Prized Possessions (22 page)

‘I
am
right. I am
always
right, Uncle, and don't you forget it.' Dominic pushed away his plate and cup and got abruptly to his feet. ‘Come on, pick up the briefcase, settle the bill and let us get back to the warehouse and pay our employees what they are due.'

‘What will we do then – about the thieves, I mean?'

‘Let them sweat for a day or two.'

‘Or run away?'

‘That intelligent they're not,' said Dominic and, with Guido tailing behind, strode quickly out to the car.

*   *   *

It had never occurred to Polly that Patsy would live in a run-down tenement and have relatives of his own to look after. Logically she realised he must reside somewhere but she had been disinclined to separate Patsy from the image he presented of himself, to sully her belief that he was a lonely rogue, free of the sort of ties and commitments that affected the rest of the community.

She had already begun to suspect that as far as Communism went Patsy was more Pale Pink than Turkey Red and that his enthusiasm for the rights of the working man was an intellectual pursuit not unconnected to snobbery. He was self-educated, well read, articulate, periodically well off, and had travelled further afield than any fifty Clydeside citizens chosen at random. That he also made his bread by robbing the better-off seemed glamorous now or, if not glamorous, certainly different, certainly stimulating.

Unlike Babs, Polly was not immediately depressed by the circumstances of the warehouse robbery. She disliked the Manones. In fact, she detested the Manones. Though she'd had no clear idea what Dominic Manone had looked like or what it was that still linked him to her family, over the years he had become Polly's bogey-man, her
bête noire,
a scapegoat for all the unpleasantness that the Conways had endured.

Even in Wellshott Primary School she had equated Dominic Manone with the bullies who tormented the weaker boys or pulled the girls' pigtails; also with those domineering teachers – female as well as male – who made life miserable for everyone. When, around fourteen or fifteen, she had reached the age of reason, she had become aware that her hatred of Dominic Manone might be a substitute for hatred of the father who had abandoned her but whom she could not quite find it in her heart to blame.

Seldom, if ever, did she think of her daddy, whereas she thought of Dominic Manone quite a lot. But the discovery of the hidden hoard under Gran McKerlie's floorboards had affected her more than she cared to admit.

It had brought her father into the foreground again and pushed the Italian bogey-man, the blameful stranger, into the background. Indeed, if it hadn't been for Patsy's plan to relieve the Manones of a small fortune within the week she might have completed the transference and have acknowledged that she owed her job in the burgh offices to a man she had always despised and that good things as well as bad were mysteriously connected to the Italian.

When Polly arrived in the burgh offices there was no talk of a break-in at the Manones' warehouse, no circulating rumours. Throughout the morning she kept her head down and her ears open but heard not a chirp about happenings at the CWC. It wasn't until one of the burgh architects brought in an early edition of the
Evening Citizen,
however, and it too was devoid of news that Polly began to fret.

As soon as she was released from her desk at half past five o'clock she made a beeline round to Brock Street, at the back end of the Gorbals, where, in a flat over the Washington Bar, Patsy resided.

It wasn't Patsy who opened the door to Polly's urgent knock but a small, bald-headed, bad-tempered man of about fifty clad in a snow-white undervest and a pair of patched moleskin trousers held up by a canvas belt. He had no hair at all. His scalp shone as if it had been greased with whale-oil and Polly could see upon it, raised like a relief map, a series of prominent ridges. His face too was scarred, the cheekbone under his left eye concave, the brow above hairless.

‘I'm looking for Patsy,' Polly said.

One eye pinched and closed – the good eye, the real eye; the other was of glass. It stared out at her, not blankly but with a weird glittering ferocity as if it were not artificial and opaque but a mirror to magnify the anger that simmered in his soul. He answered Polly with a word, the harsh, punched-out, Anglo-Saxon word that for some men defined all women. Polly had heard the word often before; it still made her wince.

Before she could complain, the man turned and yelled over his shoulder, telling someone inside the flat that a so-and-so had called for him and that he had better get his arse out of the chair and see what the so-and-so wanted.

Polly regarded the man as contemptuously as he regarded her.

He still had his arm up, holding the door.

She could make out a tussock of grey-white hair under his armpit and running out of it like a pale vein or a worm-cast another of those long-healed but still livid scars.

‘What caused that?' she said. ‘Shrapnel?'

When he widened his eyes she saw that the glass eye had no life in it after all, that it was dead to every reflection.

She waited for rage, for another eruption of obscenity.

He grunted, amused – possibly – by her audacity.

‘Wire,' he told her. Then turning again, he shouted again, ‘Patrick, get out here,' and stepped back and limped away.

Patsy took his father's place in the narrow doorway.

And Polly knew at once that it had all gone wrong.

*   *   *

Those ‘ordinary' members who came clumping down Molliston Street that cold Thursday night in search of warmth and shelter and an inexpensive pint were doomed to disappointment, for the doors of the Rowing Club were well and truly locked against them. A hand-printed notice –
Committee Meeting In Progress
– tacked to the paintwork provided sufficient information to prevent even the most irascible dimwit clamouring for admission and, if the notice wasn't enough to deter them, then a glimpse of the sleek, dark shape of an Alfa Romeo motorcar parked a little way down the street most certainly was.

Inside the Rowing Club there was no sign of the management committee as such and a meeting of quite a different order was in session.

The bar had been open for half an hour, with drinks on the house. But Mr Manone's boys had been uncommonly abstemious and had drifted into the windowless room at the rear of the building nursing nothing more intoxicating than a half-pint of beer or a glass of well-watered whisky. They had been summoned from various corners of the territory during the course of the afternoon by word of mouth, and all Mr Manone's top aides were present, including Tony Lombard, Alex O'Hara and – a head cold notwithstanding – sniffy little Tommy Bonnar.

In spite of all that Guido and Tony had done to prevent it, rumours of what had taken place in the warehouse had sifted on to the streets and with all the enthusiasm of washerwives gathered round a pump the lads had exaggerated the few scant facts in their possession until the tale had become one of blazing revolvers, slaughtered night-watchmen and the sort of zigzag pursuit down the Clyde in speedboats that would have had a Saturday matinée audience roaring its appreciation.

Dominic did not remove his overcoat. He laid his hat and gloves on one of the dining tables that had been pushed against the wall. The long room smelled of coal smoke, fish fries and beer and, on that damp December night, held tobacco smoke in thin blue-grey bands. Chairs were ranked before the open fireplace as if for a prayer meeting but not even Tommy Bonnar was disrespectful enough to sit down.

Poor sniffing Tommy coughed into a crumpled handkerchief.

‘You should be in your bed,' Alex O'Hara told him in a stage whisper.

‘I was in ma bed,' said Tommy.

‘You shoulda stayed there.'

‘Aye, an' how would that've looked?' Tommy croaked.

Alex O'Hara chuckled and shook his head at Bonnar's discomfort.

Whatever had happened at the warehouse a summons from Dominic Manone was not something you dared ignore. Besides, there was always a possibility that Guido would be on hand with his scuffed leather grip filled with brown envelopes and you would go home with a pocketful of the crinkly. Guido was on hand but there was no sign of the scuffed leather grip. The grim old Italian looked even grimmer than usual. The boys stirred nervously, sipped from their flat half-pints, puffed their cigarettes, and waited to be told what would be expected of them.

There were no preliminaries, no clearing of the throat, no polite little rappings on the table or calls for order. Dominic leaned against the table and started talking. He informed them that the Central Warehouse had been broken into, a safe removed from the manager's office and taken off downriver in a small boat, and that the job had probably been pulled by locals.

Tommy Bonnar had the temerity to ask why Mr Manone thought the job might have been done by someone local.

Mr Manone explained his reasoning.

Irish Paddy asked if the boat had been found.

Mr Manone said that the boat had not been found.

Irish Paddy asked if the matter had been reported to the police.

Alex O'Hara guffawed audibly while Mr Manone, with more patience than the question deserved, explained his reasons for not summoning the police. Alex O'Hara asked if Mr Manone wanted them to conduct the investigation.

Mr Manone said yes, that was what he required of them and indicated that there would be a finder's fee for anyone who turned up the money or a portion thereof.

‘An' what d' you want us t' do when we catch the bastards?'

‘Tell Tony,' said Dominic Manone.

There was little or no discussion.

The meeting closed at nine minutes to seven.

Dominic, his uncle and little Tony Lombard left immediately.

Soon after that Alex O'Hara left too, heading for Brock Street and Patsy Walsh's flat above the Washington Bar.

*   *   *

Patsy invited her in. There was nowhere else for them to talk. Polly wouldn't be welcome in any of the bars that flanked Brock Street and the Black Cat Café was just too far away to make the hike worth while.

To Polly's surprise the single-room apartment was sparsely furnished. She had somehow expected it to be more cluttered. There was no linoleum upon the floor and only a single thin rug before the grate. There were two hard little armchairs by the fireplace, two wooden ones at the narrow table and the room had a scrubbed, almost sterile air.

The old man, Patsy's father, paid her no attention. He did not even seem interested in learning her name.

He opened a drawer beneath the niche bed, took out a clean blue shirt and a necktie. Back to her, he put on the shirt and knotted the necktie. Then he pulled a jacket and a cloth cap from a hook in the alcove and put them on too. He seated himself on one of the armchairs and drew a pair of boots from under it, tugged the boots on and laced them up.

Patsy said, ‘Listen, Paw, you don't have to go out.'

‘I'm goin' anyway.'

‘You're not workin' tonight, are you?'

‘Naw.'

‘Then you stay here an' we'll—'

The old man called Patsy a dirty name, stamped his feet firmly into the boots and headed, limping, for the door.

Standing awkwardly by the narrow table, Polly heard the landing door slam and only then did she ask, ‘What happened?'

Patsy moved towards her. He put his arms around her and would have drawn her to him if she hadn't held back.

‘You look terrible,' Polly said. ‘What happened last night?'

‘A cock-up,' he said, ‘a right royal cock-up from start to finish.'

‘Didn't you get the money?'

‘Nope, we didn't get the money.' He seated himself on a kitchen chair. ‘The money's still inside the bloody safe an' the safe's at the bottom of the Clyde. We lost it. We nearly lost Dennis an' all.'

‘Couldn't you open it?'

‘Open it? We could hardly even move the bloody thing.'

‘Did Babs…'

‘It wasn't her fault. If it was anybody's fault it was mine. I shouldn't have listened to Tommy Bonnar. The whole thing was nuts from the start. The ropes snapped while we were lowerin' the safe out the window,' Patsy said. ‘The safe fell straight down into the boat. Smashed it to pulp. We were lucky it didn't hit Tommy or Dennis. They were flung into the water. Guess what? Dennis can't swim. He was halfway to bloody Greenock before Tommy managed to fish him out. I'll say that for the wee bugger, he really kept his head – Tommy, I mean.'

‘What about the boat?'

‘It sank without trace, what was left of it.'

‘And the safe?' said Polly.

‘It's still down there – with the money inside.'

‘Won't it show up at low tide?'

‘Tommy says not. Tommy says it'll be lost in the silt.'

‘Do you believe him?' Polly asked.

‘I don't have much option,' said Patsy. ‘Tell you what I'm not doin' – I'm not goin' fishin' for the bloody thing. If Tommy wants it, he can get it himself.'

‘Are you hurt?' Polly asked.

‘Bruised, that's all.'

‘What about the others?'

‘Dennis is okay. Jackie's got burned hands.'

‘Are they bandaged?'

‘I dunno. As soon as we were all safe we scarpered in different directions. Tommy an' Dennis were soaked to the skin. They walked home, I expect.'

‘So you don't know whether or not Jackie's hands are bandaged?'

‘He's a big boy. He'll be all right.'

‘Oh, yes,' Polly said. ‘Unless Dominic Manone finds him.'

Patsy glowered up at her. She wasn't offering sympathy.

‘If the safe's under water and the boat sank then the Manones won't know that you didn't get away with the money,' Polly said. ‘They'll be on the look-out for the money and for anything that might give them a clue who did the job.'