The Deep Dark Sleep

It was difficult to believe, but the Finnieston Vehicular Ferry had not, in fact, been designed by William Heath Robinson. When I had seen it for the first time, it struck me as the most bizarre piece of navigational engineering I had ever seen: somewhere between the skeleton of a Mississippi river-boat and a giant, floating hamster cage. The reason for its unusual appearance was actually its ingeniousness. It could operate throughout the day and evening, whether it was high or low tide — and here the Clyde was tidal — because it had a steam-driven elevating car deck that could be adjusted to the exact height of the quay it docked at, irrespective of the water level at that time.

When I arrived at the ferry next morning there was no smog in the city, but a thickish fog skulked low on the river without the conviction to rise up over the banks and into the streets. The fog turned the improbable superstructure of the ferry into something even more black and gothic. Mine was the only car on the first crossing of the day and there was only a handful of foot passengers. Fraser boarded at the last minute and walked over to where I stood, looking down at the fog fuming on the dark surface of the Clyde.

‘A rather gloomy crossing, don’t you think, Mr Lennox?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. It beats crossing the Styx, I guess. But there again you would know more about that than I would, wouldn’t you, Mr Fraser. It would appear that you have paid the boatman to take more than a few people across that river.’

‘Listen, Mr Lennox, you have got the wrong end of the stick about all of that. This really is a bad business, a thoroughly bad business. Things have just gone far too far. It really is just too unfortunate.’

‘Unfortunate? You pay me silly sums of money and I lead your killers to where Paul Downey is hiding out, except your boys aren’t as good as you think they are and they kill the wrong pansy.’

‘You don’t understand …’ For once Fraser wasn’t full of cocky assurance. ‘Things have got out of hand. I don’t know … you think you know people, you think you understand where you are with them. That there’s some kind of bond between you. Then someone comes along and turns the world on its head.’

‘You’re talking about Joe Strachan?’

Fraser turned from looking out over the water. ‘Help me, Lennox. Protect me. I didn’t know any of this was going to happen. Leonora Bryson asked me if I knew anyone who could follow up on the Downey thing and I put her in touch with Colonel Williamson. The deal was that if you found Downey, Williamson’s men would double check that you had got all of the negatives. And they would perhaps be more forceful in making the point than you had been. I had no idea that Miss Bryson asked them to go further than that.’

‘I was forceful enough. Downey and Gibson were no threat to you, or Leonora Bryson or John Macready. The truth is that Williamson, as you call him, was only too happy to oblige Leonora because he had a good reason to see Downey dead. He wanted to make sure there were no more copies of this photograph …’ I took out the picture that had been my constant companion these last few days. ‘This is Williamson, right?’

‘Right.’

‘Wrong,’ I said. ‘This is Gentleman Joe Strachan, armed robber, murderer and all round bad bastard of the first water.’

‘I know,’ said Fraser. ‘Colonel Williamson persuaded me to put pressure on you to drop all other jobs so you could focus on the Macready case. It didn’t take a genius to guess that what he really wanted was for you to stop looking for Joe Strachan. I worked it out from there. I couldn’t believe it at first … I’ve known Colonel Williamson since the war. And I couldn’t work out how he could have got security clearance for the work he did during the war, based on a fictitious identity.’

‘So how did you square that circle?’

‘If there’s one thing I’m good at, Mr Lennox, it’s paperwork. And every life leaves a paper trail. When it comes to following documentary traces, I’m like a native tracker.’

‘Let me guess: Henry Williamson isn’t a fictitious identity.’

Fraser shook his head. ‘No. He was a South African, educated at an exclusive boarding school in Natal. Parents both dead, no brothers or sisters, and any other kin distant both in terms of relationship and geography. He served as an officer in the Great War, then nothing much on record for twenty years, other than his being a shareholder in various companies and buying two properties: a townhouse in Edinburgh and a large country property in the Borders. Then, just before hostilities break out, he renews his commission in the army, but with a totally different regiment from the one in which he served during the Great War.’

‘Let me guess again,’ I said. ‘He re-joined the army in Thirty-eight? Right about the time of the Triple Crown robberies?’

‘Exactly. You have to believe me, Lennox, I had no idea until then that the person I had known for all of these years was anyone other than Colonel Williamson.’

‘So when did you meet him?’

‘In Nineteen forty. He had been stationed at Edinburgh Castle and was moved up to Headquarters staff at Craigiehall, sometime between re-enlistment and Nineteen forty he had been promoted to full Colonel. He was put in charge of “special training” for hand-picked units of the Home Guard. I was selected to command a unit and, effectively, he became my senior officer. I tell you, Lennox, there wasn’t a thing about the man that didn’t ring true. There were even officers who remembered meeting him in France during the First War. How he managed that I can’t imagine, and it was the one thing that I still have trouble with. I just can’t reconcile that with him being a fake.’

‘It’s not that complicated. During the First War, Strachan was a deserter and an officer-impersonator, pretty much in the same way as Percy Toplis was. From what I can gather, he was a popular member of the officers’ mess. There were bound to be others who would remember him, whether he used the name Williamson or not.’

Fraser nodded. ‘I worked out that, at some point between Nineteen eighteen and Nineteen twenty-nine, the real Williamson must have died — probably murdered by his imposter, who stepped seamlessly into his life.’

‘That’s my guess too,’ I said. ‘After that, I reckon Strachan merely maintained the identity, without being too active within it. Although his daughters told me that he would disappear for long periods. Anyway, back to the war … what exactly were you and Strachan involved in?’

‘Officially the only Scallywag units were stationed along the south coast of England, where everyone thought the German invasion would take place. But it was worked out that large deployments of paratroopers and amphibious troops could be dropped or landed in the more remote parts of the Highlands and Scottish coastline. So the Duke of Strathlorne was put in command of special operations training for Auxiliary Home Guard units in Scotland.’

‘And after the war, you, Strachan and the Duke all remained tight in your little special forces club.’

‘Something like that. I was proud of what I did, Lennox. You have no idea what we were trained to do. If the invasion took place, we were to carry out sabotage and assassinations. Any senior public official who collaborated with the occupation was to be eliminated: politicians, council heads, even police chief constables. We had hidden arms dumps all over Scotland and enough rations to last us seven weeks.’

‘And what were you supposed to do after the seven weeks?’

Fraser laughed bitterly. ‘It was the same arrangement as the Scallywag units on the south coast of England … they gave us all seven weeks’ rations because they had worked out that we would all be dead before then.’

‘And these arms dumps … have they all been cleared out?’

‘No. Not at all. No one except the units themselves know where the dumps are. It’s the same all across Europe. The Duke is in contact with other organizations, including Gladio.’

‘I see,’ I said. I was beginning to understand.

‘The danger is still there, Lennox. Except it’s not the Nazis any more, it’s the Soviets. And they ground the Nazi war machine into dust; how long do you think it would take them to sweep across Europe? The only defence we have is the bomb.’

‘And the stay-behinds …’ I said. ‘So that is what this is all about. You and your Home Guard chums are still playing at soldiers. This isn’t just about Strachan protecting himself, it’s about protecting the Duke. Including protecting him from the kind of scandal his son was likely to cause.’

‘That’s about the size of it,’ said Fraser.

‘And Strachan — or Colonel Williamson — is in charge of security, is that it?’

‘Something like that. He recruits men straight out of the army: commandos, paratroopers, that kind of thing. New blood.’