Strange Loyalties

24

I didn’t have long to wait at Frankie’s house. He was out before I could turn off the engine. As he came down the path, I could see he was himself again for the moment. He was wearing slacks and an expensive-looking suede jacket. The cravat was colourful. As he climbed into the car, his aftershave almost nipped my eyes. At least it wasn’t Aramis.

‘Where to, man of discretion?’ I said.

‘Anywhere. As long as it’s outa here. Ah don’t think we should do the motorcade through the village. If they see me, it won’t be ticker-tape they’re throwin’. Turn left down here.’

The tension suited him. It was his natural habitat. Indoors, he had seemed drained, uncertain of himself. Now he was alive with energy, glancing round all the time, tapping his hand on the top of the dashboard as he leaned forward. It was because, I think, Frankie needed a role. This one was the big-time crook revisiting his small-town background, where he was misunderstood and unappreciated.

‘Straight on,’ he said. ‘Jesus. I hate coming back here. Not just the thing about Dan. It was always a pain. Like standin’ in front of one of those mirrors at the shows that makes ye look wee. Head for the hills.’

It didn’t take long for us to come out into the countryside.

‘Dan used to do his roadwork along here,’ Frankie said. ‘Him runnin’, me on the bike.’

Training for a fight seemed a bad purpose to which to put such gentle country. It was soft farmland, greening richly towards summer. When I die, I thought quite cheerfully, this is where they bring me, back to Ayrshire. And don’t cremate me. Let me fertilise a place I love.

‘That’s Farquhar’s Farm,’ Frankie said. ‘See that wee hill there? We used tae sit on the top of it for a rest. Big Dan did it the first day we were out on the roads. An’ it became a habit with us. Every day for a fortnight. We’d sit there an’ talk.’

On instinct, I drew in at the gate to the field. As the engine died, I worked out where the instinct came from. I was going to try and get Frankie to tell me what he wouldn’t want to tell me. The place might help. If he had any ghost of loyalty to Dan Scoular, this could be where it haunted.

‘We’ll get some air,’ I said.

I climbed over the gate into the field and Frankie followed me, being careful about his slacks. I walked to the top of the hill and sat down. Frankie sat beside me after spreading a handkerchief on the grass. Thornbank was visible from here.

‘Dan Scoular’s view,’ I said.

Frankie followed the direction of my look.

‘Aye. Big Dan loved that place. Looks nice from here, right enough. Not so good up close.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Like the pictures ye used to look at in the children’s books. Remember? Say, a farmyard scene. It always looked that nice. They never showed ye the henshit on the tail-feathers. Or the sow eatin’ anythin’ that would stay still long enough. Yerself included.’

‘You just don’t like the place, Frankie.’

‘Does the place like me?’

‘Maybe it has its reasons.’

Frankie selected a stalk of grass for chewing.

‘You mean what happened to Dan? That wasn’t me. It was more likely that place that killed him. The values it gave him. They don’t work in the real world. No heroes there. Maybe that’s yer murderer there.’ He nodded at Thornbank. ‘Maybe that’s what killed him.’

‘We both know what killed him,’ I said. ‘It’s called Matt Mason.’

‘I don’t know that,’ Frankie said quickly.

‘Frankie!’

‘I don’t know it.’

‘All right. That’s even better.’

‘Better?’ Frankie took his piece of grass out of his mouth, as if it tasted strange. ‘What do you mean?’

‘It means you can talk freely. You’re not shopping anybody. You don’t know enough to do that.’

‘Ah don’t know enough to do anything. Ah’ve told you what Ah know.’

‘Just tell me about the fight, the people involved.’

‘Come on, Jack. Ah can’t do that. It’s not what Ah do. It’s like you said in ma maw’s. Ah’ve got ma sense of maself.’

‘Your sense of yourself? A good man died partly because of your sense of yourself. Bury it. An’ don’t invite me to the funeral.’

Frankie shivered. There was a slight wind combing the grass gently. It wasn’t enough to make it cold. The draught had to be internal. Frankie was looking at Thornbank.

‘You ever get that feeling?’ he said. ‘That something’s happened before. Ah’ve just had it. That first day. We sat here. An’ Dan was tryin’ to find out what was really goin’ on. He wanted to know who the people involved were, too. Ah could’ve told him more.’

‘So tell more now.’

‘What’s the point? He’s dead.’

‘You’re not. Are you, Frankie? Your obligation to him doesn’t end with his death. It ends with yours. We gave your mother a goin’-away prezzie there, didn’t we? Something to make her feel better. But it was just fancy wrapping-paper, Frankie. There was nothing inside. Why not put something real in it? Like respect for Dan Scoular.’

‘Ah wouldn’t know where to begin.’

‘Anywhere.’

‘What are ye hopin’ to do with it, like?’

‘I’m going to try and get Matt Mason.’

‘Jesus, you better be early up.’

‘Frankie. All o’ that’s my problem. All I’m asking. You tell me what a lotta people know already. That’s all. You’re not informin’. Christ, there musta been hundreds at the fight. Just give me a back-dated ticket, that’s all. You won’t be involved in anything that happens. In fact, the way Matt Mason feels about you, you might be taking out insurance.’

I think perhaps that thought swung it, like a quote from the book of self-preservation, which had for a long time been Frankie’s bible. Staring at Thornbank, he started to talk. Maybe the town, seen as he must often have seen it in childhood from places like this, was like a photograph from his past, reminding him of who he used to be.

He told me Eddie Foley had been involved in things in the capacity of fixer, as he usually was. Tommy Brogan had been Dan Scoular’s trainer in Glasgow. Dan and Frankie had lived in Glasgow for a week before the fight, in the Burleigh Hotel, which was where Jan had worked.

‘Ah saw you there,’ Frankie said. ‘Wi’ a good-lookin’ big wumman.’

‘When?’

‘While we were stayin’ there. It was late at night. You came in wi’ her and went up in the lift. You were well on.’

‘Well on? You must’ve mistaken me for somebody else, Frankie.’

‘Aye. Anyway, Ah would’ve said hullo, of course. But Ah didn’t want to disturb ye.’

‘That was nice.’

My glibness belied my feelings. The thought of Dan Scoular and me sharing the same building that night was an eerie one. I had been within yards of a man whose death would affect my life, without ever meeting him.

As Frankie talked on, I didn’t know what I could possibly do with the information. He described a disco afterwards and some kind of party at Matt Mason’s house. All of these events were part of the most dramatic experience he had had, something that had cleft his life in two, and so, once started, he spoke of them in that compulsive, fragmentary way we speak of things when we know they have defined us but we’re still not sure what the definition is. I had become an eavesdropper. Frankie’s pain was Frankie’s pain. I sympathised but there wasn’t much I could do about it. In any case, in the scale of things any price he was paying hardly compared with the price Dan Scoular had paid.

All I was trying to do was find pieces of the happening I could weld into a purpose of my own. It wasn’t easy. The one thing that interested me so far was Eddie Foley. Eddie had always interested me. He was one of Mason’s men unlike any of the others. He was a genteel criminal. In his gentility might be his vulnerability. While I was wondering about that, Frankie said something that interrupted my thoughts. He was talking about a woman in Mason’s entourage who had apparently fallen very heavily for Dan Scoular.

‘What did you say her name was?’ I said.

‘Melanie.’

‘What’s her second name?’

‘McHarg,’ he said. ‘Melanie McHarg. She went loopy for big Dan. Ah think she thought he was the answer to all her prayers. She used to speak to me on the quiet about him. Ah think she imagined he was her ticket to a normal life. See, Melanie’s a funny one. Ye’d think the kinna life she’s led, she’d know the story. But a wee bit of her still believes in Santa Claus. She’s a romantic, Ah suppose is whit she is. Buys a Mills an’ Boon book wi’ every packet of heroin.’

‘She does drugs?’

‘Do weans like sweeties?’

‘Would she know Meece Rooney?’

‘Meece supplied her. Certainly at one time.’

‘You know her, Frankie. If she was in trouble, who would she go to?’

‘Take yer pick,’ Frankie said. ‘Ah mean, don’t get me wrong. Ah like Melanie. Always did. But let’s face it. She’s not a house, she’s a hotel. A lotta men’ve stayed there.’

‘But there must be somebody she would turn to.’

‘Might be Meece.’

‘Anybody else?’

‘Could even be Matt, Ah suppose.’

‘What if it couldn’t be either of them?’

Frankie’s very mobile head became still and, in its slow turning towards me, the instinct of chatter became the wisdom of silence. His wide eyes stared at me. A parrot had just turned into an owl.

‘What’s goin’ on here?’ he said.

‘Meece Rooney’s dead,’ I said. ‘Melanie won’t be turning to him. Matt Mason’s the man that arranged the retirement. Melanie won’t be turning to him. She was living with Meece. Meece seems to have been fiddling the accounts. They killed him and left him beside the river. Maybe for easy disposal. So who would she turn to now, Frankie? Who’s left?’

Frankie seemed to be trying to see beyond the horizon. Maybe what he was looking at was the prospect of his own death.

‘Ah don’t touch this,’ he said. ‘That’s it. Ah don’t touch it.’

‘Frankie.’

‘You’re not on. Ah don’t touch it.’

‘Just give me a name.’

‘Ah’ll give ye a name. Frankie White. Ah’d like to keep it off a headstone for a while yet. Come on. You know this man. You can go for him if you like. Maybe you’ll get a medal for it. Me, Ah’ll just get dead. Maybe Ah’m next already.’

‘Maybe you are. And if you are, I’m your best bet.’

‘Some bet. A three-legged horse in the Derby. Ah don’t fancy your chances, Jack.’

‘You don’t have to. I do. You silly bugger. What’s to lose? You tell me, nobody else knows. It just gives me a better chance of stopping him. If I can’t, you’re where you are already. You’re getting to bet with my money. Take the chance.’

He did.

‘You know Marty Bleasdale?’

He was a man from Newcastle who had been a social worker in Glasgow until dealing with the endless mayhem of other people’s exploding lives had made him shell-shocked. He went rogue. I liked him. He seemed to have decided that he was a revolutionary caucus of one. He was half-crazy and wholly sincere. He lived on the edges of criminality because, as he had once told me, ‘villains are less dishonest than the rest of us.’ He played in a jazz-band and sometimes worked at the Barras but where the eating-money came from wasn’t entirely clear.

‘I know Marty Bleasdale.’

‘He’s your possibility. Marty’s a kind of one-man Samaritan Centre for a lot of people. He’s helped Melanie before. She sees him as some kinda patron saint. Ah think because he never tried to screw her. She might go there.’

Frankie wasn’t talking any more. Our heads had parted company, mine trying to work out how to get closer to Matt Mason, Frankie’s presumably how to get further away.

‘Thanks, Frankie,’ I said.

‘Oh, don’t say that,’ Frankie said. ‘Ah hate to hear a polisman sayin’ thanks. It usually means ye’ve said somethin’ that ye’re gonny regret. Any chance of a lift?’

Outside his house, we sat a moment in the car.

‘Well,’ Frankie said. ‘Ah can’t wish ye luck. It’s against ma religion.’

‘That’s good,’ I said. ‘With the kind of luck you would wish me, Frankie, I could be in terrible trouble.’

He smiled.

‘I hope your mother feels no pain,’ I said.

‘Aye.’

He looked quietly terrified of many things. He had his reasons.

‘Honourable,’ he said.

‘Sorry?’

‘Honourable. That was Melanie’s word for big Dan. Honourable. The most honourable man she’d ever met, she said. Ah wonder what it means.’

‘I don’t know, Frankie. I suppose it’s one of those things it’s up to other people to see in you. From where I’m sitting, maybe there’s a bit of it in you at that.’

‘You couldn’t point it out to me?’

We both laughed. I watched him walking up his mother’s path, wearing his jauntiness like someone else’s clothes.