The Papers of Tony Veitch

21

^‘Blankets? Pull this over the head, ye’ve got a fallout shelter. Hand-knitted from Polar berrs. Ah’m tellin’ ye. Wake up in the mornin’, ye see the frost on the windae in the shape o’ two hands up. It’s surrendered. At a fiver a whack, Ah’ve got to sell them quick. Polis see me, Ah’ll get arrested for insanity.’

Mickey Ballater moved on. He wasn’t in the market for blankets. Paddy’s Market in Shipbank Lane was a nostalgic experience for him, a walk into the past that momentarily blurred his present purpose. There must be streets like this in any city, he supposed, but this one was different for him. It was where he came from, a re-enactment of the way he used to live. He felt as if they were flogging his own past.

What struck him wasn’t the blanket-seller’s spiel. That was untypical of this street, more like an echo of the Barras, the city’s official market where the brashness of commercial success came out at you like a lasso. This was a quieter place, mute with resignation. It was a street of dead eyes and indifferent glances.

Down one side there was a series of holes in the wall, lock-ups where a conglomerate of scruffy goods were howked out of the dimness to be sold. The catch-as-catch-can quality of the articles was indicated by the fact that few sellers specialised in anything but most sold whatever they could get their hands on. Down the other side were those whose premises were no more than a patch of ground on which they laid what looked like the remnants of their private possessions. The market still lived up to a name that implied a place where mendicant Irish immigrants could buy.

Mickey became angry at the thought of those who, sitting in plush places, said there were no longer any real poor. If this stuff was being sold, who else would buy it but the poor?

He remembered the house in Crown Street and an old bitterness came back. These were people he had once been part of. He thought of his father using the booze as blinkers, of his mother not able to live one day in which a penny wasn’t important. He thought of his sister, broken-hearted because the joiner she was going with packed her up, his mother keening in the background that Prince Charming had ridden away.

He was different. His wife lived in a private house. Where a second-hand bike at thirty bob had been something he waited two years for, his three daughters took a personal stereo for granted. He was going to keep it that way.

‘Excuse me, aul’ yin,’ he said.

She looked up as if a glance was a boulder she was tired of lifting. Her face was a derelict cul-de-sac. The junk behind her was like a load she was yoked to, ensuring that she would never move anywhere else.

‘Ah’m lookin’ for Danny McLeod.’

She nodded along the street.

‘Auld Danny’s up there. The wan at the very end. Silly auld bugger.’

As he got nearer he saw what she meant. Danny McLeod had a piece of felt spread on the cobbles. On it lay a few boxes of matches inside metal holders, two second-hand paperbacks, a pair of spectacles in an open case and a tin ashtray. The man himself had a face blotched with drink, a map of bad places he had been.

Mickey bent down and lifted one of the metal holders. The holder was cheap metal, three-sided. The idea was you fitted the matchbox into the metal with the striking-surface facing out. One side of the metal box had what looked like a snake on it. Mickey put it back and picked up another. The design was a sun.

‘These is fae Peru,’ Danny McLeod said. ‘Lima in Peru. That’s the capital, but. Ye get these in Lima.’

‘Peru?’

‘Correct. They’re a right rarity. 50p.’

‘How d’ye get these fae Peru? Ye got a branch there?’

‘World Cup, right? Scotland playin’ in the World Cup. Right? Ah know some people goin’ over to support the boys in Argentina. So they’re goin’ overland. Down through Peru. They got me these in Lima. Cost them a bomb. But they know Ah like precious metal. Ah’m losin’ like. But Ah’m selling off the stock. Very few left. Ye get the matches free wi’ the holder.’

Mickey put down the sun, picked up a lion.

‘That’s a beauty. That’s ma favourite, like. That wan there. Looks real enough tae bite ye. Chow holes in yer pocket, that yin.’

‘50p?’

‘Special offer, big yin.’

Mickey put his hand in his pocket, pulled out a pound.

‘Know what? Gave away the last o’ ma change there.’

Mickey smiled at the expectancy in the old man’s eyes and replaced the pound in his pocket. He started to count the change in his hand and stopped. He replaced the coins and, for a reason he didn’t understand, gave him the pound.

‘Aye. If ye’re ever headed for Argentina, that’s yer best road. Straight through Peru.’

As Mickey was handing him the pound, he was saying, ‘How’s Eck doin’ these days then?’

Danny McLeod paused with the money in his hand, seemed transfixed by it. He carefully folded it and put it away.

‘Eck Adamson. How’s he doin’?’

The old man was finished rehearsing. His head came up and his eyes were an old, old baby’s.

‘Ye’ve got me, big yin. Am Ah supposed tae know whit ye’re on about?’

Mickey had seen enough.

‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘Thanks for the bargain. Ah’ll pass it on in ma will.’

He walked a little way on, just past the market. Leaning against the wall, he turned his purchase over in his hand before putting it in his pocket. Then he just looked, letting the old man fry in his stare. He knew it wouldn’t take long.

Danny McLeod seemed to have found the equator passing through Glasgow. He wiped his brow with his hand a couple of times, flapped his grubby shirt out from his chest. When a spit of rain happened, he wrapped up his goods immediately in the piece of felt and started in the opposite direction from Mickey. Mickey followed casually.

As he saw the old man about to turn left, he called out, ‘Hey, auld man.’ Danny McLeod glanced back briefly and was round the corner. Fancying his chances in any geriatric marathon, and not wanting to make anybody else notice him, Mickey didn’t change his pace. The rain was really starting to come down.

He came round the corner and began to walk more briskly. As he got a clear view up ahead, he was briefly nonplussed to see no sign of Danny McLeod. He walked a little way on and stopped. He was beginning to get annoyed when he realised he was standing outside the old Fish Market. Its entrance loomed to his left. There was nowhere else he could have gone. Mickey smiled to himself.

He walked in under the high glass roof and looked around. He saw a caravan, some parked cars and a van that told him the place was now a storehouse for the Parks Department.

‘Hello there,’ he called.

Nobody answered. The silence was what he had wanted to hear. To his right planks of wood were piled over head-height. The ground was cobblestone. The building was an oval of wooden frontages, discontinued by the entrance. Above the ground-floor was a projecting balcony along which the names of fishmongers were withering in the wood. Two rickety stairways led up to the balcony.

He listened. Upstairs there was the sound of rain dripping on wood. He walked quietly round the ground-floor, checking. There was nobody. As he started to go up one of the creaking staircases he heard a furtive scuttering above him, like an overweight rat. He climbed steadily. At the top, he looked round the empty balcony.

He pushed open a door and was in a dusty corridor where puddles of water indicated the warping of the floor. He started to walk carefully along it. It was strange how far away the city felt from here.

He was pushing doors open as he went, looking briefly into mouldering rooms. At the turn of the corridor he heard the smallest whimper, a shaving of fear that had fallen almost inaudibly into the silence. He cocked his head carefully, letting it pivot towards the source of the sound. The peeling door was ajar. He kicked it open.

‘A-a-a-h!’

The bundle tumbled from Danny McLeod’s hands, the felt unrolling as if he was open for business. He was crouched in a corner, his head half-turned away, looking over his shoulder. Mickey smiled at him.

‘Hullo, Danny McLeod. Is this yer office? I’d like to make an appointment.’

He came in and painstakingly rolled up the bundle again, handed it to the old man and, holding him under the armpits, lifted him upright. He dusted him down solicitously and looked at him, as if admiring his handiwork.

‘Who are you?’ Danny asked.

‘A local boy made good. Just up on a visit. Ma mammy’s budgie died. Ah’m up for the funeral. Lookin’ up some old friends. Like Eck Adamson.’

‘Ah don’t know who ye’re talkin’ about.’

‘Ye got off yer mark quick enough.’

‘Ah thought ye wis the polis.’

‘You got a reason for joukin’ the polis?’

‘Everybody’s got a reason for joukin’ the polis.’

‘Eck Adamson.’

‘Ah don’t know who ye’re talkin’ about.’

Mickey stared at the old man and realised why he had given him the pound. He reminded him of his father. A reflex saved him from his own compassion.

He hit the old man once on the nose with the heel of his hand and he bled. The blood ran over his mouth and into the several days’ growth on his chin. It was enough. He had started to cry. Mickey was looking at the windows opaque with grime.

‘Two choices, aul’ yin,’ he said reasonably. ‘Ye tell me whit ye know or pick a windae. Ye’re goin’ out it.’

Danny had started to cough, a whirlpool of phlegm that seemed threatening to pull his bobbing head down into it. Besides bleeding, his nose was running. He fumbled something out of his pocket and it was a rag, encursted and filthy, that looked like instant tetanus. He rubbed his lower face clumsily, leaving a streak of snot across his cheek.

‘Eck’s deid,’ he said tearfully.

‘Eck Adamson’s dead? When did this happen?’

‘A day or two back. Ah don’t want anythin’ to do wi’ this, mister. Ah’m not involved.’

‘So just tell me.’

‘Well, he’s deid. Drank somethin’, like. Ye know?’

‘No, Ah don’t.’

‘Well. Somethin’. Word is it wis paraquat.’

‘Ye mean he tried it?’

‘Aw naw. He wis fond o’ a drink right enough, Wee Eck. But Ah don’t think he tried it.’

‘Whit wis his connection wi’ Tony Veitch?’

Danny hesitated, looked up at him. Mickey wagged a forefinger.

‘Eck seemed to do messages for ’im. That boy’s got money, ye know. But there wis somethin’ wrang. Eck told me the boy wis hidin’ out some place.’

‘Where?’

‘Honest, mister. Ah swear to God. Ah’d tell ye if Ah knew. Eck wouldny tell anybody. For fear of Paddy Collins gettin’ tae hear. Tony never liked Paddy Collins since he stole his girl. An’ then gave her a doin’.’

‘What girl?’

‘Some lassie. A kinna toff. Ah think she’s a Lady Somebody-or-ither.’

‘What else d’ye know about her?’

‘She’s got a shop o’ some kind. No’ in the city.’

‘Lynsey Farren. Lady Lynsey Farren?’

‘Ah don’t know, mister.’

But Mickey was talking to himself. It took him a moment to remember Danny was there.

‘Where did Eck Adamson live?’

‘Around and about. Just around and about. Mainly inside a bottle.’

‘Where did Tony Veitch live?’

‘Honest, mister.’ The question made him cringe because he couldn’t answer. ‘Ah never knew. An’ latterly Eck wis the only wan that knew. Nobody else knows.’

‘Ah doubt it,’ Mickey said. ‘Ye’re sure that’s all ye know?’

‘As God is ma judge, mister.’

Mickey turned suddenly and went out. Danny suspected he was coming back, listened carefully. The footsteps were receding. There was a faint splash and the sound of the big man cursing at a puddle. When he heard the footsteps going down the wooden stairs, Danny emerged very cautiously to look down through the dirty glass of the balcony. As he watched him cross the cobbles, Danny held his handkerchief under a water-drip and wiped his face more effectively. He saw the man pause in the doorway to check the rain.

Danny felt a sudden anger in safety. He couldn’t remember much of his past but he could remember it had been there. Pride in who he had been made him want revenge.

‘Big guy!’ Danny whispered against the glass. ‘Ah’m glad there’s only fifteen matches in yer box.’