Chapter Ten

Tony was lying in bed reading a Peter Cheyney novel he’d purchased in Glasgow while picking up supplies. Ten or a dozen books were stacked on the narrow shelf in the smaller of the two first-floor bedrooms; reading kept his mind off Polly, particularly at this late hour of the night.

He was fatigued but not sleepy. His shoulders ached from hefting the routing machine upstairs to the attic. It had not been an easy task, even with Dominic to help him. Giffard was useless when it came to heavy labour and the girl, though willing, wasn’t strong enough. The paper had also been unloaded and stored under a tarpaulin in the stables for there was no room for it in Giffard’s attic where every inch of space was taken up with equipment of one sort or another.

Soon after Dominic had left, the printer had filled a mug with coffee, cadged a packet of cigarettes from Tony and had gone upstairs to install the routing machine and check the paper quality. Penny had accompanied him. Seated on the cot, the cat in her lap, she had been content to watch Giffard at work and Tony had seized the opportunity to drive into Breslin to telephone Polly.

Polly had not been at home, however, and just to get away from the farm for a while he had driven on into Glasgow.

The weather was neutral, neither cold nor warm and there was no wind to whistle in the empty fireplace. The tasselled shade of the bedside lamp was tilted to throw light on the page but Tony hardly took in the words. He was thinking of Polly after all. He could not put her out of his mind. Talking sense to himself didn’t help. He was plagued by a restless yearning that he couldn’t smother and daren’t encourage. He tossed the book away, rolled on to his elbow and poured himself a dram from the half bottle of whisky he’d filched from Giffard’s supply. He propped himself up on the pillow, sighed, drank a mouthful of the stinging liquid, lit a cigarette, lay back and stared at the ceiling.

There was no noise from the attic. Presumably Giffard had quit fiddling with his new toys and had finally gone to bed.

Then, ‘Tony, are you still awake?’

‘What do you want, Penny?’

He felt as guilty as if it were his mother tapping on the door and he was a boy again, stealthily experimenting with nicotine and alcohol – sex too – in the imperfect privacy of his bedroom.

‘I want to show you something,’ Penny said.

‘What?’ Tony said, thickly.

She opened the door – no lock or latch on any of the doors upstairs – and slipped into the bedroom. She wore clinging coral-pink pyjamas. And a gas-mask.

‘Blooh!’ she said, the word all fat and blubbery. ‘Blooh!’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Penny!’

She raised her arms and advanced upon him like a ghoul.

‘Blooh, blooh, blaaah!’

The flanges of the rubber mask palpitated and the ugly tin pig-snout thrust out towards him, the eye-piece clouded with vapour.

‘Glumme a kluss. Glow on, glumme a kluss.’

She leaned over him, nuzzling the metal snout down into his face.

He swung the whisky glass and cigarette away and tried to push her off. She was playful, frenetically mischievous, but he was in no mood to be teased. Breasts pointing up the fabric of the pyjama jacket, the curve of her stomach dipping down into her thighs, she bent one long leg like a hurdler and climbed on to the bed. He could hear the monstrous suck and slobber of her mouth taking in air as she struggled to pin him down and press the snout of the gas-mask against his lips.

Still juggling glass and cigarette, he defended himself with his forearm. She was lithe and angular, stronger than he had supposed her to be. She forced herself upon him, then collapsed, laughing, hot and wet and breathless within the mask. He reached across her and dropped the glass on to the table, the cigarette into an ashtray. He snared her waist and lifted her up. She was suddenly no longer playful and mischievous but tense with expectation.

He held her rigidly above him with the respirator only inches from his face. He fumbled with the buttons of the jacket. He flicked the jacket open and pinned it under her arms. She lowered herself to meet him. He opened his mouth and sucked her breast, put his hand beneath her breast, raising it so that he could take more of it into his mouth. He curled his tongue over her nipple, felt her stiffen and shudder. He slid his hand down the curve of her stomach under the waistband of her pyjamas, going on until his fingertips touched hair. She lifted her hips to give him room, arched her back. He felt gone from himself, apart. He said nothing. He had nothing to say. He pushed her on to her feet and flung back the bedclothes.

She glared at him through the clouded eye-piece, lifted her hands to peel off the mask. He said loudly, ‘No.’ Swinging out of bed he tugged down her pyjamas, sliding them down her long legs and saw how beautiful she was, the angular hipbones rounded, the belly smooth and rounded, her thighs sleek. She stepped out of the pyjamas and stood before him wearing nothing but the rubber gas-mask. She was, at that moment, both grotesquely ugly and grotesquely beautiful.

Once more she tried to loosen the mask but he rose, almost lunging, from the bed, and carried her before him. She staggered, staggered again. He caught her, not gently, his arms about her waist. He backed her against the door and thrust himself against her. She opened her legs and yielded to him, seemed somehow to absorb him so that he was no longer apart but had become enveloped in a strange hard fusion that had no meaning but conquest.

She pushed the snout of the respirator over his shoulder, let him lift and carry her and lay her across the bed, let him drive into her as if she were nothing but a sleek, ugly, faceless object. She cried out, choking, and struggled to reach the clasps of the mask, to strip it away but he would not allow it. He smothered her with his body, pinned her hands with his forearms and drove on until she reached a suffocating climax. Then he withdrew.

She tore off the gas-mask, gasping like a fish, gasped and panted and sank back against the pillow, red-faced and dewed with perspiration.

He stood by the bed looking down on her.

She sighed and smiled, and said, ‘Am I good, Tony? Am I not good?’

‘The best,’ he answered sourly, and went downstairs to wash.

*   *   *

‘Never mind Winstock,’ Kenny said, ‘just think of the position this puts me in.’

‘It’s entirely your own fault,’ Fiona said, ‘you shouldn’t have gone charging off on your own, following your own leads.’

‘It was pure chance, just a hunch,’ Kenny said. ‘How was I to know she’d recognise the bloke? My God, Fiona, it’s over twenty years since she saw him last and look at him – big moustache, a scarred lip. It didn’t seem to make a whit of difference. She took one look at the photograph and nailed him straight away. I even tried to convince her that it wasn’t Frank Conway, that it couldn’t possibly be Frank Conway, but she was adamant, absolutely adamant. It didn’t even occur to her that it might be an old photograph.’

‘Well, it isn’t an old photograph so it’s obvious that he isn’t dead.’

‘Heck, do you think I don’t know that? That’s the problem.’

‘Seems to me,’ Fiona said, crisply, ‘that he escaped the war all in one piece, changed his identity and went to work for Carlo Manone in America. That seems logical, doesn’t it?’

‘You mean he’s been in Philadelphia all this time without once trying to contact his wife and children?’

‘These people,’ Fiona said, ‘are not like you and me, Kenneth.’

‘I’m not going to take the McKerlie woman’s word for it.’

‘Then what are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Winstock will insist that you hand over the lead to him, you know.’

‘I’m not doing that,’ Kenny said. ‘I’ll have to find another way of confirming Janet McKerlie’s identification.’

‘Show the photograph to Lizzie Peabody. If his wife doesn’t recognise him, even with that stupid moustache and the scar, then…’

‘His wife: yes, precisely.’

‘Ah, I didn’t quite think of that,’ Fiona admitted. ‘Of course, she’s married again. If her first husband turns out to be still alive that may cast doubt on the validity of her present marriage. A court would straighten it out, I imagine, and find her innocent of any charge of bigamy.’

‘A court? Do you honestly believe I’d bring this to court for a decision? God, it would be all over the newspapers. See the problem? How am I going to tell Rosie that I’ve found her father, that he’s a crook and possibly a traitor and that we’re hell-bent on laying him by the heels so we can send him to clink?’

‘Won’t the McKerlie woman tell her sister even if you don’t?’

‘Not her,’ Kenny said. ‘She thinks – wait until you hear this – she thinks that Frank Conway has come back for her.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Apparently she was in love with him all those years ago.’

‘You mean he was her lover?’

Kenny shrugged. ‘She didn’t go quite that far, but I think it’s probable. On the other hand perhaps she just imagined it and he’s forgotten she even existed. He certainly hasn’t tried to make contact with her, with any of them, that we know of.’

‘Except Dominic Manone.’

‘I wonder,’ Kenny asked, ‘if Dominic knows who Harker really is?’

‘That’s an interesting question,’ Fiona said.

‘What a devious, scheming rat he’d be to keep it from Polly.’

‘Perhaps, like you, he’s afraid to tell her the truth. Does the McKerlie woman have any idea where Conway, alias Harker, is at the present moment?’

‘Of course not. She’s waiting for me to produce him like a rabbit out of a hat and deliver him on to her doorstep.’

‘You could tell her that he’s dead.’

‘She’d never believe me, not now.’

‘Convince her.’

‘Fiona, she isn’t open to reason. Even if I brought her his head on a platter she’d suspect me of trickery. I’ve given her the one thing in life that’s kept her going, a nonsensical belief that Frank Conway would come back from the dead.’

‘That’s insane.’

‘Do I not know it,’ said Kenny.

‘Well, what are you going to do?’

‘Find him myself,’ Kenny said.

‘And then?’

‘Get rid of him pretty damned quick.’

*   *   *

Dominic spent longer than usual saying goodnight to the children. Stuart had been nursing one of his interminable colds, nothing too serious, not bad enough to keep him from school, just a stuffy nose and tickling cough that rendered him pale and listless. Even Polly had taken pity on him, had brought him down to the back parlour after supper and had played several hands of Old Maid with him before bath and bedtime while Ishbel, for once, had Patricia all to herself.

It was after ten o’clock before Dominic returned to the living-room by which time Polly had fortified herself with a couple of Manhattans and was seated on the sofa smoking a cigarette and sipping coffee.

‘He doesn’t look well to me,’ Dominic said.

‘He’s fine.’

‘Perhaps we should keep him in bed for a day or two.’

‘If he runs any sort of a temperature,’ Polly said, ‘I will.’

Dominic poured black coffee from the urn on the sideboard and brought it to the fire. He didn’t sit by her but sank into the deep leather armchair that faced the curtains. He lit a cigar, crossed his legs, sipped coffee too.

‘Has Patricia shown him how to put on his gas-mask?’

‘Of course. Besides,’ Polly said, ‘they have lessons – drills at school.’

‘With that chest of his a whiff of poison gas would kill him.’

‘Now you’re just being morbid,’ Polly said. ‘Hitler won’t attack without warning. In addition to which we’re not even at war with Germany.’

‘If it comes to it,’ Dominic said, ‘we’ll move them to the country.’

‘Move who?’

‘The children – and you.’

‘I don’t want to go to the country. I might consider the seaside.’

‘The coast won’t be much safer than the city.’

‘Is that where you were today? Surveying bolt-holes in Ayrshire?’

‘The entire Clyde basin will be a target for air attacks,’ Dominic said. ‘And they’re already assembling boom defences to keep submarines out of the Firth.’

‘Didn’t you tell me just a few weeks ago that there would be no war.’

‘I’ve altered my opinion.’

‘Will you serve?’

‘Serve?’

‘Your country,’ Polly said. ‘Join up.’

‘If they’ll have me, of course.’

‘You won’t be conscripted?’

‘No, not initially. Young men will be first to go, then those without wives and children then, if necessary, anyone who can carry a rifle.’

‘Just like the last time.’

‘Yes’ Dominic said. ‘Only this one will be much, much worse.’

‘What will they make of you, Dominic?’ Polly said. ‘Will you be a quartermaster, or a bombardier, or a naval officer?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘You must have thought about it.’

‘I’ve too many other things on my mind to worry about that.’

‘What other things?’ said Polly. ‘The business?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tell me, what sort of stock do we have in the warehouse right now?’

‘You’ve been in the warehouse.’

‘Only once, a long time ago,’ Polly said. ‘So tell me, Dominic, is everything in the warehouse bona fide?’

‘Bona fide?’

‘Legal and legitimate,’ Polly said.

‘Never been anything else,’ Dominic said. ‘We’re wholesalers, darling, importers, not receivers of stolen goods. We can produce receipts and licences for every cup and vase and effigy on our shelves.’ He glanced at her out of his solemn jet black eyes to make sure that she was convinced. ‘Eighty per cent of our imports are from Italy, however, and if the war comes that trade will cease immediately and the warehouse will probably be requisitioned by the Ministry of Defence.’

‘What will we do for income then?’

‘We – you won’t starve.’

‘We could go abroad, you know. I’m sure your father would take us in.’

‘No,’ Dominic said, sharply, ‘that isn’t an option, Polly.’

‘All your other irons, are they liable to melt away too?’

‘Some will, inevitably.’

‘But not all?’

‘No, not all.’

She carried his empty coffee cup to the sideboard, refilled it and brought it back to him. He had almost finished his cigar. He inhaled a final mouthful of smoke and threw the stub into the fire. He accepted the coffee cup, cradled it on his palm. He had fine soft hands, a little plump now. She couldn’t imagine him ever having hit anyone, having ever struck out in anger or with cruelty.

‘Won’t you tell me where our money comes from?’ Polly said. ‘Better yet, Dominic, why don’t you show me how our businesses operate?’

‘No.’

‘If you do have to go off to serve King and country…’

‘If I do, then it won’t matter,’ he said. ‘It’ll all be going to hell and no one will be able to salvage anything.’

‘I’m not sure I believe you.’

He placed the little cup and saucer on a side table, reached out and took her hands in his. He rubbed the ball of his thumb on her wedding-ring as if it were a good-luck charm.

‘Whatever happens,’ he said, ‘you and the children will be taken care of.’

‘By whom?’ Polly said. ‘By Tony?’

‘If I go,’ Dominic said, ‘Tony will go too. But you won’t want for money, I promise you that. Even in a state of war – especially in a state of war – money can buy almost anything.’

‘If you know how to use it properly,’ Polly said. ‘I know nothing, Dominic. I know as little about what you own and where your income comes from as I did the day I married you: less, in fact, because at least I understood how bookmaking worked and – what did you call it? – street insurance. Now it’s all partnerships, seats on the board of this and that, deals written out on paper.’

‘Safer,’ Dominic said. ‘Cleaner and more profitable. I thought that’s how you wanted it?’

‘Tell me, Dominic. Show me. Teach me.’

He released her hands abruptly and sat back in the leather chair.

‘Please,’ Polly said.

But Dominic, frowning again, refused.

*   *   *

Bernard was staffing the office while Allan Shakespeare escorted a young married couple out to the site at Blackstone to view one of the modestly priced bungalows. There wasn’t much to see, a half-built framework of bricks and mortar rising from a sea of mud. The site reminded Bernard of a little French township near Bovet that had been bombarded for weeks by heavy artillery and when he passed the foundation trenches on his way up Blackstone Hill he almost expected to see corpses huddled in the mud.

The villas had sold well – apparently there was still money floating about looking, literally, for a home – but the bungalows were ‘sticky’, and the Bard had not been in the best of moods since Christmas, counting out daily not what he had gained but what he had lost in commission because of the threat of war; a war, incidentally, that he did not believe would ever come to pass.

The other thing Bernard hated about going out to the Blackstone site was that it took him close to the farmhouse where Dominic had installed his mistress. In spite of Dominic’s denials, Bernard was still inclined to believe that the beautiful, long-legged blonde whom he had met on two or three occasions was sleeping with his stepson-in-law. Stepson-in-law: he found it almost impossible to think of Dominic Manone as a relative. There was something too sharp and sophisticated about Manone, a quality that he, plain Bernard Peabody, could not relate to. Between them – yes, Polly too – the couple evinced a mendacity that was absent in Babs and Rosie and that Lizzie, for all her experience of the streets, could not even recognise as being there at all. He was condemned to remain silent when talk turned to Dom and Polly. He could no longer confide in Rosie, his lovely Rosie, who was so wrapped up in romance that she wouldn’t have known what he was talking about. Never had Bernard been so depressed, not even in the dark, dead days just after the Great War – which he was now beginning to think of as ‘the last war’ – when his mother was grieving for her lost sons and he was shrouded in guilt just because he had managed to survive.

If it hadn’t been for love of Lizzie he would have gone under before now. The girls might assume stepping up in the world had changed him, that the responsibility of managing an estate office instead of merely collecting rents had altered his character, but Bernard could have told them differently. It was Lizzie, soft and plump and, in her charming way, naïve who had changed him; his unflagging love of Lizzie, his desire to protect her from harm. He could have done it too, could have kept her secure, even with war threatening, if it hadn’t been for the girls and the men the girls had married. And, it seemed, the appearance on the scene of the man that the last of the three sisters would marry, the crafty copper from St Andrew’s Street, so that war and all the drastic changes that war would bring began to seem to poor Bernard like the easy way out.

Sergeant MacGregor’s visit to Breslin was close to being the last straw and from that day on Bernard was a man on a knife’s edge who, for two pins, would have abandoned everyone, even Lizzie, and gone off to join the army.

Sandra, the agency’s part-time clerk, was looking after the front office when the detective arrived. Bernard had retired to the glass-walled cubicle at the rear of the office to brood in peace. He was slumped in Allan Shakespeare’s chair smoking a cigarette when Sandra popped her head around the door and told him that he was wanted. In his present frame of mind the word ‘wanted’ had so many negative connotations that Bernard groaned inwardly and, like an arthritic old veteran, forced himself out of the chair. He had no appetite for work, no interest in bonuses and commissions and was unable to raise even the ghost of a smile when he opened the door of the cubicle and saw Detective Sergeant Kenneth MacGregor, Rosie’s sweetheart, loitering shyly by the outer office counter.

‘Ah, Mr Peabody, may I have a word with you?’ the sergeant said.

‘Do I have a choice?’ said Bernard.

‘Won’t take long.’

‘When did Breslin become your beat?’

‘I don’t have a beat, Mr Peabody.’

‘Is this call personal or professional?’

‘Bit of both,’ Kenny told him.

‘You’d better step inside,’ said Bernard.

*   *   *

Babs said, ‘I’m taking lessons in how to drive.’

‘Drive what?’ said Polly, who had been thinking of other things.

‘Motorcars,’ Babs said. ‘Dennis is teachin’ me.’

‘Dennis? Why not Jackie?’

‘I don’t want Jackie to know what I’m doin’,’ Babs said. ‘He’d only scoff. You know what he’s like about motorcars.’

‘I know what he’s like about women,’ Polly said. ‘Is it fun?’

‘Aye, once you get used to it,’ Babs said. ‘You should try it some time.’

‘Not interested.’

‘All right for you, I suppose,’ Babs said, ‘havin’ Tony Lombard to drive you about all over the place. We don’t have that kinda money.’

‘I don’t have Tony Lombard, not any more.’

‘Really!’ Babs said, as if the absence of the handsome Italian in her sister’s life had totally escaped her notice. ‘Who does for you now?’

They were taking one of their rare outings together, not in Bellahouston Park which had been given over to the Empire Exhibition, but on a small area of grassland that everyone called The Round.

The trees were not in bud but snowdrops had struggled out and here and there, where the boys hadn’t trodden on them, daffodil pods were beginning to break through the dank, impacted turf. The Round was claustrophobic, in spite of struggling signs of spring, for the old tenements of Macklin Street and St Patrick’s Road crowded upon it, ugly, not handsome dwellings that reminded the girls – Polly at least – of where Babs and she had come from and what they had left behind.

The tyres of April’s perambulator hissed on the hard-packed gravel path that followed the park’s perimeter and Babs, ever energetic, thrust into the swan-necked handle as if she and her sister were going somewhere. The baby was fast asleep, flushed by raw January air, and dribbling into her angora wool cap.

Polly didn’t answer Babs’s question.

She was here only under sufferance, to fulfil the interminable obligations that family bonds put upon her, bonds that she didn’t have the temerity to shake off. She had loved Babs once, loved her sister with the intense animosity of rivals. She did not love Babs any more, however, did not love Rosie – there was only pity and protection left of that old fondness – and loved her mother with a patronising condescension that even Polly recognised as wrong.

She had lost herself in love with Dominic Manone and when that love had faded had turned instead to Tony Lombard. She could not help but align herself with handsome, confident males, and the sacrifices she’d made to satisfy her selfish needs hadn’t much bothered her – until now.

‘Where is Tony anyway?’ Babs said.

‘I told you at Christmas, I don’t know.’

‘You told me at Christmas you were gonna find out.’

‘Well, I haven’t.’

The pram lurched on worn ground. Babs adjusted her course.

‘Have you tried?’ she asked.

Polly was out of breath and put a hand on the pram handle to slow it down.

She had no compelling need to confide in Babs, to confess that she had taken Tony Lombard as a lover. In recent years Babs’s loyalty to Jackie Hallop had made her stuffy and curiously moralistic. She would not approve of adultery, would not regard it as a romantic adventure, not now.

Polly had a sneaking feeling that Babs was right, that what she believed to be love was nothing but a shabby substitute for children who bored her and a husband who kept her at arm’s length.

‘Yes,’ Polly answered. ‘I did have lunch with MacGregor.’

‘I hope you’re not gonna nick him from Rosie.’

‘How dare you say that! As if I would.’

‘Oh, yeah, you would,’ said Babs. ‘If it suited you, you would.’

‘You don’t have much of an opinion of me, do you, Babs?’

‘You’re my sister: I’m stuck with you,’ Babs said, shrugging lightly. ‘What did MacGregor tell you?’

‘Not much. He’s looking for two suspects.’

‘I thought the CID would have enough suspects to be goin’ on with.’

‘Don’t play the fool, Babs. Two specific suspects.’

‘What’re they suspected of?’

‘He wouldn’t say.’

‘Did he tell you who they were?’

‘One of them’s a girl.’

‘Hah!’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ said Polly.

‘Is that who Tony’s with right now?’

‘You’re jumping to conclusions awfully damned quickly, aren’t you?’

‘It’s Tony Lombard you’re really worried about, isn’t it, not Dominic?’

‘I – I’m worried about the future.’

‘Well, sis, you ain’t the only one,’ said Babs. ‘Why d’ you think I’m learning to drive? It’s in case this bloody war does come an’ we’re left holdin’ the baby.’ Babs checked the charge of the perambulator, applied the footbrake and, head cocked, contemplated her sister. ‘We’re not flirty wee girls any more, Poll. We’re not Mammy’s little rays of sunshine. I got four kids an’ a bungalow in Raines Drive. You – you’ve got a pearl in every oyster, plus two kids an’ a husband who can make money fall down outta the sky. Look at us, for God sake! None of this is gonna last. Funny thing is, I don’t think it even deserves to last. You got me?’

‘No, I’m afraid I haven’t got you.’

Babs sighed. ‘Whether it does or doesn’t, I’m not gonna let any of it go without a fight.’ She took a step towards her sister and planted her hands on her hips as if the conversation had suddenly become a quarrel. ‘They’re closin’ in from all sides, Polly. I don’t mean the damned Jerries. I mean the law. They’re after your Dominic an’ that means they’ll get my Jackie in the process – unless we do somethin’ about it.’

‘What can we do about it?’ said Polly.

She spoke wearily, not warily. She didn’t resent being dressed down by her young sister for Babs’s selfishness had point and whatever she decided to do would benefit her husband and children. Mammy all over again: Mammy’s struggle writ large. For an instant Polly felt shame, then a grey, annealing weariness stole over her once more, a pervasive sense that time had stopped and there was nothing she could do to make it start up again.

‘Be ready to take over,’ Babs said.

‘Take over?’

‘What the hell’s wrong with you, Polly Conway? Is the gin gettin’ to your brain at last? Listen. Listen to me: we’re married to crooks, to criminals. There’s no good blinkin’ that fact. Hell’s bells, I’m no more honest at heart than our Jackie, though I hope I do know where t’ draw the line.’ Babs folded her arms across her bosom and though there was no one else in The Round at that early hour in the afternoon, lowered her voice to a near whisper. ‘Rosie’s detective is sure on to somethin’ an’ it’s not somethin’ small either. There’s money bein’ made, or about to be made, an’ it’s real money this time.’

In spite of herself, Polly nodded agreement.

‘This isn’t a wad o’ banknotes stuffed into a cocoa tin,’ Babs went on. ‘This is sackfuls o’ the stuff – an’ that’s not countin’ what you could realise by liquidatin’ Dominic’s assets.’

‘Is it Jackie who’s put you up to this?’ Polly said.

‘Jackie! God, Jackie wouldn’t know an asset if he sat on one,’ Babs said. ‘I mean, he still doesn’t know what an asset I am an’ I’ve been with him for ten years. Listen. Listen to me, Polly: have you forgotten what went on wi’ Mammy all those years ago, all that rubbish about her bein’ in the Manones’ debt?’

‘That was a mistake, a misunderstanding.’

‘Was it hell!’

‘In any case, it’s water under the bridge,’ said Polly.

She still felt grey and detached but in Babs’s vehemence she recognised some of the anger that had been in her too over the past months, a strange sourceless anger that found no focus of expression, none, that is, except the betrayal of her marriage vows. She felt the muscles at the back of her calves tremble slightly, her mouth become dry. What had she done? She had allowed Tony Lombard to become her lover without knowing whether or not he loved her. She had made promises not to Tony but to a stranger, promises that for all their shambolic confusion had more to do with her family than the Manones.

Now Babs was standing up to her. Babs was telling her that there were debts to collect as well as debts to pay and that she must be prepared to call them in.

‘They won’t be here much longer, you know,’ Babs said. ‘They’ll go the way Daddy went all those years ago, leavin you an’ me an’ six kiddies to fend for ourselves. Haven’t you thought about that, Polly?’

‘Yes,’ Polly said. ‘God, yes, of course I have.’

‘So what are you gonna do about it?’

‘What do you suggest?’ Polly said.

‘Sell out,’ said Babs. ‘As soon as the boys are gone, sell out.’

‘Sell out what, though?’

‘Everything we can lay our hands on, you an’ me together.’

‘Sell out to whom? I mean, who’d buy from us on a buyer’s market?’

‘I’ve thought of that too,’ said Babs.

‘Who then?’

‘John Flint.’

And Polly, wide awake, said, ‘Yes.’

*   *   *

‘I have reason to believe,’ said Kenny, ‘that your wife’s first husband is still alive.’

Bernard felt his heart lurch and a wave of nausea rise from the region of his stomach. He had been seated in Shakespeare’s chair, trying to pretend that he was entirely unruffled by the sergeant’s arrival. He’d expected questions, of course, questions about the operation of Lyons & Lloyd’s and Dominic’s other business interests, perhaps about Rosie, Rosie’s past, Rosie’s infirmity, but he hadn’t expected this sudden shattering blow. He put his hand to his mouth, clenched his fist, and gawked, bug-eyed, at the Highlander.

‘Not only still alive, Mr Peabody, but actually back in this country.’

‘How – how…’

‘How do we know?’

Bernard managed to nod.

‘Are you all right, sir,’ Kenny said. ‘You look terrible.’

Bernard managed to nod again.

‘I shouldn’t have come right out with it, should I?’ Kenny said. ‘I didn’t know what else to do, you see, who else to turn to.’

‘G-go on,’ Bernard whispered. ‘Tell me what you’ve f-found out.’

‘Well, I haven’t located the gentleman in question,’ said Kenny.

‘Then h-how can you be sure it is Frank Conway?’

‘Can’t,’ said Kenny. ‘That’s why I’m here.’

Bernard slid his arms on to the desk. In the office outside one of the telephones was ringing, distant and detached. Sandra would fend off the caller for, like most girls of her class, she had inordinate respect for the forces of law and order and would ensure that he and the policeman were not disturbed. The thought glided past almost unnoticed as he slumped across the desk, heart thumping and a hand still clamped to his mouth. Kenny shifted uncomfortably in an upright chair, embarrassed by his victim’s distress.

Bernard tried to collect himself, to square up to the possibility that the detective was in effect a sadist, that there was no substance to the rumour that Frank Conway had returned from the dead.

‘I take it you don’t have Conway under arrest?’ Bernard said.

‘I wish we did.’ Shaking his head, Kenny revised his statement. ‘No, that’s not true. It’s probably just as well that we haven’t caught him yet. If and when we do lay hands on him we’ll need positive identification and that’ll mean approaching Mrs Con – Mrs Peabody, I mean.’

Bernard lifted his head a little. ‘You want me to break the news, is that it?’

‘Lord, no,’ Kenny said. ‘I don’t want anyone to break the news to – well, to anyone.’

‘Least of all to Rosie?’ Bernard sat up. ‘Is that why you’ve come to me first?’

‘Yes,’ Kenny said. ‘I don’t want Rosie blaming me for her father’s arrest.’

‘What’s he supposed to have done?’ Bernard said.

Kenny glanced down at his hands folded in his lap. ‘I thought you might be in a position to tell me.’

‘Well, I’m not,’ said Bernard.

‘Did you know him?’

‘Nope, never met the man in my life. He was long gone before I encountered Lizzie and her girls.’

‘So you wouldn’t recognise him if you saw him?’

‘Wouldn’t know him from Adam.’ Bernard was breathing more easily now and his heart had returned to its normal rhythm. ‘Are you absolutely certain the chap you’re chasing is Frank Conway?’

‘Almost certain.’

‘Who gave you the lead? Who recognised him?’

Kenny hesitated. ‘Janet McKerlie.’

‘Janet! She hasn’t been in touch for years. Wanted nothing to do with us after her mother died. How in God’s name did Janet get mixed up in all this?’

‘We’re more thorough in the CID than you give us credit for,’ Kenny said. ‘Perhaps you’ve met Conway without knowing it. I’ll show you a photograph, see what you make of it.’

The photograph was produced, examined, returned.

‘Sorry,’ Bernard said. ‘Never met him. That’s the truth.’

‘What about this lady?’

Kenny placed the photograph of the girl on the desk.

Bernard didn’t have the inbred shutter-like defence that the Italians had perfected. He could not help but blink. He knew the policeman was watching him closely and did his level best to remain inscrutable – but it was too late.

Kenny said, ‘You do know her, don’t you, Bernard?’

‘I – I don’t know her name.’

‘Do you know where we can find her?’

‘What’s she got to do with Conway?’

‘We’ve reason to believe that she’s his wife.’

‘What!’

‘Hmmm,’ Kenny said. ‘Complicated, isn’t it?’

‘God in Heaven!’ Bernard said. ‘Complicated isn’t the word for it. Are you telling me that Frank Conway got married again. If he’s still in the land of the living he’s still officially married to my Lizzie. It was assumed he’d joined the army and had been killed in the war. Lizzie couldn’t prove it, though, for there was no record of him with any of the regiments.’ Bernard reached for the snapshot. ‘Is that moustache genuine?’

‘We believe it might be.’

‘You don’t seem exactly sure of anything, do you? I mean, it’s all “we believe this, we believe that”. Just how much do you have on Conway? And what’s he doing back in Scotland? If this young filly is Conway’s wife then I doubt very much if he’s come back to reclaim Lizzie.’

‘Where did you meet the girl?’ Kenny asked.

‘I only saw her once.’

‘When?’

‘Week or two before Christmas.’

‘With Dominic?’

He was cornered. He had to decide very quickly what would wash with the facts that MacGregor already had in his possession. He couldn’t put Rosie and Lizzie out of his mind, though, the dreadful effect that the news would have upon them. He had never doubted that Lizzie loved him, didn’t doubt that she would continue to love him, but if Frank Conway wasn’t dead, if Frank Conway was liable to stroll into their lives at any moment …

‘Yes, with Dominic,’ Bernard heard himself say.

‘Where did this meeting take place?’

‘He brought her here, a week or two before Christmas.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. He just did.’

‘How did he introduce her?’ Kenny said.

‘He didn’t. He just said that she was a friend.’

‘Did he have any conversation with Mr Shakespeare?’

‘No, Allan was out at the time.’

‘I see,’ Kenny said. ‘Dominic arrived here with the girl, brought her into the office, didn’t introduce you, and left again?’

‘Yes, that’s exactly what happened.’

‘How did he travel to Breslin?’

‘By – by motorcar,’ Bernard said. ‘I think.’

‘Did you see the motorcar?’

‘No.’

‘So you don’t know if anyone else was with them in the car?’

‘No.’

‘Tony Lombard, say?’

Bernard shook his head.

Kenny said, ‘What did Manone really want? A house, a property? Did you find one for him, Bernard? Did you offer him one off the books?’

‘No,’ Bernard said. ‘No, no.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Kenny said, ‘but I don’t think you’re telling the truth.’

‘I am, I am,’ said Bernard. ‘What reason have I got to lie?’

‘Plenty of reason. For one thing, you work for Dominic Manone.’

‘Hold on, hold on,’ Bernard said. ‘I mean, for God’s sake, you come waltzin’ in here, tell me my marriage is liable to go up in smoke and Rosie is liable to find out she’s got a crook for a father…’

‘She’s already got a crook for a brother-in-law,’ Kenny put in.

‘No,’ Bernard said. ‘No, no, no, no. I know where my loyalties lie. If it comes to protecting Lizzie and her girls or Dominic Manone then there’s no question, no question at all, which way I’ll go.’ He sat up straight, palms pressed down on the desk. ‘I’m not the only one in a cleft stick, am I? I think that’s why you’ve come here to see me on your own. You haven’t told your bosses in the CID about Conway yet, have you, Kenny?’

‘He calls himself Harker now.’

‘Harker, huh!’

‘Edgar Harker,’ Kenny said. ‘He’s been one of Carlo Manone’s henchmen in Philadelphia for years. Whether he fought in the war or whether he didn’t is something we haven’t discovered. We’ve asked the Philadelphia police department and the Federal Bureau in Washington to post us anything they may have on Harker. We’ll know more about him when the information arrives, probably.’

‘Rosie will hate you for doing this to her.’

‘I know,’ Kenny said. ‘You’re right, Bernard. I haven’t told anyone in the office who Harker really is. If – and it’s a long shot – if I can get him out of Scotland, have him arrested elsewhere, then none of it may come out. Trouble is that Harker and Dominic Manone are working hand in glove and our department’s under terrible pressure to put a stop to their activities.’

‘I don’t know anything about that,’ Bernard said.

‘It isn’t a local matter,’ Kenny said. ‘It’s a Home Office issue.’

‘Home Office?’

‘A matter of security.’

‘I don’t follow you,’ Bernard said.

‘We have reason to believe – sorry, but we do – that Dominic’s working for or with the man who used to be Frank Conway.’

‘And who’s Conway working for?’

‘Hitler,’ Kenny said.

‘Hitler?’ Bernard said. ‘Come on!’

‘Or one of his Nazi cohorts,’ Kenny said. ‘Now do you see my problem?’

‘Oh, aye,’ said Bernard. ‘I do.’

*   *   *

Over the curve of the field just where it ran into moorland a band of cornflower-blue sky had opened up in the cloud cover. Later in the evening there would be a sunset worth watching, one of those brooding, melancholy explosions of crimson and orange that might lead you to suppose that Arran’s dormant volcanoes had surged awake to spew lava into the Firth and shoot great gouts of fiery trash into the heavens above Clydebank. From the attic skylight Tony would look out at the spectacle, would wonder if Polly was watching too or if, as she often did, she’d had the maid close the curtains early.

He walked out with Penny only because he didn’t trust her, not when she had the .22 tucked under her arm and her trousers stuffed into the tops of a pair of his woollen stockings and galoshettes flapping on her big, inelegant feet.

She was, he reckoned, such an eccentric sight that any nosy official from the Civil Defence squadron in Hardgate who happened to be wandering in the area wouldn’t forget her in a hurry or be inclined to swallow whatever tale she told him to explain what she was doing on Blackstone Farm.

He accompanied her over the cobbles of the yard, through the gate and into the wet, empty pasture, walking not by but behind her. Only when they were out of range of the farmhouse did she break step and, loitering, wait for him to catch up and, as he had feared she would, held out her hand.

The gun butt was pressed against her breast, stock cradled in her right hand. In that pose she looked every inch a hunter. He could just imagine her out with the menfolk in search of wild goats or boar in the wooded country north of Barga that his old man had told him about.

‘Do you not want to take my hand, Tony?’

‘Not when you’re waving that gun about.’

‘I am not waving it about. Take my hand.’

He felt like a fool, a cheat, but took her hand none the less.

She wore mittens, clumsy hand-knitted things that covered her palms and wrists but left her fingers bare. She took his hand firmly and when she had it in her grasp, crooked her forefinger and tickled his palm, scratched the ball at the base of his thumb with her fingernail. She leaned against him, rubbed against him like a cat, like Frobisher when Giffard put out the food bowl.

‘What is wrong? Why are you so tense, darling?’

‘I’m tired, that’s all.’

‘Did you not enjoy me?’ Penny asked, still rubbing.

He didn’t have the gall to answer her honestly. He was afraid of her or, rather, he was afraid of the effect that she had on him. He wanted to explore that sleek, elongated body, to make her writhe and beg him to stop, to prove who was master. But he could never be Penny Weston’s master, not when he was in love with Polly Manone. He knew now that the urgent lovemaking to which he had subjected Polly was only an apology for love and that Polly had touched him in a way that this girl, any girl, no matter how sleek and beautiful and willing, could not.

‘I made a mistake,’ Tony said. ‘Last night was a mistake.’

He tried to pull away but she held on tightly.

‘I am a mistake? What happened was a mistake?’

‘Yeah.’

She pouted for an instant, then laughed.

‘Are you saying to me that it will not happen again?’

‘Yeah, I am.’

‘Is it because you are not in love with me you think what we did was wrong?’

‘I didn’t say it was wrong, just…’

‘The mask, you liked it with the mask, did you not?’

He tugged his hand from hers. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘We’ve a job to do here, both of us. I can’t cope with distractions.’

‘Hoh! Am I a distraction now? I’ve never been called a distraction before.’

Four strands of wire separated the pasture from a strip of ploughed ground. The acreage, turned in the autumn, had been left to weather and the furrows, marled by rain and frost, swooped down into a plantation of young firs that gave protection from the biting east winds. Above the tree line the sky was waxing, the cornflower-blue patch expanding.

‘You do not love me.’ Penny pouted again.

‘Of course I don’t bloody love you.’

‘I will put on my mask for gas and then you will love me?’

‘No,’ Tony said.

She adjusted the rifle, arched her back a little, offered her cheek. ‘Not even one small kiss for me, here, where no one can see us?’

‘I told you. It was a mistake.’

‘I will catch you out.’ She pivoted on the rubber heels and leaned all her weight against the sagging fence, careful with the gun, though, always careful with the gun. ‘If I come to you tonight, when you are dreaming of someone else, will I not catch you out?’

‘Be careful, Penny,’ Tony said.

‘There is someone else, am I not right?’

‘None of your damned business. Just because we…’

‘What? What do you call it? What name do you have for what we did together?’

‘You’ve got more names for it than I have, I reckon,’ Tony said.

He was tense: Penny was right about that. Being with her in open country with nothing but the rooftops of the farm building showing, he felt more vulnerable than ever. As a rule he was relaxed with women – except in the bedroom. He had never been casual about his performance in the bedroom, had never left a woman wanting more, never left them in tears. He might be more man than gentleman but he had never deliberately hurt a woman in his life.

Now he was hurting, hurting bad. He wanted Polly, to see her smile, hear her laugh, feel her slender arms about him, her small hard breasts pressing against him; not to use her, not to prove himself, not to count out her climaxes like loose change, but just to hold and protect her, assure her that he’d be there when she wakened in the darkness and needed him to keep her safe.

‘I know all sorts of names for it,’ Penny said. ‘Love is not one of them.’

‘I didn’t figure it would be,’ Tony said.

‘I doesn’t matter,’ the girl said. ‘I do not mind if you do not love me.’

‘No, but I do.’

She smiled, a sly, secretive sort of smile.

‘You are in love with someone else,’ she said. ‘I think you are in love with Dominic’s wife.’

‘You’ve got some imagination, kid,’ Tony told her.

She bounced a little on wire, making the strands whirr and sing between the rotting posts. ‘Does Dominic know?’

‘It would never cross his mind,’ Tony said, ‘because there’s nothing to it.’

‘I am guessing,’ the girl said. ‘I guess that he would kill you if he found out that you were in love with his wife? He is Italian and you are Italian so he would feel entitled to kill you for betraying him. It is just like the opera, is it not, with all that loving and killing?’

‘You’re nuts, Penny, do you know that?’

‘So I can ask him, can I? Ask Dominic about his wife? What will he tell me? That she is faithful, that she adores him, that she is the mother of his three lovely children and would never betray him with another man?’

‘Two,’ Tony said, ‘just two children. And I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.’

‘I would like some of that,’ the girl said.

‘What? Children?’

‘To be loved – just a little bit, to be loved,’ Penny said. ‘Perhaps I will ask Dominic to tell you to love me the way you love his wife. You will do as he tells you to do, will you not, darling? It will make me happy just to pretend.’

‘Won’t going back home with forty or fifty thousand dollars in your luggage make you happy?’

‘Oh, I will have that too,’ Penny said. She moved closer, sliding along the wire until she was almost beneath him. ‘Maybe I will not have to ask Dominic for the other thing. Maybe you will give it to me without asking.’

‘And maybe I won’t,’ said Tony.

She pushed herself upright, adjusting the angle of the rifle once more.

Even in the scruffy outfit and ugly rubber boots, she had a unique, dangerous quality that in the filament of sunlight appeared almost wicked; then Tony realised that she was no longer looking at him. She was looking past him. Swinging round, he saw the hare limping across the crown of the pasture, just as the girl raised the rifle and fired. He heard the shot ring out, ring away into the distance, its echoes muffled by the trees.

The hare rose on its hind legs, sleek and slender ears cocked, fore paws bunched daintily at its breast; close enough for Tony to read its startled expression, one sad eye rolling as it caught the scent of its own impending death.

He heard her fire again.

She was rock steady, disciplined, light and smiling.

The hare swivelled in the air, flopped and lay struggling on its back, its long body bowed, its paws kicking ineffectually.

Penny ran towards it, reloading.

Tony followed as a dog might, lumberingly obedient. He imagined he knew what he would find but it was not what he expected, not bloody, not heavy, not a dead thing at all but a thing still alive. Its neck hairs glistened in the rays of the sun, neck twisted and head raised and in the little soft black curve of the mouth were two perfect prominent teeth, so pathetic, so beseeching that he felt as if the bullet had entered his belly and the sticky star of blood on the fur was his blood too.

The girl planted the heel of her boot on the hare’s hind legs and, leaning back to find an angle, fired a final shot into the head.

She shouldered the rifle and knelt, lifted the corpse by the ears.

‘One for the pot,’ she said. ‘Big fellow too, a fine big buck by the look of it.’

Tony didn’t answer. He was already walking rapidly towards the farmhouse, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched, his back turned towards the sunset and the cornflower-blue gap in the cloud.