Free The Papers of Tony Veitch by William McIlvanney Page A

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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜It was really Hook I wanted to see, John,’ Cam said.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜What did ye want tae see Hook about? Ye seem to have been impatient.’
    â€˜I still am.’
    Cam sipped his orange juice carefully, his calmness seeming to belie his own words.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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