The telephone had been engaged and I hadn’t been able to warn Fiona White that I was on my way back. And when we pulled up at my digs I noticed two cars I didn’t recognize parked outside. The first was a dark grey Humber. It had no police markings and the driver and passenger were in civvies, but it could not have looked more like a police car if it had flat feet. I felt the distinctly novel emotion of being pleased to see a police car outside my home: Jock Ferguson, or maybe McNab himself, must have arranged it. The second car was a black three- or four-year-old Jowett Javelin PE. Too flash for the police.
Lying in my hospital bed, I had played the movie of my return home in my head: Fiona White would be all nervously-contained agitation when I arrived. She would have read about the Defenestration of Gordon Street, but it would be clear she was glad to see me, and see me in one piece. A nervous little smile would play across her lips and I would have the almost uncontrollable urge to still it with a kiss. Instead I would let her fuss around in the kitchen and make Archie and me some tea.
After Archie left, we would settle into the routine of before, drifting slowly towards whatever it was we both wanted our relationship to become.
But I could tell as soon as she answered the door that my sudden and unannounced return perturbed Fiona White. She looked startled and awkward and almost hesitated before admitting me and Archie.
I didn’t like him as soon as I set eyes on him. The main reason was, for a second, I thought I recognized him, then realized he could not be the person I took him for, because the person I took him for was dead. The face was not the same, of course, there was just a strong family resemblance to the picture on the mantelpiece above the fire. The picture of the long dead naval officer.
‘You must be the lodger …’ he said smilelessly as he stood up when we entered the living room. Tea for two with best biscuits on the coffee table. He was tanned and dressed too lightly for Glasgow and had a just-arrived-from-abroad look to him.
‘You must be the brother-in-law …’ I said flatly.
‘We’ve been reading all about your … escapades. I must say that I’m not happy about you staying here at Fiona’s. Do you know that I was accosted by a policeman when I arrived here?’
‘Really? Well, you see, they’ve been told to challenge anyone who has a suspicious or dodgy look to them. And I don’t really see what my rental arrangements with Mrs White have to do with you.’
‘Well, as my sister-in-law and with my brother no longer here, I feel an obligation to Fiona and the girls’ welfare.’
‘I see,’ I said. ‘And it’s taken ten years for this sense of obligation to grow on you?’
‘I’ve been away. Abroad. Working in India. But now that I’m back, I think it’s fair for you to know that things may change around here.’
‘I see,’ I said. ‘Do you take the same size slippers as your brother?’
He looked stung but I knew he didn’t have it in him to take it further.
‘That’s quite enough from both of you,’ said Fiona. ‘James, I am quite capable of organizing my own affairs. Mr Lennox, you’ve had quite an ordeal. I’m sure you want to get some rest. I’ll fix something to eat about six, if you want to join us.’
I stared at her for a minute. ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘My pleasure.’
I nodded to Archie and we headed up to my rooms. I was tired and pissed off and really wanted to smack the sneer off the smug bastard downstairs. But in the meantime I had bigger fish to fry.
‘I think your landlady is going to have to buy a bigger table,’ said Archie.
‘What are you talking about, Archie?’
‘If both of you are to get your feet under it.’
‘Oh yes, very funny.’
‘You okay here, chief? I can hang around if you want.’
‘No, Archie, that’s fine. I’m going to take a spin up to Billy Dunbar’s tonight to show him that photograph, but I can fly solo on that. You take the night off.’
I lay on my bed, smoking and aching. After about an hour I heard the front door open and voices. I went to the window and saw James White walk out to the Javelin. He turned and waved to Fiona and then looked pointedly up at my window. I looked pointedly back. The sight of him, his middle-class stability and his likeness to a long dead junior naval officer gave me a bad feeling in my gut. I had a vision of Fiona White’s future and no matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t see me in it.
I washed and changed. Suit, shirt, underwear, everything. It was something about hospitals I could never understand: you came out of them smelling of carbolic yet you always felt dirty. I went downstairs at six and had a meal of fish, peas and potatoes with Fiona and her daughters. I tried to chat as much as I could but the truth was I was still pretty shaken up by what had happened in my office. Fiona frowned when she saw me take some prescription pills with my meal; the bandage and dressing on my arm was concealed by my shirt sleeve and she did not know how badly I’d been injured, if at all. But the other thing that nagged at me throughout the meal was the smug presence of a dead man’s brother.
After we finished, I helped Fiona take the dishes through to the kitchen but she told me to sit. The girls settled down to watch television and I closed the kitchen door.
‘Are you okay with this, Fiona?’ I asked. ‘I know that reading about what happened must have been a shock.’
She stopped washing the plate she was working on and leant against the edge of the sink, her back to me, and looking out of the kitchen window to the small garden at the back.
‘This man. You killed him? I mean it wasn’t an accident?’
I was about to say it was a little of both, but the infuriating thing about Fiona White was that she brought out the honesty in me. ‘Yes, I killed him. But it was in self-defence. He ambushed me in my office and tried to cut my throat. He was the same guy who jumped me in the fog.’
She turned to me.
‘So it’s safe for you to be back here?’ She made it more of a statement than a question.
‘That’s not one hundred per cent certain,’ I said. ‘I don’t for one minute think that this man was working on his own. But I can’t imagine whoever was behind the attack risking anything so … so visible again. Anyway, it looks like we have serious police protection now. But there is still no way I want to put you and the girls at risk. I can find new accommodation for the time being …’
‘No,’ she said, but as if she had to think about it and without emphasis.
‘It’s not always going to be like this, Fiona,’ I said. ‘Things have got all mixed up. I thought this kind of thing was behind me. I guess I was wrong.’
‘You don’t have to explain,’ she said. ‘But you know I can’t be part of that world. I can’t bring the girls into that kind of world.’
‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘But that’s what I’m trying to put behind me. Things will get better, like I said.’
‘I know they will,’ she said and smiled.
But we both knew my fate was sealed.
It had still been just within banking hours so, on the way back from the hospital, I had had Archie stop off at the bank. News of my adventures had obviously reached the bank and when I walked in it was the kind of entry that you would expect a gunfighter to get walking into a Western saloon. MacGregor himself dealt with my request to access my safety deposit box. He was overly chatty but nervous, as if making a conscious effort to avoid the word ‘window’ or any reference to catching a taxi. I was glad I had the goods on him, otherwise I reckoned I would have already lost the bank job. As it was, my knowledge of his sordid private life would do little to save me if the board of governors set their minds to get rid of me.
But there again, they maybe liked the idea of their cash being guarded by a life-taker.