Laidlaw

32

Cities can turn their backs on you, just like people. Standing in the opening to Central Station near the Boots Dispensary, Harkness was feeling that. It was that middle of the evening time by which if you haven’t gone where you’re going or met whoever it is you’re supposed to meet, the city locks you out. Everybody seems installed in purposes. You’re left with a vagrant mood.

Harkness was having his. His attention loitered about the quiet street, bumming animation from passing strangers. A young couple went past with their little girl between them. Every few steps they hoisted her off the ground by her hands. She cycled on air and giggled simultaneously, as if her legs were working her laughter. There were four taxis at the stance. Three of the men were out exchanging moods. The fourth had stayed in his cab, reading a paper and picking his nose.

A woman in a long green evening-dress and a man in a monkey suit came round the corner towards where Harkness was standing. The man was decanting a careful laugh — ha, ha, ha. The woman looked at Harkness in a way that annoyed him, a manner that was its own red carpet, a face like a Barclay card. She went along the grubby station porch as if it was the portico of her plantation-house and she was Scarlett O’Hara. They went into the Central Hotel. There must be a function on. If they were anything to go by, a convention of twats, Harkness decided.

It wasn’t the usual paper-seller. He was a stand-in and he was having a bad night. The last copies of the Evening Times seemed glued to his arm. He was getting impatient, probably because he wanted a drink and something to eat before tomorrow’s dailies came in nearer eleven.

Across the street the door of the Corn Exchange opened suddenly and a small man popped out onto the pavement, as if the pub had rifted. He foundered in a way that suggested fresh air wasn’t his element and at once Harkness saw that he was beyond what his father called the pint of no return. His impetus carried him into the middle of the road, where a solitary car braked and honked. He waved with an air of preoccupied royalty and proceeded to negotiate the rest of the roadway with total concentration and in a zig-zag pattern of immense complication. The road, it seemed, was a river and he was the only one who knew the stepping-stones. The car drove on slowly, the three women in it looking out to watch the small man threading himself through the station entrance.

Harkness turned back from following the small man’s lateral progression to see Laidlaw crossing the street. The difference between the slumped depression of the man he had left in the hotel room and the purposeful person coming towards him almost amounted to plastic surgery. Laidlaw stopped at the paper-seller. Being close enough, Harkness heard what he was saying.

‘I’ve been trying to see Wee Eck. No joy. You tell him I want to see him. Tomorrow. Wee Mickey’s, half-past one. Without fail. You’ve got the message?’

Laidlaw had his hand on the man’s remaining papers.

‘Yer line’s on, sir. Ye’ve been clocked.’

Laidlaw handed him some money Harkness couldn’t make out and took his papers from him. The man saluted and went away.

‘Who is this Wee Eck anyway?’ Harkness asked.

‘Just another tout.’

‘Not with the trouble you’re going to.’

‘He’s causing the trouble. I think he’s avoiding me. That makes me interested. He probably thinks it puts up the price. But it doesn’t do that. So what’s the word?’

‘Alan McInnes,’ Harkness said.

Laidlaw was impressed. Harkness savoured the rest, giving it staccato, dramatic as a teleprinter.

‘He’s at a party. Byres Road. I’ve got the address. We should catch him there.’

‘Very impressive,’ Laidlaw said. ‘Oh yes. It is. I’ll tell them about that. You’re promising. In the meantime, all is forgiven. Come back at once.’

Harkness nodded.

‘Let’s go then,’ he said.

‘Okay. But give me a couple of minutes. I need some antibiotics.’

Harkness followed him into the station. Laidlaw put the papers in a litter-bin as he passed. He went to where the phones were set in their row of hardboard shells. He tried three before he found one that was working. Harkness stood apart and watched Laidlaw dialling, putting in the money and talking.

On one of the benches along from Harkness the small man from the Corn Exchange was sitting. He had emptied stuff from his pockets onto the bench and he was chatting quietly to Glasgow. Harkness was catching most of it. ‘Always pay yer way. That’s the secret. The world doesny owe ye a livin’. Uh-huh. Here somewhere. Bound to be. Tickets, please. Uddingston, here we come. Make it in time for-’

And then something that sounded like ‘The Deckman’. Harkness assumed that was the name of a pub and thought the man might be doing himself a favour if he lost his ticket till after ten. He turned back to watching Laidlaw. Laidlaw was bending down as if to get nearer the ear of the person he was talking to. Harkness understood that he was talking to children. He saw him wait while one went off and another came on. He watched his genuine laughter. It was the most vulnerable Harkness had ever seen Laidlaw. Depressed, he clenched. Happy like this, he looked defenceless.

But as he came off the phone, his face showed nothing.

‘Byres Road it is then,’ was all he said.

While they were travelling on the Underground to Hillhead, Harkness asked, ‘How many children do you have?’

‘Not enough.’

They both laughed but Laidlaw didn’t refine it. Harkness remembered Laidlaw’s reputation for being something of a mystery. Milligan had called his house ‘The Shrine’ because so few people on the force had been there. To his own surprise, Harkness found himself mentally defending Laidlaw against the resentment that had been in Milligan’s voice. Harkness knew that if he repeated the question, Laidlaw would have to answer it. But Harkness chose not to, because he divined in Laidlaw’s casual parry the apparently accidental tip of a deep and deliberate defensiveness. The reason interested him, but he decided this wasn’t the time to try and discover it. With a concern for Laidlaw he hadn’t known he had, Harkness directed the talk away from even so small a revelation.

‘You think this could be it?’

‘It could be,’ Laidlaw said. ‘But I don’t think so.’

‘Why not?’

‘You ask yourself,’ Laidlaw said. ‘Is it likely? A fella as open to suspicion as he seems to be hasn’t come forward to cover himself. What does that mean? I think it means he’s frightened in the most natural way. He knew the girl. He was fixed up to see her that night. To himself, he’s a suspect. So he hides. He admits nothing. But guilt’s a different proposition. Guilty, you work out what everybody thinks of you. You go through the card. You start to place deliberate bets. Because you’re working out the odds. This fella hasn’t made a move yet. We could find him as easily as this and he hasn’t moved. No. That won’t do. I smell red herring. So we have to go where the smell leads us.’

‘It could be him. He could be so petrified he can’t think what to do.’

‘I’ll tell you what. If Alan McInnes is at this party tonight, it isn’t him. That’s the way I bet. But it’s still important. He might tell us something.’

In that careful balance between pessimism, the assumed defeat of contrived expectations, and hope, the discovery of unexpected possibilities, Harkness recognised Laidlaw.

The number the waitress had given Harkness wasn’t the number. But they tried a few others and the music brought them to it — Led Zeppelin, Harkness thought. The door said ‘Lawrie’. They knocked several times before they got an answer.

Laidlaw showed who he was and said, ‘We’re police. May we come in?’

It was an amazing question. The girl who had opened the door stared at them, the glass tilting in her hand till the drink almost spilled. She was fairly fat, dressed in what looked like brocade curtains. Her broad, pale face was as innocent as a letter home to mother. But it was blotted slightly by her need to work out what she shouldn’t say. While she was busy reacting, a boy with long hair and a headband manifested vaguely behind her and disappeared back into the room at the end of the hall, which sounded like the passengers on a liner that is sinking.

A moment later, a self-consciously brisk young man came along the hall to the door. The girl hadn’t spoken, still hadn’t come out of rehearsals. The best she had managed was not to spill her drink.

‘Yes. Can I help you?’

Two things struck Harkness: the way so many people, taken socially by surprise, become receptionists; the silence that had occurred behind the young man’s back, as if the Titanic had sunk. Where they were was the iceberg. Laidlaw showed his card again, repeated his question.

‘What for?’ the young man said.

He was wearing jeans that looked as if they had been dipped in a few paint-pots, and a cheesecloth shirt that had sweated itself to his nipples. He was shaky but determined. Harkness liked him.

‘We want to speak to a boy called Alan McInnes,’ Laidlaw said. ‘Is he here?’

The girl had become a fascinated bystander. She was doing everything but take notes. The young man was out there in the middle of a crisis. It was his flat, his guest. He was trying to remember his rights. Harkness thought of his father. His father would have sympathised with this boy. So did Harkness.

‘What if he is?’ the young man said.

Laidlaw shrugged.

‘Look, son,’ he said. ‘We just want to talk to him. If you don’t want to let us in, that’s up to you. This isn’t a raid. But I can make it one, if that’s what you want.’

Faced with no choice, the young man took his time to make it. He was all right, Harkness decided.

‘I suppose you better come in,’ he said at last.

They came in. The girl recovered enough aplomb to shut the door. A side room they passed smelled as if somebody had been burning joss-sticks. As they reached the main room, Harkness realised the music had only been turned down as far as it would go. In the stillness of the room you could hear it whispering. He heard the word ‘police’ muttered somewhere.

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.