Prized Possessions (13 page)

‘If anyone does, Tommy'll just deny it,' Patsy said.

‘How about after the event?' Polly said.

‘After?' said Patsy, as if he preferred not to dwell on consequences. ‘Well, I mean, afterwards we'll have so much dough it isn't gonna matter.'

‘What will you do with the money?' Polly said.

‘Stash it away for a while, a long while,' Patsy said.

‘And then?'

‘Travel.'

‘I'd love to travel,' Polly said. ‘I'd love to see Paris.'

Patsy did not rise to the bait. She had lost his attention. He was focused now on other things, had, Polly realised, already begun work.

They had reached an elbow where the narrow path angled sharply away from the river and became a lane between the walls of Gerber's clothing factory and the Manones' warehouse. The warehouse stuck out ahead, a windowless gable blocked to a frontage that plunged straight down to the river.

The building had been erected on the site of a derelict cotton warehouse only twenty years ago. It had none of the quasi-Georgian or Gothic pretensions of other constructions that had been built before the Great War but was fashioned from plain-cut stone and red brick, more of the latter than the former. Delivery yard and reception area, tucked securely away behind black iron railings, faced out on to Jackson Street.

Patsy told her that he'd already reconnoitred the back of the building and had decided that while he might be man enough he certainly wasn't mad enough to try to effect an entry in sight of a busy public road.

As yet he had no idea what Bonnar wanted him to steal. He just hoped it wasn't half a dozen pianos or a selection of three-piece suites. He figured it would be money, though, cash out of a safe, the exact location of which Polly's sister would be able to pinpoint without too much trouble.

‘I didn't realise the building was so big.' Polly tilted her head. ‘It makes you dizzy just looking up at it.' She glanced at him. ‘What about the front?'

‘This is the front,' said Patsy. ‘I could probably get inside from Jackson Street but I'd be lucky to get out again. The night-watchmen are stationed there. An' if I can't pull the tickle without stovin' some poor bastard's head in then I'm not pullin' the tickle at all.'

‘What if it's the only way?' Polly enquired.

‘It's never the only way,' Patsy told her.

They walked back towards the river, to the point where the dirt path broke from the long blank windowless wall.

There was just enough clearance for Patsy to step out on to the wall and hold himself against it, straddling the corner of the building. He looked at the brickwork above, and down at the river that lapped and gurgled below his heels.

Then he laughed.

He stepped back and lowered himself to the pathway again.

‘Drainpipes, ventilation cowls, open windows. Dear God, I could lead an army battalion in there an' out again.' He shook his head in amusement. ‘If the safe's where I think it is, upstairs, then there shouldn't be any problem. Once your sister tells us exactly what office the safe's in and what kind of safe it is then we can push ahead as soon as Tommy gives us the tick-tack.'

‘You're kidding,' Polly said. ‘Is it going to be that easy?'

‘Nope,' Patsy said. ‘It's gonna be damned difficult. But basically all I need to do the job is some inside information – an' a boat.'

‘A boat? What sort of a boat?' said Polly.

‘Any sort of a boat,' said Patsy, ‘just so long as it floats.'

‘And presumably has sufficient capacity to hold a safe?'

‘You've got it in one, Polly.'

‘In and out by the river. Perfect!' Polly said.

In spite of her apprehension at the idea of being involved – however indirectly – in the commission of a crime, the daring and ingenuity of it appealed to her and washed away her immediate doubts.

She leaned against him and kissed him on the mouth. ‘What a clever lad you are, Patrick Walsh.'

‘Ain't I, though?' said Patsy and, taking her hand again, led her hastily along the bridle path, back the way they had come.

Chapter Six

There had never been any love lost been Thomas Bonnar and Alexander O'Hara. As young men they had fought on the midden-heads of Cumberland Street and across the high backs of the Calcutta Road.

The scar on Alex's cheekbone had been implanted by Tommy's knuckle-ring during a vicious bout of fisticuffs outside Brady's pub. Tommy, in turn, bore on his left buttock the purple wound of a knife attack that had been intended to emasculate him, which may have been no bad thing, given the shady state of his relations with his sister. The pair had only agreed to bury the hatchet when Guido Manone had offered them a financial inducement to do so.

God knows, Tommy had needed income so badly at the time that he would have licked O'Hara's boots if it had been required of him. He'd had an evil run with the bookies and owed money all over town. He was also supporting his sister, with whom he resided, and six of her eight living children, the other two having been farmed out. How many, if any, of the children were actually Tommy's was a moot point. Maggie Bonnar had never picked up a proper husband and had been so careless with her favours over the years that half the men on the Calcutta Road might have fathered them.

The view of most members of the Rowing Club was that Maggie was lucky to have Tommy to depend on now that her looks had gone. She'd never been much of a looker in the first place and if Tommy had taken a small share of what was so freely offered then who the heck could blame him, since that sort of thing went on willy-nilly behind closed doors all the time. Besides, Maggie's poor wee ragamuffins were confused enough without being told that Uncle might be Daddy and their sisters also their cousins.

If Maggie had been a mare and her offspring colts, no doubt Tommy would have taken a keener interest in their lineage.

As it was he made no distinction between the children. He treated them all with a vague, distracted affection that bordered on indifference and, when flush, would give each of them a tanner to spend on sweets, pat each of them on the head, and go back to studying his
Sporting Pink
as if the children who crawled about his chair had no more individuality than kittens or pups. He treated Maggie much the same way, as if she were a skivvy or a landlady, not a sister or a lover or a wife.

Mostly, Tommy was not at home. He spent more time on the streets than the average pigeon. He was constantly on the trot, darting about the back courts and closes in search of runners to carry his bets or, after a good pay-day, taking himself off to a race meeting at Ayr or Lanark or into the stand at Ibrox Park to watch Glasgow Rangers win – or sometimes lose – his money for him. Then he would be off again, strutting the streets with that odd, pouter-pigeon gait of his, chest leading and feet following on, in search of drink or company in one of the pubs on the Copland Road or down at the Rowing Club in Molliston Street.

The Rowing Club was gloomy but comfortable, offering warm fires on cold days and cold beer when it was hot outside. It had a billiards table, a wireless set and a ‘tap' wire, whose mechanism Tommy didn't quite understand, that brought news of results from all over the country in spite of the Manones' edicts, which Tony Lombard enforced, that no gambling took place on the premises and that no known bookmaker or bookmaker's runner be granted a membership. Gambling did go on, of course, but a modest flutter on a billiards match now and then wasn't going to have the coppers kicking down the door.

If it hadn't been for Alex O'Hara, Tommy would have spent more time at the Rowing Club. O'Hara practically lived in Molliston Street.

No matter what time of day or night Tommy slipped into the club O'Hara would be propped against the bar or lounging in the so-called coffee shop or stretched across the baize with cue in hand and a pint pot never very far away. He would smirk at Tommy and say something sarcastic, the sort of scathing remark that in the old days would have had Tommy reaching for his knife.

‘Hey there, loser, still backin' three-legged cuddies?' was one of O'Hara's more imaginative greetings; or, ‘See they lost again. Couldn't find a piss-pot if they was sittin' on it, Rangers.'

Tommy would bristle, would compress his lips on the wet inch of his cigarette, his jaw muscles aching with the effort of squeezing out a smile.

He would say, meekly, ‘Aye, aye, Alex, they lost again,' while striving to bear in mind that if he stuck a blade in O'Hara at the bar of the Rowing Club he would be cutting off his one sure source of income, never mind what the coppers might have to say about it.

O'Hara was no less ruthless than Tommy when it came to extracting money, or blood, from petty creditors. But O'Hara had a better network of lookouts. He seemed to know everything that was going on south of the river, including how much he, Tommy, had lost that week and how much he was in hock to the three or four street bookies whom the Manones financed. So – simply to avoid being teased by Alex O'Hara – Tommy had fallen into the habit of backing his fancy with Chick McGuire instead.

McGuire was a rival of the Manones and Tommy doubted if O'Hara, for all his cunning, could possibly have an ear inside McGuire's office, so he was safe from insults, from injury to his pride, if not from the danger of piling up debt with someone whom the Manones did not, and could not, control.

It was unreasonable and illogical – nuts, in other words – for Tommy Bonnar to blame O'Hara, and via O'Hara the Manones, for the predicament in which he found himself at the beginning of the Christmas month. Tommy had never been over-endowed with brains, however, or with the insight required to acknowledge that most of the aggravation that had descended upon him in the course of his thirty-two years on earth had been of his own making.

How could he be blamed for the failure of three-legged cuddies to win races, for goalkeepers with soapy fingers, for the assaults that had landed him twice behind bars, for letting Maggie climb into bed with him when she was too drunk to know who he was? He wasn't to blame for
anything;
not even for running up a heap of debts with Chick McGuire before the roof fell in and Chick told him to cough up or prepare himself to greet the New Year from under a slab in the Southern Necropolis.

Therefore he could hardly be blamed for listening to the whisper, the tempting rumour, that the Manones would pay out their Christmas bonuses on Thursday December 20th; that on the afternoon of Wednesday 19th an unmarked van would be sent to the Paisley branch of the Bank of Scotland and be loaded with cash which – so Mr McGuire had heard – would be stored overnight in the safe in Central Warehouse in Jackson Street.

Now there was a thing, wasn't it? Mr McGuire had remarked quite casually. Rich pickings for anyone willing to set it up, for anyone so desperately strapped for cash that he didn't care if it
was
the Manones he was robbing.

How much would be in the safe was the question that Tommy Bonnar had been about to ask but didn't have to, for it seemed that Mr McGuire had read his mind.

‘Eight or ten grand, I reckon,' Mr McGuire had said, still very casually, ‘given the number of staff the Manones employ. Just imagine, eight or ten grand lying there for the taking. Pity you work for the Eye-ties, Tom, isn't it?'

‘Why don't you…'

‘Not my scene, old son. Not my game, burglary.'

‘Ten grand ain't just gonna be lyin' there waitin' for somebody to take it, though, say what you like.'

‘Sure an' it is. Who'd dare knock off the Manones?'

‘Somebody who's right off his head,' Tommy had said.

‘Or someone,' Mr McGuire had reminded him, ‘with nothing to lose.'

*   *   *

‘I still think Tommy's off his bloody head,' Jackie said, with a grin. ‘But if he's talkin' big money like that I don't care who we rob. Anyhow, the boat's a great idea. Nobody'll be bothered with the back o' the buildin' an' Patsy's sure he can get in up that back – front – wall.'

‘Where do we get a boat, but?' said Dennis.

‘We could build one.'

‘Talk sense, Jackie. What do we know about buildin' boats?'

‘Can't be that difficult.'

‘Oh, but it can,' said Dennis. ‘It's got to float for a start.'

‘All boats float,' said Jackie.

‘Only because they're buoyant.'

‘Buoyant? What's that?'

‘We'll steal one,' said Dennis.

‘Where from?' said Jackie.

‘There must be plenty o' them lyin' about the river.'

‘Sure, tugs, yachts an' ocean liners,' said Jackie. ‘We need one wi' oars.'

‘Or a petrol engine,' said Dennis.

‘Too noisy. We need a rowin' boat, a big one. Big enough for four.'

‘Four?'

‘You, me, Patsy an' Tommy.'

‘Tommy? Is he comin'?'

‘It's his show.'

‘I thought he was just the brains.'

‘If Tommy ain't there,' said Jackie, ‘I'm not goin'. I want that wee squirt right where I can see him.'

‘Tommy's all right.'

‘Well, Tommy can be all right sittin' in the boat with us. If we get caught, he gets caught,' Jackie said. ‘That simple.'

‘We're not gonna get caught, but,' Dennis said. ‘Are we?'

‘Not if we get the right sorta boat. We'll need a lot of strong rope too, to tie the boat up while Patsy's inside. Rope or an anchor.'

‘Anchors are heavy.'

‘I know anchors are heavy, that's why I'm sayin' rope,' said Jackie. ‘I'll take a walk round tomorrow an' see what I can see. I mean, if there's anythin' in the way of a rowin' boat that we can pinch.'

‘How are we gonna get it from where it's at to the warehouse?'