William McIlvanney - The Papers of Tony Veitch

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.

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?’