‘I’ll come directly to the point,’ he said. ‘You’ve been making enquiries about one of our running-mates, Commander James McAfee Cameron of the United States Navy. I’ve been given the task of discovering why you’re interested in this fellow.’
‘No you haven’t,’ said Kenny. ‘Some clerk in the Admiralty may have tipped you the wink about my enquiry but you already know the answer. You’re here to tell me to lay off Christy Cameron.’
‘Actually, I hadn’t realised you were laying into Christy Cameron.’
‘He’s lodging with my wife’s sister, that’s all.’
‘Come now, that’s far from all.’
‘All right,’ Kenny said. ‘I know he’s some kind of a spy.’
‘The Americans are frightfully prickly about their intelligence sources,’ Marzipan said. ‘They’re new at the spying game and therefore need our co-operation to set up networks and consolidate sources. Cameron’s one of several hundred brand-new, inexperienced agents. Hard-line West Pointers detest them, of course, because they blur the line between civil and military authority.’
‘Which side are you on?’ said Kenny. ‘Civil or military?’
Sandwiched between a double-decker tram and a truck laden with rough timber, the Lancia came to a halt.
‘It’s a combined operation,’ Marzipan said. ‘It may seem eccentric to you, Inspector, but believe me this plan is much more practical than many of the harebrained schemes the secret services have dreamed up so far.’
‘Like incendiary bats and phosphorescent foxes, you mean?’
‘Ah, you’ve heard those preposterous tales, have you?’
‘Hardly more preposterous than encouraging a criminal to fund an uprising in Italy. That’s what this meeting’s about, isn’t it? Manone, his wife, and some Communist guerrilla group in Italy that needs cash to buy arms?’
‘Organised resistance in Italy doesn’t exist yet.’
‘So it’s a pie-in-the-sky project, is it?’
The car started forward again, weaving between traffic in the general direction of St Andrew’s Street.
‘The Americans are hot on the idea,’ Marzipan admitted. ‘Christy Cameron was recruited by his brother, who has, I believe, a passing acquaintance with Dominic Manone. Manone made his initial approach through US Naval Intelligence. In return for his generous contribution to the fighting fund in Italy he’ll receive immunity from deportation, a clean bill of health and all the rights and privileges of full American citizenship.’
‘And his family?’
‘Here, or over there?’
‘Over there,’ said Kenny. ‘The old man, Carlo, and the brother are big-time racketeers. I don’t imagine that the FBI will just pat them on the head and tell them to run off and play.’
‘No, I don’t imagine they will,’ said Marzipan. ‘However, that isn’t my concern. My concern is making sure that you don’t upset the applecart by asking too many awkward questions.’
‘And?’ said Kenny.
‘To keep an eye on our boy.’
‘Cameron, you mean?’
‘Of course.’
‘What about Hughes?’
‘Hughes?’ said Marzipan. ‘Who the devil’s Hughes?’
‘He’s my concern,’ said Kenny. ‘Hughes is Polly Manone’s partner.’
‘Looks after the investments and controls the money, does he?’
‘Yes,’ Kenny said, ‘and I have good reason to believe that Dominic Manone controls him.’
‘Curiouser and curiouser!’ said Marzipan.
‘By the by, Hughes is sleeping with my sister-in-law.’
‘What, Manone’s wife?’
‘Yep, Polly,’ said Kenny. ‘Polly’s the key to this mess. Polly’s the puzzle because, sister-in-law or not, I have no idea whose side she’s on or what particular game she’s playing.’
‘Are you sure that she’s playing any sort of game?’
‘Polly?’ said Kenny. ‘You bet.’
The Lancia bumped over broken cobbles and nosed down a lane adjacent to St Andrew’s Street. Marzipan hadn’t finished with Kenny, however. He halted the motorcar facing the gable of the old Saltmarket bath house, which had been sandbagged out of all recognition and now housed the fire service’s equivalent of a flying squad.
‘Do you have a dossier on her?’ he asked.
‘On Hughes and Manone, not on Polly,’ Kenny said. ‘How do I know that Polly’s playing a game? For the simple reason that she’s her father’s daughter. She’d murder me for saying so but she has the same devious streak in her as the late, unlamented Frank Conway. She lacks the old man’s viciousness but she’s just as self-seeking. Once she sets her mind on something there’s no stopping her.’
‘You don’t have a very high opinion of the lady, do you?’
‘On the contrary,’ said Kenny. ‘If you get her on your side she could be your most valuable asset. She’d make a wonderful spy.’
‘But we don’t know whose side she’s on, do we?’
‘Isn’t that why you’ve imported the American?’
Marzipan grinned and rubbed his moustache. ‘Damn and blast it! And I thought we were being awfully clever.’
‘Do you want to see the file on Hughes?’
Marzipan shook his head. ‘Not necessarily. Now that we understand each other, Inspector, I think I’ll leave Mr Hughes to you.’
‘And Polly?’
‘Hm,’ said Marzipan, still stroking his moustache. ‘No, I think we might safely trust our American friend to bring Polly round. You will, however, tread cautiously in future, will you not?’
‘Very cautiously,’ Kenny promised. ‘Will you contact me again?’
‘Absolutely.’ Marzipan leaned over and opened the passenger door. ‘Just as soon as your dear sister-in-law decides which way to jump.’
* * *
Christy hadn’t touched a camera in weeks. Although he was still being paid by Brockway’s, personally and professionally he was in limbo.
Polly had gone shopping. He was alone in the house when the packet of photographs arrived from Brockway’s. He opened the packet and spread the prints on a clean sheet of newspaper on the kitchen table.
Somebody had already weeded out the duds. Christy wondered if some idiot in editorial thought that shots of pigs and chickens, small children and pretty ladies constituted treason and that Blackstone Farm was really a school for spies.
Ron looked up at him from the table top, wet-snouted, long-lashed, ears cocked, more quizzical than belligerent.
The print had been roughly trimmed but he would tidy it up with scissors to improve the composition and make the pig look even more cute. There was nothing he could do to make Angus look cute. Leaning against the fence, elbows hooked around the rail, Angus looked as tough and sour as a Texas ranch-hand.
Christy gave a little nod of self-approval. He had done the kid proud and the kid had done him proud. The photo would never make the cover of the Saturday Evening Post but it caught Babs’s son to perfection.
Polly too: Polly in her long black velvety overcoat and Russian-style hat stood behind Angus against the grainy-grey wall of the cottage, a hand on the boy’s shoulder. She seemed to be looking straight into the lens but Christy knew she was looking at him, watching him with a degree of admiration that nothing he’d been doing at the time had justified.
Somewhere up in Glasgow he would find a photographic shop that stocked mounts. He gathered up the prints, slipped them into the big cardboard-backed envelope, went upstairs to collect his jacket and scarf, and a full hour before Polly arrived home, set out on the bus for the city.
* * *
‘Where have you been?’ Polly snapped. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you intended going out?’
‘Something came up unexpectedly.’ Christy said. ‘It’s a surprise.’
‘Oh, is it?’ said Polly. ‘Have you been to see Babs?’
‘Babs?’ Christy said. ‘Why would I go see Babs?’
&n
bsp; ‘To keep your options open.’
‘Polly, what’s gotten into you?’ he said. ‘I went up town, that’s all.’
‘You didn’t take your cameras.’
‘Nope, I didn’t take my cameras.’
‘If you’re tired of me, just say so.’
‘Polly!’
She was seated at the kitchen table, groceries spread about her in little paper packets. She had flung her overcoat across a chair and her hat and scarf lay on the floor. When he tried to kiss her she drew away, haughty and irritable, like his ma on those rare occasions when his old man had staggered home drunk. Christy propped the big parcel by the chair, placed a hand on her shoulder and, refusing to accept her rejection, kissed her ear.
‘Jackie goes back tonight,’ Polly said.
‘Are you sure it’s tonight?’ said Christy.
‘I met him at the shops. He was mooching around like a lost soul. He misses the children. Babs had to go to work and April’s at nursery and he seemed so – I don’t know…’
‘Are you angry because I wasn’t here,’ Christy said, ‘or because Jackie’s leaving and you think I’m gonna run back to Babs?’
‘He seemed so pathetic. As if he didn’t belong here.’
‘He’s a soldier,’ Christy said. ‘He doesn’t belong here.’
‘Callous, that is so callous.’
‘I don’t belong here either.’
‘Yes, yes, you do. We have things to do together.’ She turned her face up and allowed him to kiss her, then said, ‘Babs needs you more than I do.’
‘Not true,’ said Christy.
‘No,’ Polly admitted. ‘Not true.’
He wondered if this little performance was calculated to tighten her hold over him or if she was really afraid of losing him to her sister.
She sniffed. ‘Did you call in on Fin?’
‘Uh?’
‘To carve it up between you?’
‘Carve what up?’ Christy said.
‘Me,’ said Polly. ‘My future.’
‘Hey,’ he said, ‘I’m not in cahoots with Hughes.’
‘Tolerance, communication, thoughtfulness,’ said Polly, ‘but not trust – is that what you’re offering me, Christy?’
‘Jeeze,’ Christy said, ‘you sure know how to spoil a surprise.’ He brought up the big square parcel and unwrapped it. ‘If you must know, I went up town to buy mounts for these. They cost me an arm and a leg, too.’
‘Oh!’ said Polly, chastened.
He placed the heavy, velvet-soft grey card mounts before her and exhibited the photographs with which he had intended to surprise her.
‘Gifts,’ he said, ‘for Christmas.’
He watched her expression soften. She glanced up at him.
‘Is one for me?’ she said.
‘Sure,’ Christy said. ‘The pig’s for the boy, but any other you fancy…’
‘There isn’t one of you. I want one of you.’
He was pleased and flattered. ‘What the hell for?’
‘To remember you by,’ said Polly.
* * *
Everyone knew Danny Brown’s, the big posh restaurant on St Vincent Street. Rosie had often passed it when she’d worked in Shelby’s bookshop and had peeked through the plate-glass windows and wondered what it would be like to be one of the elegant ladies who dined amid the potted palms.
When ‘the girls’ at Merryweather’s began planning their Christmas dinner Rosie wasn’t at all surprised when Danny Brown’s came top of the list.
By choosing Brown’s, of course, the ruling élite excluded those poor souls who simply couldn’t afford to stump up seventeen shillings and sixpence for a night on the town. Rosie no longer felt much affinity with those who struggled to make ends meet, however. Ever since her confrontation with Aileen Ashford she had been accepted as one of the ladies of the line and in a remarkably short space of time had adopted all the airs and graces that she had once despised.
What really turned things in Rosie’s favour was the revelation that her husband was acquainted with Sir Charles Huserall. Rosie knew little of the connection between Kenny and Sir Charles, and when the ladies of the line became too inquisitive she simply invented three or four dark little cases that were vague and plausible enough to leave the ladies agog for more.
‘Brown’s?’ Kenny said, when Rosie informed him that she was dining out with the girls. ‘Well, well, you are going up in the world, aren’t you?’
‘It’s my money,’ Rosie responded. ‘I can spend it how I please.’
‘It isn’t the money,’ Kenny said, mildly. ‘It isn’t anything. I’ll grab a bite at the canteen. You go off and enjoy yourself.’
‘I will,’ said Rosie. ‘Believe me, I will.’
Instructed by the ladies of the line, she had learned to assert herself in a dozen little ways that her mother had never dreamed of to keep her husband on the hop, and as soon as the girls were seated around the long table in Brown’s, Aileen asked, ‘What did your husband say when you told him you were going out without him? Made a great song and dance, I’ll be bound.’
‘He said he’d eat in the canteen,’ Rosie replied.
There were fourteen at table. Rosie had been placed in the middle so that she could lip-read the conversations without bobbing up and down.
‘Oh, the poor chap,’ said Eleanor Brough, sarcastically.
‘He’s trying to make you feel bad,’ said Aileen.
‘Playing the martyr,’ said Constance. ‘Men are all the same.’
‘Did you leave him something in the oven?’ Mrs Findlater asked.
Rosie glanced down at the napkin in her lap. ‘I think he may be going to a meeting later this evening.’
‘A meeting?’
‘Oh, we all know what that means, don’t we?’ said Doris Maybury.
‘A meeting with Sir Charles,’ said Rosie.
She had learned to fib without a blush but she was a cautious liar and had scanned the Glasgow Herald to make sure that Sir Charles Huserall hadn’t popped off that morning. She certainly wasn’t going to admit to the ladies of the line that whatever business had brought her husband and the political dreamboat together had been concluded and that Kenny had gone back to dealing with criminals and crusty-faced lawyers.
‘Did he say as much?’ Aileen asked.
‘Oh, nuh-no,’ said Rosie. ‘He can’t say much.’
‘Official Secrets Act.’ Doris Maybury nodded as knowingly as if she had drafted the document herself.
Fortunately at that moment a grey-haired waitress appeared at the table and began distributing menus.
The good old days of slim-hipped young men in green waistcoats and tight black trousers were gone. The wine waiter was a man but he was about a hundred and ten years old and remained unimpressed by a bunch of snotty women out on the tiles. He recommended something cheap and sweet which, after much discussion, the ladies ordered, one bottle at a time.
Brown Windsor, split-pea and cauliflower, beef consommé, pigeon pie, beef steak and mushroom, mock goose patties, potato croquettes, onions in butter – ‘If that’s butter I’ll eat my hat’ – prune roly-poly, American creams, royal fruit mould and a dozen bottles of wine later it seemed that the ladies had buried their differences and shed their inhibitions.
Eleanor and Constance, who ‘rarely touched a drop’, were listing in their chairs, Doris Maybury was in danger of descending into sentimental tears and Aileen was humming carols under her breath. Two ladies, whose names Rosie had forgotten, were kissing each other under a sprig of mistletoe.
Three or four or five glasses of wine had made Rosie’s ears buzz but she was just sober enough to realise that the ladies of the line were making fools of themselves. She thought of Kenny, picking over pie and beans in police headquarters, of her nephew and nieces exiled in a lonely farmhouse in the country, of Mammy growing old and wrinkled with worry about the war, and Bernard, dear, darling Bernard, who had always looked out for her before she’d mar
ried Kenny and embraced independence. Thought of Babs, and Jackie going off to war, and Polly and Dominic and how her big sister had wrung so much out of life and how she had wrung nothing worth talking about. Then, still dwelling on Dominic, so smooth and handsome and urbane, she opened her mouth and said, ‘We should have gone to Goodman’s instead.’
‘Goodman’s?’ said Aileen, blinking her blue eyes. ‘Why Goodman’s?’
‘My sister has a stake in Goodman’s.’
‘I’ve been in Goodman’s,’ said Mrs Findlater. ‘The steaks are excellent.’
‘Nuh-no,’ said Rosie. ‘A stake, a holding. She owns it.’
‘No, she doesn’t,’ said Eleanor Brough, scornfully. ‘The Italians own it.’
‘Or did,’ said Constance, ‘before the war.’
‘My sister is married to an Italian,’ Rosie said.
Silence swept the length of the table like an icy draft and Rosie, realising that she had made a dreadful mistake, fashioned a helpless little gesture with her hands as if to erase her last remark.
‘Where is the fellow now, this Eyetie?’ said Mrs Findlater.
‘Prison,’ said one of the kissing ladies. ‘Where he should be.’
‘Too good for him,’ said Doris Maybury. ‘He should have been shot.’
‘He’s in America,’ said Rosie. ‘He – uh – he…’
‘Wait one moment, young lady,’ said Mrs Findlater. ‘If I’m not mistaken Goodman’s was once owned by one of the Manones.’
Rosie fluttered her hands again. The singing in her ears had become strident. She watched Aileen lay a cigarette carefully on the rim of a crystal ashtray and saw Aileen’s lips open and close like the petals of a dahlia.
She sensed that Aileen was shouting.
‘Are you related to the Manones?’
‘What if I am?’
‘Are you? Are you?’
‘Dominic Manone’s my brother-in-law,’ Rosie said and, broken by her stupid confession, covered her face with her hands.
* * *
‘There, there now,’ Kenny said. ‘It wasn’t your fault. You had a drop too much to drink, that’s all.’
‘I’m nuh-not drunk.’
‘No, no, of course you’re not.’
He put his arms about her and drew her to him.
She had been lying on the bed when he’d arrived home, face down, fully clothed and sobbing her heart out. When he’d touched her she’d swung round with such force that she’d almost knocked him to the floor, then she’d thrown herself, sobbing, into his arms. She was more than a little drunk and when he learned that the gang from Merryweather’s had abandoned her on the pavement outside Brown’s, he felt an anger that was hard to disguise as compassion.
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