The Papers of Tony Veitch

32

The name on the door was the first Italian one he had come to. He rang the bell. She was wearing black cords and a black blouse loose at the waist. She looked like a woman you might jump a few lights to get home to.

‘Gina?’

She appraised him for a moment and he saw her generous smile bloom on a misunderstanding, like a flower that comes out too early. She had assumed he had been told about her, was chancing his arm. He felt as if he had picked her purse.

‘I have little time this now. But-’ She looked at her watch. ‘You come in for a few minutes. Only a few. All right?’

He came in. She closed the door and walked ahead of him into the sitting-room. She was wearing backless high-heeled shoes. As he gave her a cigarette, lit it and sat down opposite her to light his own, he thought again that such trustingness was a dangerous trade to practise. There was an open travelling-bag on the floor with three freshly ironed shirts lying on top of it.

‘I’m not havin’ much time,’ she said, and smiled again. ‘You’re nice.’

‘That’s you and my mammy think that,’ Laidlaw said.

He had a brief reluctance to process the moment into practicalities. This was a pleasant hiatus. He liked the decadent innocence of her assumption. But it was unfair to prolong it.

‘You are shy?’

He laughed.

‘I didn’t think you’d notice.’

‘You want to talk? You have a problem?’

‘Thousands,’ Laidlaw said. ‘You got a spare year? No. Listen, love. There’s something I better explain. I’m a policeman.’

It was farewell to commercial Eden. Suddenly, what had looked like growing into an uncomplicated exchange was a computer job. Complex things were happening in her eyes. Her face had set like concrete. To complete the alienation, he resignedly passed across his card.

‘This is unfair,’ she said, giving it back. ‘I don’t like policemen. Some take without payment. You didn’t say.’

‘I’m saying now. Come on. You would’ve let me in anyway, love. Look, I just want to ask you some questions. About somebody who’s dead.’

‘I don’t know anybody who’s dead.’

‘We all do. Some of them still walking about as well. This was a boy called Tony Veitch.’

She hadn’t known he was dead, he was sure. Her face showed the first shock of impact and then a series of withdrawals into the implications of the fact. She didn’t know how to react. What had looked like being sadness became thoughtfulness, worry and then panic.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You have to go. I’m expecting someone.’

She half-rose.

‘Wait a minute,’ Laidlaw said. ‘That was a sudden decision.’

‘He is coming,’ she said.

She made it sound like a tidal wave, or Grendel at least. She crossed and put the shirts carefully into the travelling-bag, as if that solved everything. She turned vaguely, seeming to look for something she couldn’t find. Laidlaw wondered if it might be sandbags. He stood up.

‘Gina. Who is it?’

As her head swivelled, Laidlaw appeared again in her vision and her hand gestured him away like a midgie.

‘He didn’t tell me any of this.’ Her hand went to her mouth, sealing it. ‘I can’t talk to you. He is coming soon.’

She was starting to cry. Laidlaw took her by the shoulders and felt the tremors of her panic, like a small earthquake. He held her firmly, earthing the hysteria. The comfort of his contact, perhaps a gentleness of touch she was starved of, finally released the emotion in her and she lay against him and abandoned herself to crying. With his arms round her, he let her cry. She needed the confession of tears to admit to herself that she could no longer cope with what was happening.

Eventually he said, ‘Sit down, Gina.’

She sat down slowly. He gave her a handkerchief and, as she dabbed at her face, he lit a cigarette and gave it to her. He walked through to the small kitchen, filled the kettle, plugged it in. He watched her from the doorway.

‘I’ll make a cup of tea.’

The realisation that he was staying renewed the panic in her.

‘But he’s coming.’

‘Gina, who the hell is coming? Unless it’s Godzilla, you’re over-reacting, love. Let him come. I’ll wait with you. Who is it?’

‘A man.’

‘I’m a detective, Gina. I’d worked that out.’

His attempt to make her laugh hadn’t succeeded but she did look at him as if she was actually seeing him. She sniffed determinedly and the hiccoughing of her body subsided. A small calm had been achieved.

He rinsed out a couple of mugs, found the necessary things and made the tea. She didn’t take sugar. With their cups of tea they looked like a nice couple nicely at home.

‘Who is he, Gina?’ he asked.

He had given her time to make her decision.

‘His name is Mickey Ballater.’

‘Tricky Mickey,’ Laidlaw said. ‘That’s what they used to call him. So that’s who’s turned private detective. The Birmingham snooper. What’s the connection with you?’

He could see her wondering about catching amnesia.

‘Gina. I’m going to wait here till he comes anyway. It would be better, for me and you, if I knew what I was getting into.’

‘He comes to the door last week. And he is staying here since.’

‘But why? Why does he come to your door?’

She closed her eyes, shaking her head.

‘It is a dirty story.’

‘Most of them are. Some folk just tell them nice.’

‘Paddy Collins?’

Laidlaw nodded.

‘I am from Naples. My husband is from Naples. We are married and come here. My husband is cousin with a family with a café. He is to work. But he doesn’t work. We quarrel, he leaves me pregnant. I have the baby. I meet Paddy Collins. He is all right. But soon he makes a suggestion. How I should manage to live. I am not going to do it. But I do it.’

Laidlaw wondered how often he had heard the poignancy of whole lives reduced to the compass of a small ad. Was it her problem with the language that made it sound so simple? He imagined a terrible inarticulate pain behind the words, but perhaps he was being fanciful.

‘Don’t misunderstand. I am not blaming Paddy. Perhaps I do this anyway.’ She looked at him defiantly. ‘Sometimes I don’t dislike it.’

He shrugged, abjuring judgment.

‘But then a bad thing. A very bad thing. Paddy takes me to meet someone. He is not to know what I do for living. Then I did not know why. Now I know. His name is Tony Veitch.’

‘Let me guess,’ Laidlaw said. ‘It sounds like an old script. You and Tony get together, right? But after a time you develop a husband. And it’s going to take money to buy him off. Because he’s found out.’

She looked at Laidlaw, relieved that he had got there without the pain of having to tell him.

‘I did not know this. When I do, I am too afraid to get out.’

‘So who’s the husband?’

‘Mickey Ballater.’

‘You picked a beauty.’

‘I did not pick.’

‘No, I know, love. So that’s the story. That’s why Ballater’s been looking for Tony Veitch?’

She nodded.

‘Maybe he found him. Trickey Mickey. I wonder. Paddy Collins was demanding money from Tony Veitch? And Ballater was the way of getting it out of him?’

‘But Tony disappears. I felt glad. Tony was nice.’

‘Do you know if Mickey Ballater found where Tony was?’

‘He tells me nothin’.’

‘Did he ever mention Eck Adamson to you?’

‘No.’

‘When was it Ballater came here?’

She thought about it.

‘Friday.’

‘Did you get the impression he had only just arrived in Glasgow?’

‘He comes at night. Next day he says he will get his things from left luggage. He brings this.’

She nodded towards the travelling-bag.

‘He’s due back for it, is he?’

Her renewed fear was sufficient answer.

‘Is he carrying?’

She didn’t understand.

‘Does he have a weapon on him?’

‘He has a knife.’ She crossed her arms, trying to remember on which side he wore it. Her left arm gave up first. ‘On the left, I think.’

‘Think hard. I would like to keep on breathing.’

‘It is the left. I think.’

‘Thank you. If it’s the right, my favourite flowers are gladioli. If he’s threatened you with it, you should remember. No?’

‘Does he need to?’

She pulled up the sleeves of her blouse. Both arms had bruises that obviously dated from different times but were almost in the same place. He wasn’t even an inventive sadist. Having begun, she warmed to her rancour. She pulled her blouse up from the waist. There were three of what looked like cigarette-burns on her belly like small, not quite extinct volcanoes. Laidlaw added them to the debit column of his anger.

‘I’m sorry to be so personal, Gina. But he must have made his strange kind of love to you.’ He waited but she just stared at him. ‘So he must have touched you there.’ He pointed between her legs. ‘Which hand did he use?’

He noticed how she put him down in her estimation, as if he were some kind of voyeur. Prudishness grows in strange places.

‘His right hand,’ she said.

‘So he carries on the left. You have a phone?’

‘In the bedroom.’

Laidlaw wrote something on an envelope he took from his pocket, passed it to her. It was a telephone number.

‘When you let him in, you go into the bedroom. You phone that number. Ask them to send a couple of men right away.’

‘And you?’

‘I’ll be trying to keep him here.’

‘But if he kills you? What do I do?’

‘Well, I’ll probably have lost interest by then. I think you might say you’ll be on your own. You could maybe jump out a window or that.’

‘I have a child sleeping.’

‘Should be all right. Even Mickey Ballater’s shiteyness must have limits. Have it away on your toes with the wean. Anyway, Gina, I didn’t volunteer for God. I’m just trying to work it out as I go along. Maybe-’

The outside door had opened. Of course, Laidlaw thought, he’s got a key. As he moved behind the door of the sitting-room he was mentally thanking Gina for keeping him posted. How could she be so stupid as to let him talk about letting Ballater in without mentioning that she wouldn’t have to? His stomach went delicately molten. His hands had a familiar divining-rod tremor to them — there’s violence here, but where exactly? He shook his head distantly at her pleading expression. He had given what he could give. It was Laidlaws in the boats first. Otherwise nobody would be saved. The outside door had closed and the feet were coming along the hall. Laidlaw made a double-handed, crossed-arm wiping gesture — you’re on your own. In a moment of terrified inspiration, Gina lifted the paper from the white-tiled table beside her chair and pretended to be looking at it. As the door opened, Laidlaw realised she was holding the paper upside-down. It seemed a stupendous error at the time.

But Ballater walked into a room he had pre-decided.

‘Uh-huh,’ he said. ‘Ah’m for the off. Everything ready?’

But caution came in after him like a double-take. He stopped unnaturally, not because he had a specific reason for doing so but because he didn’t know what was wrong. Laidlaw reckoned it was the cup beside the other chair. He didn’t give himself time to refine the thought. He took two strides across the room and battered Ballater in the back, knocking his face against the wall.

‘Get out, Gina,’ Laidlaw shouted.

Ballater had fallen against the wall and Laidlaw grappled him, trying to reach his left inside pocket. There was a moment of quiescence in Ballater when Laidlaw thought he had done it. Through cloth he felt something hard then he felt something harder. It was Ballater’s elbow in his stomach. Laidlaw retched breath and as he subsided Ballater erupted with an elbow in his face. Laidlaw staggered several paces back against the door, slamming it shut.

Fear gave him panoramic vision. He saw that Gina had got out. He saw that the room was a lot smaller than it should be. He saw a bird scudding past the window. He saw a slim white chair against the wall beside him as more than something to sit on. He saw the knife in Ballater’s hand, looking as long as Excalibur. He saw the birth-mark as a core of rage that shouldn’t have been his problem.

A few swift thoughts went past like the carriages of a train he was too late to catch. This was a crazy job. He hoped the G.P.O. was on form. He had done it wrong again. He had over-rehearsed. If he hadn’t been so determined to get the knife he could have knocked Ballater out. Come on, come on. Perhaps they could talk about this.

‘Wait, Mickey. Wait a minute! You know who I am?’

His own voice sounded crazy to him, wild and irrelevant, like somebody insisting on introductions before he was murdered.

‘You’re the wan that’s gonny get it.’

‘I’m polis, Mickey.’ Beyond his own control, his card was thrown on the floor. ‘You’re tryin’ to kill polis.’

The card lay between them in a way that neither understood, seemed to build an invisible fence. While Mickey paused fractionally, as if going back inside himself far enough to make the jump, Laidlaw took the chair in one fluid nervous movement as compulsive as orgasm and fired it at Mickey. Its trajectory, as it happened, was almost enough to make him believe in God, but once completed wasn’t quite. One leg of the chair caught Mickey glancingly above the right eye. He went down. The knife went to the wall like an intention. Laidlaw scrabbled across and picked it up.

While Laidlaw stood gasping, holding the knife, Mickey sat gasping, without the knife. Both of them were bewildered.

‘What’s this about?’ Mickey said.

‘That’s what I’d like to know,’ Laidlaw said.

He noticed blood seeping through the left-hand side of Mickey Ballater’s shirt. The blood puzzled Laidlaw because it wasn’t the result of their scuffle.