The Papers of Tony Veitch

by William McIlvanney

  At that time, Moya had just been born and Laidlaw had found himself checking up on her so often it felt like sentry-duty. Big bad world, I’ve got my eye on you.

  Tonight they were fine. Moya, at eleven, slept almost smiling, as if she had a secret. It looked like a sensuous one. Her body was softening these days and her face withdrawing into thoughtfulness. The good problems were coming. At ten, Sandra looked younger than her age, still seemed to have ambitions to make it as a boy. In the box-room Jackie lay in his usual elaborate abandon, like an accident. He was seven. They were fine.

  He came downstairs and took a header into his drink, filled out another. He wondered about reading something. But everything seemed a bit far from Eck lying dead in the Royal. He thought about Eck. He felt a small need to tell someone who might care. Everybody’s dying should matter to somebody. The more people who cared, the closer you came to some kind of humanist salvation. There was no other he could believe in.

  He remembered that since he had worked with Brian Harkness they had talked to Eck a few times. Brian had met Eck on the Bryson case.

  Laidlaw went to the phone. It was early morning already but he rang. It took a lot of ringing before Brian’s father answered. Brian wasn’t home. Laidlaw apologised. Brian’s father was a nice man who had met Laidlaw several times and who seemed to exempt him from his general dislike of policemen. He took the word about the death and said he would tell Brian the earlier time at which Laidlaw wanted to meet him. But he didn’t know Eck.

  Laidlaw put down the phone and took Eck’s piece of paper from his hip pocket. Holding the paper, he remembered the money. For Eck to have seven pounds was as unusual as a win on the football pools. That number had to be a telephone number, three digits for the district. He dialled it. He let it ring fifteen times. There was no answer.

  That not very surprising fact took Laidlaw’s depression further down. If the intensive care unit had seemed like rock bottom, this was potholing. The silence at the other end of the line had felt absolute, as if he had been trying to telephone God. That recurrent ambush of despair about how little we care for one another trapped him again and wiped out any sense of achievement he could imagine.

  Everybody mattered or nobody did. He remembered as a teenager wrestling with lofty matters as if he was the first person ever to think of them, what he thought of as his wherefore-are-we-put-upon-this-earth phase, when he sometimes wandered around with a head like a billboard containing its caption of the day: Is There A God? What Is The Meaning Of Life? He could smile at it now but it was a rueful smile.

  The truth was that some of the impossibilities he had come up against then still haunted him. He could recall giving up any belief in an overall meaning to living because any such meaning would have to be indivisible, unequivocally total, giving significance impartially to every drifting feather, every piece of paper blowing along a street.

  Eck was like one of those pieces of paper. You couldn’t say the meaning of things was elsewhere and Eck was irrelevant. That was a betrayal. All we have is one another and if we’re orphans all we can honourably do is adopt one another, defy the meaninglessness of our lives by mutual concern. It’s the only nobility we have.

  Laidlaw tried to reinstate his energy by declaring war, over his whisky, on all brutalisers of others, all non-carers. Yet the very thought embarrassed. He would have been such a compromised champion, a failure opposing failures. He admitted to himself that he wanted at this moment to phone Jan at the Burleigh Hotel and felt a double guilt. There was the guilt of being tempted to use Jan to soothe him now when he gave her so little of his life. There was the guilt of betraying Ena. The compromise of his own life, so hurting to others, appalled him.

  But he couldn’t think of anybody else who would care about Eck enough to find out what had happened to him. Laidlaw had better try. Pathetically, it seemed to him, he could only think of small things to do. He would check the address and the names. He would phone that bloody number till somebody answered. He would get a post-mortem tomorrow.

  At least tomorrow he could tell Brian, somebody who would know who was dead. It would swell the mourners’ roll by one. But the thought still left him with an angry sadness.

  7

  Harkness woke up into a problem of his own. It had become his constant companion lately, the ante-room to every day. When was he going to get married? Finding an answer was complicated by the second question which always came attached to the first, like a Siamese twin: who was it he was going to marry?

  Wearily, he went through his early morning programme of thoughts, what he did instead of press-ups. He was fed up scuffling around. He wanted to get married. He fancied Morag. He fancied Mary. He didn’t want to give up Morag. He didn’t want to give up Mary. He wanted to get married. He was fed up scuffling around.

  His present situation confirmed it. He was lying on a couch in his underpants with a blanket over him. The couch was an insomnia-machine. It was cunningly constructed so that one arm clamped your head at a right angle to your body while the other etched a moquette pattern on your calves. His feet stuck out beyond the blanket and the big toe of his right foot, turned black when he stubbed his foot playing mid-field for the Crime Squad, seemed to accuse him of pretending to be younger than he was. He was twenty-seven already. His toenail looked like falling off. What next?

  He had worked out where he was. At first he had thought it might be a girl’s place. He had gone to the disco at ‘Joanna’s’ last night. (What was he trying to do, find a third possibility?) But then he recognised the inimitable decor of Milligan’s poky flat, a kind of waiting-room baroque.

  The walls were dun and featureless, the furniture was arranged with all the homeyness of a second-hand sale-room and clothes were littered everywhere. It wasn’t a room so much as a suitcase with doors.

  There was the spatter of something hitting a frying-pan in the tiny kitchen and then Milligan’s voice cheerfully kicking ‘My Way’ to death.

  Harkness smiled. When he had worked under Detective Inspector Milligan in North Division before going to the Crime Squad he had become familiar with the infectious breeziness of Milligan, as if the world was a parade arranged for his benefit. Thinking of the tension of Laidlaw’s nature, Harkness thought he could understand why his present superior and his past one disliked each other. Their natures were a mutual contradiction.

  Milligan padded through, wearing a dark blue towelling Marks and Spencer’s bathrobe. It looked old enough to have been bought in their Penny Bazaar. He was laying the table. Always slow to come to the surface, Harkness thought he should at least show willing. He opened his mouth to speak and it came out distorted by a yawn, something like ‘Narrgh’.

  ‘Can I quote you on that?’ Milligan said. ‘You were well on last night. What did you do? Fall into a vat?’

  ‘Drowning my problems.’

  ‘What problems? Your only problem is you don’t have enough.’

  Seeing Milligan bursting out of his acres of towelling, his rumpled hair going grey, his big face looking as if it had taken as much of life’s pounding as Beachy Head, Harkness felt suitably naive in the matter of problems. He was looking at a broken marriage, a stalemated career and a quality of survival that would have whistled through an air-raid.

  ‘I keep thinking I have,’ he said modestly and got up. His feet were frozen. ‘Thanks for taking me in last night.’

  ‘I thought you might have an extra bird with you. Like a carry-out.’

  Going through to the bathroom, Harkness washed himself and used Milligan’s only remaining blade, which was like shaving with a hacksaw. When he was dressed, he asked if he could use the phone.

  ‘If they haven’t cut it off.’

  He phoned his father to see if there were any messages. It annoyed him that he hadn’t been there to talk to Laidlaw about Eck. He assured his father he would be in plenty of time to meet Laidlaw. He thought of phoning Simshill but, seeing five-to-eight on his watch, he let it go.


  Breakfast was a penance. The ham and eggs were doubtless good but he had only been able to clean his teeth with his forefinger and the crap still in his mouth made everything taste like feathers. Milligan’s ferocious brightness didn’t help.

  ‘I think I’ll get married,’ Harkness said more or less to himself across Milligan’s monologue.

  ‘Why not do something more sensible? Like playing Russian Roulette.’

  ‘You don’t recommend it?’

  ‘I hope you’re not proposing. Just because I’m good at making breakfast. Actually, I’m spoken for. Wife and me are thinking of patching it up. True. I was with her for two or three hours last week and I didn’t feel like hitting her once. It must be love. She still hasn’t filed for a divorce, you know. It’s a sin. Once I’ve been there, I spoil them for everybody else.’

  ‘When’s this happening?’

  ‘Give it time. She’ll surrender. The kids are driving her daft. Use the house like an adventure playground. They need a father’s firm foot. Be a pity to leave my wee, snug bachelor-pad, mind you.’

  ‘You could force yourself.’

  ‘This could be the last time you get to crash down here. And that’s only the beginning. I’m going to show these bastards how a real polisman operates. I’ll embarrass them into promoting me.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘You know Paddy Collins?’

  ‘In the Victoria Infirmary? The stab-victim.’

  ‘Stab-victim? He’s got more holes than Haggs Castle. They didn’t know whether to bandage him or play a round on him. He’s been a dead man for days. They were just waiting for him to admit it. Last night he admitted it.’

  ‘You know who did it?’

  ‘No. But I will. I was with him a few times, but he never recovered consciousness. You know who he was?’

  ‘Paddy Collins.’

  ‘Aye. And Hitler was a housepainter. His name’s just Paddy Collins, but you know what his connection is? Cam Colvin’s brother-in-law. You know what that means?’

  ‘Paddy Collins might not be the only dead man.’

  ‘This could really be something big.’ Milligan’s blatant enthusiasm disconcerted Harkness, like someone offering guided tours of the mortuary. ‘Imagine it. I saw Cam’s sister at the hospital. She’s really into the grief-stricken widow routine. She’s had days to rehearse it. She’s getting good. Great, isn’t it? Her man’s always been a bigger shit than two tons of manure. Nasty to birds, nasty to blokes. Living off Cam Colvin’s reputation. Anybody who knew him would’ve voted him the man most worthy to be a corpse. But put him on a hospital bed and shove a tube up his nose, and it’s bring on the angel choirs. She’s going to make it seem like the end of the world. And Cam’s not going to like that. He’s going to want to give her a shroud to dry her tears. With somebody inside it. He can’t let it go.’

  Harkness shook his head, absorbing the implications.

  ‘It makes Jack’s worry seem less than major,’ he said.

  ‘Who, Laidlaw? He still your neighbour? St Francis of Simshill. What’s he up to?’

  ‘I phoned my father there. Jack had been on the phone for me. Eck Adamson died in the Royal last night.’

  ‘That’s a worry? It’s about as sad as breaking a bottle of meths. He must’ve been pure alcohol by now. Of course, maybe to Laidlaw he was just another example of suffering humanity. Christ, we’ve all got our worries, right enough. Anyway, as a tout Eck was about as much good as a budgie. He could hardly repeat what you told him, never mind tell you anything else. But I’ve got a real tout. Remember Macey?’

  Harkness nodded. When he worked with Milligan, he had met Benny Mason several times. Macey had been what policemen call ‘a good ned’ – professional, unviolent, prepared to play the percentages and take the odds the way they fell without complaint. He seemed to regard his transition to informer as a self-determined promotion. He wore it well, his nerves seemingly unaffected by the hazards of inhabiting that criminal limbo. Harkness had heard recently that on a break-in when an ill-informed policeman chased Macey and caught him, Macey had calmly explained, ‘Ye’re no’ supposed tae catch me. Ah telt ye about this job. Ah’m the one that jist manages tae get away.’ He did.

  ‘You’re still using him?’

  ‘Never to stop,’ Milligan said. ‘I’ve got his balls in a vice. He’s mine. He’s in with Hook Hawkins. I’ve told him he’s got to come up with something about Paddy Collins. I’m sure he can. He better.’

  ‘Just watch he doesn’t make it up.’

  Milligan laughed.

  ‘Be like ordering his headstone. Nah. Macey’s not that simple. He’ll do me a wee turn. I’m seeing him tonight. Guess where?’

  Harkness shrugged.

  ‘The Albany.’

  ‘The Albany? You’re kidding. That’s a helluva place to meet a tout.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Like asking him to advertise.’

  ‘Isn’t it? He was going to renege. Couldn’t believe it. Shouting down the phone. But I made him agree. I’ll bet he had to wade through his actual excrement to get out the phone-box.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I want him feeling vulnerable. As if he’s left his cover in the house.’ Milligan winked. ‘You in a hurry?’

  ‘Aye,’ Harkness said. ‘Jack wants me to meet up with him early.’

  ‘You going to get these dishes? I’ll get ready. I want to be busy-busy today. Listen. I’ll be in the Admiral late this afternoon, if you’ve the time. We could have a jar. If your guts have recovered.’

  When they went down into the street, Harkness looked up at a sky like a dustbin-lid. It fitted his hangover. He was wishing he could share Milligan’s joviality, when a long-haired young man in jeans, looking back, bumped into Milligan. The young man looked at Milligan without apologising.

  ‘Fuck off before I step on you,’ Milligan said and started laughing.

  Harkness remembered something Laidlaw had said about Milligan’s laughter – ‘It’s the sound of bones breaking.’

  He settled for his hangover.

  8

  In the bar of the Gay Laddie, John Rhodes’ favourite pub in the Calton, the beginning – and some said the end – of the East End of Glasgow, there was what felt like a crowd. There was Macey and Dave McMaster and Hook Hawkins. The rest of them were John Rhodes.

  In spite of his experience, Macey never failed to be awed by John. It was nothing specific. It wasn’t his size, which was considerable. It wasn’t just the crazy lightness of his eyes, blue as a brochure sea. There was no external you could finally attach the feeling to. Perhaps it had something to do with the sense of accumulated past violence John carried, bad places been to and come back from. The effect his presence had on Macey was of conveying danger, as if his life was a matter of juggling with liquid oxygen. And always the feeling found itself relegated to recurring mirage by his easy naturalness.

  Looking at John now, pouring four mugs of tea from the pot that Dave had brewed in the back, Macey was freshly aware of the combustible contradictions that were John Rhodes. Their presence here was part of them. They were meeting in the pub because John would allow no intrusion from the violent ways he made his money to disturb the home where his wife and two daughters might as well have had a bank-manager as the breadwinner.

  The thought of that strangeness was echoed by the strangeness of the place. It was about half-past nine in the morning and, slanting down from the high windows that were slits of glass reinforced with mesh, the shafts of light were constellated with motes and gave the still, quiet pub an incongruous solemnity, like a chapel with a gantry. The ritual of the tea completed, the high priest spoke.

  ‘Hook,’ he said. ‘Tell me the truth. You know whit Cam Colvin’s on about?’

  Hook Hawkins appealed to the bar. His upturned head moved as if deliberately displaying the scar that ran down his left cheek and under his chin. Some said his nickname came from that, because it had been g
iven to him by a man with a hook for a hand. Others said the name belonged to his brief career as a boxer.

  Remembering his meeting tonight with Ernie Milligan, Macey had more reason than his natural curiosity for paying careful attention. He knew that Hook and Paddy Collins had once had a fall-out but he had never heard why. He wondered if it had been about something which wasn’t really over. But he found Hook’s performance convincing.

  ‘Honest to God. Ah don’t know whit it’s all about, John. Ah don’t know.’

  ‘Paddy Collins is dead,’ John said. ‘You don’t know anythin’ about that?’

  ‘We were mates.’

  ‘Ye weren’t always mates.’

  ‘That trouble was all finished, John.’

  ‘Maybe Cam doesny think so. This Sammy’s a friend of yours, Macey?’

  ‘Aye. Well, an acquaintance, John. A harmless boay.’

  John looked at Dave McMaster. Macey regretted his last remark. He had only meant to make it clear to John that he wouldn’t have been responsible for introducing a trouble-maker to any of the pubs John looked after. But he realised that he had made Dave’s position worse by implying he was letting innocent people get molested. He hoped Dave wouldn’t hold it against him.

  ‘But he’s fine,’ Macey offered as emendation. ‘No damage done. Except that the jacket looks like a tie-dye job now.’

  But in certain moods John was as easily amused as an old Glasgow Empire audience on a wet Tuesday. He was still looking at Dave. Being looked at in that way, Macey thought, would be like standing too near a furnace. You would want to back off.