The Deep Dark Sleep

It seemed that we were settling down for a long account, and I don’t like guns pointing at me. It’s a prejudice based on their habit of going off, even when the person holding the gun has had no intention of firing it. During the war, I had seen too many men killed or wounded by their own side, just because someone had been forgetful with a safety catch or had been waving their weapon around carelessly. I communicated my prejudice to Provan and reminded him that he was loath to redecorate the wall behind me and he agreed to put the shotgun down, provided I kept my hands where he could see them. He sat down opposite me at the table and started on his memoirs.

‘I suppose you remember the Exhibition?’ he asked.

‘Before my time. I only came to Glasgow after I was demobbed. But I believe it was quite something.’

‘Aye. It was. They poured tons of cash into it. They were trying to prove something; just what it was they were trying to prove is beyond me. Maybe it was that Glasgow had taken such a kicking in the Depression and they thought that trying to convince us all that everything wasn’t all messed up after all and we weren’t going to spend the rest of our lives in squalor. The other thing was that everybody knew back in Thirty-eight – aye, well everybody except Neville Chamberlain, that is – that Hitler was going to keep stirring the shite until it spilled out into another war like the Great War. All this shite about the Glory of the Empire … I think they were trying to kid us on that everything was going to get better and stay the same at the same time. That we would always have colonies and dominions with Glasgow at the heart of it all.

‘Whatever the reason, they built this entire fake world on Bellahouston Park. Most of it looked like that H.G. Wells film, The Shape of Things to Come, while the rest of it looked like bloody Brigadoon or some bollocks like that – some kind of imaginary, romantic Scotland with a loch, a castle and a Highland village. Anyway, Joe Strachan had read up all about it right at the very beginning when it was just being planned. He worked out that there would be thousands in workers’ wages every week and even more in cash takings from the public. That was his big thing – his special gift – he could always see where the big money, the best takings, could be. No one else had his eye for it. He gathered us together and talked us through the Triple Crown.’

‘You, this guy Murphy, Bentley, McCoy, and the so-called “Lad”. What was his name?’

‘I don’t know. I never knew his name, never knew his face. And when you ask if Murphy, Bentley and McCoy were there, I know now that they were, but at the time they could have been anybody. None of us knew anything about the others. We all knew what Strachan looked like and he knew our faces, because he had recruited us, but he made us meet up at the old Bennie Railplane track, up by Milngavie.’

‘Why there?’

‘It was abandoned but somewhere we could all find. I also think that Strachan liked a bit of drama. If there was one thing he did have going against him, it was that he was a flash bastard. Anyway, there was this disused building that had been part of the original station they had built. We were told to turn up there, fifteen minutes apart. When we did, there was this guy on the door with a balaclava hiding his face.’

‘The Lad?’

‘Aye. That’s how he was introduced by Strachan later. Anyway, he was armed and gave each of us a balaclava to wear before we entered the building.’

‘So he saw your faces?’

‘Aye. But we never saw his and we didn’t see each other’s. Strachan said that it meant no one could identify any of the gang, other than Strachan himself, if they got caught. And it was made clear that it didn’t matter what prison we were locked up in, if we fingered Strachan, we wouldn’t last a month.

‘So, anyway, we all gather there, wearing these balaclavas and calling each other by an animal name: I was Fox and the others were Wolf, Bear and Tiger. Load of shite, but that was the way Strachan ran things. Like it was the fucking army. And we couldn’t complain, because it worked. Strachan then set to going through what we were going to do. He had four smaller robberies planned, but these were just practice runs, and to get funds to finance the bigger robberies. All he told us about these bigger robberies was that the first two would be the usual type of job, but on a much bigger scale than anyone had ever seen. But the third was going to be something so different, so unexpected, that they wouldn’t know what had hit them and the police wouldn’t know where to start looking. Oh, there was one thing we did know about each other – that none of us had any kind of serious form that would make us suspects.’

‘Did he tell you then that it was going to be the Empire Exhibition?’