A week before Christmas I received more news of the Chief. He had successfully fulfilled his task and delivered the smuggled spirits to the gangsters in New York. The Valkyrie was now sailing east and heading home to Scotland. I couldn’t find out exactly what had happened, but I understood there had been some drama when the whisky was handed over. There was talk of coastguard cutters, fog and shots being fired. But the Chief was apparently unscathed and, in any case, he was still in command of the Valkyrie.
With its storms and icy cold, the North Atlantic at the end of December is feared by seamen. They sometimes call it the “Devil’s Dancefloor”. But the Chief had sailed there before and if nothing unforeseen happened he should be back in Glasgow within three or four weeks. I began counting the days.
239Christmas Eve was approaching and Moira and her gang were finalizing their plans for their raid on the Greek’s gambling club. The mood around the house was nervous.
Bernie was more anxious than anyone else and I soon understood why. He was afraid the robbery would go wrong because of him. The rest of the gang lost no opportunity of reminding him how clumsy he’d been on earlier jobs.
“Don’t think, Bernie!” Moira said. “Just do what you’re told to do. It’s when you try to think for yourself that everything goes to hell.”
The night before Christmas Eve the temperature fell and there were snow showers over Glasgow. On the morning of Christmas Eve Moira was annoyed and concerned: the plan had been for the raid to be carried out under cover of darkness, but now the whole city was gleaming white.
They held a brief crisis meeting and Moira decided they would go ahead with the job anyway. After all, the weather might change in the course of the day. Bernie and I were taken by car to a village on the River Clyde a few miles west of Glasgow. The steam launch was waiting for us at the lock gates of a narrow canal. Bernie was less anxious than he usually was about travelling by boat, because Gordon had explained 240to him that we weren’t venturing out on the great River Clyde, but sticking to the narrow Forth and Clyde Canal. The banks would never be more than a couple of yards away.
The trip along the canal took the whole day, as we slid gently through the winter landscape. Bernie and I had the job of manning the winches that opened and closed the gates of the numerous locks we had to pass through. It was hard work, but that was nothing new to me.
I noticed that the skinny skipper was watching me while I worked. And then suddenly, as I was tying off a stern rope, he said, “Nice to meet you, Sally Jones. My name’s Roger Simmons.”
He then gave a quick smile that revealed a row of yellow teeth with many black gaps.
“I’ve heard people talking about you,” he continued. “There aren’t that many gorillas sailing the seas, are there?”
I shook my head.
Skipper Simmons said nothing for a while, but a look of concern furrowed his brow.
“I heard that your friend Koskela took the job of skipper on Moira’s smuggling vessel. Was he forced to?”
I nodded.
“I thought as much,” Simmons said. “You don’t mess around with Moira Gray. I borrowed some money from her a couple of years ago. When I couldn’t pay it back in time, I had to choose 241between having my skull bashed in or joining her gang as the boatman… So here I am now.”
We met another boat on a curve and Simmons had to concentrate on the steering for a while.
Then he said, “Keep your head down, Sally Jones, and don’t let Moira know how much you can do. If she finds out, there’s no guarantee she’ll let you go when Koskela returns.”
I nodded gratefully. It sounded like good advice.
Skipper Simmons was in the same jam as me and that made me feel a little less lonely.
Moira’s guess paid off. By midday the cold night air had been blown away by a damp, mild breeze from the sea. The mist grew dense and the snow was washed away by a gentle drizzle.
Darkness had fallen by the time we reached Maryhill. The tall trees lining the canal obscured the lights of the surrounding houses and it became impossible to pick out where the water of the canal ended and the banks began. Skipper Simmons cut the speed and sent me to keep a look-out in the bows.
A gleam of light suddenly shone a little way in front of us and as we approached we could hear a voice whispering on the canal bank.
“Is that Simmons?” 242
“It is,” the skipper answered.
Two figures emerged from the shadows and climbed aboard. They were Carl and Kevin, both dressed in dark clothes. We hove to and waited for half an hour or so. The only sounds in the darkness were Kevin shivering and cursing himself for not wearing warm enough clothes. Carl laughed at him—he’d solved the problem by making Bernie hand over his coat.
When the hands of Carl’s pocket watch pointed to ten to midnight, we moved out onto the canal again. A short distance farther on a big house appeared between the trees on the right bank. As we got nearer, the skipper cut the engine and the launch drifted silently into the shadow of an enormous weeping willow below the house.
Through the branches of the tree I could see a grand old stone building, its façade almost totally masked by a lush growth of ivy. Carl slung a rope and tackle over his shoulder and Kevin took a crowbar. They jumped ashore and were swallowed up by the night.
All we had to do now was wait. I could hear Bernie’s breath coming in gulps as he grew more and more nervous with every passing minute. Skipper Simmons said some calming words to him, but it wasn’t much help. Eventually a light flashed three times in a window on the top floor of the house. It was the signal we had been waiting for. 243
Once ashore, Bernie and I made our way up through parkland trees and out onto a lawn close to the house. There were dim lights in a couple of the ground floor windows, but no sign of anyone inside.
The windows on the top floor were completely dark and one of them was open. Carl and Kevin had managed to heave the safe up onto the window ledge and were preparing to lower it. In the silence I could hear the two of them having a whispered argument about the best way of doing it. In the end they seemed to come to an agreement and the safe was pushed over the edge. The rope tautened with a twang and the safe swung back and forth below the window before coming to rest at the end of the rope. Jubilant—but silent—Carl and Kevin started lowering the safe to the ground.