Craig Russell - The Deep Dark Sleep

‘I suppose you remember the Exhibition?’ he asked.

‘Before my time. I only came to Glasgow after I was demobbed. But I believe it was quite something.’

‘Aye. It was. They poured tons of cash into it. They were trying to prove something; just what it was they were trying to prove is beyond me. Maybe it was that Glasgow had taken such a kicking in the Depression and they thought that trying to convince us all that everything wasn’t all messed up after all and we weren’t going to spend the rest of our lives in squalor. The other thing was that everybody knew back in Thirty-eight — aye, well everybody except Neville Chamberlain, that is — that Hitler was going to keep stirring the shite until it spilled out into another war like the Great War. All this shite about the Glory of the Empire … I think they were trying to kid us on that everything was going to get better and stay the same at the same time. That we would always have colonies and dominions with Glasgow at the heart of it all.

‘Whatever the reason, they built this entire fake world on Bellahouston Park. Most of it looked like that H.G. Wells film, The Shape of Things to Come , while the rest of it looked like bloody Brigadoon or some bollocks like that — some kind of imaginary, romantic Scotland with a loch, a castle and a Highland village. Anyway, Joe Strachan had read up all about it right at the very beginning when it was just being planned. He worked out that there would be thousands in workers’ wages every week and even more in cash takings from the public. That was his big thing — his special gift — he could always see where the big money, the best takings, could be. No one else had his eye for it. He gathered us together and talked us through the Triple Crown.’

‘You, this guy Murphy, Bentley, McCoy, and the so-called “Lad”. What was his name?’

‘I don’t know. I never knew his name, never knew his face. And when you ask if Murphy, Bentley and McCoy were there, I know now that they were, but at the time they could have been anybody. None of us knew anything about the others. We all knew what Strachan looked like and he knew our faces, because he had recruited us, but he made us meet up at the old Bennie Railplane track, up by Milngavie.’

‘Why there?’

‘It was abandoned but somewhere we could all find. I also think that Strachan liked a bit of drama. If there was one thing he did have going against him, it was that he was a flash bastard. Anyway, there was this disused building that had been part of the original station they had built. We were told to turn up there, fifteen minutes apart. When we did, there was this guy on the door with a balaclava hiding his face.’

‘The Lad?’

‘Aye. That’s how he was introduced by Strachan later. Anyway, he was armed and gave each of us a balaclava to wear before we entered the building.’

‘So he saw your faces?’

‘Aye. But we never saw his and we didn’t see each other’s. Strachan said that it meant no one could identify any of the gang, other than Strachan himself, if they got caught. And it was made clear that it didn’t matter what prison we were locked up in, if we fingered Strachan, we wouldn’t last a month.

‘So, anyway, we all gather there, wearing these balaclavas and calling each other by an animal name: I was Fox and the others were Wolf, Bear and Tiger. Load of shite, but that was the way Strachan ran things. Like it was the fucking army. And we couldn’t complain, because it worked. Strachan then set to going through what we were going to do. He had four smaller robberies planned, but these were just practice runs, and to get funds to finance the bigger robberies. All he told us about these bigger robberies was that the first two would be the usual type of job, but on a much bigger scale than anyone had ever seen. But the third was going to be something so different, so unexpected, that they wouldn’t know what had hit them and the police wouldn’t know where to start looking. Oh, there was one thing we did know about each other — that none of us had any kind of serious form that would make us suspects.’

‘Did he tell you then that it was going to be the Empire Exhibition?’

‘Naw. I got the feeling that the first four jobs were more than practice or to raise funds. I think he was testing us out, to see how we worked as a team; to see if he could trust us. It was only after that that he gave us the details of the Triple Crown. But there was a lot more weird stuff. Every time we met, it was up at the Bennie Railplane, and every time we had to turn up at different times so that we didn’t see each other without our masks on. I really didn’t see how we could keep it up. Even with the test jobs, we were all masked up and in the back of a van. We were told that anyone who took his mask off and let the others see his face would be shot there and then. And if you knew Gentleman Joe Strachan, you’d believe it. It was then that it started to dawn on me: the real reason for the masks and the codenames and not being allowed to talk to each other. Strachan and the Lad were tight; they knew each other; the rest of us were useful if we did what we were told, but if we started to talk to each other, we could maybe plan a double-cross. Divide and fucking conquer, that’s what it was.

‘But we were happy. We got a big slice each from the practice jobs and we had all seen how Strachan’s planning worked better than any boss we’d had before. And we knew that if we pulled off the Triple Crown, we’d never have to work again. But like I said, it was all pretty weird. For three months we had to meet up every Tuesday night and Strachan would drive us up into the fucking wilds and make us do all of these exercises and combat practice. Again, like in the army. Anyway, one night we were disturbed by this gamekeeper, who obviously thought we were night-time poachers. He approached us, waving his shotgun at us, but Strachan put on his army officer palaver and before you knew it this poacher was tugging at his forelock and calling him sir. But the Lad had been on lookout and, while Strachan was talking to the gamekeeper, the Lad came up behind him, completely silent, and cut his fucking throat. In the bat of an eye and without breaking his step.’

‘I see …’ I said, casting my mind back to a more recently deceased gamekeeper with a slashed throat. ‘What happened to the body?’

‘We took it back in the van. What happened to it after that I don’t know: Strachan and the Lad disposed of it, I suppose. But on the way back, Strachan stripped the body and left the keeper’s shotgun and all the clothes that weren’t blood-stained by the side of this fast flowing stretch of river. I said to Strachan that it didn’t make sense, that no one would believe that the gamekeeper had gone for a midnight dip in a dangerous stretch of river, never to be found. In any case, I says, it’s not like the sea … anyone drowned in the river would be washed up somewhere downstream.

‘Strachan says to me that that doesn’t matter. That the less sense it makes the more of a mystery the gamekeeper’s disappearance will be. Country people love a mystery, he says, and they’ll make up all kinds of stories about the gamekeeper running off with a woman or crap like that. No one will think about it being a simple murder because he disturbed someone in the woods.

‘After that, things got tense. Me and the other boys had been shaken up by the way the Lad had done the gamekeeper in cold blood. I started to think that maybe the loot from the big jobs would only be split two ways and the rest of us could end up taking a nap at the bottom of the Clyde.’

‘Did you do anything about it?’ I asked.

‘I’ll get to that,’ Provan answered me impatiently. ‘So we do the first two of the big three and everything goes to plan. But there’s no talk of a divvy-up of the takings. We’re told we have to wait until after the Exhibition Robbery. Then, says Strachan, we’ll get everything that’s coming to us.