The Papers of Tony Veitch

19

When you opened the street door to the Glasgow Press Club in West George Street you were confronted with an old, stone, curving staircase, an act of contrition steep enough to take the wind out of most pomposity. Once you negotiated the locked door at the top (in Harkness’s case by getting Eddie Devlin to sign him in), you came into a small place articulate with that Glaswegian instinct for finding the off-hand remark which freezes pretentiousness in its tracks. It was a de-briefing room for the spy network the press runs on celebrities.

Mainly, it was two places: the snooker room and the bar, which had a small, compact gantry and a scatter of tables. In either room, there was no problem finding someone to deflate you. Eddie Devlin was merely one of many always ready to oblige.

‘Uh-huh,’ he was saying. ‘Then we could run a society column for down-and-outs. Who’s getting off their mark with whom from the Salvation Army Mission. Have a series. Who was out of their mind with the bevvy on Custom House Quay last week. Which are the smart derelict buildings to be seen in these days. Hey. I could become the William Hickey of Caledonia Road. It’s a good idea, Jack.’

Harkness was glad he had a pint of pain-killer. He knew he had made a mistake coming in here and he sympathised with Eddie. It was a moment he recognised from a case like this, one of the lay-by times when there was nothing actively they could do and Laidlaw was left going over the thing obsessively in his head. He was still on the lime-juice and soda, which couldn’t be helping.

‘Come on,’ Laidlaw was saying, staring through Eddie’s ridicule. ‘Just give him a mention.’

‘Where? In the dead derelicts column? We discontinued it, Jack. Doesn’t sell a lot of papers.’

‘A paragraph. One small paragraph.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he deserves it. Your mob invent fame. Like playing stocks and shares with people’s reputations. So invest a paragraph in Eck. This glamour crap gets me. Same in our job, Brian. Steal enough money from an institution and you’ll get the entire Crime Squad after you. Steal a widow’s last fifty quid and who cares? It’s only people. Eck deserves to be acknowledged.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he was there. But even playing it by your rules he still deserves it. I think he was murdered. That’s still news here, isn’t it? What’s happened to this city? It used to be the life of the streets was properly respected here. It got attention. What about Hirstling Kate? Or Rab Ha’ the Glesca Glutton? They were Eck’s kind of people.’

Hirstling Kate had been a cripple who pulled herself along on her knees by means of spiked boards held in her hands. Rab Ha’, who was said to have eaten a calf at a sitting, had died as a vagrant in a hayloft in Thistle Street. Laidlaw had touched on one of Eddie’s hobbies.

For the next few minutes Harkness was introduced to some other nineteenth-century landmarks of Glasgow, like Old Malabar, the Irish street juggler, and Dungannon, the barefooted porter of the Bazaar at Candleriggs. He heard a four-line rhyming sermon from the ‘Reverend’ John Aitken. He discovered that Penny-a-Yard’s job had been making brass chains for wall clocks. His favourite was Lang Tam, an imbecile beggar who inspired people’s charity by waving goodbye to the Paisley coach at Jamaica Bridge and waving hello to the same coach as it arrived in Paisley.

The memory of those people who had found preposterous niches in a hard life, like kittiwakes nesting on a sheer cliff face, worked on Eddie, while Laidlaw argued Eck’s place in the tradition.

‘And another thing, Eddie. Whoever did this thinks they’ve caused about as much fuss as running over a stray cat. I want them to feel differently. It doesn’t mean a lot but I’d like to get them worried if I can. Who knows, it might help. You might put in an appeal for information.’

‘What’s the point? If it’s not an accident, it has to be rummy obliterating rummy. How many rummies do you think read the Glasgow Herald?’

‘I don’t know, it makes a good big blanket on a cold night. And you know what might help? If you could pass it on to the Evening Times.’

‘Right, Jack. Stop there. I’ve got no influence with the London Times. Look, I’ll see. All right? I’ll see.’

‘Thanks, Eddie. There’s another thing.’

Eddie looked round his raised whisky the way the negro house-servant used to look round doors in old Hollywood films.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘You want me to do a piece on stray dogs.’

‘Not this week. Remember that stuff the paper ran a while back? On the vagrant thing. “Skid Row” idea.’

Eddie nodded.

‘You think you could get me that to check through? Just in case. It’s probably hopeless. But just in case.’

‘You’re mellowing. You’re beginning to ask reasonable things.’ A man came over from the bar to their table. He was tall and very fat.

‘Five minutes,’ he said to Eddie. ‘I hope you’re fit.’

‘I’m not likely to be less fit than you, Stan,’ Eddie said. ‘Look at him. If they cleaned him out, he’d make a good garage. Pollokshaws Fats, the one-man crowd. You’ve got to wait in the bar while he’s making a shot.’

‘Gallows humour,’ Stan said. ‘Can I buy you boys a drink? I believe it’s customary at a wake.’

The voice was appropriate to the remark, slow, deep and mournful, every sentence a small cortège. Laidlaw had barely touched his lime-juice and soda. Eddie and Harkness didn’t need anything at the moment.

‘Five minutes,’ Stan said.

Eddie checked his watch. It seemed a typical gesture to Harkness. That broad face with its kindly inquisitive eyes always seemed to be slightly abstracted, thinking ahead. It was as if the pressures of the job had invaded his private life so that even his pleasures needed the adrenalin of having time-limits. He was a junkie for deadlines.

‘How about the lab tests?’ Harkness asked Laidlaw.

‘Oh yes. Guess what? Paraquat in the bevvy. That was Eck’s bottle we found, all right.’

‘Hey, maybe you’re not so daft. Mixing that stuff with the wine means premeditation, doesn’t it?’

‘Not just that. Two sets of fingerprints on Eck’s bottle. Only one of them Eck’s.’

‘And if it’s true that he didn’t share. .’

‘Find the fingerprints, you find your man.’

Eddie got up to take on Stan. He was smiling.

‘I’ve got it, boys,’ he said. ‘Go round the off-licences finger-printing people and you’re home alone. I’ll buy you a drink with my winnings.’

Harkness stared after him, turned back to Laidlaw.

‘He’s got a point. If you’ve got two lots of fingerprints on the bottle, that’s got to be the other lot, hasn’t it?’

Laidlaw refused to be dismayed.

‘Don’t take Eddie too seriously. That journalism makes you cynical. Not like police-work.’

‘No. But he’s right.’

Laidlaw took his lime-juice and soda as if it was a wisdom-potion, and winked.

‘I would bet he isn’t. Cynicism’s just a failure of imagination. Those fingerprints are a solid investment. They’ll work for us. Well, where did you bestow your charms tonight?’

Harkness had a drink.

‘I didn’t,’ he said. ‘I phoned Mary and we decided we wouldn’t be seeing each other again. I’m going to get married.’

‘You make it sound like a death-sentence.’

‘No. You know what it was? Mary sounded really happy about it. I thought she fancied me. I worry my arse off about telling her. And she takes it like a prezzy. Like Christmas was early.’

Laidlaw was laughing.

‘You know what’s worrying me now?’ Harkness said. ‘I ask Morag to marry me and she hunts me. If she does that, I couldn’t take it. The equipment’ll shrivel up and fall off. After Mary went off the phone singing, I went and got bevvied. I’m going to have to leave in time for the last bus. Just leave the car.’

‘I’ll drive you to Fenwick,’ Laidlaw said.

‘You not staying at the Burleigh tonight? You going home?’

‘Well.’ Laidlaw had a clowning expression on his face, like Pagliacci. ‘More or less home. That’s where I’m going, if that’s what it is.’

Harkness had a feeling about Laidlaw he had had before, an almost irresistible compassion for him. Laidlaw came on hard, could be a bastard, sometimes gave the impression that if God turned up he’d want Him to take a lie-detector test. But he so obviously cared about people, was so unmistakably hurt by what happened to them, sometimes through his doing, that he would have put a stone under pressure to feel things. Out of concern for him Harkness moved the conversation away from where they were headed.

‘I don’t want to sound cynical,’ he said. ‘But how is it those fingerprints are going to be use to us?’

‘Brian. Imagine it. You’re putting paraquat into a wine bottle. Some down the sides. Right? You wipe the whole bottle. Because you don’t want the bottle to look suspicious. Isn’t it true? Then you’re giving it to a wino. Who cares if your hand’s been on it? Where is it going to finish, anyway? In the Clyde? You’re going to be careless. You’re going to give it to him with panache. Oh yes, you are. If it’s Tony’s fingers on it, Brian, it’s Tony. If it’s somebody else’s, it’s somebody else. We’ve found the combination to this safe. I’m telling you. Hey. I like being bright. Don’t you? It’s good fun, isn’t it?’

He was laughing. Harkness was pleased to see him arrogant again. Harkness believed that Laidlaw had certain small rights in that area.