‘One of our favourite spots,’ the man said and started to walk. Laidlaw and Harkness went with him while the others straggled behind.
They didn’t have far to go. He stopped on a waste lot where the ashes of a dead fire suggested an abandoned camp-site. The man was nodding. The others joined them.
‘Did anyone get in touch with him that you saw?’ Laidlaw asked. ‘A stranger.’
‘A young man perhaps. A benefactor perhaps.’
Harkness understood Laidlaw’s expression. The questions were probably no more than the spurs to creative fantasy in the man. He had the drunk’s disconcerting technique of hibernating between remarks.
‘Yes. There was a young man. John? David? Alec? Patrick?’
‘Thanks,’ Laidlaw said. ‘Do you remember his second names as well?’
‘We don’t use second names here.’
‘He wouldny share,’ the small man said.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Had a bottle. Wouldny share. Basta.’
Laidlaw gave the dignified man a fifty-pence piece.
‘Many thanks. At the moment I’m slightly devoid of funds.’
They dispersed as vaguely as fog.
‘Useful information,’ Harkness said.
They were standing aimlessly on the waste lot.
‘Let’s look,’ Laidlaw said.
‘What for? A visiting card?’
‘Anything. Just bloody look!’
They did. After a dusty half-hour, Harkness turned up a bottle in a niche of the wall and hidden with loose bricks. It was a Lanliq wine-bottle with a screw top. It contained something dark.
Lifting it gingerly by the neck, Laidlaw unscrewed the cork and smelt. It meant nothing he recognised. He looked at Harkness.
‘We’ve got to go in and get a car anyway. Let’s take it with us.’
‘Sure,’ Harkness said. ‘We might get something back on the bottle.’
‘But I’m not humphing this. We’ll get a taxi.’
It seemed a simple enough idea but it led to one of those impromptu moments of Glaswegian cabaret in which the city abounds. Having flagged a cab down, Laidlaw, with a sense of camouflage that was instinctive to him, gave a destination near Pitt Street. And things began immediately with a green car pulling out without warning in front of their driver.
‘Away, you!’ their driver bellowed. ‘Ah hope yer wheels fa’ aff.’
He was a man who looked in his late thirties with thinning, curly hair and he was obviously an extreme sufferer from that contemporary ailment, urban choler.
‘Bastards,’ he said, jerking his head as if he was riding the world’s punches.
He was one of those taxi-drivers who do up their cab like a wee house on wheels. There was fancy carpeting and instead of advertisements on the base of the fold-up seats he had pasted on pictures of a couple of Highland scenes, the Three Sisters of Glencoe and the Ballachulish Ferry before the bridge was built. He had woollen baubles hanging from the inside mirror and plastic footballers, Rangers and Celtic, over the dashboard-switches. It was like taking a ride inside someone’s psyche.
‘Ye fancy some music, boays?’
His eyes in the mirror suggested refusal might be a capital offence. They murmured non-committally and he switched on a tape.
‘Magic him, intae? James Last, eh? Ye need somethin’ soothin’ in this job.’
There was an almost full bottle of Irn Bru wedged upside down between the meter and the luggage-door. As he talked, it began to seem that its purpose might be more than a thirst quencher.
‘Tell you two places Ah’ll no’ go.’ He said it as if they had turned up especially to enquire about his taboos. ‘Not any more. Blackhill and Garthamlock. No chance. Know why? Garthamlock. Take a bastard out there. In the back wi’ the biggest Alsation Ah’ve ever saw. Rin-Tin-Tin wi’ elephantiasis. Get there, no money. Gonny set his dog on me. Ah steps oot the cab. Before ye could say Jack Robinson, he’s hit me the awfiest kick in the knackers. Oot the gemme completely. Ma balls were like wattermelons. Ah wis walkin’ aboot like a cowboy for a week, wasn’t Ah? But he wisny clever. Knew roughly where he stayed, didn’t ah? Couple o’ the mates an’ me pay a wee visit, wait for him. We played at keepie-uppie wi’ his heid. Don’t worry about it. Big guy. He wis squealin’ like a pig. Left his face like a jigsaw-puzzle. Wan o’ his lugs had nostrils by the time we stopped. Correct. This is a nice wan, boays.’
He turned up the music and hummed along with it briefly.
‘Aye, ye meet some fuckin’ lunatics in this job.’
In the mirror Harkness watched the driver’s eyes contemplate the incidence of insanity with a kind of cosmic dyspepsia. There was a certain relief in realising they were almost at their destination. He couldn’t hold in his laughter.
‘Aye. Ye learn to trust nobody. Some o’ them wid massage yer head wi’ a screwtop as fast as look at ye. The world’s a shambles.’
‘Your tip’s on the meter,’ Laidlaw said as he paid.
Harkness realised that Laidlaw was justified. Behind his distracting talk, the driver had followed an unnecessarily circuitous route. But the man looked at Laidlaw as if deciding whether to fight a duel with him.
He flicked on his ‘For Hire’ sign and took off. Harkness imagined him cruising round Glasgow like a mobile manic broadcaster, Radio Armageddon, meter ticking like a time-bomb.
‘We’ll get this to the lab,’ Laidlaw said and suddenly was laughing.
He pointed helplessly after the departing taxi, shaking his head. Harkness nodded, buckled beside him.
‘How about that?’ Harkness managed to say.
‘Like going over Niagara in a taxi.’
‘I wonder what happened in Blackhill?’ Harkness said.
10
The Top Spot, in the same building as the Theatre Royal, had changed since the theatre had been taken over by the Scottish Opera. But its continued nearness to the new Scottish Television building meant that it still got a lot of its clientele from there. Bob Lilley by-passed the public bar and went downstairs, where the arched alcoves and beer-barrel bottoms stuck on the wall to advertise Lowenbrau were like a rough set for The Student Prince.
The lounge was pleasantly busy. He saw Laidlaw sitting with Brian Harkness at one of the metal-topped tables. Harkness was saying something that Laidlaw didn’t seem to agree with. When Bob joined them, Laidlaw waited a few minutes and then said, ‘What do you have to do to get a drink here? Wear make-up?’
Harkness and Laidlaw had been talking again about the post-mortem Laidlaw had attended that morning. Harkness was glad Bob had come in.
While Laidlaw was at the bar, Harkness shook his head at Bob. Bob sat down and looked along at Laidlaw. He saw a tall, good-looking man who didn’t look like a policeman, didn’t look forty, staring at the gantry as if it was the writing on the wall. That preoccupied intensity was such a familiar aspect of Laidlaw to Bob that he wondered what was bothering Harkness.
‘It’s not a bee in his bunnet Jack’s got,’ Harkness said. ‘It’s a bloody hive.’
Sharing an office with Laidlaw, Bob was as close to him as anybody, with the exception of Harkness, although sometimes Harkness wondered. He had known Laidlaw for about a year and still found his presence a lucky dip from which any chance remark could draw a surprising response. He was about as easy to explore as the Louisiana Purchase. Among the other men on the Squad, Bob had appointed himself Laidlaw’s defence counsel, a function which must have sometimes felt like a full-time job in itself.
‘What’s up?’ Bob said.
‘A few fruitless days for us. That’s what I think’s up. Jack thinks he’s going to find out whoever did in wee Eck Adamson.’
‘Eck was murdered?’
‘Jack seems to think so.’
‘How?’
‘Ask him. So it would be all right if he just keeps his eyes open and hopes for something to turn up. But not him. I feel an obsession coming on. And it’s hopeless, isn’t it? You might as well point to a snowstorm and say, “See that snowflake at the end of the road. Go and get it.” No chance. And you know what Jack’s like when he’s got a cause. Even a lost one. About as easy to ignore as a Salvation Army drum. He’s going to start putting everybody’s humph up. The Crime Squad’ll look like the Loch Ness monster.’