But Ballater walked into a room he had pre-decided.
‘Uh-huh,’ he said. ‘Ah’m for the off. Everything ready?’
But caution came in after him like a double-take. He stopped unnaturally, not because he had a specific reason for doing so but because he didn’t know what was wrong. Laidlaw reckoned it was the cup beside the other chair. He didn’t give himself time to refine the thought. He took two strides across the room and battered Ballater in the back, knocking his face against the wall.
‘Get out, Gina,’ Laidlaw shouted.
Ballater had fallen against the wall and Laidlaw grappled him, trying to reach his left inside pocket. There was a moment of quiescence in Ballater when Laidlaw thought he had done it. Through cloth he felt something hard then he felt something harder. It was Ballater’s elbow in his stomach. Laidlaw retched breath and as he subsided Ballater erupted with an elbow in his face. Laidlaw staggered several paces back against the door, slamming it shut.
Fear gave him panoramic vision. He saw that Gina had got out. He saw that the room was a lot smaller than it should be. He saw a bird scudding past the window. He saw a slim white chair against the wall beside him as more than something to sit on. He saw the knife in Ballater’s hand, looking as long as Excalibur. He saw the birth-mark as a core of rage that shouldn’t have been his problem.
A few swift thoughts went past like the carriages of a train he was too late to catch. This was a crazy job. He hoped the G.P.O. was on form. He had done it wrong again. He had over-rehearsed. If he hadn’t been so determined to get the knife he could have knocked Ballater out. Come on, come on. Perhaps they could talk about this.
‘Wait, Mickey. Wait a minute! You know who I am?’
His own voice sounded crazy to him, wild and irrelevant, like somebody insisting on introductions before he was murdered.
‘You’re the wan that’s gonny get it.’
‘I’m polis, Mickey.’ Beyond his own control, his card was thrown on the floor. ‘You’re tryin’ to kill polis.’
The card lay between them in a way that neither understood, seemed to build an invisible fence. While Mickey paused fractionally, as if going back inside himself far enough to make the jump, Laidlaw took the chair in one fluid nervous movement as compulsive as orgasm and fired it at Mickey. Its trajectory, as it happened, was almost enough to make him believe in God, but once completed wasn’t quite. One leg of the chair caught Mickey glancingly above the right eye. He went down. The knife went to the wall like an intention. Laidlaw scrabbled across and picked it up.
While Laidlaw stood gasping, holding the knife, Mickey sat gasping, without the knife. Both of them were bewildered.
‘What’s this about?’ Mickey said.
‘That’s what I’d like to know,’ Laidlaw said.
He noticed blood seeping through the left-hand side of Mickey Ballater’s shirt. The blood puzzled Laidlaw because it wasn’t the result of their scuffle.
33
Sometimes you believe them, sometimes you don’t. Laidlaw had believed him for the moment. He had only found out where Veitch was when it was too late. Anyway, all he had wanted was the money. The rest would have been up to Cam Colvin. And Ballater was a knife man, subtle as a road accident. Why would he arrange to make it look like suicide? You might as well expect a gorilla to take up origami. Tricky Mickey, Mickey, maybe, but broad tricks, painful slapstick, not the theatrical cunning Laidlaw thought he saw behind the corpse of Tony Veitch trussed in electricity.
That body haunted him, seemed to mock Laidlaw’s private law of gravity, whereby hard truths must be seriously pursued till they surrendered their full meaning. So the fact that Ballater was being held for possession of an offensive weapon and that Gina was safe for the moment to indulge again the normal pains life brought her gave Laidlaw no respite from the feeling in him. That past moment was already like a booster rocket, falling into irrelevance. It had only served to kick him further into the manic orbit he was following, fuelled on his compulsion to find what everybody else said wasn’t there.
All other concerns had fused for him, and when his preoccupation found him standing again in the living-room of Lynsey Farren’s flat in East Kilbride he wasn’t sure he could remember exactly how he got there. He wasn’t even entirely sure what he was doing there. Certainly, nobody else seemed to know. He was like yesterday’s news nobody was interested in any more.
They had been reluctant to let him in. Now that he was in they contrived barely to notice him. Lynsey Farren was packing. Her face was blotchy with crying and she was abstractedly filling two big leather suitcases on the floor.
Her father, Lord Farren, was waiting to accompany her back to his estate. He looked in his eighties and was hovering about so vaguely it seemed as if he wasn’t sure of the century, never mind the day of the week. He still hadn’t worked out who Laidlaw was. He was a charming old man who had asked Laidlaw how he got the lump on his cheek. He kept returning to the window, perpetually looking for something he couldn’t find, perhaps a hansom cab to take him to an address no longer there.
The Mercedes Laidlaw had recognised outside belonged to Milton Veitch. Mr Veitch was there to run Lynsey and her father home. He had taken control of them. Having manfully overcome his grief, he was helping Lynsey pack and telling Laidlaw that they wanted to be left in peace. He was very solicitous towards Lynsey. To an outsider he would have seemed a nice man, doing the right thing.
Rectitude is a sanctimonious bastard, Laidlaw thought. It would unravel the jumpers from its shivering children’s backs to knit gloves for public charity.
‘I just need to talk to Miss Farren,’ Laidlaw said.
‘No, you don’t,’ Veitch said. ‘She’s suffered enough. We all have.’
‘Not quite as much as Tony.’
Lynsey broke down at the mention of the name, beginning to sob. Veitch put his arm round her.
‘What a filthily tasteless remark!’ he said. ‘How dare you!’
Lord Farren turned from the window and saw Lynsey crying. It must have appeared to him like a tableau he had accidentally stumbled across. He seemed to make no connection with what had gone before.
‘Lynsey dear,’ he said and crossed towards them. Veitch shepherded them both into the bedroom, waited with them a little, came out and closed the door. He looked at Laidlaw as if he was very small. His contempt was the height of a cliff.
‘Do you enjoy other people’s suffering?’ he asked.
‘I need to talk to Miss Farren.’
‘You won’t be doing that.’
‘So what’s going to happen? You all retire behind your moat of money and leave it at that? I can’t do that. This is where I live. I need to know what it’s really like.’
‘That’s your problem. We have the right to cope with this tragedy any way we can.’
‘No, you haven’t. Not at the expense of the truth you haven’t. You don’t get monopolising that as well. A share of it’s mine. And I’m claiming it. Listen, I think your son was murdered.’
‘I think you’re off your head. That’s what I think. And I think this is harassment. Why are you here alone, for example? That’s hardly official procedure. You really don’t care about anybody, do you?’
‘I must have walked through a looking-glass,’ Laidlaw said. ‘I don’t care? Your son’s dead. And all you can do is help somebody to pack who knows more about it than she admits. You’re going to ferry her silence away for her. You know what you are? You’re playing batman to your own son’s death. Dressing it up nice. Now why is that? Because you know the truth would be an accusation against you?’
‘That’s it,’ Veitch said. ‘I’ll be phoning Bob Frederick. Bob can deal with this.’
Laidlaw couldn’t believe it. That familiar use of the Commander of the Crime Squad’s name was supposed to be the ultimate sanction applied. It felt like living in a different world from everybody else. Did he really think that mattered?
‘Phone,’ Laidlaw said.
‘Phone right now.’
‘I’ll phone when I choose.’
‘No, you won’t. Listen. If you can make a phone-call and blow me away, then do it. But don’t threaten me with it. You want to pull strings, pull. I’ll arrange to have you strangle yourself on them. Or if I can’t, I’ll be glad to lose. Because this job won’t be worth doing. Which actually maybe it’s not. But if you’re not going to do that, get out of my way and let me speak to that lassie. Make your choice.’
Veitch wilted slightly and sat down. He put his head in his hands briefly, looked up.
‘Laidlaw. Do you think my son’s death doesn’t matter to me?’
‘Mr Veitch. I’m not interested. I don’t want to talk to you. I’ve tried that already. Let me speak to the girl.’
‘Laidlaw, I wish I could believe what you believe. But I knew my son. You want to think he wasn’t capable of that. But I know he was. God forgive me. But I know he was. I’ve seen him get seduced by every spurious extremist philosophy. Become an intellectual whore. Just to pay me back for some imagined wrong. Since he went to university he developed a mind like a swamp. A breeding-ground for sickness. He was capable of anything. I know he was.’
‘Mr Veitch. You know what I think happened to you? You lost the taste for whisky because you owned the pub. Don’t tell me what you know. You wouldn’t know the truth unless it had Bank of Scotland written on it. I don’t want to waste my time with you, Mr Veitch. That’s what I really don’t want to do. What are you? Some kind of guardian of the golden fleece? Let people talk. If you’re so sure you’re right, just let me test it. Is that too much to ask?’
Mr Veitch put his head in his hands again. He looked up slowly.
‘I’ll give you five minutes with Lynsey,’ he said.
‘Mr Veitch,’ Laidlaw said. ‘You’ll give me as long as I need. Your son’s dead and I care more about why and how he died than you do. That gives me rights. Go and get Lynsey, please. And if you really care about people, keep the old man through there. His head doesn’t need to try to cope with this.’
When she came through, she was fairly composed. The door had closed on the bedroom and she put down the lid on a suitcase as she passed and then sat down in one of the leather armchairs beside the electric fire. But what she hadn’t realised was that she had walked into Laidlaw’s obsession. The room was no more than a backdrop for his mood. He sat down across from her.
‘Tell me what happened,’ he said.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Tell me the truth as far as you understand it.’
‘About what?’
‘About the national economy. What do you think? About Tony Veitch.’
‘I’ve told you what I know.’
‘You’ve told me nothing. I sat in this room and listened to your cabaret. All right. That was then. But now somebody you’re supposed to have cared about is dead. Take the make-up off. I want to know anything you can tell me that might help.’
‘I don’t know what might help.’
‘I’ll help you then. Who beat you up?’
‘That’s my affair.’
‘No, no. It’s not. You don’t understand. I saw Tony Veitch lying dead. Barbecued like a bit of butchermeat.’
She gasped and covered her eyes.
‘You could cry for a week, Miss Farren, and it wouldn’t count. That picture’s burned into my head. And I’m not carrying that for you. Or anybody. You have to turn up and take your part of it. You’re maybe sensitive but you’re not sensitive enough. What matters isn’t the effect it has on you, but what you do with the effect it has on you. You feel it bad, then turn up for the man you feel it for. A boy is dead. I don’t think he deserved to die.’
She was crying quietly.
‘So tell me now. Who gave you the bad time that night here?’
‘It—’ Her words were drowning in phlegm. ‘Paddy Collins.’
Laidlaw nodded, having established that she wanted to tell the truth.
‘You’d been with him before Dave McMaster. Was that why he got vicious? Because you had gone with Dave?’
She shook her head.
‘It wasn’t that.’
Laidlaw waited. It hurt him to look at her but it would have hurt him more to leave her alone. The way he felt, that other hurt could be terminal.
‘I had told him about Tony’s money. When Paddy and I were still together. That night he thought I knew where Tony was. He said. He said. If he couldn’t get me, he could at least cut his losses. He could make money from it. He wanted to know where Tony was. He was trying to make me tell him. But I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I’m glad I didn’t. He hurt me so badly I think I would have told him. But I didn’t know.’
‘Who knew about what Paddy did to you?’
‘Dave and Tony knew. That’s why Tony killed Paddy Collins. I know that’s why he killed him. Tony had always said, since we were small, he wouldn’t let anybody harm me. Tony could be wild. You’ve never seen anybody as wild as Tony could be.’
‘Maybe I have. Just possibly.’
‘No. You didn’t know him. No, you see. When you came the last time with the other man. I tried to protect Tony. I told you nothing because I didn’t want him hurt. I knew he had done it for me. He still loved me, you know. How could I do anything but protect him when he did it to protect me? He loved like an angel. That was his problem. I think I lost his letter because I was ashamed to keep it. He loved you so much you felt guilty at how much less your own love was. If you’d met him you’d know what I mean. Even when I realised he’d killed that sad old man, I could never have helped to turn him in. I don’t know why he did that. Maybe because the old man knew about Paddy Collins. He must have been desperate by that time. I found out from Alma where he was. And we tried to help him. But we were too late. I wish we could have been sooner. I wish we could have been sooner.’
Laidlaw was staring past her at the unconscious support she was giving to his own suspicions.
‘Who’s we?’
‘Dave and I.’
‘What did you do to help?’
‘We told Macey. So that he could tell the police.’
‘Why didn’t you tell the police yourselves?’
She hesitated. He found her discretion pathetically touching, as if she thought Laidlaw didn’t know.
‘Well, some of the people who know Dave wouldn’t have liked it.’
Laidlaw knew for sure now. It only remained to confirm it.
‘If only we’d been sooner,’ she said.
She sat staring into lost possibilities. Laidlaw wondered if there were people who would never get it right, regretting the wrong things, bestowing their compassion like a lead weight thrown to a drowning man. He stood up and crossed to the bedroom door. He knocked and pushed the door open. Mr Veitch was there before the door had opened half-way.
‘I think you should take her home now,’ Laidlaw said.
‘My God, thank you very much. You’re sure we have your permission?’
Laidlaw looked at him. Mr Veitch was sneering, his main concern to reinstate himself. The end of his nose was limbo. If he travelled beyond it he’d fall off the edge of the world. Laidlaw thought, not for the first time, that there must be those who, if a dying man told them the secret of all life and swore at them at the same time, would only remember that he swore.
‘You’re a deeply compassionate man,’ Laidlaw said.
‘Don’t you know that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit?’
‘I don’t know,’ Laidlaw said. ‘I think maybe clichés are.’
He crossed towards the door. On the way he touched Lynsey Farren gently on the head.
‘Good luck with you,’ he said.
He let himself out, thinking that there was more pain ahead for her.
34
The Crib was closed. That was a strange fact, about as likely as the sun not turning up. Two men were standing staring at the shut door. One of them looked round bemusedly, then up at
the sky, as if checking he had the right universe. As Laidlaw approached, they had started to move off. One of them was saying, ‘Mebbe they’ve drapped the bomb an’ we haveny noticed.’ Laidlaw let them go round the corner. He thumped on the door. Nothing happened. He did it again.
The door opened slightly, still on its chain. It was Charlie the barman, who used to work in the Gay Laddie. He knew who Laidlaw was.
‘Yes?’
His face was as welcoming as a turned back.
‘Charlie. I’m looking for somebody.’
‘Yes?’
‘Is there anybody in?’
They could both hear the voices from where they were. ‘Well.’ Charlie was trying lines inside his head. ‘There’s a wee staff-meeting on.’
Laidlaw wondered what was on the agenda: whose turn it was next week to pick up the bodies?
‘That’s why we’re not open yet. Who is it you’re lookin’ for?’
Laidlaw smiled, gave Charlie a look that told him not to be naughty.
‘I just can’t remember his name, Charlie. But I’d know him if I saw him. Any chance I get in?’
Charlie’s eyes stared over Laidlaw’s head. He looked distant, as if receiving telepathic messages.
‘Ye want tae wait a minute?’
The Papers of Tony Veitch Page 20
