‘What do you want?’
‘Miss Farren?’
‘Yes.’
‘It may be connected with that business about a week ago.’
‘That’s over with. I’ve nothing to add. I told them that.’
The door was closing.
‘Something else has come up.’
The door opened again and she re-emerged from behind it like a quick-change artiste. It had been pleasure, then distrust. Now she was bored. Her eyelashes seemed to weigh a ton.
Harkness decided she had been preparing for them. She had overdone it.
‘Oh look. What is it?’
‘Murder,’ Laidlaw said.
‘I’m just going out.’
‘Two people already have. Permanently.’
‘Two people? Oh, come in if you like. But I can’t give you long.’
She walked away, leaving the door open. Harkness closed it as they came in. You almost had to climb over the smell of perfume to get in the room. It was a studied place, Harkness thought — kitsch tapestries, a big, round glass table, a halfacre of painting above the imitation fireplace showing horses posing on the foreshore. One of those studio mock-up LPs of recent hits recorded by Joe Soap amp; Company was playing, authentic as a wooden penny. It belonged. Harkness wondered if that was why she wore her hair long: her ears were made of tin.
She didn’t ask them to sit down. She took a cigarette and lit it. Laidlaw and Harkness stood like members of the audience who have wandered on to the stage.
‘Well?’
‘What exactly happened three weeks ago, Miss Farren?’
‘A misunderstanding. It’s personal.’
‘So’s murder. Very.’
‘I wasn’t murdered.’
‘Miss Farren. We’re trying to find out if whoever was here three weeks ago might have been involved in a stabbing that’s happened since then. It’s important for us to establish who it was who was with you.’
She glanced at her watch. She sat down. Laidlaw and Harkness did the same.
‘I hardly knew him,’ she said.
‘Do you know his name?’
She checked the brand name on her cigarette as if it tasted strange and looked across at Laidlaw suddenly, boldly.
‘No. Look, I’m embarrassed about it. I’d had too much to drink. I met him and brought him back here and it all went sour. Very sour. Never again. It’s embarrassing but I honestly don’t know his name.’
‘His first name?’
‘Not even that.’
The silence was the sound of incredulity. Laidlaw took out Eck’s piece of paper and passed it to her. As she read it, she stopped over-acting like a tic-tac man. Her face became still.
‘You recognise the writing, Miss Farren?’
‘It’s Tony’s writing.’
‘He’s written to you, has he?’
She nodded.
‘When?’
‘About a week ago.’
Harkness felt she was about to tell them the truth. He reckoned the phone-call from Milton Veitch foreseen by Laidlaw had happened. She had decided what she would tell and what she wouldn’t. He was convinced this was something she had chosen to be honest about, perhaps because they knew her connection with him already or perhaps because she cared about him or perhaps just because good lies need a leavening of the truth to make them palatable.
‘It was a letter. We had stopped seeing each other. Tony and I’ve known each other for years. At one time it felt like love. But it wasn’t. Not for me. Not that kind, anyway.’
‘It was you that packed it up?’
‘That’s right. It was a long letter.’
‘Do you have it?’
‘I destroyed it.’
Harkness reflected that Tony Veitch wasn’t having a lot of luck with his writing. Maybe he should have enclosed a stamped-addressed envelope for return of manuscripts.
‘He must have been affected by the break-up,’ Laidlaw said. ‘You think that might have something to do with his disappearance? You know he’s disappeared?’
‘I know. But I don’t think so. It was a very calm letter. Just trying to analyse our relationship, I suppose.’
‘That piece of paper you have. It was found on a vagrant. Eck Adamson. Does the name mean anything to you?’
It didn’t.
‘He’s dead of paraquat poisoning. The other names?’
She looked at Laidlaw condescendingly, returning to the dismissive style she had adopted on first seeing them. Her moment of truth was evidently over.
‘My own means something to me,’ she said.
‘Not Paddy Collins?’
She shook her head.
‘The Crib?’
‘It’s a pub Tony and I sometimes went to.’
‘A bit down-market, isn’t it?’
‘Tony liked that.’
‘And you?’
‘It makes a change. Look. I’m not quite finished getting ready.’
Harkness couldn’t imagine what else she was going to do — apply varnish? But she had made up her mind. The rest was a lock-out and her impenetrability was double-bolted when the outside door of the flat suddenly opened and a young man came in, whistling like a bush of blackbirds and walking at the head of an invisible parade. He halted dramatically, observing the group. Laidlaw and Harkness recognised Dave McMaster.
But it didn’t do them much good. He and Lynsey Farren might as well have dropped in for the weekend from Mars. What they didn’t know about Glasgow was compendious. Dave had seen Tony Veitch in ‘The Crib’ but that was all. Was Paddy Collins dead? Who was Eck Adamson? By the time Dave had taken up with Lynsey, Tony was out of the picture. Neither could understand how Lynsey Farren’s name could come to be on Eck’s piece of paper. It made you wonder what Tony Veitch was up to. They were just a happy young couple going out for a meal. And they didn’t want to miss the table they had booked.
At the door, Laidlaw said, ‘By the way, Miss Farren. When I mentioned that there were two people murdered, you repeated it. You sounded surprised. Did you know that there was one dead already?’
But she was firmly esconced again as the lady of the manor. She smiled.
‘I suppose two just seemed so — extravagant.’
But as the door closed on the police, she came apart very quickly.
‘Dave! He asked me about Paddy Collins.’
‘You didn’t tell him anything?’
‘I said I didn’t know him.’
‘That’s good. Everybody’s after Tony, right enough.’
‘Dave. Eck Adamson’s dead.’
‘Auld Eck? Is he? Still, maybe it’s whit they call a blessed release.’
‘He was murdered.’
Dave stared at her disbelievingly.
‘Eck? Come on. Be like bombin’ a grave. Who’d want to murder Eck?’
Before he had finished the question, their stares had locked, seeming to find the same possibility in each other’s eyes. Dave looked away and shook his head too determinedly.
‘Behave yerself, Lynsey. It couldny be Tony.’
‘He’s done it once.’
‘We canny be sure o’ that.’
‘Can’t we?’
‘Anyway, there wis a motive then. Whit reason could there be for killin’ Eck?’
‘Maybe he knew something.’
‘Eck didny know the time o’ day.’
‘Oh, Dave.’ She was huddled against him. ‘I don’t think I can take this. Poor Tony. Have you phoned Mickey Ballater yet?’
‘Aye. Just putting him off. He could be real bother. Ah’ll have to phone him again the night.’
‘What are we going to do?’
‘We’re going to go out and enjoy ourselves.’ He bear-hugged her. ‘See if they’re away yet.’
She crossed to the window and held the curtain back. Their car hadn’t moved. Inside, it was being agreed that Harkness would drop Laidlaw off at Pitt Street. Afterwards, Laidlaw was going to meet Eddie Devlin at the Press Club and Harkness might see him there. Harkness turned the ignition and put the car into gear.
‘Dave McMaster,’ Laidlaw was saying. ‘She’s really crossing borders with him, isn’t she? Maybe Mr Veitch should update his sense of Lady Lynsey Farren. She’s definitely stopped playing with dolls, the lassie. What a con-artist! She looks as if she hires her expression by the day. From Haughty Faces Ltd.’