This time, the smog was persistent. It had lurked all night and was pressing against the windows of my boarding house room when I woke the following morning. My tumble in the street was now playing vigorous accompaniment to what had been the decrescendo of the bruises I’d picked up in the alleyway. I headed into the office early, again taking the tram and not risking driving in the murk.
When I got to the office I tried to get Leonora Bryson by ’phone at the Central Hotel, but was told she and Mr Macready were in Edinburgh for press interviews. I was luckier with Fraser, the lawyer: I told him we had to meet urgently and for some reason he insisted that we didn’t meet at his office, so I suggested Central Station in half an hour.
Despite my only having to cross the street to the station, Fraser managed to get there before me. There is a kind of protocol to sitting in railway cafes: if you are just having a cup of coffee, it should always be with a cigarette and you should hunch over your coffee and look miserable, as if the train you are waiting for is scheduled to take you to the final of all destinations. Fraser was breaching this etiquette of gloom. He was sitting with his straight back to the counter, facing the station concourse, his beady eyes alert. He spotted me coming and took his briefcase from the chair next to him. I ordered a coffee at the counter from the glummest man in the universe, carried it over and sat next to Fraser.
‘This is not the ideal place to talk about what I want to talk about,’ I said, casting an eye over the other patrons who might be within earshot.
‘I thought our business regarding these photographs was concluded, Mr Lennox,’ he said.
‘So did I. I got a visit from the police the other day. We’re cooperating on another case. While he was there, my contact let slip that he was dealing with a murder in Govanhill.’
‘I would imagine that’s not a particularly rare or noteworthy event …’ Fraser frowned.
‘Maybe so, but this murder was at the address I recovered the photographs from.’
Fraser looked shocked for a moment, then leaning forward, lowered his voice to the level I’d been speaking at. ‘Paul Downey?’
‘That I don’t know. The flat was rented by his friend, Frank. I’ll probably find out later today which of them is dead.’
‘My God …’ Fraser thought for a moment, then said conspiratorially, ‘Is there anything, anything that can link us and the Macready business to that address?’
‘One of the reasons I’m expecting to have the identity of the deceased today is because I’m expecting the police to call. I asked one of my contacts if he knew anything about Paul Downey. If it’s Downey who’s been murdered, then they’re going to want to know why I was asking.’
‘But you can’t tell them, Mr Lennox!’ Fraser looked around the cafe and lowered his voice. ‘You know how sensitive this whole thing is. I have to say that I think it was very careless of you to ask the police about Downey.’
‘It was a calculated risk, Mr Fraser. And the calculation didn’t include Downey or his boyfriend turning up dead. As far as telling the police about the background to it all, I’ll do my best to keep Macready out of it. But the police tend to take a poor view of murder and my neck is allergic to hemp, so if push comes to shove, we’re all going to have to level with them …’
‘After all we’ve been through, Mr Lennox, that would be most unfortunate. I’m afraid we would have to disavow all knowledge of you working for us. After all, we paid you in cash.’ Fraser’s beady eyes turned cold behind his spectacles. ‘And I can assure you that all of the photographs and negatives have been destroyed. So there would be nothing to back up your claim that we employed you.’
I smiled. ‘Well let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, because then I would have to spill every bean in the pot, including the fact that after I ran Paul Downey to ground, I only gave the address to two people … you and Leonora Bryson. Then it would boil down to a simple case of whom the police are more likely to believe. And I have a track record with them.’ I failed to add that that track record just might work against me. ‘And, of course, you would have to gamble that I didn’t hang on to a couple of the negatives, as insurance against just such a sticky situation as this. Added to all of which is the fact that it takes a lot of balls to lie to the police when it relates to a murder inquiry. And, no offence, I don’t think you’ve got them.’
‘Well, as you say, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.’ If I had ruffled Fraser, he was hiding it very well. ‘And I don’t see that it should. I mean, this is all coincidental. An unfortunate coincidence admittedly, but a coincidence none the less. Let’s be honest about it, it can be a very dark and dangerous world that these people inhabit. I would not be at all surprised if it turns out that one of them murdered the other during some kind of fall-out.’
‘It could be. But if there’s one thing I have noticed about coincidences, it’s that they have a nasty habit of coming back and biting you in the ass.’
‘So what do you suggest we do?’
‘Sit tight for the time being. Like I said, I should know more later today. In the meantime, instead of threatening to throw each other to the wolves, I suggest you and I both try to think of ways to limit the damage if the police do ask questions.’
‘Any suggestions, Mr Lennox?’
I paused to take a sip of the coffee I’d been nursing and immediately regretted it. I wondered if whatever was in my cup had come up in the same dredger bucket as the mystery bones.
‘The police aren’t bright, as you know, but they have so much experience of lies that they can spot one a mile off. Our best strategy is to tell them the truth. Just not the whole truth. The studio wants to protect Mr Macready’s reputation. Well, I suggest that we tell the police absolutely everything that happened, including about the photographs, but we say that it was a woman he was in flagrante with. If any of it leaks out, then it only enhances his reputation as a ladies’ man.’
‘And if they ask the identity of the lady?’
‘Then we say only Mr Macready knows that; he wouldn’t tell even us. But if pushed, you could say that Macready told you that it was the wife of someone very important. You Brits are so respectful of your establishment that it may just prevent the police digging. In the meantime, Macready will be on a plane to the States on Monday. The City of Glasgow Police are not going to extradite him back to get a name. Anyway, the police are also great ones for applying Occam’s Razor to everything: they look for the simplest explanation, mainly because it is usually the easiest. I’m hoping that they won’t look at my involvement too hard.’
Fraser considered what I had said, nodding slowly. ‘Yes … yes, that all makes sense. I’ll go along with it. But there is one question I have to ask, Mr Lennox, and I’m sure you’ll understand the reason why I have to ask it …’
‘The answer is no,’ I said predictively. ‘I did what you asked me to do in your roundabout way and put the frighteners on Downey. And I admit I gave his chum a bruise or two, but that’s as creative as I got in interpreting your instructions. When I left them, both Frank and Downey were very much alive.’
By the time I left the station, the fog had thinned to a grainy mist that faded Glasgow to monochrome — not something that took a lot of effort — rather than obscuring it. I crossed Gordon Street and went up the stairwell to my office. I had locked the door and half expected to find Jock Ferguson or even McNab waiting for me at the top of the stairs. They weren’t, so I unlocked my office door and stepped through.
I was back in the war.
The speed of thought seems to me the most unquantifiable thing: faster than the speed of sound, even the speed of light, even if Albert says it ain’t so. But what happened to me as I stepped through the door of my Glasgow office took me instantly back to a place where you killed without thought or lost your own life.