The Good Provider (28 page)

He hesitated, thought of making a break for it then and there, glanced down the lane to the open street. Malone’s fist closed on his arm and drew him roughly aside as McVoy skilfully turned the horse in the corner of lane and church wall, nosed it back towards the street and drew to a halt once more.

‘Right,’ said Malone. ‘No sense in dawdlin’. You’ll take the back, Billy. The window’ll yield, won’t it?’

‘Aye,’ Skirving said. ‘I scouted it last night.’

‘Nicholson an’ me, we’ll take the front.’

Craig said, ‘The front door! But she’ll recognise—’

‘Wrap this round your chops, sonny.’ A woollen scarf was thrust at him. ‘Anyway, she’ll have precious little chance t’ see your face.’

‘What d’ you mean?’ said Craig, but received no answer.

Skirving was by his side, breathing into his face. He smelled of onions. ‘Look, you, just do what Mr Malone tells ye. I’m beginnin’ t’ think you’ve a reason for no’ wantin’ in on this tickle at all.’

‘I’ve never done robbery before.’

‘High time ye learned then,’ Skirving told him.

‘Come on, come on.’ Malone caught Craig by the arm, dragged him past van and horse and out into Walbrook Street.

To Craig the street seemed to teem with people; a couple strolling with a dog on a leash, three gangling boys kicking a cloth ball against the bowling-green fence, a hansom clipping towards the city with the driver, high and alert, staring down at him.

‘Walk casual,’ Malone told him.

In the uncurtained window of a terraced house Craig saw a pair of young girls in pretty floral frocks standing before a music stand and singing their hearts out. By the mail-box, where he had posted his first letter home, a fat girl in a servant’s cape loitered flirtatiously in the company of a kilted soldier. Exposed and ashamed and scared, Craig kept step with Daniel Malone as they walked along Walbrook Street and mounted the steps to the door of Number 19.

It was Thursday; Craig clung to the fond hope that Hugh Affleck might be dining with his sister; then he remembered that Tom McVoy had been on scout since dusk, had seen nobody leave or enter the boarding-house.

‘What the hell’s wrong wi you?’ Malone hissed. ‘Pull up the muffler I gave you an’ chap on the door.’

Fumbling, Craig took the scarf and wrapped it about the lower part of his face.

‘The bell; ring the bloody bell,’ Malone snapped.

Malone too had wrapped a scarf about his nose and mouth and, with cap pulled down, was effectively masked; only his eyes showed, fierce and red in the catch of light from the gas-lamp.

Craig rang the bell.

The couple with the dog had gone. The servant and the soldier had vanished too. The gangling boys had drifted away from the fence and were punting the ball along the gutter, heading for Partick.

The wool, wetted with warm breath, clung to his lips.

‘Again,’ said Malone impatiently.

Craig closed his fist on the wrought-iron handle of the bell-pull and gave it another strenuous tug. He stared at the plain black door and then lifted his eyes to the dove-grey transom in which a light showed.

Malone’s fist pinched his arm above the elbow, holding him rigid and motionless directly in front of the door.

It opened.

Mrs Frew confronted him.

She blinked.

Malone pushed Craig past the woman and, in almost the same motion, struck her, cuffed her economically with a short sweep of his right forearm. He stepped after her as she staggered against the interior wall, and kicked the outside door shut with his heel.

‘Bolt it,’ Malone shouted.

Mrs Frew was gagging, contorted features turned in Craig’s direction, eyes wide. It was light in the hall; she had brought a lamp with her and had left it on the stand by the umbrella rack.

‘Don’t,’ said Craig in a soft pleading whisper as Malone, with the same economy of effort, struck the old woman again.

She slumped on to the iron rack and pitched headlong to the floor, the rack crashing with her. She rolled over, flopped on to her back, twitched and was still. She did not look like Mrs Frew any more.

‘She never recognised you, sonny,’ Malone said. ‘I told you you’d nothin’ to worry about.’

‘Is she dead?’

‘Snoozin’,’ said Malone. ‘Now will you bolt that bloody door.’

Craig fumbled with the long bolt, would have left it loose if Malone had not been watching. He shot it into the lock. He was trapped in the house with the thieves, had become an accomplice to violence.

‘Right, where’s this bloody silver?’ said Malone in a normal, natural voice, not a whisper.

Craig did not answer. He was fascinated by the sight of the old woman on the floor. She had no shred of dignity in that position. Her false teeth jutted out hideously and her skirts were thrown up to expose wrinkled stockings and skinny bare thighs.

Malone grabbed him, shook him. ‘The silver stuff, where is it?’

From the rear of the house came the muffled sound of breaking glass – Skirving. Why, Craig wondered, had it been necessary to smash into the kitchen? Why had Malone not simply strolled through the hall and unlatched the kitchen door?

At that moment Cissie, shrieking, shot from the shadows at the top of the basement steps. It had not occurred to Craig that the servant girl would still be in the house at this hour of the night for she was usually dismissed about eight. Pursued by Billy Skirving, Cissie darted towards the main staircase. She made but three steps before Skirving caught her round the waist and threw her down. He pinned her, his knee in the small of her back, and closed a hand over her mouth. Craig could still hear her muffled screams.

‘Stick the bitch a good ’un Billy, an’ shut her up,’ said Malone.

‘Leave her alone,’ Craig said.

‘Never mind about her, you, where’s the damned silver?’

‘She’s only a servant,’ Craig said.

‘I’ll have your friggin’ guts, sonny if you—’

‘
I said not to hurt her
,’ Craig shouted. ‘
Leave her alone
.’

Skirving had taken the Indian club from the breast of his jacket and held it poised. Knee still embedded in Cissie’s spine, he looked down and grinned. ‘Fancy her, son? Alive an’ kickin’?’

Tearing himself free of Malone’s grasp Craig stepped nimbly across the hall and caught the upraised club. He seemed to do it in spite of himself; once he had broken the inertia, however, had acted of his own free will, deception was over.

Malone, of course, understood.

‘
You bastard
!’ he snarled.

Craig held tightly to the Indian club. He had no notion of where his strength came from; a second ago he had been weak and limp. But that feeling was gone. Flushed by outrage, his body felt hot and powerful. He dropped to one knee and snapped Skirving’s arm across it. He heard Skirving cry out. Cissie, released, screamed piercingly and scrabbled up the staircase. Craig thrust his hand into Skirving’s face and pushed the man’s head back, forcing him down with one hand, then rolled to one side and got to his feet. He saw Skirving’s hand on the stair, like something severed. He stamped on it with all his force; and Cissie, still shrieking, scrambled on to the first landing out of his sight.

‘Christ!’ Malone said, ‘I should’ve known you were one of them.’

If he could get past Malone he might make it to the door. Once he was in the street he could surely raise the alarm. Cissie was out of reach of the robbers now. Squirming on the landing stairs Billy Skirving was too occupied with pain to pose a threat.

Malone lashed out at him. Craig stepped back.

Everything seemed lucid in the light of the lamp on the hallstand, pristine in its clarity. Even so he did not see the short iron bar in Danny Malone’s hand until it struck him on the crown of the shoulder. Numbing fire spread down his arm. He heard himself utter a throaty grunt of astonishment. He shrank from the weapon that was poised to smash in his skull.

Numbness seemed to spread into his brain, a cloudy sensation, red and sick. He ducked. The iron bar struck hunched muscles on his upper back. He charged into Malone, hands outstretched. He found Malone’s face, the scarf, dug his fingers into it and squeezed, squeezed as he might squeeze the heart of a great soft cabbage. The iron bar flailed against his back and buttocks without leverage or force. He rammed Malone into the wall. A strange plaintive yammering came from Malone’s lips but Craig did not let go. He bunched his fists until his wrists ached and his arms trembled.

‘
Open up, open up
.’

The voice was deep.

The long bolt on the door rattled furiously in its socket.

‘
I am an officer of the City of Glasgow Police
.’

Pounding fists sounded on the door. Involuntarily Craig slackened his hold on Malone who, with a sudden surge, threw off the young man and ran for the kitchen.

Craig reached the door, found the bolt and shot it open. Hugh Affleck charged past him, yelling, ‘Where is he? Where is the bastard?’

‘There,’ Craig pointed. ‘Both of them. That way.’

Hugh Affleck charged on into the kitchen. Three burly uniformed officers followed him and, ignored, Craig slid out of the house. Shoulder, arm and neck were knitted with pain but he no longer felt cloudy and sick. He stood on the top step, looked right then left along Walbrook Street.

Directly opposite Number 19 a hansom cab was drawn up, its door flung wide on its little hinges. Close behind it was a high-sided two-horse black van with the City of Glasgow arms painted upon the side, and a policeman seated on the lofty board. The black horses were lathered and panting. Both cab and police van were pointed towards Partick, away from St Anne’s corner.

Craig wiped his mouth with his knuckles. He had lost his scarf in the scuffle, but did not care who saw or recognised him now. He was still sizzling with the thrill of the fight. Heart hammering, he watched the corner by the church, saw the horse emerge from the lane with a feeling, almost, of relief.

Discreetly the van turned into Walbrook Street and headed towards the maze of lanes and streets that led to Dumbarton Road. Craig watched with amazement; the rig moved so slowly and sedately that it hardly seemed to be there at all. If it had come plunging out of the lane it would have attracted immediate attention and pursuit by the constables. As it was, in three or four minutes it would be out of sight and once more Danny Malone would have escaped the law. Craig had no doubt at all that Danny Malone was crouched down under the canvas canopy.

The arrival at speed of a hansom cab and a police van had brought the good folk of Walbrook Street hurrying to windows and doors. On one step the pretty singing girls clung to the arm of a bearded man in a silk smoking-jacket. Servants peeped up through the railings of half-basements while an elderly gent in tasselled nightcap craned from a bedroom window and demanded an explanation of the racket that had wakened him from slumber. Craig was oblivious to all of them. His gaze was fastened on the distant rig. Once into Harbour Road or Portside Street, Malone would slip from it and be lost and McVoy would swing the van on to Dumbarton Road all innocently, for he carried nothing to tie him to the scene of the crime.

Craig vaulted the iron railing and was running before his feet touched the pavement. He uttered no sound and gave no signal to the police to follow him.

Onlookers gasped, shouted, ‘See, there’s one. There he goes,’ but no one attempted to stop him.

Bristling with energy, Craig ran as he had never run before. McVoy did not seem to notice him or hear the hue-and-cry. The little van appeared through white patches of gaslight, vivid for a moment then shadowy again. It picked up speed. Craig cut sharply left at St Anne’s corner, pushed through a cluster of boozers at the door of a pub, pushed through a knot of Freemasons who had stepped out of their lodge, and cut sharply right down a narrow lane that brought him out at the very end of Walbrook Street just as the van came clopping round the curve that would carry it out of sight of witnesses.

Craig ran straight at the horse’s head.

The animal shied and reared in the shafts. Craig ducked under the flying hoofs. The whip cracked about his ears. He side-stepped and came in again, too quickly for McVoy to react. Confused, the horse reared and pranced, shook the fly-weight van from one wheel to the other. Craig caught the horse’s cheekstrap and, throwing all his weight into it, dragged its head down. The van tilted dangerously.

Standing up on the board McVoy yelled at and struggled to control the animal.

Craig tightened his grip on the strap and, by sheer brute strength, dragged the horse about. The van’s wheels screeched on the cobbles. Suddenly he let go of the strap, drove his boot into the horse’s belly, tripped and fell back. The van lurched and swayed violently and the horse bucked and plunged madly in the shafts, then, with eyeballs rolling white and its mane flying, went off at a gallop across the pavement corner and back into Walbrook Street. McVoy lost all control. Malone had had no opportunity to throw himself clear, of that Craig was sure. On his feet again, he limped after the runaway, saw the black police van thundering down Walbrook Street, two coppers clinging to its footboard, saw too that Superintendent Affleck had come out of Number 19 and was sprinting towards him.