‘Hah! The old story,’ Tony said. ‘The old, old story.’
‘What is?’
‘Waiting for Mr Right. You could wait all your life for Mr Right.’
‘Then perhaps I will – wait all of my life,’ Penny said.
She suspected that she could force him to a decision, for behind his moodiness, beneath his toughness Tony Lombard was a sentimentalist who would not let her go, not if she was carrying his child. And it was Tony’s child. She was eight or ten weeks into pregnancy and had been with no other man in that time.
‘What are you smiling at?’ Tony said.
‘I did not know that I was smiling.’
He shifted his weight, drew up his knees a little. He had a broad chest, hairy but not ugly, broad shoulders too. ‘So you wouldn’t want to marry a guy like me?’
‘A guy like you?’ Penny said.
‘Me,’ Tony said. ‘Get married to me.’
‘Are you asking if I will marry you?’
‘Yeah, I am.’
‘When this is over?’
‘As soon as this is over, yeah.’
‘Will you go away?’
‘We’ll both go away,’ Tony said, ‘if that’s what you want.’
‘It is what I want,’ Penny said. ‘Somewhere far away.’
‘Fine,’ Tony said. ‘Why don’t you marry me and we’ll clear out together?’
‘I would,’ she said, ‘but Eddie…’
‘Eddie? What the hell does Harker have to do with it?’ Tony said. ‘He isn’t your husband, not legally.’
‘You are right,’ Penny said. ‘I suppose you are right.’
‘So you will marry me?’
‘When it is over,’ Penny said. ‘When it is all over here, yes.’
‘That’s good enough for me,’ said Tony and drew her down upon him and cautiously kissed her lips.
* * *
It came as a surprise to Lizzie, and something of a shock, to see Dominic’s motorcar draw up at the kerb outside the living-room window and, a moment or two later, to find her grandchildren on the doorstep. She was nonplussed by her son-in-law’s appearance on a Sunday afternoon, curious as to why he’d come. The fact that he’d left Polly at home in Manor Park suggested there might be trouble brewing between them.
‘Don’t look so perturbed, Mother-in-law,’ Dominic said. ‘We’ve had lunch, if that’s what’s got you hot and bothered.’
‘You’ll have tea then?’
‘No,’ Dominic said then, sensing Lizzie’s agitation, instantly changed his mind. ‘Please, yes.’ He inclined his head towards the kitchen. ‘Where’s Bernard?’
‘Out in the back,’ said Lizzie, ‘digging more holes.’
‘Shelters?’
‘Aye,’ said Lizzie, ‘More shelters.’
She turned her attention to her grandchildren. Much as she loved Stuart and Ishbel she was less at ease with them than with Babs’s brood, particularly Angus whose enthusiasm for mischief seemed more natural than the little Manones’ polite reserve. If she had spent more time with them she might have detected in Stuart a sadness that had no explanation and might have recognised in Ishbel some of her sister’s prissiness.
‘They’re getting big,’ Lizzie said, lamely. ‘Aren’t you getting big, Stuart?’
‘Yes, Granny, I think I am.’
‘Thank you,’ Ishbel said.
‘Thank you,’ Stuart repeated.
There was more discussion about food and drink for neither child seemed willing to give offence by expressing a preference.
Lizzie came close to losing patience for she felt uncomfortable at having her son-in-law in her house without Polly and Dominic’s elegant clothes and polished manners made everything here seem shabby.
She went into the kitchenette and put on the kettle. Though the back door was closed she could hear the rasp of a saw and someone, Mr Grainger probably, shouting orders. She had no idea what was going on and Bernard hadn’t seen fit to tell her. Some new development in neighbourhood plans to thwart Hitler’s bombs perhaps, or an argument about how much of the back lawn should be dug up to plant vegetables.
Dominic drifted into the kitchenette. Stuart and Ishbel remained at the table in the living-room. They looked bored, Lizzie thought, bored with being so well behaved. She recalled the clamorous life of the tenements, small rooms packed with unruly children, noise and fuss and quarrelsome voices, riotous games and impromptu free-for-alls. Though she liked Knightswood sometimes she felt the loss of … of what? Something she couldn’t put a name to, a sense of endeavour and endurance, of energy and rebellion, qualities that Polly’s children sadly lacked.
‘Lizzie,’ Dominic said, ‘what did Bernard say when you told him that your husband – that Conway had gone back to America?’
‘I don’t think he believed me.’
‘Would you like me to have a word with him?’
‘Is that why you came today, Dominic?’
‘Yes, that’s why I came. Also, to let you see the children.’
‘That’s a funny thing to say,’ said Lizzie.
‘I feel sometimes that you have not seen enough of them.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ Lizzie said.
‘Ah, but it is,’ said Dominic. ‘Bernard’s outside?’
‘Aye, he is.’
She watched him open the door and step down on to the mud-slicked path that ran the length of the cottage row. It was, she supposed, as strange a world to him as Manor Park was to her but her son-in-law was too confident, too polite to let his distaste show. She had known from the first that by condoning Polly’s marriage to this man she would in time lose her daughter – and that was exactly what had come to pass. She watched Bernard emerge from a slit trench ten or fifteen yards from the back door. Mr Grainger was in another trench forty or fifty feet away and the neighbours were shouting at each other, not angrily but with friendly raillery. Each had a spade, each had a cigarette hanging from his lips and Dominic, groomed like a tailor’s dummy, stood between them, watching and waiting with a patience that Lizzie found unnerving.
She closed the back door with her foot, poured milk from a bottle into two clean glasses and carried them into the living-room.
‘There you are now,’ she said. ‘Drink up.’
‘Thank you, Granny,’ Ishbel said.
‘Thank you, Granny,’ said Stuart.
* * *
‘I’ve arranged an appointment for you with the Housing Officer of Breslin District Council,’ Dominic began without preamble. ‘Next Wednesday morning, ten a.m., at the Burgh hall.’
‘Housing Officer?’ said Bernard. ‘What do we want with him?’
‘Nothing,’ said Dominic. ‘He’s interviewing for the post of deputy and I’ve suggested that you’d be an ideal candidate. Four sets of references have already been filed in your favour. I don’t think there will be a problem.’
Bernard stuck the spade into the ground and leaned on the handle. He took the cigarette from his mouth, contemplated the wet end for a moment, tossed it away. ‘Am I being sacked from Lyons and Lloyd’s?’
‘Let go,’ said Dominic. ‘Released sounds even better.’
‘Why?’
‘There isn’t enough business coming through the agency to justify the employment of two full-time estate agents.’
‘You’re not closing down then?’
‘No. Allan Shakespeare will keep things ticking over.’
‘Last in, first out?’ Bernard said. ‘The law of the jungle. This wouldn’t have anything to do with Frank Conway, would it?’
‘What could it possibly have to do with Frank Conway?’
‘Or Kenny MacGregor?’
Dominic paused. He was conscious of the presence of the neighbour, Mr Grainger, who was digging away nonchalantly and pretending not to eavesdrop.
He stepped closer to the wall at the end of the communal drying green. Boards were propped against it, the remains of what had once been a sweet-pea frame and a
stack of turves that would be laid over the roof of the Anderson shelter that Bernard had bedded in the ground. He drew Bernard away from the slit trench and put a hand on his shoulder.
‘Fifty pounds in a plain brown envelope, Bernard? Do you take me for a idiot? No, you don’t have to report to Kenny MacGregor. I’ll do that for you.’
‘You?’
‘I’m closing the shop.’
‘I thought you just said…’
‘Not the estate agency, other things.’
‘And you want me out, is that it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Supposing,’ Bernard said, ‘I don’t fancy working for Breslin Council?’
‘It’s entirely up to you, of course,’ said Dominic. ‘I’m giving you a month’s wages in lieu of notice. I want you out of the office by Wednesday. Allan will take over any transactions that you have on hand. The job with the Council is yours if you want it. If you don’t…’ He shrugged. ‘I advise you to take it, Bernard. The pay’s a bit less but the Council needs experienced housing officers and you won’t, I’m sure, short-change them.’
‘Are you sure they will take me on?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Dominic. ‘My friend, Carfin Hughes, has considerable influence in that quarter and he’s given you a glowing recommendation.’
‘Pretty cut an’ dried then, isn’t it?’ Bernard said.
‘Yes.’
‘Has Conway really gone back to the States?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did our friend MacGregor have to say about that?’
‘Kenny has bigger fish to fry.’
‘Bigger fish?’ Bernard chuckled, more like a cough. ‘Not you?’
‘I was never as big a fish as some people imagined me to be. In the current scheme of things I’m a minnow, a tiddler,’ Dominic said. ‘Will you keep the appointment on Wednesday, Bernard, please.’
‘Don’t have much option, do I?’
‘If you do,’ Dominic said, ‘you won’t be bothered again, not by me or by the coppers. You’ll be as safe and secure as anyone can be at this time.’
‘How safe and secure is that?’
‘I’m not a prophet,’ Dominic said. ‘I don’t know.’
‘What about the farm? What about Blackstone?’
‘Blackstone has been sold.’
‘What?’
‘Well, to be accurate it’s in process of being sold.’
‘Why wasn’t I told? My signature’s on the lease.’
‘What lease?’ said Dominic. ‘There is no lease.’
Again the chuckle, the cough: ‘By God,’ Bernard said, ‘you’re certainly thorough, Mr Dominic Manone, I will say that for you.’
‘Will you keep the appointment on Wednesday morning?’
Bernard looked down the length of the gardens. Grainger was still digging, little gouts of clayey soil spewing from his spade. Grainger was no navvy, no labourer. He was a clerk in Simpson Brown’s clearing house; clean collar, shiny suit, tramcar to work every morning; two sons of twenty-five or thirty, eight or ten years to retirement and a modest pension. Eight or ten years! God, Bernard thought, where will we all be in eight or ten years, in eighteen or twenty months for that matter? He was no prophet either yet the long-term future appeared to be as bleak as it was uncertain.
Relieved and grateful to be out of Dominic Manone’s shadow, free of his connection with the fraternity of less-than-honest men, he nodded.
‘Yes, Dominic, I’ll be there.’
‘Good man,’ said Dominic and without a word of farewell went back into the house for tea.
Chapter Nineteen
If Gareth Winstock really had been dead and not merely ‘missing’, as it were, his ghost would surely have haunted no other place, give or take the odd public house, than the basement in St Andrew’s Street for the chair at the head of the table remained respectfully vacant and the progress of the SPU’s investigations continued just as lamely as they had done under his auspices.
Kenny saw to that for he had learned the art of prevarication from a master and had more motive than ambition to delay the case in hand. He still had Stone sitting outside Lombard’s apartment in a radio van and Galbraith, on the hoof, strolling round Manor Park, but Fiona, his beloved sister, was growing short on patience.
‘Are you going to throw it all away, Kenny MacGregor? Is that your intention? You promised me faithfully when you accepted the job that you’d do it to the best of your ability.’
‘This is the best of my ability.’
‘Is it? What happened to the message from Stone that Lombard had picked up a suitcase from his apartment and driven off with it?’
‘I received the message.’
‘What did you do about it?’
‘Logged it, of course.’
‘Why didn’t you instruct Stone to follow Lombard?’
‘I didn’t have to. Besides, Stone’s shift was almost up and I didn’t want to run the unit into overtime.’
‘Overtime! Overtime!’ said Fiona, in her best Lady Bracknell voice.
‘We do have a budget,’ said Kenny, ‘and right at this very moment I’m trying not to exceed it. Good management is very important, Fiona, as you are constantly reminding me.’
‘So are results.’
‘Results will come.’
‘Oh, will they?’
‘Yes, they will,’ Kenny said.
‘You don’t even read my foreign résumés.’
‘I do, when I’m not too busy.’
‘Busy! You’ve been twiddling your thumbs for the best part of a month, Kenny. I’m amazed that Percy hasn’t had you on the carpet.’
‘Percy is otherwise occupied,’ Kenny said. ‘If I’d asked for extra money for overtime, though, he’d have been down on me like a ton of bricks.’
‘My God! What an attitude!’ Fiona said, outraged. ‘When are you going to pick up Manone and the others? I mean, if you were really worth your salt you’d have that damned villain Carfin Hughes behind bars by now and half his high school cronies with him.’
‘Nobody will ever put Hughes behind bars. He’s far too slippery. Besides, he’s a lawyer. Can you imagine the ructions upstairs if we had the audacity to lift an esteemed member of the legal profession for questioning, let alone arrest. In addition to which…’
‘I know, I know: we’ve nothing to go on.’
‘I could lift Flint, I suppose. If you want me to.’
‘It isn’t what I want, Kenneth. I’m nothing around here. I’m just a female civilian who does your typing and wastes time translating material nobody bothers to read. Frankly, if you weren’t my brother I’d resign tomorrow.’
‘Did you bring any scones?’
‘Scones!’ Fiona spat out. ‘Hitler’s trampling all over Europe, Jews are being beaten senseless in the streets of Berlin, the Italians are on the point of signing a pact with Germany, Franco has pulled Spain out of the League of Nations, and all you can think about is scones!’
‘An army marches on its stomach, you know.’
‘Oh, God! Kenny, I ask you!’
‘Instead of nagging me, Fiona, why don’t you ask me why I didn’t send Stone chasing after Tony Lombard and his precious suitcase?’
‘All right then. Why didn’t you send Stone chasing after Lombard?’
‘Because I know where Lombard and his suitcase were going.’
‘Oh!’ Fiona exclaimed.
Kenny savoured a small moment of triumph over his sister. He let her stew for almost half a minute while the ruckus upstairs in the corridor grew louder and Detective Constable Galbraith’s boots clumped on the stairs.
Fiona could contain herself no longer. ‘Where?’
‘Blackstone Farm.’
‘Where?’
‘Out by Breslin.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Printing counterfeit money.’
‘Why don’t you bring him in then?’ Fiona said, glancing at the door.
‘I intend to
,’ Kenny said. ‘I’m going to bring him in myself.’
‘When?’
And Kenny said, ‘Tonight.’
* * *
Two hundred five-pound notes were laid out on John Flint’s desk like a gigantic hand of Patience. Johnny could hardly keep his hands off them and while Harker talked, lifted a note here, a note there and stroked it, smirking, before returning it to its place in the pattern.
‘Lovely,’ he murmured. ‘Isn’t it a lovely sight.’
‘For Chrissake, stop gloatin’,’ Eddie Harker told him. ‘It’s only the tip o’ the iceberg, Johnny boy. There’s a million more where that came from.’
‘A million, a whole million?’ Johnny said. ‘Is that a fact?’
‘Can you cope with it?’
‘Oh sure, sure I can cope with it.’ Johnny looked up at Harker with the most profound expression he could muster. ‘Money, I can always cope with but I never imagined I’d ever have a million quid lyin’ on my desk.’
‘You won’t,’ Harker said. ‘What you will have are consignments o’ twenty thousand, cash value, at a time. An’ listen, bucko, if one note, one lousy wee fiver slips through your fingers, I’ll know about it an’ you won’t see another tosser.’
‘Of course, I’ll account for every penny,’ said Johnny soberly. ‘I’ll give you a statement of price on every packet in every consignment. But the rate’s bound to vary, Eddie. Nobody’s gonna buy more than five grand’s worth from me at any one time.’ He fingered another note, stroking it with his forefinger. ‘The stuff’s so bloody good, though, I reckon we could get off with not scrubbin’ it at all.’
‘Maybe later,’ said Harker. ‘What we need to do first is test the market. We also need to pull in some honest cash. This operation ain’t been cheap.’
‘I can well believe it,’ Johnny said. ‘I’m just glad to be a part of it.’
‘Keep your nose clean, Flinty,’ Eddie Harker said, ‘an’ you’ll make your fortune along with the rest of the guys.’
‘Along with Dominic, you mean?’
‘Yeah. Dominic.’
‘When can I expect a first delivery?’
‘I’m pickin’ it up tonight,’ Eddie Harker said. ‘I need keys to your van.’
‘My van?’ Flint’s euphoria vanished. ‘I didn’t know you’d be usin’ my van.’
Sisters Three Page 38
