The Papers of Tony Veitch (2 page)

‘Where's Paddy Collins?'

‘He is in the hospital.'

‘How?'

‘He has been stabbed.'

‘How do you know?'

‘His brother-of-law is here yesterday. Very angry. He tells me Paddy is stabbed. Serious. He thinks he will die.'

It didn't take long for the images of Paddy Collins that occurred to Mickey to convert from regret to energy, like old photographs thrown on a fire. If Paddy Collins died, the pay-off would be better for himself if he could find Tony Veitch. But there were problems.

‘His brother-in-law, Cam Colvin? You're sure it was him?'

‘Mr Colvin.'

‘That's all we need. How did he know about you?'

‘My address is in Paddy's clothes.'

‘That's handy. What did you tell him?'

‘How Paddy is lookin' for Tony Veitch.'

‘It looks as if he found him. What else?'

‘Nothin' else. I know nothin' else.'

Mickey found the Scottish inflections in her Italian accent attractive. He began to notice her again.

‘Did you tell him about me?'

She shook her head.

‘You're sure?'

‘Paddy said silence. Or.'

She made a throat-cutting gesture. Mickey almost laughed. It sounded like Paddy all right, good at frightening women and still following the script of an old Edward G. Robinson film.

‘What else did Paddy tell you?'

‘To do the things he says and be all right.'

That sounded convincing too. Paddy hadn't told Mickey much that mattered either. All he could remember was that
Veitch knew Hook Hawkins' brother. And it looked as if Paddy was going to get even better at keeping a secret.

‘Where
is
Tony Veitch?'

‘Nobody knows still.'

‘Come on. Cam Colvin must have been at the hospital.'

‘He is in a com-combo?'

‘Jesus Christ. Hidin' in a band?'

‘Como. Comma?'

Mickey stared at her.

‘Coma. You mean Paddy's in a coma?'

‘He doesn't speak.'

‘But
you
know Tony Veitch.'

‘Not since the trouble with Paddy. Since two weeks nobody can find him.'

‘Ach!' Ballater's eyes strafed the ceiling. He pointed at her. ‘Listen. Ah didny come up here for the view. Anything you know ye better tell me.'

‘Only you are to be my husband for Tony.'

He watched her carefully. She didn't look hard, more like an amateur still slightly surprised to be getting paid for it. When Paddy had set her up for Veitch, the second stage of the ploy with himself appearing as a husband who had to be bought off must have taken her by surprise. She probably couldn't help.

But time was short. If Veitch had done Paddy, buying a box of matches could be a foolishly long-term investment for him, unless he wanted to leave it in his will. Mickey would have to move fast but carefully. He knew this place well enough to know that he didn't know it well enough any more. He remembered another couple of lines of the song:

You don't skip through minefields. He needed a bomb-detector. It came to him as a small inspiration that the obvious one was Cam Colvin himself.

‘What hospital is Paddy in?' he asked suddenly.

‘Victoria Infirmary.'

A baby started to cry. He watched her stubbing out the cigarette, careful of her nails. She got up and he heard her feet on the floor of the hall, then those private noises a mother makes to a child, as if she knows the whole world's against it but she's telling it a secret that will see it through.

He went out of the room and found the phone in the empty bedroom, where the light was still on and the bed was mussed. The voice in the Victoria Infirmary told him that the relatives of Mr Collins were with him. He reckoned he still had a little time.

When he came back into the sitting-room she was standing uncertainly at the fire. She turned as he crossed towards her. She contracted slightly as if he was going to hit her. He pulled the belt of her dressing-gown and slipped the garment off to fall on the floor. He pointed towards the bedroom. As she stilted awkwardly ahead of him, he watched her flesh quiver.

‘Ye're supposed to be ma wife,' he said. ‘We might as well have the honeymoon.'

 

 

 

 

2

T
he phone-call seemed just a casual interruption, but then one stone can start an avalanche.

‘And then,' Ena had been saying. ‘What do you think? The car conked out completely. Just died on me. In the middle of the Clyde Tunnel. And where was Jack? On a case, of course. In Morecambe!'

Laidlaw had heard the story before. He had once suggested to Ena that presumably everyone had heard it, with the possible exception of the North Vietnamese. His rancour came from understanding the bizarre meaning the story had come to assume for Ena: the failure of the internal combustion engine equals marital neglect.

‘I'm sorry,' he said. ‘I should've been running after it. I just forgot.'

The remark was accepted by the others as being funny as a dirty joke at a funeral. Laidlaw could feel his sense of isolation grow aggressive. He was saved by the phone.

‘I'll get that,' he said.

He was careful to moderate the pace of his departure, in case he burned the carpet. The phone was in the hall.

‘Hello?'

‘Is that Detective Inspector Jack Laidlaw?'

‘That's right.'

‘Is this
the
Detective Inspector Jack Laidlaw? Doyen of the Crime Squad? Protector of the Poor? The Punters' Choice?'

Laidlaw recognised first the style and then the voice. It was Eddie Devlin of the
Glasgow Herald
.

‘Christ, Eddie,' he said. ‘Your copy's getting worse. Could you not get your sub-editor to come on the phone with you?'

‘It's all this giving the public what it wants. Listen, Jack. There's somebody in casualty at the Royal who wants you to go in and see him.'

‘Tonight? Did they say whether I was to bring Maltesers or black grapes? What is this, Eddie?'

‘No. Straight up, Jack. I got a tip from one of the porters. Old bloke brought in. Chin like a Brillo-pad. Smelling like a grape harvest. Just about conscious. But he kept asking for Jack Laidlaw. Must see Jack Laidlaw. Porter in there is one of my tipsters. You know? Well, he's heard me mention you before. So he thinks he better let me know. But I wouldn't think there's anything there for me. He's probably just got the dt's. No offence, Jack. I mean, you're not Errol Flynn. But you've probably got the edge on spiders and pink elephants.'

‘Any wounds?' Laidlaw said.

‘Didn't seem to be. But I didn't get too much information. He's a trier, this. But he's not too hot on the verbals.'

‘When did you get this call, Eddie?'

‘Got it at the pub here. Five minutes ago. I thought I'd better let you know before I leave. I want to look in at the Vicky. The Paddy Collins thing. I might get some famous last words. Anyway, it's up to you, Jack.'

‘Thanks, Eddie. I owe you one.'

‘Aye. When the revolution comes, I'd like a press-card. Cheers, Jack.'

‘Cheers.'

Laidlaw put down the phone. The sound of Eddie's voice had been an injection through the ear. Things were happening in the city. But he had guests. Well, Ena had guests. He tried to be fair and decided they wouldn't miss him. His absence would probably be a relief.

Any weekend that Laidlaw wasn't working was pre-arranged for him. Familiar with the anti-social hours policemen kept, Ena had learned to try and compensate. If Laidlaw insisted on treating the calendar the way an alcoholic treats liquor – big benders of absence, brief domestic drying-outs – she was determined to ensure that his off-duty time was spent exclusively with her.

She deployed baby-sitters like chessmen – check, mate. She counteracted his thirst for the streets of Glasgow with events carefully bottled like home-made wine, each neatly labelled in advance. ‘Friday – Frank and Sally coming.' ‘Saturday – Mike and Aileen's party.' ‘Saturday – Al Pacino film at La Scala. Baby-sitter arranged.'

Tonight was ‘Friday – Donald and Ria.' It wasn't one of her best vintages, a mild cabbagey flavour that never got you high but which might, Laidlaw suspected, rot the social taste-buds over a prolonged period so that you couldn't tell a bromide from the elixir of life. He tried not to have anything against Donald and Ria. It was just that the four of them together gave him the feeling of being involved in field-work on group sedation.

Besides, maybe it was someone who had done him a favour. Maybe it was someone who was dying. Nobody was dying in the room he had left. Maybe four or so of them were dead. But nobody was dying.

He was wearing a red polo-neck and black slacks. Reaching into the cupboard in the hall, he took out his denim jacket and put it on. He might as well announce his intention to the committee. They'd veto it, of course, but he'd made his decision. He felt guilty but that was a familiar feeling.

 

 

 

 

3

F
rom Simshill in Cathcart, where Laidlaw lived, to the Royal Infirmary in Cathedral Street was a short trip but a big distance. Fortunately, the architecture changed in stages, like decompression chambers, so that you didn't get the bends.

One half of the first gate was open yet and he drove in. A lot of cars were in the parking area but there was plenty of room. Locking the car, he was struck again by the size of the place, three huge linked units, each with its own imposing dome. It seemed to him a castle of black stone. It made illness appear not a leveller but an accolade that admitted you to a Gothic aristocracy.

Across the courtyard was the single-storey casualty department like a gatehouse where they examined your credentials. He went in. It was after eleven.

The hallway was the parking place for the blue leather invalid-chairs, maybe thirty of them. On one of them a boy of twenty or so was sitting. But he wasn't an invalid. He looked ill enough to chew railings. The slight skinning on his right cheek only accentuated his appearance of hardness. He was nursing a light jacket the shoulders of which were black with
blood, like the patch on a Wimpey reefer. He was waiting for someone.

‘Hey, you,' he said as Laidlaw came in. ‘Gonny give us a fag?'

Laidlaw looked over curiously. He recognised drink but not drunkenness and the residual aggression from a fight not lost, the adrenalin spin-off that could be captioned ‘Who's next?' Laidlaw turned towards the doorway to casualty.

‘Hey, you! Big man. Ah'm talkin' to you. Gi'es a fag!' Laidlaw went over.

‘Here, son,' he said. ‘So far you've only managed mild abrasions. Is this you trying for intensive care?'

The boy looked momentarily blank at the medical references but the tone was Esperanto.

The boy said, ‘Come on. Ah asked a wee favour.'

‘So don't make it sound like a threat.'

Laidlaw gave him a cigarette.

‘You put the tipped end in your mouth. Then you light the other bit.'

The boy was smiling. Laidlaw turned to the casualty room. It is a single, long, arched place, both basic and ornate, like a Victorian nissen hut. Laidlaw entered it like a time-warp.

The first things he noticed were a couple of ghosts of his youth, two constables whose faces were fresh-laid eggs. Near them stood a group wearing doctors' white coats. Laidlaw hoped they were students. All of them, policemen and doctors, looked young enough to have been given their uniforms for Christmas. Suddenly, Laidlaw was Rip Van Winkle.

He checked the treatment room on the right. While two nurses looked on, a doctor was remonstrating with a boy who
was stripped to the waist. From hairline to belt, the boy was blood. The red made the place look like a dressing-room for one of the more preposterous Elizabethan tragedies, say
Titus Andronicus
.

‘No problem!' the boy was saying.

Physically, he seemed to be alright. Laidlaw could see a long cut on the back of his neck and nothing else. He was obviously enjoying that taste of the heroic your own spilled blood can give you. Probably the worst thing they could do for him would be to wash him clean. Then he would have to settle for himself again. Laidlaw didn't know him but perhaps he would.

Starting opposite the treatment room is a row of cubicles. They presented Laidlaw, as he went, with a succession of tableaux that might have come from a contemporary mystery play. A girl whose eyes were still in shock was holding a bloodstained bedspread, waiting for someone or something. There was a young man with a left eye like a piece of bad fruit. He was protesting hysterically about injustice while a doctor attended him. A woman was crying while her arm was being bandaged. ‘He gives me some awfu' kickings,' she was saying. A middle-aged man was explaining to a nurse, ‘It's a kinda shifting pain,' while two young policemen looked on. Laidlaw recognised a familiar art, that of postponing arrest by young policemen through the contraction of sudden, mysterious maladies.

Cubicle E, the one Laidlaw knew to be used for delousing, was empty but showed signs of recent use. He recognised nobody, except perhaps the two plain-clothesmen who had just come in. He didn't know them as individuals but he knew
that style of moving on tramlines of professional preoccupation. They merged with the rest of the scene as subtly as Mormons.

Looking back along the room, Laidlaw found nothing specific to him, only the city processing its Friday night pain. The place was a confessional. You came here to admit to frailty, brittle bones, thin skin, frangible organs – the pathetic, haphazard machinery we make bear the weight of our pretensions.