The Deep Dark Sleep

I’m sure my warning had Glasgow’s three most feared crime bosses quaking in their handmade Loake semi-brogues. I had actually half expected, and dreaded, a proposition of the blind-eye-turning sort, but none had been forthcoming. Like Jock Ferguson, each of the Three Kings knew I was straight. Comparatively speaking.

Anyway, like I said, the original discovery of a pile of bones in a dredging bucket didn’t raise a ripple on the pond of Glasgow’s collective consciousness. But a week later, it made a splash. A big splash. And the papers were full of it:

RIVER BODY IDENTIFIED AS WANTED

EMPIRE EXHIBITION ROBBER.

MYSTERY OF JOSEPH STRACHAN

DISAPPEARANCE SOLVED AFTER 18 YEARS.

PROCEEDS OF DARING 1938 EXHIBITION ROBBERY

STILL UNRECOVERED.

*

Now Gentleman Joe Strachan was before my time. But so were Zeus and Odin and I had heard of all three. The Glasgow underworld had more myths and legends than ancient Greece, and Gentleman Joe had become a towering figure in the folklore of those trying to turn a dishonest buck.

Reading the article reminded me that I had heard the name mentioned with hushed reverence over the years; but because my acquaintance with the Second City of the British Empire had only begun when I was demobbed after the war, Strachan had never been a visible figure in my landscape. However, I did know that there had been a spate of pre-war robberies, the biggest in Glasgow history, culminating in the Empire Exhibition job in Nineteen thirty-eight. All of which had been attributed to Gentleman Joe. Attributed but never proved.

What I had also heard was that if Strachan had hung around – and not at the end of a rope for a policeman’s murder – then he probably would have been the Fourth King of Glasgow. Or maybe even the One True King of Glasgow; with Cohen, Murphy and Sneddon having to settle for fiefdoms. But then there had been the spectacularly daring robbery, a copper lying dead, and Gentleman Joe was suddenly nowhere to be found. Nor was the fifty thousand pounds.

No one at the time had thought Strachan would be dead: rather that, in keeping with his now mythical-heroic status, he had entered the Glasgow gangster version of Valhalla. Which many took to be a luxury bungalow on the Bourne-mouth coast or somewhere similar. Probably called Dunrobbin.

All of which really had nothing to do with me and was of less interest.

Until I got a visit from Isa and Violet.

CHAPTER TWO

You never see it coming. Or at least it always seems to be that I never see it coming. Right up until Isa and Violet brought their shapely similitude into my office, my year had been going well. Very well.

I had a client list and a set of matching, balanced books that I could wave in front of the taxman and the occasional inquisitive copper to prove that my business was legitimate. Well, at least a lot more legitimate than it had been a year or two before. And the kind of cases I was working on made more demands on my wits – and not even many demands on them – and fewer on getting handy with some low rent Teddy Boy in an alley somewhere.

Which was good. Of late, I had been making a real effort not to get heated.

You pick up different things in war. A lot of men came back with venereal diseases caught from whores in Germany or the Far East, which they passed on unselfishly to their waiting wives, while others came back with trophies stolen from bodies. I came back with a hair-trigger temper and a tendency to express myself with great physical eloquence. Truth was, there had been times when I’d gotten more than a little carried away. Once I got started, it was difficult to stop. It was something that, when I’d been serving in the First Canadian Army in Europe, had been positively encouraged; but the authorities were decidedly sniffy about you using the skills they had taught you, now you were back in civilian life. The truth was that it was another good reason for curtailing my involvement with the Three Kings. It had involved me in a world I could understand at a time I could understand practically nothing else. Where everybody talked the same language: violence. And I was fluent.

So, whereas Sherlock Homes had used intellect and deerstalker to crack cases, I had tended to employ muscle and blackjack. And to be honest I had enjoyed it just that little bit too much and I wanted away from it. Something had gotten broken during the war and I knew that if I wanted to fix it, I was going to have to steer clear of the kind of crap I’d been wading about in. The problem was, when someone like the Three Kings got a hold of you, they didn’t like to let go.

But I had been making a pretty good fist of it; then Isa and Violet came to see me at my office.

Isa and Violet were identically petite, identically pretty, with identically large, blue eyes. Which was not surprising: they were identical twins. I worked that out as soon as I saw them. It’s the kind of detail people expect you to notice when you’re a detective.