Laidlaw

by William McIlvanney

  The party was the statue of a party. For Harkness, the city had turned its back on him all over again. There was no mistaking the meaning of this sculpture: nobody here likes the police. It was part of the folk art of the West of Scotland. Harkness should know. His father was one of its curators.

  There seemed more people in the room than it could hold. To Harkness, the parts were somehow more than the sum. He took in fragments. A boy kept his arm round a girl. A big man with a beard stood very erect, auditioning for Moses. People sat or sprawled or stood motionless, looking at Laidlaw and Harkness. A stunning, black-haired girl leaned back against a wall, like the figurehead of one of Harkness’s dreams. Smoke rose in a straight line from somebody’s cigarette.

  ‘This is the police,’ the young man said, labouring the silence.

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb your party,’ Laidlaw said. ‘But we’re looking for Alan McInnes. Is he here?’

  The reaction was a complicated event. It was relief and curiosity and resentment. When the figure stepped forward, he didn’t simplify things.

  ‘I’m Alan McInnes.’

  He had left a girl, who stood conspicuously bereft, a poster of abandonment. Her innocent embarrassment made Laidlaw and Harkness look cruel. Alan McInnes was a good-looking boy, a bit pale, but perhaps that was temporary. Laidlaw nodded to him in a friendly way but it wasn’t enough to ease the tension. The unease found a spokesman.

  ‘Wait a minute! What’s this about?’

  It was the big man with the beard. His shirt was open to the navel. Carpeted with hair, his chest sported a medallion that could have anchored the Queen Mary. He stepped into the middle of the floor to make room for his sense of himself. He made his focus Laidlaw.

  ‘What’s this about?’

  Laidlaw was patient.

  ‘We just want Alan to come with us and answer a few questions. We think he can help us. Alan knows what it’s about. Don’t you, son?’

  ‘I think I do.’

  ‘Son!’ The big man waited till the reverberations of his voice had subsided. ‘Son? Paternalism is the silk glove of repression.’

  Harkness saw Laidlaw relax and read the sign correctly. The big man had sold the jerseys. He was an ego-tripper, not concerned about Alan McInnes, only about how good he could make himself look in relation to him. Laidlaw ignored him.

  ‘You don’t mind coming with us. Do you, son?’

  ‘No, I’ll come.’

  ‘No, wait!’ The big man was still trying. ‘If you’ve got to have hostages to conformity, take me. I’m against everything you stand for. I’m a dropout. A hippie. A mystic. An anarchist.’

  ‘I’m a Partick Thistle supporter,’ Laidlaw said. ‘We’ve all got problems.’

  Some people laughed. Laidlaw had Glasgowfied what was happening. Alan McInnes came over to them. The man with the beard appealed to an emptying theatre.

  ‘Capitalism at work,’ he said.

  They were looking at Laidlaw. He let the silence build itself into a rostrum.

  ‘I would say Alan’ll be back before the night’s out,’ he said. ‘While you’re waiting,’ he nodded towards the man with the beard, ‘why not put out some of your empties? It would give you room to have a real party.’

  They left. The young man in the cheesecloth shirt saw them out. The girl dressed in curtains had drifted back to the door, still balancing her drink. She was getting good enough to make a career of it.

  It was quiet in the tube. They sat in an empty coach like three friends on a night out. Perhaps it was the lack of threat Laidlaw presented, but Alan McInnes began of his own accord to talk to him about Jennifer Lawson.

  ‘You had a date with her on Saturday night,’ Laidlaw said.

  ‘She didn’t turn up.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’

  ‘I got frightened. I thought maybe she hadn’t mentioned it to anybody. She was like that. So I kept quiet.’

  ‘How long have you know her?’

  ‘Six, seven weeks.’

  ‘Can you get people to be witnesses to where you were on Saturday night?’

  ‘I can. It was supposed to be a foursome.’

  He went on talking, building up a lot of evidence against the way he thought things looked. Only one other thing he said seemed to interest Laidlaw particularly.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘There was somebody else she was going out with. Just the past couple of weeks. She explained to me about it. Wanted to be fair to me. So that I could pack it up if I wanted. But I said we’d wait and see. I liked her a lot.’

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘She wouldn’t say. She was very close about some things.’

  ‘You know anything about him at all?’

  ‘It was somebody she had been out with before. But her father didn’t approve. The bloke was a Catholic.’

  ‘Any idea where he came from, what he did?’

  ‘No, that’s everything she told me. Except she seemed to think he needed her. Wasn’t sure of himself.’

  ‘How did she mean?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s just what she said.’

  They walked him from St Enoch’s Square to Central Division. Outside the door of the station, Laidlaw took Harkness aside.

  ‘You take him in,’ he said. ‘You did the work, you get the kudos. But I think he’s all right. I’m off on a wee tout-hunt.’ To Alan Mclnnes he called, ‘Take it easy, Alan. Just tell them the truth.’ And then to Harkness again, ‘Let me know what the word is. I’ll be in The Burleigh.’

  Harkness felt the evening go off again. Gratified at having brought in Alan McInnes, he was dismayed at Laidlaw’s casualness about it. Looking after him, he reflected that he was the kind of policeman his father might like.

  33

  The Gay Laddie was busy. John Rhodes had to accept a lot of hullos and touches on the back before he reached the closed door of the snug. Tam opened the door and closed it again behind him, just happening to stay standing outside it, drinking a pint.

  In the snug a man sat alone at the table. In front of him was an unbroken bottle of White Horse, two empty glasses and a jug of water. John Rhodes looked at him, judging him against the instincts that were the most refined equipment John had. The man looked big and strong but so did a lot of people. What impressed about him was the stillness. He didn’t fidget under the stare, just gave it back like a bouncing cheque.

  ‘Bud Lawson? Ah’m John Rhodes.’

  Bud Lawson nodded and reached out his hand to shake. John Rhodes ignored it and sat down opposite. He poured out the drinks. Bud Lawson took water.

  ‘Mr Lawson. Understand. You came intae this snug by the side door there. Ye’ll go out the same way. Nobody’ll see ye. That’s the first thing. The conversation we’re gonny have never happened. Ye understand?’

  ‘Ah understand.’

  John Rhodes took a drink.

  ‘Ah wis sorry tae hear about yer daughter.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Say ye could get yer hands on who did it. Surmisin’, like. Whit wid ye do?’

  ‘Ah’d kill ’im.’

  It was a simple statement of fact.

  ‘They might catch ye.’

  ‘So who’s worried?’

  ‘But if they did?’

  ‘It wid be worth it.’

  ‘Whit wid ye tell them?’

  ‘Nothin’.’

  John Rhodes was convinced. But he waited a moment. He topped up both glasses.

  ‘Ye’ve got the knackers tae do it all right, Ah wid think. But have ye got the knackers tae keep yer mooth shut for the rest o’ yer life? That’s the hard bit.’

  ‘Ah widny give the polis the time o’ day. Anytime.’

  ‘It’s no’ jist the polis. Whit about yer friend?’

  ‘Whit friend?’

  ‘The fella ye were with in “The Lorne”.’

  ‘Nae chance. If Ah just get a go at this yin, Ah widny even mention it tae maself.’

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nbsp; ‘Ah think by the morra Ah can take ye where he is.’

  They sat in stillness, looking at each other.

  ‘If Ah do that, Ah want your word that if anythin’ happens, ye’re on yer own. We can cover ourselves anyway. But Ah want your word.’

  ‘You’ve got ma word.’

  John Rhodes watched him closely and then nodded.

  ‘That’s it then. You’ve got mine. By the morra night ye’ll get yer chance. We’ll work out the story ye tell if anythin’ happens. An’ Mr Lawson. Ye better stick tae it.’

  He stood up.

  ‘Ye’re ma friend for life,’ Bud Lawson said.

  ‘Naw. Ah’m a stranger tae you. Ah don’t want tae see you efter the night. Don’t you forget that. Ah’m doin’ whit Ah think is right. Ah’ve got daughters as well. We’re strangers talkin’. You finish yer drink. Then go out that side door. The man there’ll tell ye arrangements. Don’t ever come back in here. Even if ye’re passin’ an’ it’s on fire. Don’t try tae save anybody. Jist let them burn.’

  He went out. As Bud Lawson drank, he knew that in the eyes of John Rhodes he had passed a test – in his own eyes too. He was capable of doing it, he knew. He had never killed anyone before but he had never had so strong a reason before.

  34

  What time it was didn’t bother Harkness, only what time it wasn’t. It wasn’t quarter-to-eleven, and it wouldn’t be again tonight. The waste of a night weighed on him. He had passed up something in order to arrive at nothing. The aimless scuffling that composed the whole day made him feel like a bit-player in his own life.

  The Burleigh didn’t help, locked and dark, a storehouse for sleep. He had to get the night-porter to let him in. The old man obviously knew the plot of Harkness’s day. He wasn’t about to change the ending.

  When Harkness rang, the small figure appeared out of the dimness beyond the glass door with infinite patience, like a genie materialising atom by atom out of a bottle. You knew he was getting nearer because he wasn’t getting any further away. Once there, he cupped both hands against the glass, giving himself a letterbox of shadow he could keek through. It took him a day or two to focus. He was a slow mover, Harkness decided, the kind who could miss a world war by glancing away.

  While the old man was plotting his position, Harkness had a strong desire to put on his Frankenstein face, shoot out his arms and stiff-leg it up and down the porch. He contented himself with trying not to look like a letter-bomb.

  Then it was the ritual of the keys. He brailled his way through them, made his selection and dropped the lot. The whole process began again, taking him so long that Harkness was hoping he wouldn’t take a tea-break in the middle. Inside, Harkness tapped him on the sleeve of his brown dustcoat.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said with relief.

  But the receptionist was waiting to continue the art of walking backwards to meet you. She wasn’t the one from earlier. She was younger and harder and looked as if she wanted the world to go away and bother somebody else. In the time it took Harkness to safari to her desk, she didn’t look up once. When he got there, she still didn’t look up.

  She was making entries in a ledger, presumably working out when the world would end. She didn’t glance at him. While the point of the pen in her right hand bounced like a bagatelle-ball among complicated figures, her left hand spun the register round for him.

  ‘Will you be a single-room?’ she said.

  She was the perfect end to a crappy day, brusque, supercilious and precisely as pleasant as a boil on the sphincter. Harkness stared at the crown of her head, deciding where the axe should go.

  ‘Only if you’ll be a bungalow,’ he said.

  The pen-point jabbed purposefully a couple of times more and then staggered to a halt in mid air. She looked at him as if she didn’t want her pince-nez to fall off.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Of course you do. I’m going upstairs to see a Mr Laidlaw. I’m just letting you know. He’s in, I take it.’

  She had checked the register and the key-board and said, ‘Yes’, before she caught up with herself. Harkness waited patiently for discomfiture to give way to annoyance and for annoyance to exercise itself into indignation before he showed her his card.

  ‘He’s a policeman, too,’ he said.

  She wasn’t pleased.

  ‘I suppose it’s all right. But keep it quiet, please. The residents are sleeping.’

  ‘And here was me hoping to have a dorm feast,’ Harkness said.

  The old man offered him the lift but Harkness said, ‘No. Thanks all the same.’ He was in a hurry. He went upstairs and walked the tilting decks again. At Laidlaw’s door he knocked gently several times and nothing happened. He tried the handle and it opened. He switched on the light. The room was empty.

  Leaving the door open, he went to the Residents’ Lounge and put on the light. There was nobody there, just a beer-glass ringed with white and a newspaper lying open at the television programmes. He put off the light and went back to Laidlaw’s room. The note he left said ‘Alan McInnes seems to be in the clear’.

  Even Laidlaw was avoiding him. He went back downstairs and was heading for the door, where the old man was waiting, when he turned and crossed towards the desk. He needed one last squeeze at the boil to get the frustration out.

  ‘That’s me leaving now,’ he said.

  She nodded curtly. He must have cost her another calculation.

  ‘You don’t have a lounge-bar open just now, do you?’

  She looked a reprimand at him.

  ‘No, it’s closed. And even if it was open, it would only be for residents.’

  He let her misunderstanding go.

  ‘Where’s the other woman? Who was on the desk earlier?’

  ‘She’s upstairs in bed,’ she said, and then wondered how he knew her. ‘You mean Jan?’

  ‘I don’t know her name. But you can’t miss her. She’s the one who treats people as if they were human.’

  ‘How can she tell?’

  ‘It takes one to know one,’ Harkness said.

  The old man opened the door with all the ease of the Venus de Milo cracking a safe. The street cooled Harkness down. He thought maybe he had over-reacted. Laidlaw must be catching. He remembered he was supposed to have phoned Mary and wished it was quarter-to-eleven. He wondered about Laidlaw.

  35

  They had made love twice. The first time was hurried and desperate, less a love-letter than a note for the milkman. It was a quick inventory of basic equipment and a fitting of the essential component parts together, followed by about a minute-and-a-half of grunting mayhem.

  After it, they lay in the darkness, trying to remember how to breathe. It was several minutes before she managed to speak.

  ‘Would you mind arresting yourself for assault and battery?’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  He started to laugh.

  ‘By the way,’ he said. ‘Here’s your left tit back. It just came away in my hand.’

  They were both laughing. She tapered hers off into an operatic groan.

  ‘My God,’ she said. ‘I feel so sore. I wish you’d taken your boots off.’

  ‘It’s so long since I’ve seen you. I had a wee bit bother finding my way around.’

  He put his arm round her and thought about it.

  ‘When you can’t pick the lock,’ he said, ‘you’ve got to batter the door down.’

  ‘Yes. But I left it open.’

  ‘I’m so virile, I didn’t notice.’

  She waited patiently for his head to come back from a walk around his guilt. His complexity didn’t annoy her. She accepted that the situation was more fraught for him. The only trammel to her love was the fear of causing hurt to him through disrupting his life irrevocably. Her right hand stroked his stomach, an insistent but gentle presence.

  The second time was a slow discovery. They had lain face to face, saying what came into their heads and breathing on each other.
He lipped her ear. Her hand defined the inside of his thigh. Gradually they became mouths that went out on each other, blindly exploring. They were two roundabout journeys looking for a meeting-point. Their mouths took bearings from a lot of places as they went. Beneath the lips of each the other distended, mysterious as a continent, until he was coming at her, manic as a conquistador with a new world to colonise. It was as if he was fighting an ebbing tide to come ashore, where she reached for him. His mouth was talking, making wild threats that she was welcoming. When they finally rolled over, separate but having merged, they didn’t know how long it had been. They just knew it felt exactly long enough.

  The fierceness he had felt towards her cleansed his sense of her. He saw her as beautiful. They lay as if they had fallen very far – luxuriously fractured. It was enough.

  ‘All better now,’ she said, and giggled. ‘You may have been rough before. But you’ve got good ointment.’

  Laidlaw stirred, reached across and switched on the bedside light. He took his cigarettes and matches.

  ‘Can I have one of those, please?’ Jan asked.

  Then it had been at-home time, a delicious parody of domesticity – pillows improvised lengthwise into armchairs, Laidlaw padding about like a naked butler getting whiskies, the two of them ensconced smoking, her breasts appearing coyly over the bedclothes.

  Now it was that unpolluted feeling that Laidlaw appreciated, when your head is free of fog and thoughts come out of your mouth natural and fully formed. He was lying on top of the covers with the ashtray balanced on his stomach.

  ‘Be careful where you put your ash, love,’ he said. ‘We don’t want to start a forest fire.’

  ‘Delusions of grandeur. Has your guilt arrived yet, by the way?’

  ‘Who said it ever left?’

  ‘You’re amazing. It’s a sport, love.’

  ‘Aye. But it’s a blood sport.’

  ‘Come on.’

  ‘True. Kisses are wee assaults. Just turning towards someone is turning away from somebody else. There’s always hurt.’