The Deep Dark Sleep

CHAPTER FOUR

I wanted to find out more about Donald Fraser, and before heading back to my office I decided to telephone Jock Ferguson from a telephone kiosk on the corner of Blythswood Square. It was the regulation Glasgow ’phone box: its exterior inexpertly coated in thick red paint that was flaking where it had bubbled; its interior fuming with the regulation Glasgow call box odour of stale urine, forcing me to prop the heavy, spring-loaded door open with one foot. For some reason, Glaswegians had always been confused about how the word urinal differed lexically from telephone kiosk, bank doorway, swimming pool or the back of the raincoat of the supporter in front of you at a football match.

I was lucky and got Jock Ferguson at his desk. I asked him what he knew about Donald Fraser, which was nothing, but he said with a sigh that he would ask around. In turn, he asked why I was asking and I told him the truth: that Fraser was a solicitor in the city and wanted to hire me and that I just wanted to check Fraser’s bona fides before I took the job. Ferguson told me he would ’phone me back at my office later with whatever he could find out. He also made it plain that the next lunch I treated him to would have to be somewhere more upscale than the Horsehead Bar.

I walked back to my office. It remained unseasonably warm — and muggy, which seemed to be the only warm Glasgow did. Even in the middle of that summer’s heatwave, it had been as if the city had opened up its pores and sweated itself slick. Something in this mugginess, however, hung in my nostrils and chest; that old warning feeling I always got when a smog was on its way.

When I got back, the afternoon mail had been delivered. One envelope contained a single, plain sheet of paper with a list of names. No signature, note or anything else to show who had sent it. Isa and Violet were perhaps not as guileless as they appeared.

Of the names, I recognized only three, and one of those happened to be the name at the very top of the list. For a moment I hoped that the Michael Murphy heading the list wasn’t the one that immediately leapt to mind. I transferred the name along with all of the others to my notebook:

MICHAEL MURPHY

HENRY WILLIAMSON

JOHN BENTLEY

STEWART PROVAN

RONALD MCCOY

Five names. There had been five robbers involved in the Empire Exhibition job. But one of those five had been Strachan himself, and if the Michael Murphy on the list was the Michael Murphy I was thinking of, then I couldn’t see him having been one of that team.

During the twins’ visit to my office, Isa — or Violet — had left me a telephone number and I called it. It was Isa after all. I asked if the Michael Murphy on the list was Hammer Murphy; she told me she didn’t know for sure but it was possible. Her father had known Murphy.

‘What was your father’s involvement with Murphy?’ I asked.

‘Daddy knew all the Murphy brothers. I think they did some work for Daddy. Now and again. Mam said that that was before Michael Murphy became successful and important, in his own right, like. But Michael Murphy was round now and again. I don’t remember him being at the house, but there again I was only wee.’

‘And Henry Williamson?’ I asked. The name had leapt out at me as not being typically Glaswegian.

‘He was a good friend of Daddy’s. I never met him either, though. From what Mam said, Daddy had known him for years. Since the war. The First War, I mean.’

‘Your father served in the First War?’

‘Aye. He was a hero you know.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought your father would have been old enough.’

‘It was near the end of the war.’

‘And that was where he met Williamson?’

‘I think so.’

‘Was Williamson involved in crime too?’

There was a short silence at the other end of the telephone; I wondered if I had offended her by reminding her of the origins of her father’s wealth.

‘I don’t know. That’s the truth,’ she said. ‘I don’t think Mr Williamson was ever in prison, or anything like that, but I just don’t know. He stopped coming around after Daddy went away. But they saw each other all the time before that.’

‘Do you know where I can find him? Where he lives?’

‘Not really. All I know is that Da knew him from the war. But I don’t think he was from Glasgow.’

‘I see …’ I said.

I ran through the other names with Isa. A couple of them I knew, or realized I knew when she gave me some background information. All thieves and hardmen. I reckoned that there was a good chance, after all, that I was sitting with the names of the Empire Exhibition Gang in my hand. But could it really be as easy as that? In Thirty-eight, the police would have had exactly the same list of names, yet they never nailed even one of the robbers.

The only other name I had to ask about was John Bentley.

‘I never knew him either. Mam said that he was just someone she had heard Daddy talking about to the others.’

Before I visited Willie Sneddon, I ’phoned and made an appointment. With a secretary.

That’s what dealing with Willie Sneddon had turned into. Secretaries and appointments and meetings in offices.

Willie Sneddon was by far the most treacherous and dangerous of the Three Kings. Which was saying something when you considered that Hammer Murphy had not earned his nickname because of his joinery skills. But the thing that made Willie Sneddon more dangerous than anyone else was his brain. There were a handful of Willie Sneddons born in the slums of Glasgow every year or so: people who, despite the odds and the lack of stimulus, had the raw intelligence to clamber their way out of the gutter. More than half of them wouldn’t make it: Britain’s obsessive class-consciousness placing barriers in their way at every opportunity. The others would make it despite the odds stacked against them and become surgeons, engineers, self-made business magnates.

And a couple, like Willie Sneddon and Gentleman Joe Strachan, would use their brains to dominate and terrorize the city’s underworld. Sneddon had been too small-fry to come to Strachan’s attention; but, if Strachan hadn’t disappeared when he did, then the paths of the two would, sooner or later, have come together. In a this-town-ain’t-big-enough-for-the-both-of-us kind of coming together.

But the paths had not met, and Willie Sneddon had had a clear run at dominating the city’s underworld, which he had, much to the annoyance of the other two Kings, Murphy and Cohen. They had divided the city up equally, except that Sneddon’s share had been more equal than the others. He was the youngest of the Three Kings and had come much farther, much quicker, than the other two. And everyone knew that Sneddon’s climb to the top wasn’t yet over.

Like Strachan, Sneddon had been very careful to make sure that his only view of Barlinnie Prison was seeing it in the distance as he passed by in his Jaguar on the A8. He had had a few run-ins with the City of Glasgow Police, right enough, but hadn’t picked up any indelible blots on his copybook. His relationship with the oily lawyer George Meldrum, and his open-handedness with brown envelopes stuffed with cash, had ensured that the only bars he ever looked through were the ones he ran or from which he extracted protection money. There was even a rumour that he was tight with Superintendent McNab, through their mutual membership of the Orange Order and the Freemasons or God knows what other let’s-do-a-funny-handshake-to-prove-we-hate-the-Fenians secret society.

And Sneddon was rich. Almost inexplicably rich. He had more money than the other two Kings put together, more than anyone could fully account for. I, personally, never saw much of a difference between businessmen and gangsters, other than that I would probably trust a gangster’s word more. Sneddon combined the callousness of a gang boss with the greed and acumen of a business magnate and that, I guessed, was what made him a different kind of animal in the jungle. The apex predator, as zoologists called such creatures.

Things were changing fast for Sneddon. He had re-invested the majority of his ill-gotten gains into legitimate businesses. It had all started out as front, but then Sneddon had seen that although the benefits were fewer and the profits less than his illegal activities, the risks were much, much lower. So now he ran a successful and perfectly above-board import business, an estate agency and three car showrooms, as well as having shares in a major Clydeside ship repair yard.

And he paid his taxes in full, on time. Scrupulously.

So now, Willie Sneddon — who was reputed to have once, in one of his more whimsical moments, boiled the flesh off the feet of one of his criminal competitors simply because this particular crook had made a remark about ‘letting Sneddon stew’ over a deal — now hobnobbed with lairds, shipyard owners, Corporation officials and magnates.

But Willie Sneddon still, it was said, retained the services of Twinkletoes MacBride, his torturer-in-chief, and an entourage of Teddy Boy suited thugs including Singer, the ironically nicknamed mute. I often puzzled about how Twinkletoes MacBride — being big on muscle and cruelty and short on brains and subtlety — had adapted to the new commercial environment. Somehow, I now imagined him dressed in a bowler hat and pinstripe and carrying his bolt-cutters — used for removing toes of uncommunicative victims — in an attache case.

Sneddon’s secretary tried to put me off until the next day, but I piled on the charm and pushed my luck, saying it was an important and pressing matter but that it would only take up ten minutes of his time. She asked me to hang on while she consulted her boss and when she came back a minute later, she told me that Sneddon could see me in fifteen minutes.

The ’phone rang almost immediately after I hung up. It was Jock Ferguson.

‘I’ve asked around about Donald Fraser. He’s as kosher as a Tel Aviv butcher’s. He deals with contract law, mainly. I wouldn’t have thought he would be handling divorce cases.’ Ferguson had drawn the obvious conclusion; I decided not to disabuse him of it.

‘I think he’s handling this case more as an obligement than anything else. A personal favour called in by a client. Did you find out anything else about him?’

‘Nothing to find. Educated at Fettes in Edinburgh. In the Home Guard during the war. Dodgy eyesight kept him out of the regular army, apparently. His father was an officer in the Great War.’

‘God, Jock, your intelligence gathering is a hell of a lot better than I thought.’

‘Not really. One of the senior uniform boys here, Chief Superintendent Harrison, knew Fraser during the war. Fraser and Harrison are pals, apparently. So I’d say he’s okay.’

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Thanks, Jock. That’s all I wanted to know.’

‘And how’s your sniffing about the Empire job going? Anyone jump up and kick you in the teeth yet?’

‘Not yet. But on that …’

‘Here we go …’ Ferguson sighed at the other end of the line.

‘On that …’ I continued, ‘what do you know about Henry Williamson and John Bentley?’

‘That’s easy,’ said Ferguson. ‘Nothing. Never heard of either of them. Well, I know a couple of Williamsons — it’s not that uncommon a name — but nobody connected to that world and certainly no one who would know Joe Strachan. And I don’t think any of them is a Henry. I could ask around, I suppose, but then you might buy me another Horsehead pie, and I’m beginning to think they’re named after their contents, not the name of the bar.’

‘Okay, next time I’ll make it an Italian meal …’ I’d treated Jock Ferguson to a meal at Rosseli’s before. In Glasgow that was as exotic as it comes and he had spent five minutes suspiciously poking around with his fork at his spaghetti. Forty minutes and two bottles of cheap Chianti later, he seemed to have developed an enthusiasm for Italian cuisine. Or as much of an enthusiasm as Jock Ferguson was capable of displaying: I could not imagine him ever throwing his arm around a waiter and bursting into ‘O sole mio’.

‘Do you have anything on either of them?’ he asked. ‘So’s I know where to start asking.’

‘Well, I think Williamson was a war buddy of Joe Strachan’s. In Number One, I mean.’ I had just finished saying it when I heard at the other end of the line something as rare as an inside toilet in Dennistoun: Ferguson laughing.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘A war buddy?’ he said. ‘Is that a polite way of saying fellow deserter?’

‘I thought Strachan had a glowing war record,’ I said. ‘A war hero, his daughter told me.’

More laughter. ‘Listen, Lennox, Strachan could sell any line of bull to anyone he chose. Do you know why everybody called him Gentleman Joe?’

‘I’ve heard that he was a flashy dresser, and liked a few of the finer things in life. Mind you, coming from the Gorbals, toilet paper that doesn’t leave newsprint on your backside counts as one of the finer things, I suppose.’

‘Joe Strachan didn’t dress flashy, Lennox. He dressed well. He knew what to wear and how, when and where to wear it. Like you say, he was one hundred per cent Gorbals, but he could pass himself off as anything, in any social circle. Believe it or not, it was actually what led the City CID in the first place to suspect him of having pulled off the Empire job and the other top-end robberies.’

‘Oh? Why?’

‘It was just by chance that a bank clerkess mentioned having served a tall, well-dressed, well-spoken gentleman a couple of weeks before the bank got hit. He had called in to cash a postal order but she had remembered that he had asked a lot of questions. Then, when they went over the other jobs, and prompted witnesses’ memories, they remembered a tall, well-spoken, well-dressed gentleman having had some kind of contact a few weeks before the job.’

‘Did he fit Strachan’s description?’

‘The description was slightly different each time, but there were enough similarities. It was by pure chance that it came out: no one thought anything of it because “gentlemen” don’t commit crime. And do you know where Strachan learned his party trick? In the army at the end of the First War.’

‘He saw active service?’ I asked. ‘I was told he volunteered as a fifteen-year-old …’

Ferguson snorted. ‘Joseph Strachan was not the volunteering type. He was too young for most of the war but was called up at the arse end of it all. But the last shot hadn’t been fired, so young Strachan showed real initiative by taking some leave without burdening his superiors with organizing it.’

‘So that was when he deserted?’

‘More than deserted … Strachan had this ability: to mimic voices, accents, mannerisms, that kind of thing.’

‘What’s your point … that Music Hall’s loss was armed robbery’s gain?’

There was a short silence and I could imagine Ferguson making an impatient face: he was not used to being interrupted. ‘Anyway, he could pass himself off as anyone. Any class, any nationality: Scottish, English, Welsh. So when he deserted, he didn’t just take a powder and lie low, like most would. Oh no, young Master Strachan also nicked a couple of subalterns’ uniforms so he could pass himself off as an officer on leave. Fooled everybody. Spent six weeks running up mess and brothel bills.’

‘Six weeks? I’m surprised he lasted that long. Passing yourself off as an officer with a put-on accent is one thing, but it’s not just how you talk, it’s what you’ve got to say about yourself.’

‘Aye … I suppose you’ll know all about that, Lennox.’ Ferguson didn’t attempt to keep the tone of contempt out of his voice. ‘You having been an officer and gone to a fancy school yourself … So what are you saying? That Strachan would be bound to give himself away by using the wrong spoon or holding his bone china the wrong way or some crap like that?’

‘I just don’t see how a thug from the Gorbals could be that convincing as a public school-educated officer.’

‘Well you’re wrong. Like I said, that’s why they called him “Gentleman” Joe: he could turn it on at the drop of the hat. You may just see him as a Gorbals monkey, but he was one smart monkey. He didn’t just put on the accent, he knew the moves. He may have left school at thirteen, but everyone knew he was a clever wee bastard. When he wasn’t shoving a gun in a bank teller’s face, he was shoving his nose into a book. He was obsessed with knowing things. And they say that’s why he got away with the officer act. He knew the right things to say at the right time. The rumour is that he also got to know the mutineer Percy Toplis and that was where he got the impersonating officers idea.’

‘You seem to know a lot about Strachan’s life story, Jock.’

‘He was a bit of a legend with the older boys here. I think there was a fair amount of grudging respect, that kind of shite. But all of that went right down the pan when that constable was gunned down. So yes, it’s not difficult to know a lot about Strachan if you’re a Glasgow copper. Added to which I’ve had my ear bent non-stop by Superintendent McNab about him since those bones were dredged up.’

I thought for a moment about McNab’s personal interest in Strachan. I was going to have to make a real effort to work around him, in much the same way as a pilot fish works around a shark.

‘So if he was a First War deserter, how come he didn’t end up in front of a firing squad?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know too much about that, but I gather that he talked his way out of it. He was good at that, from all accounts. And the odds were in his favour: there were over three thousand sentenced to death, but only three hundred or so faced a firing squad.’

I nodded slowly as I processed the information. The British had been almost as keen on shooting their own as shooting the enemy in the First War. Most of those tied to a post and shot had been men with otherwise outstanding war records, whose nerves had been shredded and reshredded by an uncaring command that did not recognize battle fatigue. And many had simply been terrified children who had lied about their age to serve King and Country. One of the finer moments of the British Empire had been when it had shot a ‘coward’ who had just turned sixteen.

‘There were rumours, apparently,’ continued Ferguson, ‘that Strachan maybe dodged a drumhead court-martial and firing squad because he volunteered to do reconnaissance work. You know, going over-the-top on your own at night and crawling around in the mud to find out what you could about the enemy disposition — barbed-wire, machine-gun posts, that kind of thing. Maybe that’s where his daughters got that mad idea that he was a war hero. It was probably dangerous, all right, but you’ve got less chance of getting shot at night on your belly than tied to a post in front of a firing squad. Anyway, have you seen Billy Dunbar yet … the guy I gave you the address for?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Well I got the name of the witness we talked about. The van driver. But you’re not going to get much out of him.’

‘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 that 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 name: 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.’

I paused and took a sip of the whiskey. It was a rich, aged bourbon and I guessed it hadn’t come from the hotel’s stock. I was four city blocks and a million miles away from the Horsehead Bar.

‘The other party in the photographs … you haven’t mentioned this to him?’ I asked.

‘No, not yet. I’ve been advised not to, but I think he has a right to know.’

‘I would stick to the advice you’ve been given, Mr Macready. The … prominence of the young gentleman in question is possibly something that could work in our favour. I really don’t see the press being allowed a free rein by the powers-that-be. It’s entirely possible that they would be stuck with a D-notice.’

Macready shrugged at me.

‘A D-notice is a banning order issued by the government to block stories that might damage the national interest.’

‘Nothing like a free press,’ said Macready with overdone irony as he sipped his bourbon.

‘Well, it’s something you might end up being grateful for.’

‘If so, isn’t that exactly why we should be telling the other party? That way we might get the whole damn thing stopped before it gets started.’

‘I think we should keep our powder dry on that one. It’s something we may have to resort to. But it would be a gamble: it could be that they could decide that he’s simply not important enough for them to issue a D-notice. In which case, he would be as well and truly screwed as we would be.’

The phrase was out before I thought it through, but Macready didn’t seem to have picked up on it. I took another sip of the bourbon and it breathed on an ember somewhere in my chest.

‘What is the big deal with Iain, anyway?’ asked Macready, giving the other party his name for the first time. ‘I knew he was some kind of aristo, but I didn’t know he was that well connected …’

‘His father is one of the big Dukes up here. And he’s a cousin — God knows how many times removed — of the Queen. The Queen’s mother is a Scot, you see. Which makes him, no matter how far down the food chain, minor royalty. Royalty is big here, Mr Macready. It’s symbolic. It’s funny, I’m investigating another case that goes all the way back to Nineteen thirty-eight, when they had a big exhibition here in Glasgow to celebrate the Empire. Well, the Empire has all but gone and that makes the monarchy all the more important. Us Canadians hang on to it to prove we’re not Americans. Yet. The Brits are clinging on to it because it’s all they’ve got of the past. If the British lose their monarchy, they’ll have to face up to the thing they fear most.’

‘Which is?’

‘The future. Or maybe even simply the reality of the present. So the monarchy is fast becoming a national treasure, like Stonehenge. And just like Stonehenge, it serves damn-all present purpose but it’s nice to look at and allows you to wallow in the past. And you, Mr Macready, have just taken a leak on Stonehenge, as far as anyone else is going to be concerned. So, like I said, I think we’ll keep the other party out of it for as long as we can. They might just throw you to the wolves.’

‘Okay. But what now?’

‘I try to find the guy who’s got the photographs and use my simple charm to win him over and get the negatives. But first I need to ask you a few questions …’

And I did.

Leonora Bryson showed me back to the lift when we were done. I made the move we were both expecting me to make, but she told me she was busy in a way that suggested she would remain busy for the rest of the century. Undaunted, I gave her my best philosophical some other time response but resolved not to give up. Some women were worth more effort than others. And I had three weeks.