The Papers of Tony Veitch Read Online Free PDF

trying to get his reputation to go further than it could on its own by giving it a tow from Dave’s.
    Sammy was a tourist, somebody Macey had introduced. He looked like a cousin from the country. His eyes were shining with appreciation of Dave’s toughness. He was probably the kind of gruesome simpleton who would have bought a ticketfor a road accident. He desperately wanted to be one of them but he couldn’t help himself. He was so square you could have laid him out and used him for a table.
    He had tried to tell a funny story and it came out roughly like someone describing a golf-ball hollow by hollow. But he could sing, a light, sweet voice that didn’t deserve him. It had occurred to Charlie that Sammy should have stayed home in bed and just sent tapes.
    â€˜It’s true,’ Dave was saying. ‘When they went to see him, he had a turning-lathe in the bedroom. Didny even know what it was for. Just stole it in case it might be valuable. First time he knew whit it was was when he heard the charge.’
    Their laughter didn’t measure the funniness of what was being said, just the authority with which Dave had said it. He had a confidence which could make an atmosphere where anything he said grew funny, although transplanted into a retelling it might wither into nothing. They were still laughing when the knock came at the street door.
    Dave made a face into the pause.
    â€˜Check it, Charlie,’ he said. ‘Unless it’s somebody special, they’re bombed out.’
    Charlie went through and opened the door, keeping it on the chain.
    Through the gap, he saw Cam Colvin. There were two people behind him but Charlie couldn’t see who they were. He didn’t have to. Cam Colvin was enough. Charlie wished John Rhodes were here.
    â€˜Mr Colvin. Can ah help ye?’
    â€˜You can help yourself by opening the door. Unless you want your pub to be open-plan.’
    Charlie knew his duties, and they didn’t include standing up to Cam Colvin. Dave had said only to let him in if it was somebody special. Cam qualified. Charlie slid the chain.
    Behind Cam, Mickey Ballater and Panda Paterson came in. Mickey had been out of Glasgow for a while, was less well known than he had been, but Charlie had a long memory. Panda was named after his deceptively comforting appearance, a hulking heaviness topped by a roundly innocent face. He might be a teddy-bear but the claws were real.
    Charlie’s face showed none of his surprise at their presence. Neither of them was a Colvin man. Charlie, aware of the imminence of Paddy Collins’ death, could only suppose that they had turned up at the Vicky to prove their goodwill to Cam, like a retrospective alibi. But surely Ballater didn’t come up from England just to do that. Both of them had known Paddy Collins but that didn’t explain why they were here. Charlie didn’t like it. He had a fairly precise knowledge of which people belonged with which and strange groupings always upset him. They usually meant trouble. He locked the door and followed them through and went behind the bar.
    Cam Colvin stopped a little way from where the others were sitting. They saw a medium-sized man in a Crombie coat. All his clothes looked expensive but just a bit behind current fashions, as if he had been reading The Tailor and Cutter in a dentist’s waiting-room. His hair was slightly long but carefully cut. Charlie wondered if they knew what they were looking at.
    In the shifting league-table of professional Glaswegian hard men, established informally by those who know, in pub conversations and awesome anecdotes, Cam Colvin was currently atthe top. The qualities most commonly cited as justifying his place there, like goals for and goals against, were his extreme viciousness and his absolute caution. He had a name for acting with brutal exactitude, like a paranoid computer.
    For him to threaten his way into a pub minded by John Rhodes didn’t