Chapter Eleven

In a more fanciful world there would have been a hidden entrance to John James Flint’s headquarters above the Stadium Cinema. The cinema belonged to a company in which ‘Flinty’ Flint was a major shareholder and the construction of a sliding panel in the lavatory or a secret staircase sneaking up from the stalls would have been easy to arrange.

Johnny Flint didn’t run that kind of organisation, however, and admission to the top-floor offices was via a grand wishbone-shaped staircase that cascaded down into a wide open yard behind the picture house. The stairs were topped by a beautiful wrought-iron railing against which John James Flint would lean while he sipped his mid-morning coffee or afternoon tea and surveyed the wall of a coal-merchants’ dump and the towering edifice of the Paisley & District Flour Mill, as if the atmosphere of black dust and white was both aesthetically pleasing and a suitable symbol for the sporting empire over which he presided.

Flint had Dominic Manone to thank for his exalted position in the great grey netherworld of almost bloodless crime. It was on Manone’s instruction that Flinty’s boss, Charley – Chick – McGuire had met a sticky end some eight or nine years ago, a fact of which only four or five men had sure knowledge, and the police no knowledge at all. John Flint had not been one to waste a golden opportunity, however, and as soon as Chick had turned up dead in an alleyway on the other side of the river he had assumed control of the illegal book and the handful of other rackets by which Chick had turned a dishonest buck, and in the years that followed had spread his interests into the entertainment business, melding legal and illegal activities in a manner that bamboozled even the most diligent investigators.

He had purchased the Ferryhead Rowing Club from Dominic and had turned it into a billiard hall. He had paid fair money for the remnants of Manone’s protection racket and the right to infiltrate the rich, feudal lands of Govan and Ibrox as far to the east as Gorbals. He was, and always would be, a street crook, however, for he had none of Dominic’s panache when it came to socialising with stockbrokers and big-city businessmen. John Flint’s contacts were limited to crooked councilmen, a handful of on-the-payroll policemen and an accountant who could make numbers dance like angels on the head of a pin.

He was sharp, natty, affable and unflappable. He had a shock of steely grey hair that was coifed by a professional barber three or four times a month, and the sort of vulpine good looks that maturity had only improved. Women thought he was wonderful. Even his new young wife, Natalie, was so hypnotised by his awful charm that she turned a blind eye to his outrageous philandering and never asked him to explain himself or demanded to be told what he was up to or where he had spent the night; she was, in fact, just grateful that he deigned to come home at all.

Flint was standing on the balcony sipping coffee when Dominic drove the Wolseley into the parking lot behind the cinema. There were few car owners in the vicinity of Paisley Road West and the quarter acre of asphalted ground behind the Stadium provided no cover for nosy coppers. For the most part it lay empty, save for Johnny’s private transport and a couple of small delivery vans.

‘Dom,’ he called out. ‘By God, you’re a sight for sore eyes. Come up, for God’s sake, man, come on up and let me take a look at you.’

They hugged at the top of the staircase and moved out of the damp January air through the big double-door that gave access to the offices.

Although it was still early afternoon the cinema had commenced its matinee performance and a mutter of gun-fire and thundering hooves and the ebb and flow of panic-stricken music filtered up into the office’s carpeted corridor. In dockets and alcoves clerkesses were busy at typewriters and smart, Brylcreemed young men were hammering away on comptometers. In a shuttered office just outside Flint’s private suite two well-groomed young women were managing a teleprinter, and the overall impression was one of clean-cut commercial endeavour, though who or what shady connections lurked at the end of the telephone wires was anyone’s guess.

Still carrying his coffee cup, Flint ushered Dominic into the suite.

A far cry from Dominic’s office in Central Warehouse, it was decorated more like a lounge bar or nightclub than a place of work. A massive walnut wood cocktail cabinet occupied half a wall, glasses and bottles glinting. Framed, signed photographs of football players, jockeys, and less-than-leading lights from theatre and film crammed every available inch of space. Pride of place was accorded to an enormous painting in the Landseer tradition of a greyhound – Half Way Home – posed on a rock at the top of a misty mountain, though what the animal might be seeking at that altitude Dominic could not imagine.

Flint’s desk, a great flying wing fashioned from exotic hardwoods, seemed to come at you out of the light from the window, a glazed and tinted masterpiece that must have cost Flint more than a Clydeside riveter could earn in a lifetime. Standing behind the desk, as if he, not Flint, owned the place, was Edgar Harker, looking implacably American in a black alpaca overcoat and a suit with stripes so broad that you could have driven a tramcar along them.

There was, Dominic realised, a disturbing similarity between Harker and Flint, not so much in appearance as demeanour; a cocky, arrogant, superior manner that Johnny managed to make work for him but that Eddie Harker could not. He felt himself bristle at the sight of the little man who, like a pantomime villain, was stroking his moustache, and grinning.

‘Surprise!’ Edgar Harker said. ‘Surprise, eh what?’

‘You know Eddie, of course?’ John Flint said.

‘Of course,’ said Dominic. ‘I thought this was to be a private meeting, John?’

‘No secrets from Eddie,’ Flint said. ‘Right, m’boy?’

‘Right you are,’ said Harker. ‘I’ve just arrived myself, in fact.’

Dominic tossed his hat on to a padded banquette that filled a corner under the big painting. He took out and lit a small cigar, blew smoke, while Flint made the long trip around the desk and seated himself in an armchair.

Harker remained positioned at Flint’s right hand.

‘Where have you just arrived from?’ Dominic said. ‘Hull, by any chance?’

‘Don’t be so bloody sniffy, Dom,’ said Harker. ‘You got all I promised you.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me about Guido?’

‘Didn’t know about Guido.’

‘What’s happened to my aunt?’

‘Teresa?’ Harker said. ‘She’s gone to stay with Benedetta.’

‘Who the hell is Benedetta?’

‘Her younger sister. Surprised you didn’t know that. She’ll be safe as houses with Benedetta,’ Harker said. ‘Benny’s boys are both army officers.’

‘Where?’

‘In Roma.’

‘I didn’t even know Teresa had a sister in Rome.’

‘Lots of things you don’t know, son,’ Harker said. ‘Lots of thing you really should try t’ catch up on. Pronto, pronto.’

‘I hate to interrupt this family reunion’ Flint said, ‘but time’s money an’ it’s money we’ve come here to discuss. Dom, did you bring me a sample?’

‘A sample of what?’

‘The counterfeit notes you want me to put through the system.’

Dominic studied the end of his cigar and shifted his weight from one foot to the other, not awkwardly but in the manner of a boxer who might be called upon to weave and duck defensively.

At length he said, ‘Just how much has friend Harker told you?’

‘Pretty well everything,’ Johnny Flint answered.

‘Pretty well everything,’ Dominic said. ‘Then that’s pretty well more than he’s told me. How come you got involved before I did, Johnny? It was presented to me as an open and shut job – and my show.’

‘Nope, it was never your job to handle distribution, Dominic,’ Harker said. ‘You print the goddamn things and we channel them through the system. That was the deal your old man laid out for you, wasn’t it?’

‘Who’s “we”?’ Dominic said. ‘And what “system” are we talking about?’

‘That don’t concern you,’ Edgar Harker said.

‘Hang on,’ Dominic said. ‘The agreement was that I would manage the production of the notes for twenty-five per cent of market value. My old man told me I’d be expected to finance the management and distribution and…’

‘Not distribution,’ Harker said. ‘That’s always gonna be our pigeon.’

‘So how do I get paid, on what reckoning?’ Dominic said. ‘Face value?’

‘Hell no!’ Harker said. ‘That’d be far too much. You’ll get what you were promised, son, which is twenty-five per cent of sale value of each run.’

‘And you’ll tell me what each run has fetched?’ said Dominic.

‘Prices are gonna vary,’ Harker said. ‘I mean, that’s obvious. We sell down through a friend like Johnny here an’ the price will be lower than if we trade through the foreign exchanges.’

‘Trade in what currency?’ Dominic said. ‘Lira, dollars, Deutschmarks?’

‘Who the hell cares?’ Harker said. ‘Rubles or kronen or even bloody pesetas if the rate is advantageous enough. The plates you were given were top-notch. A lot of sweat an’ blood went into gettin’ you the right paper an’ the right inks. Your old man told me you had the best contact in creation for managin’ the printing. Was he wrong? Ain’t you an’ your guy up to it?’

‘Oh, we’re up to it,’ Dominic said. ‘I just want to know where the materials came from, where they originated?’

‘Does that really matter, Dom?’ John Flint put in.

‘Of course it matters,’ Dominic said. ‘We’ll be running off a hundred thousand face value a month by Easter and the way it was explained to me we’re expected to keep the run going at that rate of production for six or eight months.’

‘Longer,’ Harker said. ‘Much longer.’

‘So what do I do when the paper supply dries up.’

‘We ship you another batch,’ said Harker. ‘Same quality.’

‘If it’s coming in from abroad, from Italy,’ Dominic paused, ‘or Germany…’

‘It ain’t comin’ in from anywhere,’ said Harker. ‘It’s here, a ton of it, all you’ll ever need. Signed in and stored away in a nice, dry, rodent-proof warehouse. You think your old man would risk having an expensive cargo of manufactured paper confiscated at the ports or, worse, turned back like an Italian coal ship?’

‘So,’ Dominic said, ‘I make, you distribute.’

‘Yeah, that’s it.’

‘Where do I deliver?’

‘You don’t,’ Flint said. ‘I collect.’

‘You collect.’

‘Sure,’ Edgar Harker said. ‘Sweet, ain’t it?’

‘I don’t see what’s so damned sweet about it,’ Dominic said. ‘You expect me to stand back and watch a hundred thousand pounds in doctored fivers sail away in the back of one of Flint’s vans every month, then hang around waiting for you to tell me how much – or how little – I’m going get for it. I’m already out twenty-eight hundred in basic expenses.’

‘Take it off the top then,’ Flint said.

‘Is that what you’ve been promised?’ Dominic said. ‘A cut off the top?’

‘Naw, that ain’t what Johnny’s been promised,’ Harker said, a faint threatening snarl in his voice. ‘We hand you a goddamn money-mill, son, an’ you have the bloody gall to bicker about twenty-eight hundred.’

Dominic held up a hand placatingly.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘All right.’

Harker stroked his moustache with bridged fingers and smiled broadly, showing the twisted scar and worn teeth. ‘Aye, you’re Carlo’s boy, sure enough,’ he said. ‘I thought you’d no balls at all but I should’ve known better.’ He chuckled, shook his head. ‘I figured you’d quibble when it came to it, though, so I’m gonna make you a better offer.’

‘Like what?’ said Dominic.

‘Five per cent face value on every cargo.’

‘Five thousand a month ain’t hay, Dominic,’ Johnny Flint reminded him.

‘You gear up to a higher production rate,’ Edgar Harker said, ‘we can cope with that. You make it, we take it, you get more moolah.’

‘Why wasn’t I offered those terms in the first place?’

‘I thought you were,’ Edgar Harker said, shrugging. ‘Must’ve been a breakdown in communications somewhere along the line. Happens.’

‘All right,’ said Dominic again. ‘Five per cent of face value is…’

‘Generous, Dom, generous,’ Johnny Flint put in.

‘… acceptable,’ Dominic said. ‘Tell me, who pays the girl?’

‘I do,’ Edgar Harker said.

‘She’s thinks I’m her paymaster,’ Dominic said.

‘She can think what she bloody-well likes,’ Edgar Harker said. ‘She’ll get her rake-off from me. Nobody else.’

‘Is that all she’ll get from you?’ Dominic said.

‘None of your goddamned business, son,’ said Edgar Harker. ‘Five thousand pounds clean cash money in your hot wee hand every calendar month, that’s your business. That’s the offer I’m empowered to make. Now, no more stupid questions, Have we got a deal, or haven’t we?’

‘Yes, we’ve got a deal,’ said Dominic and, sliding on a satisfactory smile, shook Harker’s outstretched hand.

*   *   *

It was long after Lizzie’s usual time to sleep, but she could not shut an eye. She was worried about Bernard who had been so morose and uncommunicative these past few days that she felt alienated from his affections, though she couldn’t for the life of her imagine what she’d done to offend him.

‘It is not you, Mammy,’ Rosie assured her. ‘Bernard is mad at me for falling for a policeman. But I am not going to stop seeing Kenny, no matter how much Bernard sulks.’

Her daughter’s explanation did seem logical, particularly as Bernard and Rosie no longer walked to the railway station together and one or other would contrive an excuse for leaving early. They barely spoke now and at meal times it was left to Lizzie to scrape the bones of conversations that died in vexatious little grunts or stone-cold silences.

The situation had become worse in the past couple of days. Bernard hadn’t come home until after nine o’clock and had smelled of drink.

‘Did you go for a dram with Mr Shakespeare, dearest?’

‘No.’

‘I just thought I smelled…’

‘If I want to go for a dram with Shakespeare then I will.’

‘Bernard, what’s wrong?’

‘Nothing’s wrong. Nothing.’

Lizzie had no wish to turn into a nag and did not press him further. When he pushed away most of his dinner and refused his pudding, however, she began to fear that he was ill with some dreadful disease that he was keeping from her. Convinced that she had uncovered the truth, she lay awake in bed at night, listening intently to the sound of his breathing, waiting, really, for it to stop.

When she tried to hug him he pretended to be asleep and lay stiff as an ironing-board beside her or uttered a painful groan and rolled away from her, so far away that he was left hanging half out of the bed.

Alone in the house during the day, Lizzie frequently dissolved in tears.

She was even tempted to make the long journey across the city to call on Polly or on Babs but it wasn’t just the river that separated her from her daughters now; the style in which they lived, their sophisticated acceptance of things that frightened her made it difficult for her to confide in them. She didn’t want them to think that Mammy had turned soft in her old age. Besides, what did she really have to complain about; that Bernard was sulking; that Bernard might be ill? How daft those reasons seemed, how feeble. She had no proof that he was ill, only a paralysing anxiety that her silly hunch might actually turn out to be accurate.

Nights were the worst. He and she lay side by side, not daring to hug and cuddle, jerking away when a knee brushed a hip or toes touched as if any sort of contact between them might prove to be contagious.

Lizzie crouched on her side, a pillow stuffed under her shoulder so that her head was raised up enough to allow her to look at the darkened ceiling instead of the darkened wall; the house so quiet that she could hear ash falling in the grate and now and then the hum of a late-night bus speeding past on the Anniesland Road.

She listened anxiously to Bernard’s breathing, heard him sigh, then, shockingly, sob: one sob, like a raindrop, falling into the silence, then another and, loudly now, another. Suddenly her man, her tower of strength, was sobbing fit to burst. She rolled towards him at the same moment as he turned to her. Their arms tangled under the bedclothes and she found him, gathered him, shaking, into her embrace and pressed his lean body against her breasts to absorb his misery.

‘Bernard,’ Lizzie said, beginning to cry too. ‘Oh, Bernard, Bernard, will you not tell me what ails you?’

‘I’m frightened, Lizzie. I’m so frightened.’

‘Oh dear, oh dearest, please tell me what you’re frightened of?’

‘Everything,’ Bernard said.

She was overwhelmed by relief that she was not the reason for her husband’s tears and believed she understood: he was worn out, poor lamb, tormented by worry about the possibility of war: that must be it, and that must be all.

Sighing, Lizzie drew him closer, almost enveloping him. She kissed and patted and hugged him, his head upon her breast, soothing him as if he were a child to whom the world meant nothing, nothing but a mother’s love:

Until, exhausted by her many attentions, poor Bernard fell asleep.

*   *   *

The shop was busy that brusque early spring afternoon and even Albert had been routed from his bunker in the alcove to attend to casual customers. Mr McAdam and Mr Robert had gone off to a house sale in Jefferstone where there were many lots in the library and not much time to price up the catalogue. There had been problems in the packing department and an unusually heavy lunch-time post had come down from the secretary’s office upstairs and Rosie had been co-opted to type out letters of quotation.

She was more than up to the task, of course, and had been distracted from her own concerns by a beautiful three-volume edition of Ackerman’s Microcosm of London, with all one hundred and four coloured plates intact, which Brentano’s had expressed an interest in buying.

She had lunched in that day, nibbling a sausage roll and drinking tea in the bleak little staff room in the basement while the packing department lads squabbled and swore and pranced in and out just to annoy her. She had eaten in yesterday and the day before too. It had been over a week since Kenny had appeared at the shop, over a week since they had shared a plate of macaroni-and-cheese in the Lido Café, over a week since she had heard a word from him.

Common sense told her that Kenny was busy, just busy, that awkward shifts and a full card of crimes had taken him away from her. Common sense also indicated that things between them were not as they had been before Christmas, however, and that now Kenny was practically her fiancé she deserved a little more consideration in the shape of a telephone call or a letter of explanation or apology. She was both annoyed and deeply concerned, panic-stricken in fact, at the prospect of never seeing Kenny again.

Common sense, a quisling virtue at the best of times, finally betrayed her. She was filled with not unrealistic imaginings that Kenny had decided to give her up rather than risk the wrath of his superiors in St Andrew’s Street and that this was his cowardly way of waving bye-bye: or that he had discovered just how closely her sisters were involved in unimaginable crimes: or that he had finally realised that her deafness was an impediment that he didn’t want to live with for the rest of his life, signing and stammering and being embarrassed by her shouting out in public, and that he didn’t have the heart to tell her so face to face.

Even while she typed letters of quotation she felt helpless and abandoned and filled with self-pity, so much so that she didn’t see Albert pad back into the alcove and pick up his pipe from the ashtray and almost jumped out of her skin when he put his hand on her shoulder.

‘If,’ Albert said, ‘you’re going to start cryin’ lass, I think it might be an idea not to do it all over the Rowlandson plates.’

He fished in his breast pocket and found a clean if crumpled handkerchief, handed it to her, watched her blow her nose. He gave her a little pat on the shoulder and drawing his chair closer, seated himself by her side.

‘Is it him? Have you heard from him?’

‘Nuh-no, I huh-have not heard from him. Tha-ut’s the trouble.’

‘Bit early for a broken heart, though,’ Albert said.

‘Yuh-you don’t understand.’

‘Strange to relate, Rosie, I’ve had my share o’ broken hearts,’ Albert said. ‘Long years ago, admittedly, but I can still remember how it hurt. When did you see him last?’

‘Nine days ago.’

‘Did you quarrel?’

‘Nuh-nothing like that.’

‘Then he’s just busy.’

‘He should have let me know. He should have been in touch.’

‘Possibly,’ Albert said. ‘Think on this, though: the tramlines run both ways.’

‘Pa’din?’

‘You haven’t been in touch with him, have you?’ Albert said. Rosie wiped her cheeks with her knuckle, blew her nose once more and offered the handkerchief back to Albert. He shook his head. ‘Keep it. I’ve another one at home. Now, answer my question, Rosalind? Have you let him know?’

‘Whuh-what?’

‘That you miss him. Why haven’t you written to him?’

‘It’s not up to me. I’m a girl.’

‘So what?’ said Albert.

‘Albert! I’m surprised at you!’ Rosie said, more cheerfully. ‘I thought you were still opposed to women having the vote. The fact of the matter is that I do not have Kenny’s address.’

Albert smote his forehead with his palm forcefully enough to create a resounding smack that Rosie, of course, could not hear. She could read his expression, however, and exasperation was evident in his gesture.

‘Call yourself a researcher,’ Albert said. ‘By gum, if Kenny was a copy of First Principles you’d find him fast enough, wouldn’t you?’

‘But I do not know where to begin?’

‘Try the Post Office Directory,’ said Albert.

*   *   *

There had been a special assembly in the police Gymnasium that afternoon which all ranks had been ordered to attend. The meeting had been addressed by no less a person than the Surgeon General, Sir James Wilkie, who had travelled from London to deliver a series of illustrated lectures on the organisation of air raid casualty services. Coloured slides depicted the effects of gas attack and the emergency treatment of victims in such grisly detail that several young constables were swaying in their seats and even Kenny, who had seen more than his fair share of charred and dismembered corpses, had had to lower his gaze a couple of times.

Among the civilian personnel only Fiona remained unfazed. Her blue eyes never left the screen for she found the graphic horrors more fascinating than shocking and couldn’t wait to leap into a Civil Defence Volunteer uniform and begin saving lives.

At the end of the two-hour ordeal off-shift officers sidled away to wait for the pubs opening and those on-shift galloped along to the canteen for a reviving cuppa before reassembling in the muster room. Kenny would have prefered to leave with Fiona, for the lecture had depressed him. He had been summoned to Inspector Winstock’s office to explain his recent failure to pull his weight, however, and trudged gloomily up the stone staircase and into the long corridor where the cupboard-sized offices of senior inspectors rubbed shoulders with the registration and licensing departments.

Winstock was already slumped in a wooden chair, smoking furiously.

He looked rumpled, his complexion ashen. Tell-tale stains of milky fluid at the corner of his mouth indicated that he had been tippling from a bottle of stomach medicine. His tongue, when he opened his mouth to speak, was pure white.

‘What did you think of that then?’

‘Interesting,’ Kenny answered.

‘Interesting?’

‘Well, disturbing might be a better way of putting it, sir.’

‘How did your sister take it?’

‘She loved it.’

‘Aye, she would,’ Inspector Winstock said. ‘I expect she’ll be off as soon as the whistle blows, off like all the rest of you, and I’ll be left here high an’ dry with a bunch of old men and cripples. Will you stay on in the Force when the war comes?’

‘I don’t know, Mr Winstock.’

‘Not you, Kenny,’ the inspector said. ‘You’ll go leaping into the cannon’s mouth first chance you get. God knows, son, you’re a Highlander and Highlanders are always spoiling for a fight. The real battle won’t be out there in Flanders, though. The real battle will be right here on our streets.’

‘Yes, Mr Winstock.’

‘I mean it.’ He flicked a finger over the corner of his lips and removed the tell-tale stain. ‘There will be fire raining down from the skies and the dead piled up on the streets like rats.’ Kenny’s depression was no match for the inspector’s apocalyptic vision. ‘Anyway,’ Winstock went on, ‘the Chief Constable wants to know what we’re doing down in the basement, and since it’s my head on the block, it’s your head on the block too.’

‘Manone hasn’t turned up at the Athena again, sir.’

‘God Almighty! I know Manone hasn’t turned up at the Athena. Stone’s been squatting in the damned lobby for weeks, ogling the tarts and having a high old time. I’ve taken him out of there and put him in a radio van across the street from Tony Lombardi’s flat. And, guess what, Tony Lombardi’s also done a bunk, vamoosed, vanished into thin air.’

‘What about Dominic?’

‘Oh, aye, your friend Dominic,’ Inspector Winstock said. ‘Why don’t you tell me about your friend Dominic?’

‘Haven’t you read my report, sir?’

‘This?’ Winstock lifted a cardboard folder and shook it. ‘This is toilet paper, Sergeant. What’s more, you damned well know it’s toilet paper. If you don’t come through with something more valuable that this very soon then you’ll find yourself interrogating the Irish and running up closes in the Gorbals searching for detonators.’

‘I’ve been occupied with other cases.’

‘Ballocks! Half a dozen domestics. I’ve checked the log. Where’s Manone?’

‘At home, at the warehouse.’

‘Where’s Lombardi then? Where’s the blonde girl? Where’s bloody Edgar Harker who, incidentally, has a file as long as your arm with the Philadelphia police department? A file as long as your arm.’

‘Convictions?’

‘One assault charge three years ago. Dismissed.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Yes, Sergeant, that’s all.’

Kenny tried to control his mounting panic. He was not intimidated by the inspector’s threats, though he knew his performance had been disappointing and that he deserved more than a verbal reprimand. He had been a good constable, an efficient and conscientious sergeant, had carved out a promising career as a detective. Now, at this moment, he was on the point of throwing it all away to satisfy an aspect of his character that he had never known existed.

He had felt pity for the urchins in the streets, compassion for some women and men who were regarded as the dregs of society, but that was a general thing, finite and individual. What he felt for Rosie Conway was quite different.

There was nothing in his experience to compare with it. If only his sister had been more – what? – human, perhaps, then he would have been able to ask her what to do about his troubled heart. But Fiona would only scoff at what she perceived as weakness. She had supported his unprofessional behaviour so far only because she was unclear precisely what or who the department was pursuing and because, he supposed, she loved him in her cold, clinical way. That situation wouldn’t last much longer. He had detected a look in her eye today, a passionate enthusiasm for engagement, for a war in which she could participate and not merely translate. He couldn’t depend on Fiona keeping quiet much longer.

What he should do, right here and now, was inform Inspector Winstock that he had discovered Edgar Harker’s identity, then he would shine again. He would also be ordered to interrogate Lizzie Conway Peabody, however, and to put pressure on Bernard. Perhaps he would even be pulled off the investigation altogether, and it would all be up for Rosie and him.

He had avoided Rosie for nine long, unendurable days. He wasn’t so naïve as to imagine that he could avoid her forever, though, or that the feelings inside him would lessen, that the pining in his heart would diminish. He was in danger of putting his career in jeopardy for the sake of a girl who might be a whole lot less innocent and vulnerable than he imagined her to be.

‘You’re not going to tell me anything, are you?’ Inspector Winstock said.

‘I’m sorry, sir, but so far I’ve drawn a blank.’

‘What about the weak links you spoke of, what about them?’

‘Who’s that, Mr Winstock?’

‘The mother, Peabody’s wife, for a start.’

‘She knows nothing.’

‘Have you interrogated her?’

‘Yes.’

‘When?’ Winstock said.

Kenny fabricated and answer: ‘The weekend, at her house at the weekend.’

‘It’s not in your report. It’s not even recorded in the log.’

‘I did it on my own time, sir.’

‘That’s no damned excuse.’

‘She knows nothing,’ Kenny said again.

‘Are you lying to me, son? Are you keeping something back?’

‘No, Mr Winstock, I’m not.’

‘If I didn’t know you better, Kenny, I might even begin to suspect that you’ve drifted away from the straight and narrow and that Dominic Manone has been making you tempting offers.’

‘Not true, sir. In fact, I resent the implication.’

‘Did you really interrogate Lizzie Conway?’

‘Yes, sir, and…’

‘She’s pure as the driven snow, I suppose.’

‘Neither she nor her husband seem to know anything about what Manone’s up to these days.’

‘Either that or they’re pulling the wool over your eyes.’

Kenny laid the tip of his tongue on his dry nether lip and licked it. It had grown dark outside and the rampage of traffic heading for the bridges indicated that the evening rush hour had already begun. Above the clash of tramcars and the rumble of horse-drawn carts he could make out the piercing cry of a corner newsvendor calling out the headlines from the evening edition.

‘Are you still seeing the girl, the dummy?’ Winstock said.

‘She isn’t a dummy, sir. She’s deaf, that’s all.’

‘You’ve a big heart, son, taking on a dummy,’ Winstock said, ‘and a helluva cheek getting tangled up with a relation of Manone’s.’

‘I think I know what I’m doing, sir.’

‘I wonder,’ Winstock said. ‘I really do wonder.’

‘If you’re not happy with my performance, Inspector Winstock, or if you suspect my integrity you can always have me transferred.’

‘No, I’m not gonna do that,’ Winstock said. ‘I’m gonna give you a week, Sergeant MacGregor. One week. Seven days to bring me something concrete on Harker or the girl or, for that matter, on Manone. I’m sick to death of working in the dark. I need to know just what the Eye-tie is up to and since you seem to be closer to him than anybody else it’s up to you to find out. Do I make myself clear, Sergeant?’

‘As crystal, sir,’ said Kenny.

*   *   *

The tenement was quite swanky, at least by Rosie’s lights. There were no lavatories to stink up the landings and ornamental tiles gleamed on the walls. There was still that damp-dungeon smell, though, that every tenement close in the city, posh or poverty-stricken, shared to some degree.

On the second floor an engraved brass plate told her that the apartment of K. R. & R. F. MacGregor was precisely where the Post Office Directory had indicated it would be. Beneath the rectangular plate was a smaller circular plate with an ivory button in the centre and the words Push Me scrolled around it, an instruction that brought Alice in Wonderland popping into Rosie’s head. She would not have been entirely surprised if the Duchess had opened the door to her, or even the White Rabbit, for such bookish little fantasies calmed her in times of stress.

She thumbed the button, rang the bell, stepped back.

The door opened as swiftly as if the woman had been waiting for her. No Duchess, no White Rabbit, and certainly no Kenny; the woman, though not tall, had a severe and imposing presence that made Rosie want to turn on her heel and run.

She was difficult to read, mouth firm, lips compressed, the obvious vowel almost invisible.

‘Yes?’

Losing control, Rosie bellowed, ‘I am looking for Suh-sergeant Mack-Gregor, Suh-sergeant Kuh-kenneth Mack-Gregor.’

‘All right, all right, no need to shout. I’m not dea … Ah, but you are!’

The frown brought form to the woman’s face, made it less classically austere, more human. The blue eyes were hard, though, when she pursed her lips she had the look of a nun about her, one of the stern teachers at the School for the Deaf. A stiff, laced-collared white blouse and pleated black skirt fostered that daunting impression.

‘Is Suh-sergeant Mack-Gregor at home?’

‘No, he’s on duty. You’re Rosie, are you not?’

‘Pa’din?’

‘Kenny’s on duty. Are you Rosie?’

‘Yes.’

The woman’s frown did not yield to a smile but at least she had the decency to shape her words more clearly.

‘Come in,’ she said. ‘Yes, come in. It’s high time I had a word with you.’

And Rosie, not quite trembling, stepped into Fiona’s lair.

*   *   *

Kenny was stuck, desperately stuck. He had lost the thread of the investigation entirely or, more accurately, had never picked it up in the first place. There were none of the usual leads to follow, no battered corpse, no bloodstains, no fingerprints, no shattered shop front or blown safe, no footprints, tyre tracks or witnesses to the event. There had been no event, in fact, no episode or incident from which Inspector Winstock’s little band could trace their way back through motive and opportunity to collar a murderer, embezzler, or thief. So far no crime had been committed, certainly no crime of sufficient magnitude to attract the attention of the Home Office.

Dominic Manone had been up to his ears in shady dealings for years, of course, and, like his father before him, had sailed so close to the wind on occasions that only luck and a skilful lawyer had kept him out of the dock. He had never had any truck with Glasgow’s notorious gangsters and, though he had employed some thick-eared louts in his day, had never been personally involved in acts of violence. No one had ever turned King’s against him, which suggested loyalty bought and paid for rather than loyalty induced by fear.

Kenny had no doubt that Dominic Manone had locked on to something big this time, something that the gentlemen in London had got wind of. With war looming and Fascist spies under every bed, Percy Sillitoe’s boys in blue were expected to put a stop to it before it even happened which, given the Glasgow CID’s limited resources, was a tall order indeed.

Kenny went down to the basement office which, at that hour of the evening, was deserted. He had bought himself a sausage sandwich from the canteen and, with a mug of luke-warm coffee and ten Player’s Weights, settled himself at the table under the lamp to do a bit of brooding before he signed off for the night.

He hauled out his sister’s typed reports together with bulky files of clippings and translations that she had compiled over the past half-year and spread them out on the table. He munched the sandwich, sipped coffee, and treated himself to one of the little cigarettes to aid his concentration – but there was nothing to concentrate on and no sudden flash of inspiration, no blinding insight came to him.

At ten to eight he replaced the files, dusted crumbs off the table, switched out the lamp, climbed back up to street level and signed off at the desk. The main doors batted open and shut as officers in and out of uniform came and went and the smell of Glasgow on a dank weekday night came drifting in to the hall. Kenny put on his overcoat, stuck his hat on his head, stepped out into St Andrew’s Street, turned right and set off towards the Trongate to catch a tram home.

She was standing outside one of the closes, not leaning on the wall but upright, arms folded across her stomach, handbag clutched in both fists. She did not have the appearance of a prostitute or even a beggar and, given her posture, certainly wasn’t drunk.

Kenny barely glanced at her and would have gone on by if she hadn’t stepped in front of him and caused him to execute a deft soft-shoe shuffle to avoid collision. Next thing he knew her hand was fixed on his sleeve like a claw.

He gave an involuntary little shake, then a wrench, but she clung to him and brought him round to face her before she said his name: ‘Sergeant MacGregor.’

He peered at her in the streetlamp light.

‘Miss McKerlie?’

‘Aye, it’s me.’

‘What on earth are you doing here?’

‘I’ve been waitin’ for you.’

‘But how did you know where to find me?’

‘Headquarters,’ Janet McKerlie said, nodding. ‘Detectives live there.’

‘I could have been anywhere, though, or not on duty.’

‘I waited last night too.’

‘Good God!’

‘An’ the night before. I knew you’d show up eventually.’

‘Look…’

‘Where is he? Where’s Frank?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Have you not found him?’ Janet McKerlie said.

‘Not – no, not yet. It takes time. I mean, for all we know he may not be in Glasgow. May have gone elsewhere, moved along.’

She continued to hold on to his sleeve with her little grasping claw. One good swipe with the handbag would have knocked Kenny for six. He raised his arm a little to protect himself just as a clerk from the licensing office came up behind him, touched him on the shoulder, muttered, ‘Aye, aye, bit on the old side for you, Sergeant,’ and went on towards Glasgow Cross without a backward glance.

‘You took his photo,’ Janet said. ‘Frank’s photo.’

By the light of the street lamps he saw that her face was grotesquely daubed with powder, rouge and lipstick. Her hair had been dyed and waved and dangled from beneath her cup-shaped hat in doughy russet coils. The overcoat, if not brand new, had been cleaned, the fox-fur collar brushed.

He was tempted to break free, run down to Glasgow Cross, hop a tramcar, leap on to a bus, anything to get away from this woman, this parody who, he couldn’t help but recall, was Rosalind’s aunt.

‘No,’ he heard himself say. ‘No, Miss McKerlie. I didn’t take his photo. It’s an old photograph, an old likeness. It came off the file. I honestly don’t know where he is right now.’

A brace of constables came tramping along the pavement. They knew perfectly well who Kenny was but paused none the less to ask Janet if the gentleman was giving her trouble. She answered that he was not and the constables, chuckling at their little joke, went on around the corner into St Andrew’s Street.

Kenny said, ‘Have you had your tea?’

‘I came straight from the dairy.’

‘Is that where you work?’

‘Aye. Sloan’s.’

‘Well,’ Kenny said, ‘you must be ready for your tea.’

‘I’m not carin’ about my tea. You promised you’d bring Frank to see me.’

‘I promised nothing of the kind,’ Kenny said.

It occurred to him that Inspector Winstock might not have a ‘lodge meeting’ that evening and might at any moment appear around the corner; and old Wetsock would not be so readily put off or so easily amused as the constables.

‘Come on,’ Kenny said. ‘I’ll stand you a bite.’

‘A what?’

‘A bite. Something to eat.’

‘I’m not needin’ you for t’ feed me.’

‘For God’s sake,’ Kenny snapped, and without further argument linked her arm to his and dragged off towards the Trongate where he knew there was a fish and chip shop with a sitting-room at the rear.

*   *   *

Fiona had always hoped that her brother would marry a girl of some intellectual capacity and when she first clapped eyes on Rosie Conway she was disappointed and couldn’t quite fathom what Kenny saw in her, apart from an obvious vulnerability that her big, soft-hearted brother probably found appealing.

After a few minutes of casual conversation, however, Fiona began to detect something of herself in Rosie Conway, just a trace of the innocent girl-child who had come down to Glasgow from the isles and who, until then, had shown no aptitude for anything much except teasing Kenny and making mischief on the farm. A year at language school had matured Fiona, though, and she had gone off without a qualm to the University of Wurzburg for two terms of special training. Her father had had to scrape the barrel to pay her fees and Kenny, still in constable’s uniform, had added a few pounds from his meagre wage, but neither Daddy nor Kenny could have possibly foreseen just what sort of instruction she would receive in the shadow of Marienberg Castle on the banks of the Main.

In retrospect it seemed incredible that a man like Max von Helder and a farmer’s daughter from Islay should have met at all, particularly in an old Bavarian town ringed with Baroque prince-bishop’s palaces, Gothic churches and rococo gardens. Max was an officer in the Luftwaffe and had been posted from Ulm to Wurzburg to polish up his English for reasons that he could or would not explain. He was everything that Fiona had imagined a German would be: tall, slim-waisted, blond, blue-eyed, well-mannered and charming. Every girl in the Universität was intrigued by him but he, by his own choice, was Fiona’s friend; just her friend, not her sweetheart, not her beau, not – not then – her lover.

He took her under his wing and showed her all the sights; the Tiepolo frescoes in the Residenz, the cathedral, the sarcophagus of the Irish monk St Kilian, Apostle of the Franks, with whom Max wrongly supposed she would have an affinity. He taught her to enjoy wine, the best Franconian vintages, to fall in love with the views from the Furstengarten, and asked her questions, endless questions, about ‘her country’ which one day he hoped to visit.

He spoke of the war, of the depression in Germany, of the political necessity of being rid of von Hindenburg from the Reichstag, spoke too of the vigour of the National Socialist Party whose ranks were already swelling with young idealists who wanted no truck with Marxists or the Wise Men of Zion, and to whom the notion of Gleichschaltung – co-operation – was not anathema but tonic. He talked quietly, sometimes in English, sometimes in German, talked charmingly, almost convincingly, of the future of Germany and of England’s past, but he did not attempt to kiss her or to put an arm around her waist, not once in all the time they were together down in quaint old Gothic Wurzburg.

Max left six weeks before Fiona’s second term was up. He wrote to her from Ulm, from Northeim and from Hanover. He sent her pamphlets and snippets from local newspapers and, finally, an invitation to join him for five days sightseeing in Berlin just before she sailed for England.

Fiona knew by then that she was not in love with Max von Helder.

In fact, she disliked the shabbiness of his ideals, but two terms at the Universität would probably be the great adventure of her life for she would have no opportunity, or money, to travel abroad again. She was no longer a naïve island girl-child, and had Max von Helder to thank for that, at least in part. She understood only too well what Max wanted and that if she went to Berlin she would give it to him and that he would be too arrogant to realise that she, not he, had set the terms for their love-making.

He put her up in a fifth-floor room in a modern hotel close to the corner of the Friedrichstrasse and Unter den Linden. He took her for lunch at the Hotel Baur, for coffee at Kranzier’s, and to a mass meeting of the NSDA, three or four thousand strong, in one of the squares. There she heard for the first time, and possibly the last, the persuasive voice of one of the party’s twelve deputies, Joseph Goebbels, and observed, with satisfaction and some excitement, the brawling that went on in the side streets outside the railings.

That night she put on a new cotton nightgown, lay upon the huge bed in the fifth-floor bedroom and invited Max to make love to her.

He was cautious at first, then lascivious, then triumphant at having taken the virginity of an English girl. Fiona hadn’t the heart to tell him that she was Scottish and had been willing, and no victim at all.

On parting Max promised to write, to visit her in England if he could. She was under no illusions that he would do so and did not expect to hear from him ever again. He’d had what he wanted from her. She in turn had taken what she wanted from both Max and Germany. She had no guilt about the matter, only concern that she might become pregnant and she had endured a month of anxiety on that score, a nervous, snappish time that Kenny put down to misery at being back home in dear old dowdy Glasgow.

‘Why did you come here tonight? Fiona said. ‘I’m sure Kenny didn’t invite you or he’d have made a point of being here.’

‘I have not seen him for over a week,’ Rosie said.

‘A week? A whole week?’

‘I – I thought he might be avoiding me.’

‘He’s very busy. It’s quite chaotic down at police headquarters.’

‘So he – he has not given me up?’

‘I doubt it,’ Fiona said. ‘What makes you think he might give you up?’

‘Because of who I am.’

They were seated knee to knee in the parlour that adjoined the kitchen.

Fiona crossed her legs and braced an elbow on the drop-leaf dining-table and said, ‘Because you’re deaf, you mean?’

‘Because of who my sister is married to,’ Rosie said.

The girl was not ingenuous enough to assume that Kenny had kept anything back from her, Fiona realised, and was grateful for her candour. It was one thing for a daft wee factory lassie to fall like a ton of bricks for an unsuitable male but quite another for an intelligent girl like Rosie Conway to admit to having given her heart away.

‘So it’s a question of loyalties, is it?’ Fiona said.

‘Yes. I know what Kenny stands to lose.’

‘I’m not even going to ask if you’re in love with him.’

‘I would not be here if I was not.’

‘Oh, you might,’ said Fiona. ‘You might be here because your brother-in-law suggested you keep in with Kenny.’

‘No. I never see Dominic, hardly ever, and I really do not know anything about what he—’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Fiona. ‘But you do see your sister, and your mother.’

‘I live with my mother. What does my mother have to do with it?’

‘She’s the hub of the family circle,’ Fiona said. ‘Where would my brother fit into a family circle like yours, I wonder? Have you given that any thought, Rosalind?’

‘I’ve thought of hardly anything else for weeks,’ Rosie said.

‘And what’s your answer?’

‘I do not have one.’

There was something pleasantly intense about the deaf girl; her need to lip-read and the concentration it entailed would be at the root of it, of course. But there was more, a soberness, a fierce, rather chilling need to have her say. She was no milksop, no yielder. Fiona chose her words with care.

‘Sooner or later,’ she said, ‘there’s going to a war with Germany. I take it you are aware of that probability, Rosalind?’

‘All too aware.’

‘And when that happens everything will change.’

‘Yes, my father has explained it to me.’

‘Your father?’

‘My stepfather, Bernard. Kenny met him at Christmas.’

‘Oh, yes, your stepfather, of course,’ Fiona said. ‘Has your stepfather told you that if there is a war with Italy your brother-in-law is most likely to be arrested?’

‘Dominic is Scottish. He’s a British citizen.’

‘Even so.’ Fiona said, shrugging. ‘Everyone who isn’t a British national will fall under suspicion.’

‘What does this have to do with Kenny and me?’

‘Rather a lot,’ said Fiona. ‘If your brother-in-law, Dominic Manone, is removed from the equation then there’s absolutely no impediment to you and Kenny getting married – if that’s what you want to do.’

‘Has Kenny mentioned marriage?’ Rosie asked.

‘It’s safe to say it’s been on his mind, yes.’

The girl smiled. She looked quite different when she smiled. There was something about her, Fiona realised, that made you want to please her; a dangerous characteristic.

‘Why did you never get married?’ Rosie asked.

Fiona cleared her throat, and said, ‘No one ever asked me.’

‘That is a shame.’

‘It isn’t the be-all and end-all for women, marriage,’ said Fiona, testily.

‘Wouldn’t you like to get married?’

‘I have a job, a career, and if there’s a war…’ Fiona shrugged again.

‘Will you join up?’

‘I might. Yes, I expect I will,’ Fiona said.

She wasn’t quite sure how the conversation had swung on to her problems or if the deaf girl had turned it deliberately.

‘I don’t know what I will do,’ Rosie said. ‘I would not be much use as an air raid warden, would I?’ She laughed. ‘I want to marry. I want to marry Kenny.’

‘And have children?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘And perhaps this is not the best time to be bringing children into the world.’

‘If Kenny left the police force, if he joined the army instead…’

‘Ah!’ Fiona said. ‘So that’s your little scheme, is it?’

Rosie looked puzzled. ‘Scheme? I am not scheming.’

‘My brother might be forced to stay on in the police.’

‘Forced?’

‘As soon as a war is declared, perhaps even before then, a little thing called the Emergency Powers Act will be brought to bear and we won’t be able to call our souls our own,’ Fiona said. ‘Do you hear what I’m saying, Rosalind?’

‘Yes, I hear you.’

‘Firemen and policemen and shipwrights and steel workers and, oh, a host of other trades will become crucial to the war effort and some younger men will have to be left at home to staff these trades and services.’

‘You sound just like my teacher, Mr Feldman.’

‘I am a teacher; at least I was,’ Fiona said. ‘I apologise if I’ve been lecturing you but you don’t seem to understand the gravity of the situation.’

‘I do not remember the last war but Bernard has told me about it. Do you remember the last war?’

‘I was a child, a child on a farm on an island called Islay.’

But she did remember the last war, how her father had tried to enlist and how he had been turned down for service because he was weak in one arm, an arm almost torn off by a bull at the Dalmally market in the year that Kenny had been born. It seemed that a man who could work a team of plough horses or shear a flock of sheep could not necessarily fire a rifle or load a howitzer. Her father had not been dismayed at being rejected and, as the war had dragged on, he had often expressed relief that he had been permitted to stay safe at home. He was too down-to-earth a person, her father, to brand himself a coward for not dying in the trenches like many of the young men from the island. She thought, in the same breath, as it were, of Max again, of the vicious nature of his patriotism, his thirst for conquest, and wondered vaguely if he were even now flying bombing missions in Spain, rehearsing for a greater conflict to come.

Rosie got to her feet suddenly. ‘I am sorry. I should not be asking these impertinent questions. I only came here to see if Kenny was – was all right.’

‘He’s fine,’ said Fiona.

She would have liked the Conway girl to stay, to talk, to provide her with company until Kenny came home but she was wary of any relationship that involved even a modicum of surrender. It was as if she had used it all up eight years ago in Germany, in that hotel room in Berlin, with Max.

She got to her feet too. ‘I will tell him you called.’

‘Will you tell him, please, that I miss him.’

And Fiona said, not sternly, ‘Of course I will, my dear.’