The Deep Dark Sleep

Just half an hour before, McNab had been taking me into his confidence, something that was generally as conceivable as Dwight and Nikita having a slumber party together, and now it would be a matter of a day or so before he took me into custody. Nice going, Lennox.

What confused me was the presence of the fire brigade and the tossed-out furniture. The good news was that if there had been a fire in the flat, then there was a chance that my fingerprints would not be recoverable.

I heard voices as someone came out of the other tenement passage; I recognized one of them as belonging to McNab. He was talking to his subordinate about various arrangements, none of which gave me any insight as to which of my pals was now deceased or how he met his demise. I decided to get out of the area before I added another circumstance to the circumstantial case against me. I moved quickly and silently along the passage and into the back court again. This time I headed straight across, wanting to distance myself from the murder scene as quickly as possible. The fog seemed to have thickened on the way back and I found I’d lost my bearings. Halfway across, I could no longer see either wall of tenements, but pressed on, reckoning that if I kept on going straight, I must eventually manage to reach the opposite side.

What I did manage was to walk straight into a collection of trashcans, knocking one over, its lid rattling on the cobbles. The noise echoed in the court, but not as loudly as I would have expected, muffled as it was by the blanket of smog. I stood still and silent for a moment. No voices, no dogs barking, no police whistles. I again set blind course through the fog and eventually washed up against the sooty sandstone shore of the tenements opposite. I couldn’t see a passageway out onto the street again, but knew that if I moved along the tenements in either direction, I’d find one soon enough. The only problem was that I had to edge past the windows of the lower flats of the tenement until I reached the passage. Again I moved as quietly as I could, crouching as I passed an illuminated window.

It was the window that wasn’t lit up that was my undoing.

I heard the sounds of a struggle: someone gasping for breath and grunting. For a moment I couldn’t place where it was coming from, then I realized the sounds were issuing through a hole in the cracked window. I stood up and looked through the grimy glass, into the gloom inside. It was the usual tenement kitchen-cum-living room and the only light was the glow from the open door of the range, used for heating and cooking. The glow picked out the edges of a huge woman stretched over the rough kitchen table, leaning her elbows on it. She was hugely overweight and naked to the waist, the huge pale moons of her breasts swinging and the fat on her arms quivering with every lunge of the small, thin man behind her. He was balding, with strands of black hair pasted over his pale pate, and a Groucho Marx rectangle of moustache twitched beneath his thin nose with each impassioned thrust.

It was the same sort of thing as when you inadvertently see some unfortunate take ill in public and vomit in the street. You don’t want to see it, but no matter how much it repulses you, once you’ve looked, you can’t tear your eyes away. I froze.

Jack Spratt and his wife were clearly trying to keep as quiet as possible, probably because there were kids sleeping in the tenement flat’s only other room, but the fat woman moaned:

‘Lover boy… oh lover boy …’

I rammed a fist into my mouth and bit down hard, but still my shoulders shook uncontrollably.

‘Oh Rab … you’re my lover boy …’

Move, Lennox, I told myself. For God’s sake move.

Then, in a moment of heightened passion, the skinny little man gave forth:

‘Senga! Oh … Senga!’

Despite the danger of my situation, something over-rode my survival instinct and the fist stuffed in my mouth, and the laughter I’d been trying to contain threatened to explode. Something high-pitched and strangled sounded in my throat.

It was loud enough for the fat woman to hear. Looking up, she saw me at the window, let go a shrill scream and clutched her arms to her massive bosoms in a ludicrously inadequate effort to conceal her nakedness. The small man saw me too and, disengaging himself, charged towards the window, thankfully pulling his braces back up over his shoulders.

‘Pervert!’ he shouted in a high, shrill voice. ‘You fucking pervert! Peeping Tom! Peeping Tom!’

I made a run for it, along the wall, hoping I would find the passageway out. Meanwhile, lover boy had swung open the window and was screaming for the police at the top of his voice.

Well done, Lennox.