And the duo across the desk really did remind me of Stan and Ollie.
I had already given a full written statement, in detail, but they made me go through everything over and over again. I accounted for my time down to the last minute, including toilet breaks.
It was the usual police procedure. A big lie is easy: saying you didn’t commit a crime you had committed is a granite block of a lie that no amount of chipping away at will break. But get the tiniest detail wrong — change the brand of the cigarettes you say you bought at a certain place at a certain time, or who was standing in front of you in the bus queue — and that tiny crack in your carefully constructed story will bring the whole thing down on you. Coppers were never particularly bright, but you didn’t have to be; all you needed to be was methodical, patient and take notes.
The fat copper may not have introduced himself or his partner, but I knew who he was. Inspector Shuggie Dunlop.
Shuggie was one of those strange Scottish diminutive forms that was actually longer and infinitely uglier than the original name, Hugh. And Shuggie Dunlop was infinitely uglier than his name. A big man in all three dimensions, he was clearly a keen collector of chins and, in keeping with his surname, spare tyres. Jacketless, the roll of blubber that spilled over his belt and strained his cheap white shirt seemed completely to encircle him, like a built-in life- ring.
It had become clear from the outset that I was not being treated as a witness, but a suspect. This time, no one had called me Mr Lennox when I had arrived at St Andrew’s Square, and Dunlop was engaging me in a battle of wits. Which, to be honest, was kind of like being challenged to an arm-wrestling contest by Shirley Temple.
The first thing I had asked when I’d been taken into custody was that I be allowed to get a change of clothes. The fine worsted of my suit trousers had absorbed Ellis’s blood like blotting paper. What hadn’t soaked into the material as a red-black stain had dried and crusted on the surface of the cloth and I doubted if any cleaner could restore the suit to wearable. Which was annoying, because it was one of my bespokes and cost me far more than I should ever have paid for tailoring.
But it wasn’t my sartorial sensibilities that had been my main reason for wanting to get out of the suit: it was a skin I needed to shed to lose the taint of death. Maybe then, the image of Ellis’s face as he stared up at me, letting go of my collar and his life, would stop pushing its way to the front of my mind, jostling with the image of Sylvia Dewar’s broken skull.
Once more, I felt Canada beckoning. But this time it seemed to beckon from much further away.
As it turned out, the police were only too happy to assist me get out of my stained suit. In fact they insisted on it. I was put in a custody cell and ordered to strip down to my underwear and they took everything — coat, jacket, trousers, hat, shirt, tie, shoes — and placed each item in a separate canvas bag, labelled it and took everything away.
They refused my request that I be allowed to pick up fresh stuff from my hotel and instead I was given a neatly folded stack of clothes to change into. It was an interesting get-up: a collarless grey-white shirt and a prison uniform of battledress type jacket and formless trousers. It was scratchy, uncomfortable and smelled as if it could have done with another couple of runs through the laundry. The ensemble was rounded off with a pair of laceless, army-style boots, the leather of which was dull and scuffed.
The prison uniform instantly gave the interrogator an advantage: dressed in that outfit, even I started to believe I might be guilty.
‘You realize you could hang for this Lennox, don’t you?’ Dunlop leaned forward, resting his fat elbows on the wooden desk between us.
‘Really?’ I asked amiably. ‘I would have thought that there was a tiny obstacle in the way of that — and I know it’s a technical point, really — but I didn’t kill Andrew Ellis.’
I was smart-mouthing to push for a reaction, even if it was to come in the form of a fat fist. I was a little disconcerted when I didn’t get one. Dunlop gave a quiet, contemptuous laugh that quivered his fleshy face.
‘Well, I say you did. And it’s not just Andrew Ellis you’ll hang for…’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You’re here for more than the one killing, Lennox. You thought you were going to get away free and — ’
Dunlop was interrupted by the door behind me swinging open. When I turned, I was relieved to see Jock Ferguson framed in the doorway, although the timing of his appearance troubled me. Dunlop had just been about to give away more than he had gotten out of me and the unpleasant suspicion crossed my mind that Ferguson had perhaps been listening to Dunlop’s questioning from a neighbouring room and had judged it was time to intervene.
‘Jock…’ I said. ‘Am I glad to see you.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t say the same, Lennox.’
I didn’t like the look on Ferguson’s face one little bit. He nodded to Laurel and Hardy and they stood up wordlessly and left the room. Taking the chair vacated by Dunlop’s bulk, Ferguson took a packet of cigarettes out, lit one and slid the pack and lighter across the table to me.
The room was lit by a couple of neon strips, suspended by wires and thin, painted chains from the ceiling. The walls were distempered in two tones: dark green to waist-height, then a buttery cream above. It was a bleak, stark room and, somehow, Jock Ferguson, with his ill-fitting, dull grey gabardine suit, his long, pale face and hooded eyes, seemed to fit right in.
He leaned forwards, elbows on the desk, his gaze empty and focused on the desktop.
‘You’re in trouble, Lennox,’ he said when he looked up to face me. ‘You’re in an awful lot of trouble, and I don’t think there’s much I can do to help you.’
‘What?’ I twisted my face in disbelief and it hurt like hell from where my chums on the stairs had given me the beating. ‘Just because I found Ellis dying? That makes me a witness, Jock, not a suspect. I had nothing to do with his death.’
‘Whoever killed him just happened to choose your office as the place to do it, wrecking the joint in the process, is that it?’
‘How the hell do I know, Jock? Maybe Ellis found out that his wife had hired me because she had suspicions about his fidelity and he wanted to set me straight. Or maybe he had something to tell me about Tanglewood, whatever or whoever it is, or this Hungarian crowd he’s involved with and they followed him to my office and killed him there.’
‘Your locked office?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, Jock…’ I said exasperatedly. ‘Maybe I forgot to lock it when I left to meet Magda at Central Station. Maybe whoever broke in knows how to pick locks. Or had a key, somehow.’
‘Oh yes, this mysterious Hungarian brunette you say you met at Central Station?’
‘Yes, Magda the mysterious Hungarian brunette. Are you telling me that you don’t believe me, Jock?’
‘Now, there’s the thing… you seem to automatically expect me to believe you. Why is that, Lennox? Is that because you never lie to me?’
‘You think I’ve been lying to you?’ I said defensively, but there had been a touch of bitterness in Ferguson’s voice. Perhaps I should not have been so relieved to see him walk into the interrogation room; what I thought was the cavalry was maybe just more Apaches.
‘I don’t know, Lennox. Have you been lying to me?’ The bitterness was still there. I could tell Ferguson had caught me out on something, or thought he had, but I had no idea what.
‘Do you think I’ve been lying about Magda? Magda is real enough, believe me. And she played her part pretty damned well, keeping me occupied while her pals did in Ellis in my office. In fact, she was pretty insistent that I wait ten minutes after she left before going back to my office. If I had done that, then I wouldn’t even have bumped into the two heavies on the stairs. They’re the guys you should be looking for. Anyway, I’ve already told Dunlop all of this. Magda was involved with Ellis in one way or another and it’s a hell of a coincidence that she keeps me busy while Ellis meets his end, don’t you think?’
‘That’s if she exists. And I wouldn’t push the importance of coincidences too much, if I were you. There are too many coincidences revolving around you over the last week or so. And when you get enough coincidences, you get a circumstantial case. You know what a circumstantial case is, don’t you?’
‘Something you put a picture in before you hang it on the wall, in the case of most coppers.’ It was my turn to be bitter. I had expected support, not suspicion, from Ferguson.
‘No one is trying to frame you, Lennox. You’ve done a pretty good job of doing that yourself.’
