The Deep Dark Sleep

CHAPTER TWO

You never see it coming. Or at least it always seems to be that I never see it coming. Right up until Isa and Violet brought their shapely similitude into my office, my year had been going well. Very well.

I had a client list and a set of matching, balanced books that I could wave in front of the taxman and the occasional inquisitive copper to prove that my business was legitimate. Well, at least a lot more legitimate than it had been a year or two before. And the kind of cases I was working on made more demands on my wits — and not even many demands on them — and fewer on getting handy with some low rent Teddy Boy in an alley somewhere.

Which was good. Of late, I had been making a real effort not to get heated.

You pick up different things in war. A lot of men came back with venereal diseases caught from whores in Germany or the Far East, which they passed on unselfishly to their waiting wives, while others came back with trophies stolen from bodies. I came back with a hair-trigger temper and a tendency to express myself with great physical eloquence. Truth was, there had been times when I’d gotten more than a little carried away. Once I got started, it was difficult to stop. It was something that, when I’d been serving in the First Canadian Army in Europe, had been positively encouraged; but the authorities were decidedly sniffy about you using the skills they had taught you, now you were back in civilian life. The truth was that it was another good reason for curtailing my involvement with the Three Kings. It had involved me in a world I could understand at a time I could understand practically nothing else. Where everybody talked the same language: violence. And I was fluent.

So, whereas Sherlock Homes had used intellect and deerstalker to crack cases, I had tended to employ muscle and blackjack. And to be honest I had enjoyed it just that little bit too much and I wanted away from it. Something had gotten broken during the war and I knew that if I wanted to fix it, I was going to have to steer clear of the kind of crap I’d been wading about in. The problem was, when someone like the Three Kings got a hold of you, they didn’t like to let go.

But I had been making a pretty good fist of it; then Isa and Violet came to see me at my office.

Isa and Violet were identically petite, identically pretty, with identically large, blue eyes. Which was not surprising: they were identical twins. I worked that out as soon as I saw them. It’s the kind of detail people expect you to notice when you’re a detective.

And now Isa and Violet sat earnestly, and a little primly, opposite me.

I had, once before in my career, professionally encountered twins; but that had been an altogether different business. The last matching pair I’d come across had been Tam and Frankie McGahern. It had been an encounter that I had barely survived, so I had developed something of a superstitious aversion to matching siblings. But as Isa and Violet had come in and taken their seats, I had stolen a look at their identically peachy rears and had decided to become more pragmatic in my approach.

They introduced themselves, simultaneously, as Isa and Violet but had different surnames and I guessed there were wedding rings beneath the grey gloves. The twins shared the same pale, heart-shaped faces, small noses, bright blue eyes and full mouths, both of which had been encrimsoned in exactly the same shade of lipstick. They had their dark hair short and demiwaved, coming halfway down delicate ears that supported large domes of faux pearl. They even wore identical expensive grey suits, with tight-waisted jackets and pencil skirts that squeezed where I would have liked to do a bit of squeezing myself.

And, when they spoke, they finished each other’s sentences without breaking the rhythm of what they were saying and without looking at each other.

‘We heard you was …’ began Isa. Or maybe it was Violet.

‘… a private detective,’ concluded Violet, or Isa, seamlessly.

‘We need your help …’

‘… about our father.’

‘I suppose you’ve read all about him …’

‘… in the papers …’

I smiled, a little confused. The truth was I had been a little discomfited by their arrival. They were both very pretty. Well, exactly as pretty as each other. And they were twins. The usual lustful scenario that would lurch unbidden into my imaginings when faced with a set of curves was subject to multiplication and I had to snap out of my speculation about what other tasks they might be disposed to take in turns.

‘Your father?’ I asked with a professional frown.

‘Yes. Daddy.’

‘Our maiden name you see …’

‘… is Strachan,’ they concluded in unison.

Even then it took me a moment to catch on; for significance to attach.

‘The remains found in the Clyde?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’ Another chorus.

‘Gentleman Joe Strachan?’

‘Joseph Strachan was our father.’ The two pretty heart-shaped faces took on an identically harder look.

‘But you must hardly have known him,’ I said. ‘From what I’ve read, Joe Strachan has been missing for nearly eighteen years.’

‘We were eight,’ said Isa. Or Violet.

‘When Daddy had to go away.’

‘We’ve never forgotten him.’

‘I’m sure.’ I nodded sagely.

When people pay you to find out things, sagacity is an attribute you should project at every opportunity. Much in the same way that when you visit a doctor you want him to exude an absolute mastery of his craft, despite the fact that the workings of the human body leave him almost as confused as everyone else. I wanted to impress the twins by saying, as they do in all the best movies, ‘So you want me to find out …’ and then anticipate their request.

It wasn’t working for me: I hadn’t a clue what they could want from me, other than to find out who dumped Daddy in the drink. And that couldn’t be it, because the police were all over that like a rash. There was, after all, the matter of a dead patrolling copper who happened to be at the right place at the wrong time eighteen years before. Whoever nudged Gentleman Joe over the side would know who tapped the beat bobby. The City of Glasgow Police were a less than cerebral bunch and if the case had been beyond them two decades before, I couldn’t see them making anything of it now. And I would make even less.

‘So what can I do for you?’ I switched off the bulb of my omniscient sagacity for a moment.

They simultaneously lifted their handbags and placed them on their laps, snapped them open and took out identical wrapped wads of cash, placing them on the desk. The wads had made their handbags bulge and were now having the same effect on my eyes. The big Bank of England notes were crisp and new. And twenties: a denomination you would not exactly hand over the counter in a fish and chip shop. For a moment I thought this was an advance payment and from the size of the bundles, I saw myself working exclusively for the twins for the next three years.

‘We get this every year …’

‘On the twenty-third of July …’

‘One thousand pounds exactly, each.’

I couldn’t resist picking up a bundle in each hand, just for the feel of them, responding to an instinct similar to the one I’d had when the twins had first walked in.

‘For how long?’ I asked, bouncing the wads in my hands as if weighing them.

‘Since Daddy left. Our mother got the money for us each year and then, when we were eighteen, it came directly to us.’

‘Does your mother get any money for herself?’

‘Mam passed on a couple of years ago …’

‘… but before that, she got the same.’

‘… a thousand pounds each year.’

‘I’m sorry for your loss …’ I said.

After an appropriate pause I blew a long, low whistle. ‘Three thousand pounds a year is a very substantial amount of money,’ I said. It certainly was, especially in a city where the average wage was about seven pounds a week. ‘And it always arrives on the twenty-third of July?’

‘Yes. Give or take a day …’

‘… if it falls on a Sunday …’

‘… for example.’

‘Is that your birthdays?’ I asked.

‘No,’ they said in unison and I could see identical reluctance on both faces.

‘So what is the significance of the twenty-third of July?’

The twins looked at each other before answering.

‘The robbery …’

‘… in Nineteen thirty-eight …’

‘… at the Empire Exhibition …’

‘Saturday the twenty-third of July was the day the robbery took place …’

‘Do you see …’

‘… our conundrum?’ The twins asked between them.

I leaned back in my captain’s chair and laced my fingers before me — sagely — while thinking of how much I really would like to see their conundrums. The truth was that I was struggling: I’d worked out that Isa and Violet were twins as soon as I saw them and felt that should have been enough Holmesian deduction for one day. I could see identical disappointment on their faces.

‘We knew that Daddy had had to go away …’

‘… after all of that trouble …’

‘… but we knew he was looking after us …’

‘… by sending us the money every year …’

And then it hit me. The discovery of his remains in the river meant that Gentleman Joe Strachan had been in a state of terminal repose for eighteen years and, as far as I was aware, there was no postal pick-up at the bottom of the Clyde.

‘So you want to know who’s been sending you the money, if not your father?’

‘Exactly,’ Isa and Violet said in emphatic unison.

‘Unless it’s not your father’s remains they found …’ I said.

Two identical heads shook with identical grim certainty. ‘The police showed us the cigarette case …’

‘… we both recognized it right away …’

‘… we remembered it clearly …’

‘… and our Mam always said to us how Daddy wouldn’t go nowhere without his special cigarette case.’

‘But that’s all there is to go on?’ I asked.

‘No …’

‘… they found clothes …’

‘… rotted to rags …’

‘… but they were able to read the labels …’

‘… and they were from Daddy’s tailors …’

‘… and our Da was always particular about where he bought his clothes …’

‘What about dental records?’ I asked. They both looked at me with blank confusion, which shouldn’t have surprised me. This was Glasgow, after all.

‘Our Da was tall …’

‘… five foot eleven …’

‘… and the police said the leg bones matched someone that height …’

I nodded. Five foot eleven was tall for Glasgow. I was tall for Glasgow and it was my height. I reluctantly handed back the wads. Isaac Newton had formulated the concept that every mass, from a coffee cup to a mountain to the Earth, had its own gravitational field: for me, cash always seemed to exert an irresistible force disproportionate to its mass. And as an object, I was anything but immoveable.

‘I have to tell you ladies,’ I said, ‘that I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to walk around the streets of Glasgow with that amount of cash about your persons.’

‘Oh, it’s all right,’ said Isa. ‘Violet’s husband Robert drove us here. We’re on our way to deposit the money in the Clydesdale Bank around the corner.’

‘But we thought we’d come and see you first.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I suppose the starting point has to be the money itself. It would appear to be the only material clue we have at the moment. It arrives by post, you say?’

Another simultaneous nod, followed by another coordinated dip into the handbags which resulted in two empty brown envelopes presenting themselves on my desk. Each was addressed differently, but in the same hand. There was a London postmark on each.

‘These are your current addresses?’

More harmonious concurrence.

‘And you have had no contact with the sender?’

‘Of course not.’

‘So how did the sender find out about your new addresses? What about your mother? Whoever is sending these payments must have been told of your marriages. Could it be that your mother really knew who this is?’

‘No. She was as surprised as we was …’

‘… we both got married in the same year and the next packages arrived at our new addresses …’

‘… with an extra five hundred each.’

‘I have to say, ladies, that that sounds very much to me like the actions of a regretful absentee father. Especially when you take the significance of the date into account. You’re both absolutely sure that it was your father they found?’

‘As sure as we can be.’

‘And our Ma said she never believed the money came from Daddy.’

‘Oh?’ I asked. ‘Why did she think that?’

‘She said …’

‘… all along …’

‘… that if Daddy had been alive, that wherever he was, he would have sent for us. To be a family.’

‘Maybe that was impossible for him to do,’ I said.

I didn’t mention that I had also heard of Gentleman Joe’s prowess as a bedroom swordsman: the twins were unlikely to be the only family he had.

‘I don’t mean impossible because he was dead, but because he couldn’t risk coming back to Glasgow and the police tracing him. Three thousand pounds a year is a huge amount of money and I don’t think, with respect, that you have a munificent but anonymous secret benefactor.’

They frowned and I simplified my vocabulary to a Glasgow level. Sometimes I can be too polysyllabic for my own good.

‘So you’re saying you think that it isn’t Daddy they found in the river?’ Isa spoke for them both, with an assertiveness I hadn’t heard from either of them before. Maybe she was the older. Seniority in minutes and seconds counted to twins, I had been told. But maybe she was Violet.

‘Truth is, I really don’t know,’ I said. ‘Tell me, have either of you tried to trace back the packages to where they were sent from?’

‘Until now we’ve kept very quiet about it …’

‘… thinking it was Daddy …’

‘… we didn’t want to make waves …’

‘… or do anything to lead the police to him.’

‘That’s understandable, I suppose,’ I said; then, in a let’sbe-absolutely-clear-about-this kind of tone, ‘So you want me to find out who has been sending the money?’

‘We do.’

‘Even if that leads me to your father, who is wanted for the most serious crimes you can be wanted for?’

Identical frowns. Then an emphatic ‘Yes.’

‘Before we go any further,’ I said, ‘if that wasn’t your father at the bottom of the Clyde and my investigations lead me to him, alive and well, then I will have to notify the police.’

They looked at each other, then back at me. ‘We heard you was …’

‘… discreet …’

‘… that you and the police don’t get on.’

‘Did you?’ I leaned forward. ‘And who told you that?’

‘We asked around …’

I studied them for a moment. Despite the cute ditzy twins thing they had going, they were after all the daughters of a legendary Glasgow gangster. I began to imagine where they had got character references for me.

‘Turning a blind eye to the odd technical infringement of the law is one thing, ladies. But perverting the course of justice, misprision of felony or being an accessory after the fact in armed robbery and murder are something else. Anyway, I’m not in the business of breaking the law,’ I said with such conviction even I believed it.

‘Our Daddy is dead, Mr Lennox …’

‘… we want to know who is sending us the money.’

I took a moment to think about what they had told me. The penny dropped.

‘So you want me to find who’s been sending you the money because, if it isn’t your father, then he or she has to have a pretty strong motive to part with that kind of cash. You think that maybe whoever’s sending you the money is doing so out of guilt. If that was your father at the bottom of the river, someone must have put him there, is that it?’

When I said it, I said it as if it had been in my mind all along.

‘We just want to know who’s sending it to us.’

‘Then what?’ I asked. ‘You call the police? I’m guessing you haven’t been troubling the tax man about these payments. And the police come over all pernickety and bureaucratic when it comes to the proceeds of armed robbery. So what do you have planned? I have to tell you that if this is about some kind of personal retribution, then I’m not interested.’

‘We just want to know who is sending it,’ Isa repeated; this time there was a little steel in her voice and both heart-shaped faces again set hard.

‘The postmarks on the envelopes are always London?’ I asked with a hint of a sigh as they slipped the money back into respective handbags.

‘Not always …’

‘… sometimes Edinburgh …’

‘… and once from Liverpool.’

‘I see …’ I frowned for effect before the punchline. ‘I have to warn you that this may all become expensive, ladies. I may have a lot of travelling to do — all of which will be receipted and accounted for, of course. And it will take time … whoever is sending you this money certainly values their anonymity. And time, I’m afraid, is money.’

‘Is this enough …’ They both took out the cash bundles again and each peeled off crisp twenties, laying them, in turns, on my desk. When they were finished they had each laid six portraits of the queen before me.

‘… to get you started?’

‘You can let us know if you need more.’

I looked at the two hundred and forty pounds. The irresistible force had met with the moveable object.

‘Let me see what I can find out,’ I said and smiled my most at-your-service smile. ‘I have to say, ladies, that I think you’re paying me to look a gift horse in the mouth. You would maybe be better leaving things lie as they are.’ But I had already picked up the twenties. I had decided that, given that Isa and Violet hadn’t troubled the tax man, it would be diplomatic for me to do the same.

‘We just want to know who it is …’ said Violet.

‘… but we don’t want them to know we know,’ said Isa. ‘Then we’ll decide what to do.’

‘That could be tricky,’ I said. I thought of where this could all lead me and started to wonder if I should have made a bigger effort to be immoveable.

‘I’m an enquiry agent. I make enquiries. People tend to hear when someone’s asking questions about them. I suggest we take this one step at a time. Could I see one of the wrappers the money comes in?’

Isa obliged and handed me a paper band. It was plain, unmarked with a gummed closure.

‘This isn’t a bank’s,’ I said. ‘The only way to trace this money would be to have the police check the serial numbers, but I guess that’s not going to happen.’ I punctuated my sigh with an obliging smile. ‘Let me see what I can do. I’ll ask around.’

‘Thank you, Mr Lennox,’ they said simultaneously.

‘Do you have a photograph I can have of your father? I wouldn’t need to keep it … just long enough to copy it and then I’d return it to you.’

Isa, or Violet, shook her head. ‘We don’t have any photographs of Daddy …’

‘He never liked having them taken …’

‘Then, when he disappeared, the few photos there were of him also went missing …’

‘I see,’ I said. Ghosts didn’t steal photographs. ‘Can you give me a list of people your father associated with before he disappeared?’

‘We never knew anyone Daddy had dealings with …’

‘But there were the names we found …’

‘… behind the bureau …’

‘What names?’ I asked.

‘It was a list that Daddy had made …’

‘… years and years ago …’

‘… it had fallen behind the bureau …’

‘Mam found it when she was cleaning …’

‘It had some names on it …’

‘Would that help?’

‘Anything that could give me somewhere to start looking would help,’ I said, although I couldn’t imagine Gentleman Joe committing a list of his Empire Exhibiton robbery co-conspirators to paper.

I went across to my office window while their heels were still clacking their way down the stairwell. Gordon Street below and the entrance to Central Station opposite were both thronging with people. Because it was before noon, there were no parking restrictions on Gordon Street and there was a car pulled up directly outside the entrance to my building. A brand new Ford Zephyr, all black and Hire Purchase shiny. A smartly dressed man stood leaning against the wing smoking a cigarette. He wasn’t wearing a hat and I could see he had a full head of thick, dark hair. The suit looked expensive and must have been tailor-made to fit the shoulders that bulked beneath the material. He snapped away his cigarette and dutifully held open the door for the twins when they emerged from the doorway. So that was Violet’s husband, Robert. I could tell, even from the distance of four floors up, that this guy was ‘handy’, as my shady business chums would say.

I found myself wondering how much of Robert’s tailoring was paid for through the largesse of his wife’s anonymous benefactor and how much came from earnings that spared the taxman effort. I couldn’t see his face and therefore couldn’t tell if he was someone I’d come across in my dealings with Glasgow’s less salubrious social set.

After they had driven off, I sat at my desk frowning, without knowing what it was I was frowning about. Or maybe I did: I had spent a long time putting some distance between myself and the Three Kings. I still got the very occasional job from them, and it was difficult to refuse Willie Sneddon, Handsome Jonny Cohen or Hammer Murphy. Murphy particularly had a problem with anyone saying no to him, and had a temper that a psychopath would deem unseemly. It was blindingly obvious that this case, involving as it did the famous — or infamous, depending on your point of view of a sawn-off shotgun — Gentleman Joe Strachan, was going to suck me right back into that world.

But it wasn’t even that: there was more to the nagging in the back of my brain. I frowned some more.

Then I took the cash the twins had handed me out of the drawer and counted it. Then counted it again. I stopped frowning.