‘So how did the sender find out about your new addresses? What about your mother? Whoever is sending these payments must have been told of your marriages. Could it be that your mother really knew who this is?’
‘No. She was as surprised as we was …’
‘… we both got married in the same year and the next packages arrived at our new addresses …’
‘… with an extra five hundred each.’
‘I have to say, ladies, that that sounds very much to me like the actions of a regretful absentee father. Especially when you take the significance of the date into account. You’re both absolutely sure that it was your father they found?’
‘As sure as we can be.’
‘And our Ma said she never believed the money came from Daddy.’
‘Oh?’ I asked. ‘Why did she think that?’
‘She said …’
‘… all along …’
‘… that if Daddy had been alive, that wherever he was, he would have sent for us. To be a family.’
‘Maybe that was impossible for him to do,’ I said.
I didn’t mention that I had also heard of Gentleman Joe’s prowess as a bedroom swordsman: the twins were unlikely to be the only family he had.
‘I don’t mean impossible because he was dead, but because he couldn’t risk coming back to Glasgow and the police tracing him. Three thousand pounds a year is a huge amount of money and I don’t think, with respect, that you have a munificent but anonymous secret benefactor.’
They frowned and I simplified my vocabulary to a Glasgow level. Sometimes I can be too polysyllabic for my own good.
‘So you’re saying you think that it isn’t Daddy they found in the river?’ Isa spoke for them both, with an assertiveness I hadn’t heard from either of them before. Maybe she was the older. Seniority in minutes and seconds counted to twins, I had been told. But maybe she was Violet.
‘Truth is, I really don’t know,’ I said. ‘Tell me, have either of you tried to trace back the packages to where they were sent from?’
‘Until now we’ve kept very quiet about it …’
‘… thinking it was Daddy …’
‘… we didn’t want to make waves …’
‘… or do anything to lead the police to him.’
‘That’s understandable, I suppose,’ I said; then, in a let’sbe-absolutely-clear-about-this kind of tone, ‘So you want me to find out who has been sending the money?’
‘We do.’
‘Even if that leads me to your father, who is wanted for the most serious crimes you can be wanted for?’
Identical frowns. Then an emphatic ‘Yes.’
‘Before we go any further,’ I said, ‘if that wasn’t your father at the bottom of the Clyde and my investigations lead me to him, alive and well, then I will have to notify the police.’
They looked at each other, then back at me. ‘We heard you was …’
‘… discreet …’
‘… that you and the police don’t get on.’
‘Did you?’ I leaned forward. ‘And who told you that?’
‘We asked around …’
I studied them for a moment. Despite the cute ditzy twins thing they had going, they were after all the daughters of a legendary Glasgow gangster. I began to imagine where they had got character references for me.
‘Turning a blind eye to the odd technical infringement of the law is one thing, ladies. But perverting the course of justice, misprision of felony or being an accessory after the fact in armed robbery and murder are something else. Anyway, I’m not in the business of breaking the law,’ I said with such conviction even I believed it.
‘Our Daddy is dead, Mr Lennox …’
‘… we want to know who is sending us the money.’
I took a moment to think about what they had told me. The penny dropped.
‘So you want me to find who’s been sending you the money because, if it isn’t your father, then he or she has to have a pretty strong motive to part with that kind of cash. You think that maybe whoever’s sending you the money is doing so out of guilt. If that was your father at the bottom of the river, someone must have put him there, is that it?’
When I said it, I said it as if it had been in my mind all along.
‘We just want to know who’s sending it to us.’
‘Then what?’ I asked. ‘You call the police? I’m guessing you haven’t been troubling the tax man about these payments. And the police come over all pernickety and bureaucratic when it comes to the proceeds of armed robbery. So what do you have planned? I have to tell you that if this is about some kind of personal retribution, then I’m not interested.’
‘We just want to know who is sending it,’ Isa repeated; this time there was a little steel in her voice and both heart-shaped faces again set hard.
‘The postmarks on the envelopes are always London?’ I asked with a hint of a sigh as they slipped the money back into respective handbags.
‘Not always …’
‘… sometimes Edinburgh …’
‘… and once from Liverpool.’
‘I see …’ I frowned for effect before the punchline. ‘I have to warn you that this may all become expensive, ladies. I may have a lot of travelling to do — all of which will be receipted and accounted for, of course. And it will take time … whoever is sending you this money certainly values their anonymity. And time, I’m afraid, is money.’
‘Is this enough …’ They both took out the cash bundles again and each peeled off crisp twenties, laying them, in turns, on my desk. When they were finished they had each laid six portraits of the queen before me.
‘… to get you started?’
‘You can let us know if you need more.’
I looked at the two hundred and forty pounds. The irresistible force had met with the moveable object.
‘Let me see what I can find out,’ I said and smiled my most at-your-service smile. ‘I have to say, ladies, that I think you’re paying me to look a gift horse in the mouth. You would maybe be better leaving things lie as they are.’ But I had already picked up the twenties. I had decided that, given that Isa and Violet hadn’t troubled the tax man, it would be diplomatic for me to do the same.
‘We just want to know who it is …’ said Violet.
‘… but we don’t want them to know we know,’ said Isa. ‘Then we’ll decide what to do.’
‘That could be tricky,’ I said. I thought of where this could all lead me and started to wonder if I should have made a bigger effort to be immoveable.
‘I’m an enquiry agent. I make enquiries. People tend to hear when someone’s asking questions about them. I suggest we take this one step at a time. Could I see one of the wrappers the money comes in?’
Isa obliged and handed me a paper band. It was plain, unmarked with a gummed closure.
‘This isn’t a bank’s,’ I said. ‘The only way to trace this money would be to have the police check the serial numbers, but I guess that’s not going to happen.’ I punctuated my sigh with an obliging smile. ‘Let me see what I can do. I’ll ask around.’
‘Thank you, Mr Lennox,’ they said simultaneously.
‘Do you have a photograph I can have of your father? I wouldn’t need to keep it … just long enough to copy it and then I’d return it to you.’
Isa, or Violet, shook her head. ‘We don’t have any photographs of Daddy …’
‘He never liked having them taken …’
‘Then, when he disappeared, the few photos there were of him also went missing …’
‘I see,’ I said. Ghosts didn’t steal photographs. ‘Can you give me a list of people your father associated with before he disappeared?’
‘We never knew anyone Daddy had dealings with …’
‘But there were the names we found …’
‘… behind the bureau …’
‘What names?’ I asked.
‘It was a list that Daddy had made …’
‘… years and years ago …’
‘… it had fallen behind the bureau …’
‘Mam found it when she was cleaning …’
‘It had some names on it …’
‘Would that help?’
‘Anything that could give me somewhere to start looking would help,’ I said, although I couldn’t imagine Gentleman Joe committing a list of his Empire Exhibiton robbery co-conspirators to paper.