Laidlaw

12

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