‘Listen, Jock…’ I jerked my head in the direction of Dunlop. ‘Your fat friend here has already made up his mind about me, and that means he’s not even going to start looking for an answer anywhere else. If you want answers, real answers, then let me go so that I can ask my own questions in my own way. Only then will we really get to the bottom of all of this.’
Dunlop grunted, which was appropriate for his physique. ‘Do you honestly think that we’re going to let you wander about free as a bird?’
‘If you want some proper answers, then yes. Let me go on police bail or whatever you have to. You can put a tail on me. I’ll give you hourly reports. Whatever you need. But a bunch of coppers flat-footing it all over the place isn’t going to clear this up.’
‘Maybe we think we already have got it cleared up,’ said Dunlop.
‘And that’s exactly what this Hungarian mob want you to think, don’t you see that? I’m not a moron, Dunlop. Do you think that if I had killed Ellis, especially if it was premeditated, I wouldn’t have come up with something a lot less cockamamie than what I’ve told you?’
Dunlop smirked and shook his head.
‘Sorry, Dunlop. That was maybe too difficult for you to take in, the question having a double-negative in it and all.’
The fat detective took a step towards me but Ferguson checked him.
‘You have a point,’ said Ferguson. ‘But there’s absolutely no way we can release you until we’ve carried out more enquiries.’
I sighed, the fight out of me.
‘Let’s get back to the Square,’ said Ferguson. ‘There’s nothing more to be gained by hanging around here.’
Collins, who I now guessed to be some kind of letting or estate agent, let us out of the building, switching off the lights and shutting the door behind us. There was an urgent exchange between the policemen on the pavement, I guessed about the smog that had grown denser while we had been inside. Getting back to St Andrew’s Square was going to be quite an undertaking. Ferguson said something to the uniformed cop, who renewed his tight grip on my coat sleeve.
In that kind of smog, crossing the road becomes a job for all your senses. When taxis or buses have a habit of looming suddenly out of the murk, only feet away from you, you learn to listen out for the sound of approaching motor engines, hearing them long before you see a glimmer of headlights.
I was given my chance by the Whispering Death.
To be more precise, I was given my chance by the Number Thirteen Whispering Death to Clarkston. I acted on instinct more than anything else. My police escort was leading me across the street when the trolleybus, its electric motor silent, surged out of a wall of grey-green smog. On seeing us, the driver sounded his claxon and the police constable pulled me back towards the pavement.
It was more an instinctive reaction — the fly’s impulse to pull against the spider’s web — than a conscious decision to escape. I yanked my arm hard, pulling the copper with me into the path of the trolleybus. He shouted something obscene and let go of my sleeve and I threw myself in the other direction, placing the trolleybus between me and the uniform, Dunlop and Ferguson.
I could hear Ferguson shouting behind me but I lunged forward. I tripped up over my own feet, made larger and more cumbersome by the unlaced army boots, and came down hard onto the cobbles of the street. I picked myself up instantly and ran headlong toward the other side of the road.
And right into the path of a taxi.
Fortunately, the cab was travelling slowly because of the poor visibility and I suffered no injury other than the slurs on my mother’s virtue bawled out through the window by the driver. One of my boots had come off and I kicked the other one free and ran on in my sock soles. It made my feet slip on the cobbles, but when I made it to the opposite pavement, dodging in front of the parked police car, I got full purchase and was able to sprint. There were shouts and the sound of running behind me and the blast of a horn told me that one of my pursuers had also run out in front of a vehicle.
Running full pelt in the smog had a certain edge to it, like playing Russian roulette. With only a three- or four-yard visibility, there was the constant risk of a bone crunching collision with another pedestrian, a lamppost or an unpredicted wall. It also had its advantages: there could only be two of them after me, Jock Ferguson and the burly uniformed constable. I reckoned Shuggie Dunlop’s running range was even more limited than the visibility. They couldn’t see me now; I had become hidden behind a curtain of smog within a few yards, but unfortunately not before seeing the direction I took. That meant they wouldn’t have had to split up and each take a direction, and both Ferguson and the uniform would be heading this way. I thought about re-crossing the road and heading back the way I had come, but that was too obvious and there was always the chance that they were each taking one side of the street.
I took a random right into an alley and sprinted full pace, again hoping I didn’t tumble over an obstacle. I came to another alley, cutting across the first, so I took another right. Eventually I reached the gloomy, indistinct mouth of the alley and found myself in what I guessed was a bigger street, although it was difficult to tell in the smog-tightened pool of visibility. I took off again at random, eventually slowing to a trot, my stocking-soled feet silent on the pavement.
Peering into the smog around me, I occasionally picked out the sounds of footsteps and the indistinct bloom of hand-held flashlights. No one was looking for me here — the torches were those of pedestrians equipped for the smog, following a wall or a pavement edge to find their way. Ferguson, Dunlop and the uniformed policeman had no chance of finding me now and, if they had split up, I guessed they’d struggle to find each other, blind in the smog. But they weren’t the only ones who were lost. I had no idea where I was.
I found another alley way and dodged into it, moving the few feet back from the street necessary to be concealed from view. My feet were beginning to hurt, not so much because I’d been running on stone and asphalt without shoes but because of the cold that was beginning to penetrate deep into the bone. That was something I needed to sort out sooner rather than later. I leaned my back against some stonework and made a conscious effort to calm myself and think through my situation. Apart from the small inconvenience of being a wanted man on the run, dressed in a prison outfit, hunted by the police and without any kind of footwear, it was all going swimmingly.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Think, Lennox.
I kept repeating it to myself, trying to push back the panic. After all, I’d been in worse situations.
There had been some kind of cockeyed logic behind my escape. I wasn’t kidding myself that I could live the rest of my life as a fugitive, even if I did somehow get back to Canada, but I knew that my prospects were no more sunny if I had stayed put with the police. I had to find the answers myself, and I couldn’t do that from a cell. I even toyed with the idea that Ferguson had taken me to the Hopkins building, even though he already knew there was no one there, just to give me a chance to make a break for it. I dismissed the thought: no matter how sympathetic he was to my plight, Jock Ferguson was a straight-down-the-line copper. Creative thinking or expedient dodges were not in his makeup.
And I tried not to think about the little lecture Ferguson had given me about flight being an indicator of guilt.
I tried to look on the bright side: I may have looked grubby, dishevelled, black-eyed, unshaven, shoeless and probably half-mad, but I comforted myself with the thought that this was Glasgow, so there was no problem with me looking out of place.
There really were genuine advantages to my situation. The smog was a godsend: Ferguson wouldn’t call out search parties, knowing it would be a fool’s errand. I could bet, however, that every patrolling beat bobby would have my description the next time he made the routine call from his police box to check in with his station. It all meant that I had time, but not much. And, of course, the smog was as much an encumbrance to my escape as it was to their manhunt.
