The Deep Dark Sleep

I had gotten the idea as we approached Largs along the ribbon of coast road. Between Skelmorlie and Largs a large open field, backed by a curtain of cliff, had been converted into a caravan park. A drive led to a cabin that bore a sign telling you that it was the ‘reception office’. Half of the field beyond was occupied by ten to a dozen identical two-tone cubes arranged in ranks, looking out over the sea to the hulking grey mass of the Isle of Arran. On the other half of the field, next to the identical caravans, was a largely open space, populated by two boarded up, larger caravans. I guessed one side of the park was for visitors bringing their own vans, while the other was for caravans to rent. Across from the ‘reception’ shed was a largish, red-sandstone villa.

I told Downey to stay put in the car while I went into the park’s office cabin. There was no one there, but a sign above a large hand-bell, the kind ye olde worlde town criers would use, instructed me: IF NOBODY’S HERE IT DON’T MEAN A THING, PICK ME UP AND GIVE ME A RING.

So I did.

A minute later, a woman in her early thirties came across from the villa, hurrying as much as her tight pencil skirt and high-heels would allow. She had light brown hair and pale grey eyes and a smile that told me I could be her special guest. That made things easier and I flirted as I booked in. I explained that the caravan would be occupied mostly by my young friend, who had been ill and needed the sea air to recuperate.

‘We get a lot of that from Glasgow,’ she said, nodding gravely but keeping her eyes on mine. ‘So, will you be staying at all yourself, Mr Watson?’ she asked, reading the fake name I’d entered into the register. ‘I’m Ethel Davison, by the way.’

‘I hadn’t planned to,’ I said, hamming up the wolfishness as I shook her limp hand. ‘But maybe I should keep an eye on my friend.’

‘We’ll look after him. I’m here all of the time and my husband is here when he’s not at work. He works nights,’ she explained helpfully.

‘I wouldn’t worry too much about my friend. He has a pile of books and really wants solitude as much as the sea air, which is why I chose your site. It really is a lovely spot you have here,’ I said, and looked appreciatively out of the cabin’s window to the sea, just as a beer lorry rattled past the road end.

I gave her a week’s rent in advance, which she was delighted with. ‘If your friend needs to stay longer, that’s not a problem at this time of year,’ she said. ‘Or if you wanted a caravan for yourself, we could do a special combined rate …’

I smiled and told her it wouldn’t be necessary, but I really would make sure that I checked on him regularly. Probably in the evenings.

After she showed me where the communal toilets and washhouse was, she took me over to the caravan. Like the others, it was cream on top and black below, with flat flanks but a belly swell at the front and back. Inside it was clean and still had a smell of newness. There was a horseshoe of seating at one end and she demonstrated how it folded down into a bed. I could easily have encouraged her to demonstrate some more, but Downey was waiting in the car and I had a lot of business to deal with.

Once I had gotten Downey settled in the caravan, I drove into Largs and picked up provisions for him, as well as half a dozen cheap paperbacks. Warning him not to set foot anywhere further than the toilet block, I told him I would check on him regularly and left him to it.

I ’phoned Willie Sneddon’s office from the post office in Skelmorlie but was told that he was out and would not be back that day. I tried him at home, but his wife told me he would not be home until later that evening. Telling her who I was, I said I would try to get hold of Mr Sneddon later. I thought about cruising a few of his places to see if I could find him, but decided to leave it for now.

I had other business.

The address Jock Ferguson had given me was in Torrance, an uninspiring small town to the north of Glasgow and a couple of hours from Largs. Stewart Provan’s house was a substantial looking, stone-built bungalow that small Scottish towns were full of: statements that the occupiers were financially comfortable but without imagination or ambition. It was the architecture of mediocrity. I guessed that, in Provan’s case, it was a statement of anonymity.

He answered the door himself. He looked in his early fifties but I’d already worked out that he would be sixty at least. He was dressed in flannels, a Tattersall shirt and a navy cardigan – the uniform of Britain’s lower middle-classes – but his face didn’t quite fit. No scars, no broken nose, no cauliflower ears: just a lean hardness that told you this was not someone to mess with. I thought I detected his shoulders sag a little when he saw me on the doorstep and an expression of resignation on his face. Not for the first time, I felt as if my arrival had been expected.