Gently 14 - Gently North-West by Alan Hunter

Author:Alan Hunter
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781780339405
Publisher: Robinson
Published: 2012-07-14T23:00:00+00:00

McGuigan closed the door.

Mary Dunglass, with a deal more colour in her cheeks, slipped shyly to a high-back chair and sat droopingly to stare at the carpet. McGuigan stood. He found a post for himself before the rusty iron hearth, leaning back, elbows on the mantelshelf, his beard tilted at the world. He took a fierce look at Gently.

‘Well, we’ve had our words, man,’ he said tightly. ‘We have this matter straight now. You can go ahead with your questions.’

‘Just a moment,’ Gently said. ‘I don’t have any right to ask questions. In Scotland I’m simply a private citizen – nobody is answerable to me.’

‘You’re acquainted with Blayne, are you not?’

‘Only as the officer investigating a certain case.’

‘Ay, and you talked it over with him, and gave him your mind – you ken the case as well as he does.’

‘That may be so, but he’s your man.’

‘It’s you I want to be asking the questions.’

‘Please!’ Mary Dunglass broke in. ‘It’s your help we’re asking for, Superintendent. We’re in sore trouble, Jamie and I – he’s too proud to ask you, but I’m not!’

‘Is that the truth?’ Gently asked McGuigan.

McGuigan’s beard stuck out even straighter. ‘Ay,’ he growled. ‘She tells you true. We need your help, man – there’s all that’s to it.’

‘But how can I help you?’

McGuigan scowled. ‘You can hold us for innocent, for a start. And it’s just that you’re English an’ have no standing that sets you where you can do that.’

‘I’ll have to inform Blayne of anything you tell me.’

‘So you will – and so you should. But you need not think like him, none the more – you can pit your wit with Mary and me. You ken the case man, you’re a grand expert, it should not be past you to get at the truth – an’ the truth must be got at if we’re to win out – we’re dooms deep, man. Dooms deep.’

‘Say yes,’ Brenda said. ‘Or I’ll kick you, George.’

‘Oh please, yes,’ pleaded Mary Dunglass.

Gently wriggled his shoulders. ‘Carry on then,’ he said. ‘As long as you appreciate my position – I can’t hold out on Blayne.’

McGuigan lowered his beard and re-established his elbows on the mantelshelf. His large face, partly in shade, had an air of archetypal majesty. Though he was roughly dressed, his athletic build showed strikingly under his slack garments, and the shirt parting at his throat gave him a slightly coltish look.

‘You ken Mary and I are cousins,’ he said slowly. ‘That’s in the Scots way, you understand – she’s a McGuigan from Cuitybraggan, which is over the hills – I spent a while there in my father’s time. I kent Mary from a wee bairn. There’s a year or two between us.’

‘Ay, I grew up with Jamie,’ Mary Dunglass said. ‘He was at school with my brothers at Invergoyll. Then the war came, and Jamie was away and I didn’t see him again for fifteen years.’

‘I was in the Control Commission after the war,’ McGuigan said. ‘Then I was flying for Charter Airways.

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