The Deep Dark Sleep

above-board import business, an estate agency and three car showrooms, as well as having shares in a major Clydeside ship repair yard.

And he paid his taxes in full, on time. Scrupulously.

So now, Willie Sneddon — who was reputed to have once, in one of his more whimsical moments, boiled the flesh off the feet of one of his criminal competitors simply because this particular crook had made a remark about ‘letting Sneddon stew’ over a deal — now hobnobbed with lairds, shipyard owners, Corporation officials and magnates.

But Willie Sneddon still, it was said, retained the services of Twinkletoes MacBride, his torturer-in-chief, and an entourage of Teddy Boy suited thugs including Singer, the ironically nicknamed mute. I often puzzled about how Twinkletoes MacBride — being big on muscle and cruelty and short on brains and subtlety — had adapted to the new commercial environment. Somehow, I now imagined him dressed in a bowler hat and pinstripe and carrying his bolt-cutters — used for removing toes of uncommunicative victims — in an attache case.

Sneddon’s secretary tried to put me off until the next day, but I piled on the charm and pushed my luck, saying it was an important and pressing matter but that it would only take up ten minutes of his time. She asked me to hang on while she consulted her boss and when she came back a minute later, she told me that Sneddon could see me in fifteen minutes.

The ’phone rang almost immediately after I hung up. It was Jock Ferguson.

‘I’ve asked around about Donald Fraser. He’s as kosher as a Tel Aviv butcher’s. He deals with contract law, mainly. I wouldn’t have thought he would be handling divorce cases.’ Ferguson had drawn the obvious conclusion; I decided not to disabuse him of it.

‘I think he’s handling this case more as an obligement than anything else. A personal favour called in by a client. Did you find out anything else about him?’

‘Nothing to find. Educated at Fettes in Edinburgh. In the Home Guard during the war. Dodgy eyesight kept him out of the regular army, apparently. His father was an officer in the Great War.’

‘God, Jock, your intelligence gathering is a hell of a lot better than I thought.’

‘Not really. One of the senior uniform boys here, Chief Superintendent Harrison, knew Fraser during the war. Fraser and Harrison are pals, apparently. So I’d say he’s okay.’

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Thanks, Jock. That’s all I wanted to know.’

‘And how’s your sniffing about the Empire job going? Anyone jump up and kick you in the teeth yet?’

‘Not yet. But on that …’

‘Here we go …’ Ferguson sighed at the other end of the line.

‘On that …’ I continued, ‘what do you know about Henry Williamson and John Bentley?’

‘That’s easy,’ said Ferguson. ‘Nothing. Never heard of either of them. Well, I know a couple of Williamsons — it’s not that uncommon a name — but nobody connected to that world and certainly no one who would know Joe Strachan. And I don’t think any of them is a Henry. I could ask around, I suppose, but then you might buy me another Horsehead pie, and I’m beginning to think they’re named after their contents, not the name of the bar.’

‘Okay, next time I’ll make it an Italian meal …’ I’d treated Jock Ferguson to a meal at Rosseli’s before. In Glasgow that was as exotic as it comes and he had spent five minutes suspiciously poking around with his fork at his spaghetti. Forty minutes and two bottles of cheap Chianti later, he seemed to have developed an enthusiasm for Italian cuisine. Or as much of an enthusiasm as Jock Ferguson was capable of displaying: I could not imagine him ever throwing his arm around a waiter and bursting into ‘O sole mio’.

‘Do you have anything on either of them?’ he asked. ‘So’s I know where to start asking.’

‘Well, I think Williamson was a war buddy of Joe Strachan’s. In Number One, I mean.’ I had just finished saying it when I heard at the other end of the line something as rare as an inside toilet in Dennistoun: Ferguson laughing.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘A war buddy?’ he said. ‘Is that a polite way of saying fellow deserter?’

‘I thought Strachan had a glowing war record,’ I said. ‘A war hero, his daughter told me.’

More laughter. ‘Listen, Lennox, Strachan could sell any line of bull to anyone he chose. Do you know why everybody called him Gentleman Joe?’

‘I’ve heard that he was a flashy dresser, and liked a few of the finer things in life. Mind you, coming from the Gorbals, toilet paper that doesn’t leave newsprint on your backside counts as one of the finer things, I suppose.’

‘Joe Strachan didn’t dress flashy, Lennox. He dressed well. He knew what to wear and how, when and where to wear it. Like you say, he was one hundred per cent Gorbals, but he could pass himself off as anything, in any social circle. Believe it or not, it was actually what led the City CID in the first place to suspect him of having pulled off the Empire job and the other top-end robberies.’

‘Oh? Why?’

‘It was just by chance that a bank clerkess mentioned having served a tall, well-dressed, well-spoken gentleman a couple of weeks before the bank got hit. He had called in to cash a postal order but she had remembered that he had asked a lot of questions. Then, when they went over the other jobs, and prompted witnesses’ memories, they remembered a tall, well-spoken, well-dressed gentleman having had some kind of contact a few weeks before the job.’

‘Did he fit Strachan’s description?’

‘The description was slightly different each time, but there were enough similarities. It was by pure chance that it came out: no one thought anything of it because “gentlemen” don’t commit crime. And do you know where Strachan learned his party trick? In the army at the end of the First War.’

‘He saw active service?’ I asked. ‘I was told he volunteered as a fifteen-year-old …’

Ferguson snorted. ‘Joseph Strachan was not the volunteering type. He was too young for most of the war but was called up at the arse end of it all. But the last shot hadn’t been fired, so young Strachan showed real initiative by taking some leave without burdening his superiors with organizing it.’

‘So that was when he deserted?’

‘More than deserted … Strachan had this ability: to mimic voices, accents, mannerisms, that kind of thing.’

‘What’s your point … that Music Hall’s loss was armed robbery’s gain?’

There was a short silence and I could imagine Ferguson making an impatient face: he was not used to being interrupted. ‘Anyway, he could pass himself off as anyone. Any class, any nationality: Scottish, English, Welsh. So when he deserted, he didn’t just take a powder and lie low, like most would. Oh no, young Master Strachan also nicked a couple of subalterns’ uniforms so he could pass himself off as an officer on leave. Fooled everybody. Spent six weeks running up mess and brothel bills.’

‘Six weeks? I’m surprised he lasted that long. Passing yourself off as an officer with a put-on accent is one thing, but it’s not just how you talk, it’s what you’ve got to say about yourself.’

‘Aye … I suppose you’ll know all about that, Lennox.’ Ferguson didn’t attempt to keep the tone of contempt out of his voice. ‘You having been an officer and gone to a fancy school yourself … So what are you saying? That Strachan would be bound to give himself away by using the wrong spoon or holding his bone china the wrong way or some crap like that?’

‘I just don’t see how a thug from the Gorbals could be that convincing as a public school-educated officer.’

‘Well you’re wrong. Like I said, that’s why they called him “Gentleman” Joe: he could turn it on at the drop of the hat. You may just see him as a Gorbals monkey, but he was one smart monkey. He didn’t just put on the accent, he knew the moves. He may have left school at thirteen, but everyone knew he was a clever wee bastard. When he wasn’t shoving a gun in a bank teller’s face, he was shoving his nose into a book. He was obsessed with knowing things. And they say that’s why he got away with the officer act. He knew the right things to say at the right time. The rumour is that he also got to know the mutineer Percy Toplis and that was where he got the impersonating officers idea.’

‘You seem to know a lot about Strachan’s life story, Jock.’

‘He was a bit of a legend with the older boys here. I think there was a fair amount of grudging respect, that