Strange Loyalties jl-3

by William McIlvanney

  But the sense of openness was illusory, I felt. It wasn’t just that I could detect the signs of an elaborate security system. It wasn’t just the leaded windows that seemed more a way of looking out than seeing in. It was the awareness of strange proliferation in the building. There were outcrops and oddnesses around its edges. I wondered what shapes the rooms were and what might be in them. Two dozen paces through my flat would have told you all. Here, I suspected you might still not know where you were once you were in. It would have unexpected shadows and secret places. I thought of ghosts, not supernatural beings, just those self-projected creatures of the mind, old deeds that can haunt us more the more we deny them. No wonder ghosts traditionally frequent big houses, it occurred to me. There’s more room for guilt there.

  I pulled the bell. It was a woman who answered. She was wearing a skirt and blouse. Her deferential air suggested I might have more rights here than she had. This was where she worked. I had started to explain what I was doing here when Dave Lyons appeared behind her.

  ‘That’s all right, Janice,’ he said. ‘I’ll get this.’

  I nodded to him and he stared at me. He waited, looking over his shoulder to make sure that Janice had gone. He looked even more authoritative than he had looked in Cranston Castle House. He would. This was his territory.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he said.

  ‘I just want to speak to you.’

  ‘But I don’t want to speak to you. Where did you get this address?’

  ‘The same place I got the phone-number.’

  Something occurred to him.

  ‘Did you just phone there? Not long ago.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And hung up.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t think you would invite me down if you knew it was me.’

  ‘Oh, you’re right. You’re very careless for a policeman. That was a nuisance phone-call. Risky thing to be doing.’

  ‘I’ll deny everything. Come and get me, copper.’

  ‘What an arsehole,’ he said. ‘Move your car. If that’s what you call it. It’s blocking my driveway.’

  I tugged my forelock.

  ‘Aye, zur,’ I said. ‘Right away, zur. After we’ve talked.’

  ‘We’ve talked all we’re going to,’ he said. ‘You’ve spoiled a lunch for me already. You’re not going to waste my evening. I’ve had more meaningful conversations with the talking clock.’

  The door was open but it wasn’t open. The doorway might as well have been filled with reinforced glass. I wasn’t getting in.

  ‘It won’t take long,’ I said.

  ‘Get lost,’ he said and was closing the door.

  ‘Does your wife know about you and Anna?’ I said.

  Now the door was really open. He looked as if he couldn’t believe the garbage someone had dumped on his doorstep. I think I shared his feeling to a degree, but to a very precise degree. What I had said was a malignant thing to say. But in handling such potentially toxic material in my own nature, I had a couple of protective thoughts, like rubber gloves. First, I would never have used such knowledge beyond this conversation with him, though he wasn’t to know that. (And the expression on his face told me this was knowledge, it was no longer guesswork.) Second, I wasn’t yet convinced of his right to moral outrage at my remark. But I still felt like averting my head from the smell of my own behaviour.

  ‘Come in,’ he said. ‘I’d ask you to wipe your feet but how do you wipe the rest of you?’

  Maybe that was fair enough. We crossed a wide hall with a wooden staircase leading up from it. The windows at the bend on the stairs were filled with stained glass. He took me through a large, open, wooden door, which he then closed. I assumed this was where he had come from when Janice answered my ring.

  We were in a kind of personal trophy-room. There were a couple of small silver cups, maybe for golf. There was a piece of Caithness glass and three sombre certificates that were awards of some sort for industry. A careful arrangement of photographs on the wall showed groups of confident-looking men enjoying the importance of their own company. A leather-topped desk dominated the room. I had met its brother in Edinburgh. The desk-lamp was lit, its narrow beam focused on sheets of paper. I felt the intrusiveness of my presence in this man’s preoccupations.

  ‘I suppose you’d better sit down,’ he said.

  I sat in a leather swivel-chair near the outer edge of the desk. He crossed to the small window and put his hands in his pockets, looking out. I noticed an antique-looking vase resting on top of a bookcase. I thought its pattern was as complicated as the interweaving lives I had stumbled among. Now that I had breached his sanctum, I experienced a reluctant awe at having invaded the private recesses of another person’s life. He was still looking out of the window. There wasn’t much to see out there except the obstructing branches of a tree. But he seemed to be able to see far, for he began to describe the view.

  ‘I’m going to marry Anna,’ he said. ‘I tell you that so that you’ll understand what the information means. That your seedy investigations have found out. This isn’t some hole-in-the-corner affair we’re talking about. You’re playing around with people’s lives here. Linda. My wife. She can’t have any children. Anna and I are hoping to have a family. But I care about Linda. She’s not too strong emotionally. Anna has agreed to give me time to prepare her for all this. It’ll help Linda if I leave her on my own terms. If Anna’s not involved. We can do it amicably. I need a little time to do that. To arrange things. I’m asking you not to interfere with that. For my wife’s sake. That’s all. I can understand how you feel. Anna being Scott’s widow. But Scott wasn’t exactly a saint himself, you know.’

  ‘Not even approximately,’ I said.

  ‘He was having an affair with a woman called Ellie Mabon. Why don’t you check that out?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Jesus Christ. You really are a seedy one.’

  ‘Mr Lyons,’ I said. ‘I want you to stop saying that. All I’ve been trying to do is find out some truths about my brother’s life at the end. If the truths turn out to be seedy, you included, don’t blame me. You don’t accuse the X-ray of the cancer. And don’t parade your moral rectitude in front of me. As far as I can see, it’s just a long view of nothing. Like a flea on stilts. And this sudden confidential talk is crap. Open day at a nuclear plant. All that means is you’re only going to see what doesn’t matter. That’s not what I’m here for. Keep the moving details of your private life. I’m not sure I could believe them anyway. Maybe you are concerned about your wife. Or maybe it’s financially healthier for you to arrange the break-up this way. How would I know?’

  I had swung the chair towards the window and was watching him. He turned towards me.

  ‘What is it you want from me?’ he said.

  ‘Just information. A modicum of honesty.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘The man in the green coat.’

  ‘Not that again. Who the hell is the man in the green coat?’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘Not a clue.’

  ‘You do remember as a student sharing a flat with Scott?’

  ‘Briefly, yes. It wasn’t exactly one of the highlights of my life.’

  ‘Do you remember someone called David Ewart?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘He came to see about renting the flat. When you and your friends were moving out. He was a first-year student.’

  He was starting to laugh.

  ‘Is this supposed to be a serious question? I’m supposed to remember some student coming to look at a flat? What do you think I did? Made a note of it? “Dear Diary, a wonderful thing happened today.”’

  ‘But it seems to have been a memorable day. Or at least the evening was. Something happened that night.’

  ‘That would make it novel, right enough.’

  ‘You don’t remember all going out together
that night?’

  ‘We went out together quite a few nights. I don’t remember any one night in particular. I shouldn’t imagine any of us did. The idea was usually to get pissed.’

  ‘That night Scott destroyed his paintings.’

  ‘Did he? I don’t know about that.’

  I realised there was no way I could prove that he knew about that night. My only hope was to concentrate on small, specific details.

  ‘Who’s Sandy Blake?’

  He thought about it carefully.

  ‘He shared with us as well.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘He became a doctor.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘He’s in South Africa.’ He was smiling. ‘I don’t think I have his address.’

  ‘What about the fourth one?’

  ‘The fourth what?’

  ‘The fourth student. There were four of you sharing the flat.’

  ‘No. There were only three.’

  ‘David Ewart says there were four.’

  ‘Who the hell’s David Ewart? I lived there.’

  ‘I think I’m wasting my time,’ I said.

  ‘I think you’re wasting everybody’s time,’ he said. ‘Especially mine.’

  ‘Well,’ I said.

  I stood up and wandered vaguely about the room.

  ‘The door’s that way,’ he said, nodding.

  I paused beside the bookcase. I touched the vase gently.

  ‘Leave that alone,’ he said. ‘It’s very, very valuable.’

  I lifted it in one hand.

  ‘Put it down,’ he said.

  ‘You’re a liar, Mr Lyons,’ I said. ‘I assume your wife’s in?’

  ‘What if she is? That’s worth a lot of money. Put it down.’

  I started slowly to throw the vase from hand to hand.

  ‘I don’t care about that stuff, Mr Lyons. Just about the real things.’

  ‘You would know what these are, I suppose.’

  ‘I know what they’re not. I’m still looking. Tell me, what’s the secret of your success?’

  ‘What I am I’ve made myself.’

  ‘And used a few other lives as the material. There are no self-made men. They all use other people as spare parts. Who was the fourth?’

  ‘There was no fourth.’

  ‘My palms are sweating,’ I said. ‘I can’t keep this up. When it breaks, I’ll break something else. Until Mrs Lyons comes. To see. . what. . the noise. . is.’

  He said nothing.

  ‘Fuck it,’ I said.

  I threw the vase up until it almost touched the ceiling and made to put my hands in my pockets.

  ‘Michael Preston,’ he shouted.

  I caught the vase about four inches from the floor. The surprise of the name almost made me miss, for it was familiar to me. In the hearing of that name, I realised the deviousness that had been Scott’s life. That he had known Michael Preston and never mentioned the fact to me was amazing. Michael Preston was a very well known television presenter, his name the kind that was liable to crop up in a lot of conversations. I straightened up slowly.

  ‘You’re mad,’ Dave Lyons said.

  ‘Just angry,’ I said. ‘Mad’s a lot worse than this.’

  I replaced the vase where it had been.

  ‘So that’s who was on television that night,’ I said.

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘No. Of course, you wouldn’t.’

  I looked at him. He had rediscovered his anger. This wasn’t how people treated him. His mouth was sealed with rage.

  ‘I’ll unblock your driveway,’ I said.

  27

  I was in the shower when Brian phoned me at the Grosvenor. I had intended it to be a luxurious experience. In the Bushfield I had only had access to a bath. Now I could have hydrotherapy as well as wash myself. But the pleasure was short-lived. I hadn’t even finished singing ‘The Other Side of Nowhere’ by the time the phone rang.

  I was still dripping as I took the call, trying to towel myself. It wasn’t a long conversation. We talked a moment about Marty Bleasdale and Melanie McHarg. Brian and Bob would be looking for them tomorrow. They would phone me at the hotel and leave word if I wasn’t there. Brian suggested I should get an early night so that I could be fit and fresh to carry on with my mania in the morning.

  I finished drying myself. I pulled on a sweater and a clean pair of underpants. I combed my hair. I filled out an Antiquary and watered it. I stood at the window and looked down on to Byres Road. It felt good to be back in Glasgow. I thought of David Ewart’s ambition for his retirement. It wasn’t a bad one.

  I watched the cars pass, the people walking in the street. I saw endlessly criss-crossing preoccupations, not noticing one another seriously, pursuing their own strange loyalties. Strange and questionable loyalties, I thought, including my own. We were moles that lived in the light, following painstakingly constructed tunnels of private purpose.

  My week so far had been one of those tunnels. In its determined progress it had broken into other people’s secret places, disturbing the still air, bringing an alien and upsetting presence. In the calmness of this moment, I could acknowledge how abrasive I had been. I regretted that, but not too much.

  For although I admired loyalty, I reflected, it could have strange side-effects. Frankie White’s loyalty to a malignant ethic had allowed his friend to be buried in a very deep silence. Anna’s loyalty to Dave Lyons had amputated her husband from her life with clinical coldness. Dave Lyons’ loyalty to himself made everything else irrelevant. In our haste to get to the places to which our personal and pragmatic loyalties lead us, we often trample to death the deeper loyalties that define us all — loyalty to the truth and loyalty to the ideals our nature professes.

  I was faced with a labyrinth of commitments in which, it seemed to me, people kept to their exclusive space and pretended it did not connect with other corridors, where bad things happened in their name but not in their hearing. Given that, I could see only one way to proceed. Each of the people I was dealing with had presumably more than one loyalty. Let’s strike one against the other and see if a spark of truth came out of that. Let’s force them to a choice of loyalties.

  Eddie Foley, for example, was a faithful minion of Matt Mason. It seemed there was no way he would betray him. But Eddie Foley was also a devoted family man. He lived two contradictory lives. Let’s make them confront each other, the nice man and the criminal, and see who won the fight. I would start with him. It wouldn’t be easy. From here on, I might have to be somewhat more abrasive. I drank reluctantly to that. When the world decides to take away from you, without explanation, a part of what matters to you most, you’d better challenge its indifference, some way or other.

  And the meek shall inherit the earth, but not this week.

  FIVE

  28

  Know thine enemy. I hoped I knew Eddie Foley. I had parked the car and was walking towards Rico’s in Sauchiehall Street. One reason I hoped I knew him was that, if I did, he would be there at this time. There was another reason that was more complicated.

  I needed him for what I was planning to try. I needed that my assessment of him should be accurate if the plan I had was to work. Like all of my plans, it wasn’t too tightly constructed — more free verse than rhyme. A plan for me is impulse with, hopefully, intelligence on its back. The rider will work out what the destination is as they go.

  There are as many variations of criminality as there are of social conformity. Just as the apparent openness of rectitude will have its hidden places where foul things may moulder in the dark so, in the shadowed lives of those outside the law, may sometimes be found concealed honesty and naive ideals. We may think of evil and good as separate states but they have no fixed borders. Any one of us may pass between them without declaring anything. We are all born to parents with passports entitling us to travel freely in both.

  Eddie Foley was an interesting example of dual cit
izenship. He was a criminal whose wife was a woman of seemingly unimpeachable decency. Married to Eddie, she may have been naive but she was honest. He had a daughter who was a teacher, a son who was studying agriculture. His love of family was no pretence. There had never been a whiff of womanising to his reputation. Word was he watched television a lot. He was not without cultural interests. I knew that he and his wife had membership of the Glasgow Film Theatre, where they seemed to go quite often. He had told me once that he was looking forward to having grandchildren.

  In his private life he was a model citizen. At work, it was different. His job was enabling evil. He didn’t fire any guns. He just kept the chambers oiled. He had worked with Matt Mason for a long time. Mason knew his own people. He knew what Eddie would do and what he wouldn’t, the delicate nature of his functions. Eddie would never be present when the sore things happened. He saw no serious crimes. Extreme violence and death were noises off in his life. But he understood people and he was a skilful administrator. He was a fixer who fixed what he was asked and took his wages.

  The endless adaptability of our compromises fascinates me. Bring a child up in a locked safe with an eye-slit at the bottom and I imagine it would learn to spend much of its life standing on its head, because that’s the way it sees the world. The compromise that was Eddie Foley’s life was a prize specimen of the species. He was a caring husband and father and a gentle citizen, who helped to arrange anonymous mayhem. He had a civic conscience that was housebound, a violence that was abstract.

  I had often wondered how he did it, how he kept walking the tightrope back and forth across the chasm of contradiction that divided the two halves of his life. Approaching Rico’s, I thought maybe his case wasn’t so strange — extreme but not strange. Perhaps the cost of guaranteeing the safety of his own had been the blunting of his conscience towards others. That wouldn’t make him strange. That would make him one of many — not some incomprehensibly alien expression of our lives, just demotic in italics. Big-scale or small-scale, comfort costs. Winners feed off losers. It was the system. Eddie was just playing the system.