The Cursing Stone: a gripping mystery and family saga

by Adrian Harvey

‘I’m sorry sir, but that item has been sold. Last November, actually. We occasionally get similar pieces in, and if you’d like to leave an email address, I’d be happy to add your name to our mailing list, with a note…’

  Her voice tailed off, aware that her customer’s mood had changed. She stood to her full height and began to apologise again, to explain that it was important that, if he was interested in a particular type of piece, he keep abreast of the schedule of auctions, which were available on the company’s website. Then she paused, waiting to see what the young man would do next.

  Fergus felt his hopes for a speedy return to Hinba sinking with his shoulders. He had been overly optimistic, naïve, he realised. There would be no easy resolution to his search. He sighed deeply and, from across the showroom, Mary looked up, frowning instinctively. She watched her brother’s surrender and felt his weariness as he tried to gather his strength to begin again.

  He explained to the assistant that he was not looking for similar pieces, but for that specific piece. It was only that piece, that stone, in which he was interested. He had travelled a long way to find it, and while he understood that it was his fault that he was too late, the news that it had been sold was something of a disappointment. He apologised if he had appeared rude. If the assistant could just let him have the name and address of the buyer, he would be most grateful and would trouble her no further.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry but that won’t be possible. It’s company policy to protect absolutely the privacy of our clients. I’m sure you’ll understand, sir, and that you’d expect nothing less if the situation were reversed?’

  The book flopped shut with a heavy thump and Fergus cursed himself for lacking the foresight to read across to the name recorded next to the item sooner. The young woman had recovered herself and felt once more in control of the situation. She smiled and raised an eyebrow at Fergus’s still cocked head, triumphant. The sweep of the curtain behind her, however, brought a flinch. A squat, round man appeared at her shoulder.

  Dressed in a mossy suit, Mr McAteer glowered for a short moment through wire-framed spectacles. His thin hair was slick to his head and his pink skin seemed too small for his face. It had a sickly, glossy sheen and his cheeks strained roundly. Before he spoke, a small pink tongue slid up across his upper lip and lingered contemptuously; his broad mouth curled malevolently.

  ‘Is everything in order, Miss Carmichael? No problems with this customer, I trust?’

  She quivered slightly beneath her blouse as she explained that everything was indeed in order and that the issue had been dealt with. Her eyes pleaded with Fergus for confirmation, but McAteer was in any case unconvinced. With a hook of his head, he sent Miss Carmichael scurrying to the back room and turned to face Fergus. The buttons on his waistcoat wrestled with his bulk.

  Despite his girth, McAteer was a full foot shorter than Fergus. He glowered for a while longer, licking his upper lip, before a deep swallow pulsed down his throat.

  ‘Am I to understand that you were trying to bully my assistant into revealing the personal details of one of my clients? Because that is something that I find unacceptable. Un-ac-ceptable. Am I making myself clear, young man?’

  His voice was steady and controlled, but venomous all the same. Despite his lack of height, he glistened with menace. With the stroke of the hand, he cut off Fergus’s attempt to counter and continued.

  ‘You might not fully understand this, but trust is an important part of my business. Integrity. Discretion. I will not tolerate your attempts to harass my customers, nor to intimidate my staff.’

  The tongue again. McAteer swayed a step closer to Fergus, his stomach resting on the counter, his fingers spread evenly on the glass.

  ‘Now, before I have you leave the premises, you will tell me exactly why you were interested in this piece.’

  His fat finger pointed to the picture of the cursing stone on the torn page that still lay on the counter where Miss Carmichael had left it in her haste. Fergus’s eyes fell limply to the page and his resolve drained from him. There was no point now explaining that the stone had been stolen; McAteer would not believe him, would think it simply a ploy, a ruse, to circumvent his policy of guarding the privacy of his client. At best, he would simply tell him to go to the police; more likely, he would erupt in anger and throw him and his sister out onto the street, enraged at the impudent accusation implied about this business. Inspiration came from his sister’s presence at his side.

  ‘We’re students. At the University. In the Archaeology Department. We’re doing a project on the settlement of the Small Isles, and we just wanted to talk to the owner. About the bullaun stone. Where it was found, that kind of thing. It would help us get a good grade.’

  ‘Students! My god, do you lot never think? Supposed to be clever, but really… Why would my client want to talk to you, even if it got you a bloody gold star? Out. Out! Back to your books: that’s how you’re supposed to learn, not by bothering hard working people. Get out, just get out.’

  Fergus stuttered an apology and shrank into himself. As he turned to leave, he had the presence of mind to sweep up the torn page and fold it into his pocket in a single movement, all the while watching McAteer’s shaking head, his eyes wide open, his mouth ajar, the fleshy stuffing bulging over the ivory studs of tiny teeth.

  As he guided his sister towards the door, past the startled couple by the porcelain figurines, Fergus did not know what the next steps were, but he knew that there was nothing to be gained by arguing with McAteer. They had been lucky enough to discover the identity of the auction house so easily; all things considered, this was not a significant setback. A solution would present itself.

  16

  He wasn’t sure about his new flatmate’s brother. Craig didn’t know Mary well, of course: she had only moved into the spare room after Christmas, when Patrick had decided that University was not, after all, for him and had not returned from Manchester following the winter break. She had enquired about the room and had seemed the most sane and reliable of all those they had seen. Compared with the boy with staring eyes and an aversion to the most basic aspects of hygiene, she had seemed saintly. It had been an easy decision and Mary had moved in before the end of the second week back.

  Craig had soon come to like her. She was studious and earnest, with an interest in art and an adventurousness of spirit that shone only slowly through her quiet calmness. She made no great display of her decision to leave the sanctuary of Halls after just one term, taking independence and responsibility as a given. She was sure of her own opinion and aware of its limits: their intense discussions stretched sometimes late into the night, but were never heated, only illuminating. She was one of the most subtle thinkers Craig had met in his short life and they had started to spend time together on campus between lectures, sitting together in the library. Before long, easy assumptions had been made.

  Craig found them in the café on Ingram Street. It was as Mary had said on the phone: the visit to McAteer’s had not gone well. He was not surprised. The brother, despite his bluster and self-assurance, lacked guile. He had had no clear plan of action and it was obvious that, by simply presenting himself at the auction house and demanding the address of a customer, he was going to fail. Businesses didn’t just give out that sort of information and, as much as it clearly pained him, Fergus was always going to have to ask for help. Craig had been in no hurry.

  ‘How’s the cappuccino?’

  Fergus did not look up in response to Craig’s cheery greeting, but continued to turn his cup in its saucer. The flaky remains of a croissant dusted the table. Craig put his own cup on the table and leant across to kiss Mary on both cheeks, before taking his seat and offering his assistance.

  With a long, slow breath, Fergus joined the conversation, although his eyes seldom lifted from the table-top. Craig listened as brother and sister gave their own perspectives on what had passed in McAteer’s that morning. Mary was calm, detached, but Fergus’s hands fluttere
d as they illustrated the fruitless confrontation that had occurred.

  The details were simple. There was an order book, under the counter by the bear, and in it were the details of the client that had bought the stone. It was a straightforward task really, simply a matter of getting to look inside that book, without the knowledge of the irascible Mr McAteer. All that was required was the right kind of diversion, at just the right time.

  ‘Or, better, how about someone on the inside? You know, someone who works there?’

  He knew where he would find him. There had been no need to call, and it would have been pointless in any case: Joe did not answer his mobile, even if he was aware that it was ringing. Yet despite his studied elusiveness, Craig knew that on that particular Monday afternoon, Joe could be in one place only. So he had left Mary and her brother to their own devices and walked up High Street as far as the cathedral. There, in the heart of the old city, he had passed through the gates to the Necropolis and into its narrow lanes.

  The morning’s cloud had lifted, tugged away by a nagging wind, and the sky was bright even as the air still held its chill. As he climbed the steep path towards the highest point, he felt the compression of the city’s streets fall beneath him and the air buoyed him upwards. The only activity was that of the unseen workmen hammering at wayward masonry and, aside from a prim dog walker and the dead, he had the cemetery to himself.

  Joe was sitting on the steps of the domed mausoleum of William Rae Wilson, on the very brink of the hill, his back turned to the bustle below. The wind caught his hair, toyed with it briefly before dropping its waves in bold constructions. Joe did not resist: he was intent upon his sketch of the faceless woman perched on the neighbouring tomb, within which three generations of the Holdsworth family lay unmolested. The statue, a woman holding an anchor, her head covered by a cloth, was carved from a white stone which contrasted with the grimy honey of the main structure.

  Craig watched Joe for a little while, knew not to disturb him especially when he wanted a favour. Instead he took up his place on a low wall and looked out across the city, down onto the nearby hospital and out over the receding tower blocks and cranes. Above him, rising through a copse of obelisks and crosses, John Knox watched, unmoved, as the sun inched down a ladder of cloud. Craig breathed in the ageing afternoon. The low hum of the city pulsed, but could not smother the gentle chatter of the birds or the scratching of Joe’s pencil. The only other sounds were the occasional intrusion of the wind, rattling the trees that were about to unfurl their greenery.

  Joe moved his pencil with a light fluidity, working the graphite with his thumb to capture the shifting tones of the woman’s shrouded head. He had a thing for graveyards, for death, for the long departed ghosts of the city. He had been raised among the lush, light villages of Oxfordshire, but had been drawn to the heaviness of the city as much as to its Art School. He had set about making sketches of the relics of the merchant families that had made Glasgow almost as soon as he had arrived, trying to capture the transience of permanence and the absurdity of our attempts to remain present beyond our time. While Craig knew him best from the bars and clubs of the city’s night, during daylight hours at least, if he wasn’t on Renfrew Street, he would be at the Necropolis with his pencils.

  ‘Remind me, when do we start to get proper evenings again? This light is pathetic.’

  Joe was sitting slumped against the mausoleum, his pad abandoned in his lap. His expression was lost in the fast gathering gloom but the frustration it conveyed was apparent in any case, the irritation at another day passed and the work still not done.

  ‘Soon, I think. Let me buy you a beer. Cheer you up.’ Craig let a shiver run through him, his shoulders shaking beneath his too-thin jacket, and he wondered at the imperviousness of the coatless Joe.

  ‘Yeah, why not? But give me another ten minutes or so. Here.’

  Joe threw a packet of tobacco over towards Craig; it fluttered for a moment like a sycamore seed, before dropping to earth a little short of the waiting hands. Retrieving the wrap, Craig rolled a tight, thin cigarette between marble fingers that soon sought out the lighter. Sparks spluttered before a shallow dome of orange flame settled into being, and Craig’s face puckered to suck in the smoke, the thin crumple of paper pinched between thumb and forefinger of his left hand. The smoke swelled in his chest and he allowed his head to race ahead of itself a little before he let it go in a long release.

  The day’s light was seeping cautiously into the ground. Soon the dusk would animate the grain of the granite and the cemetery would become a place of primal fears. Craig wanted to be away to the safety of electric light and the conviviality of the pub.

  ‘Make me one of those, will you?’

  By the time the cigarette was rolled, the sun was all but done and Joe had begun stowing his things in his satchel. Craig wondered if the bag was an affectation or a simple continuity from Joe’s childhood: his background certainly allowed for him to have been to one of those schools. When he was sure he had left nothing under the dusk, he joined Craig on the wall and took the cigarette and a light from his friend.

  ‘So, anyway. You didn’t come up here to watch me sketch. At least I hope not. That would suggest that you’re either more dull or more needy than I took you for. Desperate to see me were you? Or after something?’

  ‘Actually, there was something I wanted to talk to you about. Are you still seeing that girl? Elspeth?’

  Craig had heard Joe talking about his girlfriend, the diffident convent girl who fought a constant battle against the roving hands of her muculent employer. He had never met her, but knew that she was studying fine art and worked in the auction house during the vacations and on weekends, since she lacked the familial resources of either Joe or even of Craig.

  ‘Well, I’m happy to give it a try, mate. But she’ll never go for it: she’s terrified of the old man. Why do you care anyway? It’s not like you know this bloke anyway.’

  Craig watched the orange glow of his cigarette rear and recede three times before he answered. The monuments silhouetted against the sky crowded around him in anticipation of his confession.

  ‘It’s the sister. My flatmate. I sort this for him, and she’ll be…’

  ‘Grateful? Come on, you old dog. Before they lock us in.’

  It was properly dark by the time they reached the auction house and the sky as washed peach with the sodium glow. McAteer’s stayed open until 7.30pm and they had a little time yet. Hopefully the owner would be distracted, unguarded, at this late stage of the day, already half-living his evening plans, whatever they might be. Craig and Joe exchanged a glance to steel themselves before they clicked open the latch and the door swung easily inwards.

  The jangle of the bell startled Elspeth Carmichael. She had hoped that this day had already run its course. It was not how she had imagined studying. At her sixth form, she had delighted in learning without obstacle. Her parents made sure she had been provided with the physical comforts of a happy if modest life, while the Sisters had permitted her the space and means to explore all of western art and literature. The School of Art provided that too, more so, but the collapse of her unnoticed mundane support had affected her unexpectedly. She had been surprised to discover how distracting earning money could be, even without the intrusions of her lecherous employer.

  At least for now he was out of the way, confined to his office in conference with an older gentleman, discussing the prospects for a cache of antiquarian books. The client had arrived as dusk had flickered on the street lights. He had reminded Elspeth of her own grandfather shortly before his death: refined and kindly, yet also insubstantial, ethereal, scarcely able to bear the cloak of resignation he wore. She had watched him shrink into McAteer’s robust handshake and disappear behind the curtain with a mixture of relief and regret. The client’s sacrifice at least secured her own release. Until now of course, with the arrival of yet more visitors only twenty minutes from the end of her captivity.

&nb
sp; Her despondency evaporated at the sight of Joe, which once more promised release. He could only be here to see her, maybe to distract her from the dying minutes of the day. Even the presence of another only brought the flicker of a frown to her face.

  ‘Hello you! To what do I owe this pleasure?’

  She embraced him briefly, brushing her lips on his earlobe, before withdrawing coyly. His friend, she noted, had turned to look across the room rather than to invade their intimacy and she was grateful for this. Despite the three months she had known Joe, she had still not reconciled herself entirely to the physical manifestations of affection, much less their being viewed by others.

  Craig was introduced and the three of them stood awkwardly by the glass-topped counter. He smiled at the frozen rage of the bear, its demonstrative impotence. He asked the girl if it had a name but paid no attention to her response, since he had spotted the big blue ledger beneath the glass of the desk. He cast a look towards Joe then began to circumnavigate the bear, as if to get a better understanding of its shaggy bulk.

  Joe took Elspeth by the waist and guided her towards some paintings hung beyond a bank of glass cabinets on the far side of the show room. Certain of his seclusion, Craig took up the ledger and flipped swiftly through it to the page on which last November’s sales were recorded. The looped letters of the clients’ names slid beneath his finger, all fixed in flat blue ink, until he reached the purchaser of lot 326. Craig allowed himself a small smile of triumph, a private recognition of his own ingenuity, and searched his pocket for pen and paper.

  Craig did not hear the whisper of the curtain behind him, or feel the eyes narrow and sharpen, the breath solidify in the throat. Only the creak of the floor board alerted him to the fact that he had been discovered. He scrambled through all the words in his head, searching for an explanation that might prove both plausible and innocent, but none had been found before he heard the sharp inhalation that announced his imminent sentence.