EIGHT

Voices on the Green

The Jewish burial ground had been long disused. City historians would, from time to time, sally down the length of Conger Street from Ferry Road and poke about among the headstones and fallen monuments and there were occasional ‘inspections’ by members of Glasgow’s Hebrew community who had a mind to restore the place. But nothing came of good intentions and the plot was much the same as it had been for thirty or forty years, bristling with hog weed and willow herb, its walls shrouded in creeping ivy. In summer weather down-and-outs would congregate there to sun themselves and pass about bottles of raw spirit but that night in late February Daniel Malone had the ground to himself.

As he waited for dawn he dozed, feet propped on a wrought-iron rail, comfortably enough. He had stolen a rug from outside a villa in Markham Terrace, had made off into Bruce Lane with it, and nobody any the wiser. He had been lucky to find in the pocket of Caine’s uniform a shilling and a sixpence, as well as a tin with three Gold Flake in it. He had bought coffee and a veal pie from a stall in Cranstonhill where, to his amusement, he had been mistaken for a blue boy. After supper he had walked boldly down Ferry Road and Conger Street, met hardly a soul, and was bedded in a corner of the burial ground by nine o’clock with the slap of the tide and throb of riverboats’ engines to croon him to sleep.

The mist carried with it a trace of frost and Malone was up before daybreak, stiff as a board but hearty for all that. With the sabre he prised up a piece of flat slate that lay behind a gravestone marked with a distinctive little star in rusted iron. The slate clung to the turf and it took Malone a good five minutes to free it, to dig in the hard earth to a fist-sized piece of sandstone beneath which he had hidden a Fry’s Cocoa tin. Uncapping the tin Malone took out an oilskin tobacco pouch and, squatting on the ground, unfolded it. The roll of banknotes, one hundred and fifty pounds in all, was exactly as he had left it almost three years ago, a little damp but otherwise undamaged.

He rolled up the pouch with the money inside and stuffed it into the pocket of the tunic. He replaced the tin, the rock, the slate, and warmed by activity and the successful outcome of his foresight threw the rug over the wall into the weeds and left the burial ground for Conger Street, hastening to reach his next port of call before daylight.

 

It was left to Jess Walker to tell Kirsty what had happened, to instruct her to stay indoors and not to answer the door. Father and son Walker had repaired to the station to be signed off night duty and to retire to bed. They would be on guard on their own doorstep again at dusk. In daylight hours, with so much pressure upon manpower, however, it was deemed prudent enough to leave Mrs Nicholson to fend for herself.

‘Where are you going right now?’ Jess Walker said.

‘Shoppin’,’ said Kirsty.

‘Well, I’ll come with you.’

‘I’m only goin’ to Kydd’s.’

‘Far enough, I’d say, under the circumstances.’

‘Why hasn’t Craig come home to tell me himself?’

‘Don’t you take my word for it?’

‘It’s not that,’ said Kirsty. ‘It’s just—’

‘He’ll be busy. They’re all busy. It’s a right stramash with a convict on the loose in the district.’

‘Is he in the district?’

‘Those in the know reckon he’ll come back here to the Greenfield.’

‘But why?’

‘To seek assistance from his pals.’

‘Assistance?’

‘To further his escape. He’ll need clothin’ and money, won’t he? Where else can he get help if it’s not from his underworld pals?’

Kirsty said, ‘That’s not the only reason, Mrs Walker, is it?’

‘Only reason I know of,’ said the woman. ‘Wait right there. I’ll fetch my coat an’ hat an’ basket an’ we’ll go to the shop together.’

‘Did somebody tell you to look after me?’

‘Aye, my husband.’

‘Where’s Craig?’ said Kirsty again.

‘Wait there,’ said Mrs Walker.

During the few minutes that it took Jess Walker to garb herself for the expedition Kirsty loitered by the close mouth of No. 154 Canada Road and let the news sink in. She did not doubt the truth of it. Mrs Walker was not the sort of woman to play a joke or contrive such a hoax. Oddly, Kirsty was not entirely surprised that Daniel Malone had escaped from prison. There was something about that earlier episode that had always seemed unfinished. She stared out at the street, a bland and undistinguished view, a still, grey, cloudy morning. A coal cart rumbled past, the coalie shouting his wares. The sound seemed threatening. She drew back into the shelter of the building as Mrs Walker came striding from her door.

‘Come on then,’ said the woman briskly. ‘Let me have a wee peep outside first.’

‘But – but why?’

‘Nothin’ for you to worry about,’ Jess Walker said.

Nevertheless there was caution in the way Mrs Walker stepped from the shelter of the close on to the pavement, almost, Kirsty thought, as if she expected a volley of bullets to whistle about her head. Kirsty felt – how did she feel? – she felt silly. She could not take it seriously, not yet. She stepped carefully down the steps, more concerned with the baby inside her than with the threats that the empty morning might hold.

Mrs Walker took her arm and they set off down Canada Road together, heading for the grocer’s shop.

Kirsty said, ‘They’ll catch him, won’t they?’

‘Of course they’ll catch him,’ Mrs Walker said.

‘There’s no danger he’ll get away, is there?’

‘Not with our lot on his trail.’

Kirsty liked the sound of that phrase – ‘our lot’. It incorporated her into a group, made her part of what Craig did. Even so, her apprehension was not much lessened.

‘But why—’

‘Better safe than sorry,’ Jess Walker said and, tightening her grip on Kirsty’s arm, glanced over her shoulder nervously.

 

Joseph McGhee was not so young as he had once been and the routine of opening his pawnbroker’s shop seemed to take an unconscionable time these days. He removed the padlock from the bar of the wooden gate, slid out the bar, hoisted up the gate and put it to one side of the doorway. He shuffled into the alcove, bent forward and waved the key about until he found the hole, turned it and unlocked the door. He pushed the door open with the crown of his head.

A voice behind him said, ‘Hullo, Joseph. Remember me?’

The old man straightened. ‘I thought you was inside.’

‘I was, Joseph, but I stepped out.’

‘Escaped from Barlinnie?’

‘It’ll be in your newspaper, I expect.’

‘What do you want wi’ me, Danny?’

‘A warm by your fire for a start, Joseph. And a bit o’ breakfast might go down nicely too.’

‘Are they lookin’ for you?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I want no trouble, Danny.’

‘Just do as I say, Joseph, an’ there’ll be no trouble at all. Now let’s step inside the shop.’

‘I’ll have to bring in the gate.’

‘Do it, then.’

‘What – what’s that?’

‘Never seen a sabre before, Joseph?’

‘God, where did ye get it?’

‘Borrowed it from a warder. How much would it fetch?’

‘I canna touch it, Danny. You know that. The coppers are round here—’

‘A joke, Joe, just a wee joke. Fetch in the gate then come in an’ lock the door.’

‘Lock the – I’m supposed to be open for business.’

‘Get off the bloody street, Joseph. Now.’

‘Right, right.’

Tiggy, the little marmalade cat that kept down mice, tiptoed from the back shop and hopped on to the counter. It squeezed between the iron grid and big silver till then stopped, back arching at the sight of the stranger. It hissed and retreated, ears back, and peered from behind the till, watching as the old man staggered in with gate, bar and padlock and put them down behind the partition.

‘Now, lock the door again,’ said Malone.

‘What if—’

‘I said lock it.’

Joseph McGhee obeyed. He had not been in the pawnbroking business for forty-three years without learning guile. He was only too well aware that he was at Malone’s mercy. In days of yore he had done enough business with Malone to realise that he was no match for the man, sword or no sword.

The cat leapt to the floor and shot into the back shop. Malone whirled round, sabre in his fist.

Joseph said, ‘It’s only Tiggy.’

‘Who?’

‘My cat.’

‘Nobody else here?’

‘Not at this hour,’ Joseph said. ‘Come in to the back, Danny. I’ll light the stove an’ put on a kettle. When did you cut out?’

‘Yesterday.’

‘Have you had any grub?’

‘Not much.’

‘I’ve sausage an’ bread,’ Joseph said. ‘I could nip out for some—’

‘You’ll nip out nowhere, Joe. We’re stayin’ in today. Both of us.’

‘In that case I’ve a suggestion.’

‘What?’

‘I should put up my notice.’

‘What notice?’

‘Closed: Back Soon.’

Malone thought about it and when the old man handed him a strip of cardboard read the painted print as studiously as a scholar.

‘How often do you show this card?’

‘Now an’ again,’ said Joseph casually.

Outside in the street, men passed by, workers from the foundry. Joseph watched them furtively, praying that one of them might glance into the depths of the shop, might notice the man with the drawn sword.

The men clattered past unheeding.

Malone said, ‘If your customers see this notice they’ll come back, won’t they?’

Joseph said, ‘If they’re desperate they will.’

‘What then?’

Joseph shrugged.

‘Put it up,’ Malone said. ‘Then we’ll go through back an’ talk about what we’re goin’ to do.’

‘What are we goin’ to do, Danny?’

‘We’re goin’ to wait.’

‘Wait for what, Danny?’

‘Nightfall,’ said Danny Malone.

 

It had been a strange, out-of-kilter morning and, Kirsty supposed, unaccustomed excitement had made her feel out of sorts. She was glad when at last Mrs Walker took her leave and she was left alone in the house.

Mrs Walker had not only escorted her on the shopping ‘expedition’ but had insisted on accompanying her upstairs and had even invited herself into the house for a cup of tea and a blether. Unused to socialising, and not much interested in close gossip, Kirsty had agreed only because she sensed that the woman, in her way, was doing her ‘duty’. Mrs Walker did most of the talking. She drank three cups of Co-operative tea and ate a sticky cake, not one of Oswalds’, that Kirsty had purchased from the Greenfield Bakers, and chatted away about her husband and her sons, boasting about their record of arrests which, Kirsty had already learned, was not something that constables did among themselves.

It was around eleven o’clock when Freddie, Mrs Walker’s oldest, came to the door and enquired if they were all right. He was dressed in flannels and a greatcoat and wore black rubber pumps upon his feet. He was unshaven and tousled but animated in spite of a shortage of sleep. Invited into the kitchen he began at once to discourse on football, his obsession, going on and on as if Kirsty were informed about the game. Kirsty sat at the table, smiling politely, wishing that the Walkers would go away and leave her in peace.

The feeling of union that she had experienced for a few fleeting moments had been dissipated by the strain of ‘entertaining’ and by sharp little snips of pain that darted across her abdomen. She hid all sign of discomfort, breathing through her nose, smile fixed, her responses to the stream of chatter suitably rhythmic. ‘Aye, Mrs Walker. Is that so? Do you tell me now?’ and so on until even the sound of her own voice became dull and boring.

She wanted to be alone. No, she wanted Craig to be with her, where she could see him, where he could watch over her. She wanted him to hold her by the hand, assure her that everything would be all right, that Malone would be caught and incarcerated in a prison from which he could not escape, that the pains meant nothing at all, that she would carry to full term and be swiftly delivered of a fine healthy baby, a boy if that’s what Craig wanted, and would be up on her feet in two or three days; that he would not feel impelled to travel down to Dalnavert, that she would hear no more from Dalnavert or about Dalnavert or Madge Nicholson, and would have him and her baby all to herself for many years to come.

At long last Jess Walker took Freddie away.

Kirsty washed saucers, cups and plates and put them away. She felt so pinched and cramped, though, that she brought out a chair to stand on to reach the shelf. She did not risk a high stretch.

She wandered into the bare front room and stood by the window and looked down into Canada Road.

There was a breeze now and it would be cold out. At least the cloud had not brought rain. She watched a message-boy on a bicycle, heard his cheery whistle, watched three old men hobble back from the pub, puffing on their pipes. She saw one of them laugh and wondered what amusement was to be found at such an age, and if she would ever be old, old and idle and content.

Mrs Boyle came back from ‘the steamie’, the public washhouse, with her week’s laundry squatting in a great moist bundle in an old perambulator within which, once, poor down-in-the-mouth Graham must have goo-ed and gaa-ed and blown bubbles to delight his mother.

The pain was lower. It did not race across Kirsty’s abdomen but clenched her so that she gasped and clung to the window sash for support. Perhaps her time had come early. Perhaps she had mistaken the dates. She waited for the pain to establish a pattern but it did not. It disconnected and went away again.

She returned to the kitchen and sat by the fire for ten minutes to recover. She had not spared a thought for Malone or for Craig for at least a quarter of an hour. She found that when she thought of Malone now it did not induce anxiety. She had more to concern her than some convict on the run, however dangerous. ‘Our lot’ would take care of Malone.

In a minute or two she would boil an egg for her dinner, take it beaten in a cup with a knob of butter. In the meantime she had better make sure that the midwife’s address was to hand, in case of emergency.

She took her purse from the dresser drawer and searched its compartments but could not find the slip that Dr Godwin had given her. She poked about in the drawer, on the shelf above the stove, even looked in the bottom of her shopping-basket. She could not find the address.

She was not unduly concerned.

It would do tomorrow.

Yes, Kirsty told herself, tomorrow would be time enough.

 

Boyle and Rogers had changed into plain clothes taken from lockers in Percy Street. Constable Boyle wore a baggy suit of Harris tweed and a hat with a grouse feather in the band. Constable Rogers had squeezed his bulk into a pair of blue cotton overalls. From a distance nobody could have identified either man as a copper, though a glance at their black boots would give the game away. Craig grinned when he caught sight of one or other of the watchers. If he had not known who they were he would have challenged them and questioned them, been suspicious of their intentions, particularly in the quiet back streets of the beat, down by the riverside.

He was surprised at how calm he felt now that he was clear of Ottawa Street. The routine round was soothing and he did nothing out of the ordinary. Only occasional glimpses of Rogers and Boyle reminded him that there was danger in the streets today. At least he could put a face, a name to it. Tonight, on his way home, he would buy an evening newspaper and read all about Malone’s daring escape from Barlinnie, about the murder of two warders. He would not show the newspaper to Kirsty, not in her condition. She would have been told by now that Malone was on the warpath and would be on her guard. He did not seriously believe that Danny Malone would attack a pregnant woman. It would not be a brave or manly thing to do and Malone was all pride.

Craig trudged along the edge of the embankment. Rogers was on the pavement below, some two hundred yards behind, hands in the pockets of his overalls. Craig did not turn to look at Rogers but kept his eyes skinned for Boyle, who had taken up position near a lamp-maker’s shop a quarter of a mile ahead, leaning against the wall like an idler, arms folded. Malone would spot the watchers a mile off. Malone would not dare pounce while he was protected. He would have to be patient, would have to wait.

He went down by the bridge. Boyle pushed himself away from the wall and cut diagonally across the street to loll in a close mouth at the bottom of Wolfe Road. Wolfe Road! There was a name for newspaper johnnies. Craig could see it in black print, visualise the column headlines – Murderer Arrested in Wolfe Road. He composed the report in his imagination and wondered, if the battle were bloody enough, if he might receive a letter of commendation from the Chief Constable. That would be something to paste into the album, to show to his son in years to come.

Out of devilment Craig did not cross the bottom of Canada Road at all, and did not carry on up the short length of Wolfe Road. He could imagine Boyle’s bewilderment and temporary confusion and how he would have to stir his sanctimonious stumps to catch up again. Constable Rogers would still be with him, so he would be safe enough. He trudged off on a swing out to the pawnbroker’s, towards old Joe McGhee’s. It would soon be dinner-time and he would drop into the back of the café as usual for a bowl of soup or a hot pie. What would Boyle and Rogers do about dinner, he wondered.

There were three of them, two women and an elderly man. He knew them by sight and by their nicknames. One of the women, Biddy, was Irish and all three lived hand to mouth – bottle to mouth might be more accurate – by hawking the middens and picking up here and there an item that could be pawned. They were ‘professional poppers’, enjoyed scavenging for its own sake, the thrill of making a find that would earn them two or three pence. They eschewed contact with proper dealers in junk and were known not only to old Joseph but to three or four other pawnbrokers in the Greenfield. The old man’s name was Clash. The second woman, who seldom opened her mouth, was known as Bloomy, though nobody seemed to know why, not even Hector Drummond.

Today, though, Bloomy was nattering away, weather-brown features fierce, one hand clutching the canvas sack that was their receptacle for stock-in-trade, the other fist locked round Clash’s forearm.

By God, Craig thought, she’s doing her dinger! He stopped, let the three come on towards him, though only Biddy even seemed to see him and gave him a surly nod.

Craig said, ‘What’s bitin’ you, Bloomy?’

Bloomy’s mouth closed. She pursed her lips. She had few teeth left and her lips extended outwards in a grotesque pout, exaggerated by hollow cheeks. She wore a huge flowing shawl and a clean blouse and had a cameo brooch pinned at the throat. She scowled at Craig as if he were the cause of all her woes.

‘Naethin’,’ Clash answered.

He was a thin, creased man, ten or fifteen years older than the women but still spry and quick of tongue.

‘What’s in the bag?’ said Craig, pointing.

‘Stuff.’

‘What sort o’ stuff?’

Biddy said, ‘It’s a chamber-pot wi’ flowers, if ye must be knowin’.’

‘Stolen?’ said Craig.

‘Retrieved,’ said Clash.

‘Worth six pennies,’ said Biddy.

She must have been handsome once, Craig thought. She had blue eyes and flaxen hair, though all streaked with grey and tousled and bristling with pins. She too was clean, however. Only the old man was dirty.

‘What’s wrong, then?’ Craig said. ‘Won’t Joseph give you a ticket for it?’

‘Joe’s no’ there,’ said Clash.

‘Ga’n out,’ said Biddy.

‘Gone where?’

‘Gotten his notice up,’ said Clash. ‘He never cam’ back but.’

‘Wait,’ Craig said. ‘What notice?’

‘Ye’ve seen it, surely,’ said Clash. ‘Back Soon.’

‘Bloody liar,’ said Biddy. ‘Bin hangin’ round all the mornin’ long. He niver cam’ back.’

‘Perhaps he’s sick,’ said Craig.

‘Gate’s down,’ said Clash.

‘Padlock’s off,’ said Biddy.

‘Are you sure he’s not inside?’

‘Christ, if he is he must be deef.’

‘Or deid,’ said Biddy.

‘Takin’ it up tae Stein’s,’ said Clash. ‘He’ll get oor business this day, so he wull.’

Craig was hardly listening now. He had a strange tight sensation in his midriff. Pawnbroking was a strictly regulated profession and, as far as Craig knew, Joseph McGhee was both honest and efficient in the governing of his business. He could not remember old Joe’s shop ever being closed during stipulated hours, except for a few minutes when the old man hobbled down to the corner shop for milk or tobacco or to buy a newspaper. It was obvious from the testimony of the experts that Joseph had been gone much longer than minutes.

‘Stein’ll no’ gie us sixpence, but,’ said Bloomy, confessing at last the source of her annoyance in a rusty Ayrshire accent.

Clash and Biddy glanced at her as if, in finding voice in a stranger’s presence, she might now go on to reveal all sorts of dark trade secrets. Craig did not notice. He had sneaked a look over his shoulders and saw that Boyle and Rogers had met and were conversing, still with mannered casualness, at the corner of a lane some hundred yards away.

Craig said, ‘Why don’t you go back an’ give Joe one more chance?’

‘Joseph McGhee’s had his bloody chance,’ said Clash.

‘Bugger him,’ said Biddy.

If the gate had been taken down and carried out of sight, if the padlock had been removed, Craig realised that the pawnbroker’s shop was secured only by a single lock on the front door. Common sense told him that he should hop round there immediately to make sure that old Joe was not lying sick or injured within, or that thieves or desperate clients could not easily force an entry in the owner’s absence. Old Joseph was probably back by now, sitting in his chair with the cat on his lap and his pipe pouring out smoke. On the other hand it was unusual for the old man to abandon the shop for more than a few minutes. The hair on the nape of Craig’s neck prickled slightly. Something told him that he should tread cautiously, not confide his unsubstantiated suspicions to anyone, least of all to Rogers and John Boyle.

Without a word of farewell the three disreputables trudged off along the broken pavement. Bloomy was silent again, the sack cradled in her arms like a baby. Craig watched them go. He waited in alarm for Boyle and Rogers to stop them, engage them in conversation, find out what he already knew – that there was something fishy going on at Joseph McGhee’s establishment and that, just possibly, Malone was behind it.

Biddy, Clash and Bloomy brushed past the plain-clothed constables without a word and shuffled out of sight into Mill Lane.

Craig turned and, without sign or signal to his guardian angels, set off for Brunswick Street at a normal, unhurried pace to see what was what at old Joe McGhee’s.

 

Daniel Malone wiped his mouth on his sleeve and pushed away the empty plate.

‘Is that all there is t’ eat?’

‘Aye, that’s it,’ Joseph said. ‘I could always pop out for groceries, if y’ like.’

Malone laughed. ‘Naw, naw, old man. D’ye take me for daft? You’ll sit right there where I can keep an eye on you.’

The cane chair had been moved into the rear portion of the shop, a long room, crammed with unredeemed pledges, in which there was a small barrel stove and not much else by way of domestic amenities. Every inch of space seemed to be given over to the collection of ornaments and utensils that Joseph had collected over the months, each with a sticky label attached to it. Racks of clothes muffled the sounds in the back room, deadened the vibrations of heavy horse-lorries that ground past the front door from time to time.

Malone walked by the racks, inspecting the items that hung there, one looped over another in matted confusion that only the broker could untangle.

‘Does no bugger ever reclaim anythin’?’ said Malone.

‘Hardly ever,’ said Joseph. ‘What are ye lookin’ for, Danny?’

‘Somethin’ to wear.’

‘Frock coat? Got a nice one over there.’

‘Are you pullin’ my leg, old man?’

‘I’m serious,’ Joseph said. ‘If it’s a disguise you’re after what better than a frock coat?’

‘How about a kilt?’ said Malone.

‘Kilt? Aye, there’s several on that table.’

‘What table?’

‘Under the coats. You could pass for a soldier no bother, Danny.’

‘Keep your sarcasm t’ yourself, Joe.’

Nonetheless Malone rummaged under a fall of overcoats, summer- and winter-weight garments for women and men, found the edge of the table and, using strength, swung away the rack and inspected the kilts that were laid out there along with other items of military apparel.

‘Where did ye get these?’

‘Wounded veterans, mostly,’ said Joseph.

‘Deserters from the ranks, more like.’

‘Maybe,’ said Joseph.

‘What do you do wi’ them?’

‘Sell them to an outfitters for cleanin’, repair and resale.’

‘Make a good skin on it?’

‘Enough t’ buy my bread.’

‘Got a wife?’

‘She’s been dead these eleven years.’

Malone held a kilt to his waist and measured its length against his knees. ‘Family?’

‘Daughter. Married. Lives in Aberdeen. Son in merchant service. A stoker,’ Joseph said. ‘Look I could find a sporran t’ match that tartan, Danny, an’ a blouse too.’

‘A fine sight I’d look gallivantin’ about the Greenfield in that lot.’

‘Danny, did you do for that warder?’

Malone lifted back the overcoats and stared long and hard at the pawnbroker who had not stirred from the cane chair in half an hour.

‘What if I did?’

‘They’ll be huntin’ you high an’ low.’

‘What if they are?’

‘I can give you some money; no’ much, but—’

‘I’ve got money, pots o’ money.’

‘Is it – is it your intention t’ run for it?’

‘When the time comes,’ Malone said.

‘Is that why ye need a disguise?’

‘I’ve somethin’ to do in Greenfield first.’

‘How will ye get out – when the time does come?’

‘What the hell’re you jawin’ on about, McGhee?’

‘I can do you up t’ look like a toff, Danny.’

‘Wi’ this haircut?’

‘I’ve a wig, lots o’ wigs.’

‘A toff?’ said Malone. ‘I suppose I could.’

‘Shave off the whiskers, hide the crop, dress the part, an’ no copper’ll look twice at you,’ Joseph said.

‘Why are you doin’ this?’

‘Eh?’

‘Helpin’ me?’

‘I don’t want my throat cut,’ Joseph said.

‘I might cut your throat anyway.’

‘I heard you were always decent to your pals.’

‘What’s goin’ on here?’ said Malone.

‘I’ll dress ye up so your own grannie wouldn’t know you,’ said Joseph. ‘Hand-luggage, leather boots, silk cravat, top hat, glasses, false hair, the lot.’

‘And?’

‘Tie me up an’ leave me when ye go.’

‘What if nobody finds you?’ said Malone. ‘You’ll bloody starve t’ death.’

‘Somebody’ll find me.’

Malone said, ‘I’d suit the part of a gentleman, eh?’

‘Down to the ground,’ Joseph agreed.

Malone leaned against the rack of overcoats. They smelled of mothballs and damp, smelled too of the homes from which they had descended. He could see frock coats and silk-faced topcoats, lum hats, the things that Joseph had promised him. It had been his intention to leave no witness but a corpse. Now that he was out of prison, however, a little of the cold fury that had fuelled him had leaked away.

‘I’ll think about it,’ Malone said.

The outer door rattled. Malone sank back into the cover of the racks, pressing the garments about him, enveloped in odorous fabrics.

‘What’s that?’ he hissed.

Joseph made no attempt to rise from the cane chair.

‘Customers,’ he said. ‘Clients.’

‘Are they breakin’ in?’

‘Just anxious.’

‘What’ll they do when they find—’

‘They’ll go away, go elsewhere.’

‘Christ in Heaven, McGhee! If you’re—’

The din ceased.

Calmly Joseph said, ‘See, they’ve gone already.’

Malone crouched and ducked to the partition that hid the storeroom from the front shop. There was a long deal counter protected by an arch of iron gridwork, a door in the counter to the left. Scales, the till, a ticket spike and other tools of the trade made a battlement along the counter-top. Malone hoisted himself cautiously until he could look over it. Daylight patched the dusty floor, made a wedge out of the glass-fronted door itself. He could see shapes against the glass. He crouched lower, eyes above the level of the counter-top. He watched the shapes swim away and saw, through the window, two old women crabbing off towards Partick.

Still seated, still calm, Joseph said, ‘It’ll happen on an’ off all day, Danny. There’s nothin’ we can do about it.’

‘When, at night, do you close your doors?’

‘Nine o’clock.’

‘An’ when does the beat copper make his round?’

‘Seven or half past,’ Joseph replied.

‘Not before?’

‘Seldom.’

It was the question that Joseph McGhee had been dreading all morning long. He knew perfectly well why Malone had returned to Greenfield and why he needed to hide until evening, why he did not seek to make contact with his former cronies.

‘What’s the bloody copper’s name?’ Malone said.

‘Jock Rogers,’ the pawnbroker lied.

‘Not Nicholson?’

‘No, Danny. Nicholson you’ll have to find for yourself.’

 

To his knowledge Craig had not met the women before and they knew him only as the young copper who patrolled a beat near their houses in the top side of Brunswick Street. He cornered them outside the pork butcher’s in New Scotland Street and told them he would give them sixpence each if they would do something for him. It was quite against regulations to bribe a member of the great public to serve as an accomplice in police matters but it was the only way that Craig could think of to gain their attention.

He had no means of knowing that one of the women had once made a tidy living ‘doing things’ for men of all shapes, sizes and professions and that, in her day, she had entertained more than one bored young constable.

‘Where?’ she said. ‘Up a close?’

‘It’s not bloody that,’ Craig told her and, glancing apprehensively over his shoulder, explained what he wanted them to do.

As requested the women went round to old Joe’s pop-shop – the route being familiar – read the notice, shook the door handle, peered in through the whorled glass then returned to the lane’s end where the daft young copper waited and held out their hands. Craig put six pennies into one feminine mitt, a sixpence into the other. ‘Well?’

‘Closed, it says, back soon.’

‘Is the door locked?’

‘Aye.’

‘Right. Tell me, do you think there’s anybody inside?’

‘Sure there is.’

‘How can you be certain?’ said Craig.

‘Saw the smoke.’

‘Smoke? Is there a fire?’

‘Pipe smoke. Joseph’s pipe smoke. He’s in the back shop, lyin’ doggo.’

‘Did you see anybody else inside?’

‘Somethin’ in the glass mirror.’

‘What?’

‘Somebody movin’. You told us no’ t’ loiter.’

‘So I did,’ said Craig.

‘It’s an easy tanner,’ said one of the women. ‘Are ye certain ye don’t want t’ go up a close?’

‘No thanks,’ Craig said. ‘Not a word to a soul about this. Keep it secret.’

‘Cross m’ heart,’ one woman said.

‘That’s no’ your heart, Sadie; that’s your—’

‘Thank you, ladies,’ Craig said.

‘Come back an’ see us again, son.’

‘Aye, when you’re no’ so busy.’

He heard them laughing, without malice, as he hurried off down the lane.

At the first corner he almost collided with Constable Rogers.

Rogers hissed, ‘What the hell’re you playin’ at, Nicholson?’

‘Just keepin’ on the move,’ said Craig.

‘I think you’re deliberately keepin’ us on the hop.’

‘Think what you like, Jock,’ Craig said. ‘I’m goin’ to Dinaro’s for my dinner in a quarter of an hour or so.’

‘What about the pubs?’

‘I do them after,’ Craig said.

‘Be careful.’ Rogers wagged a stern finger.

Craig nodded and moved on.

Boyle was far off, lounging at the corner of New Scotland Street to the discomfiture of a gang of youths who had been planning some mischief or other and thought that the copper, whom they recognised at once, had been sent to put paid to it.

Craig adjusted his pace. He felt a strange compulsion to leg it to Ottawa Street, to blurt out his suspicions to Sergeant Drummond or Mr Affleck. They would, without doubt, take him seriously, would bring down a squad and surround the pawnshop, back and front, would send in a couple of burly Highlanders, experts in raids of this nature. But if he was wrong, if he had mistaken the signs, then he would be a laughing-stock, a joke – and if he was right he would only have a marginal share in the glory of Malone’s capture.

Craig dabbed his brow under the brim of his helmet. He was sweating slightly.

Boyle had faded away from the New Scotland Street corner. The man would be trying to get ahead of him, to out-guess him. At any time he could give the pair the slip, be off on his own. Before they could report back to Percy Street or to Hector Drummond, he, Craig Nicholson, could make the nab, could take the dangerous fugitive single-handed. His name would be in the newspapers. He would be famous again, properly famous this time.

It was not logical to make decisions in such a manner. Nonetheless Craig did not turn his steps towards Ottawa Street. He slowed his pace, let Rogers come in sight behind him and, leading both watchers, strolled along the back of Brunswick Street, scrupulously avoiding the proximity of Joseph’s shop, and headed for the café.

Craig gave a little nod to himself.

If Danny Malone was hidden inside the pop-shop then he had nothing to fear until nightfall; and when Danny emerged from his hiding-place at or after dusk, when Danny came out to search for him, Danny would be in for a shock.

 

She had fallen asleep upon the bed. When she awakened the pain had started up again and it was raining. A wind had sprung up and raindrops pattered against the glass and the sky seemed greyer than she had ever seen it before.

She sat up.

It must be near nightfall. She had slept for hours. She did not feel refreshed. She felt sick. She put her hands to her breasts. She could feel them throbbing, or so she thought, to match the throbbing in her loins. When she swung her legs from the bed she was seized by pain again and, without hesitation, dragged herself to the kitchen and took her coat and hat from the peg on the door.

It did not occur to her to cross the landing and summon help from the Pipers, though she could hear the strains of a chanter and the rub-a-dub-dub of drumsticks on a practice board from behind their door. She had forgotten that the Walkers would be on guard at the close entrances, did not notice that they had not yet come out for their evening stint. She got herself downstairs and into the fresh air. She stood uncertainly at the pavement’s edge, looking this way and that.

Canada Road was busy. The growl of traffic from Dumbarton Road sounded heavy and threatening. Rain peeled out of invisible cloud and gas-lamps hissed on their poles. She fumbled in her purse, searching again for the address of the midwife. Somehow the concentrated effort seemed to push the pain away for a minute or two, allow nausea to recede. She was better, felt better. She sucked air into her lungs and blew it out. Her breath made a cloud, raindrops flickeringly visible in it.

Graham Boyle loped past her, head down, without a word. He vanished into the close of No. 154.

Kirsty whirled. ‘Graham, tell—’

The boy had gone.

She looked up. Drops splashed against her cheeks. There were lights in all the windows, even bedrooms. She felt as if the tenement would fall on her. She put her hand on the lamp-post to steady herself. She did not feel sick any more but she did not feel at all herself. She wanted Craig. She felt angry that he was not with her, would not be home for hours. How many hours? She could not tell. He was out chasing a bad man with ‘our lot’. She could not hold that against him, could not demand an unfair share of his attention. Baby-making might be a man’s business but bearing through to labour was a woman’s job.

She remembered that she had not found the slip of paper with the midwife’s address on it. She remembered that she had been warned not to leave the sanctuary of her house. She frowned. She experienced a startled fear of the pedestrains that thronged Canada Road, girls and boys, men and women all coming and going like ants about a nest. Hurry-scurry, pell-mell. She sucked in another deep breath. She was out now. Nobody had even noticed. She was in the high end of Canada Road within sight and earshot of a hundred good folk. Surely she would be safe enough among them if Daniel Malone threatened her.

She pushed herself away from the lamp-post and took a few tentative steps. When she walked it did not hurt so much. She had a vague fevered notion that she might find the midwife’s house even without an address to guide her; yet she turned away from Greenfield west and headed instead along familiar roads that would take her to St Anne’s, to Walbrook Street and Mrs Frew.

When she realised where she was going Kirsty paused and sighed. She felt sudden relief that she had escaped from No. 154, from the strain of waiting for Craig, for wanting what she could not have from him, his time and attention. Common sense, revived by the cold wet air, was guiding her towards the one place where she would be sure to find comfort, consolation, perhaps even love.

Hands pressed to her side, she quickened her step.

Behind her, unseen, a man slipped from the shadows, a large man, clearly a gentleman, in frock coat, tile hat and patent leather boots.

In his left hand he carried an American travelling-bag of nut-brown hide; in his right, hidden in the folds of his sleeve, a carving-knife with a slender ten-inch blade.

 

The pawnbroker began his arduous journey only seconds after Malone left the shop. Old Joseph did not suppose that Malone would return. He had no reason to return. With luck he would never see the evil devil again, except perhaps if he was summoned to appear in a witness-box and give testimony against him. He would do that cheerfully, would help send the bastard to the gallows if he possibly could. For tonight, however, Danny Malone was on the streets and he, Joseph McGhee, was alone once more in his darkened shop.

The ropes were made of mock silk, ties stripped from dressing-robes that Malone had found on the racks. He had knotted them expertly and very tightly and had bound not only Joseph’s wrists but his arms to the chair-back. Ankles and knees were strapped to the chair’s legs with luggage belts and a ball of crepe paper had been stuffed into his mouth and fastened there with a lady’s scarf. Joseph did not dare utter more than a gurgle in case he swallowed the sodden paper ball and choked to death on it. That possibility worried him more than the loss of blood to his fingers and toes, a constriction that would do permanent damage if he had to endure it all night long. Even so, if Danny Malone had told him a lie, had said that he was simply ‘on the run’ and intended to bolt across the border in disguise then he, Joseph, might have sat it out. Danny, however, had told him the truth – and the truth sent a cold shiver down Joseph’s back.

‘How do I look?’

‘You look fine, Danny, just like a toff.’

‘Think they’ll know me?’

‘Your own mother wouldn’t know you.’

‘It’ll have to do for a while. All I need is to get to Canada Road without bein’ recognised.’

‘Canada Road?’

‘Where he lives.’

‘Who?’

‘Nicholson; the bastard who sent me up.’

‘I – I heard he was in the police now.’

‘Aye, he’s a bloody copper.’

‘Won’t it be difficult to find—’

‘I know where he lives. Besides, if I can’t get him, I’ll take his wife. She’ll do instead.’

‘Danny, she’s got nothin’—’

‘Shut your mouth, McGhee.’

‘I only said—’

‘Want your throat slit?’

‘Is that – Danny, is that my carvin’-knife?’

‘Aye. Do ye want a taste o’ it?’

‘I think I’d rather not, thanks.’

‘Then shut your bloody mouth an’ keep it shut.’

It was at that point, with rage simmering in Malone again, that Joseph decided on his own particular plan. He had lied to Malone about the copper; Nicholson would be around to check the Pledge Book without fail. Danny had locked the front door behind him – what had he done with the key? – but had not been patient enough to put up the gate and bar.

Aye, Danny was not half so clever as he thought himself to be. Either that or he had lost some of his brains in Barlinnie. If he had been really smart he would have put up the gate and taken down the notice and would have made sure that the chair itself was roped to something heavy, that he, Joseph, could not, by a racking contortion, inch it forward towards the counter.

By God, but it was tiring; a long, long journey across the back shop towards the counter and the grille.

He arched his back, using muscles that had been inactive for years, thrust out his chest like a pouter pigeon, and did a little dance with his feet. He gained an inch at a time, and rested. He performed the movement again. He rested.

There was the usual clamour outside, voices, cart wheels, the clatter of hoofs. Some of the factories and the foundry day-shift disgorged at six o’clock. Others would not pour out until seven; sounds he had heard for thirty years and had never really listened to before. He listened tonight, though, straining his ears for the rattle of the door-handle, his eyes inquisitive for sight of some figure outlined against the faint yellowish light that seeped in from the street.

New-wakened from a long day’s nap in her nest in a crib behind the racks, Tiggy gave a tiny mew. He could see her squatting on the counter-top, splinters of light in her green eyes.

He had rested enough. He surged his body forward, lifting and dragging the chair. He surged once more. He must make the counter before Nicholson arrived at the door. He could not entirely count on Nicholson’s intelligence, on the constable’s curiosity. In fact, now that he thought of it, if there was a hue and cry out for Malone Nicholson might not be on duty at all.

He stopped. He gagged on the paper ball. He got it with his tongue and managed to push it forward in his mouth to free his breathing. In lulls in the growl of traffic he could hear the clock ticking away the minutes. He closed his eyes for a moment. It had been a very wearing day. He resisted the temptation to rest. He did not have far to go, really, ten or twelve feet at most.

Joseph was still some three feet short of the counter when somebody rattled the door-handle and, seconds later, called out his name.

‘McGhee, are you in there?’

It was not a man’s voice, not the constable.

‘I’ve a bloody nice vase here but you’re no’ gettin’ it ’less ye open up right now.’

At that point the pawnbroker’s patience snapped. He ached in every muscle and had lost faith in the exactness of his original plan. Somebody was at the door now and he felt impelled to take a chance that they would hear him. He craned forward, rocked, pulled the rear legs of the chair clear of the floor and, as intended, brought his forehead crashing down on to the big metal keys of the till.

The cash-drawer shot out and struck him on the mouth and the till bell spanged loudly. Caught by surprise poor Tiggy leapt from the counter and whisked away into hiding with a wail like a banshee.

Unable to protect himself, and still tied to the chair, old Joseph toppled and fell to the floor.

For a moment there was silence, then a man’s voice shouted, ‘Malone, I’m comin’ in,’ and the front door flew open before Constable Nicholson’s furious charge.

 

Archie Flynn had been assigned to a short safe beat on the borderline of Greenfield and Partick, a square acre of docile dwellings and timber warehouses where very little ever happened to disturb the peace. Like all other members of the Force he had been instructed to keep a weather-eye open for Daniel Malone and had in his pocket a printed bill which gave a detailed description of the felon. The language of the handbill made Malone sound like a fiend out of hell and Archie was damned glad he would not be abroad in the Greenfield much after dark for he doubted that he had the guts to deal with a desperate dangerous criminal armed with a military sabre.

Now that dusk had fallen Archie was skulking. There was no other word for it. He did not suppose that there would be any inspectors or sergeants sufficiently ‘loose-endish’ to come checking up on a mere third-grade constable and crabbed from one safe niche to another, his back always to a wall.

He was surprised when he saw Mrs Nicholson and, forgetting his apprehension, stepped out to greet her.

‘I thought you were ordered t’ stay indoors?’ Archie said.

‘I’m goin’ to spend the night with a friend.’

‘Who’s that then?’

‘Mrs Frew, in Walbrook Street, where we used to live.’

‘Is Craig stayin’ there too?’

‘No, but if you see him please tell him where I’ve gone.’

‘Aye, I will.’ Archie peered at Kirsty. ‘Are you feelin’ all right, Mrs Nicholson?’

‘I’m – I’m fine.’

‘I’d walk down to Walbrook Street wi’ you,’ said Archie, ‘but it’s out o’ the burgh an’ I’m no’ supposed to leave the beat durin’ duty hours.’

‘I understand,’ said Kirsty. ‘I’m really all right. I can walk there myself.’

‘I don’t think you should be—’

‘Constable Flynn, I’m not a prisoner nor an invalid,’ Kirsty snapped. ‘If you see Craig—’

‘I’ll tell him,’ Archie promised.

The young woman gave him a nod and, apparently disinclined to linger, sidled round him and went on her way.

Archie put his fists on his hips and stared after her.

It was almost full dark now and the section that led down to Highland Street which led in turn to the end of Walbrook Street looked bleak and almost deserted. The big timber sheds, pulled back from the docks, employed only a handful of men and the ‘change shift’ had taken place at six o’clock. There was something about the young woman’s gait, not just her pregnancy, that touched Archie, made him shelve his concern for duty and correctness and neglect his own nervousness.

‘Mrs Nicholson,’ he called out. ‘Wait.’

She stopped and turned round, holding a hand against the wall of one of the larger sheds.

Archie caught up with her. ‘I’ll walk wi’ you.’

‘I can manage, I tell you.’

‘Just to the end o’ Walbrook Street,’ said Archie, compromising with her independence and challenging her irascibility.

The young woman sighed, a sucking breath that seemed to come from her stomach and not her lungs.

‘Thank you, Constable Flynn.’

‘Call me Archie. I’m a pal o’ Craig’s after all. An’ while we’re bein’ so friendly I think you should take my arm.’

She put up no further argument but held on to him tightly through the quarter of a mile of dockland fringe that brought Archie to the very limit of his authority and Kirsty within sight of Walbrook Street.

‘Well, there y’are,’ said Archie. ‘You’ll be all right now, Mrs Nicholson. No’ far to your friend’s house, is it?’

‘No, not far,’ said Kirsty.

She disengaged her arm from his and nodded her thanks but she did not linger. She seemed, Archie thought, driven by some urgency to get on into the broad gaslit street.

He watched her go, waddling, heavy and vulnerable, down the pavement by the railings of the posh terrace that curved away into a rain-wet infinity. He continued to watch her for two or three minutes and then he became aware that it would soon be time for the ending of his duty and that he had better make his way back to the Greenfield proper.

By God, he would be bloody glad to get off the streets and into barracks tonight for there something other than rain to bring a little shiver to the skin, though for the life of him Archie Flynn could not put a name to it, unless it was Malone.

 

Craig held the heavy stick in two hands as he had been taught to do when going in against a man armed with an edged weapon. He had kicked in the door of the pawnshop with two stabbing blows of his boot and a short surging attack with his shoulder. His heart clenched in his chest as he plunged over the threshold. Something small and fierce darted at him and he would have kicked at it if he had not heard its yowling and, not a moment too soon, realised that it was the little marmalade cat.

The beast scooted between his legs and out into the street. He heard the woman whose help he had purchased with his last sixpence scream as Tiggy went past her like a rocket.

‘Malone?’

Craig gripped the stick in his fists and held it at a level with his throat. It would deflect a downward blow and could be raised or lowered in response to any angle of attack.

No attack came.

He peered into the gloom, into the jumble. He had been prepared to meet Malone head on, had expected a sudden violent encounter with the man and felt now a resurgence of that fear which had been deadened by excitement.

‘Come out here, y’ bastard.’

From behind the counter came a groan. Still cautious and alert Craig let himself through the door in the counter and almost tripped over old Joseph McGhee strapped to the cane chair.

Craig looked about him then swiftly knelt and untied the scarf from about the old man’s mouth. He probed with his forefinger and scooped out the wad of paper that formed the gag.

‘Was he here, Joseph? Was it him; Malone?’

‘Yis.’

‘Has he gone?’

‘Yis.’

Craig took a grip on the chair and hoisted the old man up. There was blood on the side of his face and Craig’s fingers were slippery with it. He wiped his hands on his lapels and fumbled with the old man’s bonds.

‘How long since he left?’

‘Hour. Gone for—’

‘Gone where, Joe?’

‘For you.’

‘But how did he know where—’

‘Or – or your – your wife.’

‘Christ!’

‘Stole – stole a frocked coat, tall hat, bag.’

‘Are you wounded?’

‘Mouth.’ Joseph, arms free, wiped his cheek, wincing, then caught at Craig’s sleeve. ‘Leave me, son. You’d best be gettin’ after him. He has a knife.’

‘The sword he stole?’

‘Knife,’ said Joseph.

 

Kirsty saw the figure behind her when she was still two hundred yards from No. 19. She thought nothing of the appearance of a man dressed so elegantly, in such an old-fashioned style. The fact that he carried an American bag suggested that he was a gentleman making his way to visit friends or to seek shelter in a comfortable and respectable lodging. Perhaps he was a minister headed for Mrs Frew’s.

Kirsty turned to face the street and then, for no valid reason, glanced again over her shoulder.

Adjacent to her was the bowling-green fence, that quiet stretch of Walbrook Street with the tall windows of drawing-rooms heavily curtained against the sting of wintry rain and the wind that whistled up from the river. The houses looked implacable and remote. There were no other pedestrians in her immediate vicinity, only two indistinct figures at the faraway corner.

The pain across her diaphragm burrowed downward. She pressed her hands to her stomach as if to contain it, to hold it to her for a little while longer. She looked back once more.

The gentleman was running. He was running straight at her with a long loping ungainly stride, the tile hat tipped back from his brow so that she could see his face.

She stumbled as she swung round, went down on one knee and thrust herself up again. She could hear no sound but the clashing of his boots on the pavement. She ran, ran as fast as she possibly could, ignoring the sudden flooding emptiness in her belly that seemed to have replaced pain.

If the child in her body had not been heavy she would have run like the wind, would have outstripped the man and reached the doorway of No. 19 long before he overtook her but she was not a girl now but a woman wrapped in motherhood, and would be killed because of it.

She did not turn again. She ran on, waiting for hands about her neck or a cudgel to strike her skull. She was reconciled to the hopelessness of her situation. She opened her mouth to scream for help but the air in her lungs pumped so fast through her open lips that only a squeak came out. To cry for help she would have to stop and she did not dare stop. If she stopped she would collapse and he would have her. Deep in her mind was the terror that had lain dormant since that night at Hawkhead, a black fear that she would be penetrated against her will and now, with a baby grown in her body, that it too would be damaged by the savage indifference that was bred in men whether farmer or fugitive.

She found herself at the step of No. 19 and swung herself on to it, shouting in a pitiful, almost inaudible squeak.

By her left side the shape was like a gigantic crow flapping black wings. The knife tore down her shoulder and the upper part of her arm. The blow was cutting not direct and her clothing smothered the worst of it. She was at the door and beating on it with both fists before she realised that she was bleeding at all. It all seemed liquid and warm. She wondered if dying was like drowning. She fell, rolled stomach up, saw him above her, the long knife pointed down at her belly, at her child.

She gave a kick, caught him on the shins. He stepped back to the side and, stooping, pinned her to the stone, his left hand rammed like a stake into her breast.

Softly Malone said, ‘So I’ve got his cow, have I, an’ his bloody calf? Next time I’m back here I’ll get him too.’

She waited for the knife to bury itself in her body. But it did not happen. She detected blurred movement, light spill over the step and, twisting, saw David in the doorway above her.

‘David, help me,’ she cried.

Pressure lifted from her breast. Malone reared back. She heard the whack of David’s fist upon Malone’s flesh, saw more indistinct movements as the young man struck out again.

Malone toppled down the steps to the pavement, the carving-knife flying from his grasp.

David leapt after him but Malone was quick to find his feet and ran off down Walbrook Street towards Greenfield. David did not give chase. He knelt by Kirsty, touched her gently and then, without a word, lifted her into his arms and carried her into the house out of the rain.

‘David, is she dead, is the poor girl dead?’

‘Out of my way, Aunt Nessie, please.’

‘Where are you taking her?’

‘To your bedroom.’

‘Is she not dead?’

‘No, she’s in labour,’ David said.

Frantically Kirsty clung to him, sure that if he was with her she would be safe from harm.

‘I’ll – I’ll run out and fetch a doctor,’ Mrs Frew said.

‘No time, I’m afraid,’ said David. ‘It’s started.’

Kirsty glimpsed the painting of gloomy old Saint Andrew glimmering on the stairs and then she was in bright light in the bedroom at the rear of the house.

‘Oh, God, David!’ said Mrs Frew. ‘What can you do?’

‘Deliver her myself,’ David Lockhart said.

 

The force of the rain increased suddenly and dramatically. It came in great ferocious spirals over the cranes and gantries of the river reach, swept into the city from the west driving folk hastily into shelter or chasing them, with newspapers over their heads, in a gallop for home.

For five or ten minutes the deluge was so intense that the horse-trams ground to a halt, lines turned to rushing rivers and horses blinded by the tails of rain that lashed over the rooftops and scourged the cobbled roads. Men and women huddled in shop doorways, scanning the sky above the sizzling arc-lamps for sign of let or halt. In closes the street children crouched, grinning and stimulated, and watched the drops bounce outside and heard, with shivers of delight, the tearing sound of the downpour in the backcourts and thought of the big brown lakes that would lie like jelly in the hollows and how they would paddle and cavort in them and, the more inventive, make rafts to sail from shore to shore.

Archie was caught within sight of the Vancouver Vaults. He did not have the temerity to make a dash from the warehouse door to the public house and would not have been surprised to find some officious sergeant in there already waiting to take names. He turned up his collar and shrank back against the dripping woodwork and listened to the funny noise the rain made on the slatted wooden roof, like a million wee creatures in coppers’ boots doing a dance on the tar-macadam cladding. He had just managed to light a cigarette and take a sook on it, holding it cupped in his palm, when a constable came charging across the end of the street.

Guiltily Archie dropped the cigarette and put his heel on it. At first he was inclined to sing dumb and stay hidden, then he recognised the figure and, disregarding the rain, ran out, shouting, ‘Craig, for God’s sake, man. Come in here.’

Craig skidded to a halt, swung round and came at Archie as if he intended to assault him.

Archie raised an arm defensively.

‘What the hell’s wrong wi’ you?’

‘Have you seen Malone?’ Craig demanded.

‘What? Naw. Naw.’

‘He’s here, he’s gone after Kirsty, he’s wearin’ a frock coat an’ a tile hat.’

‘Christ!’

‘You have seen him?’

‘Frock coat—’

‘Archie?’

‘I saw her, your wife. She was goin’ down to Walbrook Street. I walked part o’ the way wi’ her.’

‘Kirsty? She’s supposed to stay at home.’

‘She said she was fine but she didn’t look too grand to me,’ said Archie.

Craig laid a hand behind his neck and pinched it to make him tell the truth. ‘You bloody did see him, didn’t you?’

‘Aye, I’m thinkin’ maybe I did.’

‘When?’

‘A quarter-hour ago.’

‘Why didn’t you challenge him?’

‘I didn’t know it was him, did I? In a bloody frock coat like a bloody toff.’

‘Where did you see him?’

Archie hesitated. ‘Goin’ towards Walbrook Street.’

Craig released his grip on Archie’s neck and stepped back. He drew in a lungful of wet night air and expelled it.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Now, Archie, I want you to run to Ottawa Street—’

‘Where are the coppers that are supposed to be with you?’

‘Lost,’ said Craig curtly. ‘Listen, up to the station. Rouse them out, every man that’s there. Malone’s in the Walbrook Street area, dressed like I told you. He has a knife now, not a sword.’

‘How do you—’

‘Shift it, Archie.’

‘Where will you be, Craig?’

‘Lookin’ for my wife.’

 

Wringing her hands, Mrs Frew said, ‘I cannot allow you to do this, David. It isn’t – isn’t decent.’

‘Decent or not, Aunt Nessie, I’ve no choice.’

‘Wait until I fetch a proper doctor.’

‘She is, I believe, close to expulsion. Do you want to risk her life and the baby’s because of modesty?’

‘How many babies have you delivered?’

‘Twelve,’ David said. ‘Now, Aunt, I haven’t time to argue the point. Will you please take off her garments then fetch clean linen and towels.’

‘Take off her—’

Angrily David said, ‘Will I have to do it myself, Aunt, when I’ve so many other things to get ready?’

‘I still think—’

‘There isn’t any time,’ David told her again. ‘If it makes you feel better by all means leave on an upper garment, a nightgown, or put a sheet across her.’

‘But you’ve no – no instruments.’

‘I’ve these.’ He held up his hands.

Leaving his aunt to ponder and act upon his instructions he hurried out of the bedroom into the kitchen. He had not spoken to Kirsty yet, had not asked the questions that would confirm his opinion that birth was imminent. He was frightened of what he might find when he made an examination, what complications might present themselves, situations with which he could not cope. He had told his aunt the truth; he had delivered twelve babies, ten of them alive and kicking. He had not told her, however, what a harum-scarum thing the course in obstetrics was for youthful and exuberant students of the medical faculty, how the cynicism that marked the breed was never more manifest than when confronted with the mystery of birth, that messy entry into the world.

He recalled one night in particular when he had attended a woman in Maryhill in company with a fellow student, Binks. Binks had been half-seas over when the call had come and the woman had been mad with pain and restless. He had walked her round and round the tiny stinking kitchen, observed for most of the labour by four other children huddled under the table. Father had kept out of sight, drinking in some shebeen or other until the great mysterious event was over. Binks had fallen asleep on the woman’s bed and when he had finally roused Binks to let the woman lie down, Binks had been sick all over the tousled clothes. Binks laughed about it later, boasted of it in fact, but he, David, had borne the brunt of it.

It would not be like that tonight, David told himself as he stripped off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves and laved his hands in soap and warm water. Aunt Nessie’s bedroom was clean and warm and he would bully the woman into assisting him. He would need help. Kirsty Nicholson was in distress and, since the baby was premature, he might be faced with a transverse lie or a shoulder presentation or some other foetal abnormality. As he trimmed his fingernails with a pocket clipper, he ran over the procedures in his mind, rehearsing them.

He had, he suspected, only minutes to make ready and, now that he had committed himself, wasted no more time on self-doubt. If, after preliminary examination, he found a severe trauma or abnormality he would send at once for expert assistance or for an ambulance from the Western Infirmary. Somewhere in the vicinity there must be a doctor or midwife. Indeed if Walbrook Street had been less genteel there would have been a gang of spectators gathered about the door to offer help and advice. He went back into the bedroom.

Aunt Nessie had dressed Kirsty in a pretty floral-patterned nightgown and had draped a large Irish linen sheet about her lower limbs. Kirsty had assumed the position of ‘naturalness’. He saw at once that his guess had been correct. She had entered commencement of the second stage. The membrane had ruptured and the sheet was stained with forewaters. The left shoulder and arm of her nightgown was bloody but Aunt Nessie, as an emergency measure, had padded it with a towel. He had quite forgotten that Kirsty had been wounded by the devil with the knife. He ignored the wound for a moment and got down on one knee by the bedside.

‘When did the pains begin, Kirsty?’

‘David?’

‘Yes, it’s only me, I’m afraid.’

In spite of it all she tried to smile. She looked less than pretty, quite ravaged, in fact, but he felt towards her a greater weight of responsibility than he had ever felt in his life before. He brushed back her hair and touched his hand to her brow. She was perspiring but was not much fevered, not more than a degree or two. He must, of course, take the effect of shock into his calculations.

‘The pains, Kirsty?’

‘All – all day.’

It was possible that she had gone through first stage labour without realising what it was, especially as the child was three weeks in advance of its term. Why had the blasted doctor not given her fuller instruction or put her in touch with a midwife who would have explained what to expect?

‘I’m going to look, Kirsty,’ David said. ‘Hold tightly to my hand. Squeeze if the pain becomes too great to bear. Don’t be afraid to cry out.’

Aunt Nessie left the room. Had the whole thing become too much for her delicate sensibilities? Had she gone for help? To his relief the old lady soon returned with a canvas apron pinned over her frock, a big enamel basin full of hot water in her arms.

Kirsty panted. The vigour and frequency of abdominal contractions were considerable. Involuntarily she stretched her legs and feet and sought for the bedboard. He assisted her, helped her slide downwards. He adjusted the bolster beneath her head. Her face had become congested and she could not find breath to speak to him.

Observing the distention of the oval, David counted out the minutes. Thank God, it seemed that he would not have to interfere, that presentation would be normal.

The infant’s scalp, dusted with dark hair, was visible.

As soon as the contraction eased he would begin the process of delivery, would guide the head to ensure that its smallest diameters passed through the outlet.

Kirsty gripped his hand fiercely and let out a cry.

Aunt Nessie touched his shoulder and passed him a napkin with which to cleanse the discharge.

Unbidden he heard again the voice of his obstetrics professor, James McKinnon, as he boomed out rudimentary instruction.

The core of that lecture, the language of it, had affected him oddly but the romance of the words had vanished when he had finally confronted the reality of a woman in the throes of labour. But with Kirsty’s hand clutching his and the child’s soft crown visible between her thighs David experienced once more, just before he began his work, a little of the wonder that some men find in woman’s obligation.

‘Factors in labour are,’ McKinnon had declared, ‘the Passages, the Powers, and the Passenger.’

David glanced over his shoulder. Aunt Nessie had placed the basin on the rosewood table which she had swept clear of its clutter of dainty ornaments. She was watching with interest now.

‘Bring me a reel of strong cotton thread, Aunt, if you will.’

‘Certainly,’ the widow said and went out.

David studied Kirsty for a moment and then put his hand upon her body, the sheet discarded.

Pain appeared to recede. She gasped and sought his arm. He could not give it to her. No further recession of the infant’s head had occurred. It had engaged much more rapidly than he had thought possible.

With the fingers of his left hand he touched the crown and pressed it very gently.

‘Kirsty,’ he said. ‘Bear down.’

The Passenger was due to arrive.

 

Craig did not reach Walbrook Street or learn what had happened to his wife. At first, fear for Kirsty’s safety churned within him but what really drove him on was hatred of Malone’s cleverness. Malone did not have an excuse of poverty or ignorance or that miserable lack of will which induced most law-breakers to commit crimes. Malone was selfish, greedy and mendacious. To murder for revenge was evil. He had no heart at all. What was more, he coaxed from Craig a similarly heartless response. As he raced towards Walbrook Street through sheeting rain Craig felt as cold and hard as the pavement beneath his feet. Red anger contracted and his one real fear was that bloody Malone had slipped away, clever enough at the last to trade vengeance for freedom.

It was ironic that torrential downpour had brought the traffic of the district and its citizens to a temporary halt, that the only movement in the night was the scuttle of a train along the embankment, its funnel spouting sparks. Far, far off in the distance Craig caught the sound of a police whistle. He checked his dash for Walbrook Street and paused, chest heaving, cocked his head and listened intently for that ‘chain’ of shrill urgent whistles that would indicate that an officer had sighted quarry and required assistance. He heard nothing after that first faint blast and soon swung to the left and found his stride again – and saw not Malone but Sammy Reynolds, quite unmistakably Sammy, seated on a kipper box by a blank brick wall, with a torn black umbrella held over his head.

‘Sammy?’

‘Aye.’

‘Remember me?’

‘Aye.’

‘I’m chasin’ a man, a tall man in a black coat, with a lum hat on his head.’

‘Aye.’

‘Did he come this way? Did you see him?’

It was like crying into a close mouth and hoping for an echo. Craig could hardly believe his luck when Sammy nodded.

‘When did you see him?’

‘Just now.’

‘Please, Sammy, tell me where.’

‘He went up there.’

‘Up the embankment?’

‘Aye.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Saw him, so I did.’

Sammy gave the brolly a twirl, spinning droplets from protruding spokes, and looked, Craig thought, quite smug and manly for a moment.

He had to be certain, however. ‘Lum hat, frock coat?’

‘Up there, t’ the trains.’

Craig gave the boy a gentle pat on the shoulder.

‘You’re a good lad, Sammy,’ he said, then ran.

Splashing, he crossed the road and threw himself at the barricade of heavy wooden sleepers that braced the ramp of earth, ash and charred grass, hauled himself over it and dropped to the base of the embankment proper. Instinct told him that Sammy had been right. It was exactly the sort of thing that Malone would do, make for the railway, claw on to a passing truck or wagon to ride along the edge of the Greenfield, through police cordons and away to Bowling or Dumbarton, any place that did not buzz with blue boys agog to nail him and see him topped.

Rain had turned the slope into mud. Craig slipped and slithered as he clambered towards the skyline. He did not feel winded or blown, did not notice that he was wet to the skin. He climbed swiftly, using his hands. Rain reflected every scrap of light and made a strange pale curtain across the sky. Craig could discern the plane of the railway and its curves, the bridge to his right and the small squat shape of a plate-layer’s hut.

Crouched, cautious, he came out on to the stone-fill and checked the lines, up and down. A thousand yards away, towards Greenfield West, the local track linked at the junction. There was a signal-box, lit like a watchtower against the sky, tiny but distinct. He had no clue as to which direction Malone had taken, whether he had gone towards the city and the welter of lines that fanned out from the goods and mineral yards at Stobcross or had headed towards the West box.

Rain pocked the cinders and splintered the lines. Craig lay chest and belly against the ramp and wondered what the devil to do.

The engine loomed out of darkness, straight from the shed at Kelvinhaugh perhaps, a single tank-engine, sturdy pistons beating purposeful rhythm, two lamps like eyes, a streamer of smoke flaring from its flat funnel. Warily Craig watched its approach and then, glancing to his right, glimpsed the man by the plate-layer’s hut just as he stepped from shelter to peer along at the advancing tank-engine.

Craig’s heart skipped a beat. He held his breath and pressed himself against the cinders. It seemed ridiculous that Malone should still sport the tile hat, an obvious mark of identity, all that Craig needed to be certain that he had located the fugitive. He lowered himself down the slope, rolled on to his feet and ran across the mud towards the hut, screened by rising ground. Below, the lights of Greenfield looked like boats moored in a river delta. The cobbled lane that led through the tunnel under the bridge glinted like a flowing stream. Craig felt as if he was engaged in a race with a tank-engine. It chugged along the line above and behind and he darted glances over his shoulder to check on its position. At length he changed angle, scrambled up the ramp and came on to the shoulder thirty yards or so from the hut, crouched low.

Clearly Malone was considering the possibility of hoisting a ride on the engine. He had come to the edge of the down line and stood between the sleepers, poised and intent. He did not see Craig at first and Craig was able to narrow the distance between them. To his left, over the ridge of the railway, he was aware of warehouses, quays and moorings that flanked St John Street, of river traffic nosing through the falling rain. He tugged his truncheon from its holster and held it by his side.

Malone saw him, started, straightened.

For a split second Craig thought that Malone intended to hurl himself across the track in front of the engine but Malone was not so much of a fool as all that. He stood his ground and let the tank-engine thunder past.

‘Is that you, Nicholson?’ Malone said.

‘Aye, it is.’

‘What are you doin’ out here in this weather?’

‘Lookin’ for you.’

‘It seems you’ve found me.’

‘It seems I have.’

‘Now I suppose you’ll want to take me in?’

‘That’s my job, Danny,’ Craig said.

‘A hard job it’ll be.’

‘I don’t doubt it.’

‘The Dumbarton express train will be comin’ through in a minute or two,’ Malone said. ‘Does it still slow at the signal at the bridge?’

‘Usually it does, aye.’

‘I could be on it.’

‘It would be a rough ride, Danny.’

‘How much will the fare cost?’

‘What?’

‘How much will it cost for me to be on it an’ for you to walk away?’

‘No sum o’ money will buy you that ticket.’

‘Forty pounds?’

‘Where did you get—’

‘Oh, I’ve got it,’ said Malone. ‘Right here in my pocket. Fifty pounds?’

Craig said, ‘Did you see my wife, Danny?’

‘Your wife? What way would I see your wife?’

‘You followed her into Walbrook Street.’

‘Not me, Craig. I wouldn’t know your wife from a piece o’ cheese.’

‘Same as you wouldn’t know Joseph McGhee?’ Craig said.

‘Come on, damn it, how much will my last chance cost me?’

‘I told you, Danny,’ Craig said. ‘I’ll not be bought.’

‘You’re goin’ to try to take me in?’

‘That’s it.’

‘Christ, Nicholson, I had you pegged wrong right from the start.’

‘Will you come quietly, Danny?’

Malone laughed. ‘I did see your wife, as it happens. Not only did I see her, I stuck a knife right into her fat belly.’

Craig said, ‘I’m not fallin’ for your lies any more, Danny.’

‘It’s no lie, sonny. It’s the God’s truth.’

The passenger train from Glasgow emitted a shrill whistle as it cleared the tunnel at Stobhill. On the down line Craig saw a fire-smudge of a shunter halted in obedience to the signal at the single-track’s end. In two or three minutes the express and the shunter would pass on to this section.

Craig plucked the silver whistle from his pocket, stuck it into his mouth and blew as hard as he could.

The sound seemed puny in the wide wet night.

He blew again, and again.

The shunter moved through the signal, over the bridge and into the section, rolling a host of empty wagons behind it.

Malone did not turn round.

‘Arrest me, then,’ Malone said. ‘Take me in.’

‘Put your hands above your head, Danny. Step away from the track.’

‘Aw, naw. If you want me, sonny, you’ll have to take me where I stand.’

‘The engines—’

‘Don’t tell me you’re afraid o’ the engines?’

Raising his baton Craig rushed forward.

It was a rash move, the wrong move, the move that Malone had been waiting for. Malone carried no knife but had found and concealed a length of rusty chain. He lashed out at Craig with it and caught the young man across the side of the head. Only the brim of his helmet prevented him being knocked insensible. He was, however, thrown off balance. He fell to one knee. Before Craig could rise again he was struck violently across his shoulders. On all fours he straddled the line. Out of the tops of his eyes he could see the shunter as it sped over the bridge. He lifted his baton and thrust it upward into Malone’s groin, bored it in and lifted himself up as if he were sticking a pig. Malone roared and backed away and Craig, still dazed, hurled himself on to the man. They fell together, tangled, on the track. There they struggled, rolling on to the stone-fill between the sleepers, each trying to smother the other’s blows and obtain the upper hand while the Dumbarton express rounded into the straight in a billow of smoke and steam.

Craig buried his fingers in the material of the frock coat, heavy with rain. Malone had lost his hat in the first assault and Craig could find no hold on the bristling scalp. He was not dominated by the larger man. He was strong too now. He wedged his knee under Malone’s belly and drove up. Malone did not release his grasp of Craig’s tunic and the young man was yanked to his feet. Leverage, force, balance were the elements of the struggle. Craig’s fear grew as, over Malone’s shoulder, he saw the shunting engine loom up, heard its piercing whistle.

The fireman, leaning from the cab, had spotted them but Craig doubted if there would be line enough left to brake the engine to a halt. He had a horror of being ground beneath the metal wheels and he shouted his fear into Malone’s face.

He did not, however, let go.

The express reached them first.

Noise enveloped him, flickering lights flayed at his senses and numbed his reason. With effort he kept his eyes open, wide open, as the locomotive and its carriages swayed and thundered only inches from his head. He had secured a good firm grip on Malone’s collar and held fast by it, the baton cocked in his fist.

The wide night, the quays, the river, the Greenfield’s little streets were all blotted out by the roar of the Dumbarton express and the shriek of the braking shunter.

Craig no longer knew who was clinging to whom and felt not shock but consternation when the buffer knocked him down.

 

The sponge, filled with warm soapy water, soothed her and she lay light and lethargic as it brushed her limbs. She did not know who it was that held the sponge or why she felt so contented in the midst of exhaustion. She had never been bathed before, never been given that close attention, had never been nursed.

Whirling, whirling, her mind roved about the problem without settling upon it. She could not concentrate upon the thing that troubled her, that would rouse her from the soft luxurious state of semi-sleep. Lazily she floated in a moist innocence, like a baby in the warm dark womb.

She opened her eyes.

‘Where is it?’ she demanded.

‘Easy, Kirsty, be easy,’ a man’s voice said. ‘Don’t excite yourself.’

‘Where’s my baby?’

‘He’s here.’

‘I want to see—’

‘Aunt Nessie’s washing him. She’ll only be a moment. Please, Kirsty, lie back.’

‘Is it – is it—’

‘It’s a boy.’

‘A boy. I want to—’

‘In due course, Kirsty. You’ve lost a lot of blood, you know.’

‘Where is he?’

She was desperate now but so weak that she could not even pull herself into a sitting position. She could find no purchase on the slippery surface of the bed. She gave a little cry of frustration and shook her head to clear away the clouds and bring her eyes into focus.

‘See, dear, here he is.’

‘Hold him closer, Aunt.’

Kirsty felt pillows being drawn behind her and leaned on them gratefully. Somebody pulled a sheet over her breast. She sought to free her arms. A towel stroked her brow. She blinked and at last saw that it was David by her side and that Mrs Frew was stooping over her, smiling.

In the widow’s arms was a cocoon of towels, fresh and white. In the towels was a tiny red creature, so scarlet and angry that Kirsty felt, for a moment only, an unexpected twinge of revulsion.

‘Is that—?

‘Yes, that’s him, Kirsty; that’s your son.’

‘What’s wrong wi’ him?’

‘Nothing. He’s perfectly sound,’ David said.

She could not take her astonished gaze from the tiny red thing.

David went on, ‘He’s exceedingly small, however, and will need to be nurtured with great care for a month or two.’

‘I want to hold—’

‘Oh, isn’t he lovely,’ said Mrs Frew.

Upside-down her friend’s features seemed predatory. She was beginning to recall all kinds of ugly things. She could see Mrs Frew’s teeth, tongue, nostrils, and a wickedly-pointed brooch at the throat of her dress. The dress itself was stained.

Struggling again, Kirsty stretched out her arms.

‘He’s mine.’

David put a hand upon her arm. ‘Kirsty, listen to me—’

‘Mine.’

‘Kirsty, you’re in no fit condition to nurse him yet. I’ve sent a messenger, a neighbour, to fetch an ambulance to take you to the Samaritan Hospital where you’ll receive expert care.’

‘He’s not sick, is he?’

‘Not exactly,’ said David. ‘Just – early.’

Mrs Frew put the cocoon against Kirsty’s breast. Instinctively Kirsty folded her elbow to receive it. She let her head sink and touch the folds of the towel and looked at the tiny red face with its imperfect features and dusting of dark hair. His eyes were closed but, when she touched him, he pursed his lips and uttered a thin sound, a long eeeeeeeee, and she knew that he was alive and breathing; and she began to cry. David put an arm about her.

‘You’ve had a dreadful time, Kirsty. But it’s all over now.’

‘Did you—?’

‘I had to,’ he said. ‘There was nobody else and the wee chap was reluctant to wait. I hope you don’t mind.’

David was in shirt-sleeves, had no tie, no collar. He looked weary, dishevelled and flushed. Now that she had her baby close to her she felt quite lucid.

She said, ‘I’m grateful to you, David. I would have died, perhaps, and him with me if it hadn’t been for you.’

‘Nothing to it,’ David said, flustered. ‘Nothing to it at all.’

Kirsty said, ‘The baby will be all right, won’t he?’

‘Of course he will.’

‘Why are you sendin’ us to hospital?’

‘As a precautionary measure,’ David told her. ‘It’s absolutely normal in premature births.’

‘Was he hurt?’

‘Don’t you remember what happened?’ Mrs Frew asked.

‘I remember Malone. What happened to Malone?’

‘He’s gone,’ David told her. ‘He’ll be caught and brought to book, never fear.’

‘He tried to kill me, didn’t he?’ Kirsty glanced at the neatly bound padding that protected her arm. ‘I see. I see.’

‘Yes, he got you with a knife,’ said David. ‘It’s a clean wound but a deep one. That’s why you’ve lost so much blood.’

‘I thought—’

‘The baby will go with you,’ David told her. ‘You’ll both ride in state in a nice comfortable ambulance. It isn’t far.’

For a minute Kirsty was quiet, her eyes on her child, then she said, ‘Could I not stay here?’

‘You can come back here,’ said Mrs Frew. ‘To convalesce, to regain your strength.’

The baby whimpered. Kirsty hugged him and said, ‘I’ll need to see him fed.’

‘In a while,’ said David. ‘You really must rest until the ambulance arrives.’

‘I am tired, aye, but I want to keep him by me.’

David said, ‘I’ll hold him, if you like.’

‘Don’t take him away.’

‘I’d never do that. See, I’ll sit right here.’ He leaned carefully over her. ‘May I?’

‘Aye,’ Kirsty said.

She watched him lift her baby, heard the sweet little girning sounds and, as she sank back against the pillow, saw David settle beside her on the bed with the wee one tucked safe in the crook of his arm.

 

She did not know whether she had slept for minutes or hours. All sense of time’s passage had ceased. The whole of that day and evening had furled into a skein of moods and sensations and, in her present sleepy state, she could not separate one from the other. The mutter of voices in the room brought her awake. Once more she forced her eyes to open, saw not David and her baby beside her but only the rough texture of an ulster and the sombre plane of a police uniform at the bed’s end.

She had a raging thirst, her mouth so dry and sticky that she could hardly croak let alone cry out. She had a sly instinct, though, a moment in which she was convinced that they had lied to her, had conspired to deceive her, that she had not given birth at all, that the thing wrapped in towels was not her baby, that it was a monster deformed beyond hope and that David had put it away. She lay quite still, enduring the torment of thirst, lids fluttering, and listened to learn the truth.

To her surprise they were not talking of her or her child. They were arguing. Hearing the see-saw of familiar voices, male and female, she found that she could put a name to the speakers and identify the owner of the overcoat.

Hugh Affleck said, ‘I got here as fast as I could, Nessie.’

‘We could all have been murdered. Indeed, if it hadn’t been for David—’

‘Yes, yes. I admit it was fortuitous—’

‘Fortuitous is not the word for it. If it hadn’t been for him that brute would have slain us all. David acted like a hero, I’ll have you know. I think he was sent by Divine Providence.’

‘Be that as it may, Nessie, I’ll need to talk to the girl.’

‘Tell her, do you mean?’

‘Of course, tell her.’

A third voice, accented and distinct; Sergeant Drummond said, ‘Has she not been asking for him already, Mrs Frew?’

‘As a matter of fact, no, she hasn’t mentioned his name.’

‘Is she in delirium?’

‘What do you want, Hughie? Another “statement”? Can you not give her peace?’

Sergeant Drummond said, ‘Nicholson is her husband, Mrs Frew, and the father of the infant—’

‘Oh, you always stick together, you men. If Craig Nicholson’s concerned about his wife and child why is he not here with her?’

‘He can’t be,’ said Hugh Affleck.

‘Shhh! I think Kirsty’s awake.’

They turned, all three, and she saw their faces, pale and solemn, looking down at her, that strange upside-down ugliness in each of them. Mr Affleck loomed towards her, huge and menacing in the unbuttoned coat, his hair plastered flat, the deerstalker hat held in both hands, his fingers twisting the material.

Kirsty licked her parched lips.

‘I can hear you,’ she said.

Behind the man, out of sight, a door opened.

David said, ‘The ambulance is here at last. I’ve the baby all wrapped and ready. I would prefer not to delay, Aunt Nessie.’

‘Do you hear that, Hughie?’ Mrs Frew said. ‘No delay.’

Hugh Affleck said, ‘I’ll only be a moment.’

‘Ambulances cost money.’

‘Nessie, hold your damned tongue.’

Kirsty said, ‘Did you catch him?’

‘Yes, lass. Yes, we caught him.’

‘Craig?’

‘The man who hurt you has been caught.’

‘Craig?’

‘Daniel Malone will not trouble you again.’

‘Oh, tell her if you must, Hughie.’

‘Your husband – Craig – he caught Malone for us. Single-handed.’

‘Where is he?’

‘There was an accident.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Injuries sustained in the course of duty.’

‘David,’ Kirsty said. ‘Where’s the baby?’

He came immediately and knelt beside her. His face did not look at all ugly or warped. He took one of her hands in both of his hands. ‘The baby’s fine, Kirsty, all ready for his first journey. Your husband is fine too, really he is.’

‘You’re only sayin’—’

‘He can’t be here with you because he has a lot of cuts and a fracture – not serious, I’m told – of the wrist. I think he’ll be able to visit you tomorrow, once he’s properly patched up.’

‘Craig performed his duty with great courage and fortitude, lass,’ said Sergeant Drummond. ‘You should be proud of him.’

Her relief at the news was mild, almost casual.

‘We must go,’ David said.

The sheets were fresh and dry, the blanket as soft as moss, the big quilt silky as a cocoon. When David lifted her she felt light and weightless in his arms.

The faces receded, voices too.

‘Will you come with me, David?’ she whispered.

David answered, ‘Yes.’

 

The sun came up a little after four and all the signs were that it would be another beautiful day. The river lay flat as varnish and the only indication that the tide had turned came from the gulls that, for some reason nobody could explain, abandoned the Govan shore and flocked to the roofs of timber warehouses along the end of St John Street. Their cries were raucous and fretful, at odds with the tranquillity of the summer morning but, Craig thought, they made a fitting sort of chorus for dawn in the city.

He liked the night-shift best of all, though he longed for the time, not far hence, when he would be allocated a more lively beat and a more amiable companion than dour Peter Stewart. Even so, with the long cold months of spring behind him and the sun in the sky and hawthorn in bloom and laburnum and lilac colourful in the park, he felt that he had little to complain about, even although nothing seemed quite as satisfactory as he had expected it to be; not his marriage, not fatherhood, and certainly not the aftermath of his capture of Daniel Malone.

The fractured wrist and twisted knee joint healed quickly but he was left for a week or two with the nightmare in his mind, that dream of steam and steel and blackness, Danny Malone’s face, streaming blood, at the centre of it like the head on an old coin. It still seemed a miracle that the shunter and all its wagons had raggled over him, that it was Malone who had had his skull cracked by the link of the shunting-chain and had lain in his arms for what seemed an eternity while the wagons rolled and chuckled over them and the brakes squealed and finally brought the load to a halt. And bloody Daniel Malone had managed to escape justice after all, had not collected his just deserts by stepping on to the gallows with a hood over his head and a rope around his neck. Danny was still alive, after a fashion, locked away for ever in the depths of the Judgehead Asylum for the Criminally Insane. The big shunting-chain had done what society could not, had reformed him instantly, knocking all cunning and wickedness away even as it cracked his skull and addled his brains.

Malone would never be fit to stand trial for his crimes, Superintendent Affleck said; it was not in the nature of Scottish law to top a fellow who had lost not only his wits but even the power to stand unaided. Craig regretted it, would have preferred to have had Danny Malone go up those wooden steps like Satan’s bosom pal, unrepentant, unrecondite, puffing on a last cigar and tipping his hat to all his chums and the adoring females that would gather at the gallows’ foot to bid him farewell, to bow out in the grand manner as he would have been allowed to do in days of yore.

It was daft to think in such a manner. Malone had been evil, had tried to kill Kirsty, among his crimes, and Craig said not a word about his regrets or his nightmares to a living soul. He pondered them from time to time, however, as the weeks stole past and the new shift system came into operation and he trudged the quiet night streets with Peter Stewart one week in three; and slept better in daylight with bairns rampaging outside the window and his own child girning in the kitchen, though Kirsty did her best, now that she was well again, to keep the wee beggar quiet.

No great lasting fame had accrued from his ‘arrest’ of Daniel Malone. He had been summoned to the drill hall in Percy Street, marched out before the ranks of the Burgh Police Force and had a letter of commendation read over his head by Mr Organ who had then shaken his hand and had presented him with the letter, a sort of scroll with the Burgh Seal on it, in a cardboard tube. He had been promoted a full grade as reward, which meant more money in his pocket and a little more status in Ottawa Street. He found too, oddly, that many folk who had thought him a nark and a traitor now regarded him with no more than natural antipathy and would even give him a grudging nod when they passed him in the street. All the newspapers reported the incident but Danny had not been at large long enough to stir public imagination, had been nailed before he could become a menace to public safety, a bogeyman to haunt the Greenfield after dark.

Craig had had his name in print several times over, had been labelled ‘brave’ and duly praised for what he had done but there had been no outcome from all of that either, except that he clipped the pieces from the papers and sent them to Gordon in the care of Mr Sanderson at Bankhead Mains. Gordon had even managed to write a reply, a short, stilted, jocular note which had told him very little of what was happening at home and had contained no postscript from their mother.

Night-shift duty, even back-shift, suited Craig just fine. He had the bed in the front room and Kirsty had moved into a new bed in the hole-in-the-wall in the kitchen where she could be near the baby for feeding and changing, let Craig sleep undisturbed. She had her own routine, shaped around his shifts, of course, and seemed happy enough to tend the skinny wee thing and give him all the special attention that such an early arrival demanded for survival and growth and in which she had been instructed at the Samaritan before her discharge; bathing, changing, feeding, a whole smelly, skittery rigmarole that rapidly thinned Craig’s paternal feelings and drove him out of No. 154 to swim in the pond of the Cranstonhill Baths or exercise in the police gymnasium. Sometimes he would take a tram into the city centre and stroll the populous main streets or slip into The Heritage, a cosy public house at the western end of Argyle Street where off-duty coppers from several burghs congregated to drink and talk shop.

He had insisted on choosing his first-born’s name, however, had been adamant about it. It was his name and his father’s name: Robert Craig Nicholson. Kirsty shortened it immediately to Bobby and Craig was happy enough with the contraction which seemed well suited to such a spindly wee creature.

It was Kirsty who stamped her feet about kirk baptism, though the birth had been registered at once.

‘I thought you’d want him christened quick,’ Craig had said, ‘just in case – you know – anythin’ happens to him.’

‘Baptism’s not an insurance policy,’ Kirsty had said. ‘Besides, we have to join the church first.’

‘Both of us?’

‘Aye.’

‘Well, I suppose it’s not somethin’ to rush into.’

‘I have to find out somethin’ first,’ Kirsty had said.

‘Find out what?’

‘Whether or not you an’ me have to be church married.’

‘Church married? We’re not married at all.’

‘I don’t think we have to show marriage lines or anythin’ like that.’

‘Better find out,’ said Craig. ‘Look, if it comes to it, we can slip quietly off to the registry.’

‘I’ll enquire,’ Kirsty had said, ‘about baptism.’

‘Aye, you do that.’

It rankled him that she showed no eagerness to legitimise their ‘marriage’ but he was too stubborn to go down on one knee and beg her to do it. If it did not affect the baby and she was happy then it suited him well enough to let matters stand as they were.

She had not yet allowed him to sleep with her.

‘I’m not right yet,’ she would tell him.

He did not understand what ‘right’ meant but did not ask for an explanation which, he suspected, would involve a catalogue of messy disorders since that’s what birth and motherhood seemed to be all about. He did not understand much about Kirsty Barnes, really, and concerned himself less with surrender than with a gradual and subtle retreat.

Nothing much happened in the course of the summer night duty, no break-ins, no fires, no ‘suspicious characters’ to question and move along, no lost weans to be found, no ‘disturbances’ to be quieted. Routine inspections had unfolded step by step until the sun had come up in dabs of saffron and pink and the gulls made their mysterious migration from Govan to the Greenfield. Peter and he made a last circle of warehouses and, about five-thirty, started back for the corner of Banff Street where, under the optician’s sign, they would be met and relieved.

Peter said, ‘Aye, there he is again.’

‘Who?’ Craig glanced up from his beat book.

‘Your shadow.’

‘God Almighty, does the wee bugger never sleep?’

‘Will I chase him away?’ said Peter.

‘Naw, let him be. He’s doin’ no harm, I suppose.’

‘What does he want, though?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Will I ask him?’

‘He’ll just run away an’ then come back again.’

‘Must drive ye daft, Craig, havin’ a shadow.’

Craig shrugged. ‘You get used to it.’

‘Is he starved, is that it?’

‘He never asks for anythin’.’

Peter stopped, turned and stared at Sammy Reynolds who made no attempt to ‘vanish’ but stopped too and stood, hands in trouser pockets, looking back at the coppers. He wore a filthy shirt and had abandoned shoes and stockings for the summer months. His hair, tousled and unwashed, made a sticky sort of halo round his head.

Craig called out, ‘Hey, Sammy, can ye no’ sleep?’

Sammy answered, ‘I’ve got somethin’.’

‘What’s that then?’ said Craig.

‘Got somethin’ good.’

‘Come on over, Sammy, an’ let’s have a swatch at whatever it is.’

‘What about him, but?’

‘Constable Stewart’ll no’ bite you, not if you’ve done nothin’ wrong,’ said Craig. ‘Hurry up, though. I’m off shift in ten minutes.’

Sammy hesitated and then came forward.

Peter whispered, ‘Does he not go to school?’

‘Only when the truant officer catches him.’

Sammy was shy in the presence of a stranger, though he had been observing Peter Stewart for most of the week and had dogged Craig’s tracks on back-shift and day-shift and must know by now all the routines and systems of the burgh force.

‘What’s this you’ve got then, Sammy?’ Craig said.

The boy fumbled in the breast pocket of the torn shirt and brought out a whistle on a chain.

‘See,’ he said proudly, holding it up.

‘Where did you get that?’ said Craig.

‘Found it.’

‘Don’t lie, son,’ said Peter Stewart.

‘I did. I found it.’

‘It’s a nice one,’ Craig said. ‘Can I see it for a minute?’

Sammy extracted the chain from his pocket and dangled the whistle out for Craig’s scrutiny.

Peter Stewart said, ‘Is it real?’

‘Aye, it’s real. It’s old an’ rusty but it’s got a number on it,’ Craig said. ‘Where did you find it, Sammy?’

‘On the midden.’

‘Where?’

‘Our midden.’

‘At the Madagascar?’

‘Aye. Buried down deep,’ Sammy said. ‘It’s good.’

‘He shouldn’t have that,’ said Peter Stewart. ‘It’s official issue.’

‘I wonder who it belonged to an’ why he threw it away.’

‘Mine now,’ said Sammy and swung the whistle back into his possession on the short length of chain. ‘See, I can blaw it.’

‘No, Sammy, don’t—’

Too late; the boy stuck the whistle into his mouth, puffed out his cheeks and gave a great blast that, to the constables’ relief, resulted in no more than a hiss from the rusted barrel.

‘It’s broken,’ Peter Stewart said.

‘Naw, it’s no’,’ Sammy cried. ‘Hear this.’

He thrust the whistle into his mouth once more and blew again, reddening with effort, but managed no sound but a lisping hiss.

Peter glanced questioningly at Craig.

Sammy wet-lipped and panting, said, ‘Is that no’ awful good?’

‘First class, Sammy. Just like the real thing.’

‘Like you do it.’

‘Aye, just the same.’

‘Be like you, eh?’

‘When you grow up, perhaps.’

‘Got ma whistle already.’

‘Give it another go, Sammy.’

Still no sound of any volume came from the pitted barrel. Only Sammy could hear the good strong ardent blast that would make dogs sit up and take notice, would make bad men cower and bring coppers running to his side.

‘Good, eh?’

‘Craig, we should report—’ said Peter Stewart.

‘Marvellous, Sammy,’ said Craig. ‘Now you keep that whistle polished an’ in tune until we’re ready for you; right?’

‘Right, Mr Nicholson.’

‘Say goodbye to Constable Stewart.’

Sammy snapped his right hand to his brow, saluted smartly. Peter Stewart did not return the mark of respect but turned and walked off towards ‘the spectacles’ that overhung the corner of Banff Street and Brooks’ Loan. Craig fell into step with him.

‘That whistle had an official number on it,’ Peter said.

‘An old number.’

‘The lad’s crazy anyway.’

‘Look behind, Peter.’

At a respectful distance Sammy marched along bootless, bare feet matching the constables’ gait, an unmistakable mimicry. He still had his hand to his brow and the whistle in his lips, cheeks huge with the force of the blasts he blew.

‘Cheeky young devil!’

‘Harmless,’ Craig said. ‘Anyway, can you not hear it?’

‘What?’

‘The whistle.’

‘What?’

‘I can – when I listen hard enough.’

‘You’re as daft as he is, then.’

‘I wish I was,’ said Craig. ‘By God, I wish I was.’

 

The Greenfield had but one park, a modest fifteen acres of lawns, flowerbeds, trees and shrubs. It had been presented to the burgh in the year of 1871 by the family of Sir James Forrester who had been born to a pig-farmer’s wife in a hovel near the Madagascar and, by dint of hard work and imagination, had risen to become a magnate in shipping and had made a vast fortune in trading with Canada. For its size the Forrester Park was excellently well equipped. It had a bandstand, a boating-pond, a playground for children and an imposing statue of Sir James in the centre of a cartwheel of gravel pathways. Towards the river there were groves of willow and great dark banks of evergreens and two great chestnut trees and quiet arbours where lovers, if they were quick, might kiss and touch unseen. Its walks were broad and could accommodate two perambulators riding abreast and there were many sheltered benches along their lengths. While the Forrester did not have the ‘tone’ of the West End or the Botanical Gardens it attracted a fair share of nursemaids and nannies as well as street arabs and old folk and it was to the Forrester that Kirsty wheeled her son to take the air each afternoon when the weather was fine.

She had a need to be out of the house, to be on the move, and she needed time with her baby when she did not have to creep about and remember that Craig was asleep in the front bedroom and wonder if he was being disturbed by kitchen sounds or by Bobby’s occasional wails.

It was Mrs Frew who had presented her with the perambulator, a magnificent carriage-style Cornwall with a joined hood, brass handles and a clip brake. It was quite the handsomest pram in the park, Kirsty felt, and the envy of all the other mothers and nannies. With her strength resumed after the ordeal of that terrible night in March she walked briskly, bowling along the outer walk before she cut down the long avenue that divided the park and linked its two gates. Sometimes, quite often in fact, Nessie Frew would catch a tram up from Walbrook Street and would wait for Kirsty on a bench near the main gate and would walk with her and have a shot with the pram; and sometimes Mrs Frew would bring a picnic in a basket and they would spread a blanket on the grass under the trees and drink tea from a flask or fizzy lemonade and eat seedcake and Nessie Frew would talk and talk and talk and reveal to Kirsty aspects of her character that she had shown to nobody else, not even Hughie, and exchange confidences with the young woman in the assurance that her ‘secrets’ would be safe with her friend; and Bobby, this past week or two, would seem to be listening too as if he found his ‘Aunt Nessie’s’ confessions fascinating, until he was distracted by trembling leaves overhead or the glitter of sunlight on the pond or the sudden whirring flight of a fat pigeon as it swooped down to scrounge for crumbs.

Afternoons in the park meant a lot to Kirsty whether Nessie Frew was with her or not, and she felt restored and strengthened by her jaunts out of the shadow of the tenements, freed for a time from the thin but perceptible tensions of her odd, uncertain ‘marriage’ to Craig. She had come so far since that bitter blue evening when she had led the horse up to Hawkhead, when Clegg had terrified her, and Craig had stood by her. But since then she had glimpsed a world of possibilities, had seen things that she could not have imagined twenty months ago, had met people of a different stamp from the villagers of the Carrick. Perhaps if she had married Craig in Bankhead kirk, all neat and legal, had become his wife in that narrow and familiar landscape she would not have had in her a faint, inconstant yearning, a restlessness that she could not properly define, a need to taste the adventure of romance.

Stern with herself, and loyal, however, she put no names and no faces to that misty feeling, and told herself, sometimes out loud, that Craig loved her as best he could and showed it as best he could and had kept his end of the bargain by providing security and a home.

Craig had been in a jovial mood that morning. He had kissed her, had held Bobby on his knee for three or four minutes while she had fried bacon for breakfast. But Craig had gone off to bed straight after the meal and had been snoring before the Burgh Hall clock had struck seven. She had sat on the low chair by the grate and had uncovered her breasts and had fed Bobby the first of the six small feeds that the senior female nurse at the Samaritan had recommended. Kirsty had no notion of what a ‘small feed’ meant or how to measure one and she let the infant suck until he seemed satisfied. She had no lack of milk, had not, as had at first been feared, become dry in the wake of her ordeal and from loss of blood. Her arm and shoulder had healed rapidly, leaving only slender white scars and an itching that did not seem to want to go away. She felt that she was in good health again and had certainly found energy enough to care for Bobby-Come-Early who needed a great deal of attention in those first months of life.

Kirsty was utterly devoted to her son, possessive but not foolishly so. She did not fly off the handle when Craig lifted him awkwardly from his cot, when Mrs Frew planted scores of moist kisses all over his brow, when Mrs Swanston prodded him critically and declared that he was not very sturdy and would be lucky to survive a winter, not even when young Calum Piper tried to lull him to sleep by playing a reel on the chanter right into the hood of the pram. Even so, she preferred to have him all to herself, to revel in the unique intimacy of their relationship and not have to divide her attention with Craig or anyone else.

On that beautiful summer’s afternoon there seemed to be no threat at all to Bobby’s comfort; no wind, no trace of rain, no acrid drift of smoke from the tannery, not even the anvil clang of the foundry or the pounding of its massive steam hammer to make him blink. She had him peacefully to herself and experienced a touch of contentment which some fortunate women substituted for happiness without ever knowing the difference.

She scudded along the pavement to the park at a speed that, in six months or so, would have Bobby sitting up and prattling with delight. Now, though, he lay on his side, snug under lace and protected from the sun by a canopy of pale brown Holland. His eyes were open, that dark little glint in them, and there was no sound of protest on his lips. Perhaps Bobby too was content, Kirsty told herself, though she could no more tell with him than she could with Craig what it was that swung his little moods about, that made him girn at one minute and lie quiet and good as gold the next.

She bowled through the gates of the Forrester and glanced at once towards the bench where Mrs Frew sometimes sat.

Nessie Frew was not there today.

David Lockhart was. He had his aunt’s wicker basket on his knee and a book in his hand. He wore a jacket of cool grey linen and black shoes. He did not seem to need to see Kirsty to know that she had arrived and he turned at once and got to his feet, put the book into the basket and, smiling, came forward to greet her.

Kirsty flushed. It had been three months now since she had last seen David. He had come to call on her during her stay in the Samaritan but she had been too groggy to do more than thank him for saving her life, and saving her baby too. He had been modest, had protested the importance of his role in the events of that night, had left a bunch of Dutch daffodils by the side of her bed and had gone back, she supposed, to his own sort of life.

He had written to her once, through Aunt Nessie Frew, and Kirsty had written back to him, a short note of gratitude. Since then she had heard news of him only through Mrs Frew, and not much of that. For a moment, though, when she saw him there in the sunlight she felt that she had known him all her life long, that she had never been without him in her heart. She knew instantly that there was no sin and no deception in her feelings for him, only that their lives were out of kilter and all that she was and all that she supposed David to be would keep them in this innocent state, meeting and parting, yet never being quite separate again.

She stared at him, then dropped the brake on the pram.

David put his fingers self-consciously to his collar.

‘Don’t you like it?’ he asked.

‘I didn’t realise that you’d become a minister.’

‘Well, not quite the genuine article, not yet.’

‘But the dog-collar—?’

‘Brand new. I bought it off the shelf this morning.’

‘Then you’re ordained?’ Kirsty said.

‘I’m licensed to preach the Gospel but I won’t be inducted and ordained until I have a parish of my own.’

‘A parish in China?’ Kirsty said.

‘I’ve decided not to go back to China.’

‘But, I thought – your father an’ mother—?’

‘They’ll have to contain themselves until Jack gets there.’

‘You’re not leaving after all?’

He shook his head. ‘No.’

‘After all that hard work, all that training?’

‘Don’t tell me you disapprove, Kirsty,’ he said. ‘Don’t you want me to stay in Scotland?’

‘Yes, oh dear, yes.’

‘Good,’ David said.

She felt, however, a strange panic in her. She had reconciled herself to being apart from him, not separate but safely distanced. She felt that she could best love him in her thoughts and in her memory. Now he had told her that it was not to be, that she must learn a deeper truth, find out by practice what loyalty and fidelity meant. He was not, and never would be, the sort of man who would force a choice upon her, who would challenge her and destroy what there was between them. She did not need him to explain it to her.

She did not know David Lockhart well, though never again, she felt, would any man know her so well. She wanted to ask him outright why he had changed the direction of his vocation, what reason he had found to stay here. But she was afraid that he would tell her the truth.

‘In the meantime I’ve been taken on as an assistant at St Anne’s,’ David said. ‘And I’ll lodge with Aunt Nessie in Walbrook Street for a while.’

‘That’s – that’s convenient.’

‘It’s what I want, Kirsty, what I really want,’ David said, without gravity. ‘Besides, I’d like to be in the vicinity, shall we say, while this little chap’s growing up.’

‘Will you christen him? Can you?’ she heard herself say.

‘Now, now, don’t rush me.’ David laughed. ‘No, alas, I can’t administer the Sacraments until I’m inducted.’

‘Will you be there, though?’

‘Of course, if you want me to.’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you sure that your husband won’t object.’

‘How can he? After what you did,’ Kirsty said and then, sensing that she was touching on a dangerous subject, asked, ‘What else can you do, as well as preach the Word?’

‘Funerals and weddings. The really serious stuff, that will have to wait.’

‘Are funerals and weddings not serious?’

‘Kirsty, are you teasing me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thought so,’ he said. ‘Very well, to make up for it you’ll have to let me have a shot of the pram.’

‘Are you licensed for prams?’

‘Oh, I see. Taking charge of Master Nicholson is very serious stuff indeed. How is he? Is he thriving?’

‘You’re the doctor. See for yourself.’

Gently David lifted the fringe of the canopy. He held his hand aslant to prevent the sun’s rays falling directly on to the baby’s face. He leaned to inspect the child that he had brought into the world.

Kirsty watched. As she watched she saw tenderness and love in David’s expression. Her hesitations waned away. She could not deny what she felt for him, though she understood even then how the emotion must be expressed. There was too much honour in him for there ever to be more between them than friendship. But love without loving had a quality all its own and would perhaps survive long after passion and desire had burned away. She put her head under the canopy and the tip of her ear touched his shiny collar, her hair brushed softly against his neck.

‘Well?’ she whispered. ‘What do you think, David?’

‘He’s filling out nicely. Look, I think he realises that we’re talking about him.’

She gave her attention to her child, to the dark, alert eyes that would soon find focus and survey the world that she would make for him. It was so warm, so still under the canopy and the sounds from the park were filtered and soft-edged, the motion of air in the trees like a murmur, faint and far off.

‘David?’ she said.

‘Hush, Kirsty,’ he told her.

Together they emerged from the stillness under the brown holland, close together but not quite touching.

‘Walk with me, David, if you have the time.’

‘How far, Kirsty?’

‘Twice around the park.’

‘What then?’ he said.

‘Then I must go home.’

‘You’ll always go home to him, won’t you?’

‘Yes, always,’ Kirsty said. ‘But I wish—’

‘Hush,’ he told her again, then stooped and picked up the picnic basket, unclipped the brake, grasped the handle and pushed the perambulator forward. ‘We’ll walk together, though.’

‘Why not?’ said Kirsty and fell into step by his side.