Laidlaw

38

Harkness checked the time. It was just on half-past eleven. The room was a part of memory for Harkness but the memory wasn’t of another place. It was of a feeling, an ambience of vulnerability that reminded him of his mother. She had died of pneumonia in a mental hospital. But what stayed with Harkness was the time at home, before she went in, when he and his father had watched hopelessly as she unseamed in front of their eyes. Watching her had taught Harkness how much casual pain there was and undermined seriously for the first time his arrogant sense of himself.

Now he felt recurring that awareness of the presence of someone in such a sensitised state that a snowflake might crack their skull. Laidlaw was lying on the bed facing towards the door. The curtains had been drawn. Harkness had closed the door very gently and Laidlaw’s eyes had opened. Harkness waited.

‘Hullo,’ Laidlaw said to the wall.

‘Hullo.’

Harkness watched the body on the bed reassemble itself with difficulty. The effect was grotesquely clownish, accentuated by the pallor of the face, the inappropriately jazzy underpants and the fact that he still had one sock on. The rest of his clothes were scattered around, as if a drunk man had decided to go for a swim. He worked himself round until he was sitting on the edge of the bed. He picked delicately at the corners of his eyes.

‘How do you feel?’

Laidlaw seemed to be deciding. He yawned and massaged his left armpit. Looking up, his eyes were wide and clear again. He nodded.

‘Thank God for the cavalry. The wee magic pills seem to have made it in time. I’m all right. Considering my head’s just been a few rounds with Ali.’

Talk seemed to animate him. He got up and wandered about until his jacket found him. He found what he was looking for. His mouth milked the cigarette of an enormous drag. He came back and sat on the bed.

‘First the good news,’ Harkness said.

Laidlaw laughed.

‘They’re still making that stuff out there, are they?’

‘The boyfriend’s name is Tommy.’

‘No second name?’

‘Not yet. The name means nothing to anybody else on the case.’

‘That’s the good news? What’s the bad stuff? I’ve been condemned to death?’

‘Not quite. The Commander wants to see you. A complaint went in about you from MacLaughlan’s. It must’ve been the gaffer you spoke to.’

‘When?’

‘Right now.’

‘Come on.’

‘That’s what he said. It won’t take long.’

‘Long’s comparative. Two minutes of that stuff is a long time. I don’t need it.’

He left his cigarette burning in the ashtray and went across to the sink to brush his teeth.

‘There’s more,’ Harkness said.

Laidlaw turned his head towards him, frothing at the mouth. Harkness began to laugh. Laidlaw stared at him, then, turning towards the basin, caught his own face in the mirror — curled lip, dripping fangs. He snittered at himself and rinsed out his mouth.

‘You don’t liaise.’

‘I don’t what?’

‘You don’t liaise. That’s what he said. “He puts everybody’s back up.” That’s actually what he said.’

‘What does he think we’re dealing with? A traffic offence?’

Laidlaw washed very thoroughly, soaping his torso as well. The body still looked youthful except that the stomach muscles had started to surrender. While he was shaving briefly, he said, ‘I should’ve been a lawyer, the way I wanted.’

It was the first unsolicited statement about his past Harkness had heard him make. The self-containment of the man occurred to Harkness again. The more he talked, the bigger the silence at the centre of him seemed. He was a very private man, surrounded by fences and ‘Keep Out’ signs. Perhaps that was why so many rumours circulated about him. Harkness remembered another one.

‘Is it true that you failed university?’ he asked.

Laidlaw had taken off his sock and was putting on a fresh pair.

‘No,’ he said. ‘University failed me.’

‘How?’

‘I took acres of fertile ignorance up to that place. And they started to pour preconceptions all over it. Like forty tons of cement. No thanks. I got out before it hardened. I did a year, passed my exams — just to tell myself that I wasn’t leaving because I had to. And I left.’

‘And joined the police.’

‘Not right away. I finished up here after a while.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know why.’

‘You’re very good at answering questions.’

‘I don’t like questions. They invent the answers. The real answers are discovered, before you even know what the question is.’

‘Aye, okay. But I mean even with simple things. Like I asked you last night how many children you have. You didn’t answer.’

Laidlaw pulled on his trousers. He studied the buckle of his belt as if it was the problem.

‘No,’ he said. ‘But I couldn’t tell you without giving you what you didn’t ask for.’

‘What does that mean?’

Laidlaw breathed deeply.

‘It means,’ he said, ‘that I’ve got three children by my marriage. It also means that I got a girl pregnant when I was twenty and I wouldn’t marry her. But I wanted to be a father to the child. I even offered to take it from her. She wouldn’t wear it. She had it adopted out. She wouldn’t tell me where. I understand her, but I don’t forgive her. What you feel is your own affair. But what you do with what you feel admits of judgment. I judge her hard for that. If she was dying in the street, I’d be hard pushed to put a pillow below her head. I have four children. But only three of them have me. That’s a hard thing to admit to somebody passing the time on the Underground.’

Harkness was silenced. He had been watching Laidlaw draw protection from his clothes, socks, trousers, shirt and jacket, until the rawness of himself had grown a shell. Laidlaw shaped the big knot on his tie. He jutted his chin out and ran his hand along its edges, checking for bristles. He put his tongue across his teeth and showed them to himself in the mirror. He was no longer at home to visitors. What he said showed it.

‘There had been a funny phone-call for me when I got back to the hotel.’

‘Information?’

‘I don’t know. Just checking that I could still be reached here. We better keep in touch with the desk today.’

Harkness nodded. Laidlaw smiled at him.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘Time to face the bloody bureaucracy. While I’m doing that, I think you should check with Sarah Stanley. About Tommy. I’ll meet you in the Top Spot.’

They went out, Laidlaw leaving the room like a litter-bin.