The Deep Dark Sleep

Then I saw it: Jonny Cohen fired a warning look across at his thuggish new best pal, as if Murphy had contravened an agreement they had made before meeting me. So this was what the old pals act was about. Willie Sneddon was coming out on top, as he always did with any deal, and Cohen was keeping the lid on Murphy’s resentment. But it was much, much more dangerous than that. Sneddon, the Kingpin of Kingpins, was easing himself out and into legitimate enterprise. And criminal nature abhors a vacuum.

‘Anyway, as I was saying,’ continued Cohen. ‘The three of us have done all right for ourselves. Things have been pretty good, all in all. But not one – not for a single minute during all of these years – did we stop looking over our shoulders to see if Strachan was going to make a reappearance.’

‘You wanted me to tell you about Gentleman Joe,’ said Murphy with a sneer. Or maybe he was just smiling. ‘I’ll fucking tell you. We all have our little tricks to keep everyone in fucking line. You’re really pally with that fucking monkey of Sneddon’s … the cunt with the boltcutters …’

‘Twinkletoes MacBride? I wouldn’t say we’re pally …’

‘Well he cuts toes and fingers off. Jonny here has Moose Margolis who boils your balls for you. I have …’ Murphy thought for a moment. ‘Well, I have me. The fucking point is this … we all make a big show to scare the shite out of people. Keep the fucking rank and file in line.’ Murphy leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and fixing me with those small, hard eyes of his. ‘Well, Gentleman Joe Strachan never did any of that. No show, no flash. But if you offended him, even if you didn’t mean it, you were fucked. He’d make no big deal about it, but the next fucking thing you’d know is that the one who’d crossed him would just fucking disappear off the face of the earth. No show, like I said. Nothing. And that, my friend, was the scariest fucking thing of all.’

Jonny Cohen picked up the story. ‘Every job he was involved in, every one of his men, where the cash went or what was planned next … no one ever knew anything about it. He was before my time, Lennox, but from the very first job I ever pulled, from the moment I got my foot on the ladder, I knew all about Gentleman Joe Strachan and his army of ghosts.’

‘Christ, Jonny,’ I said. ‘You’re getting lyrical in your old age.’

‘No … really, that’s what they called them. Strachan’s ghosts.’

‘And there was only one who anyone could put a fucking name to,’ said Murphy. ‘If you can call it a name …’

‘The Lad?’ I asked.

Murphy nodded. ‘So you’ve heard about him. He was called the Lad because it was like he was serving a fucking apprenticeship with Strachan. There wasn’t anything this wee fucker wouldn’t do for Gentleman Joe. And it was like Joe was training him up to take over.’

‘You know what this “Lad” looked like? Or do you have any hint of what his real name might have been or where he came from?’

‘Naw,’ said Murphy. ‘There was this one feller, going way back, fucked if I can remember his name. Anyways, this cunt starts fucking blabbing in the boozer one night about how he nearly got a job with Gentleman Joe and starts going on about this evil wee fucker they called the Lad. That’s how everybody found out about him. If this bastard hadn’t got fucking pished, we wouldn’t even know this much.’

‘Let me guess, this guy who mouthed off … he disappeared?’

‘Off the face of the fucking Earth,’ said Murphy.

‘No body ever found,’ said Jonny Cohen. ‘The thing is, Lennox, when they fished those bones out of the river, it was the first time in years that we didn’t feel we needed to keep looking over our shoulders for Strachan. But if that wasn’t his bones, then God knows where he is and what he’s got planned …’

For a moment, I thought about what they had said. ‘But that was nearly twenty years ago, Jonny. You can’t seriously think he’s come back now? If he ever showed his face in Glasgow he’d have a noose around his neck inside of a month.’

‘You’re forgetting Strachan’s “Lad”,’ said Jonny. ‘His heir apparent. If there was one thing Strachan was a master at, it was planning ahead and biding his time.’

I shook my head. ‘I still don’t get it.’

‘It’s fucking simple,’ said Murphy. ‘You’re looking into this for his girls who, incidentally, have fuck knows how many half-brothers and -sisters spread around the fucking country. Anyway, you do your job for them. That’s fucking fine and fucking dandy with us. But we will give you a thousand each if you can give us a name, an address or even a fucking face for the Lad. You point us in the right direction, and we take it from there. You also end up two grand richer.’

‘And Willie Sneddon isn’t playing?’

‘You want to fucking know something? Sneddon’s the one who’s always had the most to lose. But now he doesn’t give a flying fuck. He’s too busy becoming the Chamber of fucking Commerce’s man of the fucking month.’

It struck me that if anywhere was going to have a Chamber of Fucking Commerce, it would be Glasgow.