Laidlaw

26

Harkness was still fascinated by knocking at strange doors. As a teenager, he had sometimes gone for evening walks through wealthier neighbourhoods, imagining what dramas were being acted out behind the picture windows. The subsequent suspicion that they had probably been making instant coffee was something he didn’t dwell on.

One of the bonuses his job provided was a licence to fulfil that adolescent curiosity. You pushed a bell, showed a card and were admitted to the exoticness of every other person. They covered up, of course. But in the vapour trails left by interrupted conversations and in the subtle realignments your presence caused, you glimpsed strange vistas. In this instance he had a special interest, because he remembered Mrs Stanley.

‘This is a terrific-looking woman,’ he said at the door.

‘Down, Fido, down,’ Laidlaw said, and when the door opened thought maybe he was talking to himself.

Harkness was right. She was wearing a nylon overall, she had no make-up and her black hair was slightly mussed. Having none of the marketable props to beauty, she simply rendered them irrelevant. She would be about forty and thinner in the face than should have been acceptable. But they both accepted it. It was the intensity of the eyes that mattered most. They were still looking. Whatever it was she had come to do, she hadn’t done it yet.

‘Yes.’

‘Mrs Stanley?’ Laidlaw said.

‘That’s right.’

‘Police, Mrs Stanley.’ He showed his identification. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Laidlaw. This is Detective Constable Harkness. It’s about Jennifer Lawson’s death.’

‘Oh. Yese better come in.’

Before she closed the door, she glanced down the entry to see if anyone was watching. Harkness liked the living-room. It was attractive, tidy but lived in. It was a place where pride hadn’t surrendered to circumstances.

‘Ah saw you last night, did Ah no’?’ she said to Harkness.

Harkness nodded, pleased she remembered. She had gestured them to sit down.

‘It’s actually Sarah we want to talk to,’ Laidlaw said. ‘Could we see her, please?’

‘Oh. Sarah’s at her work.’

‘At her work?’

‘Ma man an’ me thought it wid be better,’ she said, attacking the surprise in Laidlaw’s voice. She crossed and pushed the living-room door to. ‘Ma man’s on the night-shift. No. Sarah wis jist gonny go tae bits. So we managed tae get her oot the hoose the day. My God, it’s a terrible thing. It doesn’t bear thinkin’ aboot. Least of all by somebody o’ Sarah’s age.’

‘She was Jennifer’s best friend, I understand.’

‘Well. For a while she wis. There wis a time Ah thought ye wid need an operation tae separate them. Like Siamese twins.’

‘But not lately?’

‘Well. Not so much.’

‘Why was that?’

‘People change. Ah suppose. Grow up. At different speeds.’

‘And who was growing up faster? Jennifer or Sarah?’

Mrs Stanley smiled. It was a beautiful smile, sad, preoccupied, unselfconscious. It hit Harkness like a ray-gun, and he felt his concentration atomise. He found himself imagining what she must have been like, say, fifteen years ago.

‘Jennifer was a strange wee lassie. She used to like jist comin’ here. An’ sittin’. She listened an’ she watched. Ah think she wis comparin’.’

‘With her own home?’

Mrs Stanley looked up at Laidlaw, impressed by the speed of his understanding.

‘That’s whit Ah think. But lately she wis changin’. It was as if she had made up her mind about something. Ah don’t think she needed us any mair. No’ even Sarah. But they still went out thegither sometimes. Sarah went to the disco with ’er on Saturday night.’

The living-room door swung open. The man knuckling his eyes in the doorway wore a vest and trousers. A belly like a vat overhung his unbuckled belt. His feet were bare. A rumple of receding hair and a chin like a hedgehog completed the ensemble. Beauty and the Beast, Harkness thought.

‘Did we waken ye, Airchie?’ Mrs Stanley asked.

‘Aye. Ah heard the talkin’.’

‘It’s the polis wantin’ to see Sarah.’

‘About Bud’s lassie, is it?’

Airchie didn’t acknowledge Laidlaw and Harkness. While one hand trekked across his stomach, he yawned enormously. He sat down by the fire.

‘Sarah was with Jennifer on Saturday night,’ Laidlaw said.

‘Aye. But she lost her at the disco.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well. They don’t go to meet ither lassies, do they? Jennifer got a click.’

‘Did Sarah see him?’

‘No. She says she lost touch wi’ Jennifer early on.’

The silence wasn’t accidental. A tension had come into the room with Airchie. He sat casually, resting his arms on his stomach, one forearm tattooed with an anchor, the other with a dagger. He was staring at his bare feet. He looked as if he was counting his toes.

The tension puzzled Harkness. He felt that Mrs Stanley had said something which troubled Laidlaw, but he didn’t know what it was. He sensed that Airchie’s presence was a warning to his wife. He wondered how specific the warning was, if it was more than just the reflex ‘Tell the polis nothin’ that might have been the motto for a Drumchapel coat-of-arms.

‘You talk about Jennifer making comparisons with her own family,’ Laidlaw said. ‘Was there something wrong at home?’

As soon as Laidlaw said it, Harkness recognised inspiration. It was asking exactly the right thing at exactly the right moment, because it evoked not an answer but an unrehearsed reaction.

‘Whit’s this ye’ve been sayin’?’

Airchie had wakened into anger. His wife ignored him carefully.

‘Ah mean Ah don’t think she wis happy at home.’

‘Why not?’

‘Her father wouldny give her room to breathe. He runs that house like a prison-camp.’

‘That’s enough!’ Airchie shouted.

‘Her mother hasny the life o’ a scabby cat.’

‘Ah said that’s enough!’

‘No. It’s not enough.’

They stared across at each other. Laidlaw and Harkness sat silent. It wasn’t the kind of look to interfere in. That stare was about twenty years of marriage and it was carrying more complicated traffic between them than the M1. It was no longer about a dead girl or policemen’s questions. It was about other kinds of death. It was about how much a woman had never got out of a relationship and the decency she had maintained in spite of it, about how much a man had hidden from promises he perhaps didn’t even know he had made. It was about pride kept and pride lost.

Across that long look they defined each other. Nothing he had ever been able to do had bullied out of her her hunger for whatever it was she wanted more than this. In her eyes there was still a light that he could neither feed nor douse. The only one his blusterings had intimidated was himself. He sat behind his enormous mound of Dutch courage and wilted. He did it gracefully. He had been practising for years.

‘An’ he did something to Jennifer once that she never forgot.’ She spoke very clearly, very deliberately, carving her words carefully on her husband’s silence. ‘Ah think that was what changed her.’

‘What was that?’

‘Bud did whit anybody else would’ve done.’

They all looked at him. He was raking the ashes of his self-esteem, looking for an ember to blow on.

‘She wis rinnin’ about wi’ a Pape. An’ he put his foot down. Ah don’t know whit youse boays are. But Ah’m tellin’ ye this. Nae lassie o’ mine’ll ever mairry a Catholic. Nae offence.’

‘Sarah’ll marry whoever she picks,’ Mrs Stanley said. ‘An’ say Ah’ve said it.’

Before the frankness of her face and the intensity of her eyes, Airchie began to contemplate his belly.

‘Ah’ll no’ be at her weddin’ then,’ he confided to it.

‘The only wan that’ll miss ye’ll be the barman.’

The war was over. Among the dead Laidlaw and Harkness had found what they hadn’t even known they were looking for. It was time to leave them waging peace on each other. Laidlaw stood up.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry if we’ve caused any trouble.’

‘Don’t flatter yourself,’ Mrs Stanley said, and smiled. ‘We can do this any time.’

‘We’ll see Sarah at her work.’

‘She works wi’ MacLaughlan the Printer.’

‘Aye, we’ve got the address. Thanks very much for your help.’

The street was very wide after the tenseness of the house. There seemed to be a lot of sky.

‘You think she’ll be all right?’ Harkness asked. ‘In there with him after that?’

‘Don’t worry,’ Laidlaw said. ‘She’s a lot bigger than him.’

‘I wondered what it was that was bothering you. Till you asked that question about Jennifer’s home life.’

‘That’s not what was bothering me.’

‘What then?’

‘Something else altogether. There’s one thing she said that doesn’t fit at all. Just a small thing. But then it usually is. It’s the way lies are linked that give them away. There’s a bum conjunction in Sarah Stanley’s story.’

‘So tell me, tell me.’

‘Wait till we talk to Sarah.’

There was a man already at the bus-stop, sounding as if he was in training for the world whistling championships. It was a performance of amazing intricacy, full of cunning chirrups and sustained flutings. He stopped suddenly to say, ‘Aye, boays. It’s no’ buses they’ve got on this run, Ah think. Bloody stage-coaches.’

‘Maybe the Indians’ve got them,’ Laidlaw said.

It was sharp weather for standing.

‘That Mrs Stanley,’ Harkness said, warming himself at the thought. ‘Makes me wish I had a time-machine.’

‘I can see we’ll have to requisition you iron drawers,’ Laidlaw said. ‘April is the cruellest month.’