Career of Evil

It occurred to him as he walked back along the dingy passageway to the sunlit square that, barring the obscenities the young soldier had muttered into Strike’s ear in the boxing ring, he had never heard Donald Laing speak. Still working undercover on his drugs case, it had been imperative that Strike was not seen wandering in and out of HQ in his beard, so the interrogation of Laing after his arrest had been undertaken by others. Later, when he had successfully concluded the drugs case and was again clean-shaven, Strike had given evidence against Laing in court, but he had been on a plane out of Cyprus by the time that Laing had stood up to deny that he had tied up or tortured his wife. As he crossed Market Square, Strike wondered whether his Borders accent might have been one reason that people had been so willing to believe in Donnie Laing, to forgive him, to like him. The detective seemed to remember reading that advertisers used Scottish accents to suggest integrity and honesty.

The only pub he had spotted so far stood a short distance along a street Strike passed on the way to Dingleton Road. Melrose appeared to be fond of yellow: though the walls were white, the pub’s doors and window were picked out in acid-bright lemon and black. To the Cornish-born Strike’s amusement, given the landlocked situation of the town, the pub was called the Ship Inn. He walked on into Dingleton Road, which snaked under a bridge, became a steep hill and disappeared out of sight.

The term “not far” was a relative one, as Strike had often had occasion to observe since losing his calf and foot. After ten minutes’ walk up the hill he was beginning to regret that he had not returned to the abbey car park for the Mini. Twice he asked women in the street whether they knew where Mrs. Laing lived, but though polite and friendly, neither could tell him. He trudged on, sweating slightly, past a stretch of white bungalows, until he met an elderly man coming the other way, wearing a tweed flat cap and walking a black and white Border collie.

“Excuse me,” said Strike. “Do you happen to know where Mrs. Laing lives? I’ve forgotten the number.”

“Messus Laing?” replied the dog walker, surveying Strike from beneath thick salt and pepper eyebrows. “Aye, she’s my next-door neighbor.”

Thank Christ.

“Three along,” said the man, pointing, “wi’ the stone wishing well oot front.”

“Thanks very much,” said Strike.

As he turned up Mrs. Laing’s drive he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, that the old man was still standing on the spot, watching him, in spite of the collie trying to tug him downhill.

Mrs. Laing’s bungalow looked clean and respectable. Stone animals of Disneyesque cuteness littered her lawn and peeped out from her flowerbeds. The front door lay at the side of the building, in shadow. Only as he raised his hand to the doorknocker did it occur to Strike that he might, within seconds, come face to face with Donald Laing.

For a whole minute after he knocked, nothing happened except that the elderly dog walker retraced his steps and stood at Mrs. Laing’s gate, unabashedly staring. Strike suspected that the man regretted giving out his neighbor’s address and was checking that the large stranger meant the woman no harm, but he was wrong.

“She’s in,” he called to Strike, who was deliberating as to whether to try again. “But she’s wud.”

“She’s what?” Strike called back as he knocked for a second time.

“Wud. Doolally.”

The dog walker took a few steps down the drive towards Strike.

“Demented,” he translated for the Englishman.

“Ah,” said Strike.

The door opened, revealing a tiny, wizened, sallow-faced old woman wearing a deep blue dressing gown. She glared up at Strike with a kind of unfocused malevolence. There were several stiff whiskers growing out of her chin.

“Mrs. Laing?”

She said nothing, but peered at him out of eyes that he knew, bloodshot and faded though they were, must have been beady and ferret-like in their day.

“Mrs. Laing, I’m looking for your son Donald.”

“No,” she said, with surprising vehemence. “No.”

She retreated and slammed the door.

“Bugger,” said Strike under his breath, which made him think of Robin. She would almost certainly have been better than him at charming the little old woman. Slowly he turned, wondering whether there was anyone else in Melrose who might help — he had definitely seen other Laings listed on 192.com — and found himself face to face with the dog walker, who had proceeded all the way down the drive to meet him and was looking cautiously excited.

“You’re the detective,” he said. “You’re the detective that put her son away.”