The Papers of Tony Veitch by William McIlvanney Read Free Book Online Page B

the name belonged to his brief career as a boxer.
    Remembering his meeting tonight with Ernie Milligan, Macey had more reason than his natural curiosity for paying careful attention. He knew that Hook and Paddy Collins had once had a fall-out but he had never heard why. He wondered if it had been about something which wasn’t really over. But he found Hook’s performance convincing.
    â€˜Honest to God. Ah don’t know whit it’s all about, John. Ah don’t know.’
    â€˜Paddy Collins is dead,’ John said. ‘You don’t know anythin’ about that?’
    â€˜We were mates.’
    â€˜Ye weren’t always mates.’
    â€˜That trouble was all finished, John.’
    â€˜Maybe Cam doesny think so. This Sammy’s a friend of yours, Macey?’
    â€˜Aye. Well, an acquaintance, John. A harmless boay.’
    John looked at Dave McMaster. Macey regretted his last remark. He had only meant to make it clear to John that he wouldn’t have been responsible for introducing a trouble-maker to any of the pubs John looked after. But he realised that he had made Dave’s position worse by implying he was letting innocent people get molested. He hoped Dave wouldn’t hold it against him.
    â€˜But he’s fine,’ Macey offered as emendation. ‘No damage done. Except that the jacket looks like a tie-dye job now.’
    But in certain moods John was as easily amused as an old Glasgow Empire audience on a wet Tuesday. He was still looking at Dave. Being looked at in that way, Macey thought, would be like standing too near a furnace. You would want to back off.
    â€˜What’s Mickey Ballater doin’ up here? Who needs to re-import sewage? An’ Panda Paterson? Ah’ve done shites that could beat him.’
    â€˜He wis no problem, John,’ Dave said. ‘But Ah didny want tae get involved wi’ Cam without your say-so. That’s serious business. That wis all.’
    John was staring at him.
    â€˜Ah hope so,’ he said. ‘Minding a place means lookin’ after everybody. Let wan wanker toss off in yer face an’ they’ll be organisin’ bus-trips. Bein’ cheeky in the Crib could get tae be a fashion.’
    He sipped his tea. He wasn’t really deciding anything. He was letting it be decided for him. Deliberation wasn’t his forte.Anger was. Sitting there, he was coaxing it out of its kennel, presenting it with fragments of what had happened like giving it the scent of a quarry.
    â€˜Open-plan pub?’ he said. ‘Oh, ah doubt that won’t do. We’ll have tae see which way he wants it. If that’s how he’s goin’ to be, we might have tae make his rib-cage open-plan. Ah’ll punch holes in ’im big enough for birds tae nest in.’
    He looked at Macey.
    â€˜Fix it up.’
    â€˜When, John?’
    â€˜Right now.’
    â€˜For here?’
    â€˜Naw. Let him choose. It doesny matter where. But be right back. Ah want tae see him right away.’
    Macey left the tea that he had hardly touched and went for the door.
    â€˜Macey. Maybe ye’d better make it near a hospital.’
    John Rhodes smiled, an event as cheerful as the winter solstice.

 
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    9
    G lasgow has them like every city, the urban bedouin. With the disorientation of the alcoholic and the down-and-out, they shift locations but their vagrancy has trade-routes. Places are in for a season and then get abandoned, like spas where the springs have dried.
    Laidlaw knew Eck well enough to have a very rough chart of his preferences. There were brief spells – in the past few years infrequent – when he vanished into what some said was respectability, a proper house. Certainly, he usually re-emerged wearing a coat that looked less like a dump with buttons, but not for long.
    Outside those times, he was roughly predictable. Even disintegration can be routine. Winters had been Talbot House or the