Prized Possessions (20 page)

‘Jackie, the soap.'

‘What?'

‘Put the soap under the front of the safe.'

‘Oh, right.'

Jackie did as he was told to do, nervously slipping the small bars into place under the rim. Hardly had he jerked his fingers away before Patsy reversed the action of the lever and cranked the front of the Hobbs down again.

‘Won't it crush…' Jackie began.

‘Won't matter.'

Patsy darted around to the side of the safe and, with an effort, inserted the steel extension rod beneath it. He cranked, lifted the safe up at the back so that its weight was resting on the forward rim, on the crushed bars of soap.

‘Hold this,' he told Jackie and carefully transferred the crank handle into Jackie's fists. ‘For Christ's sake don't let it go.'

‘This is very – very technical,' Jackie said. ‘You sure it's gonna work?'

‘It had better.'

Patsy doubled a length of the manila rope around his forearm and looped it under the back of the safe, knotted it firmly, then, working fast now, ran the line back over the top of the safe. He pulled on it, taking in all the slack and all the yield. The safe budged not one inch.

‘Not gonna work,' said Jackie. ‘I could've told you so.'

‘Wanna bet?'

Patsy unbuttoned his trousers and made water.

‘Aw, naw!' said Jackie. ‘That's disgustin'.'

‘Any better ideas?'

He buttoned his fly, grasped the rope in both hands and drew upon it steadily. After a moment he felt the Hobbs yield and move reluctantly towards him, then, squeaking, begin to slide by little fits and starts across the wet floorboards.

‘Jeeze, I don't believe it,' Jackie said. ‘You want me to pee too?'

‘No, thank you,' Patsy said.

*   *   *

There was no final act, no last bit of manoeuvring that made the rest easy. Even so, as each muscle-racking action was successfully accomplished, the safe jacked up and tilted against the edge of the desk – crushing it horribly – and lifted clear of the floor, Patsy really began to believe that he was going to pull off the coup of a lifetime.

The struggle with dead-weight metal had dulled his caution and his only concern as he fought to fit the Hobbs into the cargo net was that the safe would not go through the window space. He kept his doubts to himself, however, and enjoyed, moment by moment, the succession of tiny achievements. What they would do with the Hobbs once it was in the boat, how it would be conveyed from the riverside at Shotten Street to the Hallops' repair shed in the heart of the Gorbals was too much for his imagination to cope with. First things first; one step at a time, he told himself, while Jackie, knackered by his efforts, groaned and grunted and complained.

More rolling back of carpet, more laying down of crumbs of soap, more heaving and sweating to shift the desk with the safe on top from its original position and ram it hard against the outer wall, level – dead level – with the window frame. By now the Hobbs was webbed in rope of various textures – hairy hemp and smooth manila – and looked less like a safe than a captured animal, some swart, stocky beast, exhausted by the chase, not dead but resting, gathering its strength for one last effort of resistance.

‘Now what?' said Jackie, thickly.

Patsy was half out of the window, looking down. He could see the longboat directly below and thanked his stars that Tommy Bonnar was sailor enough to have kept it there for the best part of an hour. He signalled with the torch, a meaningless flash, and received by way of acknowledgement a wave from Dennis Hallop. He wriggled back inside the office and climbed on to the top of the safe, on top of the desk. He had Jackie hold the torch while he separated out one rope from another and ran two double lines of the manila down to the floor. He leaped down, went on all fours and drew the loose ropes under the desk and out again, weaving them – one each – against the desk's stout little wooden legs.

It was engineering, crude but necessary. He had no intention of losing the lot now, of letting the safe plunge out and down without something solid to brake and check it. The next part, though, would be dangerous and probably noisy, for he suspected that the Hobbs was heavy enough to wreck the framework of the desk. He gathered all the tools and stuffed them into the bag, picked up his cap and stuck it firmly on his head, put on the heavy leather gloves.

It was now exactly a minute after midnight.

If the Manones' night-watchmen were worth anything at all they would be starting out on their rounds about now, checking the warehouse bay by bay, corridor by corridor, office by office. Rough estimate, Patsy reckoned that they had about fifteen minutes to get the safe off the premises and the longboat downriver. He still nurtured a faint hope that the night-watchmen would be typically lazy sods and that the disappearance of the safe would not be discovered until morning. But things had not been running in his favour so far and he was no longer inclined to optimism.

‘Gimme the jack,' he said.

Jackie gave him the jack.

Patsy fitted the steel rods back into the crank-jack's jaws and slid them under the cargo net in which the safe was wrapped. He clambered on to the desk again and pumped the lever, lifting the safe up and forward until it was poised, teetering, on the edge of the window.

‘Jackie, take hold on that rope. That one, yeah. Hang on tight.'

‘Is this it?'

‘This is it.'

‘Okay,' said Jackie, grim and manly now. ‘Go.'

Balanced balletically on one foot, Patsy gave the safe a single swift kick. As it swayed and began to topple outward, he leaped to the floor and grabbed his share of the rope. He felt vibrations shudder through the framework of the desk, heard the teak crinkle and creak. He saw the desk heel upward and jam itself against the window. For an instant the safe was clearly visible, a great dark hairy bundle clinging ape-like to the sill – and then, unbalanced, it was gone.

Patsy had looped the manila line around his waist and ran it through his hands the way rock climbers did. Even that wasn't enough. From the corner of his eye he saw Jackie skitter and sidle forward on tiptoe. The desk hopped into the air, its stout little wooden legs breaking off as if made of balsa. Then he was dragged forward too, snatched almost off his feet. He dug in his heels, felt them slither, felt the motion of the Hobbs as it swung in space somewhere outside and heard Jackie screaming as the rope sizzled through his hands.

‘Hold on. For Christ's sake, hold on,'
Patsy shouted, even as Jackie's rope snapped and slithered away and, with a flick of its tail, disappeared.

Jackie sprawled across the desk, still shrieking.

For one glassy, isolated moment Patsy supported the full weight of the Hobbs, the ropes angled diagonally away from him, shifting, shifting, shifting with tiny clockwork-like movements, an inch at a time.

It was not that he could not hold it, rather that it would not be held.

He felt as if his spine were being wrenched through the front of his body and his arms torn from his shoulders, then there was nothing – air, emptiness, an absence of resistance – and Patsy, craning backward, fell down upon the floor.

*   *   *

‘It's comin', it's comin',' Dennis chanted. ‘They got it. They got it. Here it comes. Here it comes. Hold her steady now, Tommy. Hold…'

It looked almost weightless, like a huge bundle of straw bouncing softly against the wall. It looked as if the wind had charge of it, toying with it and that if it was released it would float away like a balloon, bobbing and billowing to alight intact somewhere about Oatlands. Even when it scraped the wall and flirted away, the cargo net robbed it of density and for two or three seconds Dennis Hallop's joy seemed justified.

Tommy Bonnar, looking up too, paddled the oars, edging the longboat into position. He was irked at Dennis for shouting but he was also relieved to see the safe, for however dark his pessimism, however deep his melancholy, he had no particular wish to have his throat cut by one of McGuire's hirelings.

‘Hold her steady now, Tommy. Hold…'

Then it wasn't floating any more.

It was falling, leaping out and falling, plummeting straight down upon them like a fragment of the dark and starless sky.

‘Oh, Jesus!' Tommy sighed, a split second before the safe struck the boat and plunged straight through it into the river. ‘Here we go again.'

*   *   *

Dominic had been dreaming of how he imagined Italy to be and, like embroidery around the edges, of being feted by a host of pretty, young
signorinas
in a sunlit village square. It had not been a sensuous dream, however, for in his subconscious mind he was just a wee bit afraid of the girls, all of whom seemed to have their hands stretched out in gestures more begging than beckoning.

Where the dream would have taken him and how it would have ended, Dominic never did find out.

Stooped over the bed like a stork, Uncle Guido shook him gently.

Dominic snuffled and opened his eyes.

‘Did you not hear the telephone ringing in the hall?' Guido said.

‘No.'

‘Our warehouse has been broken into.'

Dominic sat up. ‘What did they steal?'

‘The safe.'

‘The safe from MacDermott's office?'

‘Yes.'

‘Is that all?'

‘That appears to be all.'

‘Idiots!' Dominic said. ‘Do we know who did it?'

‘Apparently they got away.'

‘How?'

‘In a boat,' said Uncle Guido. ‘What do you want me to do? Do you want that I should telephone the police?'

‘No, we will deal with the matter ourselves,' Dominic said. ‘Call Tony and tell him to bring round the car.'

‘What, now?' said Uncle Guido.

‘Yes, now,' said Dominic Manone.

Chapter Nine

Babs hardly slept at all on Wednesday night. It hadn't dawned on her until then that because of her association with Jackie she too would be forced to face the music. It was all very well for Polly. She would be tucked away in the Burgh Hall offices. But she, Babs, would have to walk into the lion's den, into the warehouse, and pretend to know nothing about the break-in.

Worry wakened her and drove her from bed.

Although it was barely daylight, she stationed herself at the window in the hope that she might catch sight of Jackie or Dennis passing into the close below, but the only person she did see was Mr Hallop toddling off on early shift.

‘Go downstairs,' Polly urged. ‘Go and knock on the Hallops' door and ask to talk to Jackie. See how things went.'

‘Go yourself.'

‘He's not
my
boyfriend.'

‘He's not mine either.'

‘Oh, come off it, Babs.'

‘Well, all right. Maybe he is – but I'm not gonna knock on his door,' Babs said. ‘What if the coppers are already watchin' the house?'

‘That's ridiculous,' Polly said.

‘It's all very well for you, you haven't done anythin'.'

‘No, but I'm worried about Patsy.'

‘We'll see if there's anythin' in the newspapers.'

There was nothing in the newspapers, however, no banner headline, no item tucked away on page four, no mention of a robbery in the Stop Press.

By that time – on the tram on her way to work – Babs regretted her refusal to knock upon the Hallops' door. Now she would be obliged to walk into the red-brick building on Jackson Street not knowing what had happened or what she would find there.

The building looked exactly the same as it did every morning, except that there were a few more vans in the yard.

Babs slunk into the foyer and climbed the stairs to the first-floor cloakroom. She listened to the rattle and
ting
of typewriters in the pool. Everything seemed normal so far. She went into the ladies' cloakroom and found Miss Crawford, the office manageress, powdering her nose in front of the mirror above the wash-basin.

Miss Crawford wore her customary hard-bitten expression but Babs thought that her cheeks were red and her eyes pink, as if she'd been crying. There was no tremble, no trace of tears in her voice, though.

‘Ah, Miss Conway!' she said. ‘You're an early bird.'

‘I – ah – I just…'

‘It's just as well.' Miss Crawford snapped shut her powder compact. ‘There's been some trouble upstairs.'

‘Trouble? Wha' – what sort of trouble?'

‘An attempted break-in, I gather.'

‘Attempted?'

‘Some fool tried to rob Mr MacDermott's office during the night.'

‘Got – got caught?'

‘What? No, no. In any case' – Miss Crawford stood directly in front of her; Babs had nowhere to focus but on the woman's face – ‘you're wanted upstairs.'

‘Me? Who wants me? The police?'

Miss Crawford tutted. ‘What would the police want with the likes of you? Mr Manone wants a word with you, that's all.'

‘What could Mr Manone possibly want with me?'

‘I haven't the foggiest idea,' Miss Crawford said. ‘But I suggest that you smarten yourself up, girl, and don't keep him waiting.'

*   *   *

Babs had never encountered Dominic Manone face to face. Her first sight of him was from the end of the aisle that ran through Mrs Anderson's office into Mr MacDermott's office. Mrs Anderson wasn't seated at her own desk but at another smaller desk. The woman who was usually at the small desk wasn't there at all. The overhead lights were on. Both doors were open.

Babs noticed at once that the window glass in Mr MacDermott's office had been replaced by a board, a neat, raw board of pine planks that blotted out most of the daylight. Two panes of glass partly wrapped in cardboard and with globs of putty stuck on the corners leaned against Mrs Anderson's desk and a man – a glazier? – in a boiler suit was talking to someone on the telephone.