The Deep Dark Sleep

dead. As far as telling the police about the background to it all, I’ll do my best to keep Macready out of it. But the police tend to take a poor view of murder and my neck is allergic to hemp, so if push comes to shove, we’re all going to have to level with them …’

‘After all we’ve been through, Mr Lennox, that would be most unfortunate. I’m afraid we would have to disavow all knowledge of you working for us. After all, we paid you in cash.’ Fraser’s beady eyes turned cold behind his spectacles. ‘And I can assure you that all of the photographs and negatives have been destroyed. So there would be nothing to back up your claim that we employed you.’

I smiled. ‘Well let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, because then I would have to spill every bean in the pot, including the fact that after I ran Paul Downey to ground, I only gave the address to two people … you and Leonora Bryson. Then it would boil down to a simple case of whom the police are more likely to believe. And I have a track record with them.’ I failed to add that that track record just might work against me. ‘And, of course, you would have to gamble that I didn’t hang on to a couple of the negatives, as insurance against just such a sticky situation as this. Added to all of which is the fact that it takes a lot of balls to lie to the police when it relates to a murder inquiry. And, no offence, I don’t think you’ve got them.’

‘Well, as you say, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.’ If I had ruffled Fraser, he was hiding it very well. ‘And I don’t see that it should. I mean, this is all coincidental. An unfortunate coincidence admittedly, but a coincidence none the less. Let’s be honest about it, it can be a very dark and dangerous world that these people inhabit. I would not be at all surprised if it turns out that one of them murdered the other during some kind of fall-out.’

‘It could be. But if there’s one thing I have noticed about coincidences, it’s that they have a nasty habit of coming back and biting you in the ass.’

‘So what do you suggest we do?’

‘Sit tight for the time being. Like I said, I should know more later today. In the meantime, instead of threatening to throw each other to the wolves, I suggest you and I both try to think of ways to limit the damage if the police do ask questions.’

‘Any suggestions, Mr Lennox?’

I paused to take a sip of the coffee I’d been nursing and immediately regretted it. I wondered if whatever was in my cup had come up in the same dredger bucket as the mystery bones.

‘The police aren’t bright, as you know, but they have so much experience of lies that they can spot one a mile off. Our best strategy is to tell them the truth. Just not the whole truth. The studio wants to protect Mr Macready’s reputation. Well, I suggest that we tell the police absolutely everything that happened, including about the photographs, but we say that it was a woman he was in flagrante with. If any of it leaks out, then it only enhances his reputation as a ladies’ man.’

‘And if they ask the identity of the lady?’

‘Then we say only Mr Macready knows that; he wouldn’t tell even us. But if pushed, you could say that Macready told you that it was the wife of someone very important. You Brits are so respectful of your establishment that it may just prevent the police digging. In the meantime, Macready will be on a plane to the States on Monday. The City of Glasgow Police are not going to extradite him back to get a name. Anyway, the police are also great ones for applying Occam’s Razor to everything: they look for the simplest explanation, mainly because it is usually the easiest. I’m hoping that they won’t look at my involvement too hard.’

Fraser considered what I had said, nodding slowly. ‘Yes … yes, that all makes sense. I’ll go along with it. But there is one question I have to ask, Mr Lennox, and I’m sure you’ll understand the reason why I have to ask it …’

‘The answer is no,’ I said predictively. ‘I did what you asked me to do in your roundabout way and put the frighteners on Downey. And I admit I gave his chum a bruise or two, but that’s as creative as I got in interpreting your instructions. When I left them, both Frank and Downey were very much alive.’

By the time I left the station, the fog had thinned to a grainy mist that faded Glasgow to monochrome — not something that took a lot of effort — rather than obscuring it. I crossed Gordon Street and went up the stairwell to my office. I had locked the door and half expected to find Jock Ferguson or even McNab waiting for me at the top of the stairs. They weren’t, so I unlocked my office door and stepped through.

I was back in the war.

The speed of thought seems to me the most unquantifiable thing: faster than the speed of sound, even the speed of light, even if Albert says it ain’t so. But what happened to me as I stepped through the door of my Glasgow office took me instantly back to a place where you killed without thought or lost your own life.

He had been behind the door and when I came in he hooked his arm around me from behind and dug his fingers into my eye and cheek, pulling me sideways and down. If I had not been taught the same dance steps, that would have been the end of me, but without having to think it through, I knew a knife was heading for the side of my neck. I caught his forearm with a knife-hand blow. It had enough strength to block the blade, but not much else. I stepped sideways towards the knife, counter to instinct, trapping his arm between my shoulder and the wall. His hand still dug into my face and his thumb was trying to seek out my eye socket. I brought my other hand, which still held the keys, down and back and into his groin.

He gasped and the grip on my face loosened. I grabbed his knife hand and slammed it against the wall. My brain registered the shape of the knife: the long, slender, deadly but rather beautiful profile of a Fairbairn-Sykes. I was in trouble. Big trouble. Only one of us was coming out of this alive. He clung on to the knife, so I kept his knife hand pinioned to the wall with my left hand while slamming my right elbow into his face, five or six times within a couple of seconds. I had enough of a look at his face to see an old, ugly scar on his forehead and recognize him as the guy who had jumped me in the alley. Except this time there was no chat.

His nose burst and there was blood all over his face, but he didn’t pay any attention to it. It was something that I always found hard to explain to anyone who hadn’t experienced this kind of combat: it takes a lot to hurt you. Shock and a gallon of adrenalin blocks sensation until it’s all over. Then it hurts.

I knew I had to deal with the knife. I aimed a blow at his wrist with my Yale key, the only weapon I had, but my attacker brought his knee up into the small of my back and pushed me forward. He was a strong bastard all right and I lost my grip on his wrist and spun around to face him. He held the knife flat, face-up, textbook style. He slashed at me. Again, he wasn’t trying to stab me, like some street thug would do. He was looking for the quick kill: a slash across my thigh, neck or forearm to sever the femoral, brachial or carotid artery. Then you just step back out of harm’s way and watch your opponent bleed out in seconds. Textbook stuff.

I rolled over the top of my desk. Every time he came at me, I moved around the desk, keeping it between me and him, like we were playing a childhood game of tag. I felt something wet on my hand and looked down to see blood blooming on my shirt cuff and the back of my hand running red. He’d got me, but on the wrong side of my arm. I needed a weapon. By this time I had done a full circuit of the desk and he was now behind it, where I usually sat. The only thing I could grab was the hat stand behind me. I held it in front of me, stabbing at him like a retiarius gladiator with a trident. He made a move to get around the desk so I jabbed the base of the hat stand at his face and it jarred as it hit bone. One of his eyes had all but closed, swollen from one of the blows with my elbow and I could tell his vision was compromised. I jabbed again, this time slamming into his chest as hard as I could. My captain’s chair caught the back of one of his legs and he fell backwards into the window, smashing the glass. I pushed again, forcing him through the window. He grabbed the window frame on either side with both hands to stop himself falling through, dropping the F-S knife as he did so.

He gave me the look. The look that says ‘I give up’.

Still, I kept the pressure on his chest with the hat stand.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Who do you work for?’

‘Forget it, Lennox. Just call the police and let’s get this over with.’

Like me, he was trying to catch his breath and this time there was no attempt at a half-assed Glasgow accent. He spoke with an English accent, beautifully modulated, received pronunciation. I wondered for a moment if the BBC Home Service had an elite commando announcer unit.

‘What’s this? Name, rank and serial number stuff?’ I jabbed him again and the bloodied fingers of one hand slipped from the window frame. He scrabbled to regain his grip.

‘Okay, Commando Joe, I’m only going to ask this one more time: who sent you? Joe Strachan? Where is he?’