The Deep Dark Sleep

Glaswegians are as pale-complexioned as it is possible to be, yet I could have sworn both of them turned an even whiter shade.

‘Do we have a problem, gentlemen?’ Neckless the doorman was beside me. Buzzer behind the bar, I reckoned.

‘I don’t think so,’ I said cheerily. ‘These two gentlemen and I are just going outside for a stroll, aren’t we?’

‘Listen, I don’t want any trouble …’ The big guy now looked scared. The doorman wouldn’t care what happened between us if we took it outside.

‘Lennox …’ I felt a hand rest gently on my shoulder and got a blast of perfume. I turned and saw Martha. She smiled nervously. ‘No trouble, Lennox, okay? Why don’t you and me sit down over here and have a drink? On the house. These boys didn’t mean any harm.’

The two guys next to me were now turned back to the bar, doing the don’t-make-eye-contact-with-the-psycho thing. Neckless backed off a little and I let Martha lead me across to the table. I noticed her nod to the barman and our drinks followed us quickly.

I sat and glowered at the two guys at the bar for a while longer, but eventually the jazz started to soak into my bones and dissolve the tension in my muscles.

‘You’ve got to watch that temper of yours, Lennox,’ said Martha. ‘It could get you into bother.’

‘Wouldn’t be the first time,’ I said, easing back into my chair. I stopped watching the two guys at the bar, mainly because they were breaking all the laws of probability and never casting a glance anywhere on my side of the room. The next time I looked up, they were gone. ‘Anyway, I wasn’t looking for trouble. Those guys all but picked a fight.’

‘But the way you go at people … the way you lose control … it isn’t right, Lennox.’

‘You think I’m ready for the psycho ward, Martha?’

‘I’m not saying that. I just think you should ease up a little. Someone’s going to end up hurt. Bad.’

‘It wouldn’t ever come to that,’ I said, trying to tuck away in some dark corner of my mind the image of the goon I’d left on a country road with few teeth and a lifetime of mouth-breathing ahead of him. I smiled at Martha. She was pretty and, despite her job, she was a good kid. There was something about her, about the architecture of her face and the high cheekbones that reminded me in a vague way of Fiona White. ‘Enough of the gloomy talk,’ I said. ‘Let’s have another drink …’

I drove Martha home. Which was quite an accomplishment given the amount of bourbon I’d consumed. For a lot of the way I was confused by the sudden presence of so many dual carriageways in Glasgow, but managed to resolve the problem by keeping one eye shut while I drove. Martha had had a few as well, but I’d left her pretty far behind. When we got to her place she made me some of that coffee that came out of a bottle and you mixed with hot water. It tasted like crap but started to do the trick.

Martha’s place was in a newish building with shops on the ground floor and flats above. We had only ever tangoed in my car so this was my first time there and I was surprised at how tasteful it was. The furniture was the Modernist type of thing that was coming out of Denmark and she had a few Impressionist prints in cheap frames on the wall. A small bookcase was filled with book club novels and there was a two-month-old copy of Vogue on the coffee table, to be seen as much as read, I guessed. The place screamed of someone trying to break out of the rut they were stuck in and the bright, stylish, cheerful flat depressed the hell out of me.

We talked for a while and I drunk more coffee, but the booze in my system was messing with my visual recall and Martha began to look more and more like Fiona White to me. I moved in, as we both had known I would, and experienced a lack of resistance that would embarrass an Italian general. We ended up on the floor and her dress became a crumple around her waist. What followed was unlovely and almost brutal and I eased off when I saw a touch of fear in her eyes. I became more gentle and kissed her, but with my eyes closed it was still Fiona White and not Martha I had under me.

Afterwards we smoked and she was quiet. I apologized for being so rough and asked if we could see each other again.

‘I’d like that,’ she said, and I was disappointed to see that she meant it.

It was about ten the next morning when, accompanied by Archie, I arrived to meet the twins at Violet’s home in Milngavie. I had decided against conducting our business in my office because I felt the boarded-up window behind my desk might just have been a little off-putting for clients: a reminder, as it was, that I had added a new option in how you could leave my office.