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 Great Eastern Hotel, a name that sat on the Duke Street doss-house like a top-hat on a turd. In easier weather, he had favoured the East End around Glasgow Green and the decaying, still unredeveloped area south west of Gorbals Street.
Harkness had been worried about Laidlaw since they set out on foot from the office. He knew Laidlaw’s belief in what he sometimes called ‘absorbing the streets’, as if you could solve crime by osmosis. Apart from being of dubious effectiveness, it was sore on the feet. Sometimes the preoccupied conversation that went with it wasn’t a very soothing accompaniment, like watching a hamster desperately going nowhere in a revolving cage.
‘Paddy Collins mentioned on Eck’s bit of paper. Paddy Collins dead. What connection could Eck have with Paddy Collins’ death? Did Milligan tell you anything else?’
‘No. Just that.’
‘Did he say anybody had been at the Vicky when he was there?’
‘Paddy’s wife. And I suppose Cam.’
They were passing a phone-box.
‘It’s weird. Wait and I’ll try that number again.’
They went into the box and Laidlaw dialled it from memory. Harkness could understand why. It was the fourth time Laidlaw had tried it since they had started walking. This time it answered at the twelfth ring. Laidlaw’s eyes were like a small boy’s at Christmas. He nodded Harkness in to share the ear-piece as he inserted the money.
‘Hullo,’ Laidlaw said.
‘Hullo?’ It was a woman’s voice.
‘Hullo. Who’s speaking, please?’
‘Hullo, hullo?’ She sounded elderly.
‘Who’s speaking, please?’
‘Hullo. This is Mrs Wotherspoon. Who are you, son?’
‘Excuse me,’ Laidlaw said, winking at Harkness. ‘I just want to check I’ve got the right number. What address is that you’re speaking from?’
‘Address? This is a public phone-box, son. I was just passin’ there an’ I heard it ringin’. I’m on ma way to the chiropodist’s. Ma feet are givin’ me laldy. It takes me about ten minutes tae pass a phone-box the way Ah walk. That’s probably why Ah heard ye.’
Harkness was wheezing silently, his face red with suppressed laughter, and winking elaborately back at Laidlaw. Laidlaw looked as if he’d been given a stockingful of ashes for his Christmas.
‘Where is the phone-box, love?’ he asked.
‘It’s one of the two boxes at the corner of Queen Margaret Drive and Wilton Street. What is it, son? Ye tryin’ to make contact with somebody? Can Ah help ye?’
‘Look, love,’ Laidlaw said. ‘I’m sorry I bothered you. It’s a wrong number. Thanks for your help.’
‘Not at all.’
‘I hope you get the feet sorted out.’
‘So do Ah, son. So do Ah. Ah’ve got feet here like two Mother’s Pride loafs. Ta, ta, son.’
‘Cheerio.’
As they walked on, Laidlaw accepted Harkness’s mickeytaking. But it didn’t prevent him from quickly resuming his preoccupation.
‘Well, it’s something,’ he said. ‘That’s that dealt with. Paddy Collins is incommunicado. “The Crib” is too general to mean anything to us just now. That leaves the Pollokshields address and the mysterious Lynsey Farren. We’ll see what they yield after we check this out.’
Laidlaw and Harkness stayed north of the river at first. They checked part of the Green roughly, coming out past the strange, ornate façade of Templeton’s Carpet Factory.
‘Some smashing buildings in the city,’ Harkness said. ‘But you never notice them.’
Laidlaw agreed.
‘This job gives you tunnel vision,’ he said.
They wandered weirdly. Harkness began to worry even more about Laidlaw. There was a compulsion in the way Laidlaw kept walking. It was ruthless. He stopped strange people, described Eck to them and asked them if they had seen him lately. Harkness was beginning to get embarrassed.
This wasn’t what they taught you in police college. This was as cute as walking naked down the street. And yet, in some odd way, it was working. Nobody got alarmed. Harkness reflected that in Glasgow openness is the only safe-conduct pass. Try to steal a march and they’ll ambush you from every close. They hate to be had. Come on honestly and their tolerance can be great.
One man typified it. He was small, with a gammy leg. He was carrying what looked like a poke of rolls. When Laidlaw stopped him, he nodded with instant wisdom into his questions.
‘Christ, aye. Big Tammy Adamson’s boay. No problem. Ah can tell ye exactly. When Big Tammy sellt the shoap in Govanhill, Alec went tae sea. The Merchant Navy. As far as Ah know, he’s still there yet. A nice big boay. Aboot six-feet two.’
‘Naw,’ Laidlaw said. ‘Not the same fella.’
‘Well. He sounds awfu’ like ’im. Good luck, anyway. It’s the only Eck Adamson Ah know.’
‘Thanks,’ Laidlaw said.
‘For what? Ah’ve enjoyed the chance tae rest ma leg. Cheers, boays.’
In their travels, they found a few isolated groups of derelicts and talked to them. One group round a fire directed them to the south side of the river. The information was probably as helpful as a wooden compass. But they had nothing else.
They crossed the river by the Suspension Bridge. Nothing happened for a time. But after a lot more walking, they saw five people behind the Caledonia Road Church. It was a striking moment. They were four men and a woman in a difficult conspiracy. One man had a bottle and a deep argument was going on. Plato never had it harder.
Against the backdrop of the church, they looked small and yet they put it in perspective. Burned in the sixties, the shell of the building remains a monument to nineteenth century confidence, an eroding certainty about what God’s like. They bickered stridently in its shadow like a rival sect.
‘Hullo there,’ Laidlaw said, and for Harkness the remark turned the day into another wavelength. Laidlaw’s attempt at conversation with them was like trying to communicate with a ship sinking in mid-Atlantic when you’re on the shore.
‘Furraff,’ one of them said, a small man whose face dereliction had made a gargoyle. ‘Furraff, is oors.’
The woman giggled, an eerily coquettish sound that belonged behind a fan. She looked at the small man with roguish appreciation, as if he had just produced one of his better epigrams. The other three were still ignoring Laidlaw and Harkness.
‘Furraff,’ the small man repeated.
He moved towards Laidlaw in a way that was both threatening and touching, a vaguely remembered style still carried around like an unloaded gun.
‘I just want to ask you something,’ Laidlaw said. ‘Did anybody here know Eck Adamson? I know you.’ Laidlaw pointed at the man with the bottle. ‘I’ve seen you with him.’
They all paused. The man with the bottle stood swaying, drawing his dignity round him like an opera cloak. His irises had a furry look.
‘Ah know all there is to know aboot boats,’ somebody said. ‘Can make a boat speak.’
‘I beg your pardon, captain,’ the man with the bottle said. ‘You were addressing me?’
The formal politeness was a bizarre anomaly in his state of savage ruin.
‘Yes,’ Laidlaw said. ‘You knew Eck Adamson.’
The man seemed to be leafing through a mental engagement-book of fair dimensions.
‘I have that pleasure.’
‘Had. He’s dead.’
‘Greedy wee man,’ somebody said.
‘Bereft,’ the man with the bottle said. ‘Bereft.’
He took a drink and passed it to the woman. While the others drank, Laidlaw explained what had happened and asked the man if he knew where Eck might have been hanging out lately. Only fragments seemed to register.