looked, I couldn’t see me in it.
I washed and changed. Suit, shirt, underwear, everything. It was something about hospitals I could never understand: you came out of them smelling of carbolic yet you always felt dirty. I went downstairs at six and had a meal of fish, peas and potatoes with Fiona and her daughters. I tried to chat as much as I could but the truth was I was still pretty shaken up by what had happened in my office. Fiona frowned when she saw me take some prescription pills with my meal; the bandage and dressing on my arm was concealed by my shirt sleeve and she did not know how badly I’d been injured, if at all. But the other thing that nagged at me throughout the meal was the smug presence of a dead man’s brother.
After we finished, I helped Fiona take the dishes through to the kitchen but she told me to sit. The girls settled down to watch television and I closed the kitchen door.
‘Are you okay with this, Fiona?’ I asked. ‘I know that reading about what happened must have been a shock.’
She stopped washing the plate she was working on and leant against the edge of the sink, her back to me, and looking out of the kitchen window to the small garden at the back.
‘This man. You killed him? I mean it wasn’t an accident?’
I was about to say it was a little of both, but the infuriating thing about Fiona White was that she brought out the honesty in me. ‘Yes, I killed him. But it was in self-defence. He ambushed me in my office and tried to cut my throat. He was the same guy who jumped me in the fog.’
She turned to me.
‘So it’s safe for you to be back here?’ She made it more of a statement than a question.
‘That’s not one hundred per cent certain,’ I said. ‘I don’t for one minute think that this man was working on his own. But I can’t imagine whoever was behind the attack risking anything so … so
‘No,’ she said, but as if she had to think about it and without emphasis.
‘It’s not always going to be like this, Fiona,’ I said. ‘Things have got all mixed up. I thought this kind of thing was behind me. I guess I was wrong.’
‘You don’t have to explain,’ she said. ‘But you know I can’t be part of that world. I can’t bring the girls into that kind of world.’
‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘But that’s what I’m trying to put behind me. Things will get better, like I said.’
‘I know they will,’ she said and smiled.
But we both knew my fate was sealed.
It had still been just within banking hours so, on the way back from the hospital, I had had Archie stop off at the bank. News of my adventures had obviously reached the bank and when I walked in it was the kind of entry that you would expect a gunfighter to get walking into a Western saloon. MacGregor himself dealt with my request to access my safety deposit box. He was overly chatty but nervous, as if making a conscious effort to avoid the word ‘window’ or any reference to catching a taxi. I was glad I had the goods on him, otherwise I reckoned I would have already lost the bank job. As it was, my knowledge of his sordid private life would do little to save me if the board of governors set their minds to get rid of me.
But there again, they maybe liked the idea of their cash being guarded by a life-taker.
I had taken the Webley from the safety deposit box and had tucked it into the waistband of my trousers. I knew that if McNab found out I was walking about his town heavy with an unlicensed gun, the recent thaw in relations would turn out to have been a false Spring. But if someone tried to kill me again, I wanted to have more than a hat stand in my hand. When I had gotten back to my digs, and after my pleasant exchange with James White, I had put the Webley under my pillow.
It was about eight-thirty when I put my jacket and hat on, went down to the hall telephone and ’phoned Isa. We arranged that I would meet her and Violet the next day.
I knocked on the Whites’ door and told Elspeth to tell her mother that I would be out for the evening. When I drove off, I was relieved to see that the dark grey Humber stayed on point outside the house, instead of following me. But I guessed my outing would be noted and radioed in.
Before I headed up north and into the country, I stopped at a telephone kiosk and called Murphy.
‘You heard what happened?’ I asked.
‘About you throwing that cunt out the fucking window? I believe it may have come to my fucking notice. I thought you was supposed to be discreet? So who was he?’
‘The same guy I told you and Jonny Cohen about. The one who jumped me in the fog.’
‘So what are you telling me, that you want your fucking money?’
‘No. Maybe. I don’t think so. Listen, I’m not at all sure that this guy was this so called Lad of Strachan’s. Unless Gentleman Joe sent him for elocution lessons, that is. He was English.’
‘Aye? Fucking reason enough to throw him out the window.’
‘Listen, Mr Murphy, could you tell Jonny Cohen about this? I’ve got to look into something else, and it might just tell us whether Strachan is alive or not. I’m also going to try to find out if this guy
After I hung up, I drove out of Glasgow. The sky was heavy and dull but it felt good to get out of the city and into an open landscape. I guessed that there would be no one in the estate office at that time of evening, allowing me to dodge any encounter with the sexually repressed, tweed-clad Miss Marple. When I reached the estate, however, I found the gates closed and padlocked.
Running through the rough map of the place I had in my mind, I headed further on up the narrow ribbon of country road. A high dry-stone wall running along the side of the road marked the border of the estate. Eventually I found a lane that led to a disused entry, but this had been bricked up. At least the Atlantic was off the road and reasonably concealed, so I decided to risk my suede loafers and hounds-tooth suit by climbing the wall. I dropped down the other side into a mulch of old fallen leaves, twigs and branches. Ahead of me was a dense swatch of evergreens that the late evening light failed to penetrate, but I reckoned that if I walked straight ahead and managed not to break an ankle, I would come out onto the path that had led from the estate office to Dunbar’s cottage.
I really didn’t like the walk through the forest. I found myself listening to every creak, rustle and bird cry, my heart in my mouth. There was nothing to fear here and now, of course, but I’d taken many such walks through woods just like this, and back then there were things more deadly than squirrels and rabbits hiding in the foliage.
Ten minutes later I came out exactly where I thought I would, although it took me a minute to get my exact bearings on how far up the path I was. I looked around and found a largish rock by the side of the path. Its shape was reminiscent of a curled-up cat sleeping, or maybe it was just me who would see that. The point was it was distinctive enough for me to recognize and I moved it so that it sat out on the path. On the way back, all I had to do was find the rock, turn left into the woods and head arrow-straight towards the boundary wall.
It was beginning to get dark, even out here beyond the gloom of the trees. I didn’t know why I was doing it, but I slipped the Webley out from my waistband, snapped open the breech and checked the cylinder was full before snapping it shut again and tucking it back into my waistband. I also checked my inside jacket pocket to make sure the photograph was there.
It took me another fifteen minutes to reach the cottage. There were no lights showing and no sign of life, so I guessed that my luck had run out and that no one was home. I went up to the door anyway and knocked, but there was no reply. I stood there for a moment debating whether I should leave the photograph and a note, asking Dunbar to ’phone me if he recognized the man in the photograph. I decided against it. It was my only copy of the photograph and I had to be careful with it: it could, after all, connect me to a burnt-out tenement flat and a dead queer.
I cursed the waste of time coming all the way up here for nothing and turned resignedly from the door. Before I retook the path, I went to one of the cottage windows, cupped my hands to blinker my eyes and peered through the glass. As I did so the memory of my last experience peeping through a window came to mind and I hoped with a laugh I would not catch Dunbar and his ugly wife in flagrante.
