Strange Loyalties (28 page)

The way in which the reality of his life was being made over into a viewable artefact had come home to me when the camera-man suddenly said, ‘Oh God! No! Stop it there.' There was, he said, ‘a hair in the gate'. The drama of his performance shattered any atmosphere of naturalness Michael Preston had managed to create. When the interview resumed, Marlene had become terrified of the moods of the camera and kept glancing at it as if it might sprout a headful of hair this time. Julian, invited to repeat the last thing he had been saying, started not to talk but to perform.

Looking on at the end of the interview, I felt I recognised where I had been several times this week – a place where people knew unjustifiable things had happened and were happening but had tried to give the truth they knew elocution lessons, so that form became the criterion, not content. I began to worry about the man who was central to the shaping of the truth that was emerging here. I didn't want Michael Preston to give me a carefully packaged version of what I sought to know. As soon as he said, ‘That'll do us. Cut', I crossed towards him. I was beside him as he straightened up from his box.

‘Mr Preston,' I said. ‘I'm Jack Laidlaw.'

His eyes took a moment to come back from his interview. He looked at the child, he looked at me.

‘It doesn't matter how pure you think your motivations are,' he said. He was talking to himself. ‘You always feel you're exploiting people in these things. You're Scott's brother.'

‘That's right. Could I talk to you for a minute?'

‘Well, just a minute. We're going to set up outside for a piece to camera. I'll have to look at my notes.'

While they were clearing up, we wandered through to the kitchen. It was no more homely than the living-room had been. You could believe that the main thing they cooked here would be stale air. We could hear the technicians prepare to move on, having plundered the room of its few minutes of voyeurism. Standing in this place of disadvantage with this man who exuded well-being, I felt at last as if the disparate lives I had been moving among recently were coming together. Public rectitude was meeting private accusation. It was as if Dave Lyons were being introduced to Dan Scoular. But would they talk?

‘How did you find me here?' he said.

‘Through the BBC.'

‘Nemesis, right enough,' he said. ‘A Detective-Inspector calls. You're persistent.'

‘I've had to be.'

‘I've been expecting you,' he said. ‘But not in a house in Drumchapel.'

‘I suppose Dave Lyons would phone you.'

‘That's right.'

The honesty of the admission was hopeful.

‘So you know what I want to talk about.'

‘I do. And we'll do that. But not here. And not now.'

‘Why not?'

‘It's a long story. And I'm under the cosh to get this programme finished. I've another interview to do today. And we've got editing time tonight. Tomorrow I'm working as well.'

The hope I had felt receded. He must have seen it in my
face. He wrote something on the back of one of the pages of notes he had in his hand. He tore it off and gave it to me.

‘That's my address,' he said. ‘Tomorrow. Late afternoon or early evening you can get me there. Bev, my wife's having a dinner party. But I can talk to you before it.'

I thought about arguing but I had no choice.

‘You wouldn't be going to synchronise stories, would you?' I said.

The look he gave me was hard with pride.

‘Listen,' he said. ‘I belong to me. When my mouth opens, it's my words coming out. Nobody works me from the back.'

‘Mr Preston,' I said. ‘I hope that's true. I've been a long way round the houses here. And I'm getting tired of it. Somebody better speak to me straight. I hope it's you.'

‘Well, you'll find out tomorrow, won't you? I'd better get out.'

He spoke briefly and kindly to Julian and Marlene, who were nervously elated with the experience of having been on television and seemed to be looking for somewhere to put their energy. He ruffled their daughter's sparse hair. When I came outside with him, the camera was already set up in the middle of the road. He took up his position on the pavement. I walked to the car. I unlocked the door but stood and waited. Somebody checked that no vehicles were approaching and he began to speak to the camera.

‘Any social contract is a two-way agreement,' he said. ‘It's one thing to make the people serve the economy. But the economy must also serve the people. If we disadvantage the present of one section of society, we disadvantage the future of all society. The children of the well-off will not just inherit
the wealth of their parents. They will also inherit the poverty of the parents of others. Even self-interest, if it is wise, will concern itself with the welfare of all. Not just the poor will inherit the bad places. All of us will.'

He had delivered the words strongly and clearly but at that point one of three boys who had been standing on the pavement opposite shouted, ‘Ye're aff yer heid'. Apparently, the sight of a man talking precisely to no one in particular had been too much for the boy. They were obviously going to have to take the shot again. I got in the car and drove off. Michael Preston was an articulate man, I was thinking. I hoped he didn't lose his articulacy overnight.

I
had once seen Marty Bleasdale defuse a potentially ugly incident in a pub. A man who had picked an argument with him was beginning to get threatening.

‘Has anyone ever told you,' Marty said, and those around him waited for the telling insult, ‘that you've got pianist's fingers?'

The remark had arrived from so far away that the other man contemplated it as if an alien had landed. Then he managed to fit it into the context he was trying to create.

‘Ah could rattle out a tune on you, anyway.'

‘Do you do requests?' Marty said. ‘Ah like Prokofiev. Something from
Romeo and Juliet
.'

The tension dissipated in laughter. The man hesitated, then laughed along. It had seemed an almost accidental dismantling of threat but it involved two qualities which Marty had in plenty. One was skill in dealing with people. He may have felt his years as a social worker hadn't effected much improvement in other people's lives but they had certainly made Marty very difficult to nonplus. He had not only obliged the man's aggression to force its way through laughter. He had also made the man express it not in his own terms but in Marty's. By the time the classical
allusions turned up, the man wasn't too clear about where he was or what the rules were.

The other quality was nerve. Like a bomb-disposal expert, Marty was able to deal calmly with an explosive situation because, if his techniques didn't work, he had prepared himself for the consequences. I think the man understood that. The person from whom the outlandish talk was coming was rough-faced and pony-tailed and dressed like someone who wasn't worried what other people thought, and his eyes didn't flicker. Marty had a certain style. He gave the impression that circumstances were meeting him on his own terms.

That was why, when I received word at the hotel that Marty was rehearsing with a new group at the Getaway, I felt some uplift in my spirits. Whatever practical results a conversation with Marty might or might not have, it shouldn't do my mood any harm. When I went down the long flight of stairs that led to the basement bar, I found Brian and Bob were the only two customers. They were drinking beer. From the rehearsal room at the back of the place interesting sounds kept starting up and breaking down into cacophony.

‘It's the happy wanderer,' Bob said.

‘Excuse me, sir,' Brian said. ‘Could you direct me to the nearest murderer?'

Brian's remark was a mocking echo of one I had once made. Ricky Barr, the owner, came over.

‘At last, Jack,' he said, ‘you've decided to come where the culture is.'

‘If Marty Bleasdale's culture,' I said.

Ricky was one of the more benign expressions of success. He had made a lot of money in the music business before
buying the Getaway. Now he provided a venue for all kinds of struggling musicians and gave them rehearsal space and recording facilities at minimal rates. His ambitions were fulfilled, he had a happy family life and he wanted to share the superflux.

‘What are you drinking?' he said.

He brought Brian and Bob beers and myself a whisky and water.

‘I'll see if they can spare the maestro,' he said.

‘I'll talk to Marty on my own,' I said to Brian and Bob.

‘Oh-ho,' Bob said. ‘We set up the interview and then get locked out the room.'

‘You know what Marty's like,' I said. ‘One polisman makes him jumpy. Three could cause a fit.'

‘It's all right,' Brian said. ‘We're just happy to have been of service.'

‘Who said you have yet? Depends what kinda mood Marty's in. He might decide to tell me nothin'.'

I went to the other end of the big, split-level bar and sat down. As Marty came out of the rehearsal-room with Ricky, his eyes checked off Bob and Brian. Marty was wearing a baggy shirt and jeans and cowboy boots. He had a fine, silk scarf knotted round his neck.

As he sat down at the table, he said, ‘Ah feel surrounded. Three's a crowd, eh?'

‘They're not involved, Marty. Just the two of us.'

‘That's nice.'

Ricky brought him a drink.

‘What's that?' I said.

‘Jack Daniels,' Marty said. ‘That's what Ah'm on this afternoon.
Ah change ma tastes by the hour. Got to try everything in this world.'

Disconnected sounds were still coming from the rehearsal-room.

‘Rehearsing?' I said.

‘What?'

‘I didn't think you rehearsed jazz.'

‘Tomorrow'll be the first time we've played together.'

‘But Ah thought you were supposed to improvise with jazz.'

‘Oh, is that what you do? We're just building the trellis. Give the roses room to grow. Rambling roses.'

‘Hm.'

‘Do yourself a favour, Jack. Don't try to be clever about it. Just come and listen.'

‘I'll see if I can manage.'

‘Anyway, you're not here to write a preview. Are you?'

‘I want to find Melanie McHarg,' I said.

‘Melanie Who?'

‘Do yourself a favour, Marty. Don't try to be clever about it.'

We sipped our drinks and smiled at each other and Marty looked round the room.

‘Ah've met her,' he said. ‘Of course, Ah have. So what?'

‘So where is she?'

‘Ah've met Thelonius Monk, too. Ye want me to tell ye where he is?'

‘You could save that for later. I want to find her, Marty.'

‘Good luck. If Ah was her, ye wouldn't find me. She's had enough troubles lately. Ah'd be off an' runnin'.'

‘But you're one of the places she would run, are you not?'

‘Not known at this address,' he said. ‘Ah'll have to get back to the clarinet.'

‘Before you do,' I said.

I could see Brian Harkness and Bob Lilley laughing and nodding at something they were talking about. Ricky was standing against the counter, reading a newspaper. The jazz-group in the rehearsal-room was making aural shapes I didn't recognise. In those three mysterious preoccupations, I felt how the meaning of things withholds itself and hides among the endless banality of its proliferations. I sensed that, if this moment, too, were allowed to pass without revealing its small cache, the truth Betty Scoular knew was there might never be declared. The only pressure I could put on Marty was the truth. He would have outmanoeuvred anything else.

‘The reason I want to talk to her. It seems obvious that Matt Mason wiped out Meece Rooney. It looks as if he also killed another man. About three months ago. Melanie could help us get at Matt Mason. Ah think she might also help herself. She must be trying to come to terms with her past. And see if there's a future. Maybe if she stopped just being the victim of her life. The way it looks as if she has been. And started to pay it back. Make it take on a shape she gives it. Maybe that would help her. I think they call it rehabilitation.'

I hoped the social worker's instincts weren't quite dead in Marty. He looked through me, as if he were checking my file for trustworthiness.

‘What way could she help?' he said.

‘I've got an idea. Something she could do for us.'

‘What would that be?'

‘That would be for me to ask. And for her to decide yes or no. Not for you to decide, Marty.'

‘You goin' to put pressure on her?'

‘There would be no pressure. Just ask her and let her make up her mind.'

‘She's tryin' to come off it cold turkey, ye know. She's not in great shape. The way she is, a twig droppin' on her be like a fallin' tree. Timber. You'd have to leave it entirely up to her.'

‘That would be the deal.'

‘Ah'll see.'

He finished his Jack Daniels.

‘See quick, Marty,' I said. ‘Time's short here.'

‘It's shorter than you think,' Marty said. ‘Melanie's leavin' for Canada tomorrow.'

‘Then let me talk to her today.'

He thought about it. He shook his head.

‘No way. That way we narrow her choice. She might feel pressured into it. What Ah will do. Ah'll see her tonight. Ah'll speak to her. Ah'll let ye know if she wants to meet you. That's it.'

‘It's maybe not enough. It doesn't leave us a lot of space for fancy footwork. I can't see her till tomorrow?'

‘Jack. Maybe you can't see her at all. How do Ah get in touch?'

I gave him my room number at the hotel. As an afterthought, I also gave him Jan's telephone number. Going back to rehearsal, he turned.

‘Oh and, Jack,' he said. ‘Don't try to put a tail on me, eh?'