The Deep Dark Sleep

I decided to follow the wall about ten yards further on and climb over as quietly as I could. When I was on top of the wall, I checked to see if I could see the car, but I had chosen too well and it was concealed by bushes. I eased myself down and took the gun from my waistband again. As I edged towards the car, I could see the back of it begin to emerge. I stopped. I had been right. A figure stood by the car, watching the wall next to it with his back to me. It took me a few seconds to work out he was on his own. My guess was the other two were still searching the woods for me. I could see he was younger, leaner and shorter than the older man I’d seen in the woods. He had something in his hand. Not a gun. For a moment I thought it was a large knife but, as I crept closer, I could see it was a baton, like a policeman’s truncheon. They hadn’t expected me to be armed and I hadn’t realized that I had had an advantage. But I decided not to risk it. Turning the gun around in my hand and holding it hammer style, I crept forward until I was right behind the goon by the car.

I let him have it hard on the back of his skull, then twice more on the way down when I didn’t really need to. He was out cold, but all of the tension and adrenalin of the chase in the woods took over and I rolled him onto his back and fixed his face for him. I guess I only hit him three or four times, and not with all my strength, but it cost him several of his teeth and his sense of smell. I wanted the others to find him and see what happened when you went Lennox-hunting but you didn’t make the kill.

I went through his pockets and took everything he had, not taking the time to look at it but stuffing it into my jacket pockets. When I was finished I got into the car. I was shaking: my hands, my legs. That was how it got me. It wasn’t the scares, it was the adrenalin and the testosterone and whatever the hell else your body flooded with. And it never got me at the time, only after.

I had it now, I had had it after the fight in my office, and I had gotten it regularly during the war.

I eventually found the ignition with the key and drove off.

I got back to my digs about nine-thirty. The Javelin was back, parked outside. I could have just gone in and gone up to my rooms, or I could have played who’s-the-gooseberry in Fiona’s living-room, but I didn’t have the stomach for it. Once I’d opened the floodgates like I just had with the goon on the country road, I generally found that I was too quick to get handy again. And I really, really wanted to get handy with that smug little shit.

I headed down Byers Road and along Sauchiehall Street. Something gnawed at me as I drove: maybe the real reason I hadn’t gone home and stood my ground was that I knew, deep down inside, that Fiona would be better off with James White. Brother of her dead husband, dull but reliable type, the kind of steady Joe that I could never be. Maybe it was simpler than that. Maybe it was just that I was no good for Fiona. Or just no good.

I got the same curt nod of recognition from my neckless chum on the door. No meeting with Hammer Murphy this time: I was at the Black Cat to get wet and set about it with great alacrity at the bar. The funny thing about good jazz is that it slows down your drinking and I turned my back to the bar, leaning my elbows on it cowboy style, and listened to the trio who were doing something mellow with a baroque piece; taking the mathematics out of it and playing with its rhythms. When they finished I turned back to the bar and inadvertently nudged the guy next to me.

‘Why don’t you watch what you’re doing?’ he whined, making a big deal of holding his drink up as if I’d spilled some of it, which I hadn’t. He was a big guy, and I could see that he had had a few, but I could tell at first glance that he was no fighter.

‘It was an accident, friend,’ I said. ‘No harm done.’

‘You spilt his drink …’ One of his buddies decided to chip in. But over his shoulder. ‘You should buy him another one. And it was a malt.’

‘No, I didn’t spill it. And like I said, just an accident.’

‘You calling me a liar?’ The big guy, emboldened by his friend’s support, turned to me, square on, but still holding his glass. I sighed, put my drink down and faced him.

‘Look, I didn’t spill your drink, and it was an accident. But here …’ I slapped his hand up and the entire contents of the glass splashed over his shirt, jacket and some on his face. ‘Now your drink is spilled,’ I said as if explaining arithmetic to a five-year-old. ‘And that was deliberate. And yes, I’m calling you a liar. And I’m calling your mother a filthy whore who took sailors up the ass. Yours too, by the way …’ I leaned to one side, smiling, and addressed his chum as if I didn’t want to offend him by leaving him out. ‘Now if either of you two queers are man enough, which I doubt, not to take that, then I’ll happily put the pair of you in hospital. And trust me, you’ve picked the wrong night.’