The Papers of Tony Veitch

11

They had settled for the function suite of the Coronach Hotel. Just beyond the south-eastern edge of Glasgow, at one of the points where the city suffers natural erosion from the countryside, the hotel seemed well enough named. A coronach is a dirge.

It belonged properly to the time before the Clayson Report relaxed the drinking laws, when only hotels had a seven-day licence and Sunday drinking was for what the law called bona fide travellers. Like a village pump in a place where the plumbing has been modernised, it stood as a slightly tatty monument to the old Scottish Sabbath, that interesting anomaly whereby the Kirk’s insistence on the observance of the Lord’s day of rest resulted in a country busy with Scotsmen transporting a thirst as heavy as luggage from one place to another.

The Coronach was still a drinking hotel, but quieter, especially on Sundays. To ask for a room there was as naive as expecting to meet Calpurnia in ‘Caesar’s Palace’. The only acknowledgement that hospitality could go beyond the dispensing of drink was the function suite.

It was called the Rob Roy Room, which meant that the carpet was MacGregor tartan and there were a couple of targes on the walls, framed in crossed claymores. Today its occupants were outlaws unromanticised by time.

When Macey ushered in John Rhodes, Hook Hawkins and Dave McMaster, Cam Colvin was already installed. Two of the small tables had been placed together with chairs around. Cam sat at the head of one of the tables, sedate as a committee-man.

John Rhodes and he were a conjunction of contrasting styles, like a meeting between shop-floor and management. Cam was conservative in a dark-striped suit and black shoes as shiny as dancing-pumps. The shirt was demurely striped and the tie was navy. John looked as if his tailor might be Oxfam. The light-brown suit was rumpled, the shirt was open-necked. He was wearing a purple cardigan.

Cam registered nothing when John Rhodes came in. But the fuse was already lit in John’s blue eyes. Cam and he nodded at each other. Cam indicated the man who was sitting on his right.

‘This is Dan Tomlinson,’ he said. ‘He’s the manager.’

Dan Tomlinson was a thin man in his fifties. He looked worried, as if he couldn’t remember whether his hotel insurance was up to date. Mickey Ballater was standing nearby and nodded. The only other man in the room, who had been trying to stare down the one-armed bandit beside the small bar, ambled across to join them.

‘Oh,’ John Rhodes said. ‘And Panda Paterson.’

‘Correct, John. Your memory’s good,’ Panda said.

He extended his hand to shake and John Rhodes punched him in the mouth. It was a short punch, very quick and very measured, costing John nothing, the punch of a man in training, emerging from reflexes so honed they seemed to contain a homing device. It was only after it had landed you realised it had been thrown. It imparted awe to some of the others, as if thought was fait accompli.

The effect was reminiscent of the moment in a Hollywood musical when the mundane breaks into a Busby Berkeley routine. Suddenly, Panda Paterson was dancing. He moved dramatically onto the small slippereened square of dance floor and did an intricate backstep. Then, extending his improvisation into what could have been called ‘The Novice Skater’, he went down with his arms waving and slid sitting until the carpet jarred him backwards and his head hit a radiator like a duff note on a xylophone.

‘That’s the price of a pint in the Crib,’ John Rhodes said.

There was blood coming out of Panda’s mouth. He eased himself off as if to get up and then settled back, touching his mouth gently.

‘Ye’ve made a wise decision,’ John Rhodes said, watching him refuse to get up. ‘You’re right. Ah’ve got a good memory. Ah don’t know where you’ve been lately. Watchin’ cowboy pictures? Well, it’s different here. Whoever’s been kiddin’ you on ye were hard. Ah’m here tae tell ye Ah’ve known you a long time. Ye were rubbish then an’ ye’re rubbish now. Frightenin’ wee boys! Try that again an’ Ah’ll shove the pint-dish up yer arse. One wi’ a handle.’

If you could have bottled the atmosphere, it would have made Molotov cocktails. Practised in survival, Macey was analysing the ingredients.

John Rhodes stood very still, having made his declaration. What was most frightening about him was the realisation that what had happened was an act of measured containment for him, had merely put him in the notion for the real thing. He wasn’t just a user of violence, he truly loved it. It was where he happened most fully, a thrilling edge. Like a poet who has had a go at the epic, he no longer indulged himself in the doggerel of casual fights but when, as now, the situation seemed big enough, his resistance was very low.

The others, like Panda Paterson, were imitating furniture. This wasn’t really about them. Even Panda had been incidental, no more than the paper on which John had neatly imprinted his message. The message was addressed to Cam Colvin.

Macey understood how even at the moment of its impact John’s anger had maintained a certain subtlety. Neither he nor Cam needed confrontation. People could die of that. John had repaid an oblique insult. The move was Cam’s.

He took his time. His eyes sustained that preoccupied focus they usually had, as if the rest of the world was an irrelevant noise just over his shoulder. He seemed so impervious to outside pressure, Macey felt he could have rolled a fag on a switchback railway. He looked up directly at John Rhodes.

‘You’ll need to work on your fishtail, Panda,’ he said. ‘It’s rubbish.’

It was style triumphant. Everybody laughed except Panda Paterson, who stood up sheepishly. John Rhodes, like a bull lassoed with silk, sat down at the table. The others joined him. Dan Tomlinson brought drinks, port for John and beer for the others. Cam was drinking orange juice. Dan Tomlinson went out. The meeting was convened.

‘It was really Hook I wanted to see, John,’ Cam said.

‘So Ah heard. But Ah thought Ah would jist come along. Ah had a wee message to deliver.’

He looked at Panda, who happened to be looking down.

‘What did ye want tae see Hook about? Ye seem to have been impatient.’

‘I still am.’

Cam sipped his orange juice carefully, his calmness seeming to belie his own words.

‘Paddy Collins is dead.’

He said it with a kind of innocent expectation of immediate response from the others, the way a king might await the alarm of his courtiers if he sneezed. But this was divided territory. John Rhodes was tasting his drink as if he had suddenly become a bon viveur from the Calton. Cam’s concern and John’s indifference created an impasse of neutrality in the rest. Looking at the table, Cam chose his line of thought as carefully as threading a needle.

‘Not that Paddy Collins matters much,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen better men in Burton’s window. But he was our Pauline’s man. He was connected. She’s in a state. Don’t ask me why. She’s like most women. Seems to keep her brains in her knickers. But that’s the way of it. And I don’t like it. Nobody shites on my doorstep. Or I wipe their arse with razor blades.’

The words were a ritual exercise, like the noises an exponent of the martial arts might make preparatory to combat. He seemed separate from them at the moment, rehearsing the basic gestures of his nature, locating his will. He was distant, almost formal. But you knew he would soon be coming on.

‘Who do they think they are? Where do they live? Whoever killed Paddy Collins I’m going to find. There won’t be enough of him left to make up a tin of Kennomeat.’

It was spoken quietly. Since he felt no doubts, the statement needed no force to assert itself. It occurred as evenly as breathing.

‘He was never able to tell me what happened. But somebody knows. Do you know anything, Hook?’

‘Wait a minute,’ John Rhodes said. ‘How wid he know anything?’

‘I’m asking him, John. I don’t want one of these fucking conversations by post.’ The pitch of his voice hadn’t changed. Only the swear-word was like an abstract signal of a quickening mood. ‘His mouth’s here. Let it answer.’

‘Aye, maybe,’ John said. ‘It depends whit the question means.’

‘John. What you do to Panda’s your affair. He’s not one of mine. He just happens to be with me. But don’t try to piss me about where I live. Somebody killed my brother-in-law. I didn’t choose him but that’s what he was. They’re going to have to join him. I’m asking a straight question. All it means is what it says. Does Hook get to answer?’

Macey felt the axis of the room tilt delicately in favour of Cam. He watched John Rhodes judge whether he was letting too much happen, smile easily and nod to Hook.

‘But how wid Ah know anything, Cam?’

Cam was watching Hook. ‘Tell him,’ he said to Panda.

‘Well, Ah’m livin’ quiet these days. But Ah do all right.’ He couldn’t resist tentatively trying to reinstate himself in their eyes a little, let them know he didn’t get his mouth punched every day. ‘We’ve got a few things goin’ for us.’

‘You’re not on This is Your Life,’ Cam said. ‘Tell him about Paddy.’

‘Well, Ah’ve kept in touch with Paddy back and forward. Paddy was a friend of mine.’

He seemed to be offering loyalty as a compensatory quality.

‘Ye shouldny talk ill o’ the dead,’ John Rhodes said.

Panda was like a banana republic threatened by two contending major powers who don’t want direct conflict. He felt the pressure, began to speak in a deliberately neutral voice.

‘Last time Ah spoke to him, he was very chirpy. Reckoned he had money comin’. Somebody owed him. It was somebody he met in the Crib.’

The others waited but that was all Panda had to say. He sat like someone who can’t remember the punch-line.

‘That’s it?’ John Rhodes said.

‘Not quite,’ Cam said. ‘Mickey.’

Macey was interested in Mickey Ballater’s presence. Panda was a scavenger off other people’s reputations. It was easy to see why he was here. But Mickey Ballater was different. Macey was wondering about him.

‘Ah’m up here to see Paddy,’ Mickey said. ‘By the time Ah get up, he’s in the Vicky. There was somebody he talked about up here. Wis going to introduce me. Seemed a right oddity. Fella called Tony Veitch.’

Cam was still watching Hook.

‘That’s the only two things Ah’ve got to go on,’ Cam said. ‘The Crib and somebody called Tony Veitch. Hook?’

‘Ah’m sorry, Cam. Ah’d help ye if Ah could.’

‘A minder should mind. It’s your job to know everybody.’

‘How can ye do that, Cam? Come on. A place like the Crib has a name, gets tourists. What counts is they should know me. Know Ah’m around.’

‘I want this Tony Veitch. It seems to me it might be the same one he met in the Crib. Hook, you were still friendly enough with Paddy, were you? There was that bit of bother.’

‘Years ago, Cam. A daft fall-out over a wumman. We laughed about it after. He musta told ye.’

‘I probably wasn’t listening. Women. The bastard. Anyway. .’

A stranger had walked into the function suite. He was a fairly big man around whom middle-age had set like a podium. Not much had happened to detract from his sense of his own importance, or if it had he had managed to forget it. His mouth was open in one of those smiles that suggest the joke is private.

‘Oh-ho,’ he said as he came towards them. ‘Thought Ah heard voices. Ah wis at the lavvy there. A wee fly party, boays. Well, how’s about a ticket? Any chance of a drink?’

He had had enough already to suggest he should be taken into protective custody. It was Cam Colvin he had interrupted. John Rhodes was watching him without amusement. The others waited.

‘Cat got yer tongues? Any chance of a drink?’

‘Aye.’ Cam looked up at him. ‘How about a pint of blood? Siphoned off your face.’

The man started to sketch a laugh and erased it instantly. Losing its self-assurance, his face was clumsily rehearsing expressions as he looked round the table, slowly assimilating the drift of the plot from the appearance of the cast. It wasn’t a comedy. ‘Huh,’ he tried, to convince them he could take a role here. It was a bad audition.

‘Wait a minute. There’s no need-’

‘Fuck off,’ Cam said precisely, as if he was giving elocution lessons.

The man went out, his mouth bumbling a rearguard of aimless noise to cover the retreat of his self-esteem.

‘I must tell Dan Tomlinson,’ Cam said. ‘He’s not supposed to decorate the place with balloons till Christmas. Anyway. I think Hook should help me, John.’

‘How?’

‘He knows the people that go about the Crib. He can ask around. Just for starters, I’m going to find this Tony Veitch. Just for starters. If it’s him, he’s dead. And anybody that gets in my road’ll get hurt sore. I wouldn’t like to think Hook was being less than helpful.’

John Rhodes smiled. They were watching each other.

‘If anything happens to Hook or any of mine through you, Cam, ye better book a family plot. Paddy Collins’ll have a lot o’ company.’

The others were utterly still. Professional criminals are essentially conservative, perhaps because they have to take the law so seriously, can only operate effectively where rules are rules. They were all aware of how threatening to the tight order of things this confrontation was, like a nuclear standoff in the terms of their narrow lives.

Macey understood the tension. If you were choosing a winner out of such a conflict, it would have to be Cam. His interests were bigger and more varied and he was far more highly organised than John. But among several people who were in any organisational sense more powerful, John Rhodes still commanded a lot of respect.

There were sound reasons for it. Like a traditional family firm overtaken by pushy corporations, John Rhodes retained one quality which had so far guaranteed his survival: he dispensed a pure and undiluted product — 100 % proof violence. When he had to go, it would be to the death, preferably other people’s. Everybody knew that if you went against John Rhodes it was serious business. You weren’t going to conclude it by breaking a couple of knee-caps here and there.

Cam seemed to be contemplating that old-fashioned set of values that would let John make a bonfire of everything he had just to warm his sense of honour at it. Cam could deal with it if he had to, but he would rather not. You could never be sure what would be left.

When he spoke, his face had an expression almost of pleading but it was a complicated plea, including a desire not to have his own violence activated, since he couldn’t himself see the end of it.

‘John. You want trouble, your wish is granted. But does it have to be now? All I’m asking is for Hook to show willing. Show whose side he’s on. He can help. Is he going to?’

John Rhodes finished his port. ‘Doin’ what, like?’

‘Mickey here’s going to be asking around a bit. It’s handy. He’s handy. He’s not known about here the way he was. But he could use a guide. He thinks Hook could help him. Okay?’

Mickey looked at Hook, who put the question back to John Rhodes. John nodded.

‘Okay. He’ll help. But don’t come back to any o’ ma pubs, Cam. And you, Action Man.’ He pointed at Panda Paterson. ‘If it even rains on any o’ ma pubs, Ah’m gonny blame you. See it disny. Macey here’ll pass on anything else we get. Okay?’

‘Okay. The fella’s name is Tony Veitch. I’ll be looking for you soon, Macey.’

Macey nodded briskly to cover his worry. In a marriage as uneasy as this one the best man could finish up being the purvey.