matt rusty-black. It was the kind of place the Victorians had built as a cathedral to trade, and reminded me of the huge ornate warehouses I had seen in Hamburg at the end of the war.
The office was huge and panelled in a polished exotic hardwood that made you think it would have been cheaper to paper the walls with five-pound notes. Sneddon sat behind a massive inlaid desk that could have been launched into the Clyde as an aircraft carrier. On the desk sat three phones: one black, one ivory, one red. The rest of the desk furniture looked antique and there was a small pile of books in one corner of the desk and a heap of files sitting on the blotter in front of Sneddon.
Sneddon himself was dressed in expensive grey herringbone, a silk shirt and burgundy tie. I had never seen him dressed in anything that didn’t look Savile Row. Willie Sneddon had the kind of physical presence that made you wary. He was none too tall and was stocky without being heavy: all muscle and sinew in a way that always made me think he had been woven from ship rope. That, and the ugly crease of a razor scar on his right cheek, told you that this was someone to whom violence came naturally and easily.
I wondered what his classy new chums would make of the razor scar.
‘What the fuck do you want, Lennox?’ said Sneddon in greeting. I guessed Dale Carnegie’s How to win Friends and Influence People was not among the books on his desk.
‘It’s been a while,’ I said sitting down without being asked. ‘You seem to be doing very well for yourself, Mr Sneddon.’
He stared at me silently. His small-talk skills made Jock Ferguson look like a chatterbox.
‘I wondered if you could help me,’ I continued, cheerily undeterred. ‘You used to be friends with Billy Dunbar. I just wondered if you know where I might find him? He seems to have dropped out of sight.’
‘Billy Dunbar?’ Sneddon frowned at me. ‘How the fuck should I know? I haven’t heard from him in over ten years. Billy Dunbar …’ He paused thoughtfully. ‘What the fuck do you want Billy Dunbar for?’
‘A long shot. The police hauled him in and gave him a rough time back in Thirty-eight. Over the Exhibition robbery job. I just wanted to talk to him about it.’
Something flickered across Sneddon’s expression in the small pause before he spoke. Whatever it was, I didn’t have time to read it.
‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Does this have something to do with Gentleman Joe Strachan being found at the bottom of the Clyde?’
‘Well, yes … as a matter of fact it does.’
‘And what the fuck has that got to do with you?’
‘I’ve been hired to look into it. To make sure that was Joe Strachan they found.’
‘And why the fuck shouldn’t it have been Strachan? It makes sense, seeing as how it ties in with when he went missing.’
‘Did you know Strachan?’ I asked.
‘Naw. Knew of him, of course, he was the big bollocks back then … but I never met him. Why do you think that it’s maybe not Strachan they found?’
‘I didn’t say I thought that. I’ve just been asked to make sure. And I just wanted to talk to Billy Dunbar about it and thought you might have a more up to date address for him.’
‘Leave Billy out of it,’ said Sneddon. ‘He was a good bloke. Someone you could trust. But he went straight fucking years ago and just wanted left alone. The coppers gave him the hiding of his life and he didn’t tell them anything. I mean, they get handy with their fists a lot of the time, but this was different. What they did to Billy, and a few others, was nothing less than fucking torture. But there wasn’t nothing for him to tell.’
‘I see. So you don’t know where I could find him?’
‘How many fucking times do I have to tell you?’
I stood up. ‘Sorry to disturb you, Mr Sneddon.’
Sneddon said nothing and remained seated. I made my way back to the door.
‘You want my opinion?’ Sneddon called across an acre of Axminster. I turned.
‘About what?’
‘About how the government could resolve the Cyprus crisis … what the fuck do you think about, for fuck’s sake? About Gentleman Joe Strachan.’
‘Okay …’ I said tentatively.
‘Whoever it was they found at the bottom of the river, it wasn’t Gentleman Joe Strachan.’
‘Why do you say that? I thought you said you didn’t know him, so what makes you think it’s not him they found?’
‘I took his place, Lennox. If Joe Strachan hadn’t disappeared it would be him sitting here, not me. He was a fucking legend in this town. And the Empire Exhibition robbery is the kind of job that every gobshite dreams of pulling off. Textbook stuff.’
‘Except the fact that a copper was blown away,’ I said, trying to imagine what textbooks Glasgow criminals read.
‘Aye … that’s where it all went tits up. Listen, Lennox, I took over all of Strachan’s operations after the war, or at least the ones we knew about. That guy was all planning. And brains. So I can put myself in his place — because I have put myself in his place, if you know what I mean. So let’s say I’m Gentleman Joe … there I am, I’ve just pulled off three of the biggest fucking robberies ever, and, like you say, the last one’s left a copper dead. Even if the bobby hadn’t been killed, the coppers are going to be after you like shite off a shirt tail. Matter of pride, you see: no copper wants his patch to go down in history for the biggest job pulled successfully.
‘So, like I say, there I am, having pulled this job, with a stack of cash that doesn’t need laundered and fuck knows what else from the security van. But I’ve done a copper so I am fucked as far as Glasgow’s concerned. I’ve got three men with me on the job. Maybes it was one of them that done the copper, maybes it was me. Anyway, I’m the only name the cops are likely to have, so I divide up the loot, taking a bigger share for myself, because I’ve got to start somewhere new. Maybes one of the others kicks up about it, so I top him, dress him up in my clobber, shove the initialled cigarette case that I’m never seen without in his pocket and dump him in the river. If he isn’t found, fine. If he is, the cops think th
at there’s no point to keep on looking for me.’
‘You’ve certainly thought this one through, Mr Sneddon,’ I said.
‘Aye, I have. I got my chance because Strachan dropped out. So aye, I’ve thought it through. Mainly because I’ve always had half an eye on the bastard resurfacing, but not in the way those bones did. But now …’ He held his arms wide to indicate his surroundings. ‘Now I’m putting all of that behind me. I’m a businessman now, Lennox. I’ve got kids who’ll be able to take all of this over without having to take the shite the police have tried to give me over the years. So if Gentleman Joe Strachan comes back from the grave, then it’s Murphy’s and Cohen’s lookout, not mine.’
‘You’re that sure that he’s not dead?’
Sneddon shrugged. ‘Like I said, I never met him. Didn’t know him. But what I knew about him makes me think he was too slippery a shite to end up topped by one of his own. Too slippery and too dangerous. By the way, I don’t think Billy Dunbar ever had anything to do with him either. So you’re barking up the wrong tree there as well.’
‘Well, thanks for your time, Mr Sneddon,’ I said. ‘Like I said, I just thought you might be able to point me to Dunbar.’
‘Well I can’t, so fuck off.’
I left Sneddon in his palace of commerce, wondering if he concluded meetings with the Rotary Club in the same way.
Glasgow had three main railway stations, each a gargantuan Victorian edifice: Queen Street, St Enoch’s and Central Stations were all within walking distance of each other but divided the nation’s destinations between them. If all roads led to Rome, then all railroads led to Glasgow city centre. Each of the stations was connected to its equivalent in London, binding the two most important cities in the British Empire together: Queen Street ran the service to King’s Cross, St Enoch’s to St Pancras, and Central Station ran the Euston connection. And each station had a huge, grand hotel attached to it.
My offices were directly across Gordon Street from Central Station and the dark, grandiose mass of the Central Hotel that was stone-fused into it. The Central Hotel was the kind of place where you were more likely to bump into a movie star or minor royalty than the average Glasgow punter; which was ironic, given that I was going to question a movie star about his bumping into minor royalty. The Central Hotel had had personages as stellar as Winston Churchill, Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly under its roof; not to mention Roy Rogers and Trigger. Trigger, apparently, had had a suite to himself.
The receptionist ’phoned up to Macready’s suite and I was asked to wait until someone came down for me, so I cooled my heels in the hotel lobby. At least I was cooling them on expensive marble.
When I had telephoned from my office to arrange the meeting, I had spoken to a young woman with an American accent and enough frost in her voice to make the Ice Age seem balmy. She had been expecting my call, obviously having been prepped by Fraser.
I had just sunk up to my armpits in red leather and was reading a newspaper when I heard the same frosty tone. When I looked up I found myself in the full frigid glare of a Nordic goddess of about twenty-five … and thirty-six-twenty-four-thirty-four. Her pale blonde hair looked more natural than permed and the full, deep-red lipsticked lips accentuated the Prussian blue of her eyes. She was dressed in a grey business suit and white blouse and was all curve and legs so long I was surprised when they stopped at the ground. I found myself staring at her figure. She found me staring at it too and the frost in the pale blue eyes dropped a few degrees more.
‘Mr Lennox?’ she asked, with only slightly less distaste than if she had sunk a stiletto heel into dog droppings.
‘I’m Lennox,’ I said, and somehow resisted adding and I’m your slave forever.
‘I’m Leonora Bryson, Mr Macready’s assistant.’
‘Lucky Mr Macready …’ I smiled a smile a wolf would have thought uncouth and fought my way out of the red leather armchair.
‘Follow me, Mr Lennox,’ she said and turned on her heel.
She had made it sound like a command, but the truth was that following her could easily have become my second favourite pastime. She had a narrow waist which emphasized the swell of her thighs and ass. And I use swell in every sense of the word. I was disappointed when we reached the elevator and the lift man slid the concertina door open for us to enter. He was a stunted little Glaswegian with a drawn, dour face, but he held my gaze for a split second as Miss Bryson entered the lift. Oh, I know, pilgrim, I thought as we exchanged the look. I know.
When we got out, Leonora Bryson led me along a labyrinth of corridors lined with expensive wood panelling. I wasn’t worried about finding my way back: I would simply follow the trail of drool I was leaving behind. The doors to the rooms we passed were so widely spaced that you could tell that these were the hotel’s suites. Stopping at one of the doors, she swung open a hundred pounds of oak without knocking and we stepped into a room so big that just a Glasgow mile and a half away it would be expected to house three families. That was the thing about Glasgow that had always struck me most: not just that there was a huge chasm between rich and poor, which was something you found in just about every British city, but that Glasgow seemed to do it on a bigger, louder, cruder scale. Wealth here was un-Britishly ostentatious and brash as if trying to out-shout the deafening poverty all around it. I was no Red, but, despite old Uncle Clem’s very British post-war welfare revolution, sometimes the injustice of it all really got to me.
There were two goon-types in the sitting room of the suite: big sorts with loud suits and louder shirts and Marine-style crew-cuts. Obviously the security sent over by the studio. They looked as out of place in Glasgow as it was possible to look and I would have sworn I could see their Californian tans fading as I watched. A man who was easily as tall and broad as the goons stood up as we entered. In a quiet and friendly but authoritative tone, he asked the goons to leave us alone. My Nordic ice maiden led them out.
‘Mr Lennox?’ John Macready switched on the one hundred watt smile that had beamed from the publicity photograph. I shook his hand. ‘Please sit down. Can I get you a drink?’
I said a Scotch would be fine but a Bourbon would be better.
‘I didn’t know you were an American, Mr Lennox.’
‘I’m not. I’m Canadian. It’s just that I prefer rye.’
He handed me a wrist-straining hunk of crystal filled with ice and whiskey.
‘Canadian? I see … I couldn’t quite place your accent.’ Macready sat down opposite me. He had been meticulously tanned, tailored, groomed and manicured to the point of artificiality; an unreality compounded by the fact that he was preposterously handsome. He turned down the wattage of his smile. ‘I know you’ve been hired by Mr Fraser. I take it he has told you everything.’
‘He’s told me all I need to know about the blackmail, if that’s what you mean, Mr Macready.’
‘And the photographs? He showed you those?’
‘I’m afraid he had to.’
Macready held me in a frank gaze with no hint of embarrassment. ‘I take it you know what it could mean for my career if these photographs were to be made public?’
‘The very nature of the photographs means that they can’t be made public. Any newspaper or magazine that printed them, even with strategically placed black bars, would be prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act. But that isn’t the danger. A newspaper can print that they are in possession of the photographs and describe their contents in broad terms. It then falls on you to deny the allegations, which you can’t, because — although they are unpublishable — they are fully admissible in court as evidence in a libel trial. And, it has to be said, in a criminal prosecution, too. You are aware that the acts depicted are illegal under Scots law.’
‘Under American law as well, Mr Lennox.’
‘Yes, but the Scots have an enthusiasm for prosecuting these kind of cases. Presbyterian zeal.’
‘Trust me, I know all about that, Mr Lennox. Macready isn’t a stage na
me: I’m of Scottish descent. My father and grandfather were both elders of the Presbyterian church in West Virginia.’
‘Does your father know about …?’ I groped around for an appropriate noun, but it remained out of my grasp, somewhere between inclination and problem. Macready picked up on my discomfort and gave a small, bitter laugh.
‘My father has never discussed it with me, nor I with him, but I know he knows. Despite my war record, my acting achievements and the wealth I’ve accumulated, all I see in my father’s eyes when he looks at me is disappointment. And shame. And, as you’ve pointed out, Mr Lennox, my sexual preferences make me a criminal, for some reason. But let me make this absolutely clear to you: I am not in the slightest ashamed of who and what I am. It is my nature, not a criminal trait or sexual perversion. I wasn’t turned into what I am because someone fiddled with me as a kid, and it’s not because I suffer from an unbounded libido that one gender cannot contain. Incidentally, that last description applies to one of your own swashbuckling heroes.’
‘But the studio …’
‘The studio knows about it. Has done for years. They fret about it all right, but that’s got nothing to do with some skewed sense of sexual morality. All they care about is the impact it would have at the box office. On the bottom line. Trust me, Hollywood has a much more liberal view of the world than Fayette County, West Virginia … or Scotland. The fact that I am homosexual is an open secret in Hollywood circles, Mr Lennox. But it is kept well out of view of the queue outside the movie theatres in Poughkeepsie or Pottsville or Peoria. What and who you see on the screen as John Macready is a falsehood … but it is a falsehood that moviegoers have to believe in.’
I thought about what Macready had said.
‘I’m not here to judge you, Mr Macready. Frankly, I don’t care what anyone gets up to behind closed doors so long as it doesn’t harm anyone else. And I agree that there are far better ways for the police to occupy their time. But you are a Hollywood star and the other party is the son of one of Scotland’s most prominent aristocrats. This is a serious situation.’
The Deep Dark Sleep l-3 Page 6