The Papers of Tony Veitch - William McIlvanney Laidlaw Trilogy

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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.

      ‘What’s Mickey Ballater doin’ up here? Who needs to re-import sewage? An’ Panda Paterson? Ah’ve done shites that could beat him.’

      ‘He wis no problem, John,’ Dave said. ‘But Ah didny want tae get involved wi’ Cam without your say-so. That’s serious business. That wis all.’

      John was staring at him.

      ‘Ah hope so,’ he said. ‘Minding a place means lookin’ after everybody. Let wan wanker toss off in yer face an’ they’ll be organisin’ bus-trips. Bein’ cheeky in the Crib could get tae be a fashion.’

      He sipped his tea. He wasn’t really deciding anything. He was letting it be decided for him. Deliberation wasn’t his forte. Anger was. Sitting there, he was coaxing it out of its kennel, presenting it with fragments of what had happened like giving it the scent of a quarry.

      ‘Open-plan pub?’ he said. ‘Oh, ah doubt that won’t do. We’ll have tae see which way he wants it. If that’s how he’s goin’ to be, we might have tae make his rib-cage open-plan. Ah’ll punch holes in ’im big enough for birds tae nest in.’

      He looked at Macey.

      ‘Fix it up.’

      ‘When, John?’

      ‘Right now.’

      ‘For here?’

      ‘Naw. Let him choose. It doesny matter where. But be right back. Ah want tae see him right away.’

      Macey left the tea that he had hardly touched and went for the door.

      ‘Macey. Maybe ye’d better make it near a hospital.’

      John Rhodes smiled, an event as cheerful as the winter solstice.

      9

      Glasgow has them like every city, the urban bedouin. With the disorientation of the alcoholic and the down-and-out, they shift locations but their vagrancy has trade-routes. Places are in for a season and then get abandoned, like spas where the springs have dried.

      Laidlaw knew Eck well enough to have a very rough chart of his preferences. There were brief spells – in the past few years infrequent – when he vanished into what some said was respectability, a proper house. Certainly, he usually re-emerged wearing a coat that looked less like a dump with buttons, but not for long.

      Outside those times, he was roughly predictable. Even disintegration can be routine. Winters had been Talbot House or the Great Eastern Hotel, a name that sat on the Duke Street doss-house like a top-hat on a turd. In easier weather, he had favoured the East End around Glasgow Green and the decaying, still unredeveloped area south west of Gorbals Street.

      Harkness had been worried about Laidlaw since they set out on foot from the office. He knew Laidlaw’s belief in what he sometimes called ‘absorbing the streets’, as if you could solve crime by osmosis. Apart from being of dubious effectiveness, it was sore on the feet. Sometimes the preoccupied conversation that went with it wasn’t a very soothing accompaniment, like watching a hamster desperately going nowhere in a revolving cage.

      ‘Paddy Collins mentioned on Eck’s bit of paper. Paddy Collins dead. What connection could Eck have with Paddy Collins’ death? Did Milligan tell you anything else?’

      ‘No. Just that.’

      ‘Did he say anybody had been at the Vicky when he was there?’

      ‘Paddy’s wife. And I suppose Cam.’

      They were passing a phone-box.

      ‘It’s weird. Wait and I’ll try that number again.’

      They went into the box and Laidlaw dialled it from memory. Harkness could understand why. It was the fourth time Laidlaw had tried it since they had started walking. This time it answered at the twelfth ring. Laidlaw’s eyes were like a small boy’s at Christmas. He nodded Harkness in to share the ear-piece as he inserted the money.

      ‘Hullo,’ Laidlaw said.

      ‘Hullo?’ It was a woman’s voice.

      ‘Hullo. Who’s speaking, please?’

      ‘Hullo, hullo?’ She sounded elderly.

      ‘Who’s speaking, please?’

      ‘Hullo. This is Mrs Wotherspoon. Who are you, son?’

      ‘Excuse me,’ Laidlaw said, winking at Harkness. ‘I just want to check I’ve got the right number. What address is that you’re speaking from?’

      ‘Address? This is a public phone-box, son. I was just passin’ there an’ I heard it ringin’. I’m on ma way to the chiropodist’s. Ma feet are givin’ me laldy. It takes me about ten minutes tae pass a phone-box the way Ah walk. That’s probably why Ah heard ye.’

      Harkness was wheezing silently, his face red with suppressed laughter, and winking elaborately back at Laidlaw. Laidlaw looked as if he’d been given a stockingful of ashes for his Christmas.

      ‘Where is the phone-box, love?’ he asked.

      ‘It’s one of the two boxes at the corner of Queen Margaret Drive and Wilton Street. What is it, son? Ye tryin’ to make contact with somebody? Can Ah help ye?’

      ‘Look, love,’ Laidlaw said. ‘I’m sorry I bothered you. It’s a wrong number. Thanks for your help.’

      ‘Not at all.’

      ‘I hope you get the feet sorted out.’

      ‘So do Ah, son. So do Ah. Ah’ve got feet here like two Mother’s Pride loafs. Ta, ta, son.’

      ‘Cheerio.’

      As they walked on, Laidlaw accepted Harkness’s mickeytaking. But it didn’t prevent him from quickly resuming his preoccupation.

      ‘Well, it’s something,’ he said. ‘That’s that dealt with. Paddy Collins is incommunicado. “The Crib” is too general to mean anything to us just now. That leaves the Pollokshields address and the mysterious Lynsey Farren. We’ll see what they yield after we check this out.’

      Laidlaw and Harkness stayed north of the river at first. They checked part of the Green roughly, coming out past the strange, ornate façade of Templeton’s Carpet Factory.

      ‘Some smashing buildings in the city,’ Harkness said. ‘But you never notice them.’

      Laidlaw agreed.

      ‘This job gives you tunnel vision,’ he said.

      They wandered weirdly. Harkness began to worry even more about Laidlaw. There was a compulsion in the way Laidlaw kept walking. It was ruthless. He stopped strange people, described Eck to them and asked them if they had seen him lately. Harkness was beginning to get embarrassed.

      This wasn’t what they taught you in police college. This was as cute as walking naked down the street. And yet, in some odd way, it was working. Nobody got alarmed. Harkness reflected that in Glasgow openness is the only safe-conduct pass. Try to steal a march and they’ll ambush you from every close. They hate to be had. Come on honestly and their tolerance can be great.

      One man typified it. He was small, with a gammy leg. He was carrying what looked like a poke of rolls. When Laidlaw stopped him, he nodded with instant wisdom into his questions.

      ‘Christ, aye. Big Tammy Adamson’s boay. No problem. Ah can tell ye exactly. When Big

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