Laidlaw jl-1

by William McIlvanney

  Laidlaw savoured the pause. It was the moment they all liked. It was why they called the game ‘What happened next?’ He had started the story deliberately to provide an air-raid shelter against Ena’s attacks. The morality of her raids on him had lost definition lately. It used to be she that exempted the children from them. Now she was bombing Dresden. She liked to bounce her ammunition off the children to get to him, saying things like, ‘No wonder you had a nightmare last night, Jack. Your daddy wasn’t here to protect you, son.’ The anger Laidlaw felt against that abuse of children frightened himself.

  Now that anger was defused in watching their faces. Moya, the oldest at ten, was being slightly cynical about the involvement of the other two. But behind the aloofness she was working out the possible dénouements. Sandra, a year younger, was blatantly desperate to get to the answer before her older sister. Jack, six years old, was too busy just identifying with the horror of Margaret’s situation.

  ‘What happened next?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Margaret sat. Too frightened to move. Then she heard the handle of the back door being turned. Someone — something? — trying it. Back and forward. And she couldn’t remember whether the back door was locked or not. She wanted to scream. But then they might hear her. She stood and walked into a chair. It was so sore. But she didn’t call out. She felt her way through to the front room of the house. But it was just as dark. Even the lights outside were in darkness. Pitch black. Then, as she stood there, she heard the letter-box of the front door being lifted very quietly. She could imagine two eyes staring in. Two eyes? Maybe three eyes. Would you believe nine? She screamed.’

  The telephone rang. Ena answered. Laidlaw hoped it wasn’t for him, but it was.

  ‘What happened next?’ he said to the children as he went through.

  It was the Commander of the Crime Squad telling him there had been a girl’s body found in Kelvingrove Park. Milligan of Central Division would be the D.I. for the main investigation. But Laidlaw was to help. What it meant to him first of all was the reaction Ena would inevitably have. He wasn’t disappointed. She was in the kitchen. He closed the door so that the children wouldn’t hear, passing off their pleas for a solution with ‘Later’.

  ‘There’s been a murder,’ he said.

  Ena paused over the vegetables she was chopping for Monday’s soup. She was staring straight ahead at the striated glass of the cabinet.

  ‘All I want is a nice, uninterrupted Sunday,’ she said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘No you don’t. You don’t know at all. What the hell do I care who’s been murdered? My children need a father.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ Laidlaw said. ‘Don’t try to attack me on that front. My relationship with them’s made of steel. It’s not at hazard, and you know it.’

  ‘Do I? Do they? You say you know. Do you know what this kind of thing does to me? To the whole family? I mean, how often does this happen? What’s happening to us is a crime, too. But then you know.’

  Ena was waving the knife about distractedly.

  ‘Yes, I know. I also know the difference between Hedda Gabler and East Lynne. And you are “East Lynne”, missus. You want to live as if the rest of the world was just a necessary evil. Somebody is fucking dead. That may be a nuisance to you. But it’s a fucking sight worse for them.’

  He realised he had been shouting.

  ‘Don’t swear. The children can hear you.’

  ‘Fuck off! Swear-words they’ll survive. What they might not survive is your indifference to everybody else but them.’

  He gave the children hurried kisses like bruises on the way out. They didn’t speak. In the car he was still as tight as a fist. It was getting worse. They quarrelled in short-hand now. Their tolerance of each other had almost completely eroded. Alone in the car, he could admit the injustice of what both of them had said. Over the years they had developed a savage directness, because each had come to understand that the other stood for what couldn’t be agreed to. It only took one remark to appear on the horizon and the other knew the waiting mass of unacceptable attitudes to which it was acting as scout.

  Laidlaw could acknowledge to himself how disproportionate to the surface of what had happened his anger had been. But he knew the depth of the threat he had really been answering. It was why he felt uncomfortable among the friends they visited. Beyond the small areas they cultivated conversationally, the arbours of friendship, the ornamental clichés, the well laid out preoccupations, lay a desert-tract of silence where the garbage of what didn’t concern them rotted. Occasionally in the street they might catch a glimpse of one of the strange shapes that flitted across that silence or in a newspaper headline hear an echo of the unearthly sounds that haunted its emptiness. But the door that led from them to it was firmly shut. Laidlaw couldn’t keep that door shut. Reality kept kicking it open.

  Like today. The drive from Simshill in Cathcart to the Kelvingrove Park was the distance between pretence and fact. He parked the car above the park and walked downhill into it, so that he saw the scene in a oner. It wasn’t too attractive.

  They might have been shooting a film. The cordon formed a semi-circle along the river, the furthest stanchion being maybe seventy yards from the river’s edge. Within that area the police were moving around fulfilling their odd purpose, maggots on the carcase of a murder. A couple had the dogs out. Someone was taking photographs. A man and a boy seemed to be giving statements. People were moving about like bizarre technicians, as if they were tracing a gas-leak.

  But they weren’t the most bizarre thing about the scene. That was the crowd beyond the cordon. Laidlaw didn’t like looking at them. They had the strange unity he had noticed in such groups, craning and communing with one another, a hydra talking to itself. A father carried a girl on his shoulders, her feet stirruped in his armpits. A small boy sucked a lollipop. Laidlaw never understood them. It wasn’t as if they could help. They were just voyeurs of disaster.

  Not liking being a part of them, he elbowed his way through to the policeman at the rope. Then he turned and shouted, ‘Ticket-holders only!’

  ‘What’s wrong, sir?’ the policeman asked.

  ‘Look at them,’ Laidlaw said. ‘What’s that all about? And they probably think this dead lassie is the mystery. They probably think whoever did this is pretty weird.’

  ‘They’re just curious, sir.’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘They’re not so bad.’

  ‘What Band of Hope do you attend? Don’t leave her alone with them anyway. They’ll be taking a toenail home for the kiddies.’

  ‘That’s a bit cynical, sir.’

  ‘Don’t tell me. Tell her.’

  He walked towards where she was. She lay blued with what looked like cold. She was partly covered by foliage, like an obscene and inverted parody of what we tell to children. Death found under the gooseberry bush. Her legs were a terrible abandon. Her bruises had congealed on her and blackened thighs and face and belly, and her left breast was charred with them, ash from a bad fire. Against his will, Laidlaw thought of Moya. He remembered the first time of seeing her, battered with her own birth. Hard to come, hard to go. A policeman covered her again with the coat.

  ‘Oho, it’s Interpol.’

  As he looked up, Laidlaw’s eyes went past Milligan to some scene of his own.

  ‘We’re guaranteed a solution now,’ Milligan persisted.

  ‘We’ve found the brassière, sir.’

  The young policeman held it out towards Milligan. It was yellow with white lace.

  ‘Christ, it’s a regular paper-chase he’s left us,’ Milligan said. ‘I just hope he keeps it up. Could lead us right to him.’

  ‘That’s everything except the panties,’ the policeman said.

  Laidlaw watched the young policeman put the brassière down beside the other things, the brown shoulder-bag, the yellow platform shoes, the red tee-shirt, the denim trouser-suit. Yes. There was only one other thing to check. He didn’t want t
o check it because he knew it would be there. He crouched down over the girl, moved back the coat. Her head was skewed at a funny angle on her neck, as if she was listening for something. Gently, he moved the hair back from her forehead. The hair was stiff — surely not with lacquer, Laidlaw thought. It was probably frozen sweat and dust. On her left temple he saw a beauty spot, the one she had thought would spoil her chances. He straightened up.

  ‘Look,’ he said to Milligan. ‘I think I know who this is. She lives in the Drum. Ardmore Crescent.’

  The young policeman was looking at him in awe. Out of such innocent moments legends grow.

  ‘Bud Lawson’s lassie!’ Milligan said at once. ‘Of course. She hadn’t come home.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Laidlaw said. ‘I’ve got my car here. I’ll go and fetch him.’

  ‘McKendrick. You go with him,’ Milligan said. Then turning to Laidlaw, ‘Just in case you forget to tell us something.’

  ‘I don’t mind telling you anything,’ Laidlaw said. ‘You never understand it anyway. And do you think we could hurry it up? And move her out of the glare.’

  ‘What glare?’ Milligan asked.

  ‘Just move her.’

  ‘Detective Inspector Laidlaw. You know better than that.’

  The voice was sonorous with authority. Laidlaw turned and saw the Procurator Fiscal behind the customary barrier of cigar-smoke. It kept out the smell of the world. Today he was giving the park an audience.

  ‘The doctor will be here any minute. She will not be moved until then. I thought your wide experience would have taught you that.’ Milligan was enjoying the reprimand. ‘She cannot be moved until she is certified dead. Meanwhile, I don’t think she’s suffering too much discomfort.’

  ‘That’s because she’s dead,’ Laidlaw said. He looked towards the crowd. ‘It’s just that I wouldn’t want her father to have to buy a ticket to view the corpse. I’ll bring him to the mortuary.’

  McKendrick had liked the exchange. Because he had felt sick when he saw the girl, he felt as if Laidlaw had been speaking for him. He had heard Milligan dismiss Laidlaw as an amateur and he was glad to find it was a slander. In the car he would have liked to talk to Laidlaw but he respected the silence until Laidlaw broke it.

  ‘What’s your name, then?’ Laidlaw asked.

  ‘McKendrick.’

  ‘Your first name.’

  ‘Ian.’

  ‘Well, Ian. You can wait in the car when we get here if you want. It’s up to you.’

  McKendrick thought about Milligan.

  ‘I think I’d better come in. If you don’t mind.’

  ‘Suit yourself. I was just thinking how nice it is delivering grief to folk. I thought we might spare you this once.’

  ‘I suppose I have to get used to it,’ McKendrick said. ‘It’s not that I don’t appreciate your idea. It’s just. . well. I have to get used to it.’

  ‘You’re probably right, Ian. Just don’t get too used to it. I know folk who don’t even notice any more. They deliver dead bodies as if they were butcher-meat.’

  Drumchapel engulfed them like a quicksand.

  ‘Some place,’ Laidlaw said.

  ‘Aye, there must be some terrible people here.’

  ‘No,’ Laidlaw said. ‘That’s not what I mean. I find the people very impressive. It’s the place that’s terrible. You think of Glasgow. At each of its four corners, this kind of housing scheme. There’s the Drum and Easterhouse and Pollok and Castlemilk. You’ve got the biggest housing scheme in Europe here. And what’s there? Hardly anything but houses. Just architectural dumps where they unloaded the people like slurry. Penal architecture. Glasgow folk have to be nice people. Otherwise, they would have burned the place to the ground years ago.’

  Laidlaw recognised Bud Lawson’s car. They parked behind it and went up the outside stairs to the entry. The Lawsons lived downstairs, right-hand door. Laidlaw pushed the bell but they couldn’t hear any sound. He glanced at McKendrick, pressed again and had his hand raised to knock when the door opened.

  ‘Ah’m awfu’ sorry. Have ye been ringin’? Bell’s broken. Jist makes a wee kinna buzzin’ noise. Ah’ve been at ma man tae get it-’

  She had seen McKendrick’s uniform. She was a small woman, her face looking older than the rest of her. Her body seemed somehow to hang on her, like somebody else’s clothes. Talking about the bell, her apology had found a surprisingly intense focus and then her concentration had moved just as wilfully to McKendrick. Laidlaw had seen that quality of arbitrarily shifting perspective before, always in people whose environment was putting them under pressure. It was as if they had been overtaken by the hardness of their experience and mugged by it, so that they lived the rest of their lives concussed.

  Now you could see the truth of why they were here arrive in her eyes. They didn’t have to say anything. She knew the worst because she always expected it.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she was saying. ‘Ah knew it, Ah knew it, Ah knew it. Oh my God! Whit’s happened to ’er?’

  ‘Mrs Lawson?’ Laidlaw was saying.

  ‘Oh my God! Something terrible has happened.’

  ‘Wumman. Come oot the road.’

  Bud Lawson stood between her and them. Behind him they could still hear her mouthings, but as if a door had closed on her.

  ‘Whit is it?’

  ‘Could we come in, Mr Lawson?’ Laidlaw asked.

  McKendrick closed the door and they all moved awkwardly into the living-room. Mrs Lawson seemed almost blown before them, like paper in the wind. She ended up aimlessly by the old-fashioned, scarred sideboard, shaking her head at a china figurine, an old woman seated on a bench. Bud Lawson was standing in the middle of the floor.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Lawson,’ Laidlaw said. ‘I’m very sorry. I think Mrs Lawson should sit down.’

  ‘Jist tell us whit ye came tae tell us.’

  ‘It’s about Jennifer, I’m afraid. We think we may have found her. I’m sorry. But if it’s her. . then she’s dead.’

  Mrs Lawson’s voice rose and fell in a sound McKendrick couldn’t bear. All that happened in Bud Lawson’s face was that a knot formed in his right cheek where the jaw was clenching. He turned his head slightly away from where his wife was standing.

  ‘How did this happen?’ he asked.

  Laidlaw shook his head and walked towards Mrs Lawson. She let herself be led and put in a chair, crying. Laidlaw left his hand on her shoulder.

  ‘How did this happen?’

  ‘No, Mr Lawson,’ Laidlaw said. ‘The first thing is for you to identify her. If it’s Jennifer. You can give your wife the details then. I’ll tell you in the car.’

  Bud Lawson got his jacket from a chair and put it on. He was ready to go.

  ‘Mr Lawson,’ Laidlaw said. ‘What about getting a neighbour in? For your wife.’

  Bud Lawson looked at him as if he didn’t understand. Laidlaw nodded to McKendrick. McKendrick went across the entry and told the woman there. She explained to her family and came across at once, sitting on the arm of Mrs Lawson’s chair with her arm round her. They left her saying, ‘Sadie, Sadie, oh Sadie.’

  McKendrick went into the back seat of the car. He sat staring at the cratered back of Bud Lawson’s neck, as if it was the surface of a strange planet.

  8

  The High Court of Glasgow is at Jocelyn Square. It is an imposing building, its main entrance pillared and approached by wide steps, its side doors having carved above them ‘South Court’ and ‘North Court’. The suggestion is vaguely Grecian, implying the long and formidable genealogy of justice. On its right the Clyde that made the city flows tamely under bridges.

  The Court confronts Glasgow Green like a warning. The Green itself is gated and railinged now, the city’s commemorative window-box of a once wilder place. From that green root the miles of stone have spread, north to Drumchapel, Maryhill, Springburn, Balornock and Easterhouse, south across the river to Pollok, Castlemilk, Rutherglen and Cambuslang, still part of the sa
me confrontation between nature and law, the Green and the Court.

  Adjoining the Court is a small, single-storey building, standing unobtrusively on a corner like a casual bystander. The lower parts of its walls are old weathered stone. The upper parts are red brick. It’s as if a workman were wearing spats. Above the doorway is the word ‘Mortuary’, discreet as a wink.

  This is the police mortuary, the tradesmen’s entrance to the Court, as it were. Here are delivered the raw materials of justice, corpses that are precipitates of strange experience, alloys of fear and hate and anger and love and viciousness and bewilderment, that the Court will take and refine into comprehension. Through the double glass doors come those with a grief to collect. They take away the offal of a death, its privateness, the irrelevant uniqueness of the person, the parts that no one else has any further use for. The Court will keep only what matters, the way in which the person became an event.

  To come in here is to be reminded that the first law is real estate, and people are its property. It was a reminder that always sickened Laidlaw. They stood in the entrance hall with its polished floor. A man was here to look at his dead daughter and they must ring a bell, request an audience. Laidlaw’s finger on the brass button jarred himself. It summoned him to make a fruitless choice: indulge in grief by proxy or imitate a stone. The shirt-sleeved, waistcoated man who came recognised him, unlocked the second set of glass doors and ushered Bud Lawson into calamity and Laidlaw into his own small dilemma.