In his later years he still came to Old Trafford whenever he could. With the collars of his raincoat pulled up to his ears. Almost like he didn't want anyone to know it was him.
But you could always tell it was Denis. The hair was still distinctive in its fairness. The sparkle in the eyes is still strong. Yes, you always knew when Denis was in the building. A footballer and a man who instinctively drew people towards him with the same ease with which he once left opponents in his wake.
Denis Law – who died on Friday aged 84 – was a very natural footballer, a goalscorer who worked desperately hard for what those who knew him testified always came terribly easy. He was a poster boy for sporting glory, a movie star footballer dressed in the red of Manchester United.
Of course there were other clubs too. Manchester City – quite famous – and also Torino and Huddersfield, where he started. Born in Aberdeen, he also played for his beloved Scotland 55 times and never lost a single film of that beautiful, playful national song.
But it is with United that he will forever be linked. He spent eleven years at Old Trafford between 1962 and 1973, making 404 appearances, averaging well over one goal in every other appearance.
He won the Ballon D'Or in 1964 and his 46 United goals that season remain a club record. In 1968 he won the European Cup and his tally of 237 United goals is surpassed only by Sir Bobby Charlton and Wayne Rooney.
If the game felt easier when he played, then Law was the perfect salesman for the time. Effortlessly urban and charming, effortlessly comfortable in his own skin and, above all, effortlessly effective with a ball at his feet.
There was rarely anything elaborate about the things he did on a football field. He possessed an economy of movement and the ability to score goals with ease. Ditto his party. Usually one arm up and, if he was really excited, maybe two.
Law never lost sight of the fact that one of his most unorthodox goals was the one he never really wanted to score, and even after time had clouded the memory, he never got the slightest ounce of pleasure out of it.
His backheel in City Blue against United on the final day of the 1974 season gave him the goal that people like to say dropped his old club out of the top division. The truth is that this was not the case. Other results that day would have seen United relegated anyway.
Nevertheless, questions about it haunted Law forever. It seemed like he never did an interview without it coming up, and when it did, he always hesitated a little, made a joke, or pretended he couldn't remember. It was his way of getting past the subject. For him it was just a goal, just one of many he has scored since he first made his debut for Huddersfield as a 16-year-old with an eye condition on Christmas Eve 1956.
Law was not a tall man, slight and delicate to look at. When he joined Huddersfield, some thought he was too thin. “A freak, weak and puny,” said his first manager Andy Beattie.
But then some people said that about George Best too, and there they both now stand with Charlton, forever cast in bronze on the Old Trafford forecourt.
A statue of United's Holy Trinity. A hat-trick of sporting genius. A reminder – even in these dark days of Glazer debt and sporting uncertainty – of what it should be like to be a Manchester United footballer forever.
Sir Matt Busby wanted rights at United almost immediately, but Huddersfield did not want to sell. Later Bill Shankly wanted him at Liverpool. But when he left, he joined City almost four years later for a British record fee of £50,000.
An ambition and a determination to better himself that had already taken him from the tenements of Aberdeen – Law was one of seven children – to the top level of English football when he was just 20, would take him to Italy. He only stayed in Turin for one unhappy season and then it was back to Manchester and a partnership with United that may have been too late.
A lot had changed for Law by then, but some things remained the same and he moved straight back in with the same landlady who had housed him when he played for City.
Law's years at Old Trafford brought him all his major honours. This turned out to be his time. Law joined a club still healing in the aftermath of the Munich disaster four years earlier and won two Division One titles, an FA Cup and of course that European Cup as Busby's reborn United completed their farewell cycle at Wembley Benfica completed. Unfortunately, a knee injury kept him out of the final.
Busby's United team had no shortage of glamour. The best was the show business, Charlton's heartbeat, his raging soul and his melancholic link with a tragic past. De Law was as effective as either player, able to drive forward from either foot and possessing a shoulder drop that defenders would expect, yet surrendering to its agility. The law was like smoke, like a will-o'-the-wisp. Impossible to hold, catch or stop.
Teammates loved him not only for his goals, but also for his courage and his respect. A simple man, simply blessed with extraordinary skills.
His second spell at City was notable only for that goal and he retired aged 34 when it became clear that first-team football at Maine Road would be rare.
It will come as no surprise to those who recognized his ability to talk and disarm people, but Law proved himself naturally adept in front of a TV camera and was a regular analyst for Granada, ITV's north-west regional arm. It turned out that, after years of playing football so well, he could also talk about it.
Based just outside Manchester, Law never left. His daughter Diana, one of five children, worked for many years as United's press officer and remains one of Sir Alex Ferguson's trusted confidantes. To this day, Ferguson calls Law Snr: 'My hero'.
After revealing he had prostate cancer in 2003, Law underwent surgery and recovered to become a dedicated awareness raiser. When Best succumbed to the rigors of addiction in 2005, Law sat at his bedside and then carried his casket.
More recently, it was revealed that Law suffered from Alzheimer's disease and vascular dementia in his 80s.
It was painful to see the law so limited, simply because it was so at odds with the vibrancy we remember. Law was not only a great footballer, but also a magnetic and unbreakable link to what Manchester United should always be about.
Glory, glamor and goals, but with a dash of honesty and humility in the middle. Don't think of United as they have become. See them as what they once were. Denis Law embodied all that. Today – now that all three are gone – we are more grateful than ever for that beautiful image. It will be a beautiful sight in the coming days and weeks.
Comments