must eventually manage to reach the opposite side.
What I did manage was to walk straight into a collection of trashcans, knocking one over, its lid rattling on the cobbles. The noise echoed in the court, but not as loudly as I would have expected, muffled as it was by the blanket of smog. I stood still and silent for a moment. No voices, no dogs barking, no police whistles. I again set blind course through the fog and eventually washed up against the sooty sandstone shore of the tenements opposite. I couldn’t see a passageway out onto the street again, but knew that if I moved along the tenements in either direction, I’d find one soon enough. The only problem was that I had to edge past the windows of the lower flats of the tenement until I reached the passage. Again I moved as quietly as I could, crouching as I passed an illuminated window.
It was the window that wasn’t lit up that was my undoing.
I heard the sounds of a struggle: someone gasping for breath and grunting. For a moment I couldn’t place where it was coming from, then I realized the sounds were issuing through a hole in the cracked window. I stood up and looked through the grimy glass, into the gloom inside. It was the usual tenement kitchen-cum-living room and the only light was the glow from the open door of the range, used for heating and cooking. The glow picked out the edges of a huge woman stretched over the rough kitchen table, leaning her elbows on it. She was hugely overweight and naked to the waist, the huge pale moons of her breasts swinging and the fat on her arms quivering with every lunge of the small, thin man behind her. He was balding, with strands of black hair pasted over his pale pate, and a Groucho Marx rectangle of moustache twitched beneath his thin nose with each impassioned thrust.
It was the same sort of thing as when you inadvertently see some unfortunate take ill in public and vomit in the street. You don’t
Jack Spratt and his wife were clearly trying to keep as quiet as possible, probably because there were kids sleeping in the tenement flat’s only other room, but the fat woman moaned:
‘Lover boy… oh lover boy …’
I rammed a fist into my mouth and bit down hard, but still my shoulders shook uncontrollably.
‘Oh Rab … you’re my lover boy …’
Move, Lennox, I told myself. For God’s sake move.
Then, in a moment of heightened passion, the skinny little man gave forth:
‘Senga! Oh …
Despite the danger of my situation, something over-rode my survival instinct and the fist stuffed in my mouth, and the laughter I’d been trying to contain threatened to explode. Something high-pitched and strangled sounded in my throat.
It was loud enough for the fat woman to hear. Looking up, she saw me at the window, let go a shrill scream and clutched her arms to her massive bosoms in a ludicrously inadequate effort to conceal her nakedness. The small man saw me too and, disengaging himself, charged towards the window, thankfully pulling his braces back up over his shoulders.
‘Pervert!’ he shouted in a high, shrill voice. ‘You fucking pervert! Peeping Tom! Peeping Tom!’
I made a run for it, along the wall, hoping I would find the passageway out. Meanwhile, lover boy had swung open the window and was screaming for the police at the top of his voice.
Well done, Lennox.
I heard shouts and a whistle; the sound of more trashcans being toppled and I could see, somewhere at the other side of the court, torch beams stabbing the fog ineffectually. I ran on, hoping I didn’t trip over anything else in the fog. I was not too concerned about the stumbling coppers behind me, but I knew that if someone actually had the brains to think it through, a car sent around the block, even at smog-driving pace, could catch me when I came out of the passage and onto the street.
I found the passage and sprinted along it and out onto the street. I reckoned at this time of night and in this fog, there would be few cars around and I ran straight out onto the road. I found the tramlines and ran, concentrating only on the small pool of awareness I had in the fog and keeping in the centre of the tramlines. I reached a curve and a TRAM PINCH warning sign, just discernible on the periphery of my vision, told me I was now out of the side street and on the main drag. Still no ringing bells of a pursuing police Wolseley. And now it would be useless in the fog.
I ran on for a hundred yards more, then slowed to a trot, then a walk, then stopped, leaning over to catch my breath, my hands braced on my knees. When I had recovered enough, I straightened up and stood silent in the smog and listened. Nothing.
The only problem I had was that I now had no idea where I was. Suddenly, a vast shape loomed at me out of the smog, a monster with two burning embers for eyes, rattling towards me. I leapt to the side, lost my footing and fell, rolling on my side and out of the way of the tram that trundled past, the driver shouting some obscenity through the window, but not applying the brake to check that I was all right.
The tram was swallowed up again in the smog. I stood up, dusted myself off and picked up my bashed trilby.
‘Bollocks,’ I muttered. Then, as I found my way back to the pavement, I suddenly thought about Senga and Lover Boy, and burst into laughter.
This time, the smog was persistent. It had lurked all night and was pressing against the windows of my boarding house room when I woke the following morning. My tumble in the street was now playing vigorous accompaniment to what had been the decrescendo of the bruises I’d picked up in the alleyway. I headed into the office early, again taking the tram and not risking driving in the murk.
When I got to the office I tried to get Leonora Bryson by ’phone at the Central Hotel, but was told she and Mr Macready were in Edinburgh for press interviews. I was luckier with Fraser, the lawyer: I told him we had to meet urgently and for some reason he insisted that we didn’t meet at his office, so I suggested Central Station in half an hour.
Despite my only having to cross the street to the station, Fraser managed to get there before me. There is a kind of protocol to sitting in railway cafes: if you are just having a cup of coffee, it should always be with a cigarette and you should hunch over your coffee and look miserable, as if the train you are waiting for is scheduled to take you to the final of all destinations. Fraser was breaching this etiquette of gloom. He was sitting with his straight back to the counter, facing the station concourse, his beady eyes alert. He spotted me coming and took his briefcase from the chair next to him. I ordered a coffee at the counter from the glummest man in the universe, carried it over and sat next to Fraser.
‘This is not the ideal place to talk about what I want to talk about,’ I said, casting an eye over the other patrons who might be within earshot.
‘I thought our business regarding these photographs was concluded, Mr Lennox,’ he said.
‘So did I. I got a visit from the police the other day. We’re
‘I would imagine that’s not a particularly rare or noteworthy event …’ Fraser frowned.
‘Maybe so, but this murder was at the address I recovered the photographs from.’
Fraser looked shocked for a moment, then leaning forward, lowered his voice to the level I’d been speaking at. ‘Paul Downey?’
‘That I don’t know. The flat was rented by his friend, Frank. I’ll probably find out later today which of them is dead.’
‘My God …’ Fraser thought for a moment, then said conspiratorially, ‘Is there anything,
‘One of the reasons I’m expecting to have the identity of the deceased today is because I’m expecting the police to call. I asked one of my contacts if he knew anything about Paul Downey. If it’s Downey who’s been murdered, then they’re going to want to know why I was asking.’
‘But you can’t tell them, Mr Lennox!’ Fraser looked around the cafe and lowered his voice. ‘You know how sensitive this whole thing is. I have to say that I think it was very careless of you to ask the police about Downey.’
‘It was a calculated risk, Mr Fraser. And the calculation didn’t include Downey or his boyfriend turning up
