Prized Possessions (21 page)

‘What do you want?' Mrs Anderson said.

Babs could hardly move her lips. She loitered at the end of the aisle, not daring to move. ‘Miss – Miss Crawford said – Miss Crawford sent me.'

She couldn't take her eyes off the man in the distant office: a young man, not tall but strong-looking and very handsome. He wore a dark blue lounge suit with narrow lapels, a white shirt and a pale blue silk tie that seemed too dressy for that hour of the morning. He had a canteen coffee cup in one hand and a tiny cigar in the other and smoke drifted all about him.

As soon as he noticed Babs he put down the cup and beckoned.

Babs was anything but reassured.

Mrs Anderson watched her as she projected herself up the aisle between the desk and the cabinets and entered the manager's office.

Mr MacDermott was not in the office, only Mr Manone and another Italian-looking man who sat on one of the wooden chairs with his arms folded. Mr MacDermott's desk had been moved to one side of the room, near the plant pots. It, the desk, looked as if it had been chewed by a pack of wild dogs. There was a doggy smell in the air too, faint but acrid. The carpet had been rolled up and propped against the wall by the open door.

There was no sign of the safe.

Mr Manone smiled at Babs, a gentle smile, almost shy.

‘You're Lizzie Conway's daughter, aren't you?'

‘Aye – yes, sir.'

‘Barbara, if I recall.'

‘Babs, sir, that's right.'

‘How long have you worked for us, Babs?'

‘Nearly three years.'

He lifted the coffee cup and sipped from it.

The man on the wooden chair just on the edge of Babs's vision stirred slightly. Babs darted a glance at him. He too was handsome, but he was older than Dominic Manone; not as old as her father would have been if he'd survived the war but certainly as old as her mother. He had a thin, sharp-featured sort of face and dark, watchful eyes.

Dominic nodded.

‘I take it you know who I am, Barbara?'

‘Aye – yes, sir.'

‘No doubt you're wondering why I asked to speak with you?'

‘I've no idea about that, Mr Manone.'

‘Didn't you hear that we were broken into during the night?'

‘Miss Crawford mentioned it, I think.'

‘You have only just arrived?'

‘I'm not due to start till nine.'

He stood before her at a polite distance, rocking a little on the balls of his feet while he observed her reactions.

Babs wondered if he was impressed or if he could see right through her and already knew that she had sold out the Central Warehouse Company. She also wondered where Jackie was, where the safe was, if the boys had got clean away and when she would receive her hundred quid; a little dab of mendacity was almost enough to calm her down.

‘Don't you know why I've asked to speak with you?'

‘No, Mr Manone.'

‘I've been acquainted with your mother for many years,' he said. ‘I've the greatest of respect for her. She's an honest woman. Are you honest, Babs?'

‘I try to be, Mr Manone.'

‘Someone broke into Mr MacDermott's office,' Dominic went on. ‘As you can see they've made rather a nasty mess of the place.'

Babs opened her mouth, then closed it again.

‘It seems to me,' Dominic Manone said, ‘that it's the work of hooligans.'

‘I – I suppose it could be,' Babs agreed.

‘On the other hand it may have been what is called “an inside job”. Do you know what that means?'

‘Yes,' said Babs, nodding.

He placed a hand on her shoulder; nothing friendly about the gesture, Babs sensed, nothing flirty.

‘What I wish you to do for me is keep your ears open, so that if you hear anything that might give us a clue who thought they could break into Manones' warehouse and get away with it … Well' – he smiled, released her, shrugged – ‘it would be nice if we could remind these guys that crime does not pay.'

Babs tried to appear solemn and responsible. She managed something between a scowl and a pout. ‘If they didn't get away with anythin', though…'

‘They did damage,' Dominic said. ‘They were stupid to break in to my property. They must be taught a lesson.'

‘I don't know who could've done—'

‘Sure you don't. But a smart girl might hear things that we won't.'

‘I'll – I'll see what I can find out.'

‘Good.' His eyes had gone to sleep. ‘Perhaps you'll hear something here in the warehouse or possibly in the streets. You'll do this for me?'

‘I will, Mr Manone.'

Babs felt a strange smug glow light up within her. If Dominic Manone had known who was behind the break-in then he wouldn't have sent for her. He was fishing, just fishing. She reckoned that Jackie and the boys
had
got away with the safe, that this guy, this big-shot, hadn't a clue who'd taken it or where it was now. He didn't want the police involved. She couldn't blame him for that. But he did want his money back. He must be a whole lot less smart than she'd given him credit for, though, if he thought an office clerk – even if she were Lizzie Conway's daughter – would hear anything that would finger the culprits.

‘Maybe you will hear some talk when you go dancing,' Dominic said.

‘Dancin'?'

‘At the Calcutta.'

‘I don't go … Well, aye, sometimes I do go there.'

‘Perhaps somebody will mention a name, drop a name.'

‘They might, aye,' said Babs.

‘And you will pass that name on to me.'

‘Tell Mr MacDermott, you mean?'

‘No, you will tell me. Your mama knows where to find me.'

The man on the wooden chair unfolded his arms and placed both hands on his knees. He wore a heavy woollen overcoat, a homburg hat and black shoes. He looked, she thought, like a polished version of Tommy Bonnar, an Italian version. He stared at her and then, even as she watched, gave her an insolent little wink.

‘I'll do what I can, Mr Manone,' Babs promised, then, unaware that she had just been threatened, let him guide her to the open door and see her off down the long aisle back to the safety of the counting house.

*   *   *

Dominic watched the girl depart. She had broad hips and a confident little bottom that in eight years or ten would become fat. She was an archetypal Scot of Irish descent who, like her father before her, was fuelled by a mixture of low cunning and crass stupidity. If she had been male instead of female she would have been one of his street runners instead of a clerkess.

He put the cigar to his lips and tried to coax it back into life.

Tony Lombard struck a match and held it out to him.

Dominic fired the tobacco leaf, blew smoke. ‘What do you think, Tony?'

‘She's the one,' Tony Lombard answered. ‘She's in it up to her neck.'

‘Unfortunately,' said Dominic, ‘I think you may be right.'

‘You want I should do something to her?'

‘No,' Dominic said, ‘not yet, Tony, not just yet.'

*   *   *

They were hidden in the back booth of a café halfway along Paisley Road West. It was the last place that anyone who knew the Manones would expect to find them. The café owner – not Italian – had no more than a notion that the gentlemen were important. They ordered and ate sausage sandwiches and asked for coffee to be served in a pot. The café owner was both attentive and discreet. He had noticed the expensive motorcar parked outside at the pavement's edge, had respect for anyone who owned such a vehicle.

Uncle Guido wiped grease from his chin with a handkerchief and took a sip of the appalling coffee. ‘You looked tired, Dominic,' he said, in Italian.

Dominic answered in the same language. ‘No more tired than you.'

‘What do you think they intended to do with it?'

‘The money? Pay off debts, I expect,' said Dominic. ‘At least one of our boys is mixed up in it, of that I'm sure.'

‘I hope you are not going to let them get off with it?'

Dominic did not deign to answer his uncle's question.

He broke the sandwich with his fingers and put a piece into his mouth. He was no less fastidious than the old man but he had more relish for the flavoursome meat and was, in fact, rather enjoying himself.

He had a certain grudging sympathy for the nitwits who had stolen the safe, a certain admiration for the ingenuity with which they had effected its removal. He gave no sign to Guido that this was the case, for he did not want to be thought to be anything less than serious about the insult to the family. These days, it seemed, you couldn't trust anybody. He would see to it that the night-watchmen were reprimanded for slackness, that metal grilles were put up on the waterside windows.

What really amused him and took the edge off his anger, though, was the thought of the burglars hauling the safe into a shed or a quiet back court and going to all the bother of breaking it open only to discover that it was entirely empty, that all their struggles with soap and jacking devices and ropes had been so much wasted effort.

Guido said, ‘Are you thinking that they did not get away with it at all?'

‘It could be at the bottom of the river, I suppose,' said Dominic.

‘We could always hire a diver to…'

‘Let it go. We lost nothing but the safe itself.'

‘And face,' Uncle Guido reminded him.

‘I am not forgetting about the loss of face,' said Dominic.

They had just visited the Paisley branch of the Bank of Scotland and had withdrawn from a contingency account exactly the sum that the stolen safe had purportedly contained. The banknotes had been packed into a briefcase which now reposed under the café table, protected by Uncle Guido's size tens.

The contingency account had barely withstood the mauling and had only a pound or two left in it. But, in Dominic's view, it had been necessary to act in a clear, above-board manner, to withdraw the staff's Christmas money from a legitimate source. Only five people knew that the sum that had allegedly been stolen was three and a half thousand pounds, not eight thousand. Only four people, including Brian MacDermott, knew that the money had not been housed in the Hobbs at all but was locked in an innocent-looking locker in the warehouse boiler-room from which place, later that afternoon, Guido and Tony Lombard would redeem it and transport it back to Mansion Park Avenue.

‘Nobody knows that the money was not in the safe. Why do you not report the theft?' Guido said. ‘If it is reported then we can claim the sum from our insurance and make three and a half thousand pounds profit.'

‘I considered it,' said Dominic. ‘I also considered how the coppers would love to get into our warehouse and what sort of disruption they would cause over the busy Christmas week. Besides, it was not a robbery. It was hooliganism. A window was smashed, a desk broken. Some pig pissed on our carpet. Nothing was stolen.'

‘The insurance people do not know that.'

‘Sure, sure,' said Dominic. ‘But there is a time to make profit – and this is not it. There is also a time to keep quiet – and this
is
it.'

‘The cost of the safe?'

‘Minimal.'

‘Will you purchase another Hobbs?'

‘Immediately.'

Guido hesitated. ‘I hope, Dominic, that you are not pedalling soft on this business because of the woman.'

‘Woman? What woman?'

‘Frank Conway's wife.'

‘She is not involved.'

‘No,' Guido said, ‘but her daughter might be. Tony says—'

‘Tony is only guessing,' said Dominic. ‘I am not soft pedalling on anyone, Uncle. Maybe Tony's right and Barbara Conway
is
the inside contact, but I'm not going to go out there and start swinging until I know who did this thing and who is really behind it. Our boys are good boys, if stupid sometimes. I do not want to put one against the other if I can avoid it. First I will find out who did this thing and then I will make them pay for it.'

‘Take them out, do you mean?'

‘Maybe. Yes, maybe even that.'

‘Anything less will not be acceptable,' Guido said.

‘Acceptable to whom? My father?' Dominic said. ‘My father is in Philly where things are done a little differently. If the idiots
had
got away with three and a half thousand pounds then I would be dealing with the situation differently. Everything is going good right now, Uncle, and I do not want to give the coppers an opening, not even a little one.'

‘That is only horse-sense,' Guido admitted.

‘MacDermott will do what he is told to do. If anyone asks him, he will tell them that nothing was stolen.'

‘Nothing
was
stolen,' said Guido. ‘Only an empty safe.'

‘Exactly.' Dominic grinned. ‘Do you not see how much of a circus this is? It is better than a pantomime. Whoever took our money – one of our boys or somebody else – they will know now that we are not so casual as we appear to be. Come on, Uncle, was it not clever of me to use the safe as a dummy?'

‘That is true. But you
are
clever, Dominic,' the old man said. ‘I have never thought otherwise. It is not your clever head but your less-than-clever heart that sometimes bothers me.'

‘What do you want?' said Dominic. ‘Do you want me to invite all our boys to Bernie's garage and mow them down with machine-guns? We are not in a war with anyone. Let the razor-kings do their crazy war dances and the Workers' Movement organise its riots. It keeps the police occupied, keeps them from breathing on our necks. We are businessmen, nice Scots-Italian businessmen. We do not shed blood.'

‘Unless it becomes necessary,' Uncle Guido said.

‘We are a long way from it becoming necessary.'

‘I hope you are right.'