The Deep Dark Sleep

It was a scene that bordered on the surreal: McNab, Jock Ferguson and I chatting like a bunch of old women over cups of tea and digestive biscuits. I did most of the talking and told them almost everything I had, again skipping the details of my nature trek in the forest. I did tell them that I’d been to see Billy Dunbar, accompanied by Archie, a reliable witness to the fact that Billy and his wife were both breathing when we left.

One thing that I had been expecting was to be hit with my possible connection to the death of Frank Gibson, Paul Downey’s muscular innamorato, but either Jock Ferguson hadn’t made the connection between Downey and Gibson, or he had forgotten that I had asked about someone with that name.

I placed the photograph on the desk.

‘I could have sworn this was going to turn out to be Gentleman Joe Strachan, but it’s not. It’s a guy he used to know. A friend of his called Henry Williamson. From what I’ve heard, he’s straight, but I’m pretty sure the guy who fell out of my window was working for him.’

I stabbed the photograph with my finger. I hoped the emphasis would prevent them asking exactly why I suspected him of being the brains behind the attack. McNab stared at the photograph and frowned. It gave me a bad feeling. The kind of bad feeling you get when the husband of someone you’ve got playful with stares at the smudge of lipstick you’ve got on your shirt collar.

McNab picked up the phone on the desk and tapped at the cradle before sighing and walking out of the room without a word. Ferguson looked at me and shrugged.

McNab came back in and sat down, staring at the photograph.

‘What’s up, Superintendent?’ asked Jock.

‘I’ve asked Jimmy Duncan in records to come up and join us. He works part-time as a civvy clerk, but was on the force until three years ago. He was senior man when I joined as a probationer. There’s not a face in Glasgow that he can’t put a name to.’

We sat in expectant silence for five minutes, then a heavy-built man in shirtsleeves, wearing ugly health service hornrimmed glasses and with a shock of white hair walked in. He may have been pushing sixty, but he had the look of someone you would not want to tangle with.

‘What is it, Willie?’ asked the retired constable-turned-filing clerk, as if the Chief Superintendent was still his probationer.

‘We don’t have any photographs of Joseph Strachan on file, do we? But you saw him, didn’t you, face to face?’

‘Aye, Willie, I did, but that was thirty year back and I didn’t see him for long. Didn’t talk to him or anything like that …’

McNab handed him the photograph. ‘Is that Joseph Strachan. Or could be Joseph Strachan now?’

Duncan looked at the picture for a long time.

‘I don’t know, Willie … I really couldn’t say. It really isn’t a good photograph and people change a lot in twenty year.’

‘I’ve been told that the person in the picture is called Henry Williamson,’ I said. ‘Does that name mean anything to you?’

Duncan looked at me as if I’d spoken to him in Albanian, then McNab gave him the nod that it was okay to answer.

‘Naw …’ He shook his head thoughtfully. ‘I can’t say that it does. Not as far as records is concerned.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, there was a Henry Williamson who had dealings with us right at the beginning of the war. Involved in the Home Guard.’ He looked at the picture again. ‘But I couldn’t say if this is him either. But again I only saw him the once and in passing. I had to drive Chief Superintendent Harrison over to Edinburgh for a conference about the Home Guard. Over at Craigiehall … you know, army headquarters.’

‘Home Guard, you say?’ Jock Ferguson chipped in. He didn’t look up from his tea cup and I could tell he was trying to hide the question behind a curtain of casualness. I just hoped McNab had not seen through it as easily as I had.

‘Aye, that’s right,’ said Duncan. ‘Like I said, Chief Superintendent Harrison was the force liaison with the Home Guard. Of course he was just an inspector back then.’

Ferguson looked across at me, but without much of an expression. I got his meaning though. That morning I had been jumped in the fog, the only people who had known about my interest in Strachan had been Willie Sneddon, who was unlikely to have mentioned it to anybody, and the police officers with whom Jock Ferguson had made casual inquiries.

And one of them, as he had told me, had been Chief Superintendent Edward Harrison.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

When I was leaving my digs in the morning, I bumped into Fiona White as she was coming out of her ground floor flat. Bumped into in the sense that I had the distinct impression she had been waiting to hear my footfall on the stairs before coming out.