Craig Russell - The Deep Dark Sleep

I eased myself painfully to my feet and rubbed at my wrists. ‘Let me guess,’ I said. ‘You’re going to tell me I got everything else wrong.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Well, everything seems to fit: you tell Dunbar to spin me that line about seeing Strachan during the war … a smokescreen. And then you hire an ex-commando to warn me off, but when that fails, you tell him to kill me. But then there’s something that doesn’t fit.’

‘What’s that?’

‘That old razor scar of yours. A distinguishing mark, you might say. There’s a frightened little queer called Paul Downey who specializes in dodgy photography. He’s persuaded to do a blackmail job to pay off a loan shark when suddenly a knight in shining Bentley turns up and offers him a simple job, nothing illegal on the face of it, and in turn he gets an unreasonable amount of money. This rich knight calls himself Mr Paisley and he’s a flash dresser but has a razor scar on his right cheek, just like yours. By the way, I guess that you inherited your father’s taste for expensive tailoring. So you are the Lad, and you’re “Mr Paisley”?’

‘It’s your story, Lennox. Go on …’

’So there’s these two facts, added to the fact that I’m still breathing, that screw up my theories. Why would you pay someone to take photographs of some guy who we all think is Strachan, if you know for sure Strachan is dead?’

Sneddon took out a gold cigarette case and offered me a smoke. I took it. He lit us both up. ‘So what’s your take on it now?’

‘I don’t know why,’ I said, ‘but you needed to convince yourself that Joe Strachan was dead or not. You got a tip-off that he was going to be up meeting with the Duke of Strathlorne on his estate and you know that Downey’s going to be up there because you own the loan shark, and therefore the loan, that Downey had to pay off. You knew about the whole John Macready blackmail thing.’

Sneddon shook his head. ‘It was a mad fucking idea. They were never going to get away with it. But when I heard that they were using a cottage on the estate, it was too good an opportunity to miss.’

‘It was you who told George Meldrum to recommend me to the lawyer Fraser, wasn’t it?’

‘Aye. I knew you’d clear it up in no time and they’d pay you over the odds. I needed that whole thing tied up before someone found out about the photographs I hired Downey to take.’

‘So you didn’t put anyone else on it. You weren’t behind the killing of Downey’s boyfriend and the fire at the tenement?’

‘No. I couldn’t put anybody onto that. And I had no need to have them killed. You were my man on the case, even if you didn’t know it at the time. But then you got yourself involved with the twins and finding out who was sending the money. You’ve brought all of this shite down upon yourself, Lennox. Don’t blame me.’

‘I’m not. But I’m asking you for some straight answers.’

‘Then ask.’

‘Okay …’ I reached into my jacket pocket and took out the photograph I’d gotten from Downey. ‘In that case, in the name of Christ and all that’s holy, will you please, please tell me … is this man your father, Gentleman Joe Strachan, or not?’

Sneddon took a long, slow pull on his cigarette and smiled maliciously as he let the smoke go, savouring my frustration.

‘Yes.’

‘You were right about us all meeting up at the Bennie Railplane,’ said Sneddon. ‘And about everybody being worked up about the dead copper. We weren’t supposed to talk to each other, see each other until the meet. But the other three had got together and had planned out their own wee play. I reckoned Joe and me were to get it there and then, but there had been coppers at Maryhill Station and I had to take the long way round, meaning I turned up late.

‘They must’ve had Joe at gunpoint in the hangar, because, as I was getting close, I heard gunfire and people shouting. One of the bastards had been lying in wait for me. I was going to get two barrels in the face, but I was too far away. I wasn’t armed, so I made a run for it. They fired a couple of shots at me but couldn’t risk any more. The coppers were running around all over Glasgow and there was always the chance some gamekeeper would think there were poachers in the area. I went home, got tooled up and got Billy Dunbar to come back with me. When we got there they had gone.’

‘So who was dead if it wasn’t Strachan? Mike Murphy?’

‘You see,’ said Sneddon, ‘that’s the thing … I had expected to find Joe’s body, but there was nothing. Not Joe, not Mike Murphy, nobody. But there was blood. A lot of it. Someone had taken a breath stopper, there was no doubt about that.’

‘So you didn’t get the money after all?’

‘Aye, I did. Joe must have cottoned on to the fact that the others were likely to turn on us. They got nothing. I got sent a postcard, through the fucking Royal Mail, believe it or not. He had balls, did Joe. He must have posted it on the way to the robbery. He must have known even then. Anyway, this card was posted in Glasgow but it was a postcard of Largs, down on the coast.’

I tried not to shudder at the mention of the exact location where I’d stashed Paul Downey.

‘This postcard had a picture of the Pencil on it,’ Sneddon continued. ‘You know, the monument to the Battle of Largs when we kicked out the Vikings or some shite. There was nothing written on the card, but I knew that Joe kept a boat down there at the marina next to the Pencil. He had it under a different name, so the coppers didn’t know about it or could search it. I was the only other person who knew about it and the identity he kept it under.’

‘Henry Williamson …’ I volunteered. Sneddon stared at me in amazement.

‘I have my moments,’ I explained.

‘Anyway,’ continued Sneddon. ‘I went down to the boat and right enough, stuffed under a bench inside, were two suitcases full of money. So much money I sat there shaking. Shaking like a fucking leaf.’

‘All of it?’

‘Half of it. And not just half of the Exhibition job, half of all the Triple Crown robberies. I sat there and counted it all out. I reckoned it was the safest place to do it.’

‘That was a lot of money.’

‘Just like you said, enough money to change your fucking life forever. You know, Lennox, no one has ever known about that money. Now you do, and I don’t know what to do about that.’

‘You had your chance a minute ago.’

‘I could still shut you up for good.’ Sneddon sighed. ‘You won’t talk. You know that it would end up fatal for you. But, more than that, you still think you’re some kind of colonial fucking officer and gentleman. You’ve been rolling around in the shite like the rest of us, but none of it seems to stick to you. You won’t tell because it would go against your code.’

‘I wasn’t aware I had one,’ I said. ‘What do you think happened to the other half?’

‘At the time I had no idea. I thought that maybe Joe had stashed it somewhere else to halve the risk, and maybe the others had tortured it out of him, but I doubted that. He would have spat in their fucking eye and taken a bullet first. I just assumed that he had hidden it somewhere good and the bastards never got it. But then, as time went on, I began to wonder if he had survived the shoot-out in the hangar and had taken the other half for himself and was hiding out somewhere.’

‘But you did kill the other three, didn’t you?’ I asked. ‘Bentley, McCoy and Provan, who you blew up today.’

‘As a matter of fact, I didn’t. I don’t give a shit whether you believe me or not, but I didn’t. I wanted to. I wanted to hunt them down, one by one, and kill them slow. But you have to remember that no one knew who I was. I had all of this cash and started to build my little empire. Vengeance had to take a back seat. Bear in mind no one could connect me to a robbery in which a copper was murdered. I couldn’t put my head above the parapet.’