Bernie and I arrived in Gourock late in the morning. It was low tide and I beached the launch in the mud alongside a long, narrow landing stage that ran out from the shore close to Li Jing’s house on Albert Road.
While I was attaching the mooring ropes, I noticed we were being observed. Li Jing was watching us from her wheelchair up in her conservatory. She opened a small ventilation window and shouted to us, “Come up… come on up. Mrs Brentwood is out shopping but you’ll find the key under a flower pot to the right of the door.”
I’ll never forget the expression on Bernie’s face when he stepped into Li Jing’s conservatory for the first time. Wideeyed and open-mouthed he gazed around at the flourishing greenery. 420
“Welcome to my home, Bernie Brodie,” Li Jing said. “Don’t you think I’ve got things set up nicely here?”
Bernie nodded as he watched a budgerigar fly past inside the glass roof. I looked at Li Jing in surprise. How on earth could she know Bernie’s name?
Li Jing smiled and said, “My friend in Glasgow, Mr Cheng, usually tells me all the gossip from the port. So I know you’ve spent the winter with Moira Gray and her gang. Mr Cheng has actually seen you and Bernie out running errands. And I’ve known Bernie Brodie for a long time. I’ve always been interested in boxing, you know.”
Bernie was busy watching the birds and seemed not to hear anything we were talking about.
Li Jing looked at him and pulled a sad face. “Things haven’t always been easy for that boy.”
Then she turned back to me. “Thanks to Mr Cheng I know that Koskela signed on as captain of a vessel sailing to America with a cargo of whisky. Moira’s business! But I also know that he didn’t undertake the voyage voluntarily. Am I right?”
I nodded my head.
“I thought as much,” Li Jing said earnestly. “I’m really sad that I haven’t been able to help you and Koskela through your difficulties. I used to know many influential people in Glasgow, 421but they all passed away long ago. The only one I know now is Mr Cheng.”
I nodded to show I’d understood.
Li Jing went on. “They were saying on the wireless this morning that there had been an exchange of gunfire in Oswald Street. They said it had to do with an underworld quarrel. I was worried, of course… Was it Moira Gray’s house near the Broomielaw that was attacked?”
I nodded. Li Jing looked at me questioningly.
“And while that was going on, you managed to escape? And took Bernie with you.”
I nodded my head to confirm that that was more or less what had happened.
Li Jing thought things over in silence for a moment. Then she turned to Bernie and asked, “Are you wanted by the police, Bernie?”
“I don’t know,” Bernie said. “Am I?”
“I’ll do my best to find out what the situation is,” Li Jing said. “Meanwhile I think one of you should go down to the kitchen and make a pot of tea. I imagine Mrs Brentwood will soon be back with fresh bread from the baker’s.”
422After breakfast Bernie fell asleep in one of the wicker chairs in the conservatory. I must have fallen asleep too, because suddenly it was late evening and I found myself on the sofa in Li Jing’s library with a blanket tucked round me. I’ve no memory of how I got there. Bernie, however, was still asleep out in the conservatory.
I went back to sleep and the next time I opened my eyes it was a new morning. I could hear Li Jing talking to Bernie. Still bleary eyed I got up and went out to the conservatory. Li Jing was sitting in her wheelchair and he was crouched down beside it. A small parrot had settled on Li Jing’s shoulder and Bernie was watching it with delight in his eyes.
“Good morning, Sally Jones,” Li Jing said when she saw me. “While you’ve been asleep, Bernie and I have been getting to know one another. I was just telling him that my good friend Mr Cheng in Glasgow phoned me a couple of hours ago. He’d been talking to an acquaintance in the police and learnt that Bernie is not on the wanted list. That’s good news, isn’t it? It means the two of you can stay here in peace until Koskela returns from America.”
So Bernie and I moved in with Li Jing. Bernie stayed in the guest room and I carried on using a hammock out in the 423conservatory. It would actually have been better the other way round, as Bernie could hardly drag himself away from Li Jing’s birds. The moment he woke up, he’d go and sit in one of the wicker chairs under the palm leaves and he’d stay there until Li Jing or Mrs Brentwood sent him out on an errand or asked for his help with household chores. And as soon as he’d finished, he would return to the chair.
The birds got used to Bernie very quickly and if one of them perched on him he would sit as still as a statue. Li Jing’s birds could have built a nest in Bernie’s hair and he wouldn’t have moved.
“What a strange man,” I heard Mrs Brentwood saying to herself several times.
The newspapers wrote about the events in Oswald Street and Li Jing read all the articles to Bernie and me. You could see Bernie’s relief when he heard that Moira hadn’t been injured in the attack on the house. Others were less lucky. A dozen people had ended up in hospital with bullet wounds or burns, though, fortunately, no one had died.
As a result of the police intervention, large quantities of stolen goods and other evidence of crime had been seized in Moira’s house. She and the members of her gang had been taken 424into custody on suspicion of dealing in stolen goods, smuggling, extortion, threatening behaviour and gross bodily harm. There might even be a number of murder charges. Lengthy prison sentences were to be expected.
Several of Tarantello’s men had also been arrested, but he himself had avoided arrest, as I discovered later when I happened to see his picture in the paper. The picture accompanied an article on the Locarno Dance Hall on Sauchiehall Street, the place where I’d almost been shot. The article was about the new hostess of the Locarno. She was standing in the foreground of the photograph, dressed in a long, elegant evening dress and surrounded by people in their party clothes. I recognized her immediately—it was Lucky Lucy. Tommy Tarantello, a glass of champagne in his hand, was standing just behind her.
Suddenly I had the answer to a question that had been troubling me ever since that last, dreadful night in the Oswald Street house.
Who was it who had actually betrayed Moira?
No gang member had an opportunity to tip off Tarantello about Moira’s planned attacks.
No one apart from Lucy, that is, it occurred to me now.
I know she wasn’t present at the meeting when the attacks were planned, but someone could have told her what was proposed. 425
And that someone was almost certainly Gordon.
He was very taken with Lucky Lucy and seized every opportunity to spend time chatting with her. Since they were fond of one another, he would have felt sure he could trust her to keep a secret. But he shouldn’t have. She deceived him and grassed to Tarantello about the attacks and, in exchange, Tarantello had rewarded her with the top job at the Locarno.
It made me sad. I knew Gordon was a rogue who deserved to be in jail, but it must be awful to be deceived by someone you really care about.
After a couple of days at Li Jing’s house I fell ill. I had a temperature and couldn’t get out of my hammock for a full week. Bernie was worried about me, but Li Jing wasn’t.
“I think Sally Jones is exhausted,” she told him. “Her body is telling her to rest. I’m willing to bet she’ll be back on her feet in a few days.”
Li Jing was right. One morning I woke up and felt fully recovered. That’s when I noticed that Li Jing had a small telescope on the windowsill in the veranda. During the week that followed I used the telescope several hours a day to check the shipping. I was longing for the day when I’d see the Valkyrie come sailing up the Firth of Clyde. 426
Li Jing thought that staring through the telescope was a waste of my time. She telephoned the pilot station in Gourock instead and talked to the senior pilot. He promised to inform us the moment the Valkyrie was sighted by their lookouts along the firth.
“And you don’t need to worry that the Valkyrie has gone down out in the Atlantic,” Li Jing told me. “We’d have already heard of it—shipping disasters are always big news in a city like Glasgow.”
I didn’t doubt Li Jing and, besides, I didn’t know of anyone more competent at sea than the Chief. Still, as the days passed, I became more and more uneasy. The Valkyrie should have arrived back in Glasgow weeks before.