All the Colours of the Town (15 page)

‘Are we done?’

‘Is that not what happens? I find the stories and you write them? It’s a bit late in the day for editorial
independence
, I would have thought.’

‘Turn it up, Peter. I’m doing my job.’

‘Right, the job.’ Lyons’s voice tightened. ‘Let me ask you something. You do this piece. Assuming you get a story. Assuming it’s the biggest scoop since Woodward and Bernstein. You think you’re gonna walk into Rix’s job? You think I’ll let that happen? You do this story and I promise you, Gerry, you’re fucked.’

‘I’m fucked anyway.’

‘What?’

‘The whole thing’s fucked. Papers is fucked. Nobody wants the fucking job.’

‘Yeah? You might want one sooner than you think.’

‘You might want one too, Minister.’

We both chewed the air for a bit. I could hear him
puffing
on the big cigar. He smoked Romeo y Julietas, the long ones, Churchills. He looked like Fidel Castro when he smoked them. I looked like Groucho Marx.

‘You know what, Gerry? I’m more sad than angry and that’s the truth of it. How long have we known each other? What have I done? Have I said something that pissed you off? What’s eating you? Tell me what it is and I’ll fix it.’

‘It’s too late, Peter.’

‘It’s never too late. Where are you anyway?’

‘You mean right now? I’m, I don’t know. Down at the harbour. Near the big clock.’

‘Albert Square?’

I looked for a street sign.

‘Yeah, I think so. I’m not sure.’

‘I once saw a lassie near there, chained to the railings. Shaven head, the full bit. Like something out of World War Two. It’s a serious town, Gerry. You want to watch yourself.’

‘Well, I’ll bear that in mind, Minister. Thanks for your concern. Can I go now?’

‘Listen to yourself, Gerry. Listen to the pair of us. What are we even arguing for? We’ve got so much to do together. Let’s sort this out. When the time comes – and we’re
talking
six weeks, two months tops – I’m going to need
someone
. Team leader. I’ve got my guys in place, more or less, but I’ll need a top man. Think about it. Pays a lot better than papers. You said it yourself, Gerry, papers is fucked.’

I was glad I couldn’t see his face, the plausible tilt of his head, the coaxing half-smile.

‘Good. First you’re getting me fired, now you’re giving me a job. Make your mind up, Minister.’

His sigh was like a boot heel scraping on flint.

‘Naw. Gerry Conway. My mind’s crystal fucking clear. I’m the next First Minister of Scotland. I need a Director of Communications. What you need to decide is, do you want the job, or are you gonnae piss it all away on a nothing story? You let me know.’

The line went dead.

Back at the Grania, the bald desk clerk coughed as I passed reception. There was a message: a Mr Hepburn had called. I opted not to notice the question in his eyes.

‘He left this,’ the clerk said.

‘Good man.’

It was a folded page of hotel stationery. ‘Conway’ it said on the outside. And inside, ‘Don’t be a stranger’, and below that a mobile number. I stuck it in my pocket and headed for the lift.

When the Skinners bought the
Tribune
I was tempted to resign. The night editor and the health correspondent earned a round of applause and two rounds of drinks when they loudly jumped ship at a meeting in the Cope. But the bows they took to milk the applause showed naked, white-fringed, liver-spotted scalps and the new regime would have culled them anyway. For a week or so the fourth floor crackled with sedition. Meetings were called at short notice; councils of war in the Cope’s upstairs lounge. There was lots of heckling and
cinematically
loosened ties. The Father of the Chapel, a sub called Bill, got up on a chair to smack his fist into his palm amid beery acclamations. We actually staged a walkout and for two days running the daily was eight pages short and packed with literals that had us spraying each other with shandy as we read them out in the Cope.

Eric and Helen Skinner – they were brother and sister, not husband and wife – came from an ex-mining village in Ayrshire. They made their money in discount carpets before moving into papers. Their stable was mainly local: town and village weeklies in the Scottish Lowlands and the North of England. Their titles thrived. They worked to a formula. Hire a couple of hungry up-and-comers to gather local news. A jaded newsdesk staffer to put the thing together and bash out strident leaders. And then fill up the paper with agency rubbish – gossip, showbiz, sport. It worked with their other titles and now it would work with the
Trib
. Before the deal was even done, the newsdesk were dusting off their résumés. Questions were raised at Holyrood. Shadow ministers bandied
portentous
truisms about the importance of a vigorous press to a functioning democracy.

In our meetings at the Cope we used the same words – diffidently at first, but with growing conviction as the bevvy flowed. Democracy. Truth. Scrutiny. A Free Press. We cared about these things; the Skinners just cared about money. Then we headed back upstairs to file our expenses.

Within a week it was over. Like everyone else who had threatened to leave, I stayed. I had just enough to lose by going. And it turned out the Skinners weren’t as bad as we’d feared. They knew their reputation and they worked hard to change it, emailing
Tribune
staff – from editor to copy boy – with a list of high-minded pledges. They dined the politicians, soothing scruples at Rogano’s over Loch Fyne oysters and peachy Riesling. And they set up an editorial board for the
Tribune
and the
Tribune on Sunday
. Once a month in the function room of an Edinburgh hotel (not, God help us, in Glasgow, far less the
Tribune
building), they took their places: senior
editors
, marketers from the Skinner Press, and – this was the bit highlighted in excited press releases and intoned by Eric Skinner to the Media Commission at Holyrood – four representatives from ‘civic Scotland’, respected
figures
from the nation’s public life. This hand-picked
quartet
would guard the
Tribune
’s mantle and defend the paper’s mission. No one was surprised at the
appointments
: Fergus McCrone, former
Scotsman
editor and Arts Council stalwart; Madeleine Grant, broadcaster, diarist and author of
Scotland’s Secret Gardens
; Edwin Reilly, the Booker-shortlisted novelist and veteran Home Rule agitator; and Jarvis Tennant, former Principal of Glasgow University. Then stomach cancer killed Tennant and after the funeral his equally eminent wife – Barbara Tennant, QC, human rights lawyer and occasional
Tribune
columnist – accepted his seat.

The fact that Barbara Tennant was the former
colleague
of Peter Lyons in the law firm of Leggat, Lyons and Ross prompted nobody’s eyes to narrow. Scotland’s a small country. A degree of overlap and incestuous
messiness
is unavoidable. But Barbara Tennant was now on our shoulder, the scrutineer of the
Tribune
’s morals. And Tennant was out to get us.

I made the call next evening; I couldn’t put it off any longer.

‘Who’s this? Do I know a Gerry? You fucking dipshit, Conway. I thought you’d retired. What is this, your
fucking
holidays?’

‘Hello, Norman.’

‘Four fucking hours I’ve been trying to get you!’

‘There’s no signal.’

‘Yeah? Here’s the signal. Get your arse back to Glasgow. It’s finished. All right? Get back here and do your job. First ferry.’

I was in the hotel room. The telly was showing golf, with the sound turned off. Sun bouncing off the fairway, the grass a poisonous green.

‘Don’t lie down to her, Norman.’

‘What?’

‘Just, show a bit of balls, that’s all. What can she do? She’s not even management.’

‘Whoa, Gerry. What the fuck. Who are we talking about here? Barbara Tennant?’

‘It’s OK, Norman. Martin told me. She’s been in to see you. You’re going off the deep end here, Norman. There’s no–’

‘Gerry. Gerry!’ He was laughing. ‘Believe me. Barbara Tennant is the least of my fucking worries. Barbara Tennant? Fuck Barbara Tennant.’

‘What then?’

‘Wolfe was in.’

Kenny Wolfe – ‘White Fang’ to his admirers, ‘Cry Wolfe’ to the rest of us – was the Party’s chief spin doctor. He was never off the phone, to Rix or Fiona Maguire, to the PCC, grousing about nationalist bias or misattributed quotes, demanding retractions and clarifications. I once wrote an editorial that stopped short of consigning the Nats to eternal perdition. Wolfe was on the phone that morning, demanding the name of the writer. Rix stonewalled him. ‘Right,’ said Wolfe; ‘I’ll remember this. Tell whoever wrote it he’s got a thistle jammed up his arse.’ This time he’d arrived at the
Trib
at 9 a.m., and spent forty minutes jabbing his fat finger in Rix’s face. I dwelt on that image for a second or two while Rix ranted on.

‘He’s calling it harassment,’ said Rix. ‘First Martin’s gangland splash and then the leader attacking Lyons. And now you in Belfast. It’s vindictive, he says. We’re defaming the poor guy. We’re out to bring him down. He’s already got the luvvies on the case’ – the luvvies were Tennant and the rest of them – ‘but now he’s going higher. He’s written to the Skinners. He’s threatening the PCC.’

A heavyset blond guy in fawn slacks and a patterned sweater was stumping up the fairway, fiddling with his glove. This was part of golf’s appeal: physically, there wasn’t that much to choose between the Sunday morning hackers and their million-dollar idols.

‘You’d have to wonder, Norman. Why the petted lip, right at this moment? He’s shitting it. He knows we’re on to something.’

‘Does he? He knows more than I do, then. Or you, unless things have changed.’

‘Norman: that’s the whole fucking point. They know something we don’t: that’s what I’m here to find out.’

Rix didn’t say anything for a bit. The golfer was
reading
the green, squatting down with the putter in his fist, like a grotesque parody of a pole-dancer.

‘I know, Gerry. I know. Wolfe’s a fucking madman, I know. But this time he means it. He’s out his fucking tree.’

The blond guy was addressing the ball. His knees
quivered
as he readied the shot.

‘So tell him to fuck himself. You’re a big grown-up man, Norman.’

‘Yeah? Here’s a better idea. Why don’t
you
tell him to fuck himself? And while you’re at it you can explain to the board where the money’s gone. You remember that money? The government money that kept rolling in, all those public info spots that are going to the cunting
Scotsman
, now that you’ve gone and
fucked it up
. You want to tell them about that?’

‘He didn’t say that. Come on, Norman.’

‘Oh, he didn’t?’

The blond guy was still quivering.

‘So call him out. Fucking splash it. That’s a story in itself.’

‘Be your age, Gerry. You think I wear a wire to speak to Kenny Fucking Wolfe? He’d brass it out. He never said it anyway. In so many words.’

I started to speak but he cut me short.

‘Save it, Gerry. It’s finished. You’re coming home.’

The putt sank. Blondie stooped to retrieve it, the spikes on his sole catching the sun. He doffed his visor and tipped it to the crowd.

I put the telly off and reached for the minibar. A plastic miniature Red Label and a fridge-cool Toblerone.

I knew I was wrong. I knew I’d fucked up. But I was having a hard time liking it. Maybe I could go over some things again. I phoned Isaac Hepburn but it went to voicemail. I left a message. I bit down on the Toblerone and hurt the roof of my mouth and tried him again. Finally I drove to the gym and the guy in the blue vest – the same guy who served us drinks while Hepburn
promised
to help me – seemed fresh out of sympathy.

‘I don’t know. Do I look like his social secretary?’

‘Look, he told me to get in touch. Just give me an address. I need to see him.’

‘You’re not listening, fella. I don’t know where he is.’

‘Yeah, fuck you too. Brain Trainer? I’d take it back, it’s not fucking working.’

I didn’t wait around for his reply. I stomped out to the car and sulked. There was a knot of teens in the car park, hanging about on the disabled ramp, sharing a bottle of cider. I felt like asking for some. I was going home. I had run out of options.

Back on Botanic the hotel car park was full. They were nose to tail down both sides of Cromwell Street. I drove around and finally found a space on Eglantine Avenue. Walking back to the Grania, I spotted a cab and flagged it: ‘City centre, mate.’ In the Cathedral Quarter I found a pub I’d never used. Another well-dressed, disapproving barman – this one looked like a border guard or a driving instructor – raised his eyebrows. I scanned the whiskies and spotted the bulbous neck and angular shoulders of a Lagavulin bottle. I made it a double, with a Guinness to chase.

There were plenty of whiskies. I thought of Mrs Gillies and her tray of coloured bottles. The green eyes and the firm-set mouth. The preposterous clock. Her skinny
forearm
, when she pulled it loose, had felt about ready to snap. My palm still burned where I’d gripped her. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d touched her inappropriately, intimately somehow, as if it was a breast or a buttock I’d grabbed and not her wrist. I slugged the whisky and quenched its sour burn with a sluice of Guinness. After all, what had I done? I’d forced her to tell the truth. But the truth, I now realised, is not common property. Some truths are private. Mrs Gillies had paid for the truth I’d exposed. That truth was hers and I’d taken it from her.

I took a bite of whisky, held it in my mouth till the Guinness joined it. I’d established a rhythm with these alternating mouthfuls: the malt cut through the waves of stout like the prow of a sharp little boat. I was getting drunk but I wasn’t feeling any better. I had fucked up – nobody’s fault but mine, as Blind Willie Johnson says – but still I felt cheated. I could see it, in my mind’s eye, the thing that hadn’t happened: Peter Lyons leering with glee as he planted more leather in Gillies’s kidneys. It had seemed so in keeping. In keeping, at least, with the Lyons of my weekly column – the debonair street-fighter, the lush-toned showman who still liked nothing better than a spot of toe-to-toe. I always had fun writing him up. I
resisted
the leonine conceits of the red-tops, who routinely had the Justice supremo tossing his mane or batting away opponents with a swipe of his massive paw, but my copy ran to extravagant lengths.
When Peter Lyons smiles at you, it’s time to run for cover. Yesterday in the chamber, Malcolm Jesmond, the hapless Member for Pentlands West, found this out. The hard way.
The Lyons I
constructed
was a hard man, a smiling enforcer, dishing out punishment to the weak and the wayward. When this image was given flesh by Isaac Hepburn’s memories, I felt almost proud. It was like watching a character come to life.

Even as I was driving to meet Mrs Gillies, I’d been shaping my opening par. The sentences were arranging themselves, slotting into place, as if those words in that order had always been there. Now I had nothing. No leads. No pegs. No story.

The jukebox had started: something tinny and Irish. The maudlin swoop of tin whistles, a bodhrán’s flatulent blatter. I was sick of the whole place, this tinpot Dodge with its crummy back-to-backs, its pot-bellied hard-men. I drained my Guinness, the final inch of yellow dregs. The wershness made me grue.

Out on the street it was almost dark. Warm, with a fresh salt lick in the wind. For a moment I wasn’t sure where to go: was it right or left to the Grania? I paused on the pavement and the door rattled at my back, three guys pushing past, one of them stopping to light a smoke.

He called something to the others as he jogged to catch them up but a bus heaved past and it covered his words. The destination board said ‘City Centre’ in neon
tangerine
and I started off in the other direction.

I couldn’t shake the image of Mrs Gillies taking my whisky glass, sneering at me through blue cigarette smoke. Had Lyons got to her? Had he told her what to say? It seemed unlikely that he would go to such lengths, but who could tell? And Rix: why couldn’t he see it? If Lyons was this desperate it meant there was a story. Why wouldn’t Rix let me follow it? I thought of my phone call with Lyons, the dangerous rasp in his voice. I could
hardly
blame him. He thought I would toe the line. Why wouldn’t he? We’d made a deal. The terms were never stated but we both knew what they were. He fed me
stories
and I made him look good. For a jump on the other papers, I wrote him up in my column. It suited us both. We would rise together, Lyons to the ministerial Lexus, me to the editor’s chair. Only it hadn’t worked out like that. Lyons was already fixed. In six weeks’ time he’d be Scotland’s First Minister. It seemed a poor enough prize, but that was his call, not mine. And where was I? No nearer the top than I had been last year. I was clinging by my fingers to a job I’d grown to hate.