‘Okay, Lennox, just lay both hands flat on the table.’ Provan spoke authoritatively, but without heat. ‘There’s no reason for anyone to get hurt, but I don’t want you getting any ideas about taking me into the police or delivering me up to Strachan, if he really is still alive.’
‘Do I still get the whisky?’
Provan smiled, but it looked wrong on his face, as if he was out of practice. He kept the sawn-off trained on me but poured us two massive belts with his free hand.
‘I reckon you’re on the level,’ he said after taking a slug without wincing, which was impressive: my first sip of the cheap blended whisky had shrivelled up every sphincter muscle in my anatomy. ‘I read about you in the papers. Was that the fella … the one who took a dive from your window?’
‘That was him. And if it hadn’t been him, it would have been me. He wasn’t taking prisoners. Listen …’ I leaned forward and he refocused his aim on me. I made a placating gesture. ‘Take it easy. Like you said, no one needs to get hurt. What I was going to say is that I need your help here. There’s no way I can force you to tell me, and there’s no way I can prove to you that I won’t repeat what you tell me to the cops, other than my word that I won’t. But the more you tell me, the more likely I am to be able to bring this thing to an end.’
Another bitter laugh. ‘You don’t stand a chance, Lennox. You’re lucky that you survived the attack on you. You won’t be so lucky the next time. I won’t be so lucky the first.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know. To begin with I thought I’d run. Run and hide. Get the lawyer to sell this place for me. Then I decided there was no point in running, they’d just find me. I’d made up my mind to stay put and just take what was coming to me. But then, when you turned up, it was like a survival instinct took over …’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I noticed. Can I smoke?’
‘Yes, but move really slow. This thing has a hair trigger and I don’t want to have to redecorate.’
I took his point and eased my packet of Players from my jacket pocket and offered him one. He shook his head.
‘Tell me what happened,’ I said after I’d lit the cigarette and snapped shut my lighter. ‘Everything, starting with the robbery.’
‘Why should I?’
‘Because it would help me, and helping me might just help you. This has gotten very personal with me and I want to make sure it’s Strachan, if that’s who’s behind it all, that gets what’s coming to him. And if he does, you don’t, if you get me.’
‘I get you. What do you want to know?’
‘You said the others … what others? And what happened to them?’
‘Johnny Bentley, Ronnie McCoy and Mike Murphy. They were the other members of the outfit. We did the Triple Crown robberies together.’
‘What? Hammer Murphy was part of the gang?’
‘No. This was another Michael Murphy. Hammer Murphy wouldn’t have anything like the brains or finesse Gentleman Joe needed from us all.’
‘I see,’ I said. I had undergone the unpleasantness of Murphy’s company for no good reason. ‘So what happened to them?’
‘All dead. One by one, over the years. Bentley died in a car crash and McCoy was killed by a hit and run driver. Mike Murphy disappeared on the night of the share-out and my money is on him being dead too.’
‘So none of them slipped off quietly in their sleep, that’s what you’re telling me?’
‘The police wouldn’t connect their deaths because they had no idea they were all part of the Exhibition Gang, as the newspapers took to calling us. And anyway, whoever did them took his time: there was five years between Bentley and McCoy’s deaths and six between McCoy’s and Murphy’s. And that left me.’
‘So you think it was Joe Strachan who killed all three?’
‘Not necessarily. I don’t even know if Strachan is alive. There was another member of the outfit, you see.’
‘The Lad?’
‘You know about him?’ Provan looked genuinely surprised.
‘All there is to know, which isn’t much.’
‘Well, if it isn’t Strachan, then it’s the Lad who killed the boys.’ By now Provan had drained his tumbler in a few gulps but the whisky hadn’t seemed to have any effect on him.
‘I suppose I had better start with what happened at the Empire robbery …’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
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.