wasn’t about to appear in the bedroom doorway while I took a copy of H.G. Wells’s
‘Okay, Jock …’ I said when I reappeared in my sitting room, ‘let’s have it. Why are you flying solo?’
For the first time since I’d known him, Jock Ferguson looked ill at ease.
‘I need to ask you one thing, Lennox,’ he said firmly. ‘Have you discussed your interest in the Gentleman Joe Strachan business with anyone else, other than me?’
‘Ah …’ I said. ‘I see you’ve followed the same line of thought that I have. The answer is no, I have another case on and I have been dealing with that since we spoke. I have discussed the Strachan business with no one other than you.’ Of course I had: with Willie Sneddon, but I knew that if Sneddon had wanted to frighten me off, it would have been more direct. I also knew that Sneddon kept his own counsel. In any case, I felt it best not to let Ferguson know that I’d been in touch with a King.
‘That’s what I thought …’ Ferguson said glumly. He sat on the edge of the sofa, leaning forwards, his elbows resting on his knees.
‘And you only spoke to your fellow officers about it, and then I get jumped and warned off. That’s what’s bothering you, isn’t it?’
‘It doesn’t make sense …’ He shook his head. ‘I suppose I can understand you being warned off because there are officers who are so determined to find the rest of the gang … but waving a gun about …’
‘Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves, Jock. I really think that it is unlikely to have been a copper at all. There’s always another side to every story. You suggested it yourself — my clients, Isa and Violet. Maybe they told someone that they were planning to hire someone to look into the discovery of dear old dad’s remains. They told me that they had asked around and my name had come up. It could be that someone has simply done some two and two arithmetic.’
‘And …’ asked Ferguson, reading my mind.
‘And Violet does have a husband who looks like he knows all the moves.’
‘Name?’
‘Robert …’ I struggled to remember the married names the twins had given me. I had got used to thinking of them as Isa and Violet Strachan in my head. ‘Robert McKnight. Mean anything?’
‘Not offhand. I’ll check it out. Discreetly. In the meantime I’d keep a low profile if I were you, Lennox.’
‘I’ll do my best. While I’m doing a Greta Garbo, can you have someone keep an eye on Mrs White? And give her a number to call …’
‘Fair enough, Lennox. I’ll come up with something. Probably a prowler, like you said. Just make sure you don’t sneak round the back if you need to come back for anything. And Lennox …’
‘Yeah?’
‘You’re really pushing it. Your luck with me, I mean. I could get my jotters handed to me if it was found out that I’ve covered up an assault with a firearm.’
‘I appreciate it, Jock. If anything comes out of this that leads to a big collar, you can bet your name’s on it.’
Fiona White was waiting in the hall, her arms folded and her face set hard.
‘Is this really necessary?’ she asked as I put my suitcases down in the hall.
‘It’s safer. I don’t want you and the girls involved in this. I don’t think anyone would dare show their face here again, but it would be best if I moved out.’
‘I will keep your rooms for you, Mr Lennox. I’m assuming this is a temporary arrangement.’
‘I would like it to be, Mrs White.’
The three of us stood awkwardly for a moment. Ferguson handed her a card on which he had scribbled down his home number as well as the St Andrew’s Square contact number.
‘I’ll arrange for the beat constable to check on you,’ he said. ‘But if you see anyone suspicious hanging around, ’phone me right away.’
‘I’ll ring with a contact number once I’m settled,’ I added. She nodded abruptly. Ferguson and I carried the cases out to my car.
It was still as foggy as hell. Or maybe in hell they complained about it being as foggy as Glasgow. I dumped my bags at my office and sat at my desk until it got dark and I had to switch the lamp on. The other offices were emptying and I smoked my way through half a pack of cigarettes and contemplated, not for the first time, how crap my situation was. My face hurt like a son of a bitch every time I placed even the gingerest of fingertips on it, but from what I could see from my reflection in the broad blade of my letter opener, it still hadn’t swollen. My side next to the small of my back still ached nauseatingly, but it was no longer a solo performance: all the wrenches and impacts of our scuffle in the smog were now singing in unison.
The darkening smog rubbed itself against my office window. I decided against venturing far to search for a hotel and was beginning to imagine the extra aches I would wake up with if I slept on the polished floor of my small office. Added to that, performing my ablutions in the toilet that was shared with the four other offices on my floor and the floor below did not appeal to me.
On an impulse I picked up the ’phone. I was surprised that the person I asked for took my call.
‘Hi,’ I said, failing to keep the weariness out of my voice. ‘It’s Lennox. Listen, I’m across the street in my office. I have a favour to ask … could you meet me in the lounge bar in ten minutes?’
And, to my further surprise, she said she would.
Leonora Bryson was late. Which was fair enough. There was an etiquette to these things: a woman couldn’t be seen waiting around in a bar for a man. You had to do the waiting. And women like Leonora Bryson knew that any man would wait for her, for as long as she wanted him to wait.
When she arrived in the lounge bar of the Central Hotel, she was again dressed in a formal skirt with a matching jacket and pale blue blouse beneath it. It was something that, on most women, would have looked almost drab, but on her it looked sexier than a bikini on Marilyn Monroe. She certainly attracted enough attention as she entered and I could have sworn I heard the marble bust in the corner give a gasp. I was waiting for her at the bar and suggested we take a seat at one of the tables. I asked her what she would like to drink. I was not surprised that she ordered a daiquiri, but was amazed that the Glaswegian bartender knew how to make it.
‘You look like you’ve been in the wars, Mr Lennox,’ she said, indicating the dressing on my cheek with a tilt of her daiquiri glass. There wasn’t the same frost in her voice, but there wasn’t any warmth either.
‘This? Yeah, stupid really … I walked into something in the smog.’ I neglected to explain that the something had been solid muscle with a gun.
‘Yes, I know …’ she said, suddenly animated. ‘I’ve seen some pretty bad smog in San Francisco, but this stuff is unbelievable. I mean, it’s not just dense, it’s tinged
‘They colour it for the tourists. San Francisco … is that where you’re from?’
‘No … I’m from the east coast, originally. Connecticut.’
‘Then where you were brought up was a heck of a lot closer to my home town than it was to Hollywood. I was raised in New Brunswick.’
‘Really?’ she said, with an interest so tiny that you would have needed the Palomar telescope set to maximum magnification to spot it. ‘What is it you wanted to talk to me about, Mr Lennox?’
‘I need somewhere to sleep tonight …’
The final syllable had not taken form before the temperature dropped a thousand degrees.
‘No, no …’ I held my hands up. ‘Don’t get the wrong idea … With the smog and everything, and my office just over the way, I wondered if you could swing a special rate for me here. Just for tonight. It’s a bit rich for my blood normally but needs must …’
She appraised me with the glacial blue eyes and for a moment I killed the time thinking about what Rhine maidens and Valkyries might get up to in Valhalla. She seemed to make up her mind about me.
‘Actually,’ she said, ‘we have a spare room at the end of our hall. We had it for one of the studio executives,
