‘Right …’ she said. ‘I, er … I just wanted you to know that that is all there is to it. I get the idea that you perhaps thought there was more to it. That there was some kind of … em …’
‘It’s fine, Fiona, I get the idea. Thanks for putting me in the picture. It’s important that we know where we all stand. Do you mind if I am equally unequivocal?’ I asked.
‘Of course not,’ she said.
I pushed her against the wall more roughly than I had intended. She looked startled, frightened even, and she made a half-hearted attempt to push me away as I fastened my mouth on hers and kissed her the way I’d been waiting to kiss her for two years. And it was good. Boy, was it good. And she kissed me back.
When I let her go she was kind of slumped against the wall, staring at me. But she didn’t slap me, she didn’t scream, she didn’t give me notice to quit.
‘Like you said, I just feel it’s important that we all know where we stand, Mrs White. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and freshen up. It’s been a tough day and I need to go out this evening on business. But I need you to know that I am happy to continue this discussion any time you feel like it.’
She said nothing and I left her standing there, leaning against the stairwell wall, and went up to my rooms to clean up. I heard one of the girls call to her and the door close as she went back into her flat.
I stopped off at a transport cafe on the way down to Largs and ate something that was described as a steak with the same accuracy as Hemingway was sometimes described as literature. The tea was strong enough to tan leather but it was hot and wet and it did something to revive me.
I called in to see Paul Downey and he just about jumped out of his skin when I opened the caravan door. I had brought some groceries and newspapers and sat and chatted with him for a while in that way that people who have absolutely nothing in common chat.
On the way out, the woman who owned the caravan park came trotting out of the sandstone villa. As she trotted, her breasts bounced unencumbered by support beneath her blouse and I imagined a brassiere hastily removed and stuffed behind a cushion before she had come out.
‘Ah, Mr Watson,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Have you been visiting your friend?’
‘I have, Mrs Davison. He’s very much enjoying his stay here.’
‘Oh that’s good. I’m so pleased.’ She moved in close to me and I got a lungful of cheap, overdone perfume. ‘While you’re here, could I offer you a cup of tea?’
I looked across at the villa. If I went in there, I knew no tea would be drunk. But she was attractive and her cheap perfume was working on me and the taste of Fiona White was still on my lips and I was messed up and confused and bruised all over from everything that had happened so I thought, what the hell?
‘I’d love to, Mrs Davison,’ I said and let her loop her arm through mine and lead me to the house.
‘Please,’ she said coquettishly. ‘Call me Ethel …’
Do I have to? I thought. Do I really have to?
It was difficult to believe, but the Finnieston Vehicular Ferry had not, in fact, been designed by William Heath Robinson. When I had seen it for the first time, it struck me as the most bizarre piece of navigational engineering I had ever seen: somewhere between the skeleton of a Mississippi river-boat and a giant, floating hamster cage. The reason for its unusual appearance was actually its ingeniousness. It could operate throughout the day and evening, whether it was high or low tide — and here the Clyde was tidal — because it had a steam-driven elevating car deck that could be adjusted to the exact height of the quay it docked at, irrespective of the water level at that time.
When I arrived at the ferry next morning there was no smog in the city, but a thickish fog skulked low on the river without the conviction to rise up over the banks and into the streets. The fog turned the improbable superstructure of the ferry into something even more black and gothic. Mine was the only car on the first crossing of the day and there was only a handful of foot passengers. Fraser boarded at the last minute and walked over to where I stood, looking down at the fog fuming on the dark surface of the Clyde.
‘A rather gloomy crossing, don’t you think, Mr Lennox?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. It beats crossing the Styx, I guess. But there again you would know more about that than I would, wouldn’t you, Mr Fraser. It would appear that you have paid the boatman to take more than a few people across that river.’
‘Listen, Mr Lennox, you have got the wrong end of the stick about all of that. This really is a bad business, a thoroughly bad business. Things have just gone far too far. It really is just too unfortunate.’
‘Unfortunate? You pay me silly sums of money and I lead your killers to where Paul Downey is hiding out, except your boys aren’t as good as you think they are and they kill the wrong pansy.’
‘You don’t understand …’ For once Fraser wasn’t full of cocky assurance. ‘Things have got out of hand. I don’t know … you think you know people, you think you understand where you are with them. That there’s some kind of bond between you. Then someone comes along and turns the world on its head.’
‘You’re talking about Joe Strachan?’
Fraser turned from looking out over the water. ‘Help me, Lennox. Protect me. I didn’t know any of this was going to happen. Leonora Bryson asked me if I knew anyone who could follow up on the Downey thing and I put her in touch with Colonel Williamson. The deal was that if you found Downey, Williamson’s men would double check that you had got all of the negatives. And they would perhaps be more forceful in making the point than you had been. I had no idea that Miss Bryson asked them to go further than that.’
‘I was forceful enough. Downey and Gibson were no threat to you, or Leonora Bryson or John Macready. The truth is that Williamson, as you call him, was only too happy to oblige Leonora because he had a good reason to see Downey dead. He wanted to make sure there were no more copies of this photograph …’ I took out the picture that had been my constant companion these last few days. ‘This is Williamson, right?’
‘Right.’
‘Wrong,’ I said. ‘This is Gentleman Joe Strachan, armed robber, murderer and all round bad bastard of the first water.’
‘I know,’ said Fraser. ‘Colonel Williamson persuaded me to put pressure on you to drop all other jobs so you could focus on the Macready case. It didn’t take a genius to guess that what he really wanted was for you to stop looking for Joe Strachan. I worked it out from there. I couldn’t believe it at first … I’ve known Colonel Williamson since the war. And I couldn’t work out how he could have got security clearance for the work he did during the war, based on a fictitious identity.’
‘So how did you square that circle?’
‘If there’s one thing I’m good at, Mr Lennox, it’s paperwork. And every life leaves a paper trail. When it comes to following documentary traces, I’m like a native tracker.’
‘Let me guess: Henry Williamson isn’t a fictitious identity.’
Fraser shook his head. ‘No. He was a South African, educated at an exclusive boarding school in Natal. Parents both dead, no brothers or sisters, and any other kin distant both in terms of relationship and geography. He served as an officer in the Great War, then nothing much on record for twenty years, other than his being a shareholder in various companies and buying two properties: a townhouse in Edinburgh and a large country property in the Borders. Then, just before hostilities break out, he renews his commission in the army, but with a totally different regiment from the one in which he served during the Great War.’
‘Let me guess again,’ I said. ‘He re-joined the army in Thirty-eight? Right about the time of the Triple Crown robberies?’
‘Exactly. You have to believe me, Lennox, I had no idea until then that the person I had known for all of these years was anyone other than Colonel Williamson.’