The Deep Dark Sleep

think about how that had turned out for them.

Strachan pulled up in a glossy Triumph Mayflower. He was only ten minutes early and I was surprised, really surprised, to see that he had turned up alone.

I was impressed. Here he was on a gloomy Glasgow dockside, the Gorbals born and bred Joe Strachan, and he could not have looked more out of place. There was nothing about him that said Glasgow: he was as tall as me, and when he stepped out of the car without a coat, I could see that he was impeccably dressed as a country gentleman. The tailoring did not have the robust, shapeless and slightly tasteless look of typical British country wear; I guessed that his sports jacket and flannels were of Italian or French origin, which added to the vaguely foreign-aristocrat look I’d picked up from the photograph. And there was no doubt in my mind that he was the man in the photograph.

Strachan may have been in the back end of his fifties, but he had the physique of someone twenty years younger. This was no old man.

He stood at the end of the pier, watching the Clyde slide by inky and sleek in the dark. As I watched him, I wondered if Strachan was pondering on what it would really have been like to take the deep, dark sleep at the bottom of the river.

A second car arrived and I had to duck down behind the crates to avoid being picked up in the sweep of headlights. The car parked at the land end of the pier and Fraser got out. He walked right past my hiding place and as he made his way towards Strachan, I could see him glancing nervously about.

From my silent, shadowed hiding place I willed Fraser to stop looking around. He was sending a signal to Strachan as sure as if he had called ‘Lennox! Lennox! Come out, come out, wherever you are!’

He reached Strachan and the two men shook hands, Fraser still moving stiffly and looking as rigid as hell. I couldn’t hear what they were saying to each other but I just hoped to hell that Fraser was sticking to the script we had agreed in the car as we’d driven off the Finnieston Ferry. I’d told Fraser to say I’d come to see him and I wanted to do a deal. I wanted out of the whole business and just wanted assurances that they would leave me alone. I told Fraser to say that I had told him I had a complete dossier on Strachan, including his new identity and the photograph Paul Downey had taken, and if anything happened to me it would automatically be sent to the police, so on and so forth. I told Fraser to drop in that I had an eyewitness stashed away to boot. The eyewitness they had planned to bump off.

It was all complete guff — other than me having Paul Downey tucked away in a Largs caravan park — and Strachan would know it, but it was all just something for Fraser to say until I got a chance to get the jump on Strachan. And without his goons to support him, although it was still going to be a dangerous play, it was going to be that much easier.

As they talked, Strachan gazed at the ground in concentration and nodded, as if taking in every syllable that Fraser uttered. Then, suddenly, he held up a hand as if telling Fraser to wait. He walked over to the Mayflower and opened the boot. He hauled a small, slightly-built man with dark hair out of the boot and to his feet.

Paul Downey.

I made a start but then checked myself.

‘Good evening, Mr Lennox,’ Strachan called out into the night, but not in my direction. ‘As you see, I have your witness here.’ The accent, like the tailoring, didn’t have even the tiniest vestige of Glasgow about it. Cut-glass clear and modulated, the same way as my chum who took the window exit. ‘When you told Mr Fraser here to call my men off the search for Downey, all we had to do was to follow you. You’re really not as good as you think. Now, Mr Lennox, please don’t be tiresome. Show yourself. I know that you are here.’

It was then that I heard them: the other two. I turned to see one beginning to search the far side of the pier, starting at the top and working his way towards the water. I heard his chum on my side, further back and nearer to where Fraser had parked his car, working his way through the stacks of barrels and crates.

I kept tight, but I was pissed. I was pissed at being hunted again by these bastards. I felt my anger boil in my chest. If I was going to die here, I wasn’t going to be the only one.

‘Mr Lennox … please.’ He sighed and let go of Downey, who stood, his shoulders hunched, as if suspended by an invisible wire. Strachan now stood with Downey on one side, Fraser on the other. ‘Do you know the Fairbairn- Sykes Timetable of Death, Mr Lennox?’ He spoke loudly but did not shout. He knew I was somewhere on the pier. ‘Standard issue for commando and SOE operatives. He reached inside his jacket and slipped something from his belt. Not a gun.

‘Number One …’ Strachan held the F-S fighting knife, the same type with which my attacker had been armed, to the inside of Paul Downey’s arm, ‘the brachial artery. Depth of cut, just half an inch. Loss of consciousness, fourteen seconds. Death, one minute thirty seconds.’

I could hear Downey sob; see his shoulders shake. With lightning speed, Strachan moved the knife to Downey’s wrist. ‘Number Two … radial artery. Depth of cut, only one quarter of an inch. Slightly slower action, however and a smaller target, so I’ve never gone for it myself. Loss of consciousness, thirty seconds. Death, two minutes.’ He paused. ‘Now, Mr Lennox, please show yourself, or my demonstration might become more explicit.’

I stayed put. If he was going to kill Downey, he was going to kill Downey. I just had to work out how to get the three of us out of there. I heard noises closer to me.

Strachan sighed again. ‘All right, Mr Lennox. Do you know I’ve demonstrated these knife strikes more often than I can remember? All through the war. Now we come to the really quick kills. Number Three …’ The knife flashed and was at the side of Downey’s neck. ‘The carotid. Depth of cut, one and a half inches. Loss of consciousness in just five seconds. Death within twelve seconds. Mr Lennox?’

The guy to my right was getting really close. I slipped the Webley from my belt.

‘Now this brings me to my favourite of all strikes …’ Strachan arced his arm up, again so fast that Downey didn’t even flinch, and the blade of the commando knife was angled down resting just behind where Downey’s collar bone would be. ‘The subclavian. The gladiator strike. Depth of cut two and a half inches. Unconsciousness in two seconds. Death in three and a half. Like I said, my favourite of all cuts.’

With that, his hand arced again, the blade flashing in the dark. But this time it was away from Downey. It looked no more than a tap on the shoulder, but I could see the blade had sunk deep into Fraser’s body and was pulled free in the same sliver of a second. The lawyer sank to his knees, without uttering a sound, a dark bloom soaking his white shirt. He toppled, face down, onto the pier.

‘Now, Mr Lennox. I will give you this boy. I will let him leave here tonight to go on running and hiding and living in fear. But my price, Lennox, has to be you.’

I had a fix on the heavy searching on the far side of the pier and at that moment, the second goon emerged from behind the pile of crates next to me. His head was wrapped in bandages and from what I could see from his face, he wasn’t going to be modelling knitting patterns. He was the goon whose features I’d rearranged the night of our nature trek in the woods.

‘I’m here,’ I said quietly and stood up. I shot goon two in the bandages. I heard the percussive crack of a bullet passing close to my head and I fired at the other goon before he could improve his aim. He took it in the belly and doubled up, dropping his gun and screaming.

I aimed at Strachan, but he pulled Downey in front of his body as a shield, holding the F-S knife at the youth’s throat. And as I had just seen, he knew how to use it. There was no fear or panic in Strachan’s movements, just efficiency.

The goon behind me was still screaming, so I went over and kicked his gun out of reach. Strachan did nothing while I checked on the other goon. The bandages around his head were soaked crimson. He’d used up all the oxygen he was ever going to use.

I walked back towards where Strachan held Downey.

‘You all right, Paul?’ I asked.

‘I’ve wet myself,’ he said tearfully. ‘Please don’t let him kill me, Mr Lennox. Please don’t let him.’

‘What about it, Strachan? You said you’d let the boy go in exchange for me.’

‘That’s not quite the bargain it was, Mr Lennox, considering you have that gun.’

‘It’s the only bargain you’ll get. Let’s face it, if you kill Downey, I’ll kill you. Let him go and we can talk.’

‘By talk, do you mean bargain?’

‘If there’s one thing you should have learned about me by now, Mr Strachan … do I call you Mr Strachan? Or Joe? Or Colonel Williamson?’