The Deep Dark Sleep

CHAPTER SEVEN

I took the keys into the office and ran Archie home in the Atlantic. I went back to the Central Hotel to pick up my stuff, pausing in the lobby to use one of the telephone kiosks. It was all walnut, brass and polished glass and didn’t smell of piss in the slightest. I ’phoned Mrs White and told her that I was in the Central Hotel but moving on, probably, that day or the next. She sounded genuinely relieved to hear from me and I asked her if everything was all right, which she said it was, but I could tell from her voice she was tired. I told her I would keep in touch and I hung up.

I rang up to Leonora Bryson’s room, but got no answer. I had better luck when I tried John Macready’s suite. I told her I was moving out and would keep in touch about progress, I also asked what Macready’s movements would be for the next week, until he caught his flight. Her tone was as businesslike as usual and neither of us made mention of what had happened the night before: she because she was not alone in the room, probably; I, because the situation was so bizarre that I was beginning to doubt that it had really happened, or think that I had dreamt it.

After staying in the Central Hotel, I braced myself to come down in the world, and found a reasonably priced hotel down by the Gallowgate. It was more of a boarding house than a hotel and had a sign outside which declared: NO DOGS, NO BLACKS, NO IRISH. I had spotted signs like this in London and the South, but this was the first I had seen in Glasgow. I was greeted, or more confronted, by a small, rotund, balding bundle of hostility who introduced himself as the landlord. He had that speech defect that seemed to be particularly common in Glasgow, a slushy lisp where every fricative is distorted into something that sounds like radio interference. It was rather unfortunate, therefore, that his name was Mr Simpson. Or Schimpschon, as he introduced himself.

I restrained the instinct to dry my face with my handkerchief, or to ask if it was okay if I could keep Nigger, my black Irish Wolfhound, in my room, and followed Simpson up the stairs. When I answered his question about how long I would be staying, which I said would be a week, he stopped on the stair and turned, a suspicious frown creasing his porcine brow.

‘You’re no’ Irischsch, are you?’

‘What? Oh, my accent … no, I’m Canadian. Is that all right? But I did spend a weekend in Belfast once …’

My irony went over his shiny head by a mile.

‘That’sch awright. Schscho long aschsch you’re no’ Irischsch …’

The room was basic but clean, and I shared a bathroom with four other rooms and there was a pay ’phone in the hall. It would do for a week or two, if needs be. I paid three days in advance, which Simpson took thanklessly and left.

With Archie on the trail of Billy Dunbar, I decided to dedicate myself to tracking down Paul Downey, the part-time amateur photographer who had done so well in capturing John Macready’s good side.

I spent the first evening checking out the well-known queer haunts in the city centre: the Oak Cafe, the Royal Bar in West Nile Street and a couple of others. I decided to hold off on a trip down to Glasgow Green for the moment. Wherever I went, I was met with an almost universal suspicion, clearly being taken instantly as a copper out to trap homosexuals. I would have probably been less offended if they had thought I had been there cruising.

I tried to get around the suspicion that I was a cop by offering money for information, but that seemed to make things worse. I couldn’t blame them for clamming up. As I had told Macready, the City of Glasgow Vice Squad — and police forces in Scotland generally — pursued homos with biblical zeal which, in itself, made me question the underlying culture. I never could understand why homosexuality was illegal in the first place: if consenting adults wanted to assault each other with friendly weapons out of the sight of children and horses, then I didn’t see why that should be a police matter.

All the same, I avoided visiting the toilets while I was in the queer bars.

I was aware that somebody followed me out of the Royal. It was dark and the fog had come back, but nothing like as densely as before. Unlocking your car door is a prime time for an ambush, so I walked straight past the Atlantic, picking up my pace and taking a swift turn into the alley that connected West Nile Street with Buchanan Street. As soon as I was around the corner, I pressed into the wall and waited for him to take the turn. This time, just like I had promised myself, I was going to lead the dance.

I saw the figure hesitate for a moment, then turn into the alley. I leapt out and grabbed his coat, pulling it out and down over his shoulders and upper arms, transforming it into an improvised straightjacket. I swung him around, slammed his back into the wall and rammed my forearm up and under his chin, shutting off his windpipe.

I knew even before I got a look at his face that this wasn’t the same guy from the other morning in the smog. It had all been too easy and, anyway, this guy was too small.

A pair of scared-wide eyes stared at me through uneven horn-rimmed spectacles.

‘Please … please, don’t hurt me …’ he pleaded.

‘Shit … Mr MacGregor …’ I let go the bank’s Chief Clerk. ‘What are you doing following me?’

‘I … I saw you in the bar. I know why you were there. I just know it.’

‘Em … no, you don’t, Mr MacGregor,’ I said emphatically. ‘I’m not that type of girl.’

‘No, no … I know that, Mr Lennox. I know you were in there watching me. That’s why I came after you. I promise I’ll never go in there again. Ever. It was my first time …’ His fright turned to pleading. ‘Well, my second time, but that’s all, I swear. I promise you I won’t do it again. Listen, I have money. I’ll give it to you. Just don’t tell the bank director. I know he hired you to check up on me … Or the police. Oh, please God no, not the police …’

‘Is that why you came after me?’ I pulled his coat back up over his shoulders.

‘I saw you leaving. I didn’t see you when you were in there, but I guessed that you had seen me. Please don’t tell the bank, Mr Lennox …’

I held my hands up to placate him. ‘Take it easy, Mr MacGregor, I wasn’t in there looking for you. I had no idea that you … And no,’ I said, reading the sudden change in his expression, ‘I wasn’t in there for fun. Let’s get out of this alley before a patrolling copper takes us for a couple.’

He stepped back out onto West Nile Street. ‘Come on, I’ll give you a lift home,’ I said. This was more than just an embarrassing moment: MacGregor worked for an important client and I could do without the complication. But it began to dawn on me that there might be some mileage in having the goods on MacGregor. He told me he lived in Milngavie and we headed out of the city centre and up through Maryhill.

‘So what were you doing in the Royal?’ he asked eventually, clearly still not convinced that he had not been the subject of my surveillance.

‘I was looking for someone,’ I said. ‘A guy called Downey.’

‘Paul?’

I took my eyes off the road and turned to MacGregor. ‘You know him?’

‘I do. Did. Not well. I haven’t seen him in weeks. What do you want him for?’

‘I can’t tell you that, Mr MacGregor. I thought you said that was only your second time in that bar …’

MacGregor reddened. I was going to be able to milk this.

‘Listen, I’m not interested in your private life, but I would greatly appreciate it if you could point me in the right direction. I really need to find Downey.’

‘He used to go to the usual places, the Oak Cafe, The Good Companions, all of those places. But, like I said, I haven’t seen him for weeks. You could try some of the steam rooms though. I think I heard someone say that Paul’s friend works at one of the public baths.’

‘Do you have a name?’

‘I’m afraid not. No, wait … I think his friend was called Frank, but I don’t know which baths he worked at. That’s all I can tell you, Mr Lennox. Sorry.’

‘It’s something to go on. Thanks.’

We were passing through an area of flat, open countryside as we approached Milngavie. Off in the distance — a darker grey silhouette in the lighter grey of the fog — I could see something long and cigar shaped suspended from what looked like a gantry. I had seen it before, and more clearly. It looked like something Michael Rennie should have stepped out of in a science fiction movie and it had always puzzled the hell out of me. I decided to take advantage of having a Milngavie local in the car with me.

‘Oh that? That’s the Bennie Railplane,’ MacGregor said in answer to my question. ‘It’s been there since before the war. There used to be a lot more of the track that it hangs from, but they took it down along with all of the railings and stuff for the war effort.’

‘Railplane?’

‘Yes. It was built in the Twenties or Thirties. It was going to be the transport of the future. It could travel at well over a hundred miles an hour, you know. But no one backed it and it never got more than the test track there.’

I thought about dreams of a future that never happened: the Empire Exhibition of Thirty-eight promising a cleaner, brighter Glasgow full of art deco buildings, with the Bennie Railplane connecting cities at superfast speed. What could have been. Like my wartime dream of me returning to Canada, making a proper life for myself. A lot of things had been killed in the war. Ideals and visions, as well as fifty million people.

I dropped MacGregor outside a bungalow in Milngavie which he admitted, a little embarrassedly, was where he still lived with his parents. He hesitated before getting out of the car.

‘You won’t say anything, will you, Mr Lennox?’

‘What happened tonight stays between us,’ I said.

‘I’m very grateful, Mr Lennox. I owe you for this.’

Oh, I know, I said to the empty car as I drove off. I know.

In the absence of widespread indoor bathrooms, the Victorian Glasgow that exploded in population but not in area was faced with a major public health threat. The great unwashed of Glasgow really had been. The city’s response to this problem was an array of public baths, swimming ponds, pools, Turkish baths and municipal ‘steamies’: communal laundries that were often attached to public bath houses.

In the Glasgow of the 1950s, and in the comparative rarity of the real thing, you could even have a ‘sun-ray’ bath at the Turkish Baths in Govanhill, Whitevale, Pollokshaws, Shettleston and Whiteinch. A sun-ray bath would cost you two bob; a combined Turkish-Russian and sun-ray bath would cost you four shillings and sixpence.

Bathing was segregated, the baths open between nine a.m. and nine p.m., with separate days for each gender at each venue.

Unofficially, there were set times when, if you were of a certain disposition, you could meet like-minded gentlemen in at least two of the bath houses.

I spent two evenings checking out the baths, asking if anyone knew Paul Downey or where I could find him, or if someone called Frank worked there. I was met at different locations with different responses, from the hostile and suspicious — as I had in the queer bars — to the unnervingly welcoming. But nothing took me closer to finding Downey; I could find no one who would admit even to recognizing the name.

Despite the knocks and hardship it had often endured, Glasgow was a proud city. And that pride was often given eloquent expression in the most impressive civic architecture in the most unlikely of locations. Govanhill Public Baths and Turkish Suite in Calder Street was a perfect example: a stately building from the outside, and Edwardian palace of ablution on the inside.

After asking a pool attendant, I was told that Frank was one of his colleagues and he was on lifeguard duty at the moment. The attendant sent me to wait in the gallery of the gents’ swimming pool. I sat on the fire engine-red seats and watched the handful of swimmers in the water. Every splash resounded in the chlorine-fumed air of the white-tiled and deep red-beamed pool hall. You could have held an opera here, and not just because of the acoustics; the decor of this public bath house bordered on the opulent.

‘You wanted to talk to me?’ A large collection of muscles bundled into a white tennis shirt appeared beside me. In contrast to the bulging biceps and beefy shoulders, and despite being predictably square-jawed, the features of the face were fine, almost delicate. His fair hair was bristle-cut at the sides and back but long and thick at the top, and a dense blond lock had a habit of falling across his forehead and slightly over one eye. I had the impression, somehow, of a cross between some idealized Nazi image of Aryan manhood and Veronica Lake.

‘I’m looking for Paul.’ I said it as if I knew him.

‘Paul who?’

‘You know who … Paul Downey.’

‘What do you want him for?’

‘Just to talk. I know you know where he is, Frank. Where can I find him?’

Frank leaned in closer and drew his lips back from his teeth. ‘Why don’t you just leave him alone? Didn’t he promise that he’d pay the money back?’

Interesting.

‘Maybe we can arrange easy terms,’ I said. ‘I just want to talk to him, that’s all.’

‘Anything you’ve got to say you can say through me. You’ll get your money. And soon. I thought your boss accepted that.’

‘And who, exactly, is my boss?’

Frank looked puzzled for a moment, then angry when he realized I wasn’t who he thought I was.

‘Okay, I’ll level with you, Frank,’ I said. He may have been a cream puff, but he had lots of filling and there was no need for things to turn nasty. ‘I don’t know what money you’re talking about, but I guess from what you’ve said that young Paul owes the wrong kind of people money. That’s not my concern. I’m on the supply side, not the demand. I’ve been hired to buy back certain photographs from Paul. I take it you know what I’m referring to?’

Frank shrugged his massive shoulders.

‘Listen, Frank, if you know where Paul is, tell him to ’phone me.’ I handed him a card with my office number on it. ‘And tell him that he’ll get his money, but we play this my way, not his. We’re not prepared to mail that kind of cash into a Wellington Street PO box on the strength of good faith. And it would be good if you could point out to him that he doesn’t get a single penny unless I’m totally convinced I’ve got everything: all the copies and all the negatives.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Frank, but he took the card anyway.

Frank left the Govanhill Baths about half past ten. He stood outside on Calder Street for a good five minutes, checking the road in both directions, making sure I wasn’t waiting to follow him — which I was — before heading off down the street to his tram stop. He was wearing a cheap but flashy belted raincoat and had pulled his hat down over his eyes, but there was no mistaking the shoulder to waist taper of a serious bodybuilder.

Fortunately for me, the other side of Calder Street was block after block of tenements; red sandstone beneath black soot. I had found a close, as the Scots called the open-ended entrance passageway and stair of a tenement building, and concealed myself in it while watching the bathhouse exit. Frank was a smart cookie, all right, and I found myself wondering if he had more to do with Downey’s amateur photography club than just looking pretty.

He got on the tram heading away from the city centre and I walked around the corner to where I had parked my Atlantic. There was no rush: I knew where the tram was heading and I would catch up with it before its next stop. It was fortunate that I did, because Frank skipped off at the next stop and crossed the road. We were in a long arc of tenement-lined streets and I would have been conspicuous if I had stopped, so I drove on until I could do a u-turn out of sight. As I sat parked there, another green and orange Glasgow Corporation tram passed by, this time travelling towards the city centre. I waited long enough so that I came around the corner just in time to see Frank, in the distance, board the tram.

He was a very smart cookie.

I kept my distance, following the tram until Frank got off at Plantation, and started walking into Kinning Park. I dumped the car when it became the only vehicle on the streets and my walking pace progress, even in the light fog, would start to draw attention. I followed Frank on foot, my footfall silent because I was wearing my soft-soled suede numbers, and congratulated myself on following my alleyway chum’s footwear tips.

Frank led me into a row of three-storey tenements and turned into one of the closes. I sprinted to catch up, to see which flat he went into, and reached the mouth of the close just in time to hear the downstairs flat slam shut. I doubted if Frank and Downey lived together openly — Glasgow’s attitude toward that kind of thing made the Spanish Inquisition look tolerant — but I had put my money on Frank having wanted to tell his bestest ever friend all about my visit to the baths. I decided to give them some hello-honey-I’m-home time before I went knocking on the door.

I had noticed a call box at the corner of the street, so I headed back to it and called the lawyer, Fraser, on the out-of-hours number he had given me. I told him where I was and what I was doing.

‘And you’re outside now?’ he asked. ‘How sure are you that Downey is in the tenement?’

‘I’m not sure at all, but I think it’s a pretty safe bet. What I need to know from you now is how you want me to handle this. If I go in there and Downey is there, and if the photographs and negatives are in there too, do you want me to promise the money and set up an exchange? Or do you want me to use direct negotiations to secure the negatives right now?’

‘I don’t approve of blackmail, Mr Lennox, no matter how it is couched. And I certainly disapprove most vehemently of anyone profiting from blackmail. I would like Mr Downey, as I mentioned, to be left in no doubt how seriously we take this matter. So I suggest you deal with this using your own, special, initiative.’

‘Understood, Mr Fraser,’ I said and hung up. As I stepped out of the kiosk, I slipped my hand into my raincoat pocket, just to check I had my own, special, initiative with me.

I decided to quell any naughtiness pretty quickly, should Frank get wound up, so by the time I knocked on the tenement flat door, I had already threaded my wrist through the leather loop of my sap.

I instantly recognized the boyish face at the door from the photograph Fraser had shown me. He was small and light framed and gazed at me apprehensively with his soft eyes. No trouble there.

‘Hello, Paul,’ I said cheerfully as I pushed past him and into the flat and checked the hall for Frank. ‘How’s the camera club?’

‘Frank!’ he shouted anxiously along the hall and his muscly boyfriend appeared through a doorway into the passageway and bounded towards me. He was a big boy, all right, so I swung my sap and caught him a textbook blow across the temple.

Frank’s muscle bounced like rubber, first against one wall in the narrow hall, then the other, before he dropped.

‘Say goodnight to the folks, Gracie,’ I said as he hit the floor.

Paul started to scream and I slapped him hard to shut him up. I grabbed him by the throat and slammed him against the wall.

‘It’s playtime, Paul,’ I said between clenched teeth. I was fired up. I had to be fired up because I hated what I was doing: Paul was no fighter and I saw nothing but raw terror in his eyes. Despite everything that I might have become, I had no appetite for picking on the weak. But this was business.

‘Now,’ I said slowly and menacingly. ‘I’m going to let go your throat, but you make nice and quiet, like you’re in a library, got it?’

He nodded furiously. Desperately.

‘Because if you don’t, you’re going to wake up in the fractures ward. Are we simpatico?’

He gave a strangled yes and I let him go. Frank was making a rattling snoring sound when he breathed, so I bent down and checked him out. I put him in the position we’d been taught in the army and the snoring stopped. While I was down there, I retrieved my business card from his trouser pocket and tried not to think that he would probably have enjoyed me searching for it if he had been conscious.

‘Is he dead?’ Downey asked, his voice high and quivering. Nice line of work, Lennox, I thought.

‘No. He’ll be fine. He might not be as bright as he was, but, hey, that’s brain damage for you. Now, listen. I reckon he’s out for a couple of minutes tops. If he starts to come round while I’m still here, I’m going to have to send him bye-byes again, understand? And that could mean he’ll spend the next fifty years pissing his pants and dribbling on his shirt. So, unless you’re not a true Glaswegian and actually do have a fondness for vegetables, you’ve got two jobs to do. The first is to put those photographs into my hands, and I mean everything: every print, every negative, everything. The second thing, and this is going to be by far the more difficult, is to convince me that I have got everything there is to get. Because, if I’m not convinced, then I’m going to get tetchy with you and Veronica here. And if I find out, after I’ve gone, that I haven’t left with everything, I will find you and your chum again, but next time I’ll come with some friends, and we’ll all have a real party.’

Again he nodded furiously and I knew from the look on his face that he would do exactly as I told him.

‘They’re in there …’ He nodded down the hall to a closed door at the far end. I grabbed him by the shirt front and heaved him down the hall, tearing the shirt in my fist. He fumbled with the keys he took from his pocket and I snatched them from him.

‘Which one?’

‘That one …’ he pointed and I saw how much his hand shook. I was beginning to get a bad feeling about this. Paul Downey just did not seem the type to mastermind this kind of blackmail scam. Nor did his boyfriend, for that matter, despite the muscles.

I opened the door and told Downey to put on the light, which he did, bathing the small room with red light. A darkroom, but my first inspection revealed it to be a swiftly improvised one. There was a table with developing materials and trays against the wall next to a small plan chest and a cupboard, and prints hung on clothes pegs from a makeshift drying line.

‘Okay, Paul, hand them over.’

He opened the cupboard and took out a shortbread tin, all red tartan and photographs of Edinburgh Castle — the Scots were the only nationality I knew that bought their own tourist tat.

I tipped out the contents: prints of the photographs Fraser had shown me and a few more, plus a blue airmail envelope stuffed with strips of acetate. The negatives. But the Macready photographs weren’t all he had in the box: there were two more sets of photographs, each partnered with a blue airmail envelope of negatives. I spread them all out on top of the plan chest. One set featured a prominent Glasgow businessman whom I recognized instantly, despite the fact he wasn’t exactly showing me his best side in the pictures. An upstanding member of the Kirk involved in charity work, which he publicized widely. In the black and white images, he appeared as a bleached mass of pale flesh in between a thin boy whom I recognized as Paul Downey and another youth.

The third set troubled me. No sex, no illegal activity, nothing that I could see would warrant payment of blackmail money. All the photographs were simple shots of a group of well-dressed men leaving what looked like a country house. The photographs had been taken from a distance and several were close-ups of one man in particular. The closeups had been taken with a zoom lens and were grainy, but from what I could see the man looked in his fifties and vaguely aristocratic in a foreign sort of way, with a goatee beard and skin that was a tone darker than his companions, even in the black and white pictures.

‘Is this everything?’ I asked Downey.

He nodded. I took a step towards him. ‘I swear!’

I looked again at the picture of the well-dressed, vaguely-aristocratic-vaguely-foreign-looking man.

‘What’s all this about?’ I asked. ‘Who is this?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Downey. He was telling the truth: I could tell from the quiver in his voice and his obvious fear that I would not be convinced by the truth. ‘I was paid to take photographs of these men. I had to hide out in the bushes. I was told to take photographs specially of the man with the goatee beard. I don’t know what it was all about.’

‘Who paid you?’

‘A man called Paisley. But I think he was working for someone else, I don’t know who. And I don’t know why anyone would pay what he paid for these photos.’

‘You’ve already delivered them?’

Downey nodded.

‘So why…?’ I nodded towards the prints and negatives.

‘We thought we could maybe make some more money out of them. There was obviously something important about these photographs and we thought there might be a chance to make a bob or two in the future.’

‘Where were they taken?’ I asked, leaving for the moment the fact that every time Downey said ‘we’ I got a funny feeling ‘we’ was more than him and Frank.

‘The Duke’s estate. The same place where we took the Macready photographs.’

I slipped the best of the close-ups into my pocket. Downey had now started to shake quite violently: the shock setting in. With some it takes all a battlefield can throw at them, with others a raised voice and the threat of worse.

There was a wooden chair in the corner of the darkroom and I told him to sit. It only took me a minute to cast an eye over the rest of the apartment, as well as checking on sleeping beauty in the hall. Truth was, I was getting a little worried about him and decided to make sure he came to before I left.

When I came back into the darkroom, I had an ordinary one hundred watt bulb that I had taken from the bathroom and I replaced the red light with it, flooding the small room with brilliance. I tipped out every drawer, tray cupboard and cubby-hole I could find, checking as I went. John Macready and his aristocratic playmate were clearly not the only subjects of Downey’s artistic bent.

I decided to do some pro-bono work and gathered every print and negative I could find, other than the ones I had been contracted to deliver, placing them in an enamel developing tray. I tossed the other two sets in and started a small bonfire, that made sure Downey and his muscle-bound chum would not be making any more from fat Glasgow businessmen or foreign-looking aristos.

‘Okay, Paul,’ I said as the photographs and negatives burned and I hauled him back to his feet. ‘I’ll take the rest with me and that will be an end to the matter, unless you want me to come back, that is.’

He shook his head.

‘But before I go, I want to know how you set it all up. The cottage and everything. It was an elaborate set-up. You plan it all?’

‘I needed the money. I owe money and I have to pay it back. I can’t now …’ He started to cry. ‘They’ll kill me.’

‘Who? Who will kill you?’

‘I owe money to loan sharks. Local hard men.’

‘So you came up with this scheme all by yourself?’

‘No. It was Iain’s idea.’

‘Iain? Iain as in bent-over-obligingly Iain? Iain the toff in the photographs? Iain, the Duke of Strathlorne’s son?’

‘We used to be close. For a while. He needs money almost as badly as I do and he came up with the plan. He knew about Macready and he came up with the idea.’

‘Why on earth would he need money desperately? His family own half the country, for God’s sake,’ I said incredulously. ‘And anyway, doesn’t he have as much … more … to lose than Macready if this all comes out? His family name … The connections …’

‘Iain said that that was exactly why they would cough up. It would be such a scandal that they would pay anything to stop it coming out. And if it did come out, I don’t think Iain would be that worried. It would destroy his father, more than him. And he hates his father.’

I regarded Downey. I guessed he was of Irish Catholic stock, brought up in Glasgow, which put you at the bottom of the social pile. And Iain, the Duke’s son, was right at the top. In class-obsessed Britain, I couldn’t work out how they could possibly have been ‘close’, as Downey had put it.

‘It isn’t that unusual,’ he said, reading my mind. ‘It’s a different world. You should see the businessmen and toffs who hang around Glasgow Green looking for a bit of rough. I met Iain at a party in the West End.’

‘Does he have copies of the photographs?’ I asked, suddenly seeing a much more complicated task in front of me.

‘No.’ He nodded to the tin box that I had laid back on the table. ‘That’s everything.’

We were interrupted by Frank, who lunged into the doorframe, trying to focus his gaze on me. He made a clumsy charge and I easily sidestepped him, slamming my elbow into the bridge of his nose as he careered past. He hurtled into the table and sent the tray with the burning prints and negatives crashing to the floor with him. He wasn’t out this time, but rolled over onto his side and cupped his busted nose, blood everywhere. He was finished.

Downey had started to shake again. I grabbed him by the shirtfront once more and pulled him towards me.

‘Is our business with each other concluded, Mr Downey?’

‘Yes,’ he said in a quivering tone. ‘You won’t hear from me again, I swear.’

I pushed him against the wall again and he screwed his face up tight. He knew he was going to take a beating, just to get the message across. I balled my fist.

‘Just make sure you don’t,’ I said. I maybe should have slapped him around a bit, just to reinforce the point, as Fraser had asked for in his roundabout way. But I had my limits, I was surprised and pleased to discover, and I let him go. ‘You better see to your girlfriend.’

We met at the Central Hotel, in a private dining room, at nine-thirty.

After I had left Downey, I had used the same call box at the corner of the street to get in touch with Fraser and Leonora Bryson. I told them both that I had all the copies and negatives and I had put Downey and his friend out of business. I didn’t mention at that stage that I’d found out that Iain, the aristo in the pictures, had planned to be on the receiving end in more ways than one. I had decided I could tell them when we got together, which would buy me some time to think about what it meant.

John Macready was wearing a grey chalk-stripe, double breasted suit with a white shirt and burgundy silk tie that looked like they had just been hand delivered from Jermyn Street. The guy had style, I had to give him that. He sat smoking but stood up and shook my hand when I came in. Donald Fraser and Leonora Bryson remained glued to the upholstery. I had business on my mind, but Leonora was wearing a blue silk dress that looked like the silkworms had oozed it out directly onto her skin. Her hair was up and her throat bounded by a four tier pearl choker. She sat smoking and looking at me disinterestedly, or uninterestedly, or both. I couldn’t help thinking about the night in the room upstairs and felt the urge to go over there and start tearing silk, but I guessed that would have contravened business meeting etiquette.

‘Did you run into problems?’ Fraser asked, indicating the plaster on my cheek.

‘No … this is unrelated. Everything went pretty much as I thought it would.’

‘You have the items?’ Fraser asked me. I handed over the tartan tin.

‘No … I thought I would bring you some shortbread instead. A souvenir of Scotland for our American guests.’

He looked at me blankly with his beady lawyer’s eyes. As I didn’t have a dictionary to show him the definition of the word humour, I decided to play it straight.

‘They’re in there …’ I said, nodding to the shortbread tin.

‘All of them?’ asked Leonora.

‘All of them,’ I said.

‘You’re sure?’ asked Fraser.

‘I’m sure. Downey was too scared to hold back, and I saw the set-up for myself. All the negatives are there. And, just for good measure, I burned every other piece of film I could find.’ I turned to the actor. ‘It’s over, Mr Macready. You can rest easy.’

‘I appreciate that, Mr Lennox.’ He smiled at me, but I didn’t get the full one hundred watt business. ‘I really do. If ever I can be of any help to you, please let me know. Mr Fraser, do you think it would be possible to give Mr Lennox a small bonus? After all, he really did sort this out very quickly for us.’

Fraser was caught totally off guard. He flustered for a moment, then reached into his jacket pocket and produced a juicily thick buff envelope.

‘Your fee is in there, Mr Lennox. Four thousand pounds. Not bad for a few days’ work. I trust you’ll appreciate there’s an element of hush money in there. You can never discuss this with anyone.’

‘Obviously.’

‘And we’re paying you cash. No need to go through the books. I doubt if the taxman would believe it was the proceeds of just one assignment that lasted less than a week.’

‘This means I won’t have to convince him.’ I held up the envelope before slipping it into my inside jacket pocket; close to my heart, where money tended to find a natural home. ‘And don’t worry about a bonus, Mr Macready … this is more than enough.’

In fact, it was the most I had earned in one go at any time. And three times what I’d earned in the whole of the previous year.

Macready rose to shake my hand again. The meeting was over.

‘There is one more thing,’ I said, not getting up.

‘Oh?’

‘As I discussed with Miss Bryson, it never did fit with me the way these photographs were taken, given that your visit to Iain’s was supposed to be spur of the moment. When I asked you if you could guess how the photographs were taken, or where you thought the photographer could have concealed himself, you said that it was a mystery. Your guess was that they were taken through a window.’

‘Yes …’

‘The clarity and quality of the images suggested to me that they were taken somehow from inside the cottage. They were. There was a false mirror. Two-way. The camera and photographer were hidden behind them in the next room.’

Macready lit a cigarette and took a pull on it before answering.

‘So you’re saying Iain, or someone connected to the cottage or estate was in on it?’

‘According to Downey, yes. It was Iain. He set the whole thing up to raise cash for some reason he can’t tell Daddy the Duke about. Someone’s leaning heavily on Downey for money and maybe Iain’s under the same pressure. He guessed you would pay anything to stop the photographs falling into the wrong hands. In other words, anyone else’s hands other than your own.’

‘You’ve got proof of this?’ asked Fraser.

‘Downey admitted it to me. And trust me, Paul Downey has neither the brains nor the balls to come up with this on his own. Now, I can’t really knock seven shades out of the son of a peer of the realm, but if you want me to talk to Iain, I’ll do it.’ I tapped the envelope in my pocket. ‘And you have a little credit with me.’

‘What do you think, Mr Macready?’ Fraser asked. I could see the American actor was deep in thought. It was not a nice prospect, knowing that you had been deliberately set up and used.

‘What would your advice be, Mr Fraser?’ he said eventually and a little wearily.

Fraser made the type of face lawyers make to tell you that they’re thinking and shouldn’t be interrupted, because they’re thinking at premium rate. ‘I suggest we leave it, for the moment at least, Mr Macready. We have the photographs and the negatives, which can now be destroyed. It should be the end of the matter. And given the status and influence of Iain’s father, it could be a lot more trouble than it’s worth.’

‘Sleeping dogs?’

‘That would be my inclination,’ said Fraser. ‘For the moment, at least. Mr Lennox, may we feel free to call on your services in this matter, should we change our position?’

‘Feel free, as I said.’

‘I would echo Mr Macready’s sentiments, Mr Lennox: you have dealt with this case with utmost speed and efficiency. I hope that I may retain your services in the future, on other matters.’

‘It would be my pleasure,’ I said and shook his hand, somehow managing not to add you sententious little prick. I find it’s best not to insult people who hand you large sums of cash.

Leonora Bryson shook my hand too, with the warmth of an undertaker. That sure was one mixed-up lady.