Sisters Three

by Jessica Stirling

  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, dus
ted 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 too
k 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.