All the Colours of the Town by Liam McIlvanney Read Free Book Online Page B

sex offender on early release had assaulted a woman in Queen’s Park. The news would break tomorrow and the tabloids would go for Lyons, calling on him to intervene. He wanted me to draw the sting on Sunday with a piece blaming the Lord Advocate. When I tucked the notebook away, Lyons clapped his big hands and rubbed them together.
    A waiter bore down on us, promisingly, and passed on, his two plates bound for other stomachs, and I rode the little stab of disappointment.
    ‘How’re things down there, then? How’s Rix?’
    Lyons’s phone jiggled on the tablecloth, like a beetle trying to right itself. He opened it, checked the number, and closed it again.
    ‘How’s Norman?’
    A smile was already snagging his lips. He loved to hear Rix getting slagged.
    ‘Rix? The Englishman abroad?’ A vegetable smell – asparagus? fennel? – rose from the table behind. I hadn’t realised I was hungry till the waiter passed us over. The bread basket was empty.
    ‘Stormin’ Norman. He’s, like, the worst news we’ve ever carried. This sentimental cynicism. He’s a fucking zealot. I’m right and you’re all wrong. Doesn’t matter the numbers don’t back him.’ I looked over Lyons’s shoulder; a head flashed past the porthole in the kitchen door. ‘In a month or two he’ll be flying round the Quay, handing folk their cards. He’ll still be wrong, but the numbers’ll look better.’
    ‘Heavy weather, eh? The new regime.’
    ‘What can you do? They don’t last for ever.’
    ‘You said it.’ He was smiling.
    ‘What?’
    ‘I’m saying nothing.’
    His smile wouldn’t be quelled. Even when he frowned at the tablecloth it kept springing back.
    ‘MacLaren?’
    He rolled his eyes innocently.
    ‘You mean, you wish?’
    ‘No.’ He shook his head briskly. ‘No, he told me himself . He doesn’t want to fight the next election. He’s standing down next month. He wants to announce it at conference.’
    ‘Why? What is it?’
    ‘I don’t know. His wife’s ill. He’s had enough. He wants to spend more time on Mull. He’s nearly sixty, Gerry. He’s by with it.’
    I sighed. ‘Tch. And no one waiting to fill the breach.’
    He grinned. The waiter was back and this time it was us. He set the plates down and the warm bland reek of the tatties rose with the uriney tang of the fish.
    ‘Who else has it?’
    I had my notebook out once more. He put down the salt and swept his hand towards me in a showman’s flourish.
    ‘For real?’
    ‘Would I trust such an item to anyone else? Only, don’t sit on it; if he’s told me, you know?’
    I lifted my knife and fork. The waiter was back again, with a peppermill the size of a rifle. He presented it to Lyons, gave its base three sharp twists and then clutched it diagonally to his chest. I waved him away.
    ‘By the by, Gerry, the photo? The one you used last time? Desperate. I’ll get Bryce to send one over.’
    ‘Uh-huh.’
    Leave the big shots, Eric told me. Eric Aitken, this was. My first week at the Tribune . Don’t waste your time. The leaders, the lieutenants. They’ll only spill what suits them. Look to the new ones, the up-and-comers. It’s like the cuddies, he said. Study the field. Pick out a couple. Cultivate them. Take them to lunch, slip their names into your copy, talk them up a little. When they rise, they take you with them.
    He was right. The only advice I was ever offered, and I took it. And I chose well. Not the others, maybe, not the two or three rookies I’d coaxed and flattered, but Lyons, whom I’d rated from the start. It was pure luck. I caught him at the City Halls, at the start of the referendum campaign . It was a yes-camp rally: ‘Scotland United’. He took the stage like a boxer, his big shoulders rolling, and faced the mike. Nobody knew him. But he frowned out into the crowd and started to talk. The big flat hand – chop, chop – falling in time with the words. He had the trick of rhythm, starting low and calm and then throwing out