The Papers of Tony Veitch

by William McIlvanney

  ‘Jack. Leave it just now.’

  ‘Okay, darlin’.’

  He smiled at her suddenly, his generous mouth a place she would like to explore. They knew they had access to each other at last. The point of their night till now became a strange wooing, a stillness around each other, a waiting for signs, a delicate keeping of balance until they could move. They moved. He found again the sheer openness of her, the preparedness for anything to happen. She found again his gentle aggressiveness, his desire to overwhelm her into herself. They hunted each other remorselessly over their bodies. He conjured her out with his fingers. She sucked him alive with her mouth. They made a fierce meeting. The end of it was like getting lost in each other.

  Beached on their mutual exhaustion, they saw their clothes like part of the shipwreck. Her pants were beside the fire. Her skirt hung strange from a chair. Her blouse was crumpled surprisingly small. His trousers and underpants were the one truncated garment, like lined shorts. Her brassiere lay far away in an odd place. They both realised he was still wearing his shirt. The fire was mottling their legs.

  He gave them both cigarettes and they smoked, adjusting the heat by moving away from it. They were as natural as cats. His arm around her felt as if she had been born with it there. When he threw the stub of his cigarette in the fire, she knew what would happen. She felt his arm go limp. He was asleep. She put her own stub away, gave him some minutes.

  ‘Jack,’ she said. ‘Jack darling.’

  He didn’t move.

  ‘Jack.’ Her voice was touching him as softly as her hands had. ‘Let’s go to bed.’

  His eyes opened like a doll’s. He stared at the ceiling.

  ‘Jan! You all right, darlin’? What’s the problem?’

  ‘No problem. I think we should go to bed.’

  He sat up slowly.

  ‘I think we should.’

  He stood up not too steadily. His shirt was like farce, a pretence of concealment that hid nothing. She lay back on the floor and laughed, being honestly naked.

  ‘Oh aye,’ he said sleepily. ‘Nice to furnish amusement.’

  He put the meshed fireguard in front of the fire. He stood vaguely doing nothing, threatening to fall asleep on his feet. Then he took Tony Veitch’s message she had been reading, folded it lengthwise and put it in the inside pocket of his jacket that was over a chair. He was handcuffing himself to tomorrow, even though he was drunk.

  ‘It’s bed then, lovely,’ he said.

  She lay looking at him. The fierceness of her love for him was more than he could find ways to avoid, she knew. He was going to settle for her, she decided. She understood his grief for the failure of his family. She would give him time to get over it. She stood up, knowing how right she looked naked.

  ‘Right, Jack Laidlaw. We’re going to bed.’

  He nodded long enough to suggest senility.

  ‘And all your worries can wait till tomorrow.’

  ‘Aye, right enough,’ he said as he put out the light. ‘They’ll be there all right. They get delivered with the milk.’

  30

  Harkness passed the photocopied sheet across to Bob Lilley. Bob shook his head and retired behind his whisky like a drawbridge.

  ‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘Not interested. I don’t even understand that stuff. The bit I’ve looked at reads like a cerebral haemorrhage. So the boy’s head burst. I don’t have to poke among the pieces. I get enough of that.’

  They were downstairs in the Top Spot. They were a wake of three but seemed unable to agree on the identity of the corpse. Bob was utterly and finally in dismay with Laidlaw, wondered if he was contemplating a dead friendship. Harkness wasn’t sure how much of his respect for Laidlaw could survive this. Laidlaw seemed to be mourning the still-birth of some understanding he had almost achieved.

  Even their appearances suggested different events. Bob and Harkness were spruce. Bob looked healthy and dependable in his checked shirt, neat tie and hacking jacket. Harkness wouldn’t have been out of place at a disco. Laidlaw looked hellish, his face raw with sleeplessness, his eyes strained, as if he’d spent the night trying to decipher Tony Veitch’s garbled message.

  Bob fingered his glass and looked pointedly away from their table, seemed trying to associate himself with the normalcy of the others in the bright room. He whistled infinitesimally under his breath. What hurt him most was what he suspected was the motivation for Laidlaw’s dissatisfaction. He wished Jack would leave it alone. He dreaded having to discover that Jack had come down with that mean jealousy of colleagues that was familiar to him in some other policemen, something Bob had always been sure he was immune to.

  ‘You should read that more carefully, Bob,’ Laidlaw said.

  With reluctance Bob abandoned his fascinating study of the wall on his left-hand side.

  ‘Why, Jack? Why should I do that?’ He pointed at the sheet lying on the table. ‘That’s just a production. Like a bloodstained knife. Or a button off a jacket. Not even an interesting production. We don’t even need it, because the case is as tight as an earwig’s arse. That. Is just a piece of addled brains, Jack. That stuff offends me, that’s all it does. Nothing else. I’m not interested in his wanky theories about why he did it – just that he did it, the bastard. And I’m just grateful that he didn’t get round to people who were slightly less expendable than those two. No offence to auld Eck but he’d had his whack. And made an arse of it. He was just finishing his apprenticeship drinking paraquat, wasn’t he? And Paddy Collins was just pollution. They should’ve given Veitch a civic reception for that one.’ He lifted the sheet and let it fall back on the table. ‘But don’t ask me to take an interest in that shite. Look. If I find somebody disembowelled, I don’t have to take the entrails home in a bag to study them. That’s not my job. And it’s not yours either.’

  ‘That’s not the writing of a murderer.’

  ‘Jesus Christ.’ Bob looked at Harkness and smiled, as if humour were aloes. ‘How the hell would you know that?’

  ‘Because I can read.’

  ‘Can you? Very good. Me, I’m still attacking the Beano with one finger. Come on. I may not be as clever as you, Jack. And I’m certainly not as clever as you think you are. Who is? But I’ve glanced at that bit of paper. He was as daft as a brush. And you know it. He could’ve done anything.’

  ‘No. I don’t think so. If he was daft, he was daft in the one direction. John-the-Baptist-daft. A wee one-man religion. A do-it-yourself martyr. Poor bastard.’

  Bob finished his whisky slowly. The glance he gave Harkness was a small act of collusion, a signal that he was going to say what was in both of their heads.

  ‘Jack. I think everybody but you realises there’s something funny happening here.’

  Laidlaw looked up at him slowly and assessingly.

  ‘Nothing you’ve said justifies your refusal to see this case as closed.’

  ‘So what does that mean?’

  ‘It means there has to be another reason.’

  Laidlaw looked at Harkness, who happened to be studying the table at the time.

  ‘And you’re decorating it with a lot of fancy rationalisations.’

  ‘What reason would that be, Bob?’

  Their eyes were a steady confrontation.

  ‘I’m not sure. But I’ll tell you what I think it is. I know you don’t get on too well with Big Ernie. But he’s a good polisman. And he did the job. Before you. And I think you better just accept that, Jack. Put your wee hurt pride away. It’s getting in the road of your brains.’

  ‘Bob. Come on.’ Laidlaw looked again at Harkness. ‘Brian?’

  Harkness shook his head at him.

  ‘Jack. The case looks clean to me.’

  ‘I think you should watch the area you’re moving into, Jack,’ Bob said. ‘This job would make a saint go sour. And you were never that to begin with. But I’ve always thought you were at least generous.’

  ‘What makes you think I’m not?’

 
‘The way you are just now. Your head’s trying to see round corners. Just to steal the scone off Ernie’s plate. What’s that about? And another thing. I know you’ve just been reprimanded by the Commander. Again. And I know why. And you deserved it. You knew about Tony Veitch before Ernie did. You knew about the possible connection and you didn’t pass it on. That’s a liberty, Jack. That’s what that is.’

  ‘It was a decision I made, that’s all.’

  ‘Aye, but why? Are you sure why, Jack? That was a dangerous decision. We’re dealing in people’s lives. It’s not a question of who gets the merit badges.’

  ‘Bob. It’s exactly because we’re dealing in lives that I didn’t pass it on. It’s exactly because I don’t care about making pinches for their own sake. Because I don’t want any mistakes. And I think that’s what happened. You can say I was wrong. But not for those shitty reasons.’

  ‘Maybe not.’

  ‘Anyway. Somebody sure enough passed it on.’

  ‘Thank Christ. It’s a good thing Ernie didn’t have to rely on you. I’m worried about you. I don’t want to think of you as jealous and I don’t want to think of you as mean. But it’s getting harder.’

  ‘Well, I’ll help by getting another drink.’

  He collected their glasses.

  ‘Why not buy yourself something decent this time?’ Bob said. ‘That lime-juice and soda’s giving me the blues. Maybe it’s just alcohol-starvation that’s wrong with you.’

  Laidlaw went along to the bar. The attractive waitress, who still hadn’t been discovered, looked at him quizzically as he went past but he ignored her. Bob sighed like a pair of bellows, his hands covering his face. The hands came down till they were over his mouth and he looked at Harkness, shaking his head. He smoothed back what was left of his hair, double-handed.

  ‘It’s a problem, Brian,’ he said. ‘I think you should watch him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he cracked up. Why can’t he leave anything alone? Look at him.’ Harkness looked up at Laidlaw standing bleak at the bar, like an undertaker at a wedding. ‘He’s doing the gantry stare.’ It was a phrase they shared to describe a recurring moment of bleak stillness that happened in Laidlaw’s eyes and appeared to mean some thing like, ‘This won’t do.’ The gantry was probably irrelevant to that mood. It was just that there was frequently one in front of him at the time. ‘He’s been knocked onto his horse on the road to Damascus again. Oh my Christ! You know that Paul Newman film? Cool Hand Luke? Well, I know who Jack is. He’s Cool Head Luke. Don’t let his anger kid you on. There’s always a few of the brain-cells in the deep-freeze. When they bury him, he’ll be watching how they do it. He’ll have peep-holes in the coffin. Probably shove the lid back and sit up. Say, “Wait a minute! Your grief looks a bit suspect. You can piss off. The rest of you, let’s try it again. Okay?” He’ll lie back down. A dozen times later, he won’t get up. And they can all go home.’

  Harkness laughed.

  ‘No kidding, though, Brian. He’s in a dangerous frame of mind. Try not to let him blow his career. He could, you know. Anytime.’

  Laidlaw returned with Bob’s whisky and Harkness’s lager. He had bought himself a double Antiquary.

  ‘No, Bob,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, Jack,’ Bob said. ‘Let’s talk about the weather. You know they’re going to alter this place? Call it “the Opera Bar”. You know, since the Scottish Opera took it over. How about that for a bit of fascinating chat?’

  ‘No, Bob. You’re wrong. I don’t grudge Ernie Milligan the case. So long as he got it right. But he didn’t. What seems to have happened isn’t what actually happened.’

  Bob watered his whisky, sampled it and spoke to Laidlaw with an elaborate patience that suggested he was just keeping him humoured until the strait-jacket arrived.

  ‘Is that right, Jack? How do you make that out?’

  ‘Nothing he wrote suggests a murderer.’

  ‘Oh, Jack. Did Christie advertise? What do you want them to do? Leave signatures?’

  ‘On the bottle that killed Eck,’ Laidlaw said. ‘Two sets of fingerprints. One of them’s Eck’s. The other lot don’t belong to Tony Veitch.’

  Bob was momentarily interested.

  ‘You’ve checked that off?’

  Laidlaw nodded.

  ‘He gave a mate a drink,’ Bob said. ‘Didn’t he? They’re sharers, winos. Who wants his liver to die alone?’

  ‘They said he didn’t share. You remember that, Brian?’

  ‘Aye, that’s right,’ Harkness said.

  ‘That’s what some of them said,’ Bob said. ‘So maybe he had a special friend. Or somebody made a grab for the bottle. Thinner than a witch’s tit, Jack. To establish the value of that, you’d have to fingerprint every rummy in Glasgow.’

  ‘Oh, I think we could make a shorter leet than that. And what actually ties Tony Veitch to the killings?’

  ‘Only the knife that did Paddy Collins and a tin of paraquat.’

  ‘There were no prints on the paraquat tin.’

  ‘So he wiped them off.’

  ‘And kept the tin in his flat. What sense does that make?’

  ‘Enough.’

  ‘No. Not quite enough.’

  ‘His prints were on the knife all right.’

  ‘They could have been put there easily enough. Only his prints were found in the flat. But there were plenty of smudges consistent with the wearing of gloves.’

  ‘Pimples, Jack. They don’t alter the essential features of the case.’ Bob smiled, as if he had suddenly remembered how much he liked Laidlaw. ‘Tell us, O wise one, what really happened. Eh?’

  Laidlaw neutralised the facetiousness by taking the question seriously.

  ‘It’s what didn’t happen I think we should start from. Tony Veitch didn’t commit suicide. At least, I don’t think he did. He was manic to talk to the world. Suicide tends to amputate your larynx. I know how thin that is, Bob. I’ve done this job long enough to know the kind of somersaults the head can take. I know we often express our most intense feelings by doing the opposite. The more desperate the talker, the more effectively he defines his own silence. The bit he knows he’ll never be able to say. So maybe Tony Veitch went in the huff with the world. Because it wouldn’t listen. Or killed himself just because of the distance between his ideals and the things he’d done. If he’d done them. It could’ve been like that. But I don’t think so. I think somebody did him and set it up to look like suicide. And I think I know who did it. But I don’t expect anybody else to agree with me.’

  ‘That’s a relief,’ Harkness said. ‘Who, though?’

  ‘Unfair to say. But I’m going to do a bit of scuffling myself today, Brian. Nothing too official, like.’

  ‘Jack. I’ll come with you.’

  ‘No. I think I’m going to need you later on. If I get what I’m looking for. And I’ll be in touch. But I’m going to hassle a few people first. And you shouldn’t be involved in that.’

  Bob was staring at Laidlaw.

  ‘Jack,’ he said. ‘Maybe you shouldn’t have gone on to the hard stuff. You seem to get pissed very quick. Maybe you’re not used to it now.’

  Laidlaw smiled and drank the whisky.

  ‘You going to get me another one?’ he said to Bob,

  ‘I’ll do that,’ Harknes said and winked at Bob as he left.

  ‘Not for me, Brian,’ Bob said. ‘They must be spiking it. Come on, you,’ to Laidlaw. ‘You’ve been a mug. But you’re trying to graduate to being a loony too quick. What’s this you’re talking about?’

  ‘It’s what I’m going to do.’

  ‘Who you going to see?’

  ‘Some people.’

  ‘Stick the mystery up your arse, Jack. Tell me what you’re going to do. I may have to go bail.’

  ‘Forget it. I’ll stand by anything I do.’

  ‘Listen, bloody Robin Hood. You’ve got a career. If you do this, tomorrow you may not have.’

  ‘Naw. You listen. I’ve got a life. That’s
more than any career. And I wouldn’t be able to spend it sitting beside myself if I let this pass. And this case isn’t right. Some bastard’s put it together like a Meccano-set. And I’m going to take it apart. Three people are dead. And their bodies are buried in lies. Not on! Not for me it’s not. That’s why I’m here, supposed to be. To arrive at whatever half-arsed version of the truth’s available. And that’s what I’m going to do. If I have to break in doors to do it.’

  Harkness was back at the table. Laidlaw stood up, watered his drink and downed it.

  ‘Thanks, Brian. I’ll be in touch.’

  ‘Jack,’ Bob said. ‘Don’t work so hard at getting it wrong. You’ll get it wrong anyway. Everybody does.’

  Laidlaw went out. Harkness sat down. Bob was staring blankly round the room. Harkness lowered his head, put his hand on his brow and studied the pattern of beads on the surface of his lager.

  ‘You think we should take up a collection for his widow?’ he muttered.

  ‘I’ve worked out the way to beat Jack with words,’ Bob said. Harkness looked at him.

  ‘Batter him unconscious with a copy of the Oxford Dictionary.’

  31

  Gus Hawkins was alone in his flat. He admitted Laidlaw to an atmosphere he remembered from his own brief time as a student. There was an old armchair near the window, with several books lying round it and on the arm an open paperback of The Psychopathology of Everyday Life with heavy underlinings in biro. There was a can of export on the floor beside the chair. Sunlight shone on the open pages of the book, seeming to hackle that delicate fur the surface of cheap paper has.

  It was a still life of studenthood, evocative of long hours spent alone, intense head-wrestling matches with the dead, endless arguments on which the world depended, cups of coffee at strange hours, time contracted to a pellet and dissolved to disappearance. Laidlaw remembered his own discovery that his mind was there and knew the poignancy of possibilities felt in this kind of book-lined womb before career or circumstances yank you out. The awareness made his impulsiveness pause, but only briefly.