We headed back along the gloomy, porcelain-tiled corridors towards the exit. My head hurt like a bastard and the lurching in my gut was turning into determined heaving. I stopped off in the washroom and only just made it to the cubicle before I vomited. After I finished retching I went over to the wash-hand basins and splashed cold water on my face. When I looked into the mirror I saw a wraith with deep blue shadows under its eyes set into a bleached face. No wonder the ladies found me so damned attractive. The harsh hospital lighting threw up the hard angles of my face: the sharp, high cheekbones and the arch of my brow. The faint scars on my cheek, the reminders of an encounter with a German hand grenade, seemed more noticeable. I smoothed my black hair back with the palms of my hands. A plastic surgeon had had to do a bit of tidying up after my adventure with German munitions and it had left me with taut skin that accentuated my features. One thing I got a lot, especially from women, was that they thought I looked a little like the actor Jack Palance. Women seemed to like my face. I’d been told I had a handsome face but it had a touch of cruelty in it. That’s why they liked it and that’s why I hated it.
‘You fucking coming?’ Sneddon was at the door of the washroom.
‘Sure,’ I said, sniffing and drying my face with a paper hand towel. ‘I’m coming. I’ve got work to do.’
I took one more look at the face in the mirror; it seemed to me it looked a little more cruel.
Singer drove me back to my digs in the Atlantic. Halfway there, I had to get him to pull over to the kerb so I could throw up again. I felt dizzy and sick, and had that feeling of unreality that comes with concussion. It wasn’t the first time I’d been clobbered on the head and it probably wouldn’t be the last, despite a doctor warning me that my skull had had just about all the punishment it could take.
It was just before eleven-thirty when Singer parked outside my flat. He helped me to the door. I thanked him and he nodded: we were bosom chums now. He went back out onto the street and climbed into the green Rover that Twinkletoes had followed us in. I didn’t go up to my room right away. There was silence from the Whites’ flat so I was as quiet as I could be as I dialled Lorna’s number. I let it ring a long time. Still no answer.
I went up to my rooms and poured myself a whisky. It was a mistake: the first swallow made me retch. I was getting too old for this kind of malarkey. I decided that I’d probably have to have my head examined in the morning; not an unusual state of affairs but this time not metaphorically.
Before the war, when I’d been a kid in New Brunswick, I’d been handy with a pencil or paint brush and had given serious thought to studying art at the college in Halifax. Then the war had come along. Fact was that I was still handy with a pencil, and before I did anything else I took a clean sheet of paper and a pencil from the sideboard drawer, sat down and sketched out what I could remember of the jade figure I had seen in the farm cottage. When I was finished my head hurt even more but I was satisfied with the image I’d drawn. Not exact, but it was my memory rather than my abilities that let me down.
When I was finished, I drank some water from the tap, splashed my face again and pressed a damp towel against the egg behind my ear. I needed to pull myself together. I shaved and changed my clothes; my suit bore the traces of country life and I needed to feel freshened up. I drank some more water, this time swallowing more than the recommended dosage of aspirin with it: a stomach ulcer was the least of my worries at the moment.
I hit the street again just before midnight, climbed wearily into the Atlantic and drove down to Pollokshields.
When I got to Lorna’s house, Benny Goodman was ‘Stompin’ at the Savoy’. In fact, he was stompin’ so hard I could hear him from the drive as I pulled up. The front door was unlocked and I let myself in. There was no sign of Maggie, Jack Collins, or any other semi-detached members of the MacFarlane dynasty.
I found Lorna in the living room, dancing with the air along to the full-volume Benny Goodman record. In Lorna’s case it should have been ‘Staggerin’ at the Savoy’, and I hooked an arm around her waist and guided her over to the sofa. I discovered she had been clutching a hidden dancing partner to her breast. I pried the tumbler full of malt from her grasp and eased her down onto the chesterfield.
‘Well, hi, handsome.’ She breathed fumes that could have fuelled a jet into my face and smiled at me in an unfocussed, cold sort of way. It was a look I was used to in Glasgow: Scottish truculence is a craftsman’s work, filtered through peat and sheep droppings and distilled till it’s a hundred proof. ‘Long time no see.’
I went over to the record player and tore the needle from its groove. Benny stopped stompin’ and I hoped the neighbours hadn’t already ’phoned the police.
‘This doesn’t help you know, Lorna,’ I said, placing the Scotch on the side table and out of her reach.
‘Nor do you. You don’t help much, do you, Lennox?’ She pushed at my chest as if ridding herself of a great annoyance. ‘So what do I owe the pleasure of your company?’
‘I read the papers. I wanted to see how you are.’
‘Well you’ve seen. You may go…’ She approximated a regal wave of dismissal.
‘Not until you’ve sobered up, Lorna. I’ll make some coffee.’
‘Fuck the coffee. Fuck you, Lennox.’ It was the first time I’d heard Lorna utter a profanity. ‘Oh… is that what you want? You want me to fuck you, Lennox? We have such a deep and meaningful relationship, don’t we, sweetheart?’
‘Lorna, be quiet. I’ve been trying to get in touch with you all day. I didn’t realize you were working so hard on tomorrow’s hangover. I’ll get you some water while the coffee’s on.’ I went through to the kitchen, filled the kettle and put it on the stove. Ditching the malt in the sink, I rinsed the glass and brought it back to Lorna, filled with water. Lorna looked at it disdainfully but I sat next to her and waited until she had drunk it all down.
‘I’m sorry, Lorna. I should have been here more often,’ I said, and meant it. ‘It’s just that I’ve been tied up with a few things, including looking into some of the deals your father was into. I thought that I might find out something about his death. But that all seems redundant now. Have the police spoken to you about the arrest?’
Another dismissive wave. Less regal this time. ‘They showed me a photograph. Asked if I’d seen him before.’
‘Had you?’
She shook her head sullenly. ‘Some bloody gyppo. He must’ve followed Dad home from Shawfields a few times to learn his routine. Then waited for him…’
‘Is that what the police told you?’
‘They told me nothing. They talked to Maggie for a while and then Jack.’
‘Jack Collins?’
‘Yes… He’s family,’ she said with what I took as a bitter laugh. There again, everything about her was bitter.
‘The gyppo must’ve broken in and waited until…’ She started to cry. ‘Daddy…’
I put my arm around her and she pulled away.
‘Have you eaten?’
She shrugged. I went through to the kitchen and made the coffee and some toast. Again I had to overcome her resistance before she drank the coffee and ate the toast. I took some coffee too and managed to keep it down. The aspirin was beginning to work on my headache: like a butterfly trying to wear away a cannonball with its wing.
We sat for an hour, saying nothing, me topping her up with coffee. Eventually the inevitable happened and she had to run for the toilet. When she came back, her face was grey-white and the streaked make-up stood out like flaking paint. We made a handsome couple. I made her drink more coffee. Gradually, her voice became less slurred and her hatred of me less intense.