‘To Ayrshire?’ I couldn’t keep the puzzlement from my voice. ‘That is the past. To be specific it’s the eighteenth century.’
‘No,’ she said coldly. ‘Not Ayrshire. You’ll laugh at this…’
‘Okay, try me.’
‘Canada. We’re emigrating to Canada. They’re looking for farmers there.’
I didn’t laugh. In fact, I was surprised at my reaction. Something sharp and unpleasant bit me in the gut and I realized it was envy.
‘Where in Canada?’
‘Saskatchewan. Near Regina.’
We pulled up outside Craithie Court. I switched Torme off mid croon. ‘I really do wish you all the best.’
‘The other thing, Lennox… it would be best if you didn’t call round to the flat any more.’
I placed my hand on hers. She stifled the instinctive recoil, but not quickly enough for me not to sense the tensing of her fist to pull away.
‘It’s all right, May. I understand. I really hope it works out for you. We’ll make this our last job, okay? I won’t call round any more.’
She smiled. It would have been nice if her smile had been tinged with sadness, but the idea of not seeing me again seemed to cheer her up no end. I have that effect on some women. I went over with her again what to say to Claire Skinner and gave her Sammy Pollock’s name again. She got out of the car and went into the Hostel. When she didn’t come back immediately, I took it as a good sign.
It was half an hour before she re-emerged and got back into the car, her face flushed and her expression dark.
‘Drive around the corner,’ she said without looking at me. ‘She’s probably watching the car.’
I did what May told me. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked when we were parked again.
‘I don’t know, Lennox, but whatever it is, that girl in there is terrified. She said she wouldn’t come out to talk to you. She says she knows nothing about where Sammy Pollock is and she wouldn’t tell you if she did know. It’s not that she’s being tough about it, it’s just that she is so terrified.’ May frowned. ‘I don’t know what you’ve got involved with, Lennox, but you better be careful. Someone has that poor girl scared half to death.’
‘Okay… I guess I’ll have to wait until she has a spot at the Pacific Club and have another go at her then.’
‘You’ll be lucky. I get the feeling she’s keeping a low profile.’
‘You okay?’
May looked at me for a moment, sighed then smiled. ‘I’m fine. It’s just she was very… agitated. I thought she was going to go for me.’
‘Sorry. I didn’t think…’
‘Forget it… it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle.’ Suddenly, May’s attention was drawn to something through the windscreen.
‘Look…’ she said.
‘Is that her?’
I followed May’s eyes to the junction about two hundred yards ahead, to where a young woman in her early twenties was hurrying across the street, coming from the direction of Craithie Court. From this distance she appeared to be quite attractive. My experience of Glaswegian women was that they were usually only ever attractive from a distance, or through bourbon-tinted glasses. The woman up ahead was not quite slim with a slight heaviness around the waist and ankles. She had a pale grey jacket draped over one blue-bloused arm and everything about her movements suggested urgency.
‘You haven’t seen her before?’ May seemed surprised. ‘Yes, that’s her.’
We watched as she made her way along the street towards the corner.
‘Can you drive, May?’ I asked. It was odd, but it was one of the thousands of things about May that I didn’t know.
She shook her head. I took out my wallet and handed her everything I had in it apart from a couple of one-pound notes. It amounted to just over thirty pounds and I thrust it into her hands.
‘That’s for helping me out tonight. I’ve got to go after her so that’s to cover your taxi fare home too. Thanks, May.’
‘That’s far too much, Lennox.’
‘Consider it a wedding gift,’ I said. I got out of the car and May followed. ‘I’m sorry that you have to get a cab home.’
‘That’s okay,’ she said.
I looked impatiently up the road to the corner around which Claire Skinner had just disappeared from view. I turned back to May. It was as if she was trying to frame a thought, put something into words.
‘It’s okay, May,’ I said. ‘See you around.’
She nodded in an odd way, her eyes avoiding mine, said ‘Thanks’ and ‘Bye’, turned abruptly, and walked briskly back down Thornwood Road towards Dumbarton Road and out of my life.
I jumped back into the Atlantic. The chances were that Claire Skinner hadn’t spotted my car outside the hostel. And my face was totally unknown to her. My fond farewell to May had cost me too much time to follow Claire on foot: I had too much distance to cover. And once I had covered it, things would get tricky: it’s never easy to follow by car someone who is on foot, without being detected. But I guessed that Claire would jump onto a bus or tram, or hail a taxi. I had no idea where she was going, but I was pretty sure whom she was going to see. I picked her up again when I turned the corner. Her trot had slowed to a brisk walk, still a determined effort on a muggy summer’s evening in Glasgow. I saw her check her watch, but I was pretty sure this was no prearranged appointment: she had been spurred into action by May’s unwelcome intervention.
I caught up with her and had to drive past her at normal speed. I decided to pull over farther up the street, dump the car, and hoof it. A car travelling at walking pace would be far too conspicuous. I pulled over to the kerb and did a quick check of where I was. Fairlie Park Drive. I was about to get out of my car when she walked briskly past without looking in my direction. There was a telephone booth at the corner with Crow Road and Claire stepped into it. She made a short call before stepping back out and waiting outside the ’phone box. I noticed her feet, small beneath the slightly too thick ankles and doing a little side to side dance step. I decided to sit tight. The mountain was maybe on its way to Mohammed. After about ten minutes, I saw her wave furiously at something. A black taxi pulled over and she jumped in. I waited until the cab passed me and put another car between us before I pulled out.
The taxi headed south out of the city. We passed through Pollokshields, reminding me that I’d have to return there later, then Pollokshaws, Giffnock and Newton Mearns. One of the things I could never get used to about Glasgow was the way it was this concentrated, dense knot of stone, brick and steel, factories and furnaces, tenements and bristling cranes; and then suddenly you were in open, almost empty countryside. We were on the main road south, a grey-black scar on a wrinkled blanket of green that stretched as far as I could see on either side. This was the main Carlisle road and it meant I was able to conceal myself in traffic: something that became more difficult when the taxi pulled off onto a B-road. Another turn took the cab onto an even narrower country road. This was a road to nowhere else and you needed a reason to have made that turning. I held back, allowing a gap to open up between the Atlantic and the cab. The road traced the edge of a flooded quarry that looked up at the sun like a mud-brown eye.
I had lost sight of the taxi around a bend. It didn’t concern me because there was nowhere for it to go. A little bit of acceleration and I could bring it back into view. But when I turned the bend I was suddenly faced with the rear of the cab, pulled into a farm gate. I drove on without looking in its direction and only once I was past did I see Claire Skinner disembark and hand some notes to the driver. Clearly not waiting for change, she turned, opened the gate, and headed up what looked to me like a farm track.
Bingo.
I continued along the road until I reached the next bend. In my rear-view mirror I saw the taxi struggle to make a three-point turn and head back in the direction of the main road. I drove around the next bend, a sharp turn to the left. A little further on there was a copse beside the road. Bumping the Atlantic onto the grass verge, the two driver’s side wheels still on the tarmac, I felt reasonably sure I had concealed my car from the farm track and presumably any buildings at the track’s end.