Laidlaw

by William McIlvanney

  ‘Ah loved ma lassie!’

  ‘That’s not what I hear. She lied to you, she hid from you. She didn’t trust you because you gave her none. You wouldn’t let her be herself. You helped to make what happened to her happen.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘You helped! That’s all I’m saying. What rights have you? What right has any of us to touch that boy?’

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘Never shut up. If you can’t stand the words, don’t listen. That’s what you’ve been doing all your life, isn’t it? Hiding! You’re a hider. You couldn’t face who your girl was. She was another person, a separate body. She would’ve been a woman. She would’ve wanted men. Catholics? It wasn’t Catholics you were against. Hate Catholics, hate people! You couldn’t stand for her to have somebody else. That’s what it was. What was it, did you fancy her yourself?’

  ‘Shut up, shut up!’

  ‘It’s just a question. I don’t know the answer. Do you? Well if you do, then kill him! He’s there, he’s helpless. You’re such a hard man, aren’t you? Except that you know you’re hiding. Kill him! So that you don’t have to face up to what’s really happened. Kill him! If you can’t take the risk of leaving him alive.’

  There was silence. The silence built gradually into a terrible scream and the splatter of an enormous blow, the sound of bones fragmenting. Laidlaw jumped. The railing he caught came away but held long enough for his body to moor to the landing.

  Harkness heard the metal rebound down the well of the stairs, measuring the depth of his awe. Then a surprised voice said, ‘Jesus Christ.’ It was a visitor from ordinariness, a beautiful sound from a place that to Harkness seemed miles away. The other policemen had arrived.

  As they came up the stairs, Harkness demanded a torch. He shone it above him. It made an arbitrary patch of light in total darkness. It centre was Laidlaw. On his left was Tommy Bryson, a handsome, pale-skinned boy cowering away, the front of his light blue trousers dark where he had wet himself. On Laidlaw’s right Bud Lawson was slumped, his right hand cradled in front of him, a mess of blood and protuberant bone. The obscenely scabrous wall beside him, that served as a frame for all three, was blotched with red where his hand had smashed it. Laidlaw was buffer between them, blinking against the manufactured light, the mouth that had saved a man’s life curled in annoyance at the intrusion.

  After some consultation, a door was broken off downstairs and used as a bridge to get them from the landing. As the small group came back out the entry into Glasgow, the torch that pointed their way flicked across some graffiti that nobody noticed. One legend in ballpoint read:

  Arrest Hampden Park

  put them all in the van

  hell still be lose

  hes the cancer man

  47

  Just as a defused bomb can be recycled into household ornaments, the aftermath became routine, as it always does. Tommy Bryson gave a confused statement, the clearest part of which was ‘I loved her, I loved her, I loved her.’ He was given a change of clothes from somewhere and put in a cell. Bud Lawson denied that the car they had seen in the Bridgegate had any connection with him. He said he had gone to Poppies and followed Harry Rayburn from there. Once he found where Tommy Bryson was, he had decided to wait till night and then go back and kill him. He was taken to hospital. Minty McGregor was released, saying, ‘This is some bloody way tae treat a dyin’ man.’ When the police went into Poppies for Harry Rayburn, they were left with a corpse to collect. He had gone to get his jacket and had cut his throat.

  ‘You’re the healthy one,’ Laidlaw said to Harkness. ‘How many people have you ever loved like that?’

  They were sitting in an office at Central Division. Harkness was working at their report, Laidlaw was working at coffee, smoking and staring at the wall. Harkness had thought the end of it would feel different. He felt cheated of the euphoria he should be experiencing. It was like knowing there was a party on but not being able to find the address. It certainly wasn’t here.

  ‘That must’ve been a hard thing for Bud Lawson to do,’ he said.

  ‘Aye. It’s welcome to evolution for the big man. He’ll have to think instead of hitting for a while.’

  ‘It’s a good thing you managed to convince him he was wrong.’

  ‘I don’t know that I did that. I don’t even know that he was wrong.’

  Harkness was surprised again to discover that the most certain thing about Laidlaw was his doubt. Everything came back to that, even his decisiveness.

  ‘So what was all that about?’ Harkness asked.

  Laidlaw took some coffee.

  ‘What I’ve got against folk like Lawson isn’t that they’re wrong. It’s just that they assume they’re right. Bigotry’s just unearned certainty, isn’t it?’

  Harkness went back to typing. The phone rang and Laidlaw took it. He listened for a time, making faces at Harkness.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘I’ll tell him,’ and put the phone down.

  Harkness knew but wanted to hear it.

  ‘The head man sends all congratulations. He’s impressed with you. He’ll be seeing you himself.’

  ‘Thanks. What about you?’

  ‘Aye. He was very nice there. The rest of my life’ll be an anti-climax.’

  Laidlaw went back to wall-staring. He was wondering how much more energy he had to go on inhabiting the fierceness of the contradictions in his life. He would go back home tomorrow – he looked at his watch – today. The forebodings in that thought of some kind of imminent disaster oppressed him.

  ‘John Rhodes,’ he said.

  Harkness stopped and looked up.

  ‘Who set the boy up, you mean?’

  ‘Must have been.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking that. And tipped us off about Minty McGregor. To lead us away.’

  ‘It fits him. He believes in the man to man thing. An eye for an eye and a son for a daughter. Jehovah Rhodes. Well, there’ll be other times with him.’

  ‘You feel up to them?’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking in those terms. But if it came to that, all right.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t fancy yourself as a hard man?’

  ‘I don’t. But I don’t really fancy anyone else as one either. I hate violence so much I don’t intend to let anybody practise it on me with impunity. If it came to the bit, he’d win the first time all right. But I’d win the second time, if there was enough of me left to have one. No question about that. I’d arrange it that way. I don’t have fights. I have wars.’

  To Harkness it seemed unnecessarily gloomy to be talking about next times before they had even savoured this one.

  ‘It’s a good feeling, though,’ he said. ‘A crime solved.’

  Laidlaw lit another cigarette.

  ‘You don’t solve crimes,’ he said. ‘You inter them in facts, don’t you?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘A crime you’re trying to solve is a temporary mystery. Solved, it’s permanent. What can the courts do with this then? Who knows what it is? It’s maybe just another love story.’

  ‘What? I’d like to hear somebody trying to tell you that if you were the girl’s father.’

  ‘No way, I agree. I’m sure I’d be in the Bud Lawson stakes if it happened to one of my girls. But that wouldn’t make it right. I’m never very clear exactly what the law’s for. But that’s one thing it can do – it can protect the relatives of the victim from atavism. It can pull the knot on all those primitive impulses by taking over responsibility for them. Until we get them into balance again.’

  ‘It’s still a long way from a love story.’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s maybe Romeo and Juliet upside down. I mean she really fancied him. And he loved her. He said it himself. And I suppose her father tried to love her the way he could. And poor old Harry Rayburn loved him. And his mother.’

  ‘You really believe that?’

  ‘I don’t know. But what I do know is that more folk than two w
ere present at that murder. And what charges do you bring against the others? Against Bud Lawson. He’s made a clenched fist of his head all his life. Sadie Lawson’s more submissive than the world can afford anybody to be. John Rhodes. Because he’s very handy, he’s going to play at Nero with a boy’s life. Who the hell does he think he is? I don’t care that he could beat everybody eight days a week. Then there’s you with your deodorised attitudes. And me. Hiding in suburbia. What’s so clever about any of us that we can afford to be flip about other people? We only get our lives on tick for so long. Every so often it’s got to be divvied up. Jennifer Lawson and Tommy Bryson were the ones that had to foot most of the bill. I mean – what happened in that park?’

  Harkness exhaled slowly.

  ‘But,’ he said. ‘Take it far enough and it’s all just an act of God.’

  ‘So maybe we should find out where He is and book Him.’

  Laidlaw stood up.

  ‘I think I’ll go up and see that boy,’ he said. ‘Maybe he needs to talk to somebody. You get the headstone typed out in holy triplicate.’

  Harkness sat staring ahead after Laidlaw had gone out. In the bleakness he felt, one thought sustained him like a raft. He would be in The Muscular Arms tonight.

  He lifted the sheet of paper they had taken from Tommy Bryson’s pocket. It was a page of writing which had been almost entirely scored out with great care. Holding it against the light, he tried to make out some of it. It was virtually impossible but, speculating on the fragments of letters he could see, he thought he deciphered ‘I think she thought she knew who I was.’ But you couldn’t be sure. All that was clearly left of whatever he had written was one small statement near the bottom: ‘I tried to love her.’

  48

  Matt Mason took his drink with him when the phone rang. It had been a good meal. He was feeling pleasant. He didn’t recognise the voice that said, ‘Mr Mason?’

  ‘Who is this speaking?’

  ‘It’s Minty: Minty McGregor.’

  ‘Yes?’

  Mason was wary. He could hardly believe that Minty would have the cheek to put the squeeze on, but the thought occurred to him.

  ‘Ah want tae thank ye for contributin’ tae ma pension fund.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ah feel that after a life o’ crime it’s only right that the business should gi’e me somethin’ back.’

  ‘What’s this supposed to mean?’

  ‘It means they arrested that boy Bryson half-an-hour ago. An’ you’re sole owner of a paira knickers outa C&A. Handy wee shop that. If ye want the use o’ them, Ah can recommend a good detergent. Takes oot hen’s blood without a trace.’

  There was a pause while Mason let his apoplexy gather.

  ‘You bastard!’ he hissed. Then he nodded and smiled as his guest made his way to the toilet. ‘You’re dead.’

  ‘No’ quite. Ye’re a week or two early.’

  ‘Time enough to get you.’

  ‘What are ye goin’ to do, Mr Mason? Give ma cancer cancer?’

  Mason experienced powerlessness. It was a strange feeling. The voice coming through the phone seemed already to be speaking out of a grave. It expressed nothing – not fear, not satisfaction – just a chilly deadness that frosted his ear.

  ‘You’ve got a family,’ Mason managed.

  ‘Aye. Ah’ve also got a friend. He’s straight as a die. Great bloke, this. Ye couldny imagine whit he’s like. An’ he’s got a tape o’ that wee recordin’ session we did in the pub. Names and numbers. An’ he’s got a statement fae me. He’s wean daft an’ a’. If ma wee lassie as much as cuts ’er leg, he gets all annoyed. But he’ll never use them, of coorse. Sure he’ll no’?’

  Mason was busy learning how to breathe again.

  ‘All a best furra future.’

  Mason stood holding the phone while it purred like a cat.

  Sweating southwards, as if the compartment was a Turkish bath, Lennie didn’t yet know that he had made another mistake.

  49

  When Laidlaw reached the cell, the door was slightly open. He paused with the cup of tea he was carrying and listened. He could hear Milligan’s voice.

  ‘Come on, son,’ he was saying. ‘Do yourself a favour. You’re for the high jump, anyway. Your fancy-man must have been into something. So tell us. You can’t hurt him. Didn’t you know? They found him with a throat like Joe E. Brown’s mouth. He’d cut it. Made a helluva mess of the carpet.’

  Laidlaw put his cup down carefully at the edge of the corridor not to spill the sugar-lumps. He pushed open the door.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘Detective Inspector Milligan. Could I see you for a minute, please?’

  ‘Think about it, son,’ Milligan said. ‘You think about it.’

  As Milligan came out into the corridor, Laidlaw pulled the door to.

  ‘Aye?’ Milligan said. ‘I hear you got there too early.’

  Laidlaw took him by the lapels and flung him across the corridor. Milligan jarred against the wall and was coming back off it when he halted himself. He made as if to come on for Laidlaw.

  ‘Please,’ Laidlaw said.

  They stared at each other. Milligan realised that Laidlaw had chosen his moment carefully. The corridor was empty. Milligan would either do something now or forget it, because to report it would be an admission about himself.

  ‘You shouldn’t have opened the door to come out,’ Laidlaw said. ‘You should’ve walked under it.’

  Milligan decided to be cool. His expression fell somewhere between a sneer and a wince.

  ‘Oh, Laidlaw,’ he said. ‘You’re really insane. You know that? Something bad’s going to happen to you.’

  ‘So volunteer.’

  ‘I can wait.’

  ‘What you mean is you can’t do anything else.’

  ‘No. I mean I can wait. You want to see your boyfriend, go ahead. I’ll be back. I’ve got plenty of time.’

  Laidlaw nodded bitterly. The look between them was like a promise. He lifted the cup of tea and went into the cell.

  The boy didn’t move, didn’t look up. He sat huddled into himself, trembling slightly, like a rabbit caught in the glare of a lamp. The trousers they had given him were beltless and too big for him. If he stood up, they would fall to his feet. The shoes had no laces.

  Laidlaw crossed and sat on the bed beside him.

  ‘Here, son,’ he said.

  The boy looked blindly at him.

  ‘I brought you a cup of tea, son.’

  The boy looked at the cup and looked at Laidlaw, as if the two formed a connection he could never understand.

  ‘For me?’ he said. He was watching Laidlaw solemnly. ‘Why?’

  Laidlaw saw the countless flecks that swam in the boy’s eyes, a galaxy of undiscovered stars.

  ‘You’ve got a mouth, haven’t you?’ Laidlaw said.

  Turn the page for the first chapter of the next installment in the Detective Laidlaw trilogy.

  ‘A crime trilogy so searing it will burn forever in to your memory. McIlvanney is the original Scottish criminal mastermind’

  CHRIS BROOKMYRE

  Eck Adamson, an alcoholic vagrant, summons Jack Laidlaw to his deathbed. Probably the only policeman in Glasgow who would bother to respond, Laidlaw sees in Eck’s cryptic last message a clue to the murder of a gangland thug and the disappearance of a student. With stubborn integrity, Laidlaw tracks a seam of corruption that runs from the top to the very bottom of society.

  £7.99 – ISBN 978 0 85786 992 0

  When his brother dies stepping out in front of a car, Detective Jack Laidlaw is determined to find out what really happened. With his trademark corrosive wit, Laidlaw journeys through Glasgow’s underworld and into past. There he discovers much more than he bargained for about his brother – and about himself.

  £7.99 – ISBN 978 0 85786 993 7

  THE PAPERS OF TONY VEITCH

  1

  It was Glasgow on a Friday night, the city of the stare. Get
ting off the train in Central Station, Mickey Ballaster had a sense not only of having come north but of having gone back into his own past. Coming out on to the concourse, he paused briefly like an expert reminding himself of the fauna special to this area.

  Yet there was nothing he couldn’t have seen anywhere else. He was caught momentarily in the difficulty of isolating the sense of the place. Cities may all say essentially the same thing but the intonations are different. He was trying to re-attune himself to Glasgow’s.

  There were a few knots of people looking up at the series of windows where train departures were posted. They looked as if they were trying to threaten their own destination into appearing. On the benches across from him two women surrounded by plastic shopping-bags looked comfortably at home. Nearby a wino with a huge orange beard that suggested he was trying to grow his own bedclothes was in heated debate with a Guinness poster.

  ‘They’ll no serve ye, sir.’ The speaker was a small man who had stopped to watch the wino. The small man was in his sixties but his face was as playful as a pup. ‘I spent an hour last week tryin’ tae get a drink there.’ He glanced at Mickey before moving on. ‘Hope springs eternal in the human chest.’

  It was the moment when Mickey arrived in Glasgow, in a city that was about proximity not anonymity, a place that in spite of its wide vistas and areas of dereliction often seemed as spacious as a rush-hour bus. He understood again the expectancy that overtook him every time he arrived. You never knew where the next invasion of your privateness was coming from.

  He remembered, too, why he found Birmingham easier. This place was full of enthusiastic amateurs, Sunday punchers. You were as likely to get yours from a bus-conductor or a quiet man in a queue, especially at night. He remembered the words of a song about Glasgow that he liked: