William McIlvanney - Strange Loyalties

‘That’s just muscular leanness, Katie.’

‘Don’t dodge. What have you been eatin’? Or what have ye not been eatin’, more like?’

‘I’m the worst cook in Britain.’

‘Ach, Jack. I heard about yer other bothers, too.’ She meant my marriage. ‘Trouble always travels in company, doesn’t it?’

I tried to introduce John Strachan to her but she knew him already. She would. She treated even casual customers as if they were part of an extended family. She shooed John through to the bar to get a pint and took me upstairs to show me my room. It was freshly decorated and beautifully clean.

‘This is the best one,’ she said. ‘Some of the others are getting done up. Then there’s two fellas from Denmark staying the night. And a man from Ireland’s been here for nearly a week.’

I didn’t unpack the bag. I told her I wanted to phone Glasgow. She wouldn’t let me use the payphone. She took me back downstairs to the kitchen. Fortunately, Buster the dog recognised me, although that didn’t always guarantee you immunity from threatening noises. She left me dialling Brian Harkness’s number.

‘Hello?’

‘Hullo, Morag?’ I said. ‘It’s — ’

‘I know who it is all right. I’d recognise your growl anywhere. It’s Black Jack Laidlaw, the mad detective.’

It’s nice to be recognised.

‘Where are you?’ she said.

‘I’m in Graithnock. I’m still in Graithnock.’

‘Whereabouts in Graithnock?’

‘I’m just booking into a wee hotel. I just got in there.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ she said. Morag had the kind of directness that often goes with authentic generosity. Kindness was such a natural thing with her she never bothered to dress it in formal clothes. ‘You’re forty minutes down the road from us. Get your bum in the car and get up here.’

I didn’t take time to explain that that was a long forty minutes. The car would make it but not my head. I could hear over the phone the background noises of domesticity, like an old tune I could still remember but had forgotten the words. I didn’t want to take any contagion of gloomy obsessiveness into that nice place.

‘Well, I’ve still got a couple of people to see, Morag.’

‘Jack. Who do you think you’re kidding? You’ll sit in a room the size of a coffin and get pissed. Your habits are known. Come up here and get a decent meal and some company. Brian told me about your fridge. He said you could sell it as new. If you can’t look after yourself, let other people do it now and again.’

‘What it is, Morag,’ I said. ‘I just tasted whisky for the first time there. And, you know the way you can sometimes just tell right away? I really think I’m going to like it. So what I thought I would do, I’ll just stay with it for a while and see if I can acquire the taste. And it’s awkward to do that when you’re driving.’

‘You’re hopeless. You not coming up?’

‘Not the night, lovely wumman. But it’s in my crowded diary. How’s Stephanie and the mystery guest?’

‘Steph’s fine. The other one’s kickin’ like a football team. Listen. We’re going to feed you properly soon. Even if we have to put you on a drip. No escape. You want to speak to Brian?’

‘Please, Morag. He’s in, is he?’

‘Yes. I don’t swallow all that Crime Squad stuff about having to work late all the time. The fate of the nation hanging on a break-in in Garthamlock. I’ll get him. You watch yourself, you.’

‘Like an egg in a cake, Morag. Cheers.’

‘So Morag’s seductive tones didn’t persuade you?’ Brian said. ‘Actually, the way she’s goin’ on at me. D’you mind if I come down there? Can you get me a room?’

‘I’d change places any day,’ I said. ‘So how did it go today?’

‘You first,’ Brian said.

I started trying to give him a brief outline and began to feel as if I was drawing pictures in the air with my finger. I found myself interpreting Brian’s silence as the sound of scepticism. Maybe obsessions are essentially incommunicable. What did I have to tell him? I visited an empty house. I found an abandoned painting. I met a schoolteacher and his wife and family. It was all as interesting in the telling as one of those childhood compositions: What I Did At The Weekend. Even to myself it seemed that I was not conveying my experiences so much as my symptoms. Brian’s response wasn’t a hopeful diagnosis.

‘Christ, Jack,’ he said. ‘What’s the point of what you’re doing?’

‘I’m not telling you,’ I said. ‘’Cause you’re not a nice man. Anyway, what about you?’

I think Brian was relieved to get back to talking about the real world. Buster was looking at me from the floor as if he shared Brian’s opinion of me.

‘Meece Rooney,’ Brian said. ‘You know him?’

‘Meece? I know him.’

‘Well, you did,’ Brian said. ‘He’s dead.’

‘You mean he’s the one? On the waste ground?’

‘Meece Rooney. Listen. Somebody said he was supposed to have studied medicine. Would you know about that?’

‘Meece did about a month at university,’ I said. ‘Before he decided there must be quicker ways to fulfil yourself. If Meece was saying he studied medicine, he must’ve meant he had been reading the label on a cough-bottle.’

I found myself shrugging. Grief can be selfish. I didn’t dislike Meece. I hadn’t disliked Meece. By the rule of thumb you sometimes applied to the troublesome people you dealt with, he wasn’t the worst. The thumb was almost up. He had been in my experience more victim than perpetrator. He was a fantasist who had decided to sublimate his fantasies in heroin. But if my brother’s dying was a sore thing, why not his? His death was someone’s mourning.

‘He was dealing, you know,’ Brian said.

The thumb went down. It’s one thing to find your own way to hell. But when you start directing the traffic there, it’s different.

‘I’d lost touch with him,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know he was a dealer. It’s a natural progression, right enough. So what else have you got?’

‘Not a lot so far. We traced him to a bedsit in Hyndland. He was supposed to be living there with a woman. By the way, the pathologist’s report shows he had a broken arm recently. The neighbours aren’t saying a lot. We don’t even have a name for her yet. But she seems to have been on the stuff as well. Only thing is, she’s not there any more. And her clothes aren’t either. But one of the unwashed cups has lipstick on it. And the remains of a coffee that hadn’t even hardened.’

‘So you think she knows who did it?’

‘It looks that way.’

‘And evaporated for the good of her health.’

‘You’re a genius.’

‘I’m just thinking aloud. Don’t get smart-arsed.’

‘You taught me,’ he said.

‘No. That’s maybe what you learned but it’s not what I was teaching. But that’s interesting. At least it narrows the focus.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, with a junkie you’ve got problems, haven’t you? They’re good at keeping bad company. There’s a lot of that stuff out there. And their motivations are like mayflies. They can be born and die the same day. That can make a motive hard to trace.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘But the way Meece died looks planned. Breaking fingers one by one doesn’t smack of spontaneity. It might mean questions were being asked. Or just some special rites of passage into death. Either way, Meece’s murder was arranged. And the vanishing woman confirms that. She maybe knew it was going to happen or that it had happened. And whoever did it frightened her out of her life. And into another one.’

‘So?’

‘So it’s a guess. But you’re looking to move towards official sources in their world. The big fear. What’s the biggest fear an addict has?’