William McIlvanney - The Papers of Tony Veitch

Charlie went away. Hearing his feet move out of the corridor, Laidlaw kicked the door in, pulling the chain from the jamb. He stepped inside as Charlie’s head volleyed out to look at him. Laidlaw held his hand up.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I fell against the door. And your wee chain broke. Now that I’m in. .’

He closed the door and followed Charlie into the bar. Entering, Laidlaw found himself thinking suddenly that maybe Bob Lilley was right. Maybe he was losing his grip. This was no way to do it. Detective-work was a delicate symbiosis with the criminal world, a balancing of subtle mutual respects. You hoped to give small to get back big. It was a matter of not breaking a fragile web you were both part of, a repeated laying of the senses to different strands of that web to catch what was going, not the axeman cometh.

The craziness of what he was up to ambushed Laidlaw there in the middle of the floor. He felt himself ahead of his own sense of what he was doing; not a place for a policeman to put himself. But he was there already. He couldn’t just walk back out. Instead, he rifled the room swiftly, like an expert housebreaker, taking only what he could use.

The room was John Rhodes and Cam Colvin. There were others but those two were what this meeting meant. It had to be very serious business. That’s why the pub was shut. That was in his favour. He knew what they hadn’t wanted anybody to know. His crassness in breaking in had won him a prize that maybe outpriced their anger. He had perhaps done irreparable damage to his contacts in the long run but, the way he felt about everything, who needed the long run? People were waiting. He addressed himself to John Rhodes because the pub was his responsibility.

‘I was saying to Charlie there-’

‘Ah heard,’ John Rhodes said.

Cam Colvin looked at the doorway, looked at Charlie. Charlie shook his head. Cam relaxed.

‘You’re getting clumsy, Jack,’ he said.

‘Aye,’ Laidlaw said. ‘I’m getting pills for it.’

‘Ye want tae change yer doctor,’ John Rhodes said. ‘They don’t seem tae be workin’. Polismen breakin’ an’ enterin’? Dangerous stuff.’

‘I fell. Did none of you see me? By the way, don’t frighten me, John. I hate to cry in public.’

Laidlaw looked round them innocently. His expression was a parade behind which his mind was crouching, dreading its passing. But a face came into his vision that altered his feeling. Seeing Hook Hawkins, pale as unbaked bread and clearly wounded, whom he remembered from the Bryson case, Laidlaw remembered he was Gus Hawkins’ brother. They could have come out of the same placenta. The connection reignited Laidlaw’s compulsion to a flame that charred his misgivings about being here. He was going to the bone of this one. This case had come too quick to a corpse. Too many possibilities had been made mute, too many interconnections were unexplained.

‘Anyway,’ Laidlaw said.

He found himself hoping more words were on the way. The word had declared he wasn’t interested in Rhodes’ strictures. He had taken over the room. Now he had to work out what to do with it.

‘Whit is it ye want?’ John Rhodes asked.

He hadn’t a clue. But, blessedly, the man he had hoped to see was there. There was Macey, immobile with nerves, trying to act as if his face didn’t belong to him.

‘Macey,’ Laidlaw said. ‘I want you to come to the station with me.’

Macey was brilliant. He swallowed his panic in one lump and did the classic accused Glaswegian’s act, palms up as if testing for rain. His face went round them like a begging-bowl. He turned it to Laidlaw still empty, an expression of the world’s lack of charity.

‘Gonny gi’es a brek?’ he said. ‘Whit’s this about?’

Laidlaw understood the danger he had put Macey in. Plucking a tout from the company of other criminals like this could be like asking him to advertise in the paper. But Laidlaw improvised as expertly as Macey had. He stared at Macey with a stern, forensic expression.

‘There’s been a wee job done. I think it’s your M.O.’

‘M.O.? Whit’s that? A medical orderly?’

Macey had got it right. In taking the mickey out of Laidlaw, he made the others feel him very much part of them. Their appreciation disarmed suspicion. Laidlaw maintained the role Macey had given him.

‘M.O. Modus operandi . Your way of working.’

Laidlaw felt a certain aesthetic pleasure in how well they were working together. He thought of something else that must be making this look even more convincing to the others. They would know he had been involved in the Veitch case. His failure there would make them see this as his search for petty compensation.

‘No way,’ Macey said. ‘When did this happen?’

Laidlaw hoped Macey wasn’t going to overdo it and make him forget his lines.

‘Recently.’

‘When’s recently.’

‘Recently’s recently.’

‘There ye are then. Ah haveny been workin’ fur ages. The boys here’ll vouch for me.’

‘Uh-huh,’ Laidlaw said. ‘And then we’ll get Bluebeard to alibi for Jack the Ripper. You coming?’

Macey looked at John Rhodes.

‘On ye go, Macey. Ye better go.’

As they were going out, John Rhodes said, as a final barb at Laidlaw, ‘See you in half-an-hour, Macey.’

In the street, Macey couldn’t believe the injustice of the world. As they walked, his words were just articulated froth.

‘Mr Laidlaw. You off your head? Does Big Ernie know about this? Ah’m gonny see ’im. What a liberty! Ah mean, ye might as well give me an award on the telly. Tout of the year. Holy Jesus. That’s ma life you’re playin’ games wi’. These men don’t kid. First thing ye know, ye’ve got yer head in a poke to play wi’. Oh my. Ma hert’s gaun like a lambeg drum.’

‘Macey, I’m sorry.’

‘Oh, very good. That’s smashin’. Make all the difference on the headstone, that. No, that isn’t on.’

‘We got away with it.’

Macey stopped and looked at him.

‘We think we did, Mr Laidlaw. But if we’re wrong, who’s gonny find out first?’

Laidlaw took the point.

‘It was all right, Macey. Come on.’

‘Aye, Ah think it was. Ah think we’ve knocked it off therr. But two o’ that Ah don’t need, Mr Laidlaw. Ye know?’

‘Agreed, Macey. Never again. Look. I’m not as daft as you think. Well, probably not quite. There has been a break-in in Pollokshaws. Quite a big job. That’s what I was quizzing you about. All right? I’ll give you the details.’

‘So what are we doin’ here?’ Macey asked. ‘Ah mean, Ah hardly know you.’

They were at Laidlaw’s car.

‘In you get, Macey.’

‘What for?’

‘In you get. I’m not going to kidnap you. I’ve got nowhere to keep you.’

While Laidlaw drove to the entrance to Ruchill Park, he told Macey about the break-in.

They got out and climbed the hill to the small stone pillars of different sizes and sat there. Macey had been huffily quiet. Laidlaw had let him be. Some children were playing on the swings. Laidlaw gave Macey a cigarette, took one himself.

‘You told Milligan where to find Tony Veitch,’ Laidlaw said.

‘Ah didny say that.’

‘I’m saying it.’

‘Look.’ Macey threw the cigarette away, hardly smoked. ‘What is this? Ah speak to Big Ernie. That’s who Ah speak tae. All right? No offence, Mr Laidlaw.’

Laidlaw knew how unacceptable what he was doing was. Trying to hone in on somebody else’s tout was a serious breach of the code, something that would get you lionised in the force to roughly the same degree as rabies. But Laidlaw suspected he had perhaps achieved professional ostracism already.