Craig Russell - The Deep Dark Sleep

Instinct took over and I sped off, taking the first turning off Provan’s street, hopefully before the neighbours who were coming running from their homes spotted my car or, worse still, my licence plate.

I cursed as I drove. I still didn’t know exactly whom I was cursing, but I cursed colourfully and loudly. Once I was in open countryside, I pulled over to the side of the road and checked the Atlantic for damage. Nothing much, apart from the cracked window on the driver’s side. I brushed what fragments of green-painted wood were left on the roof and bonnet and drove off at speed.

Into Glasgow.

I was left waiting in the Western Infirmary’s Casualty Department for four hours before a doctor deigned to see me. He tutted and sighed until I glowered at him with sufficient menace to change his attitude. Then he and a pretty nurse stitched me back up. I smiled at the nurse while the doctor worked. It is one of the paradoxes of being a man, or maybe just of being a Lennox, that you can be battered and bleeding, you can have just seen someone blasted and burned to death, you can have the most dangerous villains hunting you down, but somehow you still take time to make a move on pretty nurses.

Like the suicidal spawning journey of wild salmon, it was one of the wonders of Nature.

I called Fraser from a pay ’phone in the hospital.

‘We need to talk,’ I said firmly.

‘I’ve been somewhat expecting your call, Mr Lennox. I agree, we do have to talk. I do so hope we can resolve matters between us.’

‘In that case you’ll understand that I’d like to meet somewhere public. The Finnieston Vehicular Ferry, tomorrow morning, the first sailing at six-thirty, if that’s not too early for a lawyer.’

‘I’ll be there. I’ll bring a small bonus for you, Mr Lennox, just as a goodwill gesture. I don’t see that we need to rock the boat.’

I wondered if Fraser was making a joke about the ferry, but decided that that kind of humour would be more alien to him than a little green man from Mars. I hung up.

I went to the hospital canteen and had a coffee, more to wash down the antibiotics I had been given to fight infection than anything else. I noticed my hand shook as I held the cup and the image of Provan’s burning silhouette kept pushing its way to the front of my mind.

After I’d calmed down a little, I made my way out to the car park. There were two men waiting at the Atlantic. One was a wiry, hard-looking Teddy Boy. The other was sitting on the wing of my Atlantic and I was seriously worried about permanent damage to the suspension. He stood up as I approached and the Atlantic bounced.

I knew them both.

‘Hello, Mr Lennox,’ said the giant, in a baritone that bordered on the bottom of the human hearing range. ‘We’ve been re-quest-ed to furr-nush you with conney-vey-ance to see Mr Sneddon.’

‘I was kind of expecting that, Twinkle,’ I said. ‘I see you have Singer with you. Hello, Singer.’

Singer nodded. Which was all he could do. I thought of quipping ‘I see I’m in for the silent treatment’, but joking about Singer’s affliction was something I never did, for some reason I didn’t fully understand.

Singer was mute. He was also the meanest, most vicious life-taker you could encounter. But I owed him: he had saved my life once and, as far as I could tell, he had some kind of regard for me, as did Twinkletoes. I liked Twinkletoes. He was a great one for self-improvement and worked tirelessly at improving his word-power, mainly through study of the Reader’s Digest . The funny thing was that, despite this, Twinkletoes managed somehow to speak English, his native tongue, as if it were a second language.

This endearing image of Twinkletoes was the one I tried to keep at the forefront of my thinking as he escorted me into the back of the Jaguar they had parked behind my Atlantic. The alternative image was of the psychopathic torturer who handed you your toes one by one while reciting ‘This Little Piggy’.

I looked back at my Atlantic. I had stashed my gun in the boot before heading into Casualty.

‘Need to get something, Mr Lennox?’ asked Twinkletoes.

‘No …’ I said thoughtfully. I just had to play this hand with the cards I’d been dealt. ‘No, it’s okay, Twinkle.’

Singer drove and Twinkletoes sat in the back with me, which meant I was squeezed into one corner.

‘Still doing a lot of work for Mr Sneddon, Twinkle?’ I asked conversationally.

‘ Oh cunt-rare …’ said Twinkle. ‘That’s French for on the contrary, by the way … Mr Sneddon is currently in a process of commercial diversy-fey-cation . But he’s finding other things for me to do and I’m still on full pay, but.’

‘That’s good …’ I said, hoping this trip fell under the category other things . I watched out the window. We were heading for the docks. Maybe Sneddon’s corporate office, which would be a good sign. But we took several turns into the quayside and were soon surrounded by the black hulks of quayside warehouses. Not so good.

Twinkletoes fell silent and stopped smiling. Which was worse. We pulled up at a warehouse shed and Singer got out, opened the doors, then drove inside. It was dark inside and it took me a while to adjust to the gloom. Twinkle got out, walked round to my side and hoisted me out by the arm. I was frogmarched past some empty office compartments, through double doors and into the vast hall of the main warehouse area. It was completely empty except for the heavy steel chains that dangled like jungle creepers from the roof, and for the single tubular steel office chair in the middle of the space.

Willie Sneddon, dressed in a sharp suit as always and with a camel coat draped over his shoulders, was sitting on the chair. He nodded across to Twinkletoes and a train hit me in the kidneys.

‘Sorry, Mr Lennox,’ said Twinkletoes genuinely as I vomited up my breakfast. And my spleen. Yellow dots danced in front of my eyes and I was only vaguely aware of being dragged across the floor and something cold and hard being wrapped tight around my wrists. I was suddenly hoisted up and my feet left the ground. It took me a moment or two to realize I was suspended by one of the chain hoists I’d seen dangling from the roof. I felt a trickle of blood run up my arm to my shoulder. There go my stitches again, I thought, and wondered if it would be better to get a zip fitted the next time.

Sneddon shrugged off his camel coat, stood up and came over to me.

‘Now this ,’ he said with an irritated tone, ‘is exactly the kind of shite I’ve been trying to put behind me.’

‘If there’s anything I can do to help you put it behind you,’ I said through my teeth, ‘just let me know.’

‘And that,’ he said wearily, ‘is the kind of wisecrack that makes you a pain in the arse.’ He nodded to someone out of my sight behind me, presumably Twinkletoes. Another train hit me in the soft part of my back. It was Twinkletoes.

‘I’ve given you a lot of work over the years, Lennox. I know that you think you’re too good to work for me or Cohen or Murphy any more, but this shitty little business you run … it wouldn’t have got off the ground without us. And I’ve always treated you fair, haven’t I?’

‘Generally speaking yes,’ I said, trying to focus on his face and ease the pain in my arms. ‘But I have to say that this current little tete-a-tete is stretching both our working relationship and my arms from their sockets. So why don’t we cut to the chase?’

‘Fair enough,’ said Sneddon. ‘You know why you’re here?’

‘I’m just trying to get to the bottom of this Strachan thing, is all. And I know you have more to do with it than you’ve admitted. I know who you are. I mean, I know who you were …’