‘They must’ve had Joe at gunpoint in the hangar, because, as I was getting close, I heard gunfire and people shouting. One of the bastards had been lying in wait for me. I was going to get two barrels in the face, but I was too far away. I wasn’t armed, so I made a run for it. They fired a couple of shots at me but couldn’t risk any more. The coppers were running around all over Glasgow and there was always the chance some gamekeeper would think there were poachers in the area. I went home, got tooled up and got Billy Dunbar to come back with me. When we got there they had gone.’
‘So who was dead if it wasn’t Strachan? Mike Murphy?’
‘You see,’ said Sneddon, ‘that’s the thing … I had expected to find Joe’s body, but there was nothing. Not Joe, not Mike Murphy, nobody. But there was blood. A lot of it. Someone had taken a breath stopper, there was no doubt about that.’
‘So you didn’t get the money after all?’
‘Aye, I did. Joe must have cottoned on to the fact that the others were likely to turn on us. They got nothing. I got sent a postcard, through the fucking Royal Mail, believe it or not. He had balls, did Joe. He must have posted it on the way to the robbery. He must have known even then. Anyway, this card was posted in Glasgow but it was a postcard of Largs, down on the coast.’
I tried not to shudder at the mention of the exact location where I’d stashed Paul Downey.
‘This postcard had a picture of the Pencil on it,’ Sneddon continued. ‘You know, the monument to the Battle of Largs when we kicked out the Vikings or some shite. There was nothing written on the card, but I knew that Joe kept a boat down there at the marina next to the Pencil. He had it under a different name, so the coppers didn’t know about it or could search it. I was the only other person who knew about it and the identity he kept it under.’
‘Henry Williamson …’ I volunteered. Sneddon stared at me in amazement.
‘I have my moments,’ I explained.
‘Anyway,’ continued Sneddon. ‘I went down to the boat and right enough, stuffed under a bench inside, were two suitcases full of money. So much money I sat there shaking. Shaking like a fucking leaf.’
‘All of it?’
‘Half of it. And not just half of the Exhibition job, half of all the Triple Crown robberies. I sat there and counted it all out. I reckoned it was the safest place to do it.’
‘That was a lot of money.’
‘Just like you said, enough money to change your fucking life forever. You know, Lennox, no one has ever known about that money. Now you do, and I don’t know what to do about that.’
‘You had your chance a minute ago.’
‘I could still shut you up for good.’ Sneddon sighed. ‘You won’t talk. You know that it would end up fatal for you. But, more than that, you still think you’re some kind of colonial fucking officer and gentleman. You’ve been rolling around in the shite like the rest of us, but none of it seems to stick to you. You won’t tell because it would go against your code.’
‘I wasn’t aware I had one,’ I said. ‘What do you think happened to the other half?’
‘At the time I had no idea. I thought that maybe Joe had stashed it somewhere else to halve the risk, and maybe the others had tortured it out of him, but I doubted that. He would have spat in their fucking eye and taken a bullet first. I just assumed that he had hidden it somewhere good and the bastards never got it. But then, as time went on, I began to wonder if he had survived the shoot-out in the hangar and had taken the other half for himself and was hiding out somewhere.’
‘But you did kill the other three, didn’t you?’ I asked. ‘Bentley, McCoy and Provan, who you blew up today.’
‘As a matter of fact, I didn’t. I don’t give a shit whether you believe me or not, but I didn’t. I wanted to. I wanted to hunt them down, one by one, and kill them slow. But you have to remember that no one knew who I was. I had all of this cash and started to build my little empire. Vengeance had to take a back seat. Bear in mind no one could connect me to a robbery in which a copper was murdered. I couldn’t put my head above the parapet.’
‘So it was Strachan?’
‘When I read about the first, then the second death, I began to put it all together. Then Billy Dunbar told me about seeing Joe during the war. He also told me that he’d seen Joe hobnobbing with the Duke of Strathlorne. What Billy didn’t tell you is that he saw Joe twice more, after the war. Both times on the estate meeting with the Duke. I worked out that Joe had been living off his half of the proceeds of the robberies and had set up this identity. Or stolen it, I suppose you could say. Every time the Duke has special guests, he arranges a shooting party, so Billy got advance notice of them coming. I told Downey in turn.’
‘Mr Sneddon,’ I said tentatively. ‘Do you know about Dunbar?’
‘Know what?’
I told him about my second trip up to see Dunbar, about finding him and his wife, about my chase through the forest, about recognizing the older man from the photograph. Joe Strachan.
Sneddon looked stunned by the news.
‘Billy was a good bloke. A good friend.’
‘Your father killed him. Your father killed a lot of people, some of them innocents who just got in the way.’
‘Listen, Lennox. Joe Strachan is exactly the person I described to you. All of that was true. I saw him in action, up close. If I had stayed with him, I’d have turned out the same, maybe worse. I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of: doing that gamekeeper was one of them. But now, I’m trying to put that all behind me. Joe Strachan was no father to me. He used me like he used everyone else. Like he used my ma. It’s because of him I ended up in that fucking orphanage and everything that happened to me there. The only reason he left me that cash was because he didn’t want to kill me if he could avoid it. But if he felt it was necessary, he would have put a bullet in my head the same as everyone else. If you think I was trying to find dear old daddy out of sentimentality, then you’re wrong. I needed to know if he was out there or not. So I could stop looking over my shoulder.’
I nodded. Sneddon had used the same expression that Provan had used. Right before he was flambeed in his Morris Minor.
‘So what are you saying?’ I asked.
‘If you do or say anything to link me to the Empire Exhibition robbery, I’ll make sure you’re dead within the day. Other than that, I don’t care what you do. If you bring Joe Strachan down and can do it without involving me, then you do so with my blessing.’
I lost count of the number of times Twinkletoes apologized to me on the way back to the hospital car park.
‘It’s okay, Twinkle. Like you said, it was just business. Nothing personal,’ I assured him, while struggling with the concept of how having someone ram their fist halfway through your internal organs was less than personal.
I decided that I should check my wound before I drove out of the hospital car park. Although the gymnastics in the warehouse had made it bleed some, the stitches seemed intact and I decided against going back into Casualty. In any case, I had no idea how I would have explained damaging it again in such a short space of time.
I drove back to my digs. There was no Jowett Javelin parked outside and Fiona White came out when she heard me at the door.
‘How are you, Mr Lennox?’ she said awkwardly and formally. She was wearing a lilac print blouse and I could smell that smell of lavender from her neck.
‘I’m fine, Mrs White. And you?’
‘Just fine. I thought …’ She frowned earnestly. ‘Well, I thought I ought to let you know, we’ve agreed that James will come round once or twice a week to take the girls out. We decided that it would be good for them. And, to be honest, it gives me some time to myself. He is their uncle after all.’
‘As I told you before, you don’t have to justify yourself to me, Fiona,’ I said. ‘So long as you and the girls are happy.’ I smiled wearily. I was tired. And sore.