The Unbearable Lightness of Scones

  With the broad policy agreed, James and Angus set about prising the Raeburn from its frame. Once removed, the painting seemed a somehow diminished thing, naked and vulnerable – a mere creature of canvas and wooden stretchers. But even with this, it glowed with that wonderful muted light that infused each Raeburn, and one could tell that this was from the hand of a master.

  Next, Angus fetched the redundant portrait of Ramsey Dunbarton and measured it against the frame that the Raeburn had just vacated. Some adjustment would be required to Ramsey’s portrait, but nothing excessive, and it was while he was marking this with chalk on the surface of the canvas that a telephone call came through from Domenica.

  James could tell that the call was an important one. “No!” exclaimed Angus down the line, his eyes widening. “Is there no end to her brass neck?” And, “She’ll be wanting to keep her distance from the actual transaction – that’s what she’ll be wanting!” followed by, “We’ll come down to Scotland Street immediately. Stay where you are, and keep calm.”

  “Trouble?” asked James when Angus had replaced the receiver.

  Angus rolled his eyes. “Serious trouble,” he said. “We shall have to go to Domenica’s flat without delay, James. I shall explain on our way.”

  With Cyril trotting beside them, Angus and James set off on the short walk to Scotland Street. Angus gave James an account of the conversation that he had overheard in Antonia’s flat when he was returning the blue Spode teacup. “And now Domenica says that Antonia has asked her to take another delivery for her,” he said. “She claims to be going to the hairdresser again and said that there would be what she called a ‘very delicate’ delivery while she was out. Could Domenica take it for her? She’s always doing that, of course, expecting Domenica to sign for all sorts of things, but never a consignment of drugs!”

  James listened to this and gave a whistle. “She’ll be wanting Domenica to do the dangerous work for her,” he said. “Receiving these things is presumably the most perilous part of the transaction. She’ll want to keep well clear of that. Has she given her money to hand over?”

  “Domenica said that there’s an envelope that feels as if it’s full of money,” answered Angus.

  “I find it quite despicable,” said James. “It’s bad enough that she’s involved in the whole sordid business, but to implicate an innocent neighbour is dreadful. It’s like those people who use unwitting so-called mules to do their dirty work for them.”

  Angus agreed with this assessment. “We shall see what Domenica proposes,” he said. “But in my view we should immediately involve the police. They can be waiting for the delivery and they can make their arrests.”

  “Yes,” said James. He paused. “And how long do you think Antonia will get for this?”

  “It depends on the quantity of drugs,” said Angus. “She talked about it being cut when I heard her, but it may still be quite an amount. Five years perhaps.”

  The question made Angus think. If Antonia were to be sent to prison – as looked likely – then her flat would presumably be confiscated, on the grounds that it was purchased with illicitly obtained money. That would mean that it would come onto the market, and if that happened, he might consider buying it. It would be very pleasant living next to Domenica and … and if Domenica ever thought about marrying him, he could move in with her and Cyril could be kept in the next-door flat. That would remove Domenica’s anxieties about having Cyril in the house. It was a brilliant idea, and with the arrest of Antonia imminent, it seemed like a perfectly feasible one.

  He allowed himself to daydream. Cyril could have his own brass plate on his front door. Cyril Lordie, it would say, Beware of the Owner.

  86. To Catch a Dealer

  No sooner had Angus pressed Domenica’s bell than the door was opened from within. “It’s always a bit disconcerting,” he said, “to have a door fly open immediately one presses the bell. Not that I’m criticising you, Domenica – I’m merely making an observation.”

  “I see,” she said. “So you’d prefer to wait?”

  She turned to James. “Good morning, James. I take it that you’re not disconcerted?”

  James smiled in embarrassment. He had heard Domenica and Angus sparring with one another in the past, a pursuit they no doubt found enjoyable, but which could make others feel awkward. “I don’t think it really matters,” he said. “The important thing is that the door is opened. That’s what counts, surely.”

  Domenica ushered them into the flat, Cyril being allowed in as well. The well-mannered dog looked around appreciatively and sniffed the air. There was a rug, and he moved to this and sat down, his mouth slightly open, showing his single gold tooth, awaiting instructions. Much of the life of a dog is spent awaiting instructions; any instruction will do – a command to sit, even when sitting will serve no purpose, is appreciated; or a command to fetch, even when there is no reason for anything to be fetched. With instructions, a dog feels that he is contributing to the human world that he sees going on about him, a world which is so often opaque and confusing – for dogs, and indeed often for humans; a world of frantic activity, of people going backwards and forwards, entering rooms and then leaving them, sitting down and then standing up, and to what end?

  Domenica’s mind, though, was still on the question of when to open the door. She was not going to have Angus getting away with a remark she regarded as undermining. “I must say that I find it very irritating to be kept waiting,” she said firmly. “In my view, if the door is not opened within one minute of the bell being rung, there is a need for an apology or explanation. Anything longer than that and the message is clear: the caller is not important.”

  “Yes,” said Angus. “But you do need a little time to compose yourself once you’ve rung a bell. That’s all I was saying. Composition time. It’s the same with telephones. If the other person picks up the phone immediately it rings, you get a bit of a shock. You expect a few rings at the other end.”

  “That’s true,” agreed James. “It’s a rather abrupt start to a telephone call otherwise.”

  They went into the kitchen. Angus sniffed the air, just as Cyril had done: the smell of Domenica’s coffee always seemed so much more delicious than the smell of the coffee he made for himself. Why, he wondered, does somebody not make a perfume, or an aftershave lotion perhaps, that mimicked that smell? Perfumes could be so overwhelming, so cloying by comparison; a person who brought with him or her some wafting reminder of coffee would surely be much appreciated.

  The pouring of the coffee was the signal for the topic of conversation to move on. Domenica now related to her guests how Antonia had rung her doorbell – she did not reveal how quickly she answered it – earlier that morning and asked her, again, to take a delivery. “She was as cool as a cucumber,” she said. “Standing there, utterly without scruple. And do you know what she said to me? She said: please be discreet.”

  “That clinches it,” said Angus. “This is … what do they call it? The drop?”

  James shook his head. “I don’t think so. The drop is a term used purely in espionage. It’s when you drop the papers or the microfilm in a dead tree and somebody comes along and picks them up. Half the secrets of the Cold War were exchanged in that way.”

  “How bizarre,” said Domenica. “Men don’t ever really grow up, do they?”

  Angus and James were both silent for a while. Then Angus spoke. “Many intelligence people were women, you know. Daphne Park, for example. She worked for MI5, I believe. I had lunch with her down in London once after they put her in the House of Lords. She’s a very remarkable woman.”

  “Women make rather good spies because we’re observant,” said Domenica. “But, listen, this is not the point. The point is that at any moment Antonia’s consignment is going to arrive. What are we going to do?”

  “We call the police,” said Angus.

  Domenica shook her head. “I really don’t think we have time. If I phoned the police now, they would simply
send somebody round to check up on my story. And that could frighten the dealers off. They’d see a police car parked outside.”

  Angus conceded that this was likely. “So what do we do?” he asked. “Do we simply take delivery?”

  “Why don’t we do that?” James said. “Domenica takes delivery, and one of us nips downstairs and takes the number of the person’s car. Then that’s the stage that we call the police. They then come – we tell them the full story …”

  “We can’t,” said Angus. “I’m not going to tell them about getting into Antonia’s flat and hiding in the cupboard. That’s probably an offence in itself. I’m not going to tell them that.”

  Domenica intervened. “We don’t need to say anything about that. All we need to tell them is that I was asked to take delivery by Antonia. I can then say that my suspicions were aroused – which will be true – and that we investigated the box or packet or whatever it is and discovered that it was full of drugs. Then we hand the whole thing over, and Antonia goes to jail.”

  The mention of jail made Angus think again of Antonia’s flat. “If she goes to prison,” he said, “and there can be no doubt that it’s about time that she did, then I wonder what will happen to her flat? It’s very nicely situated. One of the rooms, I’ve always felt, would make a very fine studio. It’s that one with the skylight, which gives a good northern light.”

  He watched her for signs of a reaction. If she said, “Well, Angus, why don’t you think of buying it?” it would be a good sign. That would show that she would like him to be her neighbour. And if she would like him to be her neighbour, then perhaps she would like him to be something more than that.

  But Domenica said nothing. She let the remark pass, as if nobody had said anything of the remotest interest or consequence.

  87. Deceptive Appearances

  The hands of the clock moved slowly. Everybody was too nervous now to talk very much and so for a while they sat in silence as they waited for the arrival of Antonia’s supplier. Angus found himself wondering what this person would look like. Lard O’Connor had been such an obvious figure – a gangster of the old school, almost loveable, from a distance, while Antonia’s supplier would come from a totally different end of the criminal spectrum. Such people were callous and psychopathic, indifferent to the chaos and misery their wares caused in the lives of those who consumed them. And yet, here was Antonia, outwardly respectable, quite congenial company – at times, and in her way – implicated in precisely the same trade, even if a lowly link in the chain. But if one passed her in the street it would never occur to one that she was a drug-dealer; one might even see her in Jenners and think nothing of it.

  “What was the name of that Italian?” he suddenly asked Domenica.

  “Which Italian?”

  “The one who said that he could identify criminals by their appearance?”

  James provided the answer. “Cesare Lombroso.”

  Domenica nodded. She knew all about Lombroso. “You’re thinking of Antonia, I take it,” she said. “You’re reflecting on her lack of a criminal appearance?”

  “Well, I was,” admitted Angus. “And you have to admit, she doesn’t exactly look the part of the drug-dealer, does she?”

  “Lombroso was interested in the face and the shape of the head,” Domenica said. “If you look at the illustrations in his book, you’ll see that it was all about low foreheads and the eyes being too close together. He had those wonderfully frightening pictures of Murderer – typical Sicilian type and so on.”

  “Well, they did rather look the part, didn’t they?”

  Domenica laughed. “Have you seen the photographs of Dr. Shipman? The one who bumped off half his patients. Would you have been worried if he came to give you an injection?” She answered her own question. “I doubt it, Angus. There have been plenty of mild-looking murderers.”

  Angus looked thoughtful. “Undoubtedly. But at the end of the day, there’s still some connection between the look on a face and what’s going on in the mind. The old saw that the eyes are the window of the soul has some truth in it. Take Richard Nixon. And then compare him with, say, Bill Clinton. What do the faces say to you?”

  “Nixon had a …”

  “Tricky face?” Angus interjected. “Paranoid? Couldn’t you look at that face and say, ‘That’s a man who has an enemies list’?”

  “Whereas William Jefferson Clinton …”

  Angus made a gesture to indicate the obvious. “An open, friendly face. Sympathetic. Warm.”

  “And in each case what you saw on the outside is what you got on the inside?”

  Angus nodded. “Exactly.” He turned to James. “And in portraiture, James, would you not agree that character can shine through the face?”

  “Oh yes. Although it might depend on whether there was any flattery going on. Portrait painters are not above flattery, Angus, as I’m sure you are well aware.”

  Angus laughed. “I am. That is, I am aware. And I hope that I’m above flattery – most of the time. I suppose there are occasions when I feel that I have to be kind. But being kind to somebody is different, surely, from flattering them.”

  They were silent again, each thinking, perhaps, of Antonia and any display in her physiognomy of her secret. Had there been signs that people had missed? Angus remembered seeing the moderately expensive pictures on her wall; for a successful drug-dealer, those would have been easily affordable. Well, that at least answered the question of how she could buy them. It would also explain how she managed to live without working, if one did not count the writing of a novel about the Scottish saints as working, which he did not. And there was a further mystery, the answer to which would soon be revealed: what sort of drugs would she be dealing in? The most likely answer to that, he thought, was cocaine. Antonia would be providing cocaine to the upmarket dinner parties where such things were consumed. She was perfectly placed for that in the New Town, with its elegant flats and wealthy inhabitants. He shook his head, almost wistfully. He had never been invited to one of these fashionable dinner parties, possibly because of Cyril, he thought. Or the clothes he wore. Or even his age.

  It was while Angus was entertaining these thoughts that Domenica’s doorbell rang. At the sudden, shrill sound all three of them gave a start and looked anxiously at one another.

  “I’m going to answer,” whispered Domenica. “You stay in here. Don’t do anything.”

  She left the kitchen and went into the hall. Angus and James could still see her, though, from the kitchen table, and they watched her every step.

  Domenica opened her door. There, immediately outside on the landing, was a tall woman somewhere in her forties, wearing a green Barbour jacket and tight-fitting corduroy jeans.

  “Domenica MacDonald?”

  Domenica nodded. This was not what she had expected. The voice was commanding, confident.

  “Antonia telephoned me and said that I could leave something with you while she was out.” She gestured to a large cardboard box, which she had laid down on the ground behind her. “I’ve howked this up from downstairs and I’ve got another one in the Land Rover. Could I pop this inside and then I’ll go and fetch the other one?”

  The woman did not wait for an answer, but lifted up the cardboard box and virtually pushed her way past Domenica, who was still standing in the doorway in what appeared to be a degree of shock.

  “In the kitchen?” asked the woman. “Can I dump it through there?”

  Again she did not wait for an answer, and made her way across the hall and through the kitchen door. Once in the kitchen she put the box down on the table and straightened up, to look at the astonished two men.

  “Angus Lordie!” the woman exclaimed. “Now this is a surprise! Of course you live round here, don’t you. Jimmy said he’d bumped into you in Drummond Place five or six years ago.”

  Angus struggled to his feet. “Maeve,” he said weakly. “I had no idea …”

  “Of course you didn’t,” she said br
iskly.

  “I … I …” stuttered Angus.

  “Look,” she said. “Don’t worry about all that. It’s ages ago. And I’ve been happily married for years. Don’t worry about a thing. Water under the Forth Bridge. Lots of it.”

  88. Illicit Skills

  James and Domenica exchanged glances: the confusion which now so clearly covered Angus Lordie had extended to them too, though to a lesser degree. They, at least, knew where to look, which was at Angus; he, however, was staring firmly at the floor, as if it might reveal the solution to what was evidently a situation of considerable personal embarrassment. Domenica felt sympathetic: It is awkward enough, she thought, even in ordinary circumstances to encounter a former lover whom one has mistreated; how much more difficult must it be to do so in circumstances such as these, where the former lover reveals herself as a master criminal.

  And there were loyalty issues too, she thought. The decision to report a neighbour to the authorities was one thing; it was quite another to report at the same time, in a single grand denunciation, both a neighbour and a former love. As she looked with some pity on Angus, he blushed red and stuttered, and she speculated further on what had happened between the portrait painter and this somewhat unlikely drug-dealer. For a few heady and ridiculous moments she imagined that this woman might have been his model; that these long limbs, now encased in sexless corduroy, might once have been bared and draped across some stylised couch in Angus’s studio; that from that sultry scene a torrid romance might have developed. It was possible, but her thoughts were interrupted by the model herself, if that is what she had been, who now addressed Angus again, in a perfectly matter-of-fact way, and not as one discovered in flagrante delicto.

  “The traffic across the bridge was as bad as ever,” she remarked. “It’s all very well abolishing tolls, but that just encourages people to drive.”