So I would doubt my own conviction for the moment. But I would find a way to test it. It is not enough to think the truth is there. It needs the breath of our acknowledgement to live. I had to find out how to give it the kiss of life.
The original commission I had given myself — to know what lay behind my brother’s death — had clarified itself into a double purpose: to find the man in the green coat and to nail Dan Scoular’s killer. It looked already as if circumstances had combined them and events were beginning to fit the shape of my compulsion. Maybe that’s what compulsion does for you.
The name of Matt Mason kept coming up. He was suspected twice: of Dan Scoular, of Meece Rooney. He was a ubiquitous man. People as busy as that can sometimes get careless. Their sense of detail may blur. Also, if he had done these things, he was their deviser, not the person who physically carried them out. This meant that, with every action he was responsible for, there were witnesses beyond himself. If I could rifle their knowledge, unlock it with threat or fear, I could come at him. I wanted that.
I had two possible sources of access. One was the information Brian Harkness and Bob Lilley might have. The case they were working on must have taken them into various areas of Matt Mason’s life. The second source was Fast Frankie White. There had to be more that Frankie could tell me.
In trying to fulfil the other half of my self-determined task, I could think of only one way forward. It went through Dave Lyons. So that’s the way I would go. Whatever the man in the green coat meant, I was convinced he knew. The man in the green coat was a message from Scott’s life that I had to understand. Others had given me such fragments of its meaning as they could: Sanny Wilson, Ellie Mabon, David Ewart. But they were like people who have learned by chance some incidental phrases of a code. Put them together, they didn’t make a meaning. But Dave Lyons knew the code entire. Anna understood it as well, I suspected. But if she did, she had learned it second-hand. She merely kept its secret in trust for someone else. Who? Scott was dead. It could only be Dave Lyons.
He was the one I had to get to. He had been present when a secret had begun to be kept. It was presumably a secret shared by four. ‘It was something that happened when he was a student,’ Ellie Mabon had said. David Ewart had thought of the four of them being out that night in Glasgow while he was in Rutherglen. The next morning, he believed he had looked at the suicide of youth, the death of idealism. Of the four who might have been present at that death, one was dead himself. Another was just a name. Another wasn’t even a name. That left Dave Lyons.
I didn’t expect him to tell me all that he knew. He was too well prepared for me, too well fortified. There was no way I could prove that he must know about the man in the green coat. But there was also no way for him to deny that he knew Sandy Blake and the anonymous English student. If I could find them, I might find people who were worse at lying than Dave Lyons was. It was unlikely that I would find anyone who was better at it.
Mental incantations over. It was time to see if I had found a way to conjure forth the truth. Let’s begin.
I crossed to the battered pay-phone in the bar and looked up the phone book beside it.
‘Hullo,’ Frankie said.
‘Hullo, Frankie. It’s Jack Laidlaw.’
‘Yes. You saw the lady in question?’
Frankie was sounding more like the old Frankie, the man I had grown to know and distrust.
‘I did. I need to speak to you again.’
There was a pause during which I could imagine Frankie trying on different reactions.
‘Ah. That could be tricky.’
‘Why? You’re still there, aren’t you?’
‘Well, yes. But.’ His voice went down to the basement, where things are kept that not everybody knows are there. ‘What it is. Ah’ve got a couple of cousins here. Tae see ma maw. Know what Ah mean?’
‘Frankie. I don’t intend to burst in with a warrant. We won’t be surrounding the house or anything like that.’
‘Still an’ all. They might twig who ye are. Could be embarrassing. Ah’d rather they didn’t meet ye. No offence.’
I was tempted to invite him to the Red Lion. But he had a point, I grudgingly admitted to myself.
‘Tell you what I’ll do, Frankie. I’m in the Red Lion. I’ll drive down to your place in ten minutes. I’ll wait outside. You come out or I’ll come in. Okay?’
He was in a one-way street. It wasn’t where he wanted to be but it was where he was.
‘Okay,’ he said.
24
I didn’t have long to wait at Frankie’s house. He was out before I could turn off the engine. As he came down the path, I could see he was himself again for the moment. He was wearing slacks and an expensive-looking suede jacket. The cravat was colourful. As he climbed into the car, his aftershave almost nipped my eyes. At least it wasn’t Aramis.
‘Where to, man of discretion?’ I said.
‘Anywhere. As long as it’s outa here. Ah don’t think we should do the motorcade through the village. If they see me, it won’t be ticker-tape they’re throwin’. Turn left down here.’
The tension suited him. It was his natural habitat. Indoors, he had seemed drained, uncertain of himself. Now he was alive with energy, glancing round all the time, tapping his hand on the top of the dashboard as he leaned forward. It was because, I think, Frankie needed a role. This one was the big-time crook revisiting his small-town background, where he was misunderstood and unappreciated.
‘Straight on,’ he said. ‘Jesus. I hate coming back here. Not just the thing about Dan. It was always a pain. Like standin’ in front of one of those mirrors at the shows that makes ye look wee. Head for the hills.’
It didn’t take long for us to come out into the countryside.
‘Dan used to do his roadwork along here,’ Frankie said. ‘Him runnin’, me on the bike.’
Training for a fight seemed a bad purpose to which to put such gentle country. It was soft farmland, greening richly towards summer. When I die, I thought quite cheerfully, this is where they bring me, back to Ayrshire. And don’t cremate me. Let me fertilise a place I love.
‘That’s Farquhar’s Farm,’ Frankie said. ‘See that wee hill there? We used tae sit on the top of it for a rest. Big Dan did it the first day we were out on the roads. An’ it became a habit with us. Every day for a fortnight. We’d sit there an’ talk.’
On instinct, I drew in at the gate to the field. As the engine died, I worked out where the instinct came from. I was going to try and get Frankie to tell me what he wouldn’t want to tell me. The place might help. If he had any ghost of loyalty to Dan Scoular, this could be where it haunted.
‘We’ll get some air,’ I said.
I climbed over the gate into the field and Frankie followed me, being careful about his slacks. I walked to the top of the hill and sat down. Frankie sat beside me after spreading a handkerchief on the grass. Thornbank was visible from here.
‘Dan Scoular’s view,’ I said.
Frankie followed the direction of my look.
‘Aye. Big Dan loved that place. Looks nice from here, right enough. Not so good up close.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Like the pictures ye used to look at in the children’s books. Remember? Say, a farmyard scene. It always looked that nice. They never showed ye the henshit on the tail-feathers. Or the sow eatin’ anythin’ that would stay still long enough. Yerself included.’
‘You just don’t like the place, Frankie.’
‘Does the place like me?’
‘Maybe it has its reasons.’
Frankie selected a stalk of grass for chewing.
‘You mean what happened to Dan? That wasn’t me. It was more likely that place that killed him. The values it gave him. They don’t work in the real world. No heroes there. Maybe that’s yer murderer there.’ He nodded at Thornbank. ‘Maybe that’s what killed him.’