The Papers of Tony Veitch. William McIlvanney

body to them for a fiver. Didn’t know that when you’re dead, your body belongs to your next of kin. So they get it free. He even lost out on that one.’

      ‘When did you join the vigilantes, Jack?’

      ‘Never. I’m not witch-hunting whoever did it. I just think some understanding is owed. The only healthy climate is the truth.’

      Harkness said, ‘So how do we get there, great white hunter?’ Laidlaw laughed.

      ‘Don’t ask awkward questions.’

      Bob said, ‘You could advertise: confessions wanted. I’d say it’s your only chance.’

      ‘I’d like to do something more practical,’ Laidlaw said.

      The attractive young waitress came up and took Laidlaw’s empty glass. She had long, straight black hair and the kind of eyes that always seem to see something just past your face, maybe the dandruff on your jacket. They were dark eyes that assumed your interest, letting you get on with staring at her if you must. She hovered – waiting to take an order or be discovered?

      ‘No thanks, love,’ Laidlaw said.

      The other two agreed. The waitress went away. There was a television personality being a television personality at a nearby table. The accompanying group were demonstrating the spontaneity of a studio audience.

      ‘Another lime-juice and soda,’ Laidlaw said, ‘and I’ll want to audition upstairs. There’s only so much of those the human head can stand. Anyway, we’ve got another call to make.’

      ‘I’m glad,’ Harkness said. ‘I was beginning to think your idea was to talk a solution to Eck’s death.’

      ‘We’ll grab something to eat and go out to Pollokshields.’

      ‘Jack,’ Bob said. ‘Take it easy.’

      ‘Ignore him,’ Laidlaw said. ‘He hangs about here a lot. I’ll tell the manager.’

      Bob came out with them. The waitress said cheerio almost to them. Outside, Glagow had had a change of mood. It still wasn’t warm but the sky had cleared. Harkness, his hangover gone, had that feeling that weather is subjective. Bob said he was going to the office, ‘Back to sanity.’

      Before they went over to Stewart Street for a car, Laidlaw hovered about the entrance to the Theatre Royal, looking at the billings.

      ‘Life should be more like the opera,’ Laidlaw said.

      ‘Why?’

      ‘You never die without a detailed explanation. If Wee Eck could’ve sung an aria in the Royal, we’d have no problem.’

      They were walking up to cross Cowcaddens Road. Harkness, momentarily dazzled by the brightness of the day, thought about it.

      ‘I was gee-ven the par-aaa-quat,’ he sang, ‘by Hec-tor McGob-leee-gin.’

      ‘Still,’ Laidlaw said. ‘Maybe it’s just as well he couldn’t.’

      11

      They had settled for the function suite of the Coronach Hotel. Just beyond the south-eastern edge of Glasgow, at one of the points where the city suffers natural erosion from the countryside, the hotel seemed well enough named. A coronach is a dirge.

      It belonged properly to the time before the Clayson Report relaxed the drinking laws, when only hotels had a seven-day licence and Sunday drinking was for what the law called bona fide travellers. Like a village pump in a place where the plumbing has been modernised, it stood as a slightly tatty monument to the old Scottish Sabbath, that interesting anomaly whereby the Kirk’s insistence on the observance of the Lord’s day of rest resulted in a country busy with Scotsmen transporting a thirst as heavy as luggage from one place to another.

      The Coronach was still a drinking hotel, but quieter, especially on Sundays. To ask for a room there was as naive as expecting to meet Calpurnia in ‘Caesar’s Palace’. The only acknowledgement that hospitality could go beyond the dispensing of drink was the function suite.

      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.