He picked up the note delicately, held it up to the dim light from the one small window, then switched on a tiny but powerful table lamp and studied the note briefly.
'Well, it's pretty self-explanatory, really,' he said. 'Ten-pound note, Royal Scot Linen, July 'forty-eight.' He shrugged. 'They were produced in this form from May 'thirty-five to January 'fifty-three, when the RSL was taken over by the Royal Bank.' He turned the note over a couple of times, handling it the way I imagined a card-sharp did a card. 'Quite an ornate note, for the time. It was actually designed by a man called Mallory who was later hanged for murdering his wife, in nineteen forty-two.' He gave us a suitably wintry smile. 'I suppose you want to know how much it's worth.'
'I imagined it was worth ten pounds,' I said. 'If it was still legal tender.'
'Not legal tender,' the man said, grinning and shaking his head. 'Worth about forty quid, mint, which this isn't. If you were selling I could give you fifteen, but even that's only because I like round numbers.'
'Hmm,' I said. 'Well, perhaps not, then.'
I stood, looking down at the note, just letting the time pass. The man turned the note over on the counter one more time.
'Well, then,' I said, after Topee had started to get agitated at my side. 'Thank you, sir.'
'You're welcome,' the man said, after a moment's hesitation.
I picked up the note and folded it back inside my pocket. 'Good day,' I said, tipping my hat.
'Yeah,' the man said, frowning, as I turned and walked to the door, followed by Topee. I opened the door, jangling the bell again. 'Ah, wait a minute,' the man said. I turned and looked back.
He waved one hand, as though rubbing out something on an invisible screen between us. 'No, no, I'm not going to offer you more or anything; that's all it's worth, really, but… could I have another look at it?'
'Of course.' I went back to the counter and handed him the note again. He frowned at it. 'Mind if I take a copy of this?' he asked.
'Will it be harmed?' I asked.
He smiled tolerantly. 'No, it won't.'
'All right.'
'Won't be a minute.' He disappeared into the back of the shop. There were a series of quiet, mechanical noises. He was back a moment later, with the note and a copy of both its sides on a large sheet of paper. He handed me the note again. 'You got a phone number I can reach you at?'
'Yes,' I said. 'Topee, do you mind… ? '
'Eh? What? Oh! Like, hey, no; no, on you go. Pas de probleme.'
I gave the man Topee's phone number.
'Now what?' Topee asked on the street outside.
'Army records, and old newspapers.'
There are occasions when I find pieces of technology I can't help liking. The fiche reader and built-in copying machine that I was directed to at the Mitchell Library proved to be one such device. It was like a large vertically oriented television set screen, but was really just a sort of projector, throwing onto the screen the highly magnified images of old newspapers, documents, journals, ledgers and other papers which had been photographed and placed -hundreds at a time - on pieces of thin, laminated plastic. In this manner, many years' worth of broadsheet newspapers that might have filled a room could be condensed into a small filing box that one could carry comfortably with one hand.
By working two small wheels, one could manipulate the glass bed the fiches rested upon and so rove at will across the hundreds of pages recorded on each plastic sheet. When one had found a sheet one wanted to record, all that had to be done was to press a button, and the contents of the screen would be transferred by a photocopying process to a sheet of ordinary paper.
I suspect it was something about the mechanical nature of the whole business - despite the machine's obvious reliance on electrical power - that attracted me. If you held the riches up to the light you could just make out the tiny shapes of the newspapers, easily identifying large headlines and photographs by the black and grey blocks they made on the white surface. It was obvious, in other words, that the information was physically there, albeit in microscopically reduced form, not macerated into digits or stripes of magnetism plastered on a bit of tape or a little brown disk and intrinsically unreadable without the intervention of a machine.
The fiches could probably be used without the machine, if one had a bright light and a very strong magnifying glass, and that seemed to me to define the limit of acceptable technology; Luskentyrians have traditionally had an almost instinctive suspicion of things which boast of having few or no moving parts. It makes us incompatible, as a rule, with electronics, but this device seemed just about tolerable. I was sure Brother Indra would like this machine. I thought again of Allan, using the portable phone in the office storeroom, and felt my teeth grind as I read the ancient headlines I had come here to inspect.
I was looking at old copies of Scottish and British newspapers from 1948. I glanced at one or two from the early months of the year, but was concentrating on the second half of the year. I was not entirely sure what it was I might find; I was just looking for something that caught my eye.
I sat alone at the machine, having given Brother Topee the task of finding out how one might investigate an individual who had been in the British Army; he had pointed me towards the Mitchell Library from an army recruitment centre in Sauchiehall Street. I had left him standing in a queue there; I was hoping he wouldn't join up by mistake, though with those earrings he was probably safe.
I had plenty of newspapers to choose from: The Herald, Scotsman, Courier, Dispatch, Mirror, Evening Times, Times, Sketch… I started with the Scotsman, for no better reason than that was the paper Mr Warriston took, and I had once picked it up and surreptitiously read a few pages on the first occasion I'd visited his house in Dunblane.
I read of the assassination of Gandhi, the formation of Israel, the Berlin airlift, Harry S. Truman elected President in the United States, the founding of the two Korean republics, the austerity Olympics in London, continuing rationing in Britain and the abdication of Queen Wilhelmina in Holland.
What I was looking for were shipwrecks, bank robberies, mysterious disappearances, people being washed overboard from troopships or going missing from army bases. After a quick look through a selection of months, I decided to restrict my search to that of September 1948 initially, reckoning that the chances were that whatever I was looking for had taken place then. I had got to the last September issue of the Scotsman without success when Topee appeared in the little alcove off the upper gallery where the fiche reading machine was situated.
'Any luck?' I asked.
He sat down on another chair, breathing hard as though he'd been running. 'No; it's been fucking privatised, man.'
'What? The army?'
'No; the records. All the armed forces' records. Used to be some civil service department, but now it's something called "Force Facts plc" and you have to pay for each inquiry and they're not open over the weekend anyway. Hilarious, eh? Total.' He shook his head. 'How about you?'
'Nothing yet. Done the Scotsman; about to start on the Glasgow Herald. If you could take the right-hand side of the screen while I read the left, we'll get through this a lot quicker,' I told him, making room for his seat.
He scraped in beside me, glancing soulfully at his watch. 'The guys will be watching the jazz by now,' he said in a small voice.
'Topee,' I said. 'This is important. If you don't feel you can devote your full concentration to the task, just say so and run off to play with your pals.'