Afterwards we smoked and she was quiet. I apologized for being so rough and asked if we could see each other again.
‘I’d like that,’ she said, and I was disappointed to see that she meant it.
It was about ten the next morning when, accompanied by Archie, I arrived to meet the twins at Violet’s home in Milngavie. I had decided against conducting our business in my office because I felt the boarded-up window behind my desk might just have been a little off-putting for clients: a reminder, as it was, that I had added a new option in how you could leave my office.
There were also the fact that when I had called by the office first thing that morning to pick up a few things, there had been a reporter from the Bulletin hanging around the building. Fortunately he was without a photographer and was slow on the uptake. He had asked me if I was Lennox and I told him, in a broad Glasgow accent, that I wasn’t. It was only when I said I was from the City Corporation Licensing Authority and was there to find out about taxis making unauthorized pick-ups that he stopped nodding absently and began to look suspicious.
Archie and I took my Austin Atlantic and drove up to Milngavie. On the way I noticed again the cigar-shaped profile of the Bennie Railplane sitting forlorn in its distant field, hovering over a huddle of sheds, like a discarded prop from a Buck Rogers featurette.
I gave Archie an update of where we were with things, including my suspicion that the man in the photograph was Gentleman Joe himself, and that he was behind the attempt on my life in my office. He asked me how it had gone with Billy Dunbar and I told him I hadn’t had a chance to make the trip, after all. I didn’t really know why I lied to Archie; maybe it was the fact that he was, at the end of the day, a retired copper. The fact that you’d stumbled on a double murder but hadn’t reported it, or the fact that you had pulped some gangster’s face by pistol-whipping him with an illegally held firearm, were the kind of things you didn’t volunteer to coppers, retired or otherwise.
Violet McKnight lived in a detached Nineteen-thirties bungalow, with the obligatory attic conversion above and the obligatory small square of manicured gardens out front. Milngavie was Glasgow’s hadn’t-quite-made-it middle class suburb: a sprawl of identical bungalows set out with the imagination of a vegetable allotment.
I noticed that the Ford Zephyr, still gleaming its Hire Purchase gleam, was parked in the driveway, and when we rang the doorbell we were admitted by Robert McKnight, Violet’s husband. He beamed a car salesman’s smile at us, letting it flicker only momentarily when he saw I was not alone. McKnight was shorter than I had expected him to be, but the shoulders were as packed as I had seen from above. He had a broad, handsome face, but his nose had been busted at some point and had not been professionally set, giving it a twist to the right. The effect was off-putting: even when he was looking at you straight on, you had the feeling he had already started to turn away.
He showed us into the living room, or loungette as they probably called it in Milngavie. Everything was new and immaculate and in what they called the Danish Style. It depressed me to realize I was seeing the kind of look that Martha had tried to emulate in her tiny rented flat and on a much smaller budget.
Isa and Violet were sitting on the sofa. I noticed that they sat almost pressed up to each other, as if physical contact between them was essential to comfort. I introduced Archie as my associate who had been working on the case with me, and the twins invited us to sit.
‘We read all about it …’
‘… in the newspapers …’ they began.
‘That was terrible …’
‘Just terrible …’
‘Tell us, Mr Lennox …’
‘… was it to do with you trying to find out about Daddy?’
I smiled and dropped my hat onto the G-plan. ‘I’m afraid it was. I have to tell you that I actually think that Daddy might have had more than a little to do with it.’
‘You mean …’
‘… Daddy is alive?’
‘That’s the information I’ve been given. Or at least he was still alive in Nineteen forty-two, according to one witness. Just the one, mind. But added to that single witness is the fact that the gentleman who took a swan dive from my office window had tried before to warn me off looking into your father’s disappearance, and when I couldn’t be warned off, he tried to retire me permanently from the case. And that means I am definitely on the opposite side of the fence from Joe Strachan. If I continue to work for you, that could be seen as a conflict of interests. And detrimental to my well-being.’
For once Isa and Violet said nothing but sat in identical silence.
‘So you really do think that Joe is still alive?’ asked Robert McKnight, the salesman’s smile gone from his lips and replaced with a frown of equivalent insincerity.
‘Looks like it. And that’s why I wanted to talk to you both. As I said, I’ve taken this case as far as I can. As far as I am willing.’
‘We quite understand …’ said Violet.
‘… given everything that has happened …’
‘… but we want to be sure …’
‘… that Daddy is alive …’
‘The only way to be sure would be to find him,’ I said.
‘That’s what we mean …’
‘… would you find him for us, so that we can talk to him?’
‘The short answer to that is no. I am in no doubt that if I ever did succeed in finding your father, then I don’t think I’d live long enough to tell you about it. And if I did survive the encounter, I would have to tell the police.’
They both opened their mouths to protest. I held up my hand.
‘Listen, ladies, I warned you from the start that if I found out your father was alive, and where he was, then I could not withhold that information from the police. Now the police are all over this like a rash, and I don’t want to catch it. If they ask me, right now, if I know the whereabouts of Joe Strachan, I can tell them with absolute honesty that I don’t know. And that I don’t know for absolutely sure that he is alive. If you want my advice, I think we should leave it like that.’
‘But we want to talk to him …’ they protested in unison.
‘Let’s face it, ladies, he has been sending you that cash every year for eighteen years. If he wanted to make contact, then he would have before now. If you ask my opinion, and I’m sorry to be so blunt, that money is guilt money. I think your father always planned to disappear, to leave you and your mother behind, whether or not a copper was killed during the Empire Exhibition job. I believe he has a completely new identity in some other part of the country, or the world: an identity he was probably setting up since before you were even born. The only reason he is making his presence felt here in Glasgow again is because I’ve been sticking my big nose in where it’s not wanted.’
‘So what do we do?’
‘Accept that your father is alive, but not in a position to contact you. Keep taking the money and keeping your heads down. That’s my advice and it’s advice I intend to follow myself. By the way, I think it could be a matter of your safety as well.’
The twins looked outraged.
‘Our Daddy …’
‘… would never do anything to hurt us!’
‘Perhaps not, but I think there’s a chance he could have got involved with a very dangerous group of people. More organized, better resourced and more dangerous than any criminal gang. And they look out for each other, as I found out to my cost.’