Laidlaw

10

Harkness was glad of the interruption to his Sunday. It had been worrying him. Because he was on call this weekend, Mary had suggested they spend the day at her house, where he could be reached. She hadn’t mentioned it would be like paying a visit to a Christmas card.

Lunch had been trying to converse with Christmas crackers. Her parents talked in mottoes. ‘Too many people worship money nowadays.’ ‘What you never had, you never miss.’ And Harkness’s favourite: ‘God helps those who help themselves.’ It was a while since he had heard that one and when Mary’s mother said it, he felt a brief shock of pleasure, as if he’d pulled a sturgeon out of the Clyde.

Perhaps because they had a guest, they seemed determined to range far and wide among the problems of the world, obliterating each with a scattergun of prejudice. Vandalism was ‘spoiled children’. Africans had been ‘given too much power for their own good’. The unions were killing our society. Throughout the meal they passed clichés back and forth like condiments. Harkness gagged himself with food.

After lunch, Mary’s mother was in the kitchen, cleaning up and putting clothes to steep in water. Because it was Sunday, she couldn’t wash them but steeping was all right. She had apparently read the small print from Mount Sinai. Mary’s father was reading the papers. Harkness was being shown the house.

It was a nice place but it bothered him the way houses that have been made self-consciously attractive always did. The whole experience, the talk that had lost all awareness of its own arbitrariness, the carefully arrived at prettiness of the rooms, was like being trapped inside somebody else’s hallucination. And Mary’s coy retreats from his groping hands denied him something real to hold on to. He wasn’t far from jumping out of a window when the phone rang.

Mary’s mother took it at once. Harkness wondered if that meant she had been lurking downstairs in the hall, waiting for Mary to call for help. It was his father phoning from Fenwick.

Nothing was more likely to bring Harkness back to reality than that rough voice talking guardedly into the mouthpiece. His father was usually a very open man but on the phone he came over like MI5. He didn’t trust phones and it was only under protest that he’d allowed Harkness to have one installed. When you added to that his disapproval of Harkness’s being in the police, you could understand the reluctance with which he gave the message: Harkness was wanted at the office.

Suppressing a cheer, Harkness expressed thanks and regret to Mary’s parents. He said he would try to look in afterwards. At least Mary’s mother didn’t come to the door with them.

His car was conveniently parked on the Kilmarnock Road, facing into Glasgow. He wondered what was happening at the office. He hoped it was something important. This was his first weekend on the Crime Squad and he hadn’t wanted it to pass without his being called out. His year as a D.C. under Milligan in the Central Division had been interesting but Harkness wanted more. He wasn’t sure exactly what the more he wanted was, but he had applied for the job on the Crime Squad to see if it was there.

His father hadn’t been pleased because it meant his son was all the more set on staying a policeman. His father had left school during the Thirties. He hadn’t found a permanent job till after the war. He remembered the way the police had treated strikers and hunger-marchers in the West of Scotland. He hated them simply and sincerely, and he couldn’t forgive his son for becoming one of them. With just the two of them in the house, they argued incessantly.

But working, as now, he felt no doubts. He was twenty-six and physically strong and confident. He was effectively in use, like an engine firing on all cylinders. It wasn’t till he reached the Commander’s office that the engine stalled.

‘Harkness,’ the Commander said, and left it at that. It was offered like a classification, as if he was the first person ever to have called Harkness that and he was giving him time to get used to it. The Commander was looking through some papers. From where Harkness stood, he could see the woman and the two boys smiling their reassurance to the Commander from the photograph on his desk. The Commander put down his papers.

‘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.