It was called the Rob Roy Room, which meant that the carpet was MacGregor tartan and there were a couple of targes on the walls, framed in crossed claymores. Today its occupants were outlaws unromanticised by time.
When Macey ushered in John Rhodes, Hook Hawkins and Dave McMaster, Cam Colvin was already installed. Two of the small tables had been placed together with chairs around. Cam sat at the head of one of the tables, sedate as a committee-man.
John Rhodes and he were a conjunction of contrasting styles, like a meeting between shop-floor and management. Cam was conservative in a dark-striped suit and black shoes as shiny as dancing-pumps. The shirt was demurely striped and the tie was navy. John looked as if his tailor might be Oxfam. The light-brown suit was rumpled, the shirt was open-necked. He was wearing a purple cardigan.
Cam registered nothing when John Rhodes came in. But the fuse was already lit in John’s blue eyes. Cam and he nodded at each other. Cam indicated the man who was sitting on his right.
‘This is Dan Tomlinson,’ he said. ‘He’s the manager.’
Dan Tomlinson was a thin man in his fifties. He looked worried, as if he couldn’t remember whether his hotel insurance was up to date. Mickey Ballater was standing nearby and nodded. The only other man in the room, who had been trying to stare down the one-armed bandit beside the small bar, ambled across to join them.
‘Oh,’ John Rhodes said. ‘And Panda Paterson.’
‘Correct, John. Your memory’s good,’ Panda said.
He extended his hand to shake and John Rhodes punched him in the mouth. It was a short punch, very quick and very measured, costing John nothing, the punch of a man in training, emerging from reflexes so honed they seemed to contain a homing device. It was only after it had landed you realised it had been thrown. It imparted awe to some of the others, as if thought was fait accompli.
The effect was reminiscent of the moment in a Hollywood musical when the mundane breaks into a Busby Berkeley routine. Suddenly, Panda Paterson was dancing. He moved dramatically onto the small slippereened square of dance floor and did an intricate backstep. Then, extending his improvisation into what could have been called ‘The Novice Skater’, he went down with his arms waving and slid sitting until the carpet jarred him backwards and his head hit a radiator like a duff note on a xylophone.
‘That’s the price of a pint in the Crib,’ John Rhodes said.
There was blood coming out of Panda’s mouth. He eased himself off as if to get up and then settled back, touching his mouth gently.
‘Ye’ve made a wise decision,’ John Rhodes said, watching him refuse to get up. ‘You’re right. Ah’ve got a good memory. Ah don’t know where you’ve been lately. Watchin’ cowboy pictures? Well, it’s different here. Whoever’s been kiddin’ you on ye were hard. Ah’m here tae tell ye Ah’ve known you a long time. Ye were rubbish then an’ ye’re rubbish now. Frightenin’ wee boys! Try that again an’ Ah’ll shove the pint-dish up yer arse. One wi’ a handle.’
If you could have bottled the atmosphere, it would have made Molotov cocktails. Practised in survival, Macey was analysing the ingredients.
John Rhodes stood very still, having made his declaration. What was most frightening about him was the realisation that what had happened was an act of measured containment for him, had merely put him in the notion for the real thing. He wasn’t just a user of violence, he truly loved it. It was where he happened most fully, a thrilling edge. Like a poet who has had a go at the epic, he no longer indulged himself in the doggerel of casual fights but when, as now, the situation seemed big enough, his resistance was very low.
The others, like Panda Paterson, were imitating furniture. This wasn’t really about them. Even Panda had been incidental, no more than the paper on which John had neatly imprinted his message. The message was addressed to Cam Colvin.
Macey understood how even at the moment of its impact John’s anger had maintained a certain subtlety. Neither he nor Cam needed confrontation. People could die of that. John had repaid an oblique insult. The move was Cam’s.
He took his time. His eyes sustained that preoccupied focus they usually had, as if the rest of the world was an irrelevant noise just over his shoulder. He seemed so impervious to outside pressure, Macey felt he could have rolled a fag on a switchback railway. He looked up directly at John Rhodes.
‘You’ll need to work on your fishtail, Panda,’ he said. ‘It’s rubbish.’
It was style triumphant. Everybody laughed except Panda Paterson, who stood up sheepishly. John Rhodes, like a bull lassoed with silk, sat down at the table. The others joined him. Dan Tomlinson brought drinks, port for John and beer for the others. Cam was drinking orange juice. Dan Tomlinson went out. The meeting was convened.
‘It was really Hook I wanted to see, John,’ Cam said.
‘So Ah heard. But Ah thought Ah would jist come along. Ah had a wee message to deliver.’
He looked at Panda, who happened to be looking down.
‘What did ye want tae see Hook about? Ye seem to have been impatient.’
‘I still am.’
Cam sipped his orange juice carefully, his calmness seeming to belie his own words.
‘Paddy Collins is dead.’
He said it with a kind of innocent expectation of immediate response from the others, the way a king might await the alarm of his courtiers if he sneezed. But this was divided territory. John Rhodes was tasting his drink as if he had suddenly become a bon viveur from the Calton. Cam’s concern and John’s indifference created an impasse of neutrality in the rest. Looking at the table, Cam chose his line of thought as carefully as threading a needle.
‘Not that Paddy Collins matters much,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen better men in Burton’s window. But he was our Pauline’s man. He was connected. She’s in a state. Don’t ask me why. She’s like most women. Seems to keep her brains in her knickers. But that’s the way of it. And I don’t like it. Nobody shites on my doorstep. Or I wipe their arse with razor blades.’
The words were a ritual exercise, like the noises an exponent of the martial arts might make preparatory to combat. He seemed separate from them at the moment, rehearsing the basic gestures of his nature, locating his will. He was distant, almost formal. But you knew he would soon be coming on.
‘Who do they think they are? Where do they live? Whoever killed Paddy Collins I’m going to find. There won’t be enough of him left to make up a tin of Kennomeat.’
It was spoken quietly. Since he felt no doubts, the statement needed no force to assert itself. It occurred as evenly as breathing.
‘He was never able to tell me what happened. But somebody knows. Do you know anything, Hook?’
‘Wait a minute,’ John Rhodes said. ‘How wid he know anything?’
‘I’m asking him, John. I don’t want one of these fucking conversations by post.’ The pitch of his voice hadn’t changed. Only the swear-word was like an abstract signal of a quickening mood. ‘His mouth’s here. Let it answer.’
‘Aye, maybe,’ John said. ‘It depends whit the question means.’
‘John. What you do to Panda’s your affair. He’s not one of mine. He just happens to be with me. But don’t try to piss me about where I live. Somebody killed my brother-in-law. I didn’t choose him but that’s what he was. They’re going to have to join him. I’m asking a straight question. All it means is what it says. Does Hook get to answer?’
Macey felt the axis of the room tilt delicately in favour of Cam. He watched John Rhodes judge whether he was letting too much happen, smile easily and nod to Hook.
‘But how wid Ah know anything, Cam?’
Cam was watching Hook. ‘Tell him,’ he said to Panda.
‘Well, Ah’m livin’ quiet these days. But Ah do all right.’ He couldn’t resist tentatively trying to reinstate himself in their eyes a little, let them know he didn’t get his mouth punched every day. ‘We’ve got a few things goin’ for us.’