Chapter Thirty-two

The door of the Ulster Bank in Downpatrick opened and Harry Glover, the assistant manager, came out into a throng of shoppers who were laden with parcels and serious intent. Pretty soon, he acknowledged, he would have to fall into step with them. Christmas was getting dangerously close and he had not yet bought his wife a present.

It was lunchtime and he was going to Ardglass. He got into his car, then headed for the road out of town. He drove slowly; there was no other choice. The place was jammed, the shops were packed and he cursed the fact that there were so many traffic lights in such a small place.

He was going to Ardglass because the bank had a small sub-office there. Normally, it opened only one day a week, just as a gesture, since Downpatrick was near enough for everyone to do their banking business in the main branch, but Christmas was not normal and in the two weeks leading up to it the Ardglass office was open full time.

He had delegated two young cashiers to work there and he had decided on a whim to drop in and see how they were getting on, then have a quiet lunch in one of the local pubs.

He smiled as he drove, mocking himself. A morale-boosting visit, Harry. Is that what this is? A drive was what it was. A chance to take the air.

When he reached Ardglass he headed towards the harbour, parked and got out. The weather had changed for the worse. The warmer temperatures of a few days ago seemed like an illusion, some kind of a cruel joke. Now the sky was a turbulent grey and from the sea there came a forceful, stinging wind that could work its way up into a gale if it felt like it.

He shuddered, pulled up the collar of his coat, then dug his hands into the pockets, delving for warmth. He looked around at the empty harbour and the gloomy, quiet streets, wondering if there was any point in opening the branch next year.

He halted his gaze when it fell on the Harbour Pottery. Banking business left his mind and the face of his wife came to him instead.

Peter Quinn’s place. He had forgotten about it. It had all the sort of stuff she liked. Nice glasses, Celtic jewellery, and the pottery, of course. He could get a present there. That would be ideal.

He walked towards the old stone building, thinking how grim it looked in spite of the colourful shop sign above the entrance. He tried the handle on the front door but it would not turn. Then he noticed the ‘closed’ sign in the window. He frowned and tried to peer through the glass. It was dark inside, the only light coming from the little strips illuminating the display shelves. The van, with Harbour Pottery inscribed on its flanks, was parked outside. He stepped back and looked up at the top windows of the building, where he knew there was a flat, but there was no indication of the presence of an occupant.

He turned round and headed along the road to the bank.

As he walked, he thought about Quinn and the day he had come into his office to sort everything out before he went off to Japan. Peter was a sensible guy. Glover had known him for a few years and they had even played golf together a couple of times at the club at Ardglass where they were both members, but privately, before that fellow Cochrane had arrived for the meeting, he had asked him if he was sure of what he was doing. There was all that business with the fire at the hotel and Cochrane’s subsequent jail sentence. The case had got a lot of column inches in the local papers.

Well, it had to be said, hadn’t it? And at least he had been able to talk to Peter from a position of objectivity since his bank, the Ulster, had not been involved in any way with the Cochrane family’s declining circumstances.

But Peter had insisted. It was his business after all, his decision, and that was that.

He pushed open the door of the sub-office. There were no customers and only one cashier. The other one would be at lunch.

The barren scene made his mind up for him. No Christmas opening next year.

‘Surprise,’ he said.

Geraldine Moore was twenty and came from Dublin. She had thick brown hair tied back and gold-framed glasses which she put on to see who this was.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘what’s this? Trying to catch me working?’

She did not take herself or anyone else too seriously but she had the personality to carry it off without appearing insubordinate.

‘And I haven’t managed to, have I?’ Glover fired back. ‘Just thought I’d drop by. How’s it been?’

‘Slow. A few lodgements. Some cheques cashed. Hardly worthwhile. I was thinking we could go in for tumbleweed manufacturing.’

He looked at her, puzzled.

‘You know,’ she said. ‘Like in a western. The deserted town.’

‘Oh, right.’

‘Forget it,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t work when you have to explain.’

‘Maybe it’s the way you tell them. Listen, before I forget, you don’t happen to know anything about the Harbour Pottery, do you? I’m friendly with the guy who owns it only he’s in Japan at the moment. It’s just that I was thinking of buying my wife something but it appears to be closed. Then again, maybe it’s shut for lunch.’

‘Oh, that place is never open,’ Geraldine said. ‘At least it never seems to be. I’ve never seen anybody around it since I’ve been here.’

‘Really?’

She nodded. ‘And funnily enough, I heard a couple of customers mention it yesterday. They said it seemed to be closed more often than it was open these days.’

He thought about it a little later on his way back to Downpatrick, wondering what, if anything, he would do. Was there some kind of a problem? And where was that guy Cochrane?

When he got into his office he sat down behind the desk, coat still on, and called up the pottery customer account on his computer. The details unfolded across the screen. His practised eye swept over the figures but found nothing particularly unusual. Everything was a bit static, maybe; not a lot coming in.

Remembering something, he hung his coat up and went out to the main banking room, at the back of which files were stored in shelves that covered one wall. He searched under ‘Q’ until he came up with Quinn, Peter, Harbour Pottery. Into the file he had slipped a sheet of paper with the details, which Quinn had left him, of where he would be in Japan.

‘In case of emergencies,’ Quinn had said, ‘but of course there won’t be any.’

There was an address in Kyoto, as well as telephone and fax numbers and an e-mail address.

He didn’t want to worry him. It wasn’t really the bank’s business, or his, either.

He thought for a second or two and then decided. He closed the file again and went back to his own office.

An e-mail wouldn’t do any harm. Just to make sure.