All other concerns had fused for him, and when his preoccupation found him standing again in the living-room of Lynsey Farren’s flat in East Kilbride he wasn’t sure he could remember exactly how he got there. He wasn’t even entirely sure what he was doing there. Certainly, nobody else seemed to know. He was like yesterday’s news nobody was interested in any more.
They had been reluctant to let him in. Now that he was in they contrived barely to notice him. Lynsey Farren was packing. Her face was blotchy with crying and she was abstractedly filling two big leather suitcases on the floor.
Her father, Lord Farren, was waiting to accompany her back to his estate. He looked in his eighties and was hovering about so vaguely it seemed as if he wasn’t sure of the century, never mind the day of the week. He still hadn’t worked out who Laidlaw was. He was a charming old man who had asked Laidlaw how he got the lump on his cheek. He kept returning to the window, perpetually looking for something he couldn’t find, perhaps a hansom cab to take him to an address no longer there.
The Mercedes Laidlaw had recognised outside belonged to Milton Veitch. Mr Veitch was there to run Lynsey and her father home. He had taken control of them. Having manfully overcome his grief, he was helping Lynsey pack and telling Laidlaw that they wanted to be left in peace. He was very solicitous towards Lynsey. To an outsider he would have seemed a nice man, doing the right thing.
Rectitude is a sanctimonious bastard, Laidlaw thought. It would unravel the jumpers from its shivering children’s backs to knit gloves for public charity.
‘I just need to talk to Miss Farren,’ Laidlaw said.
‘No, you don’t,’ Veitch said. ‘She’s suffered enough. We all have.’
‘Not quite as much as Tony.’
Lynsey broke down at the mention of the name, beginning to sob. Veitch put his arm round her.
‘What a filthily tasteless remark!’ he said. ‘How dare you!’
Lord Farren turned from the window and saw Lynsey crying. It must have appeared to him like a tableau he had accidentally stumbled across. He seemed to make no connection with what had gone before.
‘Lynsey dear,’ he said and crossed towards them. Veitch shepherded them both into the bedroom, waited with them a little, came out and closed the door. He looked at Laidlaw as if he was very small. His contempt was the height of a cliff.
‘Do you enjoy other people’s suffering?’ he asked.
‘I need to talk to Miss Farren.’
‘You won’t be doing that.’
‘So what’s going to happen? You all retire behind your moat of money and leave it at that? I can’t do that. This is where I live. I need to know what it’s really like.’
‘That’s your problem. We have the right to cope with this tragedy any way we can.’
‘No, you haven’t. Not at the expense of the truth you haven’t. You don’t get monopolising that as well. A share of it’s mine. And I’m claiming it. Listen, I think your son was murdered.’
‘I think you’re off your head. That’s what I think. And I think this is harassment. Why are you here alone, for example? That’s hardly official procedure. You really don’t care about anybody, do you?’
‘I must have walked through a looking-glass,’ Laidlaw said. ‘I don’t care? Your son’s dead. And all you can do is help somebody to pack who knows more about it than she admits. You’re going to ferry her silence away for her. You know what you are? You’re playing batman to your own son’s death. Dressing it up nice. Now why is that? Because you know the truth would be an accusation against you?’
‘That’s it,’ Veitch said. ‘I’ll be phoning Bob Frederick. Bob can deal with this.’
Laidlaw couldn’t believe it. That familiar use of the Commander of the Crime Squad’s name was supposed to be the ultimate sanction applied. It felt like living in a different world from everybody else. Did he really think that mattered?
‘Phone,’ Laidlaw said. ‘Phone right now.’
‘I’ll phone when I choose.’
‘No, you won’t. Listen. If you can make a phone-call and blow me away, then do it. But don’t threaten me with it. You want to pull strings, pull. I’ll arrange to have you strangle yourself on them. Or if I can’t, I’ll be glad to lose. Because this job won’t be worth doing. Which actually maybe it’s not. But if you’re not going to do that, get out of my way and let me speak to that lassie. Make your choice.’
Veitch wilted slightly and sat down. He put his head in his hands briefly, looked up.
‘Laidlaw. Do you think my son’s death doesn’t matter to me?’
‘Mr Veitch. I’m not interested. I don’t want to talk to you. I’ve tried that already. Let me speak to the girl.’
‘Laidlaw, I wish I could believe what you believe. But I knew my son. You want to think he wasn’t capable of that. But I know he was. God forgive me. But I know he was. I’ve seen him get seduced by every spurious extremist philosophy. Become an intellectual whore. Just to pay me back for some imagined wrong. Since he went to university he developed a mind like a swamp. A breeding-ground for sickness. He was capable of anything. I know he was.’
‘Mr Veitch. You know what I think happened to you? You lost the taste for whisky because you owned the pub. Don’t tell me what you know. You wouldn’t know the truth unless it had Bank of Scotland written on it. I don’t want to waste my time with you, Mr Veitch. That’s what I really don’t want to do. What are you? Some kind of guardian of the golden fleece? Let people talk. If you’re so sure you’re right, just let me test it. Is that too much to ask?’
Mr Veitch put his head in his hands again. He looked up slowly.
‘I’ll give you five minutes with Lynsey,’ he said.
‘Mr Veitch,’ Laidlaw said. ‘You’ll give me as long as I need. Your son’s dead and I care more about why and how he died than you do. That gives me rights. Go and get Lynsey, please. And if you really care about people, keep the old man through there. His head doesn’t need to try to cope with this.’
When she came through, she was fairly composed. The door had closed on the bedroom and she put down the lid on a suitcase as she passed and then sat down in one of the leather armchairs beside the electric fire. But what she hadn’t realised was that she had walked into Laidlaw’s obsession. The room was no more than a backdrop for his mood. He sat down across from her.
‘Tell me what happened,’ he said.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Tell me the truth as far as you understand it.’
‘About what?’
‘About the national economy. What do you think? About Tony Veitch.’
‘I’ve told you what I know.’
‘You’ve told me nothing. I sat in this room and listened to your cabaret. All right. That was then. But now somebody you’re supposed to have cared about is dead. Take the make-up off. I want to know anything you can tell me that might help.’
‘I don’t know what might help.’
‘I’ll help you then. Who beat you up?’
‘That’s my affair.’
‘No, no. It’s not. You don’t understand. I saw Tony Veitch lying dead. Barbecued like a bit of butchermeat.’
She gasped and covered her eyes.
‘You could cry for a week, Miss Farren, and it wouldn’t count. That picture’s burned into my head. And I’m not carrying that for you. Or anybody. You have to turn up and take your part of it. You’re maybe sensitive but you’re not sensitive enough. What matters isn’t the effect it has on you, but what you do with the effect it has on you. You feel it bad, then turn up for the man you feel it for. A boy is dead. I don’t think he deserved to die.’