left in Hamburg that the military police had taken an unhealthy interest in. Nevertheless, I had developed this habit of keeping myself and my immediate surroundings in order. I put it down to the experience of war, or more particularly the type of experience of war that I and most of the First Canadian Army had had. People talk about the harsh reality of war, but when you got right up close to it — and I had gotten as close to it as it was possible to get — war is so brutal and chaotic that it seems unreal. Maybe my orderliness had been all about locking out the chaos and misery by keeping one part of my life controlled and ordered.
Whatever the reason, while I might have come close to being cashiered for black market activities and other peccadillos of one sort or another, I would never have been brought up on a charge of having my tunic unbuttoned.
So, when I went into my rooms, I had to negotiate around the crates and chest into which I had already started to pack my books and other stuff, in preparation for quitting my flat. I was yet to empty the wastepaper basket and I found the Garnethill address I had torn out of my notebook.
Even though the day was yet to reach the pivot between morning and afternoon, the November day outside was gloomy and I switched on the table lamp. I took the crumpled note over into the pool of yellow light and smoothed it flat on the occasional table.
The Staedtler-Moran International Company Limited.
The name certainly did not sound Hungarian, but it certainly wasn’t typically Scottish either. There was no clue to what particular trade the Staedtler-Moran International Company Limited plied and there had been no signs of life when I had passed Ellis and his dishy foreign friend that night.
But it would still be worth a look.
I knew of a solicitor whose offices were not far from Garnethill and I went in with the name of his firm scribbled down on a piece of paper. My plan was to claim to be lost and looking for the solicitor, clearly having gotten the address wrong. The genuine office was far enough away for no one at Staedtler-Moran to recognize the name, but if someone did get suspicious, or decided to be extra helpful by looking it up in the ’phone book for me, they would find a nearby solicitor of the name I claimed to be looking for.
In the event, the elaborate subterfuge was unnecessary.
There was no smog or dark to cloak my surroundings this time. In fact the clouds had parted but, if anything, the cold, hard sunlight seemed to etch the dark buildings with a harsher and more uncompromising hand. It took me a while to pinpoint the exact doorway again: Glasgow’s smog created a palette and a landscape all of its own and things always looked disorientingly different in the clear light of day. Eventually a dulled bronze plaque informed me that I had again found Staedtler-Moran International.
I stepped into a fluorescent-tube-lit entry hallway of shiny green and white porcelain-tiled walls and a dull linoleum floor. In front of me, a flagged stone staircase arced up and into darkness. The offices of Staedtler-Moran were to my right and when I entered, I found a reception desk blanked off with opaque glass, with a kiosk type window at the far end. It was a common form of reception in Scottish commercial premises and it always made me feel I should be buying a railway ticket. A sign above a button instructed me to Press for Attention. I did.
The receptionist pulled open the small sliding section of window that allowed us to hear each other, but her face was framed in a circle of clear glass in the frosted pane. I could hear the clatter of typewriters behind her.
‘May I help you?’ She was a girl of about twenty-two or three and had clearly taken an instant shine to me, which always made things easier. I ran through my demi-fiction of looking for the solicitor’s office and it became obvious she was not going to be the suspicious or inquisitive type. She was, bless her, as dim as she was homely and blinked at me through horn-rimmed bottle-bottom glasses that were so heavy that she had to continually push them back up her nose with mouse-like twitches while her mouth gaped slightly.
She did not, of course, recognize the solicitor’s firm I claimed to be seeking and she explained that the Staedtler-Moran International Company supplied bakery equipment to ‘bakeries throughout the Scottish Central Belt and beyond’.
‘And what about the International in the name?’ I asked. ‘Do you have offices abroad.’
‘Not really,’ she said dully, as if worried that it might disappoint me.
‘Do you sell equipment to bakeries in other countries?’
‘No.’
‘I see.’
‘We have an office in Motherwell…’ she chirped hopefully.
I thanked her and took my leave. She watched me balefully through the small clear circle in the frosted glass. I opened the door that led into the hall just as someone who must have come down the stairwell was leaving through the main door to the street.
My little goldfish was delighted when I reappeared at her window.
‘Are there other offices upstairs?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes, but not the name you was looking for,’ she said, again eager to please.
‘I didn’t notice a plaque outside for any businesses except yours,’ I said.
‘There’s only one,’ she said. ‘It’s some kind of small concern and I don’t know its name. It’s something to do with foreign languages, I think. Translations or something like that.’
‘Okay…’ I said as I headed back in haste to the main door, waving my thanks and leaving my homely little goldfish in her circle of glass.
I just made the street in time to catch a glimpse of the figure that had passed as I had opened the office door into the hallway. She was just disappearing around the corner at the top of the rise. I sprinted up the street to the corner, closing just enough space for me to keep her in sight when I rounded the bend without drawing attention to the fact that I was following her. I could have been wrong, of course, but it had been the odd mismatch of hat and coat that I had recognized more than anything else.
And her shape. I had not had a chance to see her face, but her figure looked right to me. As right as it was possible to be right.
There were, I had been told, whisky connoisseurs whose tastebuds were so attuned, they could identify each and every distillery; and wine buffs who could pin down a wine’s source almost to the specific vine. When it came to appreciation of the female form, I displayed pretty much the same set of skills. Once a set of curves had registered with me, it wasn’t just imprinted in my memory, it was card-indexed, cross-referenced, categorized and star-rated. Even though I had only ever seen it through the weight of her unfashionable coat, hers was one chassis that had been given its own reference section.
She walked with a steady pace, determined but not rushed, and it was no ordeal to follow her from behind, but I was concerned that there was no one else around on the street. Maybe I was flattering myself, but I felt pretty sure that if she got a good look at my face, she would recognize it as the one who had disturbed her and Ellis in the smog.
She crossed Sauchiehall Street and I trotted along behind her. There were more people about and I relaxed a little, feeling I could take better cover in the foliage of other pedestrians. When we reached Charing Cross, she walked directly to the taxi rank and I picked up the pace. I was on foot, having abandoned the Atlantic at almost exactly the same place as I had that night in the smog, and there was a real danger I was going to lose her if she jumped into a cab.
Which was exactly what she did. I sprinted to the next taxi in the rank and jumped into the back.
‘Follow that car…’ I said breathlessly.
The cabbie turned in his seat and presented me with the kind of leathery face that you could only cultivate in a boxing ring.
‘Are you trying to be funny?’
‘Right now, no… but I do have my lighter moments. Hurry up, or we’ll lose them.’
‘That taxi that that young lady just got into?’
‘That’s the one. What’s the problem here?’ I looked past him and through his windshield. Her cab had turned west along Sauchiehall Street and was about to disappear from view.
‘Listen pal, this is the way it works: if you have a destination, then give it to me and I’ll take you there. If not,
