Macey was wishing he had his name sewn on the inside of his jacket. He would have liked to check.
‘But Ah thought ye want the polis tae find him.’
‘Don’t think. Just listen. Before you phone Ballater, you phone Ernie Milligan. Once ye’re sure the polis’ll get there first, then you phone Ballater. It won’t be your fault the polis knew before him. And everybody’s happy. You. Me. Lynsey. Ballater. Everybody. An’ Tony’s safely in the nick. A happy ending. Just call me Walt Disney.’
He smiled at Lynsey and she touched his arm affectionately. She had been willing throughout the meeting to let Dave handle everything. Macey wasn’t sure that he shared her willingness — not that he felt like saying.
‘Agreed, Macey?’
‘It’s agreed, Dave. Ah’ll do it the way you tell me.’
Dave stood up and Lynsey joined him.
‘Tomorrow. Ah’ve never been in this place in ma life. Macey. Have you?’
‘Never.’
They went out, leaving Macey concussed. Dave doubled back in immediately on his own.
‘Oh, Macey,’ he said. ‘Try the wee ginger nuts. They’re smashin’. By the way. If ye mix up the order of who ye tell first, Ah won’t be worried. As long as ye don’t mention it tae Lynsey. Okay?’
Macey was still sitting there trying to work out what was happening when the waitress came up and handed him a piece of paper. It was a bill for coffee and biscuits for three. He sat staring at it, wondering how much was going to be added to it if he wasn’t careful.
25
Sometimes the pragmatic leads to wonder, like Columbus setting out on a business enterprise and discovering a new world. They went to Eck Adamson’s sister’s for information and Laidlaw found a lost part of himself. She was where he came from and had lost touch with.
Anderston wasn’t a place where he would have expected to find it. It’s an area of the city that memorialises a part of Glasgow’s confused quarrel with itself, a warm and vivid slum expensively transformed into a cold and featureless one. Jinty Adamson lived high up in a grey block of flats, as accessible as a bald Rapunzel.
She would be about seventy going on seventeen, with eyes still alive with interest. Once she had established that their credentials made them trustworthy they weren’t so much let in as they were ambushed.
‘Ah haveny spoken to anybody since last Thursday. When Ah went out for ma messages. Ah’m surprised ye made it up here wi’ the lift broken. An’ no even wearin’ grimpons.’
The mountaineering references surprised Laidlaw. The accuracy of the pronunciation suggested an aural source. There couldn’t be too many sherpas in Anderston. But she explained it.
‘See that,’ she said, pointing at the television. ‘Ma best friend. Ah watch everythin’. Ah can tell ye about silver-backed gorillas, life in Bogota or what Annie Walker had for ’er tea. Ah feel like an eagle up here. These wid be great hooses for folk wi’ wings.’
It seemed a pity to spoil the pleasure with which she was taking to words like a disembarked sailor to drink. But Laidlaw felt that, if she was going to treat their visit like an unexpected present, they’d better open it for her quickly.
‘It’s about Eck,’ he said.
‘Oor Alec?’ She sat down. She went inside herself briefly till she found the admission that she had been expecting something like this for a long time. The expression she gave Harkness and Laidlaw seemed to say they couldn’t surprise her. ‘Siddoon, boays. Whit’s happened?’
‘You haven’t heard anything?’ Harkness asked.
‘Son. Is the war over? Up here ye widny know. Whit’s happened?’
Harkness waited for Laidlaw to tell it.
‘Alec was brought into the Royal Infirmary on Friday night. He had asked for me. I saw him just before. Before he died. He died peacefully.’
‘Of course. You’re Jack Laidlaw. He’s talked about ye. Whit wis it? The drink?’
‘Well. In a way.’
‘It wid be. Oh Alec. It wid be.’
‘But it was more than that. We think he died drinking wine that had been mixed with something. Paraquat.’
The word infiltrated her preparedness, undermined it. It became obvious to them that the calmness with which she had talked past hearing the fact of his death was just delayed action, like a body still trying to run before it realises it’s gone over the edge of a cliff. She knew now. She cuddled herself as if against the cold and closed her eyes. Rocking very gently, she started to cry. Her quiet grief was a fact so sheer, consolation couldn’t have found a handhold on it.
Laidlaw and Harkness could only let it happen for the moment. Laidlaw became aware more clearly of the room she sat in. It was comfortably furnished, with several old photographs positioned around, fading sepias in which the figures seemed threatening to recede into darkness. One that he thought must be her family showed mother and father, daughter and son in those stiff clothes they used to affect for photographs, like cardboard cut-outs that would stay when the people walked away. Jinty Adamson had eyes that looked as if they were trying to see beyond the horizon. Had Eck ever been so young? The parents were statues of self-assurance. Ah, Laidlaw thought, no amount of self-assurance worked. Jinty had laboured and polished and made a small, bright fortress of this place but she was found just the same. And there was nothing you could do for her.
He got up and crossed towards her. He put an arm round her shoulders, leaning down.
‘I’m going to make us a cup of tea,’ he said quietly.
‘Oh, Ah’ll get it, son,’ she said through the tears. A sense of the proper way to treat others was a reflex with her that would die when she did.
‘Naw. Ah’ll get it. Hey.’ He put his head down till his face rested sideways on her head. ‘He wisny a bad man. Most of the damage he ever did was to himself. You remember that.’
‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Oh dear, Alec.’
He straightened up and smoothed her hair slightly and went through to the kitchen. For the first time, Harkness understood what Laidlaw had felt about Eck’s death. He had been right. No death is irrelevant. It’s part of the pain of all of us, even if we don’t notice. Watching them, Harkness knew how relevant Jinty Adamson’s tears were to him. It was one world or no world, no other way. She wasn’t just paying tribute to Eck, she was dignifying living, no matter what form it took.
Harkness felt vaguely ashamed of something he had done recently. At first, he managed not to remember what it was. Then it came to him. He had given the photograph of Tony Veitch to Ernie Milligan. That didn’t matter in itself. It was fair enough to help Ernie if he could. But he hadn’t told Laidlaw. That was what he was ashamed of. He should have told him. Why hadn’t he? He would do it now.
But when Laidlaw came through with three cups of tea on a tray with a poke of sugar and a bottle of milk, it seemed to Harkness an indulgence to insist on his small confession here, like announcing during a funeral service that you’ve cut your finger. He would do it later. This was Jinty’s time. Over her tea she talked the nearest thing to an elegy Eck would have. It was just fragments, less a monument than a home-made wreath of already withering flowers.
‘He wisny a bad man. You’ve said it, son. He wisny bad’ and ‘The last time Ah saw him, he wis greetin’ for the wastry of his life. Like a wee boy’ and ‘He wis that softhearted. Ah mind when he wis three or fower. Ma mither found him greetin’ ower a picture o’ Jesus with a’ the thoarns in his heid. An’ he said, “Look whit they did tae him, mammy.” An’ she couldny console ’im’ and ‘He wis a grand drawer, Oor Alec. Could draw a bird on a bit o’ paper ye wid think could fly away. Always could draw. Coulda made something o’ himself. But a luckless man. All his days a luckless man. The kinna man woulda got two complimentary tickets for the Titanic.’
The unintentional humour of the remark was like her natural appetite for life reasserting itself. Harkness couldn’t stop smiling. It was as if Glasgow couldn’t shut the wryness of its mouth even at the edge of the grave. Laidlaw seemed to be feeling something similar because he decided it was all right to speak.