My heart sank when McNab joined us, squeaking a chair across the hospital floor. A professionally dour-looking detective stood behind him, at the door, with a briefcase in his hand. Not carrying your own things was obviously another privilege of rank.
McNab read through the statement I had dictated to Ferguson and signed.
‘Funny thing is,’ he said, pushing his hat up and away from his eyes, ‘that we have witnesses who report glass falling into the street some time before the victim fell.’
I didn’t like that word. Victim.
‘Could be, Superintendent. We were smashing into everything.’
‘And there were bloody handprints on the frame of the window, as if the victim had tried to hang on to prevent himself from falling.’
There it was again. That word.
‘He grabbed at it as he fell. In fact, that was when he dropped the knife. But his hands were too bloody to get a grip: that’s why he fell.’
‘Mmm. I see.’ McNab nodded to the detective behind him who handed him a roll of white cloth. Unwrapping the cloth, he revealed the knife. It had an evidence tag on it. And some blood. Mine. Flecks of it had stained the cloth.
‘This knife?’
‘That’s the one.’
Now, after the adrenalin of the fight had left my system, draining every last ounce of energy from me, the sight of the blade that had sliced into my flesh made me feel sick.
‘Aye …’ said McNab contemplatively. ‘This would be a commando knife, would it not?’
‘A Fairbairn-Sykes Fighting Knife, yes. Standard commando issue. The Canadian special forces were armed with a variation of it, the V42 Stiletto. An inferior version of it.’ I nodded to the knife and again felt my gut lurch. ‘What you have there is the world’s best close-quarters combat knife. And the guy who jumped me was an expert with it. Who was he, anyway?’
Jock fired a look at the Superintendent that wasn’t returned. ‘We don’t know. Yet.’
‘Let me guess, no ID?’
Jock Ferguson shook his head. ‘No ID, no driving licence, no labels or tags on his clothing to say where he came from … no cards, letters, chequebook.’
‘You any ideas?’ asked McNab.
‘He wasn’t local, I know that. He pretended to be, to start with, but he was English. And officer class. Listen, I was fighting for my life. It really was him or me. Am I going to be charged with his death?’
‘You’ve killed a man, Lennox. That’s a pretty big thing.’
‘I’ve killed plenty, Superintendent, but back then it wasn’t such a big thing at all.’
‘Well, we’ll have to submit a report to the Procurator Fiscal and you remain under caution. The evidence does seem to point to self-defence, like you said. But you can expect a lot of close attention over this. Some back alley razor gang killing is one thing, dropping well-dressed officer types onto the Gordon Street taxi rank is something else. You know the press is all over this?’
‘I can guess. How are you handling the “mystery man” aspect?’
‘We’re not. We’re just saying that the dead man has yet to be identified.’ McNab turned to the detective at the door. ‘Why don’t you get a coffee in the canteen, Robertson. Five minutes.’
After the detective had left, leaving me with McNab and Ferguson, I eased myself up on the bed. A copper like McNab reducing the number of witnesses to an interrogation was something that brought out the suspicious and nervy aspects of my character.
‘Listen, Lennox,’ said McNab, ‘I know you don’t go much for my way of doing things, and you know what I think about your involvement with the so-called Three Kings, but this is the hardest city on the face of the planet and you have to be hard to police it. But this whole thing you’re involved in is way beyond my ken. And I do not like things occurring inside the city boundary but outside my ken. It attracts unwanted interest.’
‘Such as?’
‘Special Branch.’ It was Jock Ferguson who answered. ‘What took place between you and our mystery dead man was text book SOE or commando stuff. It’s even been suggested that he was some kind of intelligence man.’
‘British Intelligence have taken to assassination attempts on Her Majesty’s loyal subjects? I doubt it. And if they did, it would have been done more discreetly than that.’
‘Well, it was professional enough for it to look like something specialist,’ said McNab. ‘And that means Special Branch are treading on my patch. And I don’t like anyone treading on my patch.’
‘But I take it you’ve told them that we all know what the link is? Gentleman Joe Strachan. That guy began by trying to warn me off the Strachan case, then he tried to remove me personally and permanently. This isn’t anything to do with the Empire robbery any more … it’s to do with whatever happened after the robbery. During the war.’
‘I still can’t buy that story about Strachan being an officer,’ said McNab. ‘And God knows I want to believe it wasn’t him we found at the bottom of the Clyde. But it just doesn’t make sense. He was a criminal on the run. And wanted for a policeman’s murder.’
‘That’s all true. But Isa and Violet seem convinced that their father was a war hero of some kind, while the official records show he was a deserter, an officer impersonator and paybook fraudster. But there are rumours that he traded off a spot in front of a firing squad for dangerous reconnaissance patrols. He also seemed to have regular contact with someone from his army days called Henry Williamson, who doesn’t seem to be connected to anything criminal in Glasgow.’
‘What are you getting at?’ asked McNab.
‘I really don’t know. There’s something nagging at me about it all. Let’s face it, there have been more than a few times we’ve seen the words with military precision used in headlines about robberies since the war. The one thing compulsory army service did was give your average crook the kind of discipline and training to make them all the more efficient at carrying out hold-ups.’
‘Hold on a minute …’ Ferguson laughed. ‘Last week we had a raid on a diamond merchant in the Argyle Arcades: one man with a fake pistol. He was caught because he thought the jeweller had activated some kind of automated dead-bolt on the door. What really happened was he kept pulling the door instead of pushing it. This despite the fact that there was a big brass doorplate engraved with the word PUSH. We’re not up to our eyes in master criminals or commando raiders yet, Lennox.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘But you do know what I’m talking about. My point is that what if Strachan was ahead of the game … what if he came out of the First War with skills, and maybe contacts who could have helped him plan better, more efficient robberies and other crimes.’
‘Leading up to the Triple Crown and culminating with the Empire Exhibition robbery?’ asked McNab.
‘Well, that’s the other thing. What if the Empire Exhibition robbery wasn’t the end but still the means to an end?’
‘I don’t get you.’
‘What if Strachan had something even bigger and better planned? Listen, here’s the way we’ve always seen it: Strachan puts together three huge robberies with an eye to becoming the sole King of Glasgow, but a copper is killed and things become too hot for Strachan, so he takes the cash and a powder and drops permanently out of sight, yes? Then a tangle of bones dressed in his clothes and with his monogrammed cigarette case is hauled up from the bottom of the Clyde, so all that changes. Now we have a fall-out amongst thieves, which is what you lot were putting together, where one or maybe all of Strachan’s accomplices realise their untilnow genius boss has put a rope around all of their necks. So this one or all of the gang kill Strachan, take his share and dump him in the river.’