William McIlvanney - The Papers of Tony Veitch

‘He must have been affected by the break-up,’ Laidlaw said. ‘You think that might have something to do with his disappearance? You know he’s disappeared?’

‘I know. But I don’t think so. It was a very calm letter. Just trying to analyse our relationship, I suppose.’

‘That piece of paper you have. It was found on a vagrant. Eck Adamson. Does the name mean anything to you?’

It didn’t.

‘He’s dead of paraquat poisoning. The other names?’

She looked at Laidlaw condescendingly, returning to the dismissive style she had adopted on first seeing them. Her moment of truth was evidently over.

‘My own means something to me,’ she said.

‘Not Paddy Collins?’

She shook her head.

‘The Crib?’

‘It’s a pub Tony and I sometimes went to.’

‘A bit down-market, isn’t it?’

‘Tony liked that.’

‘And you?’

‘It makes a change. Look. I’m not quite finished getting ready.’

Harkness couldn’t imagine what else she was going to do — apply varnish? But she had made up her mind. The rest was a lock-out and her impenetrability was double-bolted when the outside door of the flat suddenly opened and a young man came in, whistling like a bush of blackbirds and walking at the head of an invisible parade. He halted dramatically, observing the group. Laidlaw and Harkness recognised Dave McMaster.

But it didn’t do them much good. He and Lynsey Farren might as well have dropped in for the weekend from Mars. What they didn’t know about Glasgow was compendious. Dave had seen Tony Veitch in ‘The Crib’ but that was all. Was Paddy Collins dead? Who was Eck Adamson? By the time Dave had taken up with Lynsey, Tony was out of the picture. Neither could understand how Lynsey Farren’s name could come to be on Eck’s piece of paper. It made you wonder what Tony Veitch was up to. They were just a happy young couple going out for a meal. And they didn’t want to miss the table they had booked.

At the door, Laidlaw said, ‘By the way, Miss Farren. When I mentioned that there were two people murdered, you repeated it. You sounded surprised. Did you know that there was one dead already?’

But she was firmly esconced again as the lady of the manor. She smiled.

‘I suppose two just seemed so — extravagant.’

But as the door closed on the police, she came apart very quickly.

‘Dave! He asked me about Paddy Collins.’

‘You didn’t tell him anything?’

‘I said I didn’t know him.’

‘That’s good. Everybody’s after Tony, right enough.’

‘Dave. Eck Adamson’s dead.’

‘Auld Eck? Is he? Still, maybe it’s whit they call a blessed release.’

‘He was murdered.’

Dave stared at her disbelievingly.

‘Eck? Come on. Be like bombin’ a grave. Who’d want to murder Eck?’

Before he had finished the question, their stares had locked, seeming to find the same possibility in each other’s eyes. Dave looked away and shook his head too determinedly.

‘Behave yerself, Lynsey. It couldny be Tony.’

‘He’s done it once.’

‘We canny be sure o’ that.’

‘Can’t we?’

‘Anyway, there wis a motive then. Whit reason could there be for killin’ Eck?’

‘Maybe he knew something.’

‘Eck didny know the time o’ day.’

‘Oh, Dave.’ She was huddled against him. ‘I don’t think I can take this. Poor Tony. Have you phoned Mickey Ballater yet?’

‘Aye. Just putting him off. He could be real bother. Ah’ll have to phone him again the night.’

‘What are we going to do?’

‘We’re going to go out and enjoy ourselves.’ He bear-hugged her. ‘See if they’re away yet.’

She crossed to the window and held the curtain back. Their car hadn’t moved. Inside, it was being agreed that Harkness would drop Laidlaw off at Pitt Street. Afterwards, Laidlaw was going to meet Eddie Devlin at the Press Club and Harkness might see him there. Harkness turned the ignition and put the car into gear.

‘Dave McMaster,’ Laidlaw was saying. ‘She’s really crossing borders with him, isn’t she? Maybe Mr Veitch should update his sense of Lady Lynsey Farren. She’s definitely stopped playing with dolls, the lassie. What a con-artist! She looks as if she hires her expression by the day. From Haughty Faces Ltd.’

‘Aye. No Oscars for Miss Blandish,’ Harkness said. ‘She lies like a car-dealer. Why?’

Milligan climbed the hill to where, overlooking what had been Anderston, now redeveloped into anonymity, the Albany Hotel stood. He had parked in Waterloo Street. The Albany is a huge glass-and-concrete fortress to the good life. The drawbridge is money. It’s where a lot of the famous stay when they come to Glasgow. It’s maybe as near as the city gets publicly to those embassies of privilege by which the rich reduce the world to one place, although in Glasgow few public places would have the nerve obtrusively to discourage certain clients. They merely give discreet financial hints.

Milligan had stipulated the main lounge, so he passed the basement bar, the Cabin. That was a kind of servants’ quarters where the punters drank, surrounded by people such as Charles Aznavour and Georgie Best, photographs like the leftovers of big occasions.

The glass doors parted politely in front of him. The lounge was an extension of reception with the bar at the far end. Milligan infiltrated the polite crush at the bar and came out with a glass of bottled lager. There was nothing as vulgar as draught.

He sat in one of the two vacant black chairs. He was sharing a table with a couple of businessmen. ‘But compared with last year’s profits.’ ‘A new factory in Sheffield.’ ‘The overheads.’ They were talking in dialect.

Milligan was glad they didn’t wait long before going into the Carvery. They were part of an intermittent departure. Every so often a Glaswegian voice would come over the tannoy dressed in Pukka English like a Moss Bros suit that had been delivered to the wrong person. ‘Mr Somebody to the Carvery, please,’ it would say. A group would rise from its glass-topped table and go into the restaurant, still roped loosely together with conversation.

Milligan settled for the women. There were a couple he wouldn’t have minded adding to his problems. One was a big blonde in a red satin dress. The other was more subdued, with less of a lighthouse’s ubiquity of vision. But she was the one Milligan really fancied, brown-haired, sending him on by never having noticed him. He would have liked to upset her style. He shot the man she was with a couple of looks of curare, but he went on living.

‘Thank God for Macey,’ Milligan thought.

Macey was coming towards him, walking not quite tall in his platform shoes. He had on his grey striped suit with the four-lane lapels, red shirt and a tie that might have doubled as a table-cover. Macey believed in hiding his bushel under a light. The youthful face, well fed but with a nose you could have shaved with, was brightly interested in everything. Born and brought up in Govan, living in Drumchapel, he seemed to be saying to himself about everywhere else, ‘Fancy me bein’ here.’

What happened when he saw Milligan would have been a double-take in somebody else. In Macey caution reduced it to an infinitesimal pause. He nodded pleasantly and made to go past, still looking.

‘Macey,’ Milligan called softly. ‘Over here.’

Macey hesitated like a cat testing an opening with its whiskers. He came across.

‘Aye, Ernie.’

‘Can I get you a drink?’

The time it took Macey to decide, he might have signed the pledge. His livelihood, if not his life, depended on caution and foreknowledge. He welcomed this place the way a cardiac case does chest pains.