The house was in the middle of a terrace, a two-storey roughcast. As I walked up the path, I noticed that the curtains of the upstairs bedroom window were still drawn. I tapped the letter-box lightly. A woman opened the door. She was maybe forty, pleasantly strong-featured.
‘Yes?
She said it quietly, as if conversation were a cabal. I found myself joining in the conspiracy.
‘I’m looking for Frankie,’ I said. ‘I was passing through. I thought I would say hello.’
‘You haven’t heard?’ she said.
‘It’s been a long time since I saw him.’
She glanced upstairs.
‘Come in,’ she said.
She ushered me into the living-room and closed the door.
‘It’s Mrs White,’ she said. ‘She hasn’t long to go. A couple of weeks at the most. Frankie’s upstairs with her now.’
I understood why Frankie White was home. Brian had said it would take more than the SAS to get him out of London. The death of your mother qualified.
‘Ah’m sorry,’ the woman said. ‘Ah’m forgettin’ maself.’ She held out her hand. ‘Ah’m Sarah Haggerty.’
‘Jack Laidlaw.’
‘You known Frankie long?’
‘Quite a few years. Back and forward.’
‘Ah was just makin’ a cup of tea there. Ye want one?’
‘That would be nice.’
She left the kitchen door open and we talked in a quiet and desultory way. The nature of her references to how Frankie was ‘workin’ in London these days’ convinced me that she thought the work was legal. When she asked me what I did myself, I didn’t want to mar her image of Frankie as an honest grafter. I said I worked for quite a big firm. In personnel. Involved mainly in recruitment. I was glad she didn’t go on to ask me about working conditions as I was running out of euphemisms. She was full of praise for Frankie’s concern for his mother. It seemed he had arranged leave of absence from his work in London to stay with her till she died. He didn’t care if it cost him his job. There were people in Thornbank, she said, who spoke badly of Frankie, especially after what had happened lately. What had happened lately? She didn’t seem to hear the question. Perhaps it was because the kettle was boiling at the time. But the gossips didn’t know the real Frankie White. ‘He loves that woman up the stair. An’ he’s a good judge.’ Unlike a lot of people these days, he hadn’t forgotten where he came from.
The picture she painted of Fast Frankie White as an upholder of the solid virtues in shifting times was an interesting departure from realism, the portrait as an abstract of improbable colours. Frankie was good-looking and unviolent and he dispensed slickness like a Brylcreem machine. But what he promised, you must never hope to be realised. He had a mouth like a dud cheque.
Yet in this place Sarah Haggerty’s sense of Frankie seemed less ludicrous. The style of the room was familiar enough to me to be part of a whole contemporary trend in interior decoration: filial plush. In this case, it meant thick wall-to-wall carpeting, heavy wallpaper, a lot of ornaments and a fyfe-stone fire-place encasing a very elaborate metal-work gas-fire.
I liked the style fine not because it pleased the eye but because it pleased the heart. I had seen examples of it all over the West of Scotland. What it meant was gratitude. Its essence was that you should realise this place had very definitely been decorated. The person who lived here mattered to her family and this was their way of thanking her for enduring threadbare carpets and linoleum while she sacrificed to bring them up. If you were to judge Frankie White by what he had done for his mother, you came closer to understanding Sarah Haggerty’s naive idea of him. I just hoped the video hadn’t fallen off the back of a lorry. That would have been like making a crucifix out of stolen gold.
‘Here we are,’ she said. ‘Jack, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right. Thanks. Sarah?’
She nodded. I was glad to be one of the family before Frankie arrived. It should make our performance easier. I had been adopted just in time. Frankie came in.
I couldn’t remember having seen Frankie White without his make-up. I was seeing him now. Even Pagliacci had a place where he took off the greasepaint. This was Frankie’s. The flip attitudes were gone. The fear of what was happening to his mother still looked out of his face. Perhaps most revealingly for Frankie, who normally dressed in the sartorial equivalent of neon lights, he was wearing a woollen shirt, track-suit trousers and trainer shoes. Then he realised who it was he was looking at.
‘Hullo, old friend,’ I said, being not too subtle with the cue. ‘I was explaining to Sarah that I haven’t seen you for a while.’
‘Oh, Frankie,’ Sarah said. ‘Ah was just sayin’ to Jack here about yer mother. He hadn’t heard.’
Trouble always travels in company, as Katie Samson would say. As if upstairs wasn’t bad enough for Frankie, here was a policeman drinking tea in his house like an old family friend. What was happening to the world? Frankie didn’t know. He stood in the middle of our charade like the only person at the masked ball who had forgotten his costume. I thought I had better not offer to shake hands in case he had a cardiac attack at the end of my arm. Sarah helped the situation unknowingly by getting a cup of tea for Frankie and saying she would go up and see his mother.
‘You two must have a lot to talk about.’
Frankie was wondering what it was. He stirred his tea very slowly.
‘What is this?’ he said. ‘Ah’m clean, Mr Laidlaw.’
‘Call me Jack. We’ve got to keep up appearances.’
‘Ah’m clean. Ah came up from London tae see ma mother out. Ah’m not involved up here any more. Ah don’t need this.’
‘Frankie. I’m not here on official business.’
‘Mr Laidlaw — ’
‘Jack.’
‘Jack.’ He didn’t use the name with complete conviction. ‘What polisman was ever anywhere that wasn’t on official business? You mob don’t have friends. You have informants. Who are ye kiddin’? You’re lookin’ for information. Ah don’t give information. You know that.’
I did. Frankie White had never shopped anyone. It was what made him accepted among men a lot harder and more successful than himself.
‘All right, Frankie. But this is personal information. It’s not for use in the courts. It’s just for me. Why did you fall out with my brother?’
‘What brother?’
‘Scott.’
‘Who the hell’s Scott? Ah don’t know your brother.’
The troubled amazement in his eyes was not for denying. He was having a bad day and he didn’t know where it came from. I told him Gus McPhater’s version of the incident in the Akimbo Arms.
‘Ah remember somethin’ like that,’ he said. ‘Was that your brother? Jesus, he was wild. Runs in the family, eh? But Ah never understood what it was supposed tae be aboot. Ye no’ ask him?’
‘He’s dead.’
I thought I saw an infinitesimal relaxation on Frankie’s face.
‘What happened?’
I told him.
‘Ah’m sorry. That’s hellish. Ah’m sorry. Jack. But Ah never knew what that was about. Ah think the fella was just drunk. Picked on me. Maybe he didny like the suit Ah was wearin’. He wouldny be the first.’
The way he used my first name confirmed my suspicions. False intimacy is treachery’s favourite weapon. Judas kisses. The best way to knife a man is to embrace him as you do it. I decided I didn’t believe him. He knew what I needed to know and he was lying. I felt my anger freeze me to the chair. I stared at Frankie. Drinking his tea seemed to demand as much concentration as threading a needle.
‘Frankie,’ I said. ‘Tell me why Scott quarrelled with you.’
‘Ah wish Ah knew.’
‘Frankie. Ah need to know.’
‘What can Ah say?’
‘The fuckin’ truth.’
‘Come on. Ah can’t tell ye what Ah don’t know.’
We will take our little deceits to the edge of the grave. We will trivialise even death. Frankie White was staring the ultimate truth in the face and still he couldn’t kick the habit of a lifetime: lie to the police. My compassion for what was happening in his life atrophied.