knock a year or so back and anyway, even at the best of times, I wasn’t the most likely to see the good in people.
The most important thing in landing the wages-run contract was that I had made a real effort to stay out of the way of the Three Kings: Cohen, Murphy and Sneddon, the triumvirate of gang bosses who ran everything worth running in the city, even if the peace between them was as tenuous as a showgirl’s chastity. The jobs I had done for the Three Kings had been more than a few and often less than legal. But it had gotten me started in Glasgow after I had been demobbed and the work had suited me more back then, still under the shadow of the mountain of crap that had built up behind me during the war.
But now, I hoped, things were beginning to change.
I had, however, made a point of making it known to those to whom it should be made known that I was running the security for a particular company’s particular wages run, and that I could develop a particularly good memory for faces if anyone tried to stick us up. So my message was hands off my run. Or else.
I’m sure my warning had Glasgow’s three most feared crime bosses quaking in their handmade Loake semi- brogues. I had actually half expected, and dreaded, a proposition of the blind-eye-turning sort, but none had been forthcoming. Like Jock Ferguson, each of the Three Kings knew I was straight. Comparatively speaking.
Anyway, like I said, the original discovery of a pile of bones in a dredging bucket didn’t raise a ripple on the pond of Glasgow’s collective consciousness. But a week later, it made a splash. A big splash. And the papers were full of it:
RIVER BODY IDENTIFIED AS WANTED
EMPIRE EXHIBITION ROBBER.
MYSTERY OF JOSEPH STRACHAN
DISAPPEARANCE SOLVED AFTER 18 YEARS.
PROCEEDS OF DARING 1938 EXHIBITION ROBBERY
STILL UNRECOVERED.
Now Gentleman Joe Strachan was before my time. But so were Zeus and Odin and I had heard of all three. The Glasgow underworld had more myths and legends than ancient Greece, and Gentleman Joe had become a towering figure in the folklore of those trying to turn a dishonest buck.
Reading the article reminded me that I had heard the name mentioned with hushed reverence over the years; but because my acquaintance with the Second City of the British Empire had only begun when I was demobbed after the war, Strachan had never been a visible figure in my landscape. However, I did know that there had been a spate of pre-war robberies, the biggest in Glasgow history, culminating in the Empire Exhibition job in Nineteen thirty-eight. All of which had been attributed to Gentleman Joe. Attributed but never proved.
What I had also heard was that if Strachan had hung around — and not at the end of a rope for a policeman’s murder — then he probably would have been the Fourth King of Glasgow. Or maybe even the One True King of Glasgow; with Cohen, Murphy and Sneddon having to settle for fiefdoms. But then there had been the spectacularly daring robbery, a copper lying dead, and Gentleman Joe was suddenly nowhere to be found. Nor was the fifty thousand pounds.
No one at the time had thought Strachan would be dead: rather that, in keeping with his now mythical-heroic status, he had entered the Glasgow gangster version of Valhalla. Which many took to be a luxury bungalow on the Bourne-mouth coast or somewhere similar. Probably called
All of which really had nothing to do with me and was of less interest.
Until I got a visit from Isa and Violet.
CHAPTER TWO
You never see it coming. Or at least it always seems to be that
I had a client list and a set of matching, balanced books that I could wave in front of the taxman and the occasional inquisitive copper to prove that my business was legitimate. Well, at least a lot more legitimate than it had been a year or two before. And the kind of cases I was working on made more demands on my wits — and not even many demands on them — and fewer on getting handy with some low rent Teddy Boy in an alley somewhere.
Which was good. Of late, I had been making a real effort not to get heated.
You pick up different things in war. A lot of men came back with venereal diseases caught from whores in Germany or the Far East, which they passed on unselfishly to their waiting wives, while others came back with trophies stolen from bodies. I came back with a hair-trigger temper and a tendency to express myself with great physical eloquence. Truth was, there had been times when I’d gotten more than a little carried away. Once I got started, it was difficult to stop. It was something that, when I’d been serving in the First Canadian Army in Europe, had been positively encouraged; but the authorities were decidedly sniffy about you using the skills they had taught you, now you were back in civilian life. The truth was that it was another good reason for curtailing my involvement with the Three Kings. It had involved me in a world I could understand at a time I could understand practically nothing else. Where everybody talked the same language: violence. And I was fluent.
So, whereas Sherlock Homes had used intellect and deerstalker to crack cases, I had tended to employ muscle and blackjack. And to be honest I had enjoyed it just that little bit too much and I wanted away from it. Something had gotten broken during the war and I knew that if I wanted to fix it, I was going to have to steer clear of the kind of crap I’d been wading about in. The problem was, when someone like the Three Kings got a hold of you, they didn’t like to let go.
But I had been making a pretty good fist of it; then Isa and Violet came to see me at my office.
Isa and Violet were identically petite, identically pretty, with identically large, blue eyes. Which was not surprising: they were identical twins. I worked that out as soon as I saw them. It’s the kind of detail people expect you to notice when you’re a detective.
And now Isa and Violet sat earnestly, and a little primly, opposite me.
I had, once before in my career, professionally encountered twins; but that had been an altogether different business. The last matching pair I’d come across had been Tam and Frankie McGahern. It had been an encounter that I had barely survived, so I had developed something of a superstitious aversion to matching siblings. But as Isa and Violet had come in and taken their seats, I had stolen a look at their identically peachy rears and had decided to become more pragmatic in my approach.
They introduced themselves, simultaneously, as Isa and Violet but had different surnames and I guessed there were wedding rings beneath the grey gloves. The twins shared the same pale, heart-shaped faces, small noses, bright blue eyes and full mouths, both of which had been encrimsoned in exactly the same shade of lipstick. They had their dark hair short and demiwaved, coming halfway down delicate ears that supported large domes of faux pearl. They even wore identical expensive grey suits, with tight-waisted jackets and pencil skirts that squeezed where I would have liked to do a bit of squeezing myself.
And, when they spoke, they finished each other’s sentences without breaking the rhythm of what they were saying and without looking at each other.
‘We heard you was …’ began Isa. Or maybe it was Violet.
‘… a private detective,’ concluded Violet, or Isa, seamlessly.
‘We need your help …’
‘… about our father.’
‘I suppose you’ve read all about him …’
‘… in the papers …’
I smiled, a little confused. The truth was I had been a little discomfited by their arrival. They were both
