Chapter Seventeen

It seemed to Polly that the pace of life quickened in the first days of 1931. She had been reassured by Dominic Manone but not entirely taken in by his left-handed promises, if, indeed, they were promises at all, and she returned to the routines of the Burgh Hall office nursing an odd sense of accomplishment.

She reported to Babs most of what had been said at Manor Park Avenue. Babs in turn passed on a garbled version to Jackie Hallop who was so relieved to be officially off the hook that he shelled out ten shillings to take his rediscovered sweetheart to the Locarno in Glasgow where the world’s champion ballroom dancers were giving an exhibition. Dennis went out and got drunk.

What Patsy Walsh did with himself that first weekend of the year nobody knew and, it seemed, nobody cared. The consensus of opinion was that he was still sulking because he had bungled the warehouse robbery. It didn’t occur to anyone, not even Polly, that Patsy might be suffering guilt at the deaths of Tommy Bonnar and poor, shabby Maggie’s two wee bairns.

Maggie herself appeared before the Fiscal Depute, answered a multitude of searching questions, was released on bail – put up by Dominic – and charged to appear before the Sheriff on Monday week. She was then escorted to the Victoria Infirmary by Irish Paddy and wept inconsolable buckets over the wheezing two-year-old in the cot in the children’s ward before going off to spend the night not in Irish Paddy’s bed, God no!, but on a mattress on the floor of Irish Paddy’s mother’s house in Cranston Street, across the river.

Spurred on by Tony Lombard, there was also much activity down at the Rowing Club; a devising of little white lies necessary to satisfy the authorities and regain for Maggie whatever pitiful possessions had been rescued from the fire, to ensure that the surviving offspring were found a good home somewhere out of the city, if, that is, the Panel saw fit to hand them back into Maggie’s care; and, when the bodies were finally released, how to give Tommy and his kiddies some sort of a send-off, i.e. a decent burial.

Arranging the affairs of the late Thomas Bonnar wasn’t foremost in Dominic’s mind, however. He indicated to Guido what he was prepared to do – quite a lot – in that direction and let his uncle sort out the details with Tony, Irish Paddy and another Manone employee named Breslin whose brother was, of all things, a priest.

Dominic had other things to think about, not least when he might see Polly Conway again and how he might set their relationship on a less edgy footing. He was shy about Polly, tentative, a mood that affected his judgement in another pressing matter. He took big stick from Guido, little stick from Tony for his indecisiveness. He was even tempted to cable his father in Philadelphia to request advice. But he knew only too well what his father would tell him to do and that his father would then write to Guido and ask what sort of man he had raised when he, Dominic, would not undertake to protect the family name and family honour without all this stupid flimflam and soul-searching.

If she had not been so entranced by Bernard Peabody – so entranced that she sang to herself while she worked the rakes through the troughs on her Saturday shift – then Lizzie might have realised what was going on behind the scenes and have tried to prevent it. She, however, had lost her heart completely and with it her reason, not her mental faculties so much as her raison d’être, that restless need to interfere in the lives of her daughters and other poor folk who might need a shoulder to cry on or the aid of a strong right arm.

Lizzie was a goner, radiant as a sunbeam, pinked out of existence for love of an estate agent’s clerk. Her chum McIntosh spotted the change at once and, being a man of kind heart and romantic disposition, guessed the reason for it. He even teased her about it lightly until Lizzie blushed like a tea-rose and admitted in a hoarse but not coarse whisper that matrimony was quite definitely in her plans, if not this year, then next year, just as soon as she could get her daughters settled and pay off a few outstanding debts.

Meanwhile Scotland trudged back to work, back to the dole queue, back to the long drag of the winter’s second half. The joy of New Year celebrations and all the false optimism that they had engendered vanished swiftly.

Within a year Labour would be routed at the polls and a National Government would take over. Within a couple of months King Alfonso would abdicate and Spain would declare itself a Republic. Within a week Pope Pius would announce the Church’s opposition to communism, capitalism and all forms of sexual liberation. Within three days, late on Saturday night to be exact, Babs Conway would sacrifice her virginity to Jackie Hallop while standing upright in the back close of No. 10 Lavender Court, an experience that left her sore, unsatisfied and slightly bewildered.

Within fifty-six hours of calling upon Dominic Manone at Manor Park Avenue Polly would decide that she wouldn’t really feel secure until Patsy Walsh left Glasgow and that the only way she could bring that about would be to reclaim her daddy’s stash from under the floorboards in Gran McKerlie’s cupboard and that the sooner she did it the better it would be for all concerned, especially – so she convinced herself – for Patsy.

Larceny came easy to Polly; Daddy’s genes were working well. She performed her first act of pillage with all the aplomb of a seasoned professional and, to her surprise, with hardly so much as an increase in pulse rate. She climbed the backland stairs in Ballingall Street, Laurieston, at twenty minutes to eleven o’clock with pockets empty and skipped down again at five minutes to one with pockets full; with Daddy’s assorted banknotes tucked about her person and the cocoa tin – empty save for coppers – left where it was, the boards, brooms, brushes and pails all neatly back in place.

‘What have you been up to?’ Aunt Janet enquired as she took off her Sunday-best hat and unwound her scarf.

Sweet-faced and blameless: ‘Absolutely not a thing.’

‘Did she go?’

‘Yes,’ said Polly.

‘Number one or number two?’

‘Both, I think,’ said Polly.

‘Don’t you know?’

‘No, I don’t know,’ Polly said and, feeling strangely justified, took her leave soon after.

*   *   *

‘I thought you were kiddin’,’ Patsy said. ‘I really thought you were kiddin’. A hundred an’ fifty smackers. Where did you get them?’

‘Not from Dominic Manone,’ said Polly. ‘That’s all you need to know.’

‘Come off it, Polly. I can’t take your money.’

‘Isn’t it enough?’

‘Oh, aye, it’s more than enough.’

‘Then accept it graciously and get out while you can,’ Polly said.

‘Easier said than done.’

‘What? You promised you’d…’

‘I saw Jackie this afternoon,’ Patsy said. ‘He tells me we don’t have anythin’ to worry about, the pressure’s off. Is that true, Polly?’

‘Perhaps it is for him, but not for you.’

The banknotes were arranged in neat bundles on the Walshes’ kitchen table. Patsy had seen more cash than this plenty of times. Five years ago he had robbed a carpet manufacturer’s house out in Lenzie and had come out with five hundred pounds in loose notes. The haul had taken him to Spain, Switzerland, eventually to Germany, yet he’d been back knocking on his father’s door almost before the old man realised he’d gone.

‘What did you have to do to get it?’ he said.

‘I didn’t have to do anything to get it,’ Polly said.

‘Did you steal it?’

‘What do you take me for, Patsy? Of course I didn’t steal it.’ She had the lie ready. She hoped it might impress him. ‘It’s savings. My personal savings. Money my daddy put into an account when I was born. Been earning interest ever since. I decided the time had come to make use of it.’

‘Mighty generous of you, Polly,’ Patsy said. ‘Why are you so damned anxious to get rid of me?’

‘We’ve been through all this before,’ Polly said. ‘I just don’t want you to wind up dead, like Tommy Bonnar.’

‘Jackie tells me it’s all been settled, that Manone’s satisfied.’

‘Manone will never be satisfied.’

Polly was conscious of just how overblown the statement sounded, how theatrical, an utterance more suited to Dominic’s long, gloomy dining-room than to an ordinary working-class kitchen. Sighing, she reached for the little bundles of cash. ‘If you don’t want it, I’ll find another use for it.’

‘No,’ he said, quickly. ‘I didn’t say I didn’t want it.’

‘It’s not as if you’re tied to the Gorbals, like the Hallops. You’ve been to Europe before. You keep telling me how wonderful it is.’

‘It would be even more wonderful if you were with me.’

‘I’ll be here when you get back.’

‘If I come back, you mean.’

‘Nothing’s for ever, Patrick.’

‘Patrick? Oh, very formal all of a sudden.’

‘Stop it,’ Polly said. ‘Take it or don’t take it.’

‘I’ll take it.’

‘And go?’

‘Aye, an’ go.’

‘When?’

‘This week some time.’

Polly said, ‘Where’s your father?’

‘At chapel.’

‘I didn’t know you were Catholic.’

‘Methodist chapel,’ Patsy said. ‘Why are you askin’? Do you want to kiss an cuddle for a while? On the bed?’

‘No,’ Polly said. ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea under the circumstances.’

‘What happened, Polly? It looked so promisin’ for us,’ Patsy said, ‘then it just went to hell. Was it because of what I tried to do that night?’

‘That isn’t it.’

‘Well, you’re no fool.’ Patsy began to sort out banknotes, not counting so much as arranging them. He was quick-fingered and dextrous but also casual, unexcited by handling so much cash. ‘It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that you don’t want to get mixed up with a guy like me in case I run into trouble an’ wind up in jail.’

Polly said, ‘Yes, I suppose that’s it.’

‘Middle-class loyalty.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t blame you. It’s not your fault. At least give me one kiss before I hit the trail.’

He opened his arms in an extravagant gesture and Polly walked around the table and into them. He pulled her close, tilted his hips, rocked against her. But he was not aroused and there was a mocking quality to the embrace. Polly put her hands behind his neck and kissed him lingeringly, without desire. She had exorcised him, got rid of him, saved herself for someone else, someone better. She couldn’t have spent her father’s legacy on anything more worth while.

‘See you, Poll,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ Polly said. ‘See you, Patsy,’ and went out and downstairs into Brock Street before he noticed the tears in her eyes.

*   *   *

Tony had accompanied his mother and father to evening mass. To please his mother he had even taken confession and eked out a few acceptable sins to keep the father happy. He wondered what the good father would have said if he’d known what mortal sins Tony had really committed since his last confession, or if the old holy man could possibly have guessed what a nice clean-cut Italian gentleman would be getting up to in the course of the next few days.

Tony hadn’t quite reached the age when cynicism gives way to doubt or doubt bleeds into fear. He did his bit, he did his best. He kept his parents in style and visited them regularly. He did not worship false gods. He worshipped only one god and required no priestly rigmarole to communicate with that god.

‘All right,’ Tony said. ‘We know who did for Tommy; what do you want me to do about it?’

‘I’m not sure yet,’ Dominic said.

‘You have to be sure. You have to act. That Irish-born bastard will be sitting in his mouldy office laughing up his sleeve at us.’

‘How much did Tommy owe him?’ Dominic asked.

‘Nobody knows for sure. Two, three hundred, maybe,’ Tony said.

‘In that case,’ Dominic said, ‘I think I should pay him off.’

‘Jesus and Joseph!’ Uncle Guido exclaimed.

‘I think I should go call on him tomorrow,’ Dominic said.

‘Go call on him?’ said Tony. ‘You can’t set up a meeting with a man who has just had one of our boys done in. McGuire doesn’t give a toss about the money Tommy owed him. He did it to insult you. To test you. Next thing he’ll be picking off our runners, then it will be our collectors.’

‘I do not think so,’ Dominic said.

‘Paying him off will not keep the peace,’ Uncle Guido said. ‘Paying him off will be interpreted as a sign of weakness.’

Dominic said, ‘You do not have to set up a meeting, Tony. I will go by myself, all by myself.’

‘To pay him off?’ said Guido.

‘Yes, to pay whatever Tommy owed him,’ Dominic said, ‘then to kill him.’

‘You?’ Tony said. ‘You will kill him?’

The parlour was so quiet that you could hear the wind ruffling the shrubs in the garden outside.

‘No,’ Dominic said. ‘We will let O’Hara do it. Very quietly. With a knife.’

‘Oh, yeah,’ said Tony, grinning. ‘Alex will just love that.’

*   *   *

It was always a puzzle to Patsy how his father managed to remain a member in good standing of the Methodist fellowship. He, Patsy, assumed that the old man must have some kind of split personality; either that or a guardian angel who sat upon the tip of his foul tongue to check the flow of casual obscenities that made up a good sixty per cent of his father’s customary conversation.

What was undeniable was that twice-weekly attendance at Methodist meetings did the old buzzard a power of good and that he returned from the Elliston Street chapel minus much of his sustaining bitterness. It would be back next morning, of course, or might even return in the course of the evening, seeping into the operating eye then down into his mouth so that by bedtime, even without a drop of drink in him, Paw Walsh would be braying curses with all the conviction of an apocalyptic prophet.

Patsy got to him early, while he was sober and comparatively sane. He did not need his father’s approval for what he was about to do, merely his attention for a few brief minutes.

‘I’m goin’ off again for a while,’ Patsy said, while his father was busy at the stove in the cupboard making himself a pot of tea. ‘I don’t know how long I’ll be away.’ The hunched, heavily muscled shoulders did not so much as stiffen. Patsy heard the click of the spoon on the caddy, the clack of the kettle going back on the gas ring. ‘Are you okay for cash?’

‘Aye,’ his father said. ‘I’m fine.’

‘You want me to leave you somethin’ to be goin’ on with?’

‘Naw.’

His father emerged from the cupboard with a china mug cupped in both hands. He dipped his mouth to the scalding liquid and supped noisily.

Patsy said, ‘It’ll probably be Tuesday, Wednesday at the latest.’

‘Right.’

‘If anybody comes lookin’ for me you don’t know where I am.’

‘Right.’

Patsy watched his father sup again from the mug. The glitter was coming back, that ferocious little flicker in the pupil of the eye and, bizarrely, a matching glint in the glass. In a moment the glass eye would begin to water.

Patsy said, ‘I don’t know where I’m goin’ exactly. Maybe Paris.’

‘Yon so-and-so goin’ wi’ you?’

‘Polly? Nah.’

‘She know you’re leavin’?’

‘Yeah.’

‘She knocked up?’

‘Don’t be daft,’ said Patsy.

The old man sat down in a chair by the fire. He still wore boots, his Sabbath boots, polished to a high gloss. He looked down at them, the mug in both hands, scowled at his feet as if at an enemy. Patsy knew better than to offer to unlace them for him. Besides, the glass eye had begun to water.

The old man said, ‘You pull a job?’

Keeping it simple, Patsy answered, ‘Yeah.’

‘Get much?’

‘Enough,’ Patsy said.

‘You sure yon so-and-so’s no’ preg-enant?’

‘Not by me she’s not,’ said Patsy.

‘Right,’ the old man said and, putting the tea mug to one side, bent to tackle his laces.

*   *   *

The question of what to do about Rosie Conway’s future had been on Mr Feldman’s agenda for some time. Rosie was by far the brightest and most promising of final-year pupils but come June she would be too old to remain at the Institute for even one more term.

The trustees and Mr Feldman between them usually managed to find work for ‘graduates’ of the Institute, no matter how severely impaired. Copy typists, storemen, cleaners, ground-level bricklayers, apprenticeships in skilled crafts like book-binding or French polishing, one bright boy in the chemical laboratory of the Russia Road Chemical & Dyeworks, one bright girl sewing costumes in the Princess Theatre, another learning hairdressing: wherever his students wound up they had to take their licks, alas, suffer taunts and abuse and be treated as if they were not just deaf but daft.

The master did his best to instil into them a realisation that the faults lay in the prejudice of their tormentors and whatever anyone said to or about them they must hold on to both pride and temper and prove themselves not just capable but superior to those around them.

Rosie needed no such inspiring talk to put the pepper into her. She had always been sure of herself, too sure perhaps. When he’d discussed the prospect of employment with her, for instance, she had been confident that the world would be waiting to welcome her talents with open arms.

Mr Feldman knew that Rosie’s sisters were employed, one by the CWC, the other by the burgh council, but it was not until he saw Rosie being led away by one of Manone’s henchmen that everything clicked into place and he realised to his horror that Elizabeth Conway’s crooked connections had not been severed after all, that Manone or one of his ilk had been paid to obtain the sisters work and that Rosie might be destined to follow the same route and be drawn into marriage or worse with one of Manone’s thugs.

The notion of Rosie, his star pupil, sliding into that murky region made Mr Feldman pretty mad. And Mr Feldman pretty mad was not a pretty sight. His poor wife and three grown children bore the brunt of it, for teaching at the Institute was suspended for the holidays and Mr Feldman had to bide his time before he could do what he did best: take remedial action.

Oswald Shelby, Sons & Partners, Books, Rare Books, Bindings & Manuscripts – which if you ever happened to get young Miss Florence Shelby, a reformed flapper, on the telephone emerged as one unintelligible word – had been at the centre of the book trade in Glasgow for the best part of seventy years. In that time their premises had shifted from a handcart at the top of old High Street to a shop at the bottom of Queen Street and, just before the war, to their present august location in Mandeville Square, a stone’s throw from the Royal Exchange and no more than sniffing distance from their main rivals, John Smith’s, just around the corner in St Vincent Street.

In terms of style and stock Shelby’s had Smith’s knocked into a cocked hat. There was an air of distinction about Shelby’s that no other booksellers, not even Smith’s, could match. And as far as pedigree went there were Oswald Shelbys going back and back; all of the old beggars, except the very first, still alive and kicking and dabbling about in the trade, so much so that it was not entirely unknown for Mr Shelby Very Senior to be bidding against Mr Shelby Slightly Junior for the same desirable lot in one of Edmiston’s Wednesday morning auction sales.

‘Mr Shelby, please.’

‘Which Mr Shelby would that be, sir?’

‘Mr Oswald Shelby.’

‘Which Mr Oswald Shelby?’

‘How many are there?’

‘Four, sir. And Robert.’

‘Robert? Who’s Robert?’

‘Oswald the sixth. We generally call him Robert.’

‘Why do you call him Robert?’

‘To avoid confusion, I think.’

Mr Feldman suffered no confusion as to who was who in the Shelby dynasty or who it was that managed the shop these days. He had been acquainted with Oswald Shelby Junior for the best part of thirty years and the boy, Robert, since he’d first appeared, seated like an ornament on the cataloguer’s desk, sucking an ebony pen-holder.

On Saturday, the first full day of business after New Year, Mr Feldman tracked Oswald Shelby to his lair on the third floor of the elegant building. This was not the top of the house by any means; the art deco elevator ground up another three floors into teeming attics where binders and repairers laboured at long tables under the skylights and the odour of glue was heady, to say the least of it. Mr Feldman had already placed several boys with Shelby’s, a couple in the packing and dispatch department and three in ‘binding’.

After a preliminary handshake and a cordial exchange of Ne’erday greetings, therefore, Oswald Shelby was not entirely surprised when his old acquaintance eased into a familiar spiel.

‘A girl, you want me to take on a girl?’ Mr Shelby said.

‘She’s a perfectly respectable young lady,’ Mr Feldman said.

‘I have no doubt of that,’ said Mr Shelby. ‘But she is none the less … a girl.’

‘You have girls. You have daughters.’

‘This is a recommendation?’ said Mr Shelby.

‘I would like you to train her.’

‘As a binder?’

‘As a cataloguer.’

‘A cataloguer?’

‘What’s wrong with that?’ said Mr Feldman. ‘She may be hard of hearing but she isn’t blind.’

‘I do not need another cataloguer.’

‘Is it because she’s female?’

‘I have no such prejudice.’

‘Then you will take her?’

‘I did not say that.’

‘But if you have nothing against—’

‘Whoa,’ said Mr Shelby. ‘I will not be bullied into anything.’

‘She writes a fine clear hand and is certificated on the typewriting machine at forty words per minute. She is neat and personable.’

‘All of this I do not doubt. But I have no opening for a gir— for a cataloguer at this time.’ Mr Shelby was as small as Mr Feldman was tall. They were, however, of an age, and had played against each other so often at the Glasgow Chess Club that there was between them an intangible rapport that dispensed with the need for tact. ‘I am not going to be flanked on this, Abe, you need not think it.’

‘Her name is Rosalind Conway.’

Mr Shelby sighed. He was a neat little man with fine, silvery hair and trim, rather foxy features. He dressed as his father did, in high collars and prominent cuffs and a nice line in morning coats, not to mention a watch-chain and breast-pocket handkerchief. He had none of Mr Feldman’s bear-like assertiveness, however; his manner was sharp, like peppermint.

‘How old is she?’

‘Sixteen.’

‘Is she mute?’

‘No, she has the sort of hearing loss that might one day be cured. There are interesting developments in surgery that might—’

‘Is she intelligible?’ Oswald Shelby interrupted.

‘Perfectly. Given her handicap she is exceedingly articulate.’

‘Hmmmmmm.’

‘Does that mean you will take her on?’ said Mr Feldman.

‘We can always find room for another cleaner, I suppose.’

‘NO,’ Mr Feldman declared, far too loudly. ‘I mean – no. She’s far too intelligent to be stuck with a mop or feather duster. I’m offering you a good girl here, Oswald. Given the miserable wages you pay your staff I’d have thought you’d be glad to have another willing victim. Besides…’

‘Besides? I knew there would be a “besides”,’ said Mr Shelby.

‘I’d like her to work here.’

‘Why?’

‘I’d prefer her to work for you, not – not someone else.’

Mr Shelby paused. ‘Are you flattering me?’

‘Certainly not,’ said Mr Feldman. ‘Better the devil you know, etcetera.’

‘Who is this someone else you do not want the girl to work for?’

‘Dominic Manone. Do you know who that is?’

‘I know who that is.’ Mr Shelby paused once more. ‘I’m running a business here, Abe, not a mission for potentially wayward females.’

‘When will you see her? Friday?’

‘I have to be in London on Friday. It’s viewing day at Christie’s for an assortment of old Gaelic manuscripts in which we have an interest.’

‘The Macpherson Collection?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do Shelby’s have a client?’

‘We do. Ten items in particular if, that is, they prove to be genuine.’

‘Is there doubt?’

‘There is always doubt,’ said Oswald Shelby. ‘The girl, send her in for interview at half past two o’clock one week on Thursday. I make you no promises, however. I give you no guarantees. Understood?’

‘Understood,’ said Mr Feldman, and smiled quietly into his beard.

*   *   *

There were two men at the top of the steep wooden staircase that led to Chick McGuire’s office. Neither of them gave any sign that they were impressed by the unexpected visitor or that they were aware who he was.

They were runners, both of them. They would be out on the streets by half past eleven, taking up posts on corners near the gates of Harland & Wolff’s shipyard and, a little later, at the doors of the Clyde Foundry. They were out of the same pack as Alex O’Hara but older, and taller. They would be paying out winnings on the results of Saturday’s Churches League fixtures as well as the full Scottish card and receiving bets on the evening’s programme of greyhound racing at Carntyne, the Albion and White City.

As he entered from the seedy back street Dominic experienced an unusual tightening in the muscles of his stomach. It was not the sight of the two heavyweights peering down the dimly lit staircase that brought it on but rather the thought of Tommy Bonnar and how often Tommy must have slipped secretly up these same stairs. He wondered just which dogs Tommy would have backed tonight: Mother’s Double, Diamond Dick, Brickey’s Boy? Sure losers, every one. He, Dominic Manone, had backed a loser in Tommy but he would never admit that to anyone, not now the poor wretch was dead.

He approached the top of the staircase. He looked up at the heavyweights. They were stationed directly at the top of the stairs. There was a landing of sorts, wooden-floored, a skylight, a lavatory with an open door and one door amidships, closed.

Dominic said, ‘You know who I am. Tell him I’m here.’

‘Whut fur ur ye here, but?’ one of the men said.

‘I don’t talk business with runners,’ Dominic said softly. ‘Open the damned door. I assume he’s in there?’

‘Whut if he is, but?’

Dominic took his hands out of his overcoat pockets. He flaunted no weapon, none at all. He stood below the men, disadvantaged by his position. He let his hands hang loosely by his sides and contemplated the runners passively for a moment or two. Then he snapped out his hands, caught the larger of the men by the foot and with a swift savage little jerk twisted foot and ankle against the natural limit of the joint. Dominic heard the man scream. Ducking and stepping to one side, he pulled the man off balance and heaved him head first down the staircase. He looked up. ‘Now will you open the door, please.’

A second later he stepped into Charles McGuire’s cluttered little office and, turning, shot the bolt on the door behind him.

McGuire wore tweeds and a Fair Isle pullover in a fancy pattern. He had been sipping tea from a floral cup and barely had time to put down the cup and scramble from his chair behind the desk before Dominic was upon him.

‘Now wait,’ McGuire said. ‘Just wait, just hold on.’

‘No,’ Dominic said. ‘I prefer to pay you now.’

‘Pay me? Pay me for what?’ He had turned an odd colour, not white but pink; the shade, Dominic thought, of imported tinned salmon. ‘You don’t owe me anythin’.’

‘I think I do,’ said Dominic.

He stood at the edge of the desk. He could have touched McGuire without stretching his arm out by more than six inches. Between them was a strew of race cards, newspapers and the beige-wrappered notebooks in which McGuire kept records of odds and form. Also two telephones and a stubby, powerful-looking wireless set with silver knobs and three convex glass dials.

Dominic didn’t know much about the art and craft of making book. He had been to the track a few times with Guido and kept an eye on the form of horses, dogs and football teams but he had no taste for gambling and left the management of the five agencies in which he had a financial stake to Tony Lombard and Irish Paddy who kept peace between rival gangs of touts and paid a handful of police constables to look the other way from time to time. Even so, there had been trouble at the horse tracks last summer, blood shed at Ayr and a dozen arrests made after a fight at Lanark; nastiness on the streets too, involving bludgeons, knuckle-dusters and the ubiquitous razors. Dominic didn’t doubt that Tony had it right when he said that McGuire was flexing his muscles.

McGuire had control of himself now. He sat down in the squeaky swivel chair and drank a little tea from the floral cup. He tried to smile his Irish smile, full of cocky charm and blarney but he was still too unsure of Dominic’s intention to be at ease.

‘What is it you think you’re owin’ me then, Dom?’ he said. ‘I’ll be takin’ anythin’ that’s offered me, you know that.’

‘I’ve come to square you for Tommy Bonnar.’

‘Ah-hah, yes. Poor owd Tommy, eh?’ McGuire said. ‘Never did have much luck about him. God rest him, though, it was a heck of a way to die. I knew those ciggies would kill him one day but I never did think it would be like that.’

‘How much was he into you?’

‘Nah, nah. I wouldn’t dream o’ takin’ money from a dead man. I’ll be happy just for to write it off.’

‘Tommy would not have wanted it,’ said Dominic. ‘He might not have been much good at picking winners but he was punctilious when it came to paying his debts. Did you not find that?’

‘Punctilous?’ McGuire laughed. ‘There’s a word you’ll not be hearin’ much of round the midden-head. I never found owd Tommy much of anythin’, to answer your question, Dom. I never had much by way of dealin’s with him.’

‘Did he not owe you money?’

McGuire lifted his hand and gave it a little mid-air shake. ‘I took somethin’ from him now an’ again. God knows why he came to me. It wasn’t much at all, though. Twenty, twenty-five. Somethin’ like that. I’ll write it off.’

‘I would rather you did not,’ said Dominic. ‘How much?’

‘Call it thirty, that’ll be doin’ it.’

When Dominic put his hand into his overcoat pocket McGuire stiffened slightly. He could not help himself. He raised his shoulders from the chairback and wriggled his broad bottom on the padding. He watched the hand emerge and ogled the sheaf of brand-new ten pound notes with relief not greed. He watched Dominic peel three notes from the sheaf, then three more, then five after that, glancing up from the Italian’s hands to his face now and then, frowning.

‘What’s this?’ he said.

Dominic said, ‘I think you have made a mistake.’

‘Nup, no mistake, Dom. This is too much.’

‘Well, better too much than not enough,’ Dominic said. ‘It’s the way Tommy would have wanted it. It is the least I can do for him now.’

‘Well, you’re a generous man. I wouldn’t be doin’ this for any o’ my boys, dead or alive, I can be tellin’ you that. I’m certain Tommy’s soul will be restin’ all the easier for knowin’ that his debts have been paid.’

‘I am sure it will,’ Dominic said.

He placed the banknotes upon the desk, balancing them on top of the stubby little radio. McGuire did not reach out for them, did not grab. He left them where they were, stood and offered a handshake which Dominic accepted.

‘You’re a real gent, Dom,’ he said. ‘Peace to poor Tommy then.’

‘Peace to us all.’

‘Is that what you want?’ McGuire said.

‘Of course. Isn’t that what we all want?’

‘Sure an’ it is,’ said McGuire. ‘Sure an’ you’re right as usual.’

There was no sign of either of the runners on the landing or the stairs. Dominic did not hurry. He picked his way carefully, not looking back. He knew that McGuire was above him, leaning against the angle of the stairhead. Just before he reached the street he heard the bookmaker shout, ‘Don’t be a stranger now, Dom. Don’t be a stranger.’

Dominic gave a little wave of acknowledgement, went out into the grey daylight and walked unhurriedly to the motorcar that was parked at the street’s end. He climbed into the passenger seat and the car took off.

Tony, at the wheel, said, ‘Well?’

And Dominic said, ‘Take him out.’