The Papers of Tony Veitch

by William McIlvanney

  Surprises were getting to be routine with Danny. They all looked at him.

  ‘He hated Paddy Collins since the time Collins battered his old girlfriend.’

  Harkness and Laidlaw looked at each other. Harkness winked and gestured to Laidlaw to stay quiet.

  ‘Lynsey Farren?’ Harkness asked.

  ‘That’s what that big eejit called her,’ Danny said. ‘The wan that duffed me up. Paddy Collins gave her a doin’.’

  ‘And how do you know Tony Veitch was angry about that?’

  ‘Eck told me, didn’t he? Said Tony Veitch wis bealin’. An’ he wis a funny boy, that Tony Veitch. From what Ah’ve heard.’

  Harkness looked at Laidlaw. The prosecution rests.

  ‘Danny,’ Laidlaw said. ‘I don’t know what you’ve said means. But it sure as hell means something. Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Maybe this’ll let me off the hook,’ Eddie said. ‘I mean, from writing a London Times obituary on old Eck. I don’t suppose I even need to get you that information.’

  ‘Naw. Forget it, Eddie,’ Laidlaw said.

  He reached into his pocket and found a fiver. His hand rested on his knee, holding the note.

  ‘Tell me something,’ he said to Danny. ‘I’m always curious. What possessed you to come and tell us all this now?’

  ‘The big yin,’ Danny said. ‘The man who hit me. Ah’m no’ takin’ that from anybody. This is me hittin’ ’im back. The only way Ah can these days. Ah’m no’ deid yet. If he finds out, Ah might be. But no’ yet.’

  Laidlaw slipped him the fiver and the three of them stood up, leaving Danny occupying his seat proudly, like a throne. They all said cheerio.

  ‘Hey!’ Danny called and they turned back. He was looking at Laidlaw. ‘Ah didny do it for the money!’

  Laidlaw came back a little way.

  ‘Hey!’ he said. ‘I know you didn’t.’

  They went out along the Kibble Palace towards the exit. Danny sat smiling to himself. Circumstances had kissed the frog. He sat like a prince, remembering how much he had once mattered to certain people.

  24

  For Macey the familiarity of the day had fragmented when Lynsey Farren walked into the lounge of the Lorne Hotel like a mannequin parade and the two mates at his table watched her approach as if they were buyers for a surplus store who had wandered into a salon. Since then each next thing had been another shake of a kaleidoscope his hand wasn’t holding.

  Walking beside her, he felt as conspicuous as a lapel-badge and about as self-determining. The Central Hotel was another strangeness. Its big, weathered exterior, constructed in a time when the power issuing from the steam train had obscured the possibility of alternatives to itself, had been a familiar landmark to him since boyhood but had never seemed more relevant to his life than the Necropolis.

  He was entering it for the first time and a couple of porters looked at him as if they knew that. Put a monkey in a toy uniform, Macey thought, and it will try to pull rank. Lynsey Farren went up the wide carpeted staircase in a way that suggested she owned it. Macey watched her buttocks move in her fawn cords as if they were chewing a very sweet caramel. He followed her through the first double doors on his right and along the corridor past the empty lounge-bar to where the weirdest moment of a weird day was waiting for him.

  In the coffee-lounge looking up from an armchair like Lord Saracen receiving guests in his mansion was Dave McMaster. On the table in front of him was a silver coffee service, three cups and a plate of dainty biscuits. One of those Sunday papers that look like a paperback library was open on his knees. What was he doing with it, Macey wondered. Looking at the pictures?

  Dave McMaster gestured them to sit down. Macey was relieved. He had thought maybe he was supposed to stand at attention.

  ‘Coffee?’ Dave said and poured two cups. ‘Ah’ve had mine.’

  Macey took his white and, watching Lynsey Farren not bother with milk, the unfamiliarity of where he was came to him again, heightening his senses. He had never understood people taking coffee black. You might as well lay into a cup of cascara. He put three lots of sugar into his own and checked the room.

  You could have more fun in a coffin, he thought. There was a man sitting across from them with used coffee-things in front of him. He was reading typewritten sheets of paper and making notes. Probably early thirties, he looked so set already. Macey thought he had probably been born in a pin-stripe suit. The only other people were a middle-aged couple. The man was having a staring contest with the carpet.

  ‘Lynsey wid tell ye,’ Dave said.

  Macey found himself too busy chewing a biscuit to answer at once.

  ‘Ah know about yer connection wi’ Big Ernie Milligan.’

  Macey had his line ready, might as well try it.

  ‘He wis tryin’ tae nail me for somethin’. But Ah managed tae wriggle out.’

  Dave looked at Lynsey Farren and smiled. When he turned the smile on Macey, the eyes had gone dead above it.

  ‘Good for you. Ah’m that pleased. Very decent of the polis. Tae charge ye in the Albany. Lucky he didny throw you into a pent-house cell.’

  ‘It wisny a charge, Dave. More a kind of—’

  ‘More a kind of load of fucking shite,’ Dave said quietly. ‘You want to explain it tae Big John? Wriggle out? Be like tryin’ tae wriggle out fae under a steam-roller.’

  Dave offered him another biscuit but he wasn’t hungry.

  ‘You’re a tout, Macey.’

  Macey sat sickly still, a man who might just have heard his own epitaph, while Dave held up the reality of his situation against the light, an X-ray plate that only he could interpret.

  ‘You’ve pissed on Cam Colvin. And John Rhodes. You shoulda done something cleverer, Macey. Say, playin’ at tig wi’ King Kong. Macey, Macey. You’re very fragile now. You could die of a phone-call.’

  ‘Ah’ve never given away anythin’ that matters, Dave. Never. Just a lotta stuff that everybody knows anyway. Honest. It’s just tae keep Big Ernie off ma back.’

  Dave was smiling, solicitous as an undertaker.

  ‘Maybe ye’re tellin’ the truth, Macey.’

  ‘Ah am, Dave. Ah am.’

  Dave was considering.

  ‘Tell ye what. You do somethin’ for me an’ Ah went blind on Saturday night. Okay?’

  In Macey’s experience nothing was more suspicious than inexplicable generosity.

  ‘Whit—’

  ‘Macey. Whit ye tryin’ to do? Drive a bargain or somethin’? The firin’ squad’s lined up. You tryin’ to get a price for the blindfold?’

  Macey had to admit to himself he was against the wall.

  ‘Ah’ll do it,’ he said.

  ‘Correct. Here’s the score. Ah’m more than a wee bit fond o’ Lynsey here. An’ Tony Veitch is a family friend. He’s got to get it from somebody. We want it tae be the polis. Anybody else, it’s gonny be awfy sore for him. So Ah’m gonny tell ye where tae find Tony Veitch.’

  He did. Macey’s day was in such small pieces he could no longer see any shape to it all. Why was he being told this?

  ‘Because Ah want you tae use that information in a special way. Mickey Ballater’s on the hunt for Tony. You’re gonny tell ’im where Tony is. There’s the number tae phone.’

  Macey was wishing he had his name sewn on the inside of his jacket. He would have liked to check.

  ‘But Ah thought ye want the polis tae find him.’

  ‘Don’t think. Just listen. Before you phone Ballater, you phone Ernie Milligan. Once ye’re sure the polis’ll get there first, then you phone Ballater. It won’t be your fault the polis knew before him. And everybody’s happy. You. Me. Lynsey. Ballater. Everybody. An’ Tony’s safely in the nick. A happy ending. Just call me Walt Disney.’

  He smiled at Lynsey and she touched his arm affectionately. She had been willing throughout the meeting to let Dave handle everything. Macey wasn’t sure that he shared her willingness – not that he felt like saying.

>   ‘Agreed, Macey?’

  ‘It’s agreed, Dave. Ah’ll do it the way you tell me.’

  Dave stood up and Lynsey joined him.

  ‘Tomorrow. Ah’ve never been in this place in ma life. Macey. Have you?’

  ‘Never.’

  They went out, leaving Macey concussed. Dave doubled back in immediately on his own.

  ‘Oh, Macey,’ he said. ‘Try the wee ginger nuts. They’re smashin’. By the way. If ye mix up the order of who ye tell first, Ah won’t be worried. As long as ye don’t mention it tae Lynsey. Okay?’

  Macey was still sitting there trying to work out what was happening when the waitress came up and handed him a piece of paper. It was a bill for coffee and biscuits for three. He sat staring at it, wondering how much was going to be added to it if he wasn’t careful.

  25

  Sometimes the pragmatic leads to wonder, like Columbus setting out on a business enterprise and discovering a new world. They went to Eck Adamson’s sister’s for information and Laidlaw found a lost part of himself. She was where he came from and had lost touch with.

  Anderston wasn’t a place where he would have expected to find it. It’s an area of the city that memorialises a part of Glasgow’s confused quarrel with itself, a warm and vivid slum expensively transformed into a cold and featureless one. Jinty Adamson lived high up in a grey block of flats, as accessible as a bald Rapunzel.

  She would be about seventy going on seventeen, with eyes still alive with interest. Once she had established that their credentials made them trustworthy they weren’t so much let in as they were ambushed.

  ‘Ah haveny spoken to anybody since last Thursday. When Ah went out for ma messages. Ah’m surprised ye made it up here wi’ the lift broken. An’ no even wearin’ grimpons.’

  The mountaineering references surprised Laidlaw. The accuracy of the pronunciation suggested an aural source. There couldn’t be too many sherpas in Anderston. But she explained it.

  ‘See that,’ she said, pointing at the television. ‘Ma best friend. Ah watch everythin’. Ah can tell ye about silver-backed gorillas, life in Bogota or what Annie Walker had for ’er tea. Ah feel like an eagle up here. These wid be great hooses for folk wi’ wings.’

  It seemed a pity to spoil the pleasure with which she was taking to words like a disembarked sailor to drink. But Laidlaw felt that, if she was going to treat their visit like an unexpected present, they’d better open it for her quickly.

  ‘It’s about Eck,’ he said.

  ‘Oor Alec?’ She sat down. She went inside herself briefly till she found the admission that she had been expecting something like this for a long time. The expression she gave Harkness and Laidlaw seemed to say they couldn’t surprise her. ‘Siddoon, boays. Whit’s happened?’

  ‘You haven’t heard anything?’ Harkness asked.

  ‘Son. Is the war over? Up here ye widny know. Whit’s happened?’

  Harkness waited for Laidlaw to tell it.

  ‘Alec was brought into the Royal Infirmary on Friday night. He had asked for me. I saw him just before. Before he died. He died peacefully.’

  ‘Of course. You’re Jack Laidlaw. He’s talked about ye. Whit wis it? The drink?’

  ‘Well. In a way.’

  ‘It wid be. Oh Alec. It wid be.’

  ‘But it was more than that. We think he died drinking wine that had been mixed with something. Paraquat.’

  The word infiltrated her preparedness, undermined it. It became obvious to them that the calmness with which she had talked past hearing the fact of his death was just delayed action, like a body still trying to run before it realises it’s gone over the edge of a cliff. She knew now. She cuddled herself as if against the cold and closed her eyes. Rocking very gently, she started to cry. Her quiet grief was a fact so sheer, consolation couldn’t have found a handhold on it.

  Laidlaw and Harkness could only let it happen for the moment. Laidlaw became aware more clearly of the room she sat in. It was comfortably furnished, with several old photographs positioned around, fading sepias in which the figures seemed threatening to recede into darkness. One that he thought must be her family showed mother and father, daughter and son in those stiff clothes they used to affect for photographs, like cardboard cut-outs that would stay when the people walked away. Jinty Adamson had eyes that looked as if they were trying to see beyond the horizon. Had Eck ever been so young? The parents were statues of self-assurance. Ah, Laidlaw thought, no amount of self-assurance worked. Jinty had laboured and polished and made a small, bright fortress of this place but she was found just the same. And there was nothing you could do for her.

  He got up and crossed towards her. He put an arm round her shoulders, leaning down.

  ‘I’m going to make us a cup of tea,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Oh, Ah’ll get it, son,’ she said through the tears. A sense of the proper way to treat others was a reflex with her that would die when she did.

  ‘Naw. Ah’ll get it. Hey.’ He put his head down till his face rested sideways on her head. ‘He wisny a bad man. Most of the damage he ever did was to himself. You remember that.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Oh dear, Alec.’

  He straightened up and smoothed her hair slightly and went through to the kitchen. For the first time, Harkness understood what Laidlaw had felt about Eck’s death. He had been right. No death is irrelevant. It’s part of the pain of all of us, even if we don’t notice. Watching them, Harkness knew how relevant Jinty Adamson’s tears were to him. It was one world or no world, no other way. She wasn’t just paying tribute to Eck, she was dignifying living, no matter what form it took.

  Harkness felt vaguely ashamed of something he had done recently. At first, he managed not to remember what it was. Then it came to him. He had given the photograph of Tony Veitch to Ernie Milligan. That didn’t matter in itself. It was fair enough to help Ernie if he could. But he hadn’t told Laidlaw. That was what he was ashamed of. He should have told him. Why hadn’t he? He would do it now.

  But when Laidlaw came through with three cups of tea on a tray with a poke of sugar and a bottle of milk, it seemed to Harkness an indulgence to insist on his small confession here, like announcing during a funeral service that you’ve cut your finger. He would do it later. This was Jinty’s time. Over her tea she talked the nearest thing to an elegy Eck would have. It was just fragments, less a monument than a home-made wreath of already withering flowers.

  ‘He wisny a bad man. You’ve said it, son. He wisny bad’ and ‘The last time Ah saw him, he wis greetin’ for the wastry of his life. Like a wee boy’ and ‘He wis that softhearted. Ah mind when he wis three or fower. Ma mither found him greetin’ ower a picture o’ Jesus with a’ the thoarns in his heid. An’ he said, “Look whit they did tae him, mammy.” An’ she couldny console ’im’ and ‘He wis a grand drawer, Oor Alec. Could draw a bird on a bit o’ paper ye wid think could fly away. Always could draw. Coulda made something o’ himself. But a luckless man. All his days a luckless man. The kinna man woulda got two complimentary tickets for the Titanic.’

  The unintentional humour of the remark was like her natural appetite for life reasserting itself. Harkness couldn’t stop smiling. It was as if Glasgow couldn’t shut the wryness of its mouth even at the edge of the grave. Laidlaw seemed to be feeling something similar because he decided it was all right to speak.

  ‘It’s a bad time to be bothering you with questions,’ he said. ‘Forgive me. But there’s things I want to ask.’

  ‘No, no, son,’ she said. ‘You carry on. You’ve yer work to do.’

  ‘If Alec was poisoned. And I think he was. Can you think of anybody who might have wanted to do that to him?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Ah canny believe it, son. Oor Alec? Ah mean, Ah’m no’ talkin’ as some daft, dotin’ sister. But you think about it. He wis that busy bein’ bad to himself, he hadn’t the time to make a lot of enemies. Ah canny see it.’

  ‘He didn’t s
ay anything to you that might have suggested he was in trouble?’

  ‘Son. Ye know the kind of life he led. God bless ’im. He wis only here when he couldny stand it any more. He wis always welcome. He knew that. But he couldn’t forgive himself for whit he’d become. So every second blue moon Ah saw him. Ah always tidied him up and gave him whit Ah could. Ma mither would’ve wanted that. She wis a kind wumman, mamither. Woulda bought extra cheese if she’d knew there wis a moose in the hoose.’

  ‘But Eck must’ve raved a bit. Coming to you like that. I mean, he must’ve been coming when he was out his mind with the drink. Otherwise, he couldn’t have faced it. Because of his own guilt, I mean. I know what I’m like on that stuff. I’ll talk for a week. So what did he say the last time?’

  ‘You’re right, son. You are right. He talked till the clock wis dizzy. It didny know a.m. from p.m. That last time? Wait a minute. He said he had a benefactor. That was the word. Some rich boy. Name of Veitch.’

  Laidlaw and Harkness were sharing the same held breath. Laidlaw’s voice came out on tiptoe.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Ah’m no’ sure. Some woman he talked about.’

  ‘Lynsey Farren?’ Harkness said.

  ‘Whit kinna name is that, son?’

  They took that as a very definite no. She couldn’t remember her name or anything else about her. Harkness’s disappointment couldn’t understand why Laidlaw stayed so gentle. He couldn’t have been more solicitous to his mother. He thanked her and took the dishes back through to the kitchen, was going to wash them. She was offended.

  ‘Ah’m affrontit enough. A man makin’ the tea,’ she said. ‘Ye’ll not be doing the dishes in my house.’

  Laidlaw surrendered. He respected where she came from too much to argue. She was one of a species he recognised.

  They were decency’s martyrs, who would treat death itself with an instinctive politeness, the unofficial good, uncalendared. You wouldn’t find their names in any book of fame but Laidlaw believed they were the best of us because they gave off their good, quite naturally, in actions. They weren’t dedicated to God or high political principles or some idea but to an unforced daily generosity of giving, a making more bearable for others and themselves. And they were legion.