‘What the hell is that supposed to mean? Listen Jock, I understand that being found with a dying man in my office is likely to raise a few eyebrows, but it doesn’t take a genius to work out that a killer doesn’t use his handkerchief to try to halt the bleeding of his victim.’
‘We found your handkerchief stained with Ellis’s blood, all right. But we also found the knife that had been used to kill him wiped clean of fingerprints. A knife you admit is yours.’
‘Oh yes… I’m a master criminal covering up my tracks. I wipe my fingerprints off my knife so you’ll never be able to link me with a dead man stabbed to death in my office. That would throw you off the trail all right, wouldn’t it?’ If my sarcasm was making an impression on Ferguson, then it didn’t show.
‘Yes, your knife. But there again you had to admit it was yours, because I saw you opening mail with it that day I came to your office.’
‘Aw come on, Jock, you know this is all crap. You know I didn’t kill Ellis. And what’s this crap that Dunlop is throwing in about me being in the frame for more than one killing?’
Ferguson stubbed his cigarette out on the pressed tin ashtray and stood up. ‘We’ll talk about this tomorrow. We’re still carrying out some enquiries and you and I are going to have a lot to talk about. In the meantime, I’m afraid you’re going to be our guest for the night.’
‘This is bull, Jock. All bull.’ It was all I could think to say.
‘We’ll talk tomorrow.’ Ferguson said as he went to the door and called in a uniform to see me back to my cell.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The rough blankets they gave me had presumably been laundered but still oozed a fusty odour into the tiny cell and I lay, fully clothed in the uniform they had given me, on top of the bedding. If I could have summoned the power of my will and hovered, Indian guru-like, above them, I would have. But levitation was only one of the many abilities I seemed not to possess. Like common sense. Or the ability to sleep.
The facilities of the City of Glasgow Police headquarters did not run to a resident chef and I was passed a body-warmth package wrapped in grease-transparent newspaper through the fold-down flap in the heavy steel cell door. The fish and chips were caked in salt, and despite being ravenously hungry I could only eat half of them. The same went for the tea: the enamelled tin mug handed through the door was skin-peelingly hot and filled with tea turned to syrup by a ladleful of sugar. They obviously had focused their menu to meet the demands of their regular clientele.
The custody sergeant turned out the lights at nine-thirty and I did my best to sleep. I would need my wits about me the next day, and I felt bone-achingly tired, but my face hurt like hell and my brain was burning with images and thoughts and memories as it tried to make sense of what was happening. Lying in the dark, I found myself thinking of Fiona White, sleeping alone in her flat, my rooms empty above her. That was if she was sleeping alone.
I wondered how long it would take for all this crap to hit the headlines. I hoped I’d be out of this jam before the papers got a hold of my name. In the meantime, I found myself thankful that I had quit my digs when I had instead of waiting the full month. At least I wouldn’t have to see that look of weary disappointment on her face when she found out I was in deep trouble again.
I must have dozed off eventually, but was woken again at three by voices from a cell further down the block: one voice loud, strident and shrill, crying out in pain; two others deep, quiet and controlled, occasionally grunting as if engaged in physical labour. Obviously a couple of Glasgow’s guardians of law and order had dropped in on a miscreant — at the dead of nightshift — to discuss the error of his ways. Maybe the grunting was them rearranging the furniture for their guest.
I wondered if I would get a visit, but guessed I wouldn’t. Paradoxically, that troubled me. The coppers were doing everything by the book with me, and that smacked of keeping their act clean for a date in the High Court, where the judge was allowed to wear a black cap when passing sentence.
The only window in the basement cell was high up and out of reach, but still barred and meshed. When they came round with a breakfast of the same scalding brown sugary sludge and butterless toast, the small square of window was still dark and they switched on the cell block lights again.
It was mid-day when they again parked me in the interrogation room, having left me to stew in my cell until then. Ferguson and his dumb stooge Dunlop were waiting for me at the cheap oak table and a homely, uniformed WPC sat in the corner with a notepad, ready to take down in shorthand everything that was said. Everything by the book for the judge with the black cap.
Dunlop kicked off by mumbling through my caution that my answers could be used as evidence in court. Then they went through the questions. Had I killed Andrew Ellis in my Gordon Street offices? How did I get the bloody nose and the marks on my face? Could I identify the two men I claimed to see running away from my office?
‘And while Ellis was being murdered in your place of business,’ asked Dunlop, ‘you were meeting a Hungarian woman you say called herself Magda, attached to some refugee group?’
‘That’s right. You can ask at the station coffee bar.’
‘We have. You were there, all right, the girl at the cash counter recognized your photograph right away, but she didn’t see you with anyone else — mysterious foreign woman or otherwise.’
‘We sat over at the back. You couldn’t see us from the counter and Magda kept her back to everyone. At least it proves I was there, doesn’t it?’
‘It proves you were in the coffee bar, but not when. I get the feeling that the girl behind the counter took a shine to you, which is why she remembered you. But she’s hazy about the times. In fact, she guessed you were in a half hour before you said you were. And that doesn’t put you in the clear at all.’
‘She’s just muddled about the timing. Come on… if I went to the coffee bar deliberately to rig up an alibi, I’d have asked her the time, or if the station clock was right or some crap like that.’
‘Maybe you did,’ said Dunlop, his smug smile straining under the weight of his fleshy cheeks. ‘Maybe she just forgot that you asked…’
I didn’t answer but made a face to suggest the question was just too dumb to warrant a reply. Jock Ferguson gave him a similar look and Dunlop’s fat neck and cheeks reddened.
‘Let’s talk about something else,’ said Ferguson. ‘I came into your office a couple of days ago and asked about the deaths of Thomas and Sylvia Dewar in their home in Drumchapel. Do you remember that?’
‘Of course…’
‘And you told me, when I specifically asked, that you had never met either of the Dewars before that date.’
‘That’s right. What’s this got to do with Ellis?’
Ferguson ignored me. ‘So you just went to the Dewars’ home in response to his telephone call earlier that day?’
‘That’s what I said.’
‘I know that’s what you said…’ Ferguson held me in a hooded gaze. He rested his hand on a thick buff folder that sat on the desk. I had deja-vu of Hopkins doing exactly the same thing during his interrogation. ‘Tell me, Lennox, has business been good? Of late, I mean?’
I shrugged. ‘Okay, I guess.’
‘I thought things might be a bit tight for you. You know, making you feel like you need to drum up a bit of business.’ Ferguson was trying to be sarcastic and he did so with the grace of a rhinoceros on ice-skates.
‘Your point?’
‘The Dewars’ door was open, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Just like you found the door to your office open?’
‘Just like I find a door open when a door is open anywhere.’
‘You found Mrs Dewar dead on the floor of the kitchen?’
‘Yes.’
‘And found Thomas Dewar hanging dead upstairs?’
