Sisters Three Read online

  It was a clear day, the sky arctic blue, as he came up past Bonskeet’s site. Though he had invested heavily in Bonskeet’s he had little to do with day-to-day management. Nevertheless, he was gratified to see villas rising up against the horizon and general activity along the rim of the site where thirty-two trim little bungalows were being erected.

  Smiling to himself, he tooled the Wolseley past the site and a mile further on steered it through the field gate that gave access to Blackstone Farm.

  The Dolomite was parked outside the main building. The house door lay open. In the buildings to the right of the yard there was evidence of construction, a pile of fresh yellow sawdust and four big timber beams that had not been removed. He must phone Bernard and tell him to have the place cleaned up before the machinery arrived.

  He parked the Wolseley next to the Dolomite and got out.

  He expected Tony to be on top of him, the girl to come running out of the farmhouse to greet him and was irked when no one appeared. If Tony had taken the girl to shop in Breslin or Glasgow surely the house would be locked and the Dolomite wouldn’t be sitting in the front yard.

  ‘About time you got here, man,’ Tony said.

  Dominic swung round, looking towards the stables.

  ‘Been waiting for you to show up for weeks.’

  ‘Where the hell…’

  ‘Up here.’

  Dominic stepped back and looked up at the farmhouse roof. The skylight was propped open and in the opening were two faces. Tony and the girl. Tony had a telescope, the girl a rifle. The rifle, a .22 rabbit gun, was pointed at him. Resting on a tiny tripod, the telescope appeared to be trained on him too and seemed more threatening than the gun. Dominic slid behind the body of the car, rested an elbow on the soft-top, tipped back his hat, and stared up at the window in the slates.

  ‘Trespassers,’ the girl announced, ‘must be shot.’

  ‘Cut it out,’ Dominic said. ‘Come down. I want to talk to you.’

  ‘State your business,’ the girl said. ‘And repeat the password.’

  ‘For God’s sake!’

  ‘Better do as she says, Dom,’ Tony advised. ‘She’s lethal with that popgun at short range.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ Dominic said.

  ‘Repeat the password,’ the girl told him.

  They looked, he thought, like a couple of over-grown kids. Tony wore a heavy cable-knit sweater, the girl a pink blouse and an embroidered silk bolero that barely covered her breasts. They seemed ridiculously jolly and he knew then – or thought he did – that Tony had been to bed with her.

  ‘I do not think he knows the password,’ Penny Weston said.

  ‘Nope, I guess he doesn’t,’ Tony said.

  ‘Shall I shoot him?’

  ‘Wing him,’ Tony said, ‘to teach him a lesson?’

  ‘I will pick off his hat, yes.’

  ‘Sure,’ Tony said. ‘Why not? He’s got plenty of hats at home.’

  ‘What the hell’s got into you, Tony?’ Dominic said. ‘Come down from there at once. I’ve got business to discuss and I haven’t got all day to waste.’

  ‘Business?’ Tony said. ‘I thought I’d been retired.’

  ‘Oh, so that’s it,’ Dominic said. ‘You’re making a fool of yourself to teach me a lesson. For God’s sake, don’t be so childish!’

  The rifle went off with a light crisp crack that sent echoes reverberating around the yard. Dominic ducked behind the Wolseley and shouted, ‘Bitch! You stupid bitch,’ and heard the girl’s laughter.

  A moment later Tony appeared in the doorway.

  ‘She’s a bitch all right,’ Tony said. ‘Is this the kid you’re going into business with, Dom? Is this the kid who’s gonna front a counterfeit operation worth a million quid?’

  ‘So she told you, did she?’

  ‘She didn’t have to tell me. Soon as the chippies rolled up and started laying a floor in the hay-loft I figured you were getting ready to store something heavy. She let just enough of it slip for me to guess the rest.’

  ‘In bed?’

  Tony had folded the legs of the telescope and carried it over his shoulder like small field mortar. ‘Hell, no!’ he retorted. ‘Penny might be gorgeous, Dom, but she ain’t my type. Anyhow, like you said yourself, this is business. Big business. You gonna tell me about it now?’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘In the toilet, putting on her face.’

  ‘What was all that stuff on the roof about?’

  ‘I’m keeping her amused, that’s all. We were playing soldiers.’

  ‘Where did she get the rabbit gun?’

  ‘I bought it for her in Glasgow. She’s a crack shot, you know. You should see her on targets. Deadly. She tells me she learned to shoot in the Vienna woods by knocking off woodpigeon. True or false? God knows! This kid lies like a trooper. Hey, I like the motorcar. Jackie do it up for you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He was disturbed by Tony’s sudden loss of discretion. Perhaps he had been wrong to put Tony in charge of the girl, but how could he have predicted that Tony would be so affected by her. Had the long-legged blonde bewitched him or was this some ill-advised strategy that Tony had devised to punish him for his neglect? There had been no such insubordination in the old days when there had been no women around to mess things up. He remembered why he had elected not to run girls and understood why even John Flint had pulled out of pimping: you brought in women, you dealt with women, everything went haywire.

  ‘She might be a fruitcake,’ Tony said, ‘but she can take care of herself. Come on in, Dominic. It’s your love-nest, not mine.’

  ‘Love-nest?’

  ‘Forget it.’

  ‘Did she tell you…’

  ‘You want her, you’re welcome.’

  ‘I don’t want her.’

  ‘That’s good to hear.’ Tony patted the Wolseley’s soft-top and ran his hand down the side panel. ‘Dennis made a nice job of this one? How does it handle?’

  ‘Quick but solid.’

  ‘Good for a fast getaway,’ Tony said and, laughing, ushered Dominic into the farmhouse before him.

  * * *

  Meetings of the Special Protection Unit convened at half-past ten o’clock on the third Monday in every month. They were hardly formal gatherings for the office was downstairs in the basement in St Andrew’s Street and the walls were lined with dusty boxes of evidence of crimes long solved or long forgotten. There was a desk, five or six wooden chairs, a gas-ring, a kettle, a teapot, an array of chipped cups and a battered biscuit tin within which lurked a selection of stale cookies that not even Inspector Winstock’s hungry hunters would touch with a barge pole. Now and then Fiona MacGregor would bring in a batch of scones and a pat of butter in greaseproof paper and old Wetsock, before helping himself to a scone or two, would remind everyone that police work was not supposed to be a picnic.

  Gareth Winstock had a small moustache – a butter-curler, Fiona called it – ferocious eyebrows and the sort of haggard features that seemed to be standard issue for senior detectives. He also had bad teeth and a stomach ulcer, not helped by his fondness for an off-duty dram. He was, and always had been, a worried man. He worried about his cases, his staff, his promotion prospects, whether he would live long enough to collect his pension and what he would do when retirement eventually caught up with him. His anxieties had increased with the arrival of the ‘New Broom’, Chief Constable Percy Sillitoe, who had dragged the City of Glasgow police force into the twentieth century by streamlining the divisions and sacking ranking officers right, left and centre.

  Gareth Winstock had survived only because he was good at his job and, dare one say it, because he was a Brother in the Barns o’ Clyde Lodge where, off duty, he did most of his drinking out of reach of his wife. In recent months his nervousness had been expanded by a brief so vague that he had no idea whether his appointment to the Special Protection Unit signified a career move up, down or sideways, or what would happen t
o him if war with Germany did not materialise.

  Fiona MacGregor was the only woman present, and the only civilian. She had prepared translations of articles from several of the foreign newspapers, mainly German and Italian, which landed on her desk every morning, random items that Winstock and the SPU’s three other detectives would try to fit into the big picture and relate to their current investigation of Dominic Manone and the caucus of Fascist sympathisers that he had gathered around him.

  ‘What are they up to?’ Gareth Winstock began. ‘What the devil are they doing that they haven’t been doing behind our backs for years. Any ideas, Stone?’

  Detective Constable Stone shook his head. ‘Don’t know, sir.’

  ‘Galbraith?’

  Constable Galbraith also gave a negative response.

  ‘What about you, MacGregor? Are you getting anywhere with that girl?’

  ‘I doubt if the girl knows much, sir, really.’

  Fiona pursed her lips but did not contradict her brother. She was a redhead – auburn not ginger – with a milky complexion and a manner that was at best aloof and at worst hostile.

  Five years of language study and six months residence in Germany had erased the sweetness of her native Gaelic and her voice now was as clipped and ‘snecky’ as the sound of the old Underwood typewriter upon which she produced her reports. She did not regard herself as inferior to the uniforms with whom she rubbed shoulders and in fact considered them rather beneath her. It was generally agreed that she must have been a holy terror as a teacher.

  ‘I take it you’re still in contact with Miss Conway?’ Winstock said.

  ‘I am, sir,’ Kenny answered.

  ‘So the bookshop thing did pay off?’

  ‘Not exactly, sir. I mean, she saw straight through it.’

  ‘She hasn’t held the deception against you, though?’

  ‘No, sir. I can’t say she has.’

  ‘What has she told you about Manone?’

  ‘Not much, I’m afraid,’ Kenny said.

  Fiona gave a little grunt and lowered her auburn lashes.

  The tasks allocated to Stone and Galbraith were more mundane than those given out to Kenny. They’d been out and about on the streets of Govan putting the arm-lock on small fry and fishing for information on John Flint, trying unsuccessfully to connect him to Manone. Even so, the list of Manone’s associates was growing longer week by week; Italian importers, restaurant owners, proprietors of cafés and fish-and-chip shops, the innocent distributors of religious statues. Names were dropped, names hinted. Gradually the links between Manone and certain respected citizens were becoming clearer.

  Charges were possible even at this early stage, but Mr Winstock wasn’t after petty thieves, smash-and-grab merchants or pedlars of stolen goods. He could have yanked in the Hallops, for instance, and made them sweat but he’d laid hands on a few of Manone’s minions in the past and had suffered the humiliation of watching them walk free from court, thanks to the ingenuity of lawyer Carfin Hughes. Manone was a prime target now, though. Faceless men in dank offices in Whitehall were interested in Manone, which suggested that it had become a matter of national security, and he, a humble detective inspector in Glasgow CID, had a chance to make a name for himself by putting the fear of God in every traitor, every smart-arsed criminal who hoped to back the Fascist axis for gain and glory.

  ‘I’m taking her to the panto,’ Kenny MacGregor said.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Mother Goose, at the King’s.’

  ‘Who? This girl?’

  ‘Rosie, yes.’

  Fiona grunted again, a gruff sound from the back of her throat.

  ‘At your own expense, I trust?’ Winstock said.

  ‘Oh, aye, Mr Winstock, at my own expense.’

  ‘Do you think a bit of music or a drink at the bar at the interval will loosen her tongue, then?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. It might.’

  ‘How do you talk to her? Can you do the hokey-pokey?’

  ‘The what, sir?’

  Inspector Winstock waggled his fingers in the air, scattering crumbs. ‘The hokey-pokey. Sign language. She’s deaf, isn’t she?’

  ‘She can read lips and makes out what I say pretty well.’

  ‘When it suits her,’ Fiona put in.

  ‘What else do you have for me?’ Winstock said. ‘Have you been through the company registers again? Have you found out how large a slice of Bonskeet’s Manone really owns?’

  Kenny said. ‘He has a thirty-two per cent holding.’

  ‘Legitimate?’

  ‘Nothing to prevent it, sir,’ said Kenny. ‘It’s my guess that if we obtained warrants and combed through every account book Manone keeps at Central Warehouse we’d find nothing. However,’ he paused, ‘Rosie’s stepfather works for the estate agency that Manone bought last year. And that, I think, is quite interesting and possibly significant.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Bernard Peabody appears to be an honest chap. Fine army record, no black marks against him.’

  The inspector sat forward, arms on the desk. ‘If Peabody is honest then he’s definitely one to work on. Have you interviewed him yet?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Kenny. ‘I’m working up to it.’

  ‘Well, be as quick as you can.’

  ‘I don’t want to alarm that branch of the family.’

  ‘No, you’re right. It’s one thing to let Manone know he’s under observation but we shouldn’t antagonise the rest of them at this stage. Do you think you can get the girl to talk?’

  ‘I can probably persuade her to introduce me to Peabody.’

  ‘That’s a start, I suppose,’ Winstock said. ‘Now, Fiona, what do you have for us this week? Anything we can sink our teeth into?’

  Fiona shuffled a bundle of typewritten pages, pulled one out and passed it to her boss. ‘Only this, Mr Winstock.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s a reply from the Immigration Department in answer to the letter I wrote them on your behalf six weeks ago.’

  ‘When did it arrive?’

  ‘By this morning’s post, sir.’

  Winstock scanned the letter and scowled at the officers as if it was their fault that the information had been so long in arriving.

  ‘Harker?’ Winstock said. ‘Who is this chap Harker and what’s he doing in Glasgow, sucking up to Manone?’

  ‘He arrived in Liverpool off the Caronia from New York on the thirteenth of November,’ Fiona said. ‘I’ve a copy of the passenger list if you need it. He didn’t come alone. He travelled with a woman.’

  ‘What woman?’ Winstock said. ‘The woman in our photograph?’

  ‘That’s what we haven’t been able to establish yet,’ said Kenny MacGregor.

  ‘The woman Harker travelled with was, apparently, his wife.’ Fiona said. ‘At least they registered as a married couple and shared a cabin. Constable Stone has picked up on Harker since then, I believe.’

  ‘But not the woman?’

  ‘No, sir, not the woman.’ Stone consulted a battered notebook. ‘On the nineteenth of November Harker called on Johnny Flint at Flint’s office in the Paisley Road. That’s where I first saw him, Harker I mean. But I didn’t know who he was then. He had wheels at his disposal and I was on foot so I couldn’t follow him. However, five days later, on the twenty-fourth, Flint left the office and drove into Glasgow. This time I had the van and I was able to tail him. He went to the Athena Hotel in Glasgow in the late forenoon and spent two and a half hours up in one of the rooms with Harker.’

  ‘How do you know it was Harker?’

  ‘I checked at the desk, sir. He’d registered under his own name.’

  ‘Well, he’s either stupid or has ba … nerve,’ Winstock said. ‘The woman, the wife, was she there with him?’

  ‘No sign of her, Inspector. At least I didn’t see her.’

  ‘Are you sure she was ever there at all?’

  ‘No, sir, I can even be su
re of that.’

  ‘So none of you have actually seen the woman Harker travelled with?’ All three officers shook their heads. Winstock regarded them balefully before he went on, ‘Harker, known to be one of Carlo Manone’s cronies from Philadelphia, steps off a transatlantic liner travelling on an open passport with his wife. What does that suggest?’

  ‘That he intends to stay in Britain for a while,’ Galbraith offered.

  ‘And he’s not shy about advertising his presence,’ Winstock said. ‘At a guess I’d say the action’s elsewhere.’

  ‘With the wife?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  Galbraith said, ‘I think I’ll trot round to the Athena this afternoon and find out if Harker’s checked out and if he has, who paid his bill.’

  ‘Take Kenny along,’ Winstock said. ‘Show the desk clerks, waiters and chambermaids the photograph. See if we can find out exactly who this woman is and give her a name. I don’t suppose there’s even the remote possibility that she is Harker’s wife, but you never know, do you? So what’s our first priority?’

  ‘Find the wife,’ said Kenny.

  ‘That’s it,’ the Inspector said. ‘Wherever Harker’s lady is hiding, I want her located as soon as possible.’

  ‘And watched, sir?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Inspector Winstock said. ‘And watched.’

  Chapter Six

  Mechanisation hadn’t ruined the printing industry after all and any paid-up member of the Scottish Typographical Association should have been able to find work with one of the many publishing houses that flourished north of the Border.

  Drink, however, had rendered master-printer Dougie Giffard unemployable. Now and then he would be taken on for a spell by a jobbing printer to whom cost-cutting was second nature and who hoped to coax from the bleary-eyed craftsman a little of his expertise. Charity was not involved, a fact of which Giffard in his lucid moments was very well aware, but occasional short-term jobs earned him just enough to pay rent on a single-end in a tenement in Waldorf Street, buy booze and cigarettes and, when he remembered, a couple of eggs and a rasher of bacon to nourish his skinny frame.