woman I had ever known. Today she was dressed in a tailored grey suit that hugged her figure in a way that made you jealous. Her hair was black. Raven-wing black and glossy and gathered up behind her head to expose a graceful neck. She had dark eyes and arching eyebrows and her full lips were lipsticked deep red. She smiled at me, but a little sadly.
‘Lennox…’ she said in an accent that was more English than Scottish and was haunted by the vaguest ghost of Europe. ‘I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.’
‘It’s a small world, Helena. How have you been?’
She made an open-handed gesture to indicate the Georgian architecture enveloping us.
‘I don’t mean business. I mean you. How are you?’
‘I’m fine. But let’s be honest, if you were that interested in my state of mind or well-being then I would have heard from you long before now.’ She frowned. ‘I’m sorry, that was uncalled for.’
‘Probably was called for.’ I put my hat on the desk.
Helena dropped ice into expensive-looking crystal and poured me a Canadian Club without asking. She poured herself a Scotch and I waited for her to sit and cross her long silk-sheathed legs before sitting down opposite her.
‘I’m a British citizen now.’ She took the cigarette I offered. ‘No longer a displaced person. I’m now… placed. Although I just got in under the wire. The police sent in a report about my little enterprise here and I should have been deported as an undesirable alien, but fortunately it got delayed somewhere along the way.’
I gave a cynical laugh. Helena Gersons had a lot of influence with a lot of people in the Edinburgh establishment. String-pullers who had themselves, at one time or other, had their strings pulled within these elegant Georgian walls.
‘So business is good?’ I asked.
‘Okay… it’s always quieter at this time of year unless there’s a ship in. Busiest time is during the Festival.’ She laughed and exposed perfect porcelain teeth. ‘And, of course, when the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland is in town. The girls are often pushed to deal with so much religious fervour.’
I laughed too. Again I noticed her Anglicized accent and perfect grammar. Just the vaguest hint now of the Vienna she had left behind, little more than a child, in thirty-six.
‘You never think about going back? To Austria, I mean?’
‘That’s another me,’ she said and not for the first time shook me up with a statement I could have made about myself. It was good to look at Helena again; to talk to her again. There had been a time, a few years back, when we had talked a lot. Through the night, hushed in the dark. ‘And in any case, Austria is still a complete mess. God knows it could go either way and maybe end up a Russian satellite state. Anyway, people like me are an embarrassment. A reminder of past sins.’ Her eyes hardened. ‘What do you want, Lennox?’
‘Is it that obvious that I want something?’
‘You always did.’
‘We both did. Two of a kind, Helena. Anyway, you’re right. Or at least in part. I thought you might know someone I’m checking out. But that’s not the only reason I came. I did want to see you.’
She arched an eyebrow. ‘I’m guessing you were in town anyway.’
‘There’s a girl…’ I ignored the accuracy of her dig. ‘She’s got a history as a pro. She’s been putting the squeeze on a client of mine, but I’m not just sure how.’
I handed her the photograph.
‘Why don’t you just ask him how she’s putting the squeeze on him if he’s your client?’
‘He’s not taking calls. Permanently.’
‘Dead?’ She pursed her lips and looked at the photograph more closely.
‘Very. A staged accident I reckon, and missy here is involved. She calls herself Lillian but she used to go by the name Sally Blane. Did some blue-movie stuff.’
The way Helena stared at the photograph, her brow furrowed, suggested she was looking at a puzzle with a piece missing. She looked up, still frowning. ‘I knew Sally Blane. Not well, but she did a few shifts here. I had heard she’d gone off to Glasgow.’
‘Is that her?’
‘Could be… I mean, it looks like her and it doesn’t. I know that doesn’t make any sense, but her face is different. The same but different. But there again I never really knew her that well. Although she did well with the clients for as long as she worked here. She was an upper-storey girl, if you know what I mean. Higher value, higher income.’
‘But she didn’t last long?’
‘No. I got the feeling she was building her own private portfolio, carving out a little business for herself.’ Helena frowned again, beautifully. ‘Wait a minute, I remember something else. Towards the end there was a man sometimes used to pick her up after work. Not a client. A boyfriend maybe. Or a pimp. A bad-looking sort. Glasgow accent.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘A wiry little thug, to be honest. Expensive clothes and a flash car, but they didn’t fit with the face, if you know what I mean.’
‘I know exactly what you mean,’ I said and thought of a Savile Row suit hung on the wrong hanger. ‘Was there ever any trouble? I mean with her Glaswegian boyfriend. If he was who I think he was then he was always trying to muscle in on other people’s action.’
‘No. No trouble. We don’t get any here. I don’t use muscle and I don’t let any gangster push me around. There are no bouncers here because half the time we have a member of the local police somewhere on the premises.’
‘It’s good to have a bobby on the beat.’ I reached for the photograph but Helena still studied it.
‘That is strange. I don’t remember her this way. Is there any chance it could be her sister? I heard she had one but I never met her.’
‘Could be, I suppose. I’ve had a spate of siblings swapping identities.’ I took the picture back. It was certainly the same face as the Lillian/Sally in the blue movie. But it was the second time someone had done a double-take looking at the photograph.
‘She had a friend who went by the name Margot Taylor. Might even have been her sister. She worked for Arthur Parks in Glasgow and was up to the same kind of scam. You know, building a little business for herself. Parks was not as understanding, though. I gather she got a hiding and was chucked out.’
‘Sorry, the name doesn’t ring a bell.’ Helena sipped at her Scotch, the glass held in long, slender, crimson- nailed fingers. She had been a pianist, once. Rumour had it that she would sometimes play the piano for her ‘guests’ and they would be astounded to hear concert-hall-standard Bach and Mozart played in a brothel. Helena had been something of a child prodigy, but that had all been nixed when the Nazis had come to power. Helena and her older sister had both gotten out to an aunt in England just before the Anschluss. Her parents had planned to organize their affairs and follow. But when the border between Germany and Austria came down, all other borders became impenetrable for the remaining Gersons family. Helena had found out, after the war, that they had eventually made it out of Austria. But to the East. Auschwitz.
As soon as the war broke out Helena, her sister and her aunt had been arrested by the British authorities and interred on the Isle of Man as hostile aliens. Our paths had crossed immediately after the war.
We drank our drinks, smoked our cigarettes and talked about people we had both known for no other reason than to fill the quiet. Any other level of conversation would have taken us too deep.
‘I don’t work with clients any more. I just run the place. You know that don’t you, Lennox?’
‘I thought as much.’
‘One day I’ll sell this place and…’ She left the thought hanging and looked around herself at the walls. A beautiful bird in an elegant cage. There was a silence. She had taken us too deep. I picked up my hat.
‘Better go.’
‘Fine. It was good to see you.’ The temperature had dropped and she stood up and shook my hand like I was her bank manager.
I felt like crap when I hit the street and decided to walk back through the city to the station. As I walked I let scenes from my past play through my head. I was full of self-indulgent crap after seeing Helena again. I had a coffee in the station cafe before catching the four thirty train back to Glasgow. I wanted to get out of Edinburgh and
