Then he switched the torch off and stepped outside.
The gunshot was sharp, not muffled. It rang in steely little echoes between the buildings and left a tingling reverberation hanging in the air. Kenny was on his feet and bounding downstairs before the first crack faded.
‘Manone,’ he shouted. ‘My God! Dominic, what’ve you done now?’ He leapt over the remaining carton and out through the door.
He caught sight of Harker sliding down the side of the van, jerkin thrown open, arm flung wide, a gun in his hand. Then something heavy struck him on the side of the head and he fell forward on to his knees, already blacking out.
The object struck him again, from behind this time.
And Kenny was gone.
* * *
Something rubbing against his leg impinged on his consciousness. He had been knocked cold once before, on the boxing mat in the police gymnasium, but on that occasion had been swiftly brought round by a dash of cold water administered by Sergeant Ridley, his opponent. Now he remained addled and mentally numb. He kicked at the creature that was clambering up his leg and heard a grating Glaswegian voice say, ‘Mind the cat, please. Mind the cat.’
Kenny opened his eyes.
Shoals of pink and lavender tadpoles swam in front of him, scattering when a trident of pain drove among them.
Kenny groaned loudly.
‘Here, get this down ye.’
A hand closed on his wrist, a glass was fitted into his fingers.
He inhaled whisky fumes and without further assistance steered the glass to his lips and drank. More tadpoles, black this time, more little tridents of pain as the whisky trickled down his gullet into his chest.
He gasped and sat up.
‘Never fails,’ the voice said. ‘Raise the dead wi’ a good malt, so y’ could.’
‘Wh – where’s Harker?’
‘Gone back where he come from.’
His head felt enormous but when he probed it with exploratory fingers he found no obvious lumps or swellings. Pain radiated down the side of his face, however, and he couldn’t form his words properly. He wondered if this was how Rosie felt when she lost control of her vocal cords and experienced a weepy little rivulet of pity for poor Rosie. He blinked, rubbed his eyes, looked round.
If he had been a touch shabbier then the wee man who stood beside the armchair would have been an ideal model for a Glasgow artisan. In his days on the streets Kenny had encountered hundreds just like him.
‘Who are you?’
‘Giffard.’
‘Are you the printer? You are, you’re the printer.’
‘Aye.’ Giffard generously offered the bottle. ‘Want another one?’
Kenny shook his head: a serious mistake.
‘Wh-what time is it?’
‘Ten t’ ten.’
‘How long have I been unconscious?’
‘Half-hour, give’r take.’
Kenny struggled to hoist himself out of the chair. His head throbbed, his knees were like jelly. He sank back. ‘I’ve got to get to a telephone,’ he said. ‘Is there a telephone here?’
‘Nup.’
Giffard raised the bottle to his lips, took a tiny sip then corked it and slipped it into his jacket pocket.
‘He – he was shot, wasn’t he?’ Kenny said.
‘Who, who’s that?’
‘Harker.’
‘Nobody here by that name,’ Giffard said.
‘I saw him. I saw him, and he was shot.’
‘Don’t know who you’re talkin about.’
‘Conway then. Frank Conway.’
‘Frank’s been dead for years,’ Giffard said. ‘Maybe you saw a ghost.’
‘Someone hit me: was it you?’
‘You fell down the stairs.’
‘All right. All right.’ Impatience made Kenny’s head throb but it also restored his concentration. ‘I suppose you’ll be telling me next that Manone wasn’t here either, or Tony Lombard or – or that girl.’
‘They were,’ Giffard said, ‘but they’ve gone.’
‘Did they take Harker with them?’
‘No, he left,’ Giffard paused, ‘on his own.’
‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ Kenny said. ‘I can have you arrested as an accessory after the fact, you know.’
‘After what fact?’ said Giffard.
‘You’ve been printing counterfeit banknotes.’
‘Have I?’ said Giffard innocently and then, as if weary of the game, added, ‘Aye, you’ve got that much right. Considerin’ you’ve got the fake plates in your pocket I can hardly deny it, can I?’
Kenny’s hand shot to his chest. He was still wearing his overcoat but it had been unbuckled and unbuttoned. He struggled, wriggling, patting his pockets.
The cat moved cautiously away.
‘Is this what you’re lookin’ for, Sergeant?’ Giffard said.
He held the plates, laid on a towel, in both hands.
Kenny reached out. ‘Give them to me. They’re mine.’
‘I know they are,’ Giffard said. ‘They’re evidence.’ He bent his knee and dragged one of the cartons across the kitchen floor with his foot. ‘An’ so’s this. I mean, you’re not goin’ to get very far wi’out evidence, are ye?’
‘Oh yes, I see,’ Kenny said. ‘What’s in that box? Old newspapers?’
‘Ten grand in new fivers,’ said Giffard. ‘There’s another ten in a box in the van outside.’
‘Harker, Conway, whatever you like to call him, left the van behind, did he?’
‘He departed in kind o’ a hurry.’
‘Whose van is it?’
‘John Flint’s,’ Giffard said. ‘If you’re quick off the mark you’ll find another thousand quid in Flint’s safe at the Stadium Cinema – so Dominic tells me.’
Kenny pushed himself to his feet. The printer was only a messenger whom Dominic had left behind to tie up loose ends and complete the deal that had never been a deal in the first place. He was sure that Harker was dead, the body buried in the woods or, more probably, whisked away to some last resting place where it would never be found. He was sure too that Manone, Lombard and the girl would already be in hiding or en route out of the country. All that was left was a salvage operation. ‘What else did Dominic tell you to tell me?’
‘Not t’ go wastin’ your time.’
‘Pursuing him, you mean?’
‘He gave me this,’ Giffard said. ‘He said this’s what you really need an’ all the rest’s irrelevant.’
Protected by a wallet of alligator hide, the booklet was hardly larger than a warrant card. Giffard handed it over and Kenny opened it.
He knew at once what it was and what it signified: a pass-book for a deposit account in Grant Peters private mercantile bank in Carnarvon Street, London, W1. He saw by the entries that there had already been movements of monies in and out of the account and that the current balance was eight hundred and four pounds. If Giffard’s plan had worked in a week or two that sum would have been swollen by ten or twelve thousand pounds and traffic through the account would have increased tenfold.
‘Where did Dominic get this?’
‘I think Harker left it behind. Dominic said you’d know what t’ do with it.’
‘I do,’ said Kenny. ‘At least I know people who do.’
‘He said if you was to put the twenty thousand together wi’ John Flint an’ this pass-book you’d get everythin’ you need for a promotion.’
Private bank or not, duty of secrecy notwithstanding, the compulsion of law would see to it that Edgar Harker’s contact and his clients stood revealed. If the faceless experts in the Home Office’s secret departments were as devious as they were reputed to be then Adolf’s agents would soon be scooped up.
Kenny closed the book carefully and put it in his inside pocket.
‘Giffard,’ he said, ‘who pulled the trigger, who fired the shot?’
‘Shot? I dunno what y’ mean.’
‘Was it Dominic Manone?’
‘Was it?’ Giffard said. ‘Was it Dom or Tony, or Penny maybe?’ He grinned, showing brown teeth. ‘Or maybe it was me. How do y’ kill a dead man anyway, an’ who’s to blame if you do?’
‘I’ve no answer to that,’ Kenny said.
‘Which is probably just as well,’ said Giffard.
* * *
Polly had eaten dinner alone in the dining-room and had spent an hour with the children afterwards, helping them with a big jigsaw puzzle that Patricia had spread out on an oilcloth on the floor. She was sober enough at that point but oddly detached, empty of all longing, all positive thought.
Patricia had returned from her room about half-past eight o’clock to see the children into bed and hear their prayers and had sat with Stuart for ten or fifteen minutes afterwards, talking quietly to the boy.
Bored by her son’s constant need for reassurance, Polly had gone downstairs into the living-room and had mixed herself a stiff gin-and-tonic and, when that was finished, another. She’d left the curtains open for the sky over the park was a pretty colour, tinted pink and lavender. She had no desire to switch on the wireless. The news that May day had been depressing and a word, an odd, exhilarating, zig-zaggy sort of word, Danzig had cropped up again and again, repeated in the solemn orations of news readers and announcers.
No one came near: not Patricia, not Mrs O’Shea. No one came calling: not Babs, not Mam, not Tony. Especially not Tony.
Polly drank a third tumbler of gin-and-tonic and, later, a modest snifter of brandy to settle her stomach and about eleven went upstairs to bed. She lay down and fell asleep instantly, and when she wakened again it was morning.
Sunlight patched the floral curtains. The bedroom looked uncommonly tidy. Clothing she’d dropped on the carpet last night had been picked up and put away. Her housecoat was draped on one of the antique chairs. There was no trace of cigar smoke in the air, no impingement of sound from the bathroom. She lay propped against the pillows listening to the unusual silence, steeling herself to get out of bed. She did not feel bad. Her hangover was mild, a little distemper of the stomach, a slight ache above the eyes. Gin was a safe drink after all. Who had told her that? Tony, was it Tony?
She swung herself out of bed, put on the housecoat, went out of the bedroom and along the corridor to the bathroom. She used the toilet and then, at the sink, splashed water on her face. She opened the mirrored cabinet in search of the aspirin bottle. One aspirin tablet and a glass of water would remove the last traces of her headache. She took down the bottle, then stopped.
The glass shelf on the top row of the cabinet was empty.
Shaving brush and shaving bowl, the razor and even its stand were missing. The elegant jars of male astringent and hair cream were missing too. Toothbrush. Nail scissors. Laxative. Dentrifice. Missing.
Polly went out into the corridor and ran back to the bedroom. She glanced at the dressing-table. His hairbrushes and comb were gone. She pulled open drawers. Shirts, socks, ties, underwear, handkerchiefs, a leather box of cuff-links, two expensive wristlet watches – all missing. She darted to the wardrobe, threw open the doors on empty hangers.
‘Dominic,’ she shouted, her head splitting now. ‘Dominic?’
She ran to the top of the stairs and leaning over the rail, called his name again. By now she expected no answer.
‘Mrs O’Shea, Mrs O’Shea.’
The woman appeared below. She was dressed in her apron but there was no evidence of flour on her hands. She looked up stiffly, frowning.
‘What is it, Mrs Manone?’
‘Where is my husband?’
‘He’s gone, Mrs Manone.’
‘Gone? What – what time is it?’
‘Quarter after seven,’ Cook told her.
She had assumed it was later, much later, well after nine.
Shocked, she spun away from the rail and into the playroom, through it to Stuart’s bedroom. The bed was unmade, his toy-box tilted on its side, his toys strewn on the floor: in Ishbel’s room, the same. She was running now for all her worth, thumping, clumping barefoot on the narrow staircase. She hurled herself into Patricia’s room on the upper floor, saw sunlight and in the pool of sunlight an empty bed, not slept in or remade, the pinewood wardrobe door hanging wide open, its hangers empty too. She turned and ran down the narrow staircase again, battering herself on the walls, and flung herself against the rail.
Cook was just where Polly had left her, below in the hall, looking up.
‘Where are the children?’ Polly said, panting. ‘Tell me where they are?’
‘They went away with Mr Manone.’
‘When?’
‘Six, a wee bit after.’
‘God! God! God! He’s taken my children. He’s taken away my children.’
‘Aye, Mrs Manone,’ Cook told her, ‘and he’s taken Patricia too.’
Chapter Twenty
The announcement of intention to marry came as no surprise. Banns were read in St Margaret’s Church in June and the minister, Mr Heatley, was thoughtful enough to have a ‘signer’ by him so that Miss Rosalind Conway could share the moment. A handful of dark souls in the congregation muttered that ‘girls like that’ should not be permitted to marry and should in fact be sterilised to prevent them passing on their defects. But for the most part all went well and Rosie, and Lizzie too, were happier than they had been in a very long time.
If she ever thought of her father and regretted that they hadn’t met, Rosie did not speak of it. Kenny’d had a word with her, a quiet, loving but informative word and whatever he’d told her – and what he told her was Rosie’s secret – it somehow settled her mind and, in a curious way, matured her.
There had never been any question of her not wanting to marry Kenny.
All it took to bring about a reconciliation was for Kenny to eat a just a little slice of humble pie and Fiona to take the girl out to lunch and do a bit of finger-wagging. Fiona MacGregor, stern and rather spinsterish, put the arguments for marriage so convincingly that she sent Rosie rushing back into Kenny’s arms to patch up what was now referred to as ‘a tiff’. Some tiff: it was perhaps as well that Rosie didn’t know a half, not a quarter, of what had taken place out on Blackstone Farm that night in May or how cleverly Dominic had plotted to send her father back from whence he came.
From Polly, Rosie learned that Dominic had taken the children to seek sanctuary in America, that Tony Lombard, Dom’s right-hand man, had vanished off the face of the earth and that her father’s new bride had also disappeared. She was too prudent to ask Bernard if his transfer from Lyons & Lloyd’s to Breslin District Council’s housing department had also been part of Dominic’s devious and elaborate scheme to thwart justice.
What she did not know, because neither Kenny nor Fiona were willing to breach their oath of confidentiality, was that Home Office Special Branch, acting on a package of information received from Glasgow CID, had discreetly netted thirteen persons, including five women, who were alleged to have threatened the security of the nation. There was no press coverage of the arrests or trials, but all thirteen, several prominent British nationals among them, served short custodial sentences and were still behind bars when war broke out.
By that time Kenny had been promoted to the rank of Detective Inspector and was involved in rooting out Republican terrorists and there was no possibility of his being released to serve in the army.
The wedding, however, came first.
It was a hot July Saturday, blisteringly hot in fact. The tyres of the hired car in which Rosie and Bernard drove to church hissed on melting tarmac and Bernard, clad in the better of his two blue suits, looked as if he were melting too.
Only Rosie appeared cool, perfectly poised and beautiful in a bridal gown of icy-white satin. The veil draped her brow in a delicate little glissando and her cheeks were paler than the carnations in her bouquet. She stared reflectively out at the streets during the short journey – not at the drab, towering tenements of her girlhood but
at wide tree-lined boulevards – and held Bernard’s hand.
Tonight she would be with Kenny in a little hotel overlooking the Firth of Clyde and would give herself to a man for the very first time. The prospect of lovemaking did not frighten her. Kenny, like Bernard, was kind and thoughtful, and would not demand too much of her. On Tuesday they would return to the flat in Cowcaddens which they would share, at least for a little while, with Fiona. It was the sensible thing to do with everything so uncertain and Fiona talking eagerly of ‘joining up’ as soon as war was declared.
Rosie had imagined that she would weep in Mammy’s arms on the night before her wedding, that the old childish need for security and protection would rush at her out of the shadows. It didn’t happen, though: perhaps because she was the last of Lizzie Conway’s wayward girls to leave the nest and she would soon be Mrs Kenneth MacGregor not poor wee lonely Rosie, the little sister.
She could see St Margaret’s against the skyline, its tall steeple like a tower, parched grass, parked nearby the car that Jackie had borrowed from the salon to drive Babs, the children and Lizzie to church. They would all be inside, her family and her friends. Albert, old Mr Feldman, her teacher, her nieces May and June dressed as flower girls, Angus, in kilt and sporran, as a page. Babs was her matron-of-honour and Bernard would give her away. On the bridegroom’s side were Kenny’s mother and father, down from the island, Fiona, and several policemen, including DC Galbraith who had been persuaded to perform the duties of best man.
There would be no Aunt Janet, though. Rosie had written to invite her and Kenny had even threatened to arrest her and bring her along in a Black Maria but Janet had not deigned to reply. With Frank gone she had crept back into her shell, retreated into the shrivelled little world of hope and habit in which she had eked out an existence for far too many years.
Polly would be there, however: Polly all alone, Polly stripped of her family, watchful now and cautious but still exuding that effortless air of class: Polly with her limousine, her chauffeur, her Paris dress, and a hat that cost the earth: Polly who had encouraged her husband to take the children out of harm’s way, who had sacrificed her happiness for their sakes and who, with an indomitability that was entirely false, would keep the home fires burning and business ticking over until the war was over and Dominic Manone returned: so Rosie thought, sadly, as the hired car turned at the crossing and drew up before the church.
Sisters Three Page 40
