The Deep Dark Sleep

‘He must stand out from the others,’ I said. ‘I mean, he’ll be the only gamekeeper with the barrels sawn off his shotgun. Anybody else you can think of that might give me a steer, Jock? What about the witness?’

A roar of laughter from a bunch of flat-caps behind us swelled the clamour and Jock made out that he hadn’t heard me.

‘What about the witness you mentioned? The van driver?’

‘I don’t know his name offhand,’ he said with a sigh. ‘I’ll get back to you with it. I’ll tell you what, you should speak to Archie McClelland about it.’ Ferguson referred to the retired policeman I had hired to ride security with me on the wages run. ‘Archie was in the force back then. I’ve no doubt that he can tell you something about it. Now … I think you owe me another pint …’

I smiled resignedly and, shaking my empty beer glass, turned to Big Bob, who was at the far end of the bar.

I arrived on time for my meeting with Donald Fraser, the solicitor. Disappointingly, he was pretty much as I had expected from his voice: unremarkable and dour. He was tall and dull looking in the way only lawyers and bank managers managed to look dull, dressed in an expensive blue serge suit that was very carefully just out of fashion. It was also several cloth weights too heavy for the time of year and the elbows had glossed with too much desk leaning. Like his elbows, the dome of his skull seemed worn and his scalp shone through the thinning dark hair. The small, beady eyes that watched me through wire-framed spectacles had a look that I guessed was meant to be superior or intimidating. It didn’t work. He took half a dictionary to ask me to sit down and I did, taking my hat off and hanging it on my knee.

‘I was fortuitously supplied with your name by Mr George Meldrum, a colleague of mine,’ said Fraser.

‘I know Mr Meldrum,’ I said, without adding that I was surprised that Fraser knew him professionally. Everybody knew George Meldrum by reputation, of course: he was Glasgow’s most flamboyant defence lawyer and had represented some of the more colourful members of the city’s underworld, his principal client being Willie Sneddon, one of the Three Kings. Meldrum was the kind of oleaginous creep who treated people like crap whenever he could get away with it, yet when in Sneddon’s presence displayed an obsequiousness that would embarrass any self-respecting lickspittle.

‘I appreciate his recommendation,’ I said as if I meant it.

‘Quite …’ Fraser’s tone suggested that it had been less a recommendation, more of a needs-must. ‘Mr Meldrum assures me of your discretion. Particularly with regard to the more unsavoury aspects of some investigations.’

‘I see,’ I said, guessing that Fraser expected me to polish up my lead-and-leather sap. ‘I hope you understand that I operate within the law at all times, Mr Fraser.’

‘Of course,’ Fraser said, emphatically and with a hint of wounded integrity. ‘I would not expect anything less. We would not be having this conversation if I thought otherwise.’

‘Why don’t you tell me what it is you want me to do? The thing you didn’t want to divulge telephonically.’ I threw his twenty guinea phrase back at him.

‘You’re American, Mr Lennox? From your accent I mean …’

‘No. I’m Canadian. Scottish parents but brought up in Canada.’

‘Ah,’ he said approvingly, as if he found the latitude of my childhood more commendable; there was a strong fraternal link between the Scots and the Canadians – as could be seen by the three-block queues of eager soon-to-be-ex-Glaswegians outside the Canadian Consulate in Woodlands Terrace. By contrast, the British generally had a distaste for the upstart vulgarity of Americans, particularly for the insolence with which they had saved Britain from defeat during the War, and then from bankruptcy after it. ‘Like Robert Beatty, the actor?’ said Fraser eagerly. ‘My wife is something of a fan of Robert Beatty.’

‘Not quite. Beatty’s an Ontarian. I was raised in New Brunswick. Atlantic Canada.’

‘I see,’ Fraser said with a hint of disappointment. I had gotten the latitude right, but not the longitude. He opened a buff foolscap folder and slid a large, black and white portrait photograph across the desk at me. An unfeasibly handsome face grinned a one hundred-watt smile at me. I recognized the face right away.

‘That’s not Robert Beatty,’ I said.

‘No … that’s the American actor John Macready,’ said Fraser, telling me something I already knew. ‘Mr Macready is over here in Glasgow at the moment. He’s been participating in a film currently being made in Scotland. The filming has been mostly done in the Highlands: an adventure story, I have been led to believe. Mr Macready will be flying back to the United States at the end of the month or thereabouts, from the new airport at Prestwick. Until then, he is resident in the Central Hotel, which I believe is directly opposite your offices, Mr Lennox.’

‘Where do I come into this?’ I asked.