Craig Russell - The Deep Dark Sleep

When I came back up to the main hall of the bank, Archie was talking to MacGregor, the Chief Clerk, who organized the run. MacGregor was the usual young fogey you found working in a bank — a twenty-five-year-old striving hard for middle age — and Archie made a point of befuddling him with humour at every opportunity.

Archie looked over to me with his Alastair Sim eyes as he signed the manifest log, his truncheon hanging from his wrist like a handbag.

‘There’s a bit of confusion here, boss,’ he said, without a hint of a smile. ‘Mr MacGregor here says the money is to go to the yard as usual, but I thought you said this week we were off to Barbados with it.’

‘Ignore Archie, Mr MacGregor,’ I said. ‘He’s having you on. Barbados has an extradition treaty, we’re off to Spain.’

‘This amount of money is no joking matter, Mr Lennox,’ MacGregor said to me over spectacles pushed halfway down his nose, yet another misguided affectation of middle-class middle-age. ‘You’ll telephone as usual to confirm delivery?’

I said I would and signalled for Archie to stand guard on the street while I loaded the back of the van with the sacks.

It was the usual, thankfully uneventful trip: me driving, Archie sitting lugubriously with the mail sacks in the back. We delivered the wages to the shipyard office and I ’phoned MacGregor to confirm delivery. On the way back, Archie sat in the front with me.

‘I know you’ve been hit hard by losing the watchman job,’ I said. ‘Listen, Archie, things have been picking up with the business and I could do with some help. It wouldn’t be full time, not for a while at least, but if things keep going the way they’re going, it could well become full time. You interested?’

Archie looked at me with his big, mournful eyes. ‘Would it be the same kind of stuff that I’ve been doing for you lately?’

‘Yes … divorce cases, security work, missing persons. Wearing out shoe leather and knocking on doors, that kind of thing.’

The truth was I was already using Archie more and more for divorce cases. Divorce evidence in court always sounded better coming from a retired police officer, added to which Archie’s perpetually gloomy demeanour seemed to give it added gravitas. There was also the fact that I got decidedly nervous in the witness box, something lawyers are wont to pick up on. Truth was I was worried that some bright young counsel would start to call my character as a witness into question. And my character, or at least my history, was best left unquestioned.

‘I see …’ Archie leaned back in the passenger seat and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘I was considering the chairmanship of ICI… but I suppose I could fit your jobs in. Do I get an expense account, superannuation and luncheon vouchers?’

‘You’ll get ten shillings an hour plus expenses. I’ll leave your pension fund in ICI’s hands …’

‘I shall consult with the board, of course,’ he said, hooking his thumbs in his waistcoat, ‘but in the meantime you may assume my answer to be in the affirmative.’

‘Good. I’ve got two cases on right now that I need help with. One of them is to do with Gentleman Joe Strachan and the Empire Exhibition robbery. Jock Ferguson said that you would probably have been in the force at the time.’

‘Aye … I was that. I remember it well. Bad business.’ Impossibly, his expression became more doleful. ‘Very bad business.’

‘What happened? I mean, how much do you know?’

‘Most of what there is to know. Every detail, as did every copper in Glasgow. We had the whole story drummed into us over and over again. I take it you know all about the Exhibition?’

I nodded. ‘I believe it was really something …’

‘It certainly was. The Empire Exhibition was a big thing for Glasgow back in Thirty-eight,’ Archie continued. ‘ The big thing. I was there, with my wife. They built the whole exhibition in Bellahouston Park, but you would not have believed you were in the middle of Glasgow. There were towers, pavilions, a freak-show, a funfair … Oh aye, and a giant model of Victoria Falls, a hundred feet wide. There was even an entire Highland village, complete with a castle and a loch. Aye, it was some undertaking. Even your lot — the Canadians, I mean — had a pavilion, with Mounties and everything. There were these women — they called them the Giraffe-necked Women — and everybody went to see them. They’d come from Burma and had all of these rings around their necks, one added a year, until they had necks a foot long …’

Archie paused, lost for a moment in memories, a faint wistfulness flickering disturbingly across his pall-bearer’s countenance.

‘Yep,’ I said, ‘really sounds like something.’

‘It was right after the Depression, of course,’ Archie said, ‘and they thought it would do a lot of good for Glasgow, but the truth was Glasgow was about to get back to full swing anyway because of the war. And you couldn’t afford to go into any of the pavilions … at least, not if you were an ordinary Glaswegian like we were. They charged you a bob just to get through the gates. Even the kiddies had to pay sixpence. It was all supposed to be about the future but it looked to the missus and me like a future we wouldn’t afford. There were tearooms and the like, but the Atlantic Restaurant was beyond the reach of everybody except the seriously well-off. Like most people, Mavis and I spent most of the time walking around and looking at the pavilions from the outside. Do you know, we couldn’t even sit down? They charged you tuppence for a deck chair, and your ticket was only good for three hours.’

We reached Charing Cross Mansions and the garage from which I had hired the van. I pulled up outside behind where I’d parked my Atlantic, and listened to Archie while he finished his story.

‘The weather was shite,’ he continued. ‘The worst summer for rain anyone could remember, and in Glasgow that’s saying something. The Exhibition was nearly a complete wash-out, literally. But it really was something. They said that it was the future, the way things would look. All these fancy buildings. Like the ones they have in Hollywood.’

‘Art deco.’

‘Wouldn’t know. Anyway, despite the rain, the exhibition took in a fortune in cash — at all of the attractions, the restaurants and events and so forth — and the money was transferred back to the bank in the city centre. The same kind of run as we’ve just done, so to speak, but in reverse. These boys had a reinforced van, though — armoured, like. There was some kind of arrangement where the armoured car picked up the exhibition takings on its way back along Glasgow Road from a textile wholesaler out at Paisley and then back to the main bank in the city centre. They had staff working the night shift there to lock it up in the main safe, instead of it being dropped into the night safe.’

‘So there was more than the Exhibition takings in the van?’

‘Aye. But how the robbers knew that was a mystery. The CID reckoned that the robbers had help or information somewhere along the way. An inside job. But all of the staff were interrogated and the CID came up with nothing. Anyway, the Exhibition had closed for the day and the van had just done the pick-up when it was ambushed by these armed men. Five of them. The driver and the guard played along, guessing that these boys meant business after one of the robbers gave the driver a doing, but there was actually a police office as part of the Exhibition. It was supposed to be empty at that time, but the young PC who had been on duty during the day had been held up for some reason.’

‘Gourlay?’

‘Yes, Charlie Gourlay … he was on his way out of the Exhibition when he walked right into the robbery taking place. The driver of the van said in his statement that the tallest of the robbers let him have it with both barrels without a second’s hesitation. Cold blooded murder.’