The Deep Dark Sleep

Originally, Archie did the wages run with me to eke out his police pension and the money he made as a shipyard night watchman, but he had lost the watchman job, the unions complaining about his harassing their members. It was a universally accepted fact along Clydeside that almost everything that could not be nailed down, and most that was, was likely to leave a Glasgow shipyard under a fitter’s raincoat or wheeled out in a barrow hidden amidst the throng of workers leaving the yards at shift-change.

Pilfering was endemic in the yards. Shipworkers’ homes in Clydebank were famed for their eclectic décor: often tenement slum chic combined with ocean liner salon, complemented with a battleship-grey colour scheme. Archie, the ex-copper, had misunderstood his brief as night watchman and had managed to stop hundreds of pounds’ worth of timber, paint and brass fittings from walking out of the yard. The management had not been able to forgive Archie for doing his job unacceptably well and he was let go. Since then, I had tried to give him whatever I could in the way of work, including the odd divorce witness job, and the Friday run was a regular fixture.

When I came back up to the main hall of the bank, Archie was talking to MacGregor, the Chief Clerk, who organized the run. MacGregor was the usual young fogey you found working in a bank – a twenty-five-year-old striving hard for middle age – and Archie made a point of befuddling him with humour at every opportunity.

Archie looked over to me with his Alastair Sim eyes as he signed the manifest log, his truncheon hanging from his wrist like a handbag.

‘There’s a bit of confusion here, boss,’ he said, without a hint of a smile. ‘Mr MacGregor here says the money is to go to the yard as usual, but I thought you said this week we were off to Barbados with it.’

‘Ignore Archie, Mr MacGregor,’ I said. ‘He’s having you on. Barbados has an extradition treaty, we’re off to Spain.’

‘This amount of money is no joking matter, Mr Lennox,’ MacGregor said to me over spectacles pushed halfway down his nose, yet another misguided affectation of middle-class middle-age. ‘You’ll telephone as usual to confirm delivery?’

I said I would and signalled for Archie to stand guard on the street while I loaded the back of the van with the sacks.

It was the usual, thankfully uneventful trip: me driving, Archie sitting lugubriously with the mail sacks in the back. We delivered the wages to the shipyard office and I ’phoned MacGregor to confirm delivery. On the way back, Archie sat in the front with me.

‘I know you’ve been hit hard by losing the watchman job,’ I said. ‘Listen, Archie, things have been picking up with the business and I could do with some help. It wouldn’t be full time, not for a while at least, but if things keep going the way they’re going, it could well become full time. You interested?’

Archie looked at me with his big, mournful eyes. ‘Would it be the same kind of stuff that I’ve been doing for you lately?’

‘Yes … divorce cases, security work, missing persons. Wearing out shoe leather and knocking on doors, that kind of thing.’

The truth was I was already using Archie more and more for divorce cases. Divorce evidence in court always sounded better coming from a retired police officer, added to which Archie’s perpetually gloomy demeanour seemed to give it added gravitas. There was also the fact that I got decidedly nervous in the witness box, something lawyers are wont to pick up on. Truth was I was worried that some bright young counsel would start to call my character as a witness into question. And my character, or at least my history, was best left unquestioned.

‘I see …’ Archie leaned back in the passenger seat and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘I was considering the chairmanship of ICI… but I suppose I could fit your jobs in. Do I get an expense account, superannuation and luncheon vouchers?’

‘You’ll get ten shillings an hour plus expenses. I’ll leave your pension fund in ICI’s hands …’

‘I shall consult with the board, of course,’ he said, hooking his thumbs in his waistcoat, ‘but in the meantime you may assume my answer to be in the affirmative.’

‘Good. I’ve got two cases on right now that I need help with. One of them is to do with Gentleman Joe Strachan and the Empire Exhibition robbery. Jock Ferguson said that you would probably have been in the force at the time.’

‘Aye … I was that. I remember it well. Bad business.’ Impossibly, his expression became more doleful. ‘Very bad business.’

‘What happened? I mean, how much do you know?’

‘Most of what there is to know. Every detail, as did every copper in Glasgow. We had the whole story drummed into us over and over again. I take it you know all about the Exhibition?’

I nodded. ‘I believe it was really something …’