The Papers of Tony Veitch

by William McIlvanney

  ‘She seems a hider,’ Laidlaw said. ‘Like you might need radar to locate her. Let’s see if they can help.’

  The door was opened by a tall, thin man whose caution suggested that only muggers called on him. He looked worn.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mr Watters?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Detective Inspector Laidlaw. Scottish Crime Squad. This is Detective Constable Harkness. We wondered if we could talk to you.’

  Laidlaw held out his wallet with the identification-card. Mr Watters stared at it as if it were a knife.

  ‘Police?’

  ‘It’s all right. We’re just following up something that might be connected with the incident in Miss Farren’s flat. We thought you might be able to help us.’

  ‘Excuse me. Could you wait a minute, please?’

  He disappeared into the house.

  ‘Probably away to stash the sub-machine guns,’ Harkness said and took a mock kick at the door. ‘Okay, baby, this is a raid.’

  The man came back.

  ‘Come in, please. I was just explaining to Molly. The wife. She can’t take too much excitement.’

  Harkness felt flattered, as if they were a ticker-tape parade. They came into a room that was oppressively cosy. Knick-knacks abounded. It was like a stud-farm for ornaments. Wee horses faced big horses, dogs cohabited with cats, a china donkey, china ducks. Wall space was at a premium. It looked as if they would soon be hanging stuff out of the window. ‘The old curiosity room,’ Harkness thought.

  ‘Mrs Watters,’ Laidlaw said. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Laidlaw. This is Detective Constable Harkness. It’s kind of you to see us.’

  She nodded in agreement. Mr Watters gestured them to sit down.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘What we’ve had to put up with. You live decently all your days. And when you’ve got the place you want, this is what you have to put up with.’

  She had the high colouring and the faint wickerwork of veins in her cheeks of someone who might have heart trouble. With her very black hair unmarked by grey, she had a kind of hothouse bloom that contrasted with the washed-out appearance of her husband.

  ‘I don’t know. The way some people live. We keep ourselves to ourselves. We’re never out.’ She tapped her chest delicately. ‘It’s my heart, you see. But she’s a trial to us.’

  ‘You mean Miss Farren?’ Laidlaw asked.

  She nodded.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Ho!’ She stared at the electric fire, leaned over and fractionally moved the dish of water in front of it as if she knew exactly where the atmosphere needed moistening.

  ‘You mean there have been other incidents?’

  ‘Don’t you think one was enough?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I don’t understand. What then?’

  She paused and looked at her husband.

  ‘Men,’ she said. ‘Comings and goings.’

  She looked at Laidlaw and nodded. Harkness enjoyed watching Laidlaw’s face trying to deal with the invitation to share her shock. He chewed the side of his mouth and was nodding very slowly. Harkness wondered what he was agreeing with.

  ‘Mr Watters. Maybe you could tell us exactly what happened three weeks ago.’

  ‘The noise was terrible,’ Mrs Watters said. ‘We stood it as long as we could. Then Michael went to the door. It took them a while to open it.’

  ‘Who opened it?’

  ‘It was a man.’

  Laidlaw took out his photograph of Tony Veitch and made to pass it to Mr Watters.

  ‘Was it this man?’

  Mrs Watters intercepted it. She looked at it and gave it to her husband. He covered the left-hand side of the face with his hand.

  ‘I only saw his eye round the edge of the door. It could’ve been his eye.’

  Laidlaw looked at Harkness. ‘That your right eye did commit a severe assault,’ Harkness thought.

  ‘Then he told me to go away and shut the door.’

  ‘What exactly did he say?’

  Mr Watters looked at his wife and paused. He cleared his throat.

  ‘Fuck off,’ he mumbled.

  They all sat waiting for the word to disperse like a noxious smell. Harkness had an insight he didn’t enjoy. It was of Mr Watters spending his days attached to his wife like a life-support unit, a human pacemaker. Since they had come in everything had been focussed on Mrs Watters. The room was her sterile area. Illness has its uses, he thought. Life must approach her in a medical mask. He imagined the two of them in hiding here, interested in nothing more than the beat of her heart.

  ‘But she shouted to you to phone the police,’ Mrs Watters said. ‘Then she wouldn’t prosecute. She must have known she was in the wrong.’

  ‘Did you see the man leave?’

  ‘We keep ourselves to ourselves. What is it you’re trying to find out exactly?’ Mrs Watters was stern.

  ‘We’re not sure yet,’ Laidlaw said. ‘What does Miss Farren do?’

  ‘She’s not short of a shilling, the same girl. Some kind of new-fangled shop she has. What is it they call it?’

  ‘It’s a boutique in the town here,’ Mr Watters said. ‘Overdrive.’

  Laidlaw thanked them and they left. Mr Watters saw them to the door. Mrs Watters waved abstractedly like a queen in a passing coach.

  ‘Which of them do you think’s in more danger?’ Harkness asked.

  ‘Aye,’ Laidlaw said. ‘I know what you mean.’

  Lynsey Farren seemed like a different species. She opened the door at once, saying ‘Forgotten your key . . .?’ She obviously hadn’t bothered to check the spyhole that looked as if it had been recently inserted in the door by an amateur joiner. The excitement in her greenish eyes hardened into distrust. She stared at them. They didn’t mind staring back.

  She was a big blonde girl, say late twenties, subtle as a fanfare. The face was handsome, wide eyes, strong nose, slightly ferocious mouth, and the body was generous. She made Nell Gwynn look peaky. She was dressed to go out, if not to emigrate, in a long green dress with something that looked like an overgrown waistcoat over it, big earrings, a necklace and so many bangles they almost constituted luggage. She gave the immediate impression she was wearing her boutique.

  ‘Good evening,’ Laidlaw said, and seemed to Harkness to be showing amazing presence of mind.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked. She had one of those slightly butch upper-class voices.

  Laidlaw showed his card and said who they were.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Miss Farren?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It may be connected with that business about a week ago.’

  ‘That’s over with. I’ve nothing to add. I told them that.’

  The door was closing.

  ‘Something else has come up.’

  The door opened again and she re-emerged from behind it like a quick-change artiste. It had been pleasure, then distrust. Now she was bored. Her eyelashes seemed to weigh a ton.

  Harkness decided she had been preparing for them. She had overdone it.

  ‘Oh look. What is it?’

  ‘Murder,’ Laidlaw said.

  ‘I’m just going out.’

  ‘Two people already have. Permanently.’

  ‘Two people? Oh, come in if you like. But I can’t give you long.’

  She walked away, leaving the door open. Harkness closed it as they came in. You almost had to climb over the smell of perfume to get in the room. It was a studied place, Harkness thought – kitsch tapestries, a big, round glass table, a halfacre of painting above the imitation fireplace showing horses posing on the foreshore. One of those studio mock-up LPs of recent hits recorded by Joe Soap & Company was playing, authentic as a wooden penny. It belonged. Harkness wondered if that was why she wore her hair long: her ears were made of tin.

  She didn’t ask them to sit down. She took a cigarette and lit it. Laidlaw and Harkness stood like members of the audience who have wandered on to the sta
ge.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘What exactly happened three weeks ago, Miss Farren?’

  ‘A misunderstanding. It’s personal.’

  ‘So’s murder. Very.’

  ‘I wasn’t murdered.’

  ‘Miss Farren. We’re trying to find out if whoever was here three weeks ago might have been involved in a stabbing that’s happened since then. It’s important for us to establish who it was who was with you.’

  She glanced at her watch. She sat down. Laidlaw and Harkness did the same.

  ‘I hardly knew him,’ she said.

  ‘Do you know his name?’

  She checked the brand name on her cigarette as if it tasted strange and looked across at Laidlaw suddenly, boldly.

  ‘No. Look, I’m embarrassed about it. I’d had too much to drink. I met him and brought him back here and it all went sour. Very sour. Never again. It’s embarrassing but I honestly don’t know his name.’

  ‘His first name?’

  ‘Not even that.’

  The silence was the sound of incredulity. Laidlaw took out Eck’s piece of paper and passed it to her. As she read it, she stopped over-acting like a tic-tac man. Her face became still.

  ‘You recognise the writing, Miss Farren?’

  ‘It’s Tony’s writing.’

  ‘He’s written to you, has he?’

  She nodded.

  ‘When?’

  ‘About a week ago.’

  Harkness felt she was about to tell them the truth. He reckoned the phone-call from Milton Veitch foreseen by Laidlaw had happened. She had decided what she would tell and what she wouldn’t. He was convinced this was something she had chosen to be honest about, perhaps because they knew her connection with him already or perhaps because she cared about him or perhaps just because good lies need a leavening of the truth to make them palatable.

  ‘It was a letter. We had stopped seeing each other. Tony and I’ve known each other for years. At one time it felt like love. But it wasn’t. Not for me. Not that kind, anyway.’

  ‘It was you that packed it up?’

  ‘That’s right. It was a long letter.’

  ‘Do you have it?’

  ‘I destroyed it.’

  Harkness reflected that Tony Veitch wasn’t having a lot of luck with his writing. Maybe he should have enclosed a stamped-addressed envelope for return of manuscripts.

  ‘He must have been affected by the break-up,’ Laidlaw said. ‘You think that might have something to do with his disappearance? You know he’s disappeared?’

  ‘I know. But I don’t think so. It was a very calm letter. Just trying to analyse our relationship, I suppose.’

  ‘That piece of paper you have. It was found on a vagrant. Eck Adamson. Does the name mean anything to you?’

  It didn’t.

  ‘He’s dead of paraquat poisoning. The other names?’

  She looked at Laidlaw condescendingly, returning to the dismissive style she had adopted on first seeing them. Her moment of truth was evidently over.

  ‘My own means something to me,’ she said.

  ‘Not Paddy Collins?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘The Crib?’

  ‘It’s a pub Tony and I sometimes went to.’

  ‘A bit down-market, isn’t it?’

  ‘Tony liked that.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘It makes a change. Look. I’m not quite finished getting ready.’

  Harkness couldn’t imagine what else she was going to do – apply varnish? But she had made up her mind. The rest was a lock-out and her impenetrability was double-bolted when the outside door of the flat suddenly opened and a young man came in, whistling like a bush of blackbirds and walking at the head of an invisible parade. He halted dramatically, observing the group. Laidlaw and Harkness recognised Dave McMaster.

  But it didn’t do them much good. He and Lynsey Farren might as well have dropped in for the weekend from Mars. What they didn’t know about Glasgow was compendious. Dave had seen Tony Veitch in ‘The Crib’ but that was all. Was Paddy Collins dead? Who was Eck Adamson? By the time Dave had taken up with Lynsey, Tony was out of the picture. Neither could understand how Lynsey Farren’s name could come to be on Eck’s piece of paper. It made you wonder what Tony Veitch was up to. They were just a happy young couple going out for a meal. And they didn’t want to miss the table they had booked.

  At the door, Laidlaw said, ‘By the way, Miss Farren. When I mentioned that there were two people murdered, you repeated it. You sounded surprised. Did you know that there was one dead already?’

  But she was firmly esconced again as the lady of the manor. She smiled.

  ‘I suppose two just seemed so – extravagant.’

  But as the door closed on the police, she came apart very quickly.

  ‘Dave! He asked me about Paddy Collins.’

  ‘You didn’t tell him anything?’

  ‘I said I didn’t know him.’

  ‘That’s good. Everybody’s after Tony, right enough.’

  ‘Dave. Eck Adamson’s dead.’

  ‘Auld Eck? Is he? Still, maybe it’s whit they call a blessed release.’

  ‘He was murdered.’

  Dave stared at her disbelievingly.

  ‘Eck? Come on. Be like bombin’ a grave. Who’d want to murder Eck?’

  Before he had finished the question, their stares had locked, seeming to find the same possibility in each other’s eyes. Dave looked away and shook his head too determinedly.

  ‘Behave yerself, Lynsey. It couldny be Tony.’

  ‘He’s done it once.’

  ‘We canny be sure o’ that.’

  ‘Can’t we?’

  ‘Anyway, there wis a motive then. Whit reason could there be for killin’ Eck?’

  ‘Maybe he knew something.’

  ‘Eck didny know the time o’ day.’

  ‘Oh, Dave.’ She was huddled against him. ‘I don’t think I can take this. Poor Tony. Have you phoned Mickey Ballater yet?’

  ‘Aye. Just putting him off. He could be real bother. Ah’ll have to phone him again the night.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘We’re going to go out and enjoy ourselves.’ He bear-hugged her. ‘See if they’re away yet.’

  She crossed to the window and held the curtain back. Their car hadn’t moved. Inside, it was being agreed that Harkness would drop Laidlaw off at Pitt Street. Afterwards, Laidlaw was going to meet Eddie Devlin at the Press Club and Harkness might see him there. Harkness turned the ignition and put the car into gear.

  ‘Dave McMaster,’ Laidlaw was saying. ‘She’s really crossing borders with him, isn’t she? Maybe Mr Veitch should update his sense of Lady Lynsey Farren. She’s definitely stopped playing with dolls, the lassie. What a con-artist! She looks as if she hires her expression by the day. From Haughty Faces Ltd.’

  ‘Aye. No Oscars for Miss Blandish,’ Harkness said. ‘She lies like a car-dealer. Why?’

  18

  Milligan climbed the hill to where, overlooking what had been Anderston, now redeveloped into anonymity, the Albany Hotel stood. He had parked in Waterloo Street. The Albany is a huge glass-and-concrete fortress to the good life. The drawbridge is money. It’s where a lot of the famous stay when they come to Glasgow. It’s maybe as near as the city gets publicly to those embassies of privilege by which the rich reduce the world to one place, although in Glasgow few public places would have the nerve obtrusively to discourage certain clients. They merely give discreet financial hints.

  Milligan had stipulated the main lounge, so he passed the basement bar, the Cabin. That was a kind of servants’ quarters where the punters drank, surrounded by people such as Charles Aznavour and Georgie Best, photographs like the leftovers of big occasions.

  The glass doors parted politely in front of him. The lounge was an extension of reception with the bar at the far end. Milligan infiltrated the polite crush at the bar and came out with a glass of bottled
lager. There was nothing as vulgar as draught.

  He sat in one of the two vacant black chairs. He was sharing a table with a couple of businessmen. ‘But compared with last year’s profits.’ ‘A new factory in Sheffield.’ ‘The overheads.’ They were talking in dialect.

  Milligan was glad they didn’t wait long before going into the Carvery. They were part of an intermittent departure. Every so often a Glaswegian voice would come over the tannoy dressed in Pukka English like a Moss Bros suit that had been delivered to the wrong person. ‘Mr Somebody to the Carvery, please,’ it would say. A group would rise from its glass-topped table and go into the restaurant, still roped loosely together with conversation.

  Milligan settled for the women. There were a couple he wouldn’t have minded adding to his problems. One was a big blonde in a red satin dress. The other was more subdued, with less of a lighthouse’s ubiquity of vision. But she was the one Milligan really fancied, brown-haired, sending him on by never having noticed him. He would have liked to upset her style. He shot the man she was with a couple of looks of curare, but he went on living.

  ‘Thank God for Macey,’ Milligan thought.

  Macey was coming towards him, walking not quite tall in his platform shoes. He had on his grey striped suit with the four-lane lapels, red shirt and a tie that might have doubled as a table-cover. Macey believed in hiding his bushel under a light. The youthful face, well fed but with a nose you could have shaved with, was brightly interested in everything. Born and brought up in Govan, living in Drumchapel, he seemed to be saying to himself about everywhere else, ‘Fancy me bein’ here.’

  What happened when he saw Milligan would have been a double-take in somebody else. In Macey caution reduced it to an infinitesimal pause. He nodded pleasantly and made to go past, still looking.

  ‘Macey,’ Milligan called softly. ‘Over here.’

  Macey hesitated like a cat testing an opening with its whiskers. He came across.

  ‘Aye, Ernie.’

  ‘Can I get you a drink?’

  The time it took Macey to decide, he might have signed the pledge. His livelihood, if not his life, depended on caution and foreknowledge. He welcomed this place the way a cardiac case does chest pains.