Chapter Nine

Babs hardly slept at all on Wednesday night. It hadn’t dawned on her until then that because of her association with Jackie she too would be forced to face the music. It was all very well for Polly. She would be tucked away in the Burgh Hall offices. But she, Babs, would have to walk into the lion’s den, into the warehouse, and pretend to know nothing about the break-in.

Worry wakened her and drove her from bed.

Although it was barely daylight, she stationed herself at the window in the hope that she might catch sight of Jackie or Dennis passing into the close below, but the only person she did see was Mr Hallop toddling off on early shift.

‘Go downstairs,’ Polly urged. ‘Go and knock on the Hallops’ door and ask to talk to Jackie. See how things went.’

‘Go yourself.’

‘He’s not my boyfriend.’

‘He’s not mine either.’

‘Oh, come off it, Babs.’

‘Well, all right. Maybe he is – but I’m not gonna knock on his door,’ Babs said. ‘What if the coppers are already watchin’ the house?’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ Polly said.

‘It’s all very well for you, you haven’t done anythin’.’

‘No, but I’m worried about Patsy.’

‘We’ll see if there’s anythin’ in the newspapers.’

There was nothing in the newspapers, however, no banner headline, no item tucked away on page four, no mention of a robbery in the Stop Press.

By that time – on the tram on her way to work – Babs regretted her refusal to knock upon the Hallops’ door. Now she would be obliged to walk into the red-brick building on Jackson Street not knowing what had happened or what she would find there.

The building looked exactly the same as it did every morning, except that there were a few more vans in the yard.

Babs slunk into the foyer and climbed the stairs to the first-floor cloakroom. She listened to the rattle and ting of typewriters in the pool. Everything seemed normal so far. She went into the ladies’ cloakroom and found Miss Crawford, the office manageress, powdering her nose in front of the mirror above the wash-basin.

Miss Crawford wore her customary hard-bitten expression but Babs thought that her cheeks were red and her eyes pink, as if she’d been crying. There was no tremble, no trace of tears in her voice, though.

‘Ah, Miss Conway!’ she said. ‘You’re an early bird.’

‘I – ah – I just…’

‘It’s just as well.’ Miss Crawford snapped shut her powder compact. ‘There’s been some trouble upstairs.’

‘Trouble? Wha’ – what sort of trouble?’

‘An attempted break-in, I gather.’

‘Attempted?’

‘Some fool tried to rob Mr MacDermott’s office during the night.’

‘Got – got caught?’

‘What? No, no. In any case’ – Miss Crawford stood directly in front of her; Babs had nowhere to focus but on the woman’s face – ‘you’re wanted upstairs.’

‘Me? Who wants me? The police?’

Miss Crawford tutted. ‘What would the police want with the likes of you? Mr Manone wants a word with you, that’s all.’

‘What could Mr Manone possibly want with me?’

‘I haven’t the foggiest idea,’ Miss Crawford said. ‘But I suggest that you smarten yourself up, girl, and don’t keep him waiting.’

*   *   *

Babs had never encountered Dominic Manone face to face. Her first sight of him was from the end of the aisle that ran through Mrs Anderson’s office into Mr MacDermott’s office. Mrs Anderson wasn’t seated at her own desk but at another smaller desk. The woman who was usually at the small desk wasn’t there at all. The overhead lights were on. Both doors were open.

Babs noticed at once that the window glass in Mr MacDermott’s office had been replaced by a board, a neat, raw board of pine planks that blotted out most of the daylight. Two panes of glass partly wrapped in cardboard and with globs of putty stuck on the corners leaned against Mrs Anderson’s desk and a man – a glazier? – in a boiler suit was talking to someone on the telephone.

‘What do you want?’ Mrs Anderson said.

Babs could hardly move her lips. She loitered at the end of the aisle, not daring to move. ‘Miss – Miss Crawford said – Miss Crawford sent me.’

She couldn’t take her eyes off the man in the distant office: a young man, not tall but strong-looking and very handsome. He wore a dark blue lounge suit with narrow lapels, a white shirt and a pale blue silk tie that seemed too dressy for that hour of the morning. He had a canteen coffee cup in one hand and a tiny cigar in the other and smoke drifted all about him.

As soon as he noticed Babs he put down the cup and beckoned.

Babs was anything but reassured.

Mrs Anderson watched her as she projected herself up the aisle between the desk and the cabinets and entered the manager’s office.

Mr MacDermott was not in the office, only Mr Manone and another Italian-looking man who sat on one of the wooden chairs with his arms folded. Mr MacDermott’s desk had been moved to one side of the room, near the plant pots. It, the desk, looked as if it had been chewed by a pack of wild dogs. There was a doggy smell in the air too, faint but acrid. The carpet had been rolled up and propped against the wall by the open door.

There was no sign of the safe.

Mr Manone smiled at Babs, a gentle smile, almost shy.

‘You’re Lizzie Conway’s daughter, aren’t you?’

‘Aye – yes, sir.’

‘Barbara, if I recall.’

‘Babs, sir, that’s right.’

‘How long have you worked for us, Babs?’

‘Nearly three years.’

He lifted the coffee cup and sipped from it.

The man on the wooden chair just on the edge of Babs’s vision stirred slightly. Babs darted a glance at him. He too was handsome, but he was older than Dominic Manone; not as old as her father would have been if he’d survived the war but certainly as old as her mother. He had a thin, sharp-featured sort of face and dark, watchful eyes.

Dominic nodded.

‘I take it you know who I am, Barbara?’

‘Aye – yes, sir.’

‘No doubt you’re wondering why I asked to speak with you?’

‘I’ve no idea about that, Mr Manone.’

‘Didn’t you hear that we were broken into during the night?’

‘Miss Crawford mentioned it, I think.’

‘You have only just arrived?’

‘I’m not due to start till nine.’

He stood before her at a polite distance, rocking a little on the balls of his feet while he observed her reactions.

Babs wondered if he was impressed or if he could see right through her and already knew that she had sold out the Central Warehouse Company. She also wondered where Jackie was, where the safe was, if the boys had got clean away and when she would receive her hundred quid; a little dab of mendacity was almost enough to calm her down.

‘Don’t you know why I’ve asked to speak with you?’

‘No, Mr Manone.’

‘I’ve been acquainted with your mother for many years,’ he said. ‘I’ve the greatest of respect for her. She’s an honest woman. Are you honest, Babs?’

‘I try to be, Mr Manone.’

‘Someone broke into Mr MacDermott’s office,’ Dominic went on. ‘As you can see they’ve made rather a nasty mess of the place.’

Babs opened her mouth, then closed it again.

‘It seems to me,’ Dominic Manone said, ‘that it’s the work of hooligans.’

‘I – I suppose it could be,’ Babs agreed.

‘On the other hand it may have been what is called “an inside job”. Do you know what that means?’

‘Yes,’ said Babs, nodding.

He placed a hand on her shoulder; nothing friendly about the gesture, Babs sensed, nothing flirty.

‘What I wish you to do for me is keep your ears open, so that if you hear anything that might give us a clue who thought they could break into Manones’ warehouse and get away with it … Well’ – he smiled, released her, shrugged – ‘it would be nice if we could remind these guys that crime does not pay.’

Babs tried to appear solemn and responsible. She managed something between a scowl and a pout. ‘If they didn’t get away with anythin’, though…’

‘They did damage,’ Dominic said. ‘They were stupid to break in to my property. They must be taught a lesson.’

‘I don’t know who could’ve done—’

‘Sure you don’t. But a smart girl might hear things that we won’t.’

‘I’ll – I’ll see what I can find out.’

‘Good.’ His eyes had gone to sleep. ‘Perhaps you’ll hear something here in the warehouse or possibly in the streets. You’ll do this for me?’

‘I will, Mr Manone.’

Babs felt a strange smug glow light up within her. If Dominic Manone had known who was behind the break-in then he wouldn’t have sent for her. He was fishing, just fishing. She reckoned that Jackie and the boys had got away with the safe, that this guy, this big-shot, hadn’t a clue who’d taken it or where it was now. He didn’t want the police involved. She couldn’t blame him for that. But he did want his money back. He must be a whole lot less smart than she’d given him credit for, though, if he thought an office clerk – even if she were Lizzie Conway’s daughter – would hear anything that would finger the culprits.

‘Maybe you will hear some talk when you go dancing,’ Dominic said.

‘Dancin’?’

‘At the Calcutta.’

‘I don’t go … Well, aye, sometimes I do go there.’

‘Perhaps somebody will mention a name, drop a name.’

‘They might, aye,’ said Babs.

‘And you will pass that name on to me.’

‘Tell Mr MacDermott, you mean?’

‘No, you will tell me. Your mama knows where to find me.’

The man on the wooden chair unfolded his arms and placed both hands on his knees. He wore a heavy woollen overcoat, a homburg hat and black shoes. He looked, she thought, like a polished version of Tommy Bonnar, an Italian version. He stared at her and then, even as she watched, gave her an insolent little wink.

‘I’ll do what I can, Mr Manone,’ Babs promised, then, unaware that she had just been threatened, let him guide her to the open door and see her off down the long aisle back to the safety of the counting house.

*   *   *

Dominic watched the girl depart. She had broad hips and a confident little bottom that in eight years or ten would become fat. She was an archetypal Scot of Irish descent who, like her father before her, was fuelled by a mixture of low cunning and crass stupidity. If she had been male instead of female she would have been one of his street runners instead of a clerkess.

He put the cigar to his lips and tried to coax it back into life.

Tony Lombard struck a match and held it out to him.

Dominic fired the tobacco leaf, blew smoke. ‘What do you think, Tony?’

‘She’s the one,’ Tony Lombard answered. ‘She’s in it up to her neck.’

‘Unfortunately,’ said Dominic, ‘I think you may be right.’

‘You want I should do something to her?’

‘No,’ Dominic said, ‘not yet, Tony, not just yet.’

*   *   *

They were hidden in the back booth of a café halfway along Paisley Road West. It was the last place that anyone who knew the Manones would expect to find them. The café owner – not Italian – had no more than a notion that the gentlemen were important. They ordered and ate sausage sandwiches and asked for coffee to be served in a pot. The café owner was both attentive and discreet. He had noticed the expensive motorcar parked outside at the pavement’s edge, had respect for anyone who owned such a vehicle.

Uncle Guido wiped grease from his chin with a handkerchief and took a sip of the appalling coffee. ‘You looked tired, Dominic,’ he said, in Italian.

Dominic answered in the same language. ‘No more tired than you.’

‘What do you think they intended to do with it?’

‘The money? Pay off debts, I expect,’ said Dominic. ‘At least one of our boys is mixed up in it, of that I’m sure.’

‘I hope you are not going to let them get off with it?’

Dominic did not deign to answer his uncle’s question.

He broke the sandwich with his fingers and put a piece into his mouth. He was no less fastidious than the old man but he had more relish for the flavoursome meat and was, in fact, rather enjoying himself.

He had a certain grudging sympathy for the nitwits who had stolen the safe, a certain admiration for the ingenuity with which they had effected its removal. He gave no sign to Guido that this was the case, for he did not want to be thought to be anything less than serious about the insult to the family. These days, it seemed, you couldn’t trust anybody. He would see to it that the night-watchmen were reprimanded for slackness, that metal grilles were put up on the waterside windows.

What really amused him and took the edge off his anger, though, was the thought of the burglars hauling the safe into a shed or a quiet back court and going to all the bother of breaking it open only to discover that it was entirely empty, that all their struggles with soap and jacking devices and ropes had been so much wasted effort.

Guido said, ‘Are you thinking that they did not get away with it at all?’

‘It could be at the bottom of the river, I suppose,’ said Dominic.

‘We could always hire a diver to…’

‘Let it go. We lost nothing but the safe itself.’

‘And face,’ Uncle Guido reminded him.

‘I am not forgetting about the loss of face,’ said Dominic.

They had just visited the Paisley branch of the Bank of Scotland and had withdrawn from a contingency account exactly the sum that the stolen safe had purportedly contained. The banknotes had been packed into a briefcase which now reposed under the café table, protected by Uncle Guido’s size tens.

The contingency account had barely withstood the mauling and had only a pound or two left in it. But, in Dominic’s view, it had been necessary to act in a clear, above-board manner, to withdraw the staff’s Christmas money from a legitimate source. Only five people knew that the sum that had allegedly been stolen was three and a half thousand pounds, not eight thousand. Only four people, including Brian MacDermott, knew that the money had not been housed in the Hobbs at all but was locked in an innocent-looking locker in the warehouse boiler-room from which place, later that afternoon, Guido and Tony Lombard would redeem it and transport it back to Mansion Park Avenue.

‘Nobody knows that the money was not in the safe. Why do you not report the theft?’ Guido said. ‘If it is reported then we can claim the sum from our insurance and make three and a half thousand pounds profit.’

‘I considered it,’ said Dominic. ‘I also considered how the coppers would love to get into our warehouse and what sort of disruption they would cause over the busy Christmas week. Besides, it was not a robbery. It was hooliganism. A window was smashed, a desk broken. Some pig pissed on our carpet. Nothing was stolen.’

‘The insurance people do not know that.’

‘Sure, sure,’ said Dominic. ‘But there is a time to make profit – and this is not it. There is also a time to keep quiet – and this is it.’

‘The cost of the safe?’

‘Minimal.’

‘Will you purchase another Hobbs?’

‘Immediately.’

Guido hesitated. ‘I hope, Dominic, that you are not pedalling soft on this business because of the woman.’

‘Woman? What woman?’

‘Frank Conway’s wife.’

‘She is not involved.’

‘No,’ Guido said, ‘but her daughter might be. Tony says—’

‘Tony is only guessing,’ said Dominic. ‘I am not soft pedalling on anyone, Uncle. Maybe Tony’s right and Barbara Conway is the inside contact, but I’m not going to go out there and start swinging until I know who did this thing and who is really behind it. Our boys are good boys, if stupid sometimes. I do not want to put one against the other if I can avoid it. First I will find out who did this thing and then I will make them pay for it.’

‘Take them out, do you mean?’

‘Maybe. Yes, maybe even that.’

‘Anything less will not be acceptable,’ Guido said.

‘Acceptable to whom? My father?’ Dominic said. ‘My father is in Philly where things are done a little differently. If the idiots had got away with three and a half thousand pounds then I would be dealing with the situation differently. Everything is going good right now, Uncle, and I do not want to give the coppers an opening, not even a little one.’

‘That is only horse-sense,’ Guido admitted.

‘MacDermott will do what he is told to do. If anyone asks him, he will tell them that nothing was stolen.’

‘Nothing was stolen,’ said Guido. ‘Only an empty safe.’

‘Exactly.’ Dominic grinned. ‘Do you not see how much of a circus this is? It is better than a pantomime. Whoever took our money – one of our boys or somebody else – they will know now that we are not so casual as we appear to be. Come on, Uncle, was it not clever of me to use the safe as a dummy?’

‘That is true. But you are clever, Dominic,’ the old man said. ‘I have never thought otherwise. It is not your clever head but your less-than-clever heart that sometimes bothers me.’

‘What do you want?’ said Dominic. ‘Do you want me to invite all our boys to Bernie’s garage and mow them down with machine-guns? We are not in a war with anyone. Let the razor-kings do their crazy war dances and the Workers’ Movement organise its riots. It keeps the police occupied, keeps them from breathing on our necks. We are businessmen, nice Scots-Italian businessmen. We do not shed blood.’

‘Unless it becomes necessary,’ Uncle Guido said.

‘We are a long way from it becoming necessary.’

‘I hope you are right.’

‘I am right. I am always right, Uncle, and don’t you forget it.’ Dominic pushed away his plate and cup and got abruptly to his feet. ‘Come on, pick up the briefcase, settle the bill and let us get back to the warehouse and pay our employees what they are due.’

‘What will we do then – about the thieves, I mean?’

‘Let them sweat for a day or two.’

‘Or run away?’

‘That intelligent they’re not,’ said Dominic and, with Guido tailing behind, strode quickly out to the car.

*   *   *

It had never occurred to Polly that Patsy would live in a run-down tenement and have relatives of his own to look after. Logically she realised he must reside somewhere but she had been disinclined to separate Patsy from the image he presented of himself, to sully her belief that he was a lonely rogue, free of the sort of ties and commitments that affected the rest of the community.

She had already begun to suspect that as far as Communism went Patsy was more Pale Pink than Turkey Red and that his enthusiasm for the rights of the working man was an intellectual pursuit not unconnected to snobbery. He was self-educated, well read, articulate, periodically well off, and had travelled further afield than any fifty Clydeside citizens chosen at random. That he also made his bread by robbing the better-off seemed glamorous now or, if not glamorous, certainly different, certainly stimulating.

Unlike Babs, Polly was not immediately depressed by the circumstances of the warehouse robbery. She disliked the Manones. In fact, she detested the Manones. Though she’d had no clear idea what Dominic Manone had looked like or what it was that still linked him to her family, over the years he had become Polly’s bogey-man, her bête noire, a scapegoat for all the unpleasantness that the Conways had endured.

Even in Wellshott Primary School she had equated Dominic Manone with the bullies who tormented the weaker boys or pulled the girls’ pigtails; also with those domineering teachers – female as well as male – who made life miserable for everyone. When, around fourteen or fifteen, she had reached the age of reason, she had become aware that her hatred of Dominic Manone might be a substitute for hatred of the father who had abandoned her but whom she could not quite find it in her heart to blame.

Seldom, if ever, did she think of her daddy, whereas she thought of Dominic Manone quite a lot. But the discovery of the hidden hoard under Gran McKerlie’s floorboards had affected her more than she cared to admit.

It had brought her father into the foreground again and pushed the Italian bogey-man, the blameful stranger, into the background. Indeed, if it hadn’t been for Patsy’s plan to relieve the Manones of a small fortune within the week she might have completed the transference and have acknowledged that she owed her job in the burgh offices to a man she had always despised and that good things as well as bad were mysteriously connected to the Italian.

When Polly arrived in the burgh offices there was no talk of a break-in at the Manones’ warehouse, no circulating rumours. Throughout the morning she kept her head down and her ears open but heard not a chirp about happenings at the CWC. It wasn’t until one of the burgh architects brought in an early edition of the Evening Citizen, however, and it too was devoid of news that Polly began to fret.

As soon as she was released from her desk at half past five o’clock she made a beeline round to Brock Street, at the back end of the Gorbals, where, in a flat over the Washington Bar, Patsy resided.

It wasn’t Patsy who opened the door to Polly’s urgent knock but a small, bald-headed, bad-tempered man of about fifty clad in a snow-white undervest and a pair of patched moleskin trousers held up by a canvas belt. He had no hair at all. His scalp shone as if it had been greased with whale-oil and Polly could see upon it, raised like a relief map, a series of prominent ridges. His face too was scarred, the cheekbone under his left eye concave, the brow above hairless.

‘I’m looking for Patsy,’ Polly said.

One eye pinched and closed – the good eye, the real eye; the other was of glass. It stared out at her, not blankly but with a weird glittering ferocity as if it were not artificial and opaque but a mirror to magnify the anger that simmered in his soul. He answered Polly with a word, the harsh, punched-out, Anglo-Saxon word that for some men defined all women. Polly had heard the word often before; it still made her wince.

Before she could complain, the man turned and yelled over his shoulder, telling someone inside the flat that a so-and-so had called for him and that he had better get his arse out of the chair and see what the so-and-so wanted.

Polly regarded the man as contemptuously as he regarded her.

He still had his arm up, holding the door.

She could make out a tussock of grey-white hair under his armpit and running out of it like a pale vein or a worm-cast another of those long-healed but still livid scars.

‘What caused that?’ she said. ‘Shrapnel?’

When he widened his eyes she saw that the glass eye had no life in it after all, that it was dead to every reflection.

She waited for rage, for another eruption of obscenity.

He grunted, amused – possibly – by her audacity.

‘Wire,’ he told her. Then turning again, he shouted again, ‘Patrick, get out here,’ and stepped back and limped away.

Patsy took his father’s place in the narrow doorway.

And Polly knew at once that it had all gone wrong.

*   *   *

Those ‘ordinary’ members who came clumping down Molliston Street that cold Thursday night in search of warmth and shelter and an inexpensive pint were doomed to disappointment, for the doors of the Rowing Club were well and truly locked against them. A hand-printed notice – Committee Meeting In Progress – tacked to the paintwork provided sufficient information to prevent even the most irascible dimwit clamouring for admission and, if the notice wasn’t enough to deter them, then a glimpse of the sleek, dark shape of an Alfa Romeo motorcar parked a little way down the street most certainly was.

Inside the Rowing Club there was no sign of the management committee as such and a meeting of quite a different order was in session.

The bar had been open for half an hour, with drinks on the house. But Mr Manone’s boys had been uncommonly abstemious and had drifted into the windowless room at the rear of the building nursing nothing more intoxicating than a half-pint of beer or a glass of well-watered whisky. They had been summoned from various corners of the territory during the course of the afternoon by word of mouth, and all Mr Manone’s top aides were present, including Tony Lombard, Alex O’Hara and – a head cold notwithstanding – sniffy little Tommy Bonnar.

In spite of all that Guido and Tony had done to prevent it, rumours of what had taken place in the warehouse had sifted on to the streets and with all the enthusiasm of washerwives gathered round a pump the lads had exaggerated the few scant facts in their possession until the tale had become one of blazing revolvers, slaughtered night-watchmen and the sort of zigzag pursuit down the Clyde in speedboats that would have had a Saturday matinée audience roaring its appreciation.

Dominic did not remove his overcoat. He laid his hat and gloves on one of the dining tables that had been pushed against the wall. The long room smelled of coal smoke, fish fries and beer and, on that damp December night, held tobacco smoke in thin blue-grey bands. Chairs were ranked before the open fireplace as if for a prayer meeting but not even Tommy Bonnar was disrespectful enough to sit down.

Poor sniffing Tommy coughed into a crumpled handkerchief.

‘You should be in your bed,’ Alex O’Hara told him in a stage whisper.

‘I was in ma bed,’ said Tommy.

‘You shoulda stayed there.’

‘Aye, an’ how would that’ve looked?’ Tommy croaked.

Alex O’Hara chuckled and shook his head at Bonnar’s discomfort.

Whatever had happened at the warehouse a summons from Dominic Manone was not something you dared ignore. Besides, there was always a possibility that Guido would be on hand with his scuffed leather grip filled with brown envelopes and you would go home with a pocketful of the crinkly. Guido was on hand but there was no sign of the scuffed leather grip. The grim old Italian looked even grimmer than usual. The boys stirred nervously, sipped from their flat half-pints, puffed their cigarettes, and waited to be told what would be expected of them.

There were no preliminaries, no clearing of the throat, no polite little rappings on the table or calls for order. Dominic leaned against the table and started talking. He informed them that the Central Warehouse had been broken into, a safe removed from the manager’s office and taken off downriver in a small boat, and that the job had probably been pulled by locals.

Tommy Bonnar had the temerity to ask why Mr Manone thought the job might have been done by someone local.

Mr Manone explained his reasoning.

Irish Paddy asked if the boat had been found.

Mr Manone said that the boat had not been found.

Irish Paddy asked if the matter had been reported to the police.

Alex O’Hara guffawed audibly while Mr Manone, with more patience than the question deserved, explained his reasons for not summoning the police. Alex O’Hara asked if Mr Manone wanted them to conduct the investigation.

Mr Manone said yes, that was what he required of them and indicated that there would be a finder’s fee for anyone who turned up the money or a portion thereof.

‘An’ what d’ you want us t’ do when we catch the bastards?’

‘Tell Tony,’ said Dominic Manone.

There was little or no discussion.

The meeting closed at nine minutes to seven.

Dominic, his uncle and little Tony Lombard left immediately.

Soon after that Alex O’Hara left too, heading for Brock Street and Patsy Walsh’s flat above the Washington Bar.

*   *   *

Patsy invited her in. There was nowhere else for them to talk. Polly wouldn’t be welcome in any of the bars that flanked Brock Street and the Black Cat Café was just too far away to make the hike worth while.

To Polly’s surprise the single-room apartment was sparsely furnished. She had somehow expected it to be more cluttered. There was no linoleum upon the floor and only a single thin rug before the grate. There were two hard little armchairs by the fireplace, two wooden ones at the narrow table and the room had a scrubbed, almost sterile air.

The old man, Patsy’s father, paid her no attention. He did not even seem interested in learning her name.

He opened a drawer beneath the niche bed, took out a clean blue shirt and a necktie. Back to her, he put on the shirt and knotted the necktie. Then he pulled a jacket and a cloth cap from a hook in the alcove and put them on too. He seated himself on one of the armchairs and drew a pair of boots from under it, tugged the boots on and laced them up.

Patsy said, ‘Listen, Paw, you don’t have to go out.’

‘I’m goin’ anyway.’

‘You’re not workin’ tonight, are you?’

‘Naw.’

‘Then you stay here an’ we’ll—’

The old man called Patsy a dirty name, stamped his feet firmly into the boots and headed, limping, for the door.

Standing awkwardly by the narrow table, Polly heard the landing door slam and only then did she ask, ‘What happened?’

Patsy moved towards her. He put his arms around her and would have drawn her to him if she hadn’t held back.

‘You look terrible,’ Polly said. ‘What happened last night?’

‘A cock-up,’ he said, ‘a right royal cock-up from start to finish.’

‘Didn’t you get the money?’

‘Nope, we didn’t get the money.’ He seated himself on a kitchen chair. ‘The money’s still inside the bloody safe an’ the safe’s at the bottom of the Clyde. We lost it. We nearly lost Dennis an’ all.’

‘Couldn’t you open it?’

‘Open it? We could hardly even move the bloody thing.’

‘Did Babs…’

‘It wasn’t her fault. If it was anybody’s fault it was mine. I shouldn’t have listened to Tommy Bonnar. The whole thing was nuts from the start. The ropes snapped while we were lowerin’ the safe out the window,’ Patsy said. ‘The safe fell straight down into the boat. Smashed it to pulp. We were lucky it didn’t hit Tommy or Dennis. They were flung into the water. Guess what? Dennis can’t swim. He was halfway to bloody Greenock before Tommy managed to fish him out. I’ll say that for the wee bugger, he really kept his head – Tommy, I mean.’

‘What about the boat?’

‘It sank without trace, what was left of it.’

‘And the safe?’ said Polly.

‘It’s still down there – with the money inside.’

‘Won’t it show up at low tide?’

‘Tommy says not. Tommy says it’ll be lost in the silt.’

‘Do you believe him?’ Polly asked.

‘I don’t have much option,’ said Patsy. ‘Tell you what I’m not doin’ – I’m not goin’ fishin’ for the bloody thing. If Tommy wants it, he can get it himself.’

‘Are you hurt?’ Polly asked.

‘Bruised, that’s all.’

‘What about the others?’

‘Dennis is okay. Jackie’s got burned hands.’

‘Are they bandaged?’

‘I dunno. As soon as we were all safe we scarpered in different directions. Tommy an’ Dennis were soaked to the skin. They walked home, I expect.’

‘So you don’t know whether or not Jackie’s hands are bandaged?’

‘He’s a big boy. He’ll be all right.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Polly said. ‘Unless Dominic Manone finds him.’

Patsy glowered up at her. She wasn’t offering sympathy.

‘If the safe’s under water and the boat sank then the Manones won’t know that you didn’t get away with the money,’ Polly said. ‘They’ll be on the look-out for the money and for anything that might give them a clue who did the job.’

‘Like bandaged hands?’ said Patsy. ‘Yeah. Unless they decided to report the break-in to the cops an’ let the law deal with it.’

‘Haven’t you been out today?’

‘I’ve been in bed.’

‘There’s nothing about the break-in the newspapers,’ Polly said. ‘If it had been reported then surely the press would have got wind of it.’

‘I see what you mean,’ said Patsy. ‘The Manones would rather write off eight thousand quid than have the cops askin’ awkward questions. That’s all to the good as far as we’re concerned.’

He reached in his trouser pocket, brought out a packet of Woodbines and offered one to Polly.

She shook her head. ‘I have to push off now.’

‘Why? My old man won’t be back for hours.’

‘Is that it, your family? Just you and your father?’

‘Yeah, just us.’

‘Where’s your mother?’

‘She an’ my two sisters died of influenza five months after my old man was released from the military hospital. He survived the war – at least some of him survived the war – then the bloody Spanish influenza wipes us out. Maw was sick for half a day, that’s all. Couldn’t even get her to a hospital she went so quick. My sisters were taken in but it was too late. Pneumonia got both of them. Eleven an’ nine. Evelyn an’ Margaret. Boom – gone.’ He lit a cigarette and tossed the burned match into the fireplace. ‘Makes you think, eh, Polly? Made me think anyway. Put everythin’ into perspective.’

‘I have to go,’ said Polly. ‘I really must. Mammy will fret if I’m not home soon. Anyway, I need to warn Babs to be careful.’

‘You be careful too, Polly.’

‘Me? I’m not involved.’

‘Maybe not.’ Patsy got up. ‘But be careful anyhow.’

He held the cigarette at arm’s length and pulled her close.

She sensed his weakness, a lost quality, as if all assertiveness had been sucked away by the events of the night. She hugged him, kissed his mouth. Part of her wanted to stay, to let him make love to her, to merge his worries with her own, but another part of her desperately wanted to escape.

She touched her lips regretfully to his.

And someone hammered loudly on the landing door.