The Deep Dark Sleep

‘How did you get them? The scars, I mean?’ she asked, awkwardly, as she used the strips to secure a fresh pad in place. I turned my head a little and she tutted again, pushing it back with two fingers. It was the first time she had ever asked me a personal question.

‘I picked the wrong plastic surgeon,’ I said. ‘He said he’d done Hedy Lamarr’s nose and Cary Grant’s chin, but he’d only ever really done Clark Gable’s ears.’

‘Seriously …’

‘They really are plastic surgery scars,’ I said. ‘They had to patch me up after I caught the tail end of a German hand grenade.’ I didn’t tell her that it would have been much worse, if one of my men hadn’t taken most of the blast. My face had been torn open, but they’d been able to put me back together again. His splashed-in-the-mud guts were beyond any surgeon’s skill.

But the plastic guy who had fixed my face had done a pretty good job: all I had was a spider web of faint, pale scars on my right cheek. And my smile could look a little lopsided, because of nerve damage, but only in a way that made it look even more wolfish, as Leonora Bryson could fully attest.

While tea infused, Fiona White brought me a couple of aspirin and a tumbler of water. The talk became small and mainly about the smog and how it always caused trouble; but, as I sat there, a thought sunk heavy and sickeningly in my gut. I had lied to Fiona White about what happened, for the best reasons, and God knows that, on most occasions, I didn’t have to have the best reasons to lie. But I didn’t like lying to her.

That was not, however, the main cause for the feeling in the pit of my stomach. I had just evaded a very serious operator with a gun in his hand: the very same person who had ’phoned me at my digs the night before. And he had clearly been waiting for me, outside the house, knowing I would be heading in to see if he kept our specious appointment.

That meant he knew where I lived. And that, in turn, placed Fiona White and her girls in danger.

‘Is something wrong, Mr Lennox?’ Fiona White asked. ‘Are you feeling worse? I really think we should see about getting you to a doctor.’

I shook my head. For a second I debated with myself about whether I should level with her or not. It would alarm her and would certainly end my tenancy, but she had a right to know.

‘I need to make a ’phone call,’ I said.

I stood up and walked through to the hall telephone.

While we waited for Jock Ferguson to arrive, I sat with Fiona White and told her exactly what had happened to me and why. For some reason I even levelled with her about the money being sent to Isa and Violet each year on the anniversary of the Empire Exhibition robbery, and told her that this was one fact that I was keeping from the police, on client confidentiality grounds. I also told her that I had another, very high profile case that I was working on that could cause all kinds of problems, but that my little samba in the smog certainly had nothing to do with that investigation.

She sat and listened to me quietly, her small, pretty hands folded on the lap of her apron and her face quiet and serious, but otherwise without any expression. I sat and listened to myself in amazement: I was the most secretive person I knew – I even kept secrets from myself – and I never talked to anyone about my work, yet here I was spilling my guts to my landlady.

I knew I should shut up. And somewhere deep inside, I was screaming to myself to shut up, but I wouldn’t stop talking. I spoke fast and urgently and once I had given her the full background to what had happened, I told Mrs White about how I was now concerned that this man, and anyone he was associated with, clearly knew where I lived. I said I would pack a few of my things and move somewhere else, at least for the time being, but I would continue to pay my rent to her. I understood that she would probably want me to move out permanently because of the inconvenience I had caused her and I said that I would, of course, comply with her wishes, but in the meantime I wanted Inspector Ferguson to know what had happened and maybe get someone to keep an eye on the place and … I seemed to run out of things to say, or breath, or both. I punctuated it all with, ‘I’m sorry …’

‘Where will you go?’ she asked in a tone that was impossible to read.

‘I don’t know … A hotel, probably. I’ll be okay.’

‘I see …’ Still nothing to read in her voice or on her face.

The doorbell went. I made her stay where she was while I got it.

I was surprised that Ferguson had come alone. I introduced him to Fiona White, but they had met once or twice before, briefly, when she had answered the door to him on a couple of the rare occasions he had visited me at my digs.

I ran through everything with him.

‘So it was your caller from last night?’

‘Looks like it, Jock.’

‘So, do you want to make a complaint of assault?’

‘No. That could make things complicated. I just want to make sure Mrs White isn’t troubled by this.’