Craig Russell - The Deep Dark Sleep

‘So it was Strachan?’

‘When I read about the first, then the second death, I began to put it all together. Then Billy Dunbar told me about seeing Joe during the war. He also told me that he’d seen Joe hobnobbing with the Duke of Strathlorne. What Billy didn’t tell you is that he saw Joe twice more, after the war. Both times on the estate meeting with the Duke. I worked out that Joe had been living off his half of the proceeds of the robberies and had set up this identity. Or stolen it, I suppose you could say. Every time the Duke has special guests, he arranges a shooting party, so Billy got advance notice of them coming. I told Downey in turn.’

‘Mr Sneddon,’ I said tentatively. ‘Do you know about Dunbar?’

‘Know what?’

I told him about my second trip up to see Dunbar, about finding him and his wife, about my chase through the forest, about recognizing the older man from the photograph. Joe Strachan.

Sneddon looked stunned by the news.

‘Billy was a good bloke. A good friend.’

‘Your father killed him. Your father killed a lot of people, some of them innocents who just got in the way.’

‘Listen, Lennox. Joe Strachan is exactly the person I described to you. All of that was true. I saw him in action, up close. If I had stayed with him, I’d have turned out the same, maybe worse. I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of: doing that gamekeeper was one of them. But now, I’m trying to put that all behind me. Joe Strachan was no father to me. He used me like he used everyone else. Like he used my ma. It’s because of him I ended up in that fucking orphanage and everything that happened to me there. The only reason he left me that cash was because he didn’t want to kill me if he could avoid it. But if he felt it was necessary, he would have put a bullet in my head the same as everyone else. If you think I was trying to find dear old daddy out of sentimentality, then you’re wrong. I needed to know if he was out there or not. So I could stop looking over my shoulder.’

I nodded. Sneddon had used the same expression that Provan had used. Right before he was flambeed in his Morris Minor.

‘So what are you saying?’ I asked.

‘If you do or say anything to link me to the Empire Exhibition robbery, I’ll make sure you’re dead within the day. Other than that, I don’t care what you do. If you bring Joe Strachan down and can do it without involving me, then you do so with my blessing.’

I lost count of the number of times Twinkletoes apologized to me on the way back to the hospital car park.

‘It’s okay, Twinkle. Like you said, it was just business. Nothing personal,’ I assured him, while struggling with the concept of how having someone ram their fist halfway through your internal organs was less than personal.

I decided that I should check my wound before I drove out of the hospital car park. Although the gymnastics in the warehouse had made it bleed some, the stitches seemed intact and I decided against going back into Casualty. In any case, I had no idea how I would have explained damaging it again in such a short space of time.

I drove back to my digs. There was no Jowett Javelin parked outside and Fiona White came out when she heard me at the door.

‘How are you, Mr Lennox?’ she said awkwardly and formally. She was wearing a lilac print blouse and I could smell that smell of lavender from her neck.

‘I’m fine, Mrs White. And you?’

‘Just fine. I thought …’ She frowned earnestly. ‘Well, I thought I ought to let you know, we’ve agreed that James will come round once or twice a week to take the girls out. We decided that it would be good for them. And, to be honest, it gives me some time to myself. He is their uncle after all.’

‘As I told you before, you don’t have to justify yourself to me, Fiona,’ I said. ‘So long as you and the girls are happy.’ I smiled wearily. I was tired. And sore.

‘Right …’ she said. ‘I, er … I just wanted you to know that that is all there is to it. I get the idea that you perhaps thought there was more to it. That there was some kind of … em …’

‘It’s fine, Fiona, I get the idea. Thanks for putting me in the picture. It’s important that we know where we all stand. Do you mind if I am equally unequivocal?’ I asked.

‘Of course not,’ she said.

I pushed her against the wall more roughly than I had intended. She looked startled, frightened even, and she made a half-hearted attempt to push me away as I fastened my mouth on hers and kissed her the way I’d been waiting to kiss her for two years. And it was good. Boy, was it good. And she kissed me back.

When I let her go she was kind of slumped against the wall, staring at me. But she didn’t slap me, she didn’t scream, she didn’t give me notice to quit.

‘Like you said, I just feel it’s important that we all know where we stand, Mrs White. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and freshen up. It’s been a tough day and I need to go out this evening on business. But I need you to know that I am happy to continue this discussion any time you feel like it.’

She said nothing and I left her standing there, leaning against the stairwell wall, and went up to my rooms to clean up. I heard one of the girls call to her and the door close as she went back into her flat.

I stopped off at a transport cafe on the way down to Largs and ate something that was described as a steak with the same accuracy as Hemingway was sometimes described as literature. The tea was strong enough to tan leather but it was hot and wet and it did something to revive me.

I called in to see Paul Downey and he just about jumped out of his skin when I opened the caravan door. I had brought some groceries and newspapers and sat and chatted with him for a while in that way that people who have absolutely nothing in common chat.

On the way out, the woman who owned the caravan park came trotting out of the sandstone villa. As she trotted, her breasts bounced unencumbered by support beneath her blouse and I imagined a brassiere hastily removed and stuffed behind a cushion before she had come out.

‘Ah, Mr Watson,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Have you been visiting your friend?’

‘I have, Mrs Davison. He’s very much enjoying his stay here.’

‘Oh that’s good. I’m so pleased.’ She moved in close to me and I got a lungful of cheap, overdone perfume. ‘While you’re here, could I offer you a cup of tea?’

I looked across at the villa. If I went in there, I knew no tea would be drunk. But she was attractive and her cheap perfume was working on me and the taste of Fiona White was still on my lips and I was messed up and confused and bruised all over from everything that had happened so I thought, what the hell?

‘I’d love to, Mrs Davison,’ I said and let her loop her arm through mine and lead me to the house.

‘Please,’ she said coquettishly. ‘Call me Ethel …’

Do I have to? I thought. Do I really have to?

It was difficult to believe, but the Finnieston Vehicular Ferry had not, in fact, been designed by William Heath Robinson. When I had seen it for the first time, it struck me as the most bizarre piece of navigational engineering I had ever seen: somewhere between the skeleton of a Mississippi river-boat and a giant, floating hamster cage. The reason for its unusual appearance was actually its ingeniousness. It could operate throughout the day and evening, whether it was high or low tide — and here the Clyde was tidal — because it had a steam-driven elevating car deck that could be adjusted to the exact height of the quay it docked at, irrespective of the water level at that time.

When I arrived at the ferry next morning there was no smog in the city, but a thickish fog skulked low on the river without the conviction to rise up over the banks and into the streets. The fog turned the improbable superstructure of the ferry into something even more black and gothic. Mine was the only car on the first crossing of the day and there was only a handful of foot passengers. Fraser boarded at the last minute and walked over to where I stood, looking down at the fog fuming on the dark surface of the Clyde.