The Good Provider (27 page)

‘Here, I’ll see for myself.’

Malone brushed past her and went into the kitchen.

Shocked, Kirsty hesitated. She looked out of the door, saw nobody on the landing, on the stairs. She hurried back into the kitchen, leaving both doors ajar.

She had missed the first exchange but was not long in the dark about Malone’s purpose and intention.

Craig was on his feet, protesting. ‘But it’s only bloody Thursday, Mr Malone. You said—’

‘I know what I said, sonny, but I’ve changed my mind. Get your clobber on. We’re goin’ now, right now.’

‘I bloody told you it had to be Friday.’

‘I know what you bloody told me,’ said Malone, ‘an’ that’s why we’re pullin’ the job tonight.’

Craig did not move.

Kirsty said, ‘Craig, what – what is it?’

Malone said, ‘Did you no’ tell her?’

Craig said, ‘Nah.’

Malone chuckled. ‘Well, sweetheart, it’s a spot o’ night work, that’s all. Nothin’ for you to wet your drawers about.’

Malone perched himself on the table and, uninvited, poured himself a glass of beer from the jug. He wore a pullover of dark brown wool, a quilted vest buttoned tightly over it. He was not as Kirsty had pictured him, was smoother, less physically coarse. She began to understand why Craig had fallen under Malone’s spell.

‘Come on, sonny. Clobber up. The van’s waitin’.’

Kirsty took a deep breath. ‘Hurry up, Craig. Mustn’t keep Mr Malone waitin’.’

Malone turned his head and studied her, a grin kinking the corner of his lips. ‘No prayer meetin’ tonight?’

‘What?’ said Kirsty.

‘Naw, it’s Friday for prayers, right?’ Malone said, still grinning. ‘If you lived in my house, sweetheart, I’d make sure your prayers were answered. Be more than the Holy Ghost would come upon you, eh?’

‘I don’t know what you mean, Mr Malone.’

‘Aye, sure you do.’

She saw him clearly, revealed by sexual assertiveness. He did not doubt that he could, if he wished, have her. Malone was a bully in a society that had grown accustomed to being bullied, that associated aggression with power and power with masculinity. The very size of his fist, as he clasped the beer glass, seemed larger than life now. He had no fear that she would tell anyone in authority that he had called here; Malone assumed that Craig was man enough to keep his wife under control.

Craig, seated, was lacing his boots.

‘Come on, sonny, shake it a bit. We haven’t got all bloody night,’ Malone said, kicking the spar of Craig’s chair.

Craig said, ‘She’ll be at home tonight, ye know, the widow woman.’

‘Ach, it’ll no’ matter.’

‘There might be guests an’ all.’

‘Guests?’

‘Men stayin’ there,’ Craig answered.

‘What,’ Kirsty forced herself to say, ‘are you talkin’ about?’

‘Nothin’, sweetheart,’ Malone told her. ‘Nothin’ to bother your head wi’.’

One minute later, without farewell, they were gone.

Kirsty had no opportunity to tell Craig of her intention. Malone had skilfully kept them from being alone together even for a moment. Malone had strong suspicions that Craig was in cahoots with the police but not strong enough, apparently, to cause him to turn his back on the robbery.

Kirsty pulled on her shawl and shoes and hurried out of the kitchen on to the landing. She leaned over the banister and listened, heard no sound at all from below. She locked the house door and ran downstairs, paused at the close mouth, hugging the wall. She could not be sure that Danny Malone or one of his henchmen was not positioned outside ready to pounce on her the moment she left the close.

She slipped back from the close mouth, down four shallow steps into the backcourt. Light fell from the tenement windows but wash-houses and middens were pits of pitch-black shadow. She made her way between them, found a gap in the railings that divided one court from another, squeezed through it, darted across the Windsor Road backs, out into the road itself, turned right and headed, running, for Ottawa Street.

The police station was a handsome sandstone structure that should have soared up like a church or department store but seemed to have been chopped off by a roof of black slate and an apologetic little coping. Its windows showed the shadows of interior bars and the glass was etched to obscure the cells within. The steps that led up to the door were bathed in stark white light from an arc over the transom. For all her panic and urgency Kirsty drew up before the forbidding doorway and hesitated before pushing through it.

Directly to her left was a half-open door; Kirsty had an impression of a packed room beyond it, men’s voices and a haze of blue tobacco smoke. On a long bench in the main chamber two big constables flanked a tiny waif of a man who, far from being intimidated, twittered curses with the desperate anger of a habitual offender who feels he deserves special treatment.

‘Put a sock in it, Jimmie. Ladies present,’ said one of the constables. ‘What are you after, miss?’

‘Sergeant Drummond?’

‘That’s him.’

‘Aye, that’s bloody him, hen,’ the waif shouted and might have added more by way of character reference if one of the flanking constables had not extended a large arm across his gullet.

Kirsty made her way across the empty floor to the desk.

The man there wore no hat and his grey cropped head made him seem less daunting. His cheeks were smooth and ruddy, as if he had shaved recently. An open ledger and a stand of inkwells were on the desk before him.

‘Sergeant Drummond?’

‘Aye, miss, and what can I be doing for you?’

‘I’m – I’m Kirsty Nicholson.’

One eyebrow cocked. The sergeant flicked his gaze from her anxious face to the constables on the bench.

Kirsty whispered, ‘Mr Affleck said I was to talk to—’

‘Wheesh, lass,’ the sergeant murmured. ‘Step this way, if you please.’

He opened a gate in the counter-top and admitted Kirsty to the inner sanctum, ushered her before him into an office furnished with a small table and two wooden chairs. He did not close the door but stood by it, from which position, Kirsty fancied, he could spy on the constables on the bench and also keep watch on the desk.

‘You may talk now,’ Sergeant Drummond said.

‘You know about Mr Affleck an’ Danny Malone?’

‘I do, I do.’

‘Malone came tonight—’

‘
Tonight?
’

‘Yes,’ said Kirsty. ‘He came unexpectedly about a quarter of an hour ago an’ took Craig – took my husband – away with him.’

‘To do the job?’

‘Yes.’

‘I see,’ said Sergeant Drummond quietly. ‘Very well, Mrs Nicholson, if you will be good enough to wait here I will place a telephone call to the City of Glasgow headquarters in the hope that Superintendent Affleck is still upon the premises.’

‘What if he’s not?’ said Kirsty.

‘One bridge at a time,’ said Sergeant Drummond, and went out again.

Kirsty stepped to the half-open door. She could see the constables across the counter-top. One had muffled the prisoner completely by cupping a fist over his mouth while the other, the elder, had gotten to his feet in something bordering alarm. They were hissing at each other angrily, but she could not hear what they were saying. Distantly she heard a bell ring. She assumed that it was something to do with a telephone, though she had never used such an instrument. After a minute or so the elder constable whirled and headed for the station door, passed out of her sight. A minute after that Sergeant Drummond, apparently unruffled, reappeared.

‘Fortunately,’ he told her, ‘I was able to make contact with Superintendent Affleck. He will attend to the matter personally. I take it, Mrs Nicholson, that it was to Mrs Frew’s house in Walbrook Street that Malone was headed?’

‘It couldn’t be anywhere else, could it?’ said Kirsty.

‘Did Malone say it, in so many words?’

‘Yes,’ Kirsty answered. ‘Yes, he did.’

The sergeant nodded. ‘Go on home then, Mrs Nicholson.’

‘But – but what can I do?’

‘You can do nothing, lass,’ the sergeant said. ‘The rest of it is up to us.’

The van was a trim affair only six feet in length and forty inches wide at floor level. The brass lamps that were mounted on each side of the half-cab were unlighted and the whole rig, including the canopy, was painted black and jade, the horse dun-coloured. In the shadows the van was almost invisible.

To Craig’s relief Bob McAndrew was not on the board. He had heard of Billy Skirving, though, and gathered that this was the man. He wore dark brown moleskins, a duffel jacket and stocking cap and carried an Indian exercise club. He had a thin, pinched, vicious face and eyes as hard as iron rivets. Lingering respect for Malone melted when Craig looked into Skirving’s eyes, and he knew that all the fine tall tales he had heard about Billy Skirving and Danny were lies. He wished that Mr Affleck had warned him about Billy too for he sensed that here was a man without pity or any drop of compassion.

‘You,’ Skirving told him, ‘drive.’

Craig climbed nervously on to the board and took up the reins. Skirving was by his side and Malone was in the rear of the van, crouched, his face only inches from Craig’s ear. Malone told him in a hoarse whisper to keep the pace easy until they got into New Clyde Street and then to let it out. Neither of the men spoke again as Craig steered a course out of Greenfield and on towards Walbrook Street.

He was more frightened than he had ever been in his life. He had separated himself from them by agreeing to help Mr Affleck. He did not regret it for he saw now that Hugh Affleck had been right, that he would have slipped down inch by inch into an association with men of this calibre until he either became like them or was broken by his own weakness. He did not want to be exposed as a coward. On the other hand he was cut off from both sides. He was being used by Affleck just as he was being used by Malone, and nobody cared a damn about him or what might happen to him.

The resentment gave Craig a peculiar kind of strength and he tried, vainly, to formulate a plan that might prevent them reaching Mrs Frew’s house. He did not even know where the police stations were or how to summon aid. He had been drawn into this mess out of ignorance and he vowed, as he tugged and flicked the reins, that he would not be so stupid again, never again. All he had wanted was a better life for himself and for Kirsty but he realised now that he had been deluded; there was no easy route to fortune. He wished to God he had been more patient and wiser in the ways of the world. But it was too late now. He was stuck with Skirving and Malone, embroiled at last in a situation that demanded courage and control, even if it was a deception, a treachery.

It was only about half past nine. Glasgow’s citizens were still out and about, shops and pubs full lit, the streets, even back streets, were busy. They seemed to reach Walbrook Street suddenly. Suddenly the van was running along it towards Number 19.

Malone said, ‘Keep drivin’. Don’t stop.’

Craig did as instructed without protest. He drove on past the sober façade of Mrs Frew’s boarding-house; a dim light in the dining-room, all other windows dark; no sign of Superintendent Affleck or his constables, of course, and not a person within a hundred yards of the step.

‘Turn in here,’ Malone told him.

‘Turn where?’

‘Into the lane,’ Skirving snarled, ‘by the bloody kirk.’

Craig braked carefully, reined, positioned the van and ran it into the narrow gap between the wall of St Anne’s and the terrace gable. It was a place of smells and darkness which the horse liked no more than Craig did. The beast whinnied and would have shied if he had not predicted the movement and forestalled it with the rein.

‘There’s somebody here,’ Craig said huskily.

‘Sure, there’d better be,’ said Danny Malone.

From the shadows a voice hissed, ‘Is that yoursel’, Danny?’

‘Who in hell’s name would it be?’ Malone clambered from the back of the van. ‘How long have you been here, Tom?’

‘Like you told me, Danny, since half past six.’

Craig recognised the watcher; Tom McVoy, a carter from the yard, one of Malone’s pals. He too was dressed in a seaman’s jacket and stocking cap.

Malone said, ‘Did you see anybody go in or out?’

‘Not a bloody soul.’

‘Back and front?’

‘Keppit an eye on both, Danny,’ McVoy answered, then said, ‘Is that young Nicholson up there?’

‘Aye, it’s me,’ Craig heard himself say.

‘Are ye holdin’ your water, son?’

‘Aye, Mr McVoy.’

Malone said, ‘You get off now, sonny.’

‘Am I not drivin’ the van tonight?’ said Craig.

‘I thought it was your tickle?’ said Malone.

‘Aye, you’re going t’ be in there,’ said Skirving and prodded Craig in the ribs with the handle of the Indian club.

‘Tom?’

‘Aye, Danny?’

‘Take the reins.’

Reluctantly Craig climbed to the ground and handed charge of the vehicle to Tom McVoy.