by Les Cowan
But, as the years went by, he turned out to be everything his father was not: laid back, not driven; bookish and solitary in his teens; neither political nor practical but more interested in philosophy and abstractions. It didn’t make for much common ground. The National Museum of Scotland seemed to be the one place they both loved where they could feel comfortable with each other. Perhaps it was being in such uncommon ground that made it work – everything either so gigantic or so tiny, intricate or massive, imposing or intriguing. All in a series of huge Victorian halls that by their very size made you speak in hushed tones and realize you were in the presence of something bigger than yourself, like a cathedral of science and discovery. Of course the blue whale was their favourite; it was everyone’s. A huge white skeleton slung from the rafters the entire length of one of the halls. Next to that no one felt too sure of their own importance. So, wandering around, more or less in silence, every year almost from his earliest childhood, this had become the one place that managed to bridge the gulf between them, not by looking each other in the eye, but by looking away to something else that seemed to put their smaller lives into context. Next to the blue whale, maybe they weren’t so different after all. David still came here when he needed to get outside of himself, to think, to regroup, to clear his mind and let a new perspective form.
The recent remodelling had improved things in a host of ways, from decent level access, right up to the new rooftop café with all-round views from the Castle Rock, past the spire of St Giles to Holyrood Park and the Southern Uplands. But the blue whale had apparently had to go. He wasn’t entirely sure the trade-off was worth it but tried to keep positive and wandered in. He hadn’t even got halfway round marine mammals when his mobile went off with a jarring jangle and he had to head back out again.
“Hello, David Hidalgo.”
“Hi David. Sam here. Can we meet somewhere? We’ve got a witness.”
Chapter 6
THE DRIVER’S TALE
Look, I’m just a driver. Before this job I used to drive a vegetable van and before that a bus. Actually, this isn’t much different from being a bus driver. I pick up passengers and take them where they want to go. It’s just that these passengers want to go a bit further than the average. So, like I say, I’m a bus driver, not a kidnapper or a blackmailer or a rapist. You’ll have to speak to someone else for that. I’ve got a wife and family – three under ten – and I need regular work. That’s almost impossible – you know, 200 guys chasing a kitchen assistant job that pays next to nothing. And round here jobs go with connections: brother, uncle, former colleague from the Party, or just friend. Without connections it’s more like a million to one. So I do what I have to do and I don’t apologize for it.
Anyway, I knew this bloke who used to sell fake watches in the market. I helped him out a bit, looked after the stall when he had other things on. One day he said to me, “Do you want to be poor all your life, Sergei? I can get you a job that pays more than a doctor. Then your children can eat enough and your wife can get a new coat.” Of course I said yes. Then this guy, he knew another guy who knew someone else who knew someone else. You get the idea. Which means that actually, I have no idea who I’m really working for but I get paid and that’s what matters. Fifty US dollars for every warm, breathing body delivered to Hamburg. That’s ten times what I used to get as a bus driver, but then it’s a longer run. I’m not paid to make friends and I’m not paid to think about it. I hope it works out for them but they have to take their chances like all of us. I don’t know what happens after I hand them over and I don’t ask. So my wife has her new coat and the kids get toys at Christmas. She doesn’t ask where it comes from and I don’t tell her.
But you want to know about Tati. I’ve taken dozens across now, and when you’re driving through the night you don’t look at the faces or remember the names. It’s better that way. But I remember her. She was different. Everybody’s nervous, but if she was, she hid it well. She looks you straight in the eye and she says what she thinks. Most of the girls have been promised a job – a nurse or a cook or a waitress or something. I don’t suppose any of these jobs really exist but, like I said, that’s none of my business and I don’t ask. But Tati didn’t want some menial job like they were promising her. She had her eyes on something more. She told me she was going to start an agency for other girls from Belarus. Once she got established she would bring them over without paying $15,000 to the mafia for a ride in a bus. She claimed to already have some funding ideas and I believed her. She said she had good English and I wasn’t surprised. Nothing would surprise me about her.
Anyway, it was a filthy night when I picked her up. Outside the railway station is the usual place and she was waiting in the rain. I’d been stopped for running a red light so I was late. Cost me $10 out of my own pocket. I was late and I wasn’t happy. I had two more to pick up after Tati so I was in a hurry. It’s all the more surprising that I remember her so well – slim, dark shoulder-length hair, very pale skin but bright red lipstick, a sharp little nose, bright eyes. Her bag looked better quality and she had a pendant on – a circle with a flame inside it – on a chain. That’s how I remember her. Ogonyok. Little flame. She looked like she had something inside of her you couldn’t put out. At least I hope so.
She was sitting next to me and talked all the way. Most of the girls don’t have much to say. They’re young, scared, alone. They eat bread and sausage and look out of the window. They certainly don’t talk to me. What does a girl that age have to say to a man like me? But Tati, like I say, was different. She told me about her family, how she loved reading in English or listening to English pop music. She asked me if I was married, how many kids, the usual stuff, but she seemed to really want to know. So I told her. I told her too much. Things hadn’t been going so good between me and Ludmila for a few years then – even despite the extra money. I told her that as well. I told her I shouldn’t drink so much. I told her sometimes in the night I have nightmares about the girls I take in my bus. All the little girls going off to the West to find their way. I don’t know what happens to them and I try not to think about it, but I can’t stop the dreams. She just laughed and said, “Well, you don’t need to worry about me, Sergei. You’ll read about me in the paper when I have a big success.”
Halfway across Poland I had a crazy idea. A girl like her would be a great help to me. We could share the driving, she could look after the girls – I mean, talk to them, show them where to go when we stopped, reassure them. And I’m pretty sure she’d be able to sweet talk the border guards better than an old fool like me. They give me all the papers but sometimes there’s a problem or a question and it can get tricky. If I don’t get a girl to Hamburg I don’t get paid and sometimes they don’t all make it through. I didn’t stop to think; I just said to her, “Why are you going to the West, Tati? A bright girl like you could make money here. Work with me. As we say – artelnie garshok guschee keepeet – with a helper a thousand things are possible.” But she just laughed at me. “It’s not the money,” she said, “it’s the life. I want to be where I can breathe, where I can be somebody.”
Well, we got to Hamburg. The pickup was there and gave me a hard time for arriving late. But I got paid and the girls were handed over. Normally it doesn’t bother me but this time it did. I was sorry to see Tati go. Fifteen hours in a van and she felt like my daughter.
Chapter 7
THE GRANGE
Dr Gillian Lockhart had just finished her 2–3 p.m. graveyard shift tutorial on the origins of the Scots language vowel system with particular reference to the Scottish vowel length rule, commonly known as Aitken’s Law. Unfortunately, studying in the 1990s she had just missed A. J. Aitken’s tenure as Professor of Scots Language at Edinburgh. He was still widely revered as the man who had more or less invented the subject and even after his death continued to tower over it. But, however loved and respected he might be in academia, he was apparently not held in such high esteem by her Tuesday afternoo
n tutorial group. The mixed group of late teens and so-called “mature” students had other things on their minds, though the vacant stares didn’t give much away. The tutorial papers asked for the previous week had mostly passed – before immediately passing into obscurity. The “student interaction” had been torturous in the extreme and had mostly consisted of Gillian describing a point and looking to the group for examples of which very few were forthcoming. Nevertheless, finally it was over and the teenagers could head off to the Union and the middle-aged to the supermarket then home to cook the tea. She yawned, stretched, took off the glasses she now found she increasingly needed for close reading, and got up to wipe the whiteboard.
“Hi Gillian. Got a minute?” A tallish, still fairly slim figure in a Steve Jobs black polo neck and Armani jeans, a goatee beard, and a wave of steel grey hair that would have got surfers excited stood in the doorway. Gillian was never sure how to feel when Dr Stephen Baranski stopped by her room, which he seemed to be doing with increasing frequency. True, he had the reputation – probably a bit exaggerated – as the Department’s lothario, but at the same time he was also a smart guy, published widely, spoke at international conferences, not painful to look at, and could be quite amusing. What’s not to like? Gillian had decided some time ago that being all these things was all very well; the problem was when you knew it. She had started thinking of him more as the Department’s Richard Gere, an actor she always wanted to step into the movie and slap whenever she saw him. Maybe it was just a traditional Scottish “let’s not get above ourselves now” attitude. Stephen was from New England and had no such reservations.
“Sure. Come in. I’m just done.”
“Exciting and dynamic as usual?”
“No. Boring and exasperating. If I’d wanted to pull teeth I could have been a dentist.”
“Not them – I meant you, of course!”
Gillian resisted the temptation to roll her eyes and just smiled. Stephen smiled back though perhaps in a slightly different way.
“So. The Boss at Hampden on the nineteenth,” he continued, holding up a small envelope. “You were going to think about it. Interested?”
Had it been anyone else Gillian might have wrestled them to the floor, applied a Ranger chokehold, and pried the Springsteen tickets out of their feeble, dying hands. As it was not anyone else, she carried on cleaning the board before pausing for a second to give sufficient suggestion of checking her mental calendar.
“Ah. What a shame. I forgot all about it. My dad’s birthday party is on the nineteenth. I’m sure it’ll be fantastic.”
“No problem. He only comes every second year though. See you later.”
Phew. That had been a bit awkward. She had been sure all her colleagues now understood she was “in a relationship”, as Facebook euphemistically puts it these days. But, whether he knew or not (she guessed he probably did), Dr Stephen Baranski was still willing to have a go. She knew she should feel flattered but it just left her feeling muddled. She kept on wiping the board until it was cleaner than it was the day it arrived.
Dr Stephen Baranski, Revd David Hidalgo – or Someone Else for that matter. She was now over forty; the clock was ticking. Where was it all going? When all the events connected with the disappearance of Jen MacInnes had started cartwheeling out of control the previous year she had been very careful at the start just to be a helpful bystander, like the motorist willing to stop for a car crash and phone the ambulance – not take the injured home and give them hot soup. But almost immediately it had fired off in a direction she could never have predicted; both the investigation and her thoughts and feelings for that mysterious man, David Hidalgo. He was funny yet serious, wise yet foolish, careful yet reckless, tough yet weak, clear yet confused, and a few dozen other contradictory adjectives. Her feelings seemed to swing from pole to pole in sympathy. They had both uttered the fateful “I love you”, but what did it all mean? She had wondered if things were on the verge of a more decisive turn the night of the shooting; then, in all the ensuing panic, the moment had passed. Besides, he was more than ten years her senior, and although that wasn’t a problem in itself, they did seem to come from different generations as well as different cultural and faith backgrounds. Did they have enough in common, or maybe it was opposites attracting and all to the good?
There was one thing she felt sure of: she knew she could trust him. He was the sort of man who might take a while to work out what the right thing was, but once fixed on it she knew he would stick to it relentlessly, however difficult. His lonely, apparently one-way, drive from Toledo to Calatrava to find her, in the aftermath of looking for Jen MacInnes, had proved that. In a funny way he reminded her of Bilbo Baggins, who “knew his duty as a host and stuck to it however painful”. The thought of David Hidalgo as a hobbit made her almost laugh out loud. Then she stopped herself. That was interesting – a ridiculous image but it seemed to crystallize something in her mind. David was ridiculous in a lot of ways: terrible dress sense, hopeless with any expression of emotions, probably believed a bunch of crazy things most twenty-first-century people would find bizarre. But he was honest and entirely trustworthy – what the lonely hearts call “sincere”. She was pretty sure that Dr Stephen Baranski was none of these things. Not to mention that David had saved her life a couple of times and was great fun to be with when they weren’t being shot at. Maybe it was ok after all. Maybe even what he still seemed to believe and she endlessly struggled with would just have to go on the back burner. Juan Hernandez was always fond of saying that El Señor was at work – it just hadn’t all worked out yet. Maybe that was enough. Just then her mobile rang, interrupting her thoughts. It was David. Could she meet as soon after work as possible? There had been a development.
Gillian, Juan, Sam, and David met at Lovecrumbs on West Port near the Usher Hall.
“Great cakes, terrible location,” Gillian commented, nodding out the window towards a trio of sleazy bars nearby as they took a corner table. “I didn’t realize strip clubs still existed, and here we have three of them inside fifty yards. And no doubt prostitution and maybe even trafficking all mixed in.” She gave a shudder as she set down the tray. “I suppose it never really goes away…”
“How are you, Sam?” David asked, getting the subject back where it should be as they shuffled in around a tiny table. “I tried your mobile a couple of times but just got voicemail. I thought you were going away for a bit anyway?”
“That’s three questions,” Sam replied, concentrating on her coffee but aiming to be at least superficially lighthearted. “How am I? Ok – and terrible. To be honest I think just numb. I know it’s real but just can’t believe it yet. I keep thinking of things I have to tell Mike or ask him or remind him… then I have to stop myself. I decided not to go and stay with anyone. I thought that might just make it all the harder coming back. My sister’s coming down this afternoon. In fact, I’ve to get her at the airport around seven. What else? The mobile? I’ve gone a bit incommunicado too, I’m afraid. I just couldn’t stand having to tell people what’s happened. Or tell them how I am. I know everyone wishes me well but… I suppose I’m used to being on the giving side of things and maybe I’m not so good at taking sympathy.”
Although they had met only once, Gillian had instantly liked Sam and now felt an almost overwhelming sense of sisterly affection. She wanted to turn the clock back and make it all go away, or failing that, gather her up in cotton wool until it was time to come out. Neither of these being possible, she reached across and squeezed her arm.
“It’s really early yet, Sam. You’ve had an incredible shock. I think most people would be doped up to the eyeballs for the first fortnight.”
“Well, that was one thing I didn’t want. The police liaison officer they sent out suggested seeing my GP, but as well as the shock there’s part of me that’s just incredibly angry. I know Mike didn’t kill himself and if I’m out of action I can’t do anything to find out what really happened. I need to hold it toget
her for his sake and get through it. Then I can collapse once we know the truth.”
“Señora, we are praying for you,” Juan put in. “Alicia, myself, David, everyone who knows you.”
“I know – and I’m grateful for your prayers and for the practical help. Mrs MacInnes came round last night with a huge shepherd’s pie. I didn’t need to say anything to her. She just left it on the doorstep, rang the bell, then waited in the car and waved. She’s a surprising lady.”
“Sal de la tierra – salt of the earth,” Juan summed up.
“So, a witness, Sam…” said David, moving them on again.
The conversation paused as a middle-aged mum and studenty daughter squeezed past with a loaded tray.
“It was a good thing I didn’t go away. A few of the neighbours have been round. Actually, the house is full of flowers, which is nice. Anyway, Mrs Ingram from across the road – to be honest a one-woman neighbourhood watch – she knocked on the door this morning. I wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about letting her in, but anyway… In the course of a long, rambling story about her youngest daughter’s second husband’s first wife – you get the idea – she mentioned she had been a bit worried about Mike when he came back from his run on Sunday morning: ‘What a good job these young men had been around to help him.’” Sam put on the Edinburgh genteel twang. “So I asked her exactly what she’d seen. Finally, after another ten minutes it turned out that she’d noticed Mike go out for a run at about half-eleven, then around twenty minutes later a car pulled up at the door and two young men got out more or less carrying him between them. She said she wondered at the time if he’d been taken ill when he was running.”