Laidlaw

by William McIlvanney

  ‘There’s been a murder. In Kelvingrove Park. The body of a girl was found there today. Sexually assaulted and then murdered.’

  He spoke in spasms, like a teleprinter, and he seemed to be checking each statement as it came out of his mouth.

  ‘You’re a young man, Harkness.’

  That was true. He paused over the remark, seemed to find it unchallengeable.

  ‘A young man, but already an experienced one.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Harkness’s comment felt fatuous to himself but it was a way of saying ‘present’. The Commander gave the impression of talking to himself.

  ‘You’ll be working with Detective Inspector Laidlaw on this case. He’s one of our less conventional men. You may have heard.’

  ‘I know he’s said to be very good, sir.’

  ‘He can be very good. Not as good as he thinks he is, of course. But then nobody could be. You’ll begin working with him tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Thank you.’

  Harkness waited. The chief got up and walked up and down a bit. It was Napoleon-addresses-his-troops time.

  ‘There are one or two things I want to say to you. You will be working with Detective Inspector Laidlaw. Let me explain what that means. At least what it might mean, unless he’s changed his methods since last week. Which is possible.’

  Harkness began to be interested.

  ‘He’ll be going his own way. “Free-lancing”, he calls it. Which is a fancy word for a very simple thing. You’ll find Detective Inspector Laidlaw rather likes fancy words. See that you don’t get the habit from him. All that’s involved is that he – and, in this case, you along with him – will be separate from the main body of the investigation.’

  The chief stopped and looked out the window, as if making sure the city was behaving.

  ‘This is a bad crime. The murderer and the victim may have been unconnected up to the time of the crime. And that could make it very hard to solve. But time is pushing. This is a sensational crime. The press will make a lot of it. People will be frightened. A man as unbalanced as that may do it again at any time. We’re under pressure. For these reasons I’ve agreed to let Laidlaw go his own way for a few days. Up to a point, that is. And that’s where you come in. You will be the liaison between Detective Inspector Laidlaw and the main investigation, which will be controlled by Detective Inspector Milligan of Central Division. You’ll find that Laidlaw likes to lose himself in the city at times like these. What is it he calls it? “Becoming a traveller,” I think. You can ask him what that means. I certainly don’t know. Anyway, that’s all very well. But he tends to lose touch with us. You will prevent that. You will be in daily touch with Detective Inspector Milligan. You will carry information to him and from him. Unless the two investigations cross-fertilise, there is no point, You’re the fertilising agent. Understood?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Harkness said, the talking fertiliser.

  ‘You’ll meet Laidlaw at half-past nine tomorrow morning at Central Division. He’ll come straight from the p.m. to get you there. I also want you to report to D.I. Milligan there just now. That should be like old times for you. See if there’s anything he wants you to do.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  ‘Good luck. Don’t be put off by Laidlaw’s manner. He tends to be an abrasive man. That’s all.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Harkness,’ the Commander said.

  Harkness felt as if he was being filed. There was something about the way the Commander spoke that made Harkness uncomfortable. But he couldn’t understand it. He came out into the corridor smiling with expectation, until it occurred to him bizarrely that somebody’s murder was his opportunity. He stopped smiling.

  11

  The Bridgegate was empty. Harry Rayburn had parked the car well away and he was walking. He passed the second-hand furniture shop and ‘Alice’s Restaurant’, an old café whose only pretension was its name. The corrugated entrance was Number Seventeen. He paused, looking back along the street and then towards the corner with Jocelyn Square, where The Old Ship Bank was closed like everything else.

  The metal across the door was sprung as Tommy had said. But having been weathered so long in one position, it wasn’t easy to force open. He had trouble easing the travelling-bag through the opening.

  The entry was dark. He wondered whether to call Tommy’s name. But, thinking about it, he knew he must be upstairs. At the top of the stairs, he negotiated the last steps very carefully because they were corroded. The bannister wasn’t safe. Of the two doors, one was heavily cobwebbed in the dim light. It had to be the other.

  He pushed it open. The small hallway had three doors, one facing him that was presumably a cupboard, and two others opposite each other. He hesitated, and opened the door on his left, into an empty room. He closed it, stepped across the hall and opened the other door.

  He saw Tommy at once, saw him not in isolation but as part of a larger scene that gave him its significance and which he simultaneously interpreted. He was pressed against a corner, looking over his shoulder. Rayburn was aware of the scabby wall he stood against, different layers of paper showing against it like a record of failure to cover its bleakness; he was aware of the empty fireplace, the remnant of chintzy curtain on the window, flag of defeated respectability. At the centre of this small ruin of domesticity was Tommy, seeming to Rayburn at once its destroyer and its victim. He was what it denied and so he had been obliged to deny it in order to happen. He had arrived where, within himself, he had probably always been.

  They watched each other. Rayburn made to move towards him and Tommy held up his hand.

  ‘Don’t touch me, Harry. That’s the first thing. Don’t try to touch me.’

  Rayburn left the travelling-bag in the middle of the floor like bait and moved back to the doorway. Tommy looked at the bag.

  ‘Did you bring the things for writing?’

  ‘They’re there. And there’s food there and some blankets. And candles and matches. But why won’t you come back with me? We could go now.’

  ‘Did you see my mother?’

  ‘I saw her.’

  ‘What did you tell her?’

  ‘I told her you were in trouble with the police and couldn’t come home. I didn’t say why. I had to tell her that much. Because I asked her to say you had gone to London two weeks back, if they asked. It was all right.’

  Rayburn thought of the small, grey-haired woman he had talked to that morning, as clean and about as yielding as stainless steel. She had wanted to know only one thing really, that Tommy was all right. She knew, Rayburn was sure, that whatever Tommy had done was very serious, but she hadn’t hesitated to accept the part he had given her.

  ‘Who was it, Tommy?’

  Tommy shook his head.

  ‘Was it that girl you told me about?’

  Tommy nodded. His right hand had been in his pocket all the time. As he brought it out now, kneading it, Rayburn realised that what he held in it was a pair of panties. There was blood on them.

  ‘Tommy. I can help you. I can get you away from here.’ He started to move nearer to him again. ‘Let me—’

  Tommy cringed.

  ‘I don’t want anybody to touch me!’ he shouted. ‘I don’t want to talk. I don’t want anybody else here.’

  Rayburn stared at him. In Tommy’s utter isolation Rayburn had found a complete commitment. Tommy stood like an admission of what Rayburn had managed to avoid.

  ‘I’ll come back, Tommy. I can get help. You’ve heard me talking about Matt Mason. He can help. Matt Mason’ll help.’

  He turned towards the door.

  ‘Come back tomorrow, Harry. Please.’

  Rayburn nodded and went out. He knew that if he didn’t get Tommy safely out of there, there would be nothing else he wanted to do again.

  12

  The man jumped back onto the pavement as the car swerved to avoid him. He looked after it indignantly. ‘You missed hi
m,’ Milligan said.

  ‘You’ll never get promotion that way, Boy Robin. That was Barney Aird. You should’ve knocked him down. Crime Prevention, they call it.’

  ‘I’m going to miss the compassion you bring to the job,’ Harkness said.

  Milligan was looking out at the passing scene with a kind of sunny malice.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Where you’re going you’ll get plenty of that. Laidlaw? You’ll have to wear wellies when you work with him. To wade through the tears. He thinks criminals are underprivileged. He’s not a detective. He’s a shop-steward for neds. It’ll be a great experience for you. Boy Robin meets Batman.’

  Milligan started to hum ‘Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen.’ Harkness understood that Milligan hadn’t forgiven him for leaving to join the Crime Squad.

  ‘He’s supposed to be a good man,’ Harkness said.

  ‘He’s maybe a good man. Even kind to animals, probably. But he’s not a good polis-man.’

  Harkness changed down at the lights.

  ‘How not?’

  ‘He doesn’t know which side he’s on. He’s pig in the middle. Not clever.’

  ‘You think it’s always Them and Us?’

  ‘Well, they think that, don’t they? I’d be a bit simple not to agree. Turn the other cheek in this caper and they’ll have to knit you a new face at the Western. I don’t suit Fair Isle. Doesn’t go with my eyes.’

  He turned their blueness innocently on Harkness. Harkness laughed. He had always found Milligan funny.

  ‘Laidlaw seems to survive.’

  ‘Time enough yet. He’s a slow developer. His ideas haven’t shaved yet. Wait and see. He’ll either grow up or pack up. No third way. Happens to us all. You come into this job wanting to give everybody a chance and what they take is a liberty. But you learn. It’s just taking Laidlaw longer than usual. That’s all.’

  ‘There’s crooks and crooks.’

  ‘All right. But I’m talking about crooks. It takes a professional to deal with them. And Laidlaw’s an amateur.’

  ‘So what’s a professional?’

  ‘Boy Robin. You’ve worked with me for more than a year. Are you a slow learner? A professional knows what he is. I’ve got nothing in common with thieves and con-men and pimps and murderers. Nothing! They’re another species. And we’re at war with them. It’s about survival. What would happen in a war if we didn’t wear different uniforms? We wouldn’t know who was fighting who. That’s Laidlaw. He’s running about no man’s land with a German helmet and a Black Watch jacket.’

  They had turned into Ardmore Crescent.

  ‘He’s never faced up to what this job’s about. It’s about catching the baddies. And doing whatever you have to do to catch them. You have to batter down whatever’s in your road. Doors or faces makes no odds. There’s seventeen over there. You watch how it’s done, son. You can take wee notes if you like. Where you’re going, you might need them.’

  By the time Harkness had pulled into the kerb, Milligan was getting out. Harkness followed him into the entry. The door was opened by an elderly man. Milligan flapped open his wallet, showing his identity card.

  It was a ticket to an enclave of the Gothic in Drumchapel: admit two to the House of Gloom. Outside, the drab modernity of bleak streets, an imposed assumption about the meanness of our lives; inside this door, a dark subversion of that rationale, a sense of the inner distances grief imparts, the manic architecture of the heart that can make eerie castellated turrets and gloomy secret chambers in a council house.

  The hall was enriched by shadows, seeming bigger than itself. Through the half-open door of the living-room, a single wall-light glowed. The muttered voices were a coven. The kitchen door was closed. From behind it came uncertain sounds, the men imprisoned in their helplessness.

  ‘I’d like to see the parents of the deceased,’ Milligan said.

  To Harkness speech seemed like a foreign language here.

  ‘Oh, they’re in an awfy state, sir,’ the old man said. ‘Sadie especially. Ye couldny get sense oot o’ her. They’ve had an awfy time, ye know. Ah’m jist a neighbour, like.’

  ‘I still want to see them,’ Milligan said.

  His voice was like an act of vandalism. He was looking at the old man as if he was about to arrest him.

  ‘Whit’s this, Charlie? Whit’s this?’

  It was a younger woman. She was gesturing them all to be quiet.

  ‘It’s the polis, Meg. They want tae talk tae Bud and Sadie,’ the man whispered.

  ‘My Goad. The wumman’s oot o’ her wits. Could ye no’ leave them alone the noo?’

  Out of deference to her feelings, Milligan lowered his voice to a boom.

  ‘Missus,’ he said, ‘there’s been a murder. Investigations have to be made. Where’s Mr Lawson?’

  ‘The men are a’ in the kitchen,’ the woman said.

  ‘Eh, Bud’s oot for some air,’ the old man was saying.

  But Milligan had already opened the door. The room was heavy with cigarette-smoke like stage mist. Among its whorlings three men sat.

  ‘Mr Lawson?’ Milligan asked them.

  There was a silence.

  ‘One of us took Bud oot for a walk.’

  ‘Airchie Stanley.’

  ‘When will he be back?’

  ‘No sayin’.’

  Milligan closed the door.

  ‘It’ll have to be Mrs Lawson,’ Milligan said.

  ‘Oh my,’ the woman said. ‘Wait here a minute.’

  As she went in, the living-room door swung open. The doorway, separating them from a quality of grief they could never share, was a burnous lifted. It was a roomful of women busy at their sorrow. Harkness watched the younger woman break the circle and go over to the small woman by the fire. The hurt face came up, a blur of incomprehension. Then she began to cry again, as if it was the only answer she had to everything. Some of the women moved to her, closing ranks against the men. Harkness felt responsible.

  But Milligan simply waited for them to come and meet his purpose. They did. What followed was harrowing for Harkness. They were shown into a bedroom that had obviously been the girl’s, a shrine to David Essex. The younger woman came to sit with Mrs Lawson.

  Milligan moved meticulously back and forward across an already dead past like someone ploughing a cemetery, while Mrs Lawson kept being side-tracked by the incidental bones that he turned up. The only thing she could tell him about last night that Laidlaw hadn’t given him was the name of Sarah Stanley, the girl who had gone to the disco with Jennifer. The girl was in the house and came through with her mother. Jennifer had left with a man she didn’t see, Sarah said. He had been waiting outside when Jennifer said cheerio. Milligan went on with patient questions, but that was all they learned.

  They left the house with two photographs. In the car, Milligan handed Harkness one of the photographs.

  ‘That’s for Laidlaw,’ Milligan said. ‘In payment for the information he gave me.’

  Harkness looked at it. She was standing in the street. She was pretty and she was laughing.

  ‘That wasn’t too pleasant in there,’ Harkness said.

  ‘We got the photos,’ Milligan said. ‘The rest has nothing to do with us. We’ll check in at the caravan on the road back. And that’s us for the night. There’ll be nothing else happening the night. Even murderers have to go to their beds.’

  Milligan laughed. Harkness started up the car.

  ‘I wonder where Bud Lawson is,’ he said.

  ‘In the pub.’ Milligan spoke with certainty. ‘Getting fou.’

  13

  The man standing at the bar had become drunk slowly. But his declaration of the fact was sudden and spectacular. He pushed himself off from the counter as if it was a jetty. He seemed to be treading water. His eyes were seeing far horizons. The downstairs lounge of the Lorne Hotel was his oyster. He was ready to serve notice on the world.

  The place was busy. He started to approach various tabl
es by indirections. Now he seemed to be heading off in a vaguely westerly direction, now he wasn’t. His shuffling footwork was a cunning illusion. He was, as it were, surrounding everybody. His arms had begun to move with a kind of amorphous menace and he was talking.

  ‘Ho-ho! Yese fancy yerselves, do ye? Ah didny come a’ through the war fur this. In an’ oot, in an’ oot. Quick as a flash. Houf, houf! Houf, houf!’

  It was a nasal sound, the noise amateur boxers make when hitting the heavy bag to time their punches. But then it wasn’t amateur night at the Lorne.

  ‘Nya-hah! How about that then? The more ye know the less the better. Houf, houf!’

  He was circulating haphazardly, trying different tables. In Hollywood films it’s gypsy fiddlers. In Glasgow pubs it isn’t. With that instinct for catastrophe some drunk men have, he settled for a table where three men were sitting. Two of them, Bud Lawson and Airchie Stanley, looked like trouble. The third one looked like much worse trouble. He had thinning hair and eyes that seemed as impressionable as pebbles. A thick scar ran down his left cheek and vanished under his chin. It was him the drunk man chose.

  ‘Ho-ho! A big guy. Ah’ve never been known to lose. Ah’m doom on two legs. Get up, ya midden!’

  The man with the scar stood up. The barman materialised beside the drunk man and took his arm.

  ‘Is this man causing a disturbance, sir?’ he asked the man with the scar.

  ‘Unless he’s yer cabaret, Ah’d say he is.’

  ‘Come on, sir. You’ll have to behave.’

  The drunk man was offering resistance.

  ‘On ye go, sur,’ the man with the scar said. ‘It’s past yer bedtime.’

  The drunk man focussed for one clear second on the man with the scar. Then he became wisely drunk again and was led out, content to challenge a table and apostrophise the carpet on his way. He hit the end of Sauchiehall Street as if it was the edge of the world, and he might fall off.