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more seriously. Nodding sagely as you write helps.
    ‘Has Sammy done this kind of thing before. Gone off without letting you know?’
    ‘No. Or at least not like this. Not for a week. Occasionally he’s gone off on a bender. One … two days, but that’s all. And whenever I’m in town – you know, not on a tour or in London – we meet up every Saturday and have lunch in Cranston’s Tea Rooms on Sauchiehall Street. He never misses it.’
    I noted. I nodded. Sagely. ‘You said his account is overdrawn – have there been any more withdrawals since he went awol?’
    ‘I don’t know …’ Suddenly she looked perplexed, as if she’d let him down – let me down – by not checking. ‘Can you find that out?’
    ‘’Fraid not. You say you were supposed to attend the meeting at the bank with him?’
    ‘I’m a co-signatory,’ she said. The frown still creased the otherwise flawless brow. With due cause, I thought. Her brother sounded like a big spender. A high liver. If he hadn’t been trying to pull cash from his already overdrawn account, then he wasn’t spending big or living high. Or maybe even simply not living.
    ‘Then you can check,’ I said. ‘The bank will give you that information, but not me. Even the police would have to get a court order. Have you been to the police, Miss Gainsborough?’
    ‘I was waiting. I kept thinking Sammy would turn up. Then, when he didn’t, I thought I’d be better getting a private detective … I mean enquiry agent.’
    ‘Why me?’ I asked. ‘I mean, who put you in contact with me?’
    ‘I have a road manager, Jack Beckett. He says he knows you.’
    I frowned. ‘Can’t say …’
    ‘Or at least knows of you. He said …’ She hesitated, as if unsure to commit the rest of her thought to words. ‘He said that you were reliable, but that you had contact with – well, that you knew people that were more the kind that Sammy has been mixing with.’
    ‘I see …’ I said, still trying to place the name Jack Beckett and making a mental note that if I ever did come across him, to thank him appropriately for the glowing character reference.
    There was a silence. A taxi sounded its horn outside on Gordon Street. A river-bubble of voices rose up from outside and through the window I had left open in the vain hope it would cool the office. I noticed a trickle of sweat on Sheila Gainsborough’s sleek neck.
    ‘So exactly what kind of people was Sammy mixing with? You said he had gotten involved in less than honourable businesses. What do you mean?’
    ‘Like I said, Sammy isn’t really in show business as such. But he does do the odd singing job. He’s not great, if I’m honest, but good enough for Glasgow. He’s been singing in nightclubs and mixing with a bad crowd. Gambling too. I think that’s where a lot of the money has been going.’
    ‘Which clubs?’
    ‘I don’t know … not the ones I started in. There was one he went to a lot. I think he sang there too. The Pacific Club down near the river.’
    ‘Oh … yes,’ I said. Oh fuck, I thought. Handsome Jonny Cohen’s place.
    ‘You know it?’
    ‘I know the owner. I can have a word.’
    ‘Have you ever heard of the Poppy Club?’ she asked.
    ‘Can’t say that I have. Why?’
    ‘When I went to his flat there was a note by the telephone that said “The Poppy Club”. Nothing else. No number. I looked up the ’phone book but there’s no “Poppy Club” listed in either Glasgow or Edinburgh.’
    I wrote the name down in my notebook. Reassuringly. ‘What’s Sammy’s full name?’ I asked.
    ‘James Samuel Pollock.’
    ‘Pollock?’
    ‘That’s my real name. Well, it was my real name. I changed it by deed poll.’
    ‘So you were Sheila Pollock?’
    ‘Ishbell Pollock.’
    ‘Ishbell?’
    ‘My agent didn’t think that Ishbell Pollock had the kind of ring to it that a singing star’s name should have.’
    ‘Really?’ I said, as if confused as to why anyone would be blind to the charms of a