The Deep Dark Sleep

CHAPTER TEN

Dunbar reluctantly agreed to my request that his wife make us all a nice cup of tea and we could sit and discuss the information he had. Dunbar was certainly no matinee idol, and from the frugality of the cottage’s interior, he clearly didn’t have two pennies to rub together, so I was expecting his wife to be homely.

I was in for a surprise. Mrs Dunbar, who greeted us with a hostile glare and a grunt when we introduced ourselves, would have needed a team of Hollywood’s finest plastic surgeons and cosmeticians to get her even within sight of the outermost suburbs of homely. Hers was the kind of ugliness that one normally took pity on, but my brief exposure to her personality relieved me of that burden. I could understand now why Dunbar had been so reluctant to admit us and I promised myself to bring a scythe and a polished shield the next time I visited the cottage.

‘So, Mr Dunbar,’ I said after his wife left the room: we were clearly not going to get a cup of tea. ‘So, what is it you have to tell me?’

‘Money first.’

‘No, Billy, I’ll pay you afterwards. I know you’re going to tell me that it wasn’t Gentleman Joe at the bottom of the Clyde. I knew that from your reaction when I told you about the remains right at the start. So you don’t have much to bargain with, other than telling me how you know. But I promise you you won’t be short changed, so spill some beans.’

‘I volunteered for the army when war broke out, but they wouldn’t have me: my age and my record went against me. So I ended up working here, on this estate, for the Duke. With so many men away at war, he was so short staffed he would take on anyone.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘The hell of war … making do with only three under-butlers must have scarred him for life.’

‘Don’t talk about His Grace that way. He did his bit in the war. And he’s been good to me. If I hadn’t found this place, I’d probably have had no choice other than to go back on the rob.’

‘Okay, Billy, don’t bust a lung. Just tell me your story.’

‘Well, during the war the Duke was hardly ever here. He was one of the top commanders in the Scottish Home Guard. And he got me into it. The Home Guard, I mean.’

‘Great …’ I said. ‘So you could guard railway stations and that kind of thing?’

‘Well, no.’ Something dark clouded Dunbar’s expression, as if he really didn’t want to go into what he was about to go into. ‘Did you serve in the war?’

‘Yes. Canadian First Army. Captain.’

‘Canadian First, eh? You fellows had a rough time of it, all right. I know what you must think of the Home Guard. A joke. Old men with brooms instead of rifles, unfit for duty boys guarding libraries and church halls?’

‘No, as a matter of fact that’s not at all what I think.’

‘Well, for the first time in my life, my criminal record worked for me, not against me. The Duke called me up to the big house and I was interviewed by him and three other officers. They told me my special skills could maybe be useful.’

‘In the Home Guard?’ I tried to keep the incredulity out of my voice.

‘In the Auxiliary Units.’

Now that took me aback. I reappraised Dunbar. He was a tough enough looking nut all right and it wasn’t that incredible.

‘What are the Auxiliary Units?’ asked Archie.

‘Officially they were members of the Home Guard,’ I explained. ‘Especially in places like this, where there are a lot of men used to working in the open and with a knowledge of the terrain. But they had special training and duties. Didn’t you, Billy?’

‘We was called Auxiliers. Or Scallywags. Like Mr Lennox said, we was officially attached to Two-Oh-One Home Guard Scotland.’

‘But I thought all the Scallywags were based along the south coast of England,’ I said.

‘Aye, most were, but there were Scallywags in every part of the country. We was a special unit up here. You see, the Highlands were so fucking empty of people that they were worried that the Germans would drop agents and paratroopers into the Highlands in force to cause shite up here while the invasion took place somewhere else. A sort of Arnhem in reverse.’

‘It was preparation for the invasion that never came,’ I explained to Archie. ‘Forget everything you think of when you think of the Home Guard. These guys were highly trained assassins and saboteurs, but you would never have known. Farmers, doctors, teachers, postmen … gamekeepers. If the invasion took place and ended in occupation, the Scallywags were to kill anybody who could be of use to the Nazis.’

‘There’s still explosives ammunition and guns hidden,’ said Dunbar. ‘We was to create as much fucking mayhem as possible. We was to be issued with seven weeks’ rations if the invasion happened. The powers that be reckoned that after two weeks of action, we’d all be fucking dead.’

‘This is all very interesting, Billy,’ I said, ‘but what has this got to do with Gentleman Joe Strachan?’

‘I was getting to that. We was sent to Lochailort, way up in the middle of fucking nowhere on the west coast. It was where all the special units got their training. This wee fucking Highland village full of Beaverette armoured cars and machine gun posts all over the shop. The navy base there was where we was trained. You have no fucking idea the things they taught us. How to cut throats so that the fuckers dropped without a sound, how to make homemade bombs and them flame fougasses.’

‘What’s a fougasse?’ asked Archie.

‘A big fuck-off improvised incendiary. Five or ten-gallon barrels of petrol buried or hidden with a detonator attached. Some could be as big as fifty gallons. Anti-tank and personnel carrier stuff. Torches everything and everybody to fuck. I saw three of our boys burn to death in training when one of those fuckers went off accidentally. Anyway, we got all of this training. Hand-to-hand combat. Defendu, have you heard of it?’

‘Defendu … the Fairbairn system? Yes, I’ve heard of it,’ I said. ‘In the Canadian army we had Arwrology, which was pretty much the same thing.’

‘Aye. Defendu was invented by that bloke that designed the commando knife. But if you came from Glasgow you didn’t need to learn Defendu, we already had fuck-you.’ He laughed at his own joke. I made an impatient face.

‘Anyway, we was there for six weeks solid training, then back for another six. There was all kinds of brass hanging around the place, from every secret outfit you could imagine. We was under the command of the Special Operations executive, but there were commandos, Special Air, Special Boat brass, and others from units that I’d never heard of. It was during our second stint at Lochailort that I saw this officer, a major, with a group of others. One of the other officers this bloke was talking to was His Grace, who was a colonel. The officer I saw was one of ours … I mean he was Special Operations. And the other officers including His Grace was all attached to Scallywag training.’

‘Joe Strachan?’

Dunbar looked surprised that I’d jumped his conclusion.

‘I found out quite a bit about Strachan,’ I offered in explanation. ‘Do you think he was genuine? I mean a real officer and not just passing himself off as one?’

‘You was in the army, you know what them special bases are like with security. Naw, if Joe Strachan was wearing a British Army major’s uniform in that camp, then Joe Strachan was a British Army major.’

‘Aw, come on …’ Archie snorted. ‘A Glasgow hoodlum like Strachan an army major? I thought you had to be an officer and a gentleman, not an officer and a gobshite …’

I held up my hand to stop Archie. He stopped, but his eyebrows protested for a few seconds more.

‘Could you have been mistaken?’ I asked Dunbar.

‘Maybe. But I got a really good look at the fucker. I did one of them double takes. I mean, everybody’s supposed to have a double, aren’t they. Look at Monty. If this bloke wasn’t Gentleman Joe, he was his bastarding twin.’

‘I’m not being funny,’ said Archie, ‘but it maybe was his twin. You say Strachan’s daughters are twins, and twins run in families …’

‘Naw,’ said Dunbar emphatically. ‘Joe Strachan maybe became a man of mystery, but he was born in the Gorbals and there are no fucking mysteries or secrets there, when you’re crammed into a tenement with four families on each fucking floor. Strachan had two sisters and a brother. No twin. I’m fucking telling you, I saw Gentleman Joe Strachan as large as life and twice as fucking ugly, swanning about with a bunch of top brass and crowns on his shoulder boards.’

‘When was this?’

‘Forty-two. Summer of Forty-two.’

‘You tell anyone else about this?’

Dunbar looked at me contemptuously. ‘After the hiding I took in a police cell because they thought there was the slightest fucking chance that I might know something or someone that could lead them to someone else who might know more about Joe Strachan? Naw … I kept my mouth shut. Nobody knows what I saw. Until you, that is.’

There it was. Gentleman Joe hadn’t, after all, slept the deep, dark sleep. Of course, it didn’t mean he was still alive. If he had been attached to Special Operations, then he could be sleeping the dark sleep at the bottom of some canal in Holland or river in France. But even that thought — Joe Strachan as an officer in SOE — didn’t make the slightest bit of sense.

Dunbar had told us what he had to tell us and small talk, even expletive-laced small talk, was not his forte, so it was time for us to leave. As I got up a thought came at me from out of nowhere; or at least from somewhere deep in the back of my brain where it must have been taking slow form during my chat with Dunbar. Actually it was more an image than a thought. For some reason the picture I had retrieved from Paul Downey came to mind.

‘Are you around most nights, Billy?’ I asked. ‘I have a photograph I’d like to show you. I think there’s a good chance, given what you’ve just told me, that it could be the only picture in existence of Joe Strachan. Can I come back and show you it?’

‘Aye … I suppose,’ said Dunbar grudgingly. ‘But I usually go to the pub on my night off.’

‘I’ll not be back for a day or two, but it’ll only take a few minutes, Billy,’ I said. ‘And I’ll make it worth your while. Oh, and there’s one more thing before I go — and this has got nothing to do with Strachan — it’s just something I’m curious about because of something that came up recently. Do you know the Duke’s son, Iain?’

‘Aye, I know him all right.’

‘What’s he like?’

‘He’s a wee shite. Nothing like his father. Absolutely nothing like. A fucking waster.’

‘And?’

‘And what?’

‘Come on, Billy, we both know he’s a shirt lifter.’

‘Listen, I’m not going to say anything that could harm his father. God knows His Grace doesn’t have to seek his trouble with that wee bastard already. Whatever dirt you’re after, you’ll not get it here.’

‘Fair enough, Billy, but tell me what you can. Believe it or not I’m trying to protect, not damage, the family name.’

‘Iain is so different to his father that you sometimes wonder if His Grace is his father at all. They don’t look alike, they don’t behave alike, they don’t have the same values.’

‘With the greatest respect, Billy, you’re just a gamekeeper here … how do you know all this?’

‘Everybody knows it. Everybody knows everything about everybody else. When you work for a family like this, in a place like this, there are no fucking secrets.’

‘Iain has a cottage on the estate, is that right?’

‘Aye, he calls it his studio, the wee prick. He thinks he’s fucking Picasso or some shite.’

‘And he entertains there?’

‘Aye.’ Dunbar eyed me knowingly. ‘He entertains there all right.’

‘Have you ever seen anybody odd hanging around the cottage?’

‘You’re fucking joking, right? When have I not seen someone odd hanging around. There are always oddballs and freaks up there. The artistic set, Iain calls them. Artistic my arse.’

‘No, I mean anyone other than that lot. You’ve been around, Billy, you know the type, anyone who looked like they might be trouble.’

‘Can’t say I have, why?’

‘Duke Junior’s got himself into a little trouble, that’s all. I’ve been trying to sort it out, for his father’s sake, so to speak.’

‘Right, well that’s a different fucking story … if there’s anything I can do to help, just give me the fucking word …’

‘Thanks, Billy, I’ll bear that in mind. But it looks like it’s all sorted out now in any case.’ I stood up from the table. I took out my wallet and peeled off twenty-five pounds. I could see Billy’s eyes light up and I knew that it was double what he’d been expecting, but I kept peeling until I had put fifty on the table.

Spread the wealth, Lennox, I thought. Spread the wealth.

‘You do know, you’ve maybe just been taken for a ride,’ said Archie helpfully, once we were on our way back to Glasgow. ‘I tell you what, if I tell you a lot of shite about how I saw Adolf Hitler in a bookie’s in Niddrie, will you give me fifty quid?’

‘No, because it’s obviously not true: Hitler would give himself up to the Israelis before living in Niddrie. I saw the look on Dunbar’s face when I told him about the body in the Clyde. I knew there and then that he didn’t believe it was Strachan’s.’

‘So, you actually believe Strachan is hob-nobbing with the upper-crust and been made an officer in the army? “Here you go, Strachan, old boy, let’s forget all about that minor unpleasantness of the policeman you murdered, and the fact that you were a deserter in the First War, and we’ll all go and have some tea and tiffin in the officer’s mess”?’

‘Leave the sarcastic wit to me, Archie. I know it doesn’t make any sense, but I believe Dunbar saw what he said he saw.’

‘Listen, boss, I don’t want to tell you how to do your job …’

‘Heaven forfend, Archie.’

‘… but you all but waved that cash in front of his face. He obviously felt he had to tell you something. And that bollocks about Strachan being an officer was the best he could come up with at the time.’

‘No, Archie. The best he could have come up with would have been to say he saw Strachan at that bookie’s in Niddrie you saw Hitler in, or on a street in Edinburgh or a railway station in Dundee. The thing that makes me believe he’s telling the truth is exactly that it is so unbelievable. Dunbar’s been interrogated by the police so often in his life that he knows that if he’s going to tell a lie, make that lie simple and credible. You know that.’

‘So where does that leave us? Where do we go from here?’

‘Well, I’ve got a few names I want you to check out, from the list Isa and Violet gave me. Watch who and where you ask though, Archie. In the meantime, I’m going to have to make a couple of visits I’ve been putting off.’

I met Fiona White for tea at Cranston’s. We sat in the Art Nouveau tearoom and ordered tea and salmon sandwiches. She was wearing a smart outfit that I hadn’t seen her in before and what looked like a new hat. I also noticed that she was wearing a deeper shade of crimson lipstick and more make-up than I’d seen her wear before. I was flattered by the effort.

‘How are your new digs?’ she asked, a little awkwardly.

‘Very exclusive,’ I said. ‘I have to be constantly careful that I don’t bark, talk in brogue or tan too deeply.’

She made a puzzled face. A pretty, puzzled face.

‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘It’ll do me in the meantime. It keeps me dry, unless I get too close to the landlord when he’s talking.’

‘I see,’ she said. ‘There’s been no one around the house. No one suspicious, I mean,’ she added. ‘I’ve noticed the local bobby keeping an eye on us, but there really hasn’t been anything to cause me any concern.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. I’m sorry that you’ve been inconvenienced by all of this, Mrs White.’

‘Fiona …’ she said in a quiet voice that cracked halfway through the word. She cleared her throat. Her face reddened. ‘You don’t have to call me Mrs White. Call me Fiona.’

‘In that case, you don’t have to call me Mr Lennox.’

‘What shall I call you then?’

‘Lennox. Everybody does. I’m sorry you’ve been inconvenienced, Fiona.’

‘It’s no inconvenience. But the girls have missed you around the house.’

‘Just the girls?’

For a second, I got a hint of the frosty defiance I’d been accustomed to. Then it melted.

‘No, not just the girls. Why don’t you come back to your rooms? I don’t think there’s any danger.’

‘You didn’t see the guy who jumped me. There’s something going on with this Strachan thing that I don’t understand. But I’m beginning to get ideas and those ideas tell me that there are some very dangerous people involved. I don’t want to place you or the girls at risk.’

‘Listen, Lennox, I’ve thought about what you said to me, about how you felt. I’m sorry if I seemed a little … unresponsive. I said the things I said because I meant them. Or at least I meant them when I said them. It’s just that … I don’t know, just that I’m not the kind of woman you’re used to. I’m not experienced with men or sophisticated in any sense. When I married Robert, I thought that was it. I saw my entire life ahead of me; how it would be. That’s what I thought I wanted back then. Then, when he was killed, it wasn’t just that I’d lost him, I’d lost myself. What I had decided I wanted to be.’

‘I know you’re not going to believe this, Fiona, but I know exactly what you mean. A lot of us lost our way during the war, became people we didn’t know we could be. Didn’t want to be. But that’s the hand we were dealt. All we can do is make the most of it. Nothing can bring your husband back and nothing can take away the things I did in the war. But we can try to move on. To find some kind of happiness.’

‘I think you should come back.’ Fiona looked down at the tablecloth. ‘I can’t promise you anything, say anything will change. But I would like you to come back.’

‘I want that too, Fiona, but I can’t. Not yet. I have messed up so many things in my life, but I’m damned if I’m going to mess this up. I’ll be back as soon as I am sure I’m not going to bring a lot of trouble home with me.’

‘But for all we know, the man who attacked you still thinks you live at home. If anything we’re in more danger without you being there.’

‘This is more than one man. And they’re clever operators and they know I’m not there any more. I’m just hoping they haven’t traced me to where I am now.’

‘The police …’

‘Can’t help me. At least not officially, and I think I’ve squeezed the last drop of goodwill out of Jock Ferguson. Listen, it’ll be over soon and I’ll come back.’ I laid my hand on hers. It tensed, as if she was going to pull away, then relaxed. ‘Then we can talk.’

I went back to my office to finish up a few things before heading back to my temporary accommodation at the boarding house. I was just taking my raincoat off the coat rack when someone swung open my office door without first knocking. I turned and my heart sank. I suddenly realized that not conceiving of anyone worse than Hammer Murphy to share my company with only highlighted the limits of my imagination.

The man in front of me was six foot three and in his early fifties. He had broad shoulders and a brutal, cruel face. He was, as he had been every time I’d encountered him, dressed with precise and totally unimaginative neatness. In tweed. He decided to take the weight off his brogues without waiting to be asked. Like not knocking on a door before entering, waiting to be invited to sit down was something that Detective Chief Superintendent Willie McNab did not do.

I decided it was best if I sat too. I preferred to have something substantial like a desk, or a continent, between me and McNab. I watched the door, waiting for some burly Highlander in an off-the-peg Burton suit to come in after McNab: one of the privileges of rank was that you didn’t have to do your own beating of suspects. To my surprise none came.

‘To what do I owe …?’ I asked McNab.

‘You know exactly why I’m here, so don’t piss me about.’

‘I tell you what, Superintendent, just so’s we’re clear, why don’t you spell it out for me?’

‘You’ve been sticking your nose into this Strachan business. You ought to know by now that I get to hear everything that goes on in this city, and anything that’s of special interest to me, I find out fast. What have you found out?’

‘Nothing of interest to the police,’ I said.

‘Who are you working for?’

‘Sorry. Client confidentiality.’

‘Oh aye, client confidentiality.’ McNab nodded sagely, as if appreciating the concept. ‘Do you know why client confidentiality and the shite are very similar?’

‘I’m sure you’ll enlighten me.’

McNab did six foot three of standing up and leaned across the desk, bringing his face close to mine.

‘Client confidentiality is like the shite because both can be knocked out of you in the cells at St Andrew’s Square.’

I found it interesting that McNab and Hammer Murphy, although on opposite sides of the criminal justice fence, had the same approach to my professional ethics.

‘You know something, McNab?’ I said. ‘I don’t think so. A year or two ago you could maybe have gotten away with that, but I don’t play in that end of the playground any more. I’m a respectable businessman.’

‘You reckon?’

‘I reckon. But that’s not the only reason I don’t think that will happen. You’ve come up here on your own and without due cause to arrest me, so why don’t you tell me the real reason you’re here? I’m sure it has to do with Strachan, but there’s something odd in the ether.’

Despite the assurance with which I said it, I was surprised when McNab did sit back down. He took out a packet of Navy Cut and lit one. After a moment’s thought, he offered me one.

‘No thanks,’ I said, more because I was taken aback by the offer than anything else. ‘I want to be able to speak tomorrow morning. What’s the deal, Superintendent?’

He took off his trilby and threw it onto the desk.

‘Lennox, you and I have had our moments. I don’t like you and you don’t like me. But one thing about you that I’ve noticed is that every time I’ve tried to get information from you, you’ve risked a beating or jail time by telling me where to go. So I suppose you have your own code of ethics, no matter how bollocksed-up they may be. You know I dug the dirt on you from your time in Germany after the war. That German black-marketeer who ended up face down in the harbour, for example. The one the Military Police suspected was your business partner …’

‘Is there a point to this character analysis, McNab?’

‘I don’t care what happened in Hamburg, but I care what happens in Glasgow. Joseph Strachan murdered Charlie Gourlay. He gunned him down in cold blood and I want to see the bastard swing for it.’

‘But he’s dead, Superintendent. Officially, legally dead.’

‘You don’t believe that shite any more than I do. That wasn’t Joe Strachan at the bottom of the Clyde. I can’t prove it, but I know it. Strachan was too clever to be caught, and he was too clever to be topped by one of his own team.’

‘So whose bones were dredged up?’

‘I don’t know. But they weren’t Strachan’s, I’ll tell you that. Listen, Lennox, I’ve been a copper in this town for nearly thirty years. I’ve dealt with some of the hardest, most vicious bastards ever to foul the Earth with their presence. I’ve put a noose around the necks of over a dozen men: from kiddie-fiddlers to professional killers, from psychopaths to razor gangs. I’ve seen every type of fiend and monster you can imagine. But Joe Strachan is out there in a league of his own.’

‘Is he?’ I decided to play dumb. ‘From all of the “Gentleman Joe” crap you hear, and the way he’s idolized by every crook in Glasgow, you’d think he was some kind of folk hero.’

‘Do you know, we don’t have a single photograph of him on record? Or his fingerprints? He was questioned a dozen times but never arrested, far less charged. But do you know why we kept bringing him in? Glasgow criminals back then weren’t the brightest or most capable of villains. The basic principle was to batter the fuck out of something until you got money from it. Most of the stuff we dealt with was razor gang stuff, or small time robbers getting caught because they didn’t have the basic brains to plan a job properly. Things have changed. Now we’ve got your pals, the so-called Three Kings. Things have become organized. And do you know who started that? Who gave them the idea for that? Joe Strachan. But he was much, much better at it than they are. He didn’t try to control everything, to make every protection gang pay him protection, the way Sneddon, Cohen and Murphy do. Strachan assessed the risks and the rewards. He only went for the big hit, the big money. And he picked only the very best for each job.’

‘All of this I already know,’ I said.

‘Aye? Well what you probably don’t know is that some people talked: a handful of disgruntled crooks whose noses were put out of joint because Strachan didn’t pick them. One of them was already a paid informant. All of them turned up dead. Or presumed dead. Never a body to be found. No traces.’

‘Strachan killed them?’

‘His enforcer did. Someone else with no record. A name we never got. All we got from our informant was that this enforcer was young, and a protege of Strachan’s. Strachan only ever called him the Lad. His apprentice. He may have been young, but he kept everyone who worked for Strachan in line. Like I said, he was a cool and professional killer. From the little we got, we know that Strachan treated him like a son.’

‘Hammer Murphy worked for Strachan for a while …’ I kept the dumb act going.

McNab laughed. ‘No way. Murphy was building his own wee empire with his brothers. They did jobs with Strachan, but not for long. My guess is that Strachan realized what a psychopath Murphy was and stopped using him because he was unstable. And that meant unreliable. If there was one thing Strachan demanded from his teams, it was reliability.’ McNab paused to take a long draw on his cigarette. ‘Who hired you to look into this, Lennox?’

‘Now, Superintendent … you know I’m not going to tell you.’

‘It would be in your best interests.’

‘What … to avoid a beating?’

‘No. Listen, Lennox, sometimes you’ve got to put the past behind you, along with your personal feelings about people. Sometimes people who would never have thought it possible have to work together.’

‘What are you proposing?’

‘I know you’ve been tapping Detective Inspector Ferguson for information. That’s a dripping tap I can turn off permanently. But, for the moment, I’m going to do nothing. I’m also not going to put a man on your tail, twenty-four hours a day, following your every move and visiting every client we see you make contact with.’

‘That’s good of you, Superintendent. I’m guessing there’s a quid for your quo?’

‘I retire in two years, Lennox. I’ve bought a place out in Helensburgh and me and the wife are going to move out there, away from the city, after I leave the job. I want to have a quiet, peaceful retirement. But I’m not going to be at ease if I know that Joseph Strachan is still out there, enjoying life without paying for murdering Charlie Gourlay.’

‘Then why not just accept that that was Strachan at the bottom of the Clyde?’

‘Because I know it wasn’t. And, like I said, I’m pretty sure you know it wasn’t.’

This was a surprising conversation. It was about to become even more surprising. Ferguson took an envelope out of his pocket and dropped it onto my desk.

‘There’s four hundred pounds in there, Lennox. That’s almost exactly what a City of Glasgow police constable earns in a whole year.’

I picked up the envelope, more to convince myself it wasn’t an hallucination.

‘You want to hire me? Or is this from the City Police’s snout fund?’ I asked incredulously. Why was everybody so keen to throw cash at me all of a sudden …

‘This isn’t informer cash. It’s my money, not the Force’s. Yes, I do want to hire you. I have spent nearly twenty years trying to bring Strachan to justice. As much as I hate to admit it, I need someone like you, someone who isn’t a police detective and who can get to information that I can’t.’

I tossed the envelope back onto the table in front of him.

‘I can’t.’

‘You won’t, you mean? Listen, Lennox, you help me out on this, and I’ll make sure that there are doors stay open to you in the City of Glasgow Police long after I retire.’

‘Okay, listen. I would help you, but there could be a conflict of interest.’

‘You mean whoever’s hired you already?’

‘Something like that.’ I sighed, this was complicated and confusing. I was having a conversation that I never would have envisaged myself having with McNab. ‘Okay, here’s the deal. I’ve been hired by Strachan’s daughters to confirm or otherwise that that was Gentleman Joe who was dredged up.’

‘I don’t see the conflict of interest,’ said McNab. ‘You can tell them that and point me in the right direction. I know you’ve had a lot of shady stuff in your background, but I also know that you’re the kind of man who wouldn’t sit still and let someone get away with murder, whether it’s a policeman’s murder or not.’

‘It would be a mistake to overestimate my nobility, McNab. But from what I’ve heard about Strachan, yes, it wouldn’t upset me to see him caught. But we have different furrows to plough, Superintendent.’

‘Give me something, Lennox.’

Again I paused, struggling with where I was with this.

‘Okay, like I said, I am looking into Strachan’s disappearance for his daughters. I had only made a couple of enquiries, barely putting my head above the parapet, when some guy jumps me in a foggy alley and tells me to lay off. Now this guy could handle himself, I mean really handle himself. Not like a street thug, more like a commando. It gets me thinking, if Strachan is dead, why am I getting serious professional advice to drop it?’

McNab’s broad face lit up with something. I was telling him what he wanted to hear. I decided not to tell him that my dance partner had stuck a gun in my back.

‘Then … and don’t ask me how I found this out, because I’m not going to tell you … but then I get an account from an eyewitness who swears he saw Strachan during the war. In the summer of Nineteen forty-two, to be exact.’

McNab looked as if an electrical charge had just run through him. ‘I knew it! I bloody knew it! Where?’

‘Now don’t get too excited …’ I tried to inject a cautious tone. ‘The rest of this doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, so just hear me through. This eyewitness, whom I tend to believe, said that he saw Strachan wearing the uniform of a major up at Lochailort. My witness reckons that Strachan was involved in the training of Auxiliary Units.’

I could see the electricity drain from McNab. ‘That can’t have been Strachan,’ he said.

‘That’s what I thought to start with too, but don’t dismiss it. I found out about Strachan’s less than glorious service in the First War. He regularly went AWOL, wearing officers’ uniforms and made an embarrassingly good job of passing himself off as an officer. You know yourself that he probably passed himself off as some plausible upper-class type to carry out reconnaissance of the locations of each of his major robberies. So Strachan being seen in an officer’s uniform isn’t that big a leap.’

‘But you said he was at Lochailort. There’s no way anyone, even Strachan, could have bluffed his way in there without the right papers and without others knowing exactly who he was and from what unit.’

‘That’s where I get stuck. And that’s where we could do a little quid pro quo. I can’t gain access to that kind of information; but you can.’

‘I don’t know, Lennox. There’s only so much the City of Glasgow Police can get out of the military. Especially about places like Lochailort, that are still subject to the Official Secrets Act.’

‘You’ve got a better chance than me.’

‘And what do I get in return?’

‘A call. If I find that Strachan is alive, and if I discover where he’s hidden himself, I’ll stick a couple of pennies in a pay ’phone. You probably won’t believe this, but I’ve already cautioned my clients that if I do find Strachan is alive and well, I would be compelled to do my civic duty.’

‘Just make sure no one gets a five-minute start, Lennox. Or our new found chumminess may falter.’ In a gesture of purposeful ceremony, McNab used two fingers to push the envelope across the table towards me. I pushed it back.

‘Like I said, Mr McNab, civic duty. Keep your money.’

McNab paused for a moment as if assessing me, then shrugged and pocketed the envelope as he stood up.

‘Can I use your ’phone?’ he asked, but had already spun it around to face him and lifted the receiver.

‘Superintendent McNab here,’ he said after a moment. ‘I’m clocking off. Anything come in before I head home?’

He sighed as he listened to the answer, then took his notebook from his coat and scribbled into it.

‘No rest for the wicked, I guess,’ I said after he hung up.

‘I’ve got to go,’ he said. ‘There’s been a murder. Some nancy-boy out in Govanhill …’