Jack closed his eyes. There was a sudden clarity in his mind about where this was going, and his thoughts went reeling back through time, like the tumblers in a slot machine, making sense of so much that had made none at the time.
‘What did you do?’
‘I went through all the deed boxes in my father’s study till I found a folder marked “Adoption”. And there it all was. A receipt from Renfrew County Council children’s department for payment of fees due in the legal adoption of Maurice Stephen Cohen. Five pounds and five shillings. Or five guineas. That’s what it cost them to buy me. Cheap at the price, wouldn’t you say?’
His bitter little laugh turned into a cough, and it took almost a full minute for him to bring it under control.
Finally he said, ‘But there was other stuff. Personal correspondence between my father and a woman who ran a hotel and restaurant in the Gorbals. Smith’s Hotel. Though I guess the Smith was probably a corruption of Schmitt. It was famous in the years after the war, a gathering point for the Jewish community. Any Jew arriving in Glasgow would end up there. And Isa Smith was a sort of godmother to the whole community. My mother, my adoptive mother, worked there as a bookkeeper. It was Isa who arranged the adoption.’
His eyes wandered off again to some distant past.
‘I knew the place. My mother took me often, and I would eat in the kitchen. There was an older woman who worked there. Always made such a fuss of me. Serving me little treats, kissing me on the forehead. Always with a gift for me on my birthday. Turned out she was my grandmother. My blood grandmother. Her daughter had got herself pregnant. Unmarried. Just a teenager. And in those days it was common for unmarried mothers to give up their babies for adoption. Only she didn’t want to. She wanted to keep that baby. Me.’
And for a moment it seemed as if Maurie would be overwhelmed by emotion.
He swallowed hard. ‘But she’d never have managed to keep it without the help of her mother. And then the stupid girl gets herself pregnant again, almost immediately. Not even by the same man. And her mother tells her she can’t look after two babies, and that the second one will have to be adopted.’ He shook his head. ‘But before she even got the choice she went and died in childbirth, and there was no way her mother could cope. It was Isa’s idea to put us both up for adoption.’ He refocused to meet the gaze of his old friends. ‘Me and Rachel.’
Luke’s voice was hushed. ‘She was your half-sister.’
Maurie nodded. ‘My adoptive mother and her sister were both older women. Neither of them had been able to conceive. Something genetic, probably. So I went to one, and Rachel to the other. The perfect solution. Kept us both in the same family. Except that my aunt had wanted me, a boy, but drew the short straw and got Rachel.’
‘Did Rachel know?’ Jack’s voice was so quiet as to be almost inaudible. ‘I mean, about being adopted.’
‘Not until I told her. And then it was our secret. One we swore to keep always. Just the two of us. Our parents never knew that we knew. I had confronted the woman who worked in the kitchen at Smith’s. My real grandmother. She couldn’t deny me anything. Least of all the truth. And I think, in the end, she wanted me to know. She broke down and told me the whole sordid tale, but made me swear never to tell a soul. Which, apart from Rachel, I haven’t until now.’
Maurie’s eyes dipped to the table, then rose slowly to seek Jack’s. ‘She had too much of her mother in her. I was scared—’
‘That she was going to sleep with some guy and get herself pregnant.’ Jack held his gaze, unblinking.
Maurie swallowed back his emotion again, then spat it out as anger. ‘It was only too clear to me. History repeating itself. First that thug Andy...’ he hesitated, ‘... and then you, Jack. She gave herself too easily. Just like her mother. And you took advantage.’ His lip trembled as he sucked in a breath. ‘And I was right. Because it happened, didn’t it? Just as if it were programmed into her DNA. Got herself pregnant, just like her mother had! And I saw the whole damned cycle repeating itself a generation on. It was only ever going to end badly.’
No one knew what to say, and silence hung among them like a pall of cigarette smoke in a sixties pub.
It was some minutes before they heard it. The first scrape of leather on concrete. Footsteps disturbing rubble on the stairs. Slow, cautious steps. Jack glanced at his watch. Whoever it was had arrived early. And the tension in the common room became palpable. A beam of torchlight played out on the landing then snapped into darkness, before a tall, lean figure stepped into the undulating wash of candlelight in the doorway. An elderly man, well into his seventies, Jack thought. He wore an expensive camel coat and shiny black shoes. His strong, handsome face beneath a head of thick white hair swept back from his forehead was still extraordinarily familiar. Even after all this time.
Jack had been half expecting Dr Robert, and so it came as no surprise. What did surprise him was the rude health and powerful build of a man who was anything up to ten years their senior. Evidently life had treated him well.
But if he was still familiar to them, his incomprehension as he looked at the faces gathered around the table was patent.
He frowned. ‘Who the hell are you?’
‘Don’t you remember?’ Maurie said.
Dr Robert swung his eyes in Maurie’s direction, and his shock at the appearance of the dying man briefly widened them.
‘Five lads from Glasgow who lived for well over a month in the basement flat at Onslow Gardens. Who were there the night that a young thug called Andy McNeil was bludgeoned to death by the actor Simon Flet. Must be hard to see those young boys in these old men.’
The doctor’s transition from confusion, to fear, to recognition and resignation passed across his face like so many shades of the same colour. But darker each time.
‘The Shuffle,’ he said.
And Jack wondered how on earth he remembered the name after all these years.
‘Jack,’ Jack said.
‘Luke.’
‘Dave.’
Dr Robert’s eyes swung back to Maurie, whose smile seemed more like a grimace.
‘No. You wouldn’t have recognized me in a million years, would you?’
‘Maurie,’ Dr Robert said, his voice so soft it scarcely penetrated the still of the room.
‘Well remembered.’
‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘Just about everything that could be. Sit down, doctor. It was me that emailed you.’
Dr Robert took a step into the room, but didn’t sit.
Maurie watched him, unblinking, totally focused. ‘Must have scared the shit out of you, my message, eh? Scared to come, scared not to. It was the sting in the tail that caught you, though, wasn’t it?’ He bared his teeth. ‘Just irresistible. I knew it would be.’ He paused for effect. ‘That I knew who really killed Andy McNeil.’
Dr Robert was impassive, and his voice was stronger now. ‘It was Flet.’
Maurie shook his head. ‘It wasn’t.’
Jack turned towards Dr Robert. ‘Then it must have been you.’
And the doctor’s eyes flickered in his direction, hostility flashing briefly behind his apprehension.
But Maurie shook his head again. ‘No. Not the good doctor, either.’ He kept his eyes fixed on the older man. ‘But you did kill Simon Flet. Didn’t you?’
The blood drained from Dr Robert’s tanned face and left him looking jaundiced. But he said nothing.