Sisters Three Read online

  ‘You never seem to be at home these days.’

  ‘If you gave me your number…’

  ‘I don’t have a number,’ Tony said. ‘There’s no phone where I am.’

  ‘I’m not one of your tarts, Tony. You can’t just ring me up and expect me to drop everything and come to you because you fancy it.’

  She hadn’t looked at him yet, hadn’t met his eye. She sat with her head down, picking at the stitching of her glove.

  He had no notion where they were and turned the steering wheel automatically whenever a corner presented itself: somewhere in the hinterland of Manor Park, on a tree-lined avenue among the mansions: disorienting to be cruising the Glasgow suburbs after weeks cloistered on the farm: strange to be with Polly, not the Polly he had yearned for night after night but someone else, someone different: had she changed, he wondered, had he? He glanced at her again. She turned her head away.

  ‘I hate being treated like a tart,’ Polly went on. ‘I hate being summoned just when you need a woman. I’m not at your beck and call, Tony. If that’s all you want from me then I suggest you find someone else.’

  ‘I’m love in with you, for God’s sake.’

  ‘I don’t think you are,’ Polly said. ‘If you were really in love with me you wouldn’t treat me like dirt.’

  ‘I’m not treating you like – like anything.’

  ‘Where are you, Tony?’ She swung round and clutched his forearm. ‘God, I don’t even know where you are? Why won’t you tell me?’

  ‘I did tell you.’

  ‘Breslin! Where in Breslin? What are you doing there?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that, Polly.’

  ‘In that case I’m afraid you’ll have to choose.’

  ‘Choose?’

  ‘Between Dominic and me,’ said Polly.

  ‘You’re crazy!’

  ‘No, you’re the one who’s crazy. You tell me you love me, snap your fingers and expect me to tumble into bed with you but you don’t even have enough faith in me, enough trust to tell me where you are and what you’re doing.’

  ‘I don’t force you, Polly. I’ve never forced you.’

  ‘I didn’t say you had.’

  ‘If you’re tryin’ to tell me you’re not – that you weren’t in love with me…’

  ‘You don’t know the meaning of the word, Tony.’ She let out a sigh and, taking her hand from his forearm again, looked pointedly out of the side window. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘I thought we might go to my place.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Half an hour, Polly – just to talk.’

  ‘I’ve nothing to say to you, Tony.’

  ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Please, let me try to explain.’

  ‘There’s nothing you can say that will change my mind.’

  ‘Is this it? Is it over?’

  She did not answer him at once. She leaned her brow against the side window and he knew that she was weeping. Her tears hurt him more than her anger. He eased the pace of the car to a crawl and put an arm about her, holding her tentatively, hoping, still hoping, that she would turn back to him, beg his forgiveness and assure him she understood how it had to be between Dominic and him. She pressed her brow against the glass, sobbing, as unsettled by his tenderness as if this was the first step in their relationship and not, possibly, the last.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, her voice choked. ‘I don’t know whether it’s over or not. It’s – it’s up to you, darling, very much up to you.’

  He turned the wheel gradually, prowling the Dolomite around a left-hand bend, and knew now where he was. He pressed down on the accelerator and put both hands on the wheel. There was a slow suffusion of gratitude within him, nothing so grand as elation, though. He needed her, wanted her – and Polly still needed and wanted him. He was sure of it, sure that he would not have to go through an ordeal of negotiation to prove just how much he loved her.

  He drove briskly, swung the car into the sloping courtyard behind the block.

  He made a circle and braked smoothly to a halt under the hanging light.

  ‘Come up,’ he said. ‘Half an hour, Polly, that’s all I ask.’

  ‘Is this your answer?’ She was angry again, her lips white in the slant of light from lamp. ‘Is this your only sort of damned idea of an answer, to drag me upstairs and have sex.’

  ‘Polly, don’t talk like that.’

  ‘Is it? Is it?’

  ‘I just need to be with you for a while, that’s all.’

  ‘That’s all? That’s all, is it? You say it as if it were nothing.’

  ‘What the hell more do you want from me?’ Tony snapped.

  ‘I need you to let me in.’

  ‘“In”, what d’ you mean “in”?’

  ‘To confide in me, trust me, share with me. I have to be sure you aren’t just using me, darling, for I’m finding it harder and harder to believe that you love me at all, love me properly, I mean.’

  He stared out of the windscreen at the almost empty courtyard.

  Frost was already sifting down out of the evening sky and the cold would soon become numbing. When the cold eased there would be snow, so Penny had told him, and he thought of her smile, her child-like eagerness for snow.

  There were three motorcars and a van parked in the courtyard. Only half of the windows in the apartment block were lighted for the long trail back from businesses in the city had only just begun. He wondered exactly where Dominic was right now, who Dominic was negotiating with and just how much trust there had to be in a relationship to make it function.

  He said, ‘I’m staying at a farm in the country, not far from Breslin.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I have to look after the girl.’

  ‘The blonde?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And the man, the little guy with the moustache.’

  ‘He isn’t there. I don’t know where he is.’

  ‘Does Dominic visit?’ Polly said.

  ‘Once, that’s all, not to visit Penny, for – for something else.’

  ‘Why does the girl need to be looked after?’

  ‘It’s money, Polly. Counterfeit money. She owns the printing plates.’

  ‘Oh!’ Polly said. For an instant there was fire in her eyes, a sudden flash of the passion that he remembered from their first sexual encounters. ‘Oh, I see. Forged notes?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Banknotes?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Dominic’s printing and distributing them, I suppose?’

  ‘He’s heavily involved in managing the scheme.’

  ‘Well!’ Polly exclaimed. ‘Well, well!’

  He was suddenly alarmed at his lack of rectitude, at the ease with which she’d broken him down. She hadn’t even threatened him, just turned him around, roasted him in the name of love. He didn’t know if it was love any more or if it had transformed itself into something infinitely more corrosive.

  ‘Dom had to take it on,’ Tony said. ‘His old man wouldn’t let him refuse.’

  ‘His father? What does Carlo have to do with forged banknotes?’

  ‘I don’t know and can’t tell you,’ Tony said. ‘In fact, I’ve told you too much already. But I wanted you to—’

  ‘To know how much you love me?’ Polly said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  He felt flat and deflated. In telling her even a small part of the truth, he had betrayed Dominic and tossed away his integrity. At that moment he hated Polly for demanding it of him, for not understanding what honour meant.

  He twisted the ignition key and fired the engine.

  ‘I’ll take you home,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t you want to go upstairs?’

  ‘No, I’d better get you back before Dominic arrives home.’

  ‘He won’t be home for hours. Never is these days. Now,’ Polly said, ‘I know why. How much is involved, darling, and will you share in the profits?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ll have my c
ut,’ Tony said.

  She touched his arm again. ‘Then you’ll be rich too.’

  ‘Sure I will,’ said Tony.

  And before she could talk him out of it and into the bed upstairs, he flung the Dolomite into gear, drove past the cars and the van and down the slope that would take Polly back to the mansion in Manor Park and her husband, Dominic Manone.

  * * *

  ‘In God’s name, why didn’t you follow him?’ Inspector Winstock said.

  ‘I did, sir. I followed him back to Manone’s house where he dropped off the woman but after that he lost me.’

  ‘Did he know you were trailing him?’ Kenny said.

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ Detective Constable Stone replied. ‘He just sped away along the Paisley Road, heading for Glasgow.’

  ‘Why didn’t you use the wireless to request assistance?’ Winstock said.

  ‘I can’t drive an’ operate the wireless, sir, not at the same time.’

  ‘You were probably out of range of the HQ receiver anyway,’ Kenny said.

  ‘Bloody new-fangled things!’ Inspector Winstock said. ‘More trouble than they’re worth. Are you certain the woman was Manone’s wife?’

  ‘Positive. I saw her very clearly,’ Stone said.

  ‘And they didn’t go up to Lombard’s flat?’ said Winstock.

  ‘No, sir. They just sat in the car an’ talked for a while.’

  ‘Did they kiss and cuddle?’ Kenny heard himself ask.

  ‘Didn’t see none of that,’ said Stone. ‘They were only there for about five minutes. Drove up, parked in the courtyard, talked, then drove off again.’

  ‘Perhaps she didn’t want to play ball,’ Winstock said.

  ‘Or he didn’t,’ said Kenny.

  ‘That’s daft,’ said Winstock. ‘I mean, why the heck would he take her to his flat if it wasn’t for a bit of how’s-your-father.’

  ‘She is Manone’s wife,’ said Kenny.

  ‘So what!’ said Winstock.

  ‘Lombard would hardly try it on with Manone’s wife.’

  ‘It might not be the first time,’ Winstock said. ‘Are you sure they weren’t at it in the car, Stone?’

  ‘I’m certain. I’d a good view from the van. All they did was talk?’

  ‘Did they argue?’

  ‘I’m not sure but I think she might’ve been crying at one stage.’

  Winstock sat back, reached for the glass of stomach medicine which he downed as if it were whisky, then for a cigarette. ‘What,’ he said, ‘were they doing there and what were they talking about? I’d give a week’s wages to find out.’

  Kenny did not attempt an answer. In the back of his mind was the notion that Polly Manone had been pumping Tony Lombard on his behalf. He would telephone her tomorrow on the off chance that his theory was correct. If only to keep the McKerlie woman at bay he needed to learn a whole lot more about the man who called himself Harker. She had given him a hard time in the fish restaurant and had revealed nothing about Harker alias Conway that had any value.

  ‘After I lost Lombard,’ Stone said, ‘I went back to the Manone house an’ sat outside for a while just in case the woman went out again, or Tony came back.’

  ‘Did he?’ Inspector Winstock asked.

  ‘No, sir. Manone arrived home in the big Wolseley about a quarter past eight. He went indoors and didn’t come out again. I packed it in about eleven. All the house lights were out by that time.’

  ‘You’ve logged all these observations, I take it?’ said Winstock.

  ‘I have, sir.’

  ‘Dictate your report to Janet and get it on file. Kenny?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘How well do you know Manone’s wife?’

  ‘I’ve only met her once, in company.’

  ‘Well, your sweetheart’s not liable to know if her sister’s havin’ it off with Manone’s right-hand man, but if she is that would be a real bonus for us.’

  ‘Would it, sir?’ said Stone.

  ‘Sure, it would,’ said Winstock. ‘Kenny, tell him why.’

  ‘I think we’re talking about blackmail,’ Kenny said.

  Winstock chuckled and issued a stream of cigarette smoke from his nostrils.

  ‘Blackmail,’ he said. ‘Now wouldn’t that be nice.’

  * * *

  Penny had just stepped out of the bath when she heard the motorcar drive into the yard. She was pink and warm and perfumed from the salts she’d dissolved in the water and was looking forward to sliding into bed. She felt more relaxed now that she knew that Dougie was close to churning out money. In five or six months she would have earned enough to leave Scotland and sail back to New York, to pay her mother what was owed her and settle, as it were, the heinous debts that her father’s criminal activities had laid upon her.

  She had one foot on the rim of the bath-tub, lazily towelling her leg, when the faint, grating noise of a car engine filtered through the steam. She reacted instantly, wrapped the towel around her waist, knotted it like a sarong, grabbed her robe from the hook on the door and wriggled into it then she flung open the door and dashed through the stone-floored laundry room into the kitchen.

  Dougie had been dozing in front of the fire, the cat on his lap. He’d heard the motorcar too, however, and was on his feet before Penny entered the kitchen. He snatched the rabbit gun from the corner, the box of shells from the shelf, tossed the gun and then the shells to her. She caught the weapon cross-handed, fielded the box of shells and loaded the gun while Dougie went to the outside door and unlatched it.

  ‘Now,’ Penny said.

  Dougie yanked the door wide open.

  ‘Who are you? What do you want with us?’ Penny shouted.

  No answer. Headlamps switched off, the car stood in cold silhouette, darker than the darkness of the yard.

  ‘I have a gun,’ Penny cried shrilly.

  ‘I know you have a gun, for God’s sake. What you gonna do with it, kid, shoot me for the pot too?’

  Tony swaggered into the light, hat tipped back, hands in his overcoat pockets. He was jocular and arrogant, like a man who’s succeeded in whatever he’d set out to do: Penny thought she knew what that had been.

  ‘Put the damned popgun away, Penny,’ Tony said.

  ‘Why are you back so early?’ Penny asked.

  ‘I just couldn’t stay away, ‘Tony said, ‘I missed you both so much.’

  Shrugging, Dougie went back into the kitchen. He fished the startled cat from under the table and seated himself in the armchair again, Frobe on his lap. He had taken a half bottle of whisky from the cupboard and had drunk two small nips by way of celebration for a job well done. The bottle, corked, stood on the floor by the side of the chair, the little glass on the mantelshelf.

  Tony took off his hat and coat and flung them on a chair at the table. He lifted Dougie’s glass from the mantelshelf, rubbed the rim with the heel of his hand, lifted the bottle from the floor and poured himself a dram. Holding the glass carefully between finger and thumb, he guided it to his lips and tossed back the contents. He swallowed, blew out his cheeks, sighed, poured a second shot and, leaning against the edge of the table, looked Penny up and down.

  She held the rifle in one hand, barrel pointing to the floor.

  Tony said, ‘Love the rig-out, kid. I can just about see your belly-button.’

  Embarrassed Penny pulled the robe about her stomach and thighs.

  He continued to stare at her, a cocky little smile on the corner of his lips.

  He said, ‘Who’re you all perfumed up for, Penny? Are you gonna take old Dougie to bed with you. Gonna give him a lesson in love?’

  ‘You have been drinking, have you not?’ Penny said.

  ‘I haff indeed been drinking,’ Tony said. ‘I am dronk as a skonk.’

  ‘You should not have been driving the motorcar.’

  ‘Nag, nag, nag,’ Tony said. ‘Nag, nag, nag. Hell, I can drive a motorcar with my eyes closed. I can do plenty of other things too – eyes
wide open.’

  ‘What other things?’ Penny said.

  ‘Plenty of other things, with or without a gas-mask.’

  She blinked then glanced at Dougie who shook his head indicating that this was not an opportune moment to show Tony Lombard the brand-new counterfeit banknote and let him share their triumph.

  ‘Well, it’s past my bedtime,’ Dougie said. ‘I’ll be goin’ upstairs now if nobody’s got any objection.’

  ‘How about you, kid,’ Tony said, ‘you goin’ upstairs too?’

  ‘How drunk are you?’ Penny asked.

  ‘Not that drunk,’ Tony said. ‘Just drunk enough.’

  ‘Night-night,’ Dougie said and with Frobe clinging to his shoulder made his way out of the kitchen and up the creaking staircase to the attic.

  Penny propped the rabbit gun in the corner, took the box of shells from the pocket of her robe and replaced it on a shelf of the dresser. She knew that Tony was watching her, staring boldly and insolently at her legs. The ends of her hair were wet against the nape of her neck and the towel at her waist was slipping, slipping down, damp and bulky against her hips and thighs. She reached under the robe and loosened the knot, drew the towel out and draped it over her shoulder, tightened the sash of the robe and turned to face him.

  ‘You look like a damned cream cake,’ Tony said. ‘Pink sponge.’

  ‘Do you want me to fetch the mask?’

  ‘Nope, I want you just like you are, sweetheart. Anyhow, the gas-mask was a pretty sick idea, don’t you think?’

  ‘I do not know what you want me to think.’

  ‘I don’t want you to think at all,’ Tony said.

  He drank the dregs of the whisky and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. He was less intoxicated than she had supposed. He put the glass on the table and unbuttoned his trousers. He drew out the tail of his shirt, pure white against dark suiting, and pushed down the band of his undershorts.

  ‘I don’t want you to think about anything,’ he said, ‘except me.’

  Parting the folds of her bathrobe, he drew her to him.

  And later, much later, he took her upstairs to bed.

  * * *

  ‘My! My!’ John Flint said. ‘This is a pleasant surprise, a very pleasant surprise. To what do we owe the honour, Mrs Manone – or may I call you Polly?’

  ‘Come off it, Johnny, you’ve always called me Polly.’