William McIlvanney - Laidlaw

He was aware of the neatness of Bob Lilley’s desk across from him. Did neatness mean contentment? He glanced over to the pin-board on the wall facing the door: shifts, departmental memoranda, a photograph of ‘The Undertaker’ — a con-man Laidlaw liked — overtime payments, a list of names for a Crime-Squad Dinner Dance. ‘These fragments I have shored against my ruin.’

Guilt was the heart of this kind of mood, he reflected, and it surprised him again to realise it. The need to be constantly sifting the ashes of his past certainly hadn’t been inculcated in him by his parents. They had done what they could to give him himself as a present. Perhaps it was just that, born in Scotland, you were hanselled with remorse, set up with shares in Calvin against your coming of age, so that much of the energy you expended came back guilt. His surely did.

He felt his nature anew as a wrack of paradox. He was potentially a violent man who hated violence, a believer in fidelity who was unfaithful, an active man who longed for understanding. He was tempted to unlock the drawer in his desk where he kept Kierkegaard, Camus and Unamuno, like caches of alcohol. Instead, he breathed out loudly and tidied the papers on his desk. He knew nothing to do but inhabit the paradoxes.

He was looking through the Collator’s Report when the phone rang. He looked at it for a moment as if he could stare it down. Then his hand picked it up before he wanted it to.

‘Yes. Laidlaw.’ The hardness and firmness of the voice was a wonder to the person crouched behind it — a talking foetus!

‘Jack. Bert Malleson. You did say anything of interest that came up, you wanted to know. Well, I’ve got Bud Lawson here.’

‘Bud Lawson?’

‘Remember a case of severe assault? It’s a while ago now. But it was in the city-centre. It was a Central Division case. But the Squad was in on it. In the lane between Buchanan Street and Queen Street Station. The victim almost died. Bud Lawson was suspected. But nothing was proved. There was a connection. Some kind of grudge.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, he’s here now. Seems a bit strange to me. He’s reporting his daughter missing. Because she didn’t come back from the dancing last night. But it’s only a few hours. I’m wondering about that. I thought you might want to speak to him.’

Laidlaw waited. He was tired, would soon be home. This was Sunday. He just wanted to lie in it like a sauna-bath, scratch his ego where it itched. But he understood what Sergeant Malleson was wondering. Policemen tended not to see what was there in their anxiety to see what was behind it. Zowie, my X-ray vision. But perhaps there was something in it.

‘Yes. I’ll see him.’

‘I’ll have him brought up.’

Laidlaw put down the phone and waited. Hearing the noise of the lift, he brought Bob Lilley’s chair across in front of his own desk and sat back down. He heard the voices approaching, one frantic, the other calm, like ravaged penitent and weary priest. He couldn’t hear what they were saying. He wasn’t impatient to find out. There was a knocking. He waited for the inevitable pause to pass. What was he supposed to be doing, hiding the dirty pictures? The door opened and Roberts showed the man in.

Laidlaw stood up. He remembered Bud Lawson. His wasn’t a face for forgetting. Angry, it belonged on a medieval church. Laidlaw had seen him angry in outrage, demanding that they bring out their proof, as if he was going to have a fist-fight with it. But he wasn’t angry now, or at least he was as near to not being angry as was possible for him — which meant his anger was displaced. It was in transit, like a lorry-load of iron, and he was looking for someone to dump it on. His jacket had been thrown on over an open-necked shirt. A Rangers football-scarf was spilling out from the lapels.

Looking at him, Laidlaw saw one of life’s vigilantes, a retribution-monger. For everything that happened there was somebody else to blame, and he was the very man to deal with them. Laidlaw was sure his anger didn’t stop at people. He could imagine him shredding ties that wouldn’t knot properly, stamping burst tubes of toothpaste into the floor. His face looked like an argument you couldn’t win.

‘Sit down, Mr Lawson,’ Laidlaw said.

He didn’t sit, he subsided. His hands were clenched on his knees, a couple of smaller megaliths. But the eyes were jumpy. They were trying, Laidlaw decided, to keep track of all the possibilities that were swarming through his head. In that moment Laidlaw was sure Bud Lawson’s concern was genuine. For the first time, he admitted Sergeant Malleson’s suspicion explicitly to his mind, in order to reject it.

With that realisation, Laidlaw felt a twinge of compassion for Bud Lawson. He remembered the pressure they had put on him before, and he regretted it. So Bud Lawson was a mobile quarrel with the world. Who knew the grounds he had? And doubtless there were worse things to be. Whatever else was true, he seemed to care about his daughter.

Laidlaw sat down at his desk. He brought the scribbling-pad nearer to him.

‘Tell me about it, Mr Lawson,’ Laidlaw said.

‘It might be nothin’, like.’

Laidlaw watched him.

‘Ah mean Ah jist don’t know. Ye know? But Sadie the wife’s goin’ off her head wi’ worry. It’s never happened before. Never as late as this.’

Laidlaw checked his watch. It was half-past five in the morning.

‘Your daughter hasn’t come home?’

‘That’s right.’ The man looked as if he was realising it for the first time. ‘At least when Ah left home she hadn’t.’

Laidlaw saw a new fear jostle the others in the man’s eyes — the fear that he was making a fool of himself here while his daughter was home in bed.

‘How long ago was that?’

‘Maybe a couple of hours.’

‘It took you a while to get here.’

‘Ah’ve been lookin’. Ah’ve got the auld motor, ye see. Ah cruised around a bit.’

‘Where?’

‘Places. Jist anywhere. Around the city. Ah’ve been demented. Then when I was in the centre anyway Ah remembered this place.’ He said it like a challenge. ‘An’ Ah came in.’

Laidlaw reflected that something like a stolen bicycle would have been more concrete. Bud Lawson had got away ahead of the probabilities. What he needed wasn’t a policeman, it was a sedative. The main purpose of what Laidlaw was going to say next would be lay therapy.

‘You’d better tell me it from the beginning.’

The man’s confusion funnelled through a filter onto Laidlaw’s pad.

Jennifer Lawson (age 18). 24 Ardmore Crescent, Drumchapel. Left the house 7.00 p.m., Saturday 19th. Wearing denim trouser-suit, yellow platform shoes, red tee-shirt with a yellow sun on the chest, carrying brown shoulder-bag. Height five feet eight inches, slim build, shoulder-length black hair. Mole on left temple. (‘Ah mind that because when she wis wee, she worried aboot it. Thocht it wid spoil her chances with the boys. Ye know whit lassies are like.’) Occupation: shop-girl (Treron’s). Stated destination: Poppies Disco.

It looked neat on paper. On Bud Lawson’s face it was a mess. But Laidlaw had done all he could. He had been a pair of professional ears.

‘Well, Mr Lawson. There’s nothing we can do at present. I’ve got a description. We’ll see if anything turns up.’

‘Ye mean that’s it?’

‘It’s a bit early to declare a national emergency, Mr Lawson.’

‘Ma lassie’s missin’.’

‘We don’t know that, Mr Lawson. Are you on the phone?’

‘Naw.’

‘She could’ve missed a bus. She wouldn’t be able to inform you. She could be staying with a friend.’

‘Whit freen’? Ah’d like tae see her try it?’