The Deep Dark Sleep

CHAPTER ELEVEN

After McNab left, I tried unsuccessfully to get a hold of Jock Ferguson. He was on duty, the desk sergeant who answered the ’phone told me, but was out on a call.

Of course it could, I tried to convince myself, be a pure coincidence. But how many ‘nancy-boys’, as McNab called them, could there be in Govanhill? And like Glasgow Corporation buses, coincidences tended to come along in threes. Maybe Jock Ferguson had been called out to another case, but I couldn’t stop the reel on the scene playing in my head: Jock Ferguson standing over the body and suddenly remembering, probably the instant McNab arrived, that the name of the deceased just happened to be the same as one of the names I asked him to check out for me.

I decided to grab the bull by the horns and drive over to the tenement. On the way over I would have to do a lot of quick thinking on how I was going to explain my interest, but without bringing Hollywood stars or minor royalty into it. I had just put on my hat and coat when I checked myself. Of course, that had not been Paul Downey’s flat; it was Frank, the muscle-bound pool attendant, whose name was on the rent book. Maybe it was he who had been murdered, which meant I had some time before flat-feet plodded along a trail that would lead them to Paul Downey. But, pedestrian as they were, the CID would eventually make the connection, and Jock Ferguson would make another.

For once, I was grateful for the smog. It had come back with a vengeance and I decided to take the Underground to Kinning Park and hoof it the rest of the way. I walked past the end of the road, but the fog was too thick for me to see the far end and whether or not there were police cars parked outside. Walking past the street end, I turned into the next, which ran parallel to Frank’s, and walked almost to its end before cutting through a tenement passageway and into the communal back court.

The communal court was a vast rectangle, fringed by tenements on all sides and punctuated by small, squat wash-houses and clusters of trashcans and heaped rubbish. The demarcation between each tenement’s section of yard was marked by low railings, most of which were broken.

It was the kind of place the Black Death would have been happy to call home.

The court was overlooked by the backs of tenements on both streets, as well as the blocks at either end that connected them into a stretched rectangle. Not that there was much overlooking being done: the fog had dimmed the light from the windows to vague glows in the gloom and the far end of the rectangle was completely obscured. As I crossed the court, stepping through or over the railings I came to, I guessed I was pretty well concealed. The fogged air of the yard carried a rank smell and the cobbles beneath my feet felt slimy and I had to concentrate on not losing my footing. A sudden noise halted me when I was about halfway across and I froze for a moment, then realized it was something scuttling around in the trashcans. I continued my progress across the court: if I had calculated right, I would be directly opposite the tenement I’d followed Frank to. I listened for a moment but could hear no voices anywhere near, so I guessed the back court was empty behind Frank’s, but I didn’t want to take the risk of bumping into a copper taking a leak or having a crafty smoke.

As I drew closer, I could have sworn the air became denser and suffused with the smell of burning.

When I could see the tenements opposite more clearly, I angled my approach to take me towards the tenement next to Frank’s and the acrid tinge to the air intensified. I could just make out, further down and behind Frank’s tenement, a scattering of black-silhouetted objects. And voices. Many voices. I crept closer until I reached the first object: a scorched and blackened armchair that was still warm to the touch, despite having been doused in water.

Finding my way back to the neighbouring tenement close, I crept along the porcelain-tiled passageway towards its opening onto the street. I pressed my back to the tiles as I grew close to the passage’s mouth, easing my head around to check out the street. I pulled back quickly: there was a copper about ten feet from me, guarding the next close which led to Frank’s tenement. It had only been the briefest glance, but I had also been able to make out a large red Bedford fire engine parked out front, its crew talking and smoking. I’d also caught sight of a row of black police Wolseleys parked at the street end.

So that was that. The murder McNab had been called to was that of either Frank or Paul Downey. Fantastic. I wondered how long it would take Jock to make the connection. After that, whichever of the couple had survived could tell the police that I had slapped them both around and threatened to come back with my pals for a real party. And, if they took my fingerprints, they would find a veritable constellation of matching dabs in the flat.

Just half an hour before, McNab had been taking me into his confidence, something that was generally as conceivable as Dwight and Nikita having a slumber party together, and now it would be a matter of a day or so before he took me into custody. Nice going, Lennox.

What confused me was the presence of the fire brigade and the tossed-out furniture. The good news was that if there had been a fire in the flat, then there was a chance that my fingerprints would not be recoverable.

I heard voices as someone came out of the other tenement passage; I recognized one of them as belonging to McNab. He was talking to his subordinate about various arrangements, none of which gave me any insight as to which of my pals was now deceased or how he met his demise. I decided to get out of the area before I added another circumstance to the circumstantial case against me. I moved quickly and silently along the passage and into the back court again. This time I headed straight across, wanting to distance myself from the murder scene as quickly as possible. The fog seemed to have thickened on the way back and I found I’d lost my bearings. Halfway across, I could no longer see either wall of tenements, but pressed on, reckoning that if I kept on going straight, I must eventually manage to reach the opposite side.

What I did manage was to walk straight into a collection of trashcans, knocking one over, its lid rattling on the cobbles. The noise echoed in the court, but not as loudly as I would have expected, muffled as it was by the blanket of smog. I stood still and silent for a moment. No voices, no dogs barking, no police whistles. I again set blind course through the fog and eventually washed up against the sooty sandstone shore of the tenements opposite. I couldn’t see a passageway out onto the street again, but knew that if I moved along the tenements in either direction, I’d find one soon enough. The only problem was that I had to edge past the windows of the lower flats of the tenement until I reached the passage. Again I moved as quietly as I could, crouching as I passed an illuminated window.

It was the window that wasn’t lit up that was my undoing.

I heard the sounds of a struggle: someone gasping for breath and grunting. For a moment I couldn’t place where it was coming from, then I realized the sounds were issuing through a hole in the cracked window. I stood up and looked through the grimy glass, into the gloom inside. It was the usual tenement kitchen-cum-living room and the only light was the glow from the open door of the range, used for heating and cooking. The glow picked out the edges of a huge woman stretched over the rough kitchen table, leaning her elbows on it. She was hugely overweight and naked to the waist, the huge pale moons of her breasts swinging and the fat on her arms quivering with every lunge of the small, thin man behind her. He was balding, with strands of black hair pasted over his pale pate, and a Groucho Marx rectangle of moustache twitched beneath his thin nose with each impassioned thrust.

It was the same sort of thing as when you inadvertently see some unfortunate take ill in public and vomit in the street. You don’t want to see it, but no matter how much it repulses you, once you’ve looked, you can’t tear your eyes away. I froze.

Jack Spratt and his wife were clearly trying to keep as quiet as possible, probably because there were kids sleeping in the tenement flat’s only other room, but the fat woman moaned:

‘Lover boy… oh lover boy …’

I rammed a fist into my mouth and bit down hard, but still my shoulders shook uncontrollably.

‘Oh Rab … you’re my lover boy …’

Move, Lennox, I told myself. For God’s sake move.

Then, in a moment of heightened passion, the skinny little man gave forth:

‘Senga! Oh … Senga!’

Despite the danger of my situation, something over-rode my survival instinct and the fist stuffed in my mouth, and the laughter I’d been trying to contain threatened to explode. Something high-pitched and strangled sounded in my throat.

It was loud enough for the fat woman to hear. Looking up, she saw me at the window, let go a shrill scream and clutched her arms to her massive bosoms in a ludicrously inadequate effort to conceal her nakedness. The small man saw me too and, disengaging himself, charged towards the window, thankfully pulling his braces back up over his shoulders.

‘Pervert!’ he shouted in a high, shrill voice. ‘You fucking pervert! Peeping Tom! Peeping Tom!’

I made a run for it, along the wall, hoping I would find the passageway out. Meanwhile, lover boy had swung open the window and was screaming for the police at the top of his voice.

Well done, Lennox.

I heard shouts and a whistle; the sound of more trashcans being toppled and I could see, somewhere at the other side of the court, torch beams stabbing the fog ineffectually. I ran on, hoping I didn’t trip over anything else in the fog. I was not too concerned about the stumbling coppers behind me, but I knew that if someone actually had the brains to think it through, a car sent around the block, even at smog-driving pace, could catch me when I came out of the passage and onto the street.

I found the passage and sprinted along it and out onto the street. I reckoned at this time of night and in this fog, there would be few cars around and I ran straight out onto the road. I found the tramlines and ran, concentrating only on the small pool of awareness I had in the fog and keeping in the centre of the tramlines. I reached a curve and a TRAM PINCH warning sign, just discernible on the periphery of my vision, told me I was now out of the side street and on the main drag. Still no ringing bells of a pursuing police Wolseley. And now it would be useless in the fog.

I ran on for a hundred yards more, then slowed to a trot, then a walk, then stopped, leaning over to catch my breath, my hands braced on my knees. When I had recovered enough, I straightened up and stood silent in the smog and listened. Nothing.

The only problem I had was that I now had no idea where I was. Suddenly, a vast shape loomed at me out of the smog, a monster with two burning embers for eyes, rattling towards me. I leapt to the side, lost my footing and fell, rolling on my side and out of the way of the tram that trundled past, the driver shouting some obscenity through the window, but not applying the brake to check that I was all right.

The tram was swallowed up again in the smog. I stood up, dusted myself off and picked up my bashed trilby.

‘Bollocks,’ I muttered. Then, as I found my way back to the pavement, I suddenly thought about Senga and Lover Boy, and burst into laughter.

This time, the smog was persistent. It had lurked all night and was pressing against the windows of my boarding house room when I woke the following morning. My tumble in the street was now playing vigorous accompaniment to what had been the decrescendo of the bruises I’d picked up in the alleyway. I headed into the office early, again taking the tram and not risking driving in the murk.

When I got to the office I tried to get Leonora Bryson by ’phone at the Central Hotel, but was told she and Mr Macready were in Edinburgh for press interviews. I was luckier with Fraser, the lawyer: I told him we had to meet urgently and for some reason he insisted that we didn’t meet at his office, so I suggested Central Station in half an hour.

Despite my only having to cross the street to the station, Fraser managed to get there before me. There is a kind of protocol to sitting in railway cafes: if you are just having a cup of coffee, it should always be with a cigarette and you should hunch over your coffee and look miserable, as if the train you are waiting for is scheduled to take you to the final of all destinations. Fraser was breaching this etiquette of gloom. He was sitting with his straight back to the counter, facing the station concourse, his beady eyes alert. He spotted me coming and took his briefcase from the chair next to him. I ordered a coffee at the counter from the glummest man in the universe, carried it over and sat next to Fraser.

‘This is not the ideal place to talk about what I want to talk about,’ I said, casting an eye over the other patrons who might be within earshot.

‘I thought our business regarding these photographs was concluded, Mr Lennox,’ he said.

‘So did I. I got a visit from the police the other day. We’re cooperating on another case. While he was there, my contact let slip that he was dealing with a murder in Govanhill.’

‘I would imagine that’s not a particularly rare or noteworthy event …’ Fraser frowned.

‘Maybe so, but this murder was at the address I recovered the photographs from.’

Fraser looked shocked for a moment, then leaning forward, lowered his voice to the level I’d been speaking at. ‘Paul Downey?’

‘That I don’t know. The flat was rented by his friend, Frank. I’ll probably find out later today which of them is dead.’

‘My God …’ Fraser thought for a moment, then said conspiratorially, ‘Is there anything, anything that can link us and the Macready business to that address?’

‘One of the reasons I’m expecting to have the identity of the deceased today is because I’m expecting the police to call. I asked one of my contacts if he knew anything about Paul Downey. If it’s Downey who’s been murdered, then they’re going to want to know why I was asking.’

‘But you can’t tell them, Mr Lennox!’ Fraser looked around the cafe and lowered his voice. ‘You know how sensitive this whole thing is. I have to say that I think it was very careless of you to ask the police about Downey.’

‘It was a calculated risk, Mr Fraser. And the calculation didn’t include Downey or his boyfriend turning up dead. As far as telling the police about the background to it all, I’ll do my best to keep Macready out of it. But the police tend to take a poor view of murder and my neck is allergic to hemp, so if push comes to shove, we’re all going to have to level with them …’

‘After all we’ve been through, Mr Lennox, that would be most unfortunate. I’m afraid we would have to disavow all knowledge of you working for us. After all, we paid you in cash.’ Fraser’s beady eyes turned cold behind his spectacles. ‘And I can assure you that all of the photographs and negatives have been destroyed. So there would be nothing to back up your claim that we employed you.’

I smiled. ‘Well let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, because then I would have to spill every bean in the pot, including the fact that after I ran Paul Downey to ground, I only gave the address to two people … you and Leonora Bryson. Then it would boil down to a simple case of whom the police are more likely to believe. And I have a track record with them.’ I failed to add that that track record just might work against me. ‘And, of course, you would have to gamble that I didn’t hang on to a couple of the negatives, as insurance against just such a sticky situation as this. Added to all of which is the fact that it takes a lot of balls to lie to the police when it relates to a murder inquiry. And, no offence, I don’t think you’ve got them.’

‘Well, as you say, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.’ If I had ruffled Fraser, he was hiding it very well. ‘And I don’t see that it should. I mean, this is all coincidental. An unfortunate coincidence admittedly, but a coincidence none the less. Let’s be honest about it, it can be a very dark and dangerous world that these people inhabit. I would not be at all surprised if it turns out that one of them murdered the other during some kind of fall-out.’

‘It could be. But if there’s one thing I have noticed about coincidences, it’s that they have a nasty habit of coming back and biting you in the ass.’

‘So what do you suggest we do?’

‘Sit tight for the time being. Like I said, I should know more later today. In the meantime, instead of threatening to throw each other to the wolves, I suggest you and I both try to think of ways to limit the damage if the police do ask questions.’

‘Any suggestions, Mr Lennox?’

I paused to take a sip of the coffee I’d been nursing and immediately regretted it. I wondered if whatever was in my cup had come up in the same dredger bucket as the mystery bones.

‘The police aren’t bright, as you know, but they have so much experience of lies that they can spot one a mile off. Our best strategy is to tell them the truth. Just not the whole truth. The studio wants to protect Mr Macready’s reputation. Well, I suggest that we tell the police absolutely everything that happened, including about the photographs, but we say that it was a woman he was in flagrante with. If any of it leaks out, then it only enhances his reputation as a ladies’ man.’

‘And if they ask the identity of the lady?’

‘Then we say only Mr Macready knows that; he wouldn’t tell even us. But if pushed, you could say that Macready told you that it was the wife of someone very important. You Brits are so respectful of your establishment that it may just prevent the police digging. In the meantime, Macready will be on a plane to the States on Monday. The City of Glasgow Police are not going to extradite him back to get a name. Anyway, the police are also great ones for applying Occam’s Razor to everything: they look for the simplest explanation, mainly because it is usually the easiest. I’m hoping that they won’t look at my involvement too hard.’

Fraser considered what I had said, nodding slowly. ‘Yes … yes, that all makes sense. I’ll go along with it. But there is one question I have to ask, Mr Lennox, and I’m sure you’ll understand the reason why I have to ask it …’

‘The answer is no,’ I said predictively. ‘I did what you asked me to do in your roundabout way and put the frighteners on Downey. And I admit I gave his chum a bruise or two, but that’s as creative as I got in interpreting your instructions. When I left them, both Frank and Downey were very much alive.’

By the time I left the station, the fog had thinned to a grainy mist that faded Glasgow to monochrome — not something that took a lot of effort — rather than obscuring it. I crossed Gordon Street and went up the stairwell to my office. I had locked the door and half expected to find Jock Ferguson or even McNab waiting for me at the top of the stairs. They weren’t, so I unlocked my office door and stepped through.

I was back in the war.

The speed of thought seems to me the most unquantifiable thing: faster than the speed of sound, even the speed of light, even if Albert says it ain’t so. But what happened to me as I stepped through the door of my Glasgow office took me instantly back to a place where you killed without thought or lost your own life.

He had been behind the door and when I came in he hooked his arm around me from behind and dug his fingers into my eye and cheek, pulling me sideways and down. If I had not been taught the same dance steps, that would have been the end of me, but without having to think it through, I knew a knife was heading for the side of my neck. I caught his forearm with a knife-hand blow. It had enough strength to block the blade, but not much else. I stepped sideways towards the knife, counter to instinct, trapping his arm between my shoulder and the wall. His hand still dug into my face and his thumb was trying to seek out my eye socket. I brought my other hand, which still held the keys, down and back and into his groin.

He gasped and the grip on my face loosened. I grabbed his knife hand and slammed it against the wall. My brain registered the shape of the knife: the long, slender, deadly but rather beautiful profile of a Fairbairn-Sykes. I was in trouble. Big trouble. Only one of us was coming out of this alive. He clung on to the knife, so I kept his knife hand pinioned to the wall with my left hand while slamming my right elbow into his face, five or six times within a couple of seconds. I had enough of a look at his face to see an old, ugly scar on his forehead and recognize him as the guy who had jumped me in the alley. Except this time there was no chat.

His nose burst and there was blood all over his face, but he didn’t pay any attention to it. It was something that I always found hard to explain to anyone who hadn’t experienced this kind of combat: it takes a lot to hurt you. Shock and a gallon of adrenalin blocks sensation until it’s all over. Then it hurts.

I knew I had to deal with the knife. I aimed a blow at his wrist with my Yale key, the only weapon I had, but my attacker brought his knee up into the small of my back and pushed me forward. He was a strong bastard all right and I lost my grip on his wrist and spun around to face him. He held the knife flat, face-up, textbook style. He slashed at me. Again, he wasn’t trying to stab me, like some street thug would do. He was looking for the quick kill: a slash across my thigh, neck or forearm to sever the femoral, brachial or carotid artery. Then you just step back out of harm’s way and watch your opponent bleed out in seconds. Textbook stuff.

I rolled over the top of my desk. Every time he came at me, I moved around the desk, keeping it between me and him, like we were playing a childhood game of tag. I felt something wet on my hand and looked down to see blood blooming on my shirt cuff and the back of my hand running red. He’d got me, but on the wrong side of my arm. I needed a weapon. By this time I had done a full circuit of the desk and he was now behind it, where I usually sat. The only thing I could grab was the hat stand behind me. I held it in front of me, stabbing at him like a retiarius gladiator with a trident. He made a move to get around the desk so I jabbed the base of the hat stand at his face and it jarred as it hit bone. One of his eyes had all but closed, swollen from one of the blows with my elbow and I could tell his vision was compromised. I jabbed again, this time slamming into his chest as hard as I could. My captain’s chair caught the back of one of his legs and he fell backwards into the window, smashing the glass. I pushed again, forcing him through the window. He grabbed the window frame on either side with both hands to stop himself falling through, dropping the F-S knife as he did so.

He gave me the look. The look that says ‘I give up’.

Still, I kept the pressure on his chest with the hat stand.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Who do you work for?’

‘Forget it, Lennox. Just call the police and let’s get this over with.’

Like me, he was trying to catch his breath and this time there was no attempt at a half-assed Glasgow accent. He spoke with an English accent, beautifully modulated, received pronunciation. I wondered for a moment if the BBC Home Service had an elite commando announcer unit.

‘What’s this? Name, rank and serial number stuff?’ I jabbed him again and the bloodied fingers of one hand slipped from the window frame. He scrabbled to regain his grip.

‘Okay, Commando Joe, I’m only going to ask this one more time: who sent you? Joe Strachan? Where is he?’

He laughed as heartily as he could manage, blowing a bloody bubble from one nostril of his shattered nose.

‘Or what? You going to kill me in cold blood.’

‘Something like that. So tell me … where’s Joe Strachan?’

‘You honestly think you’re going to get anything out of me? I’m telling you nothing, Lennox, and no one else is going to make me talk.’

‘You haven’t met Twinkletoes McBride,’ I said. ‘He’s an associate of mine, and he didn’t get his name because of his skills on the dance floor. So talk before I call him around with his bolt cutters.’

A smile I didn’t like spread across his busted and bloody face. ‘You know something, Lennox? I don’t think you’re in any state to call anyone. You’re doing nothing, Lennox. In India, they used to have a saying, he who rides a tiger may never dismount. You can’t reach my knife without letting go of the hat stand; you let go of the hat stand, I get to the knife first. Whatever happens, we go another round.’

‘You didn’t win the last time,’ I said, ‘and you had the element of surprise.’

‘But you’re bleeding, Lennox. Nothing that can’t be patched up, but you’re weakening. I doubt you’ll even be able to hold me off with this thing for much longer. All you can do is stand there and shout for help and hope someone comes.’

‘You know something, you’re absolutely right. It’s a conundrum, but I tell you what, I have an answer to it.’

‘Oh yes?’ He kept that arrogant smile on his face. ‘And what would that be?’

‘That you shout for help … On the way down.’

I thrust forward with all of what was left of my strength. The smile went and the one unswollen eye widened in the bloody mask of his face as he scrabbled to keep his grip. I pushed again and his bloodied fingers slipped from the window frame. He toppled, screaming, out of the window.

I heard a screech of tyres and a woman’s shriek. I went to the window and looked down into Gordon Street where he lay smashed on the deeply dented roof of a taxi.

It was, I thought to myself as I stepped back in to call the police, one way to catch a cabby’s attention. More effective than whistling.