The Papers of Tony Veitch (7 page)

‘Furraff,' the small man repeated.

He moved towards Laidlaw in a way that was both threatening and touching, a vaguely remembered style still carried around like an unloaded gun.

‘I just want to ask you something,' Laidlaw said. ‘Did anybody here know Eck Adamson? I know you.' Laidlaw pointed at the man with the bottle. ‘I've seen you with him.'

They all paused. The man with the bottle stood swaying, drawing his dignity round him like an opera cloak. His irises had a furry look.

‘Ah know all there is to know aboot boats,' somebody said. ‘Can make a boat speak.'

‘I beg your pardon, captain,' the man with the bottle said. ‘You were addressing me?'

The formal politeness was a bizarre anomaly in his state of savage ruin.

‘Yes,' Laidlaw said. ‘You knew Eck Adamson.'

The man seemed to be leafing through a mental engagement-book of fair dimensions.

‘I have that pleasure.'

‘Had. He's dead.'

‘Greedy wee man,' somebody said.

‘Bereft,' the man with the bottle said. ‘Bereft.'

He took a drink and passed it to the woman. While the others drank, Laidlaw explained what had happened and asked the man if he knew where Eck might have been hanging out lately. Only fragments seemed to register.

‘One of our favourite spots,' the man said and started to walk. Laidlaw and Harkness went with him while the others straggled behind.

They didn't have far to go. He stopped on a waste lot where the ashes of a dead fire suggested an abandoned camp-site. The man was nodding. The others joined them.

‘Did anyone get in touch with him that you saw?' Laidlaw asked. ‘A stranger.'

‘A young man perhaps. A benefactor perhaps.'

Harkness understood Laidlaw's expression. The questions
were probably no more than the spurs to creative fantasy in the man. He had the drunk's disconcerting technique of hibernating between remarks.

‘Yes. There was a young man. John? David? Alec? Patrick?'

‘Thanks,' Laidlaw said. ‘Do you remember his second names as well?'

‘We don't use second names here.'

‘He wouldny share,' the small man said.

‘How do you mean?'

‘Had a bottle. Wouldny share. Basta.'

Laidlaw gave the dignified man a fifty-pence piece.

‘Many thanks. At the moment I'm slightly devoid of funds.'

They dispersed as vaguely as fog.

‘Useful information,' Harkness said.

They were standing aimlessly on the waste lot.

‘Let's look,' Laidlaw said.

‘What for? A visiting card?'

‘Anything. Just bloody look!'

They did. After a dusty half-hour, Harkness turned up a bottle in a niche of the wall and hidden with loose bricks. It was a Lanliq wine-bottle with a screw top. It contained something dark.

Lifting it gingerly by the neck, Laidlaw unscrewed the cork and smelt. It meant nothing he recognised. He looked at Harkness.

‘We've got to go in and get a car anyway. Let's take it with us.'

‘Sure,' Harkness said. ‘We might get something back on the bottle.'

‘But I'm not humphing this. We'll get a taxi.'

It seemed a simple enough idea but it led to one of those impromptu moments of Glaswegian cabaret in which the city abounds. Having flagged a cab down, Laidlaw, with a sense of camouflage that was instinctive to him, gave a destination near Pitt Street. And things began immediately with a green car pulling out without warning in front of their driver.

‘Away, you!' their driver bellowed. ‘Ah hope yer wheels fa' aff.'

He was a man who looked in his late thirties with thinning, curly hair and he was obviously an extreme sufferer from that contemporary ailment, urban choler.

‘Bastards,' he said, jerking his head as if he was riding the world's punches.

He was one of those taxi-drivers who do up their cab like a wee house on wheels. There was fancy carpeting and instead of advertisements on the base of the fold-up seats he had pasted on pictures of a couple of Highland scenes, the Three Sisters of Glencoe and the Ballachulish Ferry before the bridge was built. He had woollen baubles hanging from the inside mirror and plastic footballers, Rangers and Celtic, over the dashboard-switches. It was like taking a ride inside someone's psyche.

‘Ye fancy some music, boays?'

His eyes in the mirror suggested refusal might be a capital offence. They murmured non-committally and he switched on a tape.

‘Magic him, intae? James Last, eh? Ye need somethin' soothin' in this job.'

There was an almost full bottle of Irn Bru wedged upside down between the meter and the luggage-door. As he talked,
it began to seem that its purpose might be more than a thirst quencher.

‘Tell you two places Ah'll no' go.' He said it as if they had turned up especially to enquire about his taboos. ‘Not any more. Blackhill and Garthamlock. No chance. Know why? Garthamlock. Take a bastard out there. In the back wi' the biggest Alsation Ah've ever saw. Rin-Tin-Tin wi' elephantiasis. Get there, no money. Gonny set his dog on me. Ah steps oot the cab. Before ye could say Jack Robinson, he's hit me the awfiest kick in the knackers. Oot the gemme completely. Ma balls were like wattermelons. Ah wis walkin' aboot like a cowboy for a week, wasn't Ah? But he wisny clever. Knew roughly where he stayed, didn't ah? Couple o' the mates an' me pay a wee visit, wait for him. We played at keepie-uppie wi' his heid. Don't worry about it. Big guy. He wis squealin' like a pig. Left his face like a jigsaw-puzzle. Wan o' his lugs had nostrils by the time we stopped. Correct. This is a nice wan, boays.'

He turned up the music and hummed along with it briefly.

‘Aye, ye meet some fuckin' lunatics in this job.'

In the mirror Harkness watched the driver's eyes contemplate the incidence of insanity with a kind of cosmic dyspepsia. There was a certain relief in realising they were almost at their destination. He couldn't hold in his laughter.

‘Aye. Ye learn to trust nobody. Some o' them wid massage yer head wi' a screwtop as fast as look at ye. The world's a shambles.'

‘Your tip's on the meter,' Laidlaw said as he paid.

Harkness realised that Laidlaw was justified. Behind his distracting talk, the driver had followed an unnecessarily
circuitous route. But the man looked at Laidlaw as if deciding whether to fight a duel with him.

He flicked on his ‘For Hire' sign and took off. Harkness imagined him cruising round Glasgow like a mobile manic broadcaster, Radio Armageddon, meter ticking like a time-bomb.

‘We'll get this to the lab,' Laidlaw said and suddenly was laughing.

He pointed helplessly after the departing taxi, shaking his head. Harkness nodded, buckled beside him.

‘How about that?' Harkness managed to say.

‘Like going over Niagara in a taxi.'

‘I wonder what happened in Blackhill?' Harkness said.

 

 

 

 

10

T
he Top Spot, in the same building as the Theatre Royal, had changed since the theatre had been taken over by the Scottish Opera. But its continued nearness to the new Scottish Television building meant that it still got a lot of its clientele from there. Bob Lilley by-passed the public bar and went downstairs, where the arched alcoves and beer-barrel bottoms stuck on the wall to advertise Lowenbrau were like a rough set for
The Student Prince
.

The lounge was pleasantly busy. He saw Laidlaw sitting with Brian Harkness at one of the metal-topped tables. Harkness was saying something that Laidlaw didn't seem to agree with. When Bob joined them, Laidlaw waited a few minutes and then said, ‘What do you have to do to get a drink here? Wear make-up?'

Harkness and Laidlaw had been talking again about the post-mortem Laidlaw had attended that morning. Harkness was glad Bob had come in.

While Laidlaw was at the bar, Harkness shook his head at Bob. Bob sat down and looked along at Laidlaw. He saw a tall, good-looking man who didn't look like a policeman, didn't look forty, staring at the gantry as if it was the writing on the
wall. That preoccupied intensity was such a familiar aspect of Laidlaw to Bob that he wondered what was bothering Harkness.

‘It's not a bee in his bunnet Jack's got,' Harkness said. ‘It's a bloody hive.'

Sharing an office with Laidlaw, Bob was as close to him as anybody, with the exception of Harkness, although sometimes Harkness wondered. He had known Laidlaw for about a year and still found his presence a lucky dip from which any chance remark could draw a surprising response. He was about as easy to explore as the Louisiana Purchase. Among the other men on the Squad, Bob had appointed himself Laidlaw's defence counsel, a function which must have sometimes felt like a full-time job in itself.

‘What's up?' Bob said.

‘A few fruitless days for us. That's what I think's up. Jack thinks he's going to find out whoever did in wee Eck Adamson.'

‘Eck was murdered?'

‘Jack seems to think so.'

‘How?'

‘Ask
him
. So it would be all right if he just keeps his eyes open and hopes for something to turn up. But not him. I feel an obsession coming on. And it's hopeless, isn't it? You might as well point to a snowstorm and say, “See that snowflake at the end of the road. Go and get it.” No chance. And you know what Jack's like when he's got a cause. Even a lost one. About as easy to ignore as a Salvation Army drum. He's going to start putting everybody's humph up. The Crime Squad'll look like the Loch Ness monster.'

‘They should be used to him by now.'

‘Who gets used to Jack? You know what I mean. I like the
man. I just wish somebody would give him a lorry-load of Valium for his Christmas.'

Laidlaw brought Harkness's lager and a whisky for Bob and sipped his lime-juice and soda. Bob decided to help Harkness.

‘Eck was murdered?' Bob asked.

Laidlaw nodded.

‘Pulmonary fibrosis. Suspected paraquat poisoning.'

‘Paraquat? Come on,' Bob said. ‘If it's paraquat, what makes you think it was murder? Eck had a thirst that wouldn't have stopped at horse's piss. As discriminating as a public lavvy. He would find it and drink it. That's all. How can you say it was murder?'

‘It was something he said.'

‘Jack! You knew Eck. He made Pat the Liar sound like George Washington. You're not serious. You can't put any weight on that.'

‘I think I can. He said something about “the wine he gave me wisny wine”. I think somebody gave him a bad present.'

‘How do they know?' Bob asked. ‘Did they find paraquat in him?'

‘No. It would've worked itself out by then, I suppose. I think he'd had it for a wee while. But it causes what they call proliferative changes.'

‘What
is
that?' Harkness said.

‘I'm not sure. I think it means that even after the stuff's gone, the damage caused goes on multiplying itself. I suppose it's the exact nature of the damage that suggests paraquat. Not a nice way to go.'

‘You saw him?'

Laidlaw nodded.

‘All right, Jack,' Bob said. ‘So he had a bad time. You're sorry, but sorriness is no kind of substitute for common sense. Get a grip, will you? Learn to settle for doing the things you
can
do.'

‘Right Bob,' Laidlaw said. ‘I think I've had enough of the Police College notes from Brian already. You think I don't know? If you want to commit the perfect crime, just a crime for the sake of a crime. What do you do? Wipe out a wino. Right? For two reasons: who cares? Indifference coming at you like a river. And you trying to swim up it. Second: to solve a crime, you check with neighbours, family, friends. Who's a wino's friend? Another wino. Like cross-examining an answering service. Neighbours? Pigeons. Family? If they're not in the Eastern Necropolis, they're keeping quiet enough to be there. You can depend on it. What was the sequence of events? Who the hell knows? As predictable as a pin-ball. And there's always the feeling that it might just have been a fun crime. A fly-swatting job. It's as if you're jay-walking in Hope Street. In the middle of the road you find a fly with its wings torn off. You're going to track down the culprit? I know, Bob. I know.'

‘Then why the hell don't you accept it?'

‘Why the hell do you? I don't know what you feel about this job. But it fits me as comfortably as a hair-shirt. All right, I do it. Because sometimes I get to feel it matters very much. But not if I'm just a glorified street-sweeper. Filling up Barlinnie like a dustbin. There have to be some times when you don't just collect the social taxes. You arrange a rebate. If all I'm doing is holding the establishment's lid on for it, then stuff it. I resign. But I think there can be more to it. One of the things I'm in this job to do is learn. Not just how to catch criminals
but who they really are, and maybe why. I'm not some guard-dog. Trained to answer whistles. Chase whoever I'm sent after. I'm not just suspicious of the people I'm chasing. I'm suspicious of the people I'm chasing them
for
. I mean to stay that way.'

‘So?'

‘So Wee Eck. If the law works for them, it should work for him. If he'd died in a penthouse, let's hear you say the same. You know the life he had. Its patron saint was Torquemada. So the least he deserves is that we should care about his death enough to understand it. Like laying a wee plastic wreath on his grave. Grave? He won't even have one. His body goes to the Anatomy Department at Glasgow University. I remember Eck telling me years ago he'd tried to sell his body to them for a fiver. Didn't know that when you're dead, your body belongs to your next of kin. So they get it free. He even lost out on that one.'

‘When did you join the vigilantes, Jack?'