‘A few minutes,’ said Ferguson, again exhausting his repertoire of small talk.
Big Bob the Barman was behind the bar, wreathed in cigarette smoke and working the beer pumps like a railwayman pulling levers in a signal box. As usual, he had his shirtsleeves rolled up above his tattoo-swirled Popeye forearms. I caught his eye and he pulled two pints of heavy.
‘Give us a couple of pies to go with that, Bob,’ I shouted across the bar when he brought the beers.
‘Okay,’ said Ferguson, taking the first sip of his beer and savouring it for a moment. ‘What is this all about?’
‘Does there have to be a reason? Purely social. Maybe partly thanks for helping me land that wages run.’
‘You’ve already thanked me.’ Ferguson looked at me suspiciously, which, given that he was a Detective Inspector with the Glasgow City Police, was pretty much the way he looked at everyone.
‘You involved in this Joe Strachan thing, Jock?’ I asked as casually as I could. ‘You know? Those bones dredged up from the Clyde.’
Ferguson put down his beer.
‘Now, why would Gentleman Joe Strachan be of interest to you, Lennox? He was long before your time.’
‘Well, he seems to have resurfaced. Literally. Or am I wrong? How sure are you that the remains are Gentleman Joe’s?’
Ferguson twisted to face me full on. He turned up the volume on his suspicion and my wrists itched with a premonition of handcuffs.
‘Okay, Lennox, now I know that this is more than idle curiosity. Whatever your interest in Strachan is, I would bury it somewhere very deep. This is a subject close to a lot of Glasgow coppers’ hearts.’
‘Oh, I understand that, Jock,’ I said, putting on the ingenue act. ‘But it’s a perfectly innocent and reasonable question: was it Strachan or not?’
Ferguson sighed. ‘Yes, the body was Strachan’s.’
‘It couldn’t have been much of a body, after nearly twenty years at the bottom of the Clyde,’ I said, again as casually as I could. Laurence Olivier wouldn’t have felt threatened.
‘There was enough to identify him. Now, do I have to repeat myself? Officially?’
‘Take it easy, Jock. It’s just that I’ve been asked to confirm that it is Gentleman Joe you’ve got in a shoebox at the City Mortuary.’
‘And who’s been doing the asking? I thought you were putting that shite behind you. You working for the Three Kings again? Listen, Lennox, I vouched for you with that job. If you’re …’
I interrupted him with an emphatically held-up hand and an indignantly shaken head. ‘No, Jock, nothing like that. I can’t tell you who my client is, but it isn’t any of the Three Kings and it isn’t anyone remotely colourful.’
‘Client confidentiality, eh?’ Ferguson snorted. ‘Just tell me that whoever it is isn’t of interest to us.’
‘Trust me,’ I said disarmingly. ‘The only records my clients have were recorded by Jimmy Young.’
‘The twins …’ Ferguson frowned for a moment, trying to pull their names into his recall. ‘Isa and Violet?’
I looked at him blankly for a moment.
‘I’ve got to learn to make my wisecracks more cryptic,’ I said. ‘I’m that easy to see through?’
‘If you’re not working for a crook, then it has to be family. And Joe Strachan’s daughters are the only family that would give a shit. They have the advantage of not having had to grow up with Strachan. Listen, Lennox, be warned: drop this one and drop it fast. Whatever Strachan’s kids are paying you, it’s not worth it.’
‘What’s the big drama?’
‘A dead copper, that’s what. That and the fact that the name Joe Strachan carries a lot of history. Bad history. You’ve had dealings with Superintendent McNab in the past …’
‘Willie McNab? You know I have. He’s the president of my appreciation society, but he’s not been forwarding my fan letters lately.’
‘Aye … very funny. Let me tell you this, Lennox: if Superintendent McNab finds out you’re sniffing around the Strachan thing, you’ll be wearing your balls as earrings.’
‘Why? What’s his special interest?’
‘Police Constable Charles Gourlay, that’s what. The young policeman who was shot and killed by the Empire Exhibition robbers. You know McNab, and you know about his sense of eye-for-an-eye justice when it comes to coppers being attacked or killed.’
‘The word biblical comes to mind,’ I said. ‘His sense of vengeance makes Moses look like he took it easy on the Pharaoh.’
‘Exactly. Well Gourlay wasn’t just any bobby on the beat. This was Nineteen thirty-eight and Willie McNab was a young PC himself. Gourlay was a friend. A drinking buddy at the Masonic Lodge and Orange Hall and Christ knows where else. Willie McNab took Gourlay’s murder to heart, and it became a personal crusade for him to find Strachan and watch him drop through the hatch at Duke Street or Barlinnie. Now that Strachan has been found at the bottom of the Clyde, Superintendent McNab feels that both he and the hangman have been robbed of their chance to put things right.’
‘But maybe it wasn’t Strachan who killed the policeman. Maybe whoever did the copper, did Strachan too.’
Ferguson’s expression darkened. ‘Listen, Lennox, you and I have both seen our share of shite during the war. We both know what it’s like to be in a place where life is cheap. But never, ever talk to me about the murder of a police officer like that again. No one did PC Gourlay. He was murdered in the course of his lawful duty, in cold blood by scum who knew he was unarmed and unable to defend himself. I’m not Willie McNab, but I do have loyalty to my fellow officers.’
‘Okay, Jock … no harm meant.’ I held my hands up. It was a stupid way for me to have put it. The City of Glasgow Police were a tight-knit bunch and touchy about their own. It didn’t matter if your colleague was on the take, on the bottle or on the leveclass="underline" if he was a Glasgow copper you looked after your own first and foremost and expected the same in return.
‘But you do see how it is possible, don’t you, Jock? Strachan maybe wasn’t the killer.’
‘But he was behind the whole thing. Planned it, put the crew together, led the raid. He was in charge. Guilty before and after the fact. When that constable died there was a rope around Strachan’s neck, no matter who pulled the trigger. Anyway, there was a witness. Said it was the tallest of the gang who did the shooting.’
‘There was a witness?’
A couple of other drinkers jostled past Ferguson and he frowned. Our conversation had been half-shouted to be heard and Ferguson overdid a weary expression, but I guessed he was using the interruption to decide if or how he was going to dodge my question.
‘The van driver,’ he said eventually. ‘He said there were five robbers. They all wore stocking masks, but one was tall and all the others were no bigger than five-six, five-seven. In my book that fingers Strachan as the shooter. So maybe there’s no mystery to Gentleman Joe taking the deep, dark sleep: he put a rope around the neck of every man in that gang. Maybe they made him pay the price.’
‘How do you know that it was Strachan at all? I thought that the identities of the Empire Exhbition Gang were all unknown.’
‘Strachan …’ Ferguson paused again, this time while Big Bob placed two plates in front of us, each with a small, round meat pie centred in a pool of viscous grease. ‘Strachan went missing right after the robbery. Dropped out of sight. And Joe Strachan wasn’t one to keep a low profile.’
‘That’s it? God, Jock, we now know that Strachan was at the bottom of the Clyde. That’s the lowest profile I can think of. It could be a pure coincidence that he was topped about the same time as the robbery.’
‘You’re right, we don’t know who the other gang members were. But that in itself points to Joe Strachan. He was a stickler for security. We could never get the bastard because no one talked about a job if they were doing it with Strachan. No one knew in advance what was going to be hit or when or who was in the team. If there’s one thing I can say in his favour, it’s that when it came to planning and executing bighaul robberies, he was the best. No one came close. Even if he hadn’t gone missing he would have been at the top of a list for the Empire Exhibition job. A list of one. Anyway, the Empire Exhibition robbery was only part of it. The Triple Crown.’