William McIlvanney - The Papers of Tony Veitch

The girl emphasised the feeling in him. She had pulled on jeans and T-shirt. She had mules on her bare feet. Her recent vulnerability was her embarrassment now. Her breasts seemed too conspicuous, as if she knew the three men in the room were too aware of them. The intense privacy of what she had been involved in had been made public before she was ready. Her shyness was an indictment. Laidlaw felt guilty.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry we disturbed you. I’m Jack Laidlaw. This is Brian Harkness. We won’t be long.’

‘That’s all right,’ Gus Hawkins said. ‘This is Marie.’

Laidlaw liked him at once. Considering the varieties of embarrassment and aggression and deceit the arrival of the police gave rise to, Laidlaw liked the cool directness of the boy’s response. Gus leaned back on his elbow on the bed they had been making love on, and wore his preposterous health like an aureole. He knew whatever happened he could handle it.

Marie put out two chairs for them and sat on the third remaining chair. Gus gestured them to sit down. Laidlaw admired his style and, admiring it, couldn’t resist trying to disconcert it.

‘You said “again”,’ he said.

‘Sorry?’

‘When I mentioned Tony Veitch. You said, “Again?” Who’s been asking about him?’

‘People.’

‘I’d worked that out. What people, though? You see, it could be important. You could be withholding vital information.’

Gus Hawkins held out both hands, palms up, wrists together. Laidlaw and Harkness managed not to smile.

‘Naw,’ Gus Hawkins said. ‘Don’t take me away. Just friends at the uni. There seems a lot of fuss about Tony. So what’s he done?’

‘As far as I’m concerned, he’s disappeared. We’d like to find him.’

‘I don’t know where he is.’

‘No ideas at all about where he might go?’

‘I’ve checked them all. D’you think I wouldn’t?’

‘Well, maybe you could tell us something that might help us to find him.’

Gus sat up on the bed and clasped his hands, elbows resting on his knees. He stared at the floor for a time and looked up, seeming to have made a decision.

‘You want a cup of coffee?’

‘That would be great,’ Harkness said.

‘I’ll get it,’ Marie said.

‘Would you, love? Thanks. Okay, I’ll tell you what I can.’

Laidlaw wondered why.

‘Did you know he was going to take off? I mean, did he give any indication of it?’

‘Not really. Not any more than at any other time. He could’ve shot the crow at any time during the last year or so, Tony. He had become allergic to the uni.’

‘So how did it happen?’

‘Well, I’d given him the place to himself for the week of the finals. I’ve just finished Junior Honours, right? I look in a couple of times during the week. To see if I could help. Like Anglo-Saxon vocabulary or something. Or check references for him maybe. Last time I saw him was on the Thursday night. He seemed all right. Bit of a zombie, the way everybody is at the finals. Your head standing in for a filing-cabinet. But he was all right. Reckoned he had done pretty well so far. Then Saturday.’

He shook his head. His eyes rediscovered the puzzlement he must have felt then.

‘I come in on Saturday morning. The door’s not even shut. It’s lying open. I push it. And it’s like coming aboard the Mary Celeste . I knew there was something wrong. I mean, there was no reason why he should be here. It wasn’t that. It was just — the room hadn’t been left, it had been abandoned. There was a full cup of coffee sitting on the floor. A couple of drawers hanging out where he had emptied them. About half-a-dozen books scattered round the floor, all open. I looked in the cupboard and his travelling-bag was gone. And that was it. Never seen him since.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I checked with the uni. He hadn’t turned up. I went round some of the places I thought he might be. Pubs and that. No joy. I don’t know why he went, but he really meant it. Even took his music centre.’

‘Was he in any kind of trouble that you know of? We spoke to Mr Jamieson at the University-’

Gus Hawkins allowed the distribution of coffee-mugs to defer the question. Laidlaw had Snoopy. Harkness was drinking out of a 19th-century remedy for rheumatism. Marie gave out milk and sugar. Harkness thought she was an attractive girl.

‘Not that I know of.’

‘Did Tony know a man called Paddy Collins?’

Gus tested the hotness of the coffee.

‘That sounds familiar. I think he’s mentioned him.’

‘He knew him well?’

‘Tony didn’t know anybody well.’

‘What do you mean? He was a loner?’

‘Not by choice. He tried to mix. But he was oil and everybody else was water. He just sat on the surface. He thought he knew people. He probably thought every casual chat was soul-talk. He was naive.’

‘In what way?’

‘Look. You could show Tony’s development geographically. Without going outside Byres Road. And that’s pathetic. You know what he did? When he came here? He was here before me. We’ve talked about it often. He spent a year in the Salon in Vinicombe Street. Just down the road there. Seeing some pictures three times. Whatever they were showing, that’s what he saw. If it was Tom and Jerry, he was there. He was hiding from the shock of real life. Then in his second year he did his Captain Scott. He started to go into the Rubaiyat. Then the Curlers. Then Tennents. Do you know what I mean?’

Laidlaw thought he knew. The three pubs are all in Byres Road. He supposed Gus Hawkins meant that Tony’s progress had been towards some idea of a working-class pub.

‘Then he went beyond Partick Cross. He was Vasco da Gama. The Kelvin. The Old Masonic Arms. Next stop, outer space.’

‘That’s where he seems to be now. There must have been some indication of him being under pressure.’

‘Everybody doing finals is under pressure. You don’t need the doctor’s bag to work that out.’

‘You think that’s all it was?’

Gus seemed to be savouring his coffee.

‘As far as I know.’

‘So you think he’ll turn up again?’

‘Haven’t a clue.’

‘Did you ever meet Tony’s father?’

‘No. He mentioned him a couple of times.’

‘Not more than that?’

‘Well, he seemed to put him in roughly the same bracket as leukaemia. I don’t suppose that’s something you’d want to bum about a lot.’

‘Lynsey Farren?’

‘I’ve seen her.’

‘And?’

‘Pleasant enough to talk to if you’ve got the dark bins on. She dresses like Blackpool Illuminations.’

‘What more do you know about her?’

‘She’s some kind of hand-knitted Scottish aristocracy, is she not? I just thought somebody should’ve taken the after-birth out of her eyes. I thought she was dangerously naive. But then I think most people are.’

‘Including Tony?’

‘Aye. Especially to himself.’

‘Does the name Eck Adamson mean anything to you?’

‘The old wino?’

‘That’s right.’

‘He’s been here a coupla times. Bumming off Tony.’

‘Not off you?’

‘I don’t invest in lost causes.’

‘You know when they’re lost, do you?’

‘I’ve got a fair idea.’

‘Lucky you. You reckon Tony’s one? A lost cause.’

‘I don’t know. I just think his naivety’s dangerous. Like psychic TNT, that stuff. And he had every pocket stuffed with it. It was like he’d lived so long in a sterile unit. I suppose money’s like that. Every half-boiled idea that touched him, he came down with it. He had no resistance. Because reality wasn’t where he lived. It was where he was trying to go. I mean, he’s very bright. But his brightness has no antibodies.’