The Matrix

by Jonathan Aycliffe

  Harriet’s enquiry helped me make my mind up. That same evening, I made my way to a call box on Home Street and dialled their number.

  My mother answered. I spoke to her in Gaelic, as though it would soften the shock.

  ‘This is Andrew,’ I said. ‘I’m back in Edinburgh.’

  I held my breath. She was the strongest of the cords pulling me back to reality. I needed her then more than I could say.

  ‘Andrew. It’s wonderful to hear from you. We were getting worried something had happened to you out in Africa.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m all right. I got back a few weeks ago; but I wanted to wait until things settled down before getting in touch. How are you both?’

  And so we began to talk of everyday life. Like Harriet’s tea and cakes, my mother’s island gossip chased the shadows further from my mind. Life in Stornoway continued as before, marked only by minor changes: an elder of the kirk had died, a baby had been born to one of my cousins, an Indian family had arrived from the mainland and opened a shoe shop in the main street. That was the most exotic thing, but scarcely unusual nowadays.

  My money ran out and she rang me back. No one else was waiting.

  I didn’t say much about Morocco, portraying the summer as little more than a mixture of holiday and research.

  ‘I’m glad to be back,’ I said. ‘I stayed away too long.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re well, dear,’ she said. ‘Perhaps we’ll see you soon. Now, I know your father would like a word with you.’

  I heard the handset put down, then footsteps and muffled voices. Moments later, my father came on the line.

  ‘Andrew, it’s good to hear your voice.’

  He asked about my job, and I told him I was waiting for something else to turn up.

  ‘Why don’t you come to Stornoway?’ he asked. ‘You could spend the winter here, save a fortune on heating bills.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, ‘but I’d rather stay on. I need to sort things out here first. Going home would be . . . well, it would be an easy way out. I don’t think it’s a good idea. Maybe when I’m more settled. I might be able to get over for Christmas.’

  ‘That’s a good idea. But, look, would you have any objection to my coming to visit? I have some leave due, I could be with you next week.’

  My first impulse was to say ‘no’, but I checked myself. Why not, after all? It would be good for me to see my father. I badly needed his unshakeable scepticism.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’d like that very much. Why don’t you both come? I can’t put you up, but there are plenty of guesthouses round here.’

  I gave him my new address. I was already looking forward to his visit.

  ‘Andrew, before you go, there’s one wee thing I have to mention. While you were away, a man from Glasgow City Council got in touch. He’d been trying to contact you. I told him you were in Morocco, and gave him your address there. Did he ever get in touch?’

  ‘No, I had no letter.’

  ‘Well, I said I’d speak to you as soon as I heard from you. He’d like you to ring him sometime. His name’s Logan, I have his number here.’

  ‘Do you know what it’s about?’

  ‘Well, he wouldn’t tell me. But I think it’s to do with Catriona’s grave. I have a feeling it’s been vandalized.’

  Jamie Logan worked for the parks and cemeteries division of the council. I rang him the next morning. He sounded relieved when I explained who I was.

  ‘Dr Macleod, I’m so glad you’ve finally got in touch. I did write to you at your university department and Tangier, but I don’t suppose you had my letters.’

  ‘No, my father told me you spoke to him.’

  ‘That’s right. He said he’d ask you to ring as soon as you contacted him.’

  ‘What’s it about? Father thought it might be to do with my wife’s grave.’

  There was a silence of several seconds during which he assumed his official manner.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, his voice lower now and more solemn, ‘that’s correct. There’s been . . .’ I heard him hesitate, imagined him choosing his words carefully. ‘There’s been some trouble. From time to time we have vandalism in the cemeteries. It’s mostly young louts on a Saturday night out. They’ll be passing by a cemetery, then one dares another to climb the wall. After that it gets a bit out of hand. They kick over a headstone or two, maybe smash some ornaments. Last year we found graffiti on some Jewish graves. Swastikas and so on.’

  ‘Her headstone’s been vandalized, is that what you’re trying to tell me?’

  ‘Well, as a matter of fact, no. It’s worse than that. Her grave was dug up one night in August. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but your wife’s remains have been stolen.’

  I took the next train to Glasgow and spent the rest of the day shuttling between the Council offices and the main police station. The incident had taken place on the night of the nineteenth of August. The next morning, on arriving to start their day’s work, grave-diggers had found the grave opened and the coffin gone.

  A police investigation had started immediately, but so far they had drawn a complete blank. Grave-robbing was sufficiently rare to leave the entire Glasgow police force perfectly helpless. This was not a crime like drug-pushing or rape. There were no clues, no lists of suspects with previous convictions, no informers ready to spill the beans for a few pounds. The investigation had centred on youth gangs who might have dug up a grave for kicks, a few would-be Satanists, and a student group at the university called the Burke and Hare Club.

  I thought it diplomatic to say nothing of my precise research interests. For the record, I described myself as a sociologist and left it at that. Needless to say, I told them nothing of my own suspicions, if they even qualified as such.

  I knew that Duncan could not have been personally involved. But he had friends whom he might have persuaded to carry out something of the kind. All I knew was that the nineteenth of August was the day I left Fez for Marrakesh, the day after my last session with Sheikh Ahmad. I remembered my words to him on that occasion: ‘Catriona is dead. Her body is in a grave, rotting.’

  On returning to Edinburgh, I had just enough time to visit my old department in the university. The secretary had stayed on late to finish some typing, and I asked if any mail had been sent to me over the summer. There were some bits and pieces, most of them internal memos about seminars and public lectures. I opened everything, but Iain’s letter was not among them.

  I had not slept well since my return, and that night sleep refused to come for several hours. I had not visited Catriona’s grave, there would have been no point – it had been filled in again and the headstone replaced. But try as I might, I saw the robbery enacted again and again in my mind’s eye, the diggers arriving after midnight, hooded men without eyes, tearing at the soil until they reached the coffin, lifting it from its resting-place, slipping away under cover of darkness with their prize.

  A little before dawn I began to sleep. There were no dreams at first, just images drawn from the thoughts that had been tormenting me through the night.

  And then, as though a curtain had been raised, I found myself dreaming, yet fully conscious of everything I saw and heard. I was walking by night down a steep, narrow street in a strange city. From the curved archways and heavy wooden doors on either side, I guessed at once that it was either Fez or another city in North Africa.

  The winding street descended ever more steeply towards the heart of the city, but however far I walked I never saw another human being. All about me was silent and deserted, the dark, brooding façades of the blind houses on both sides, the forbidding aspect of the black alleyways that branched at regular intervals off the main street. I had no idea where I was headed, but I knew that something deep in the darkness was drawing me, waiting for me.

  I passed the gate of an ancient mosque bearing an inscription over its portal in Kufic lettering. Several yards past it, a narrow opening to the right led into a dark, poorly
paved alley. My feet turned into it as though by some instinct of their own, taking me further into the maze of the city.

  Without warning, there appeared in the darkness ahead of me a tall hooded figure wearing a white jellaba. He was standing with his back to me, still, and somehow sinister. As I drew near, he turned around slowly. His face was shrouded in the wide hood, and I could make out nothing of his features. I wanted to turn and run from him, but my legs would not let me. Instead, I felt myself compelled to walk nearer and nearer to him. As I came within a few feet, he lifted his hands and started to pull the hood back from his face. It fell completely away and he stepped forward into a shaft of moonlight.

  I woke screaming. It was early morning, and I was lying in my own bed, the sheets twisted as though in a frenzy. My body was caked with sweat, and I was shivering.

  I pulled the blankets round me and huddled against the pillows, trying to get warm. Thin sunlight struggled through my window. I could hear cars outside, and the voices of excited children playing hopscotch. A dog barked at the end of the street. An aeroplane passed slowly by overhead. My heartbeat began to slow. The images of the dream inside my head were receding. But something in the room was wrong.

  I strained my ears, but could hear nothing apart from the sounds from outside. My eyes, adjusted to the dim light, could see nothing out of the ordinary. But I knew something was not as it should be.

  And then, just as I had decided that it was all imagination and was preparing to get out of bed, I knew what it was. I could smell perfume. It was faint, but unmistakable. I knew its name at once: Jicky. It had been Catriona’s favourite scent.

  NINETEEN

  I could not bear to stay in my rooms. The thought of remaining indoors with that perfume all around me was repugnant. Outside, late autumnal sunshine lay folded across the street like yellow gauze. I slipped on a coat and went out, having no other aim in mind than to get away for a while.

  During my mother’s visit, she and I had gone more than once to the Botanical Garden in Inverleith, and it now seemed to me the ideal place to chase away the shadows of the night. A bus took me to Canonmills, and from there it was a short stretch to the garden.

  I spent the morning there, strolling among the flower beds or sitting by the lake. All around me were families come for a Saturday outing, laughing children, students, lovers – the ordinary world going about its business. It was the world I was desperately reaching to regain, but I felt shut out from it as though by a thin, impermeable glass.

  I had a light lunch in the café. Outside, it had grown a little cloudy, and I thought of returning home. The idea depressed me. I needed to see someone, to talk over what had been happening. Remembering that it was only a short bus ride from Inverleith to Dean Village, I found a telephone and rang Harriet. She was at home and, yes, she would like to see me. There was something she wanted me to look at.

  ‘Let’s go out,’ she said when I arrived. ‘I can’t stand being cooped up in here all the time.’ I remembered that she and Iain used to spend their weekends going for long walks together. She must have been miserable on her own, I imagined, now that the freshness of Iain’s death had worn off and her friends had discovered other things to do with their Saturdays.

  We took our time, walking slowly beside the stream that runs through the village on its way to the sea at Leith, beneath Dean Bridge and down to St Bernard’s Well. The sky had cleared a little, filling from time to time with circling flocks of migratory birds preparing for their journey south to Africa. They seemed ill-omened creatures, poised there above us, as though waiting to carry news of me into places I preferred to forget.

  I told Harriet about the incident at Catriona’s grave, and then about the perfume I had smelled, or fancied I smelled, that morning. It was but a short step from there to unburdening myself about Duncan Mylne and the events of the summer. I stopped short of blaming Mylne for Iain’s death, and said nothing of my discovery of the scarf; but I think she had already guessed that something of the sort had been going through my mind.

  I expected her to make light of everything, to find ways in which to explain my fears away. But, as I talked, I noticed her steadily grow more serious. The banter with which we had tried to cheer one another when we started out was now dropped. We were in the midst of grim events.

  ‘I don’t expect you to believe much of this,’ I said, when I had reached the end of my account.

  ‘On the contrary,’ she replied, ‘it makes a great deal of sense. I’d like to say it’s all nonsense, but I don’t think it is. Iain said some things to me before he died; they worried me a lot. And since then . . .’

  She hesitated, and I guessed she was coming to the nub of what she wanted to say. We had reached the well and turned back. The last traces of sunshine had been wiped from the sky by fresh clouds. The surface of the little stream beside which we walked was flat and colourless.

  ‘I wanted to show you this,’ she said. She reached into her coat pocket and drew out a rectangular piece of card. As she turned it to hand it to me, I saw that it was a photograph.

  ‘This is myself and Iain,’ she said. ‘It was taken on our wedding day six years ago.’

  She passed it over. Her hand was shaking gently. A flock of large black birds passed over us like a stain. One cried out bleakly, as though its heart was broken.

  They were dressed in wedding clothes. My eye caught sight of Harriet first, her veil pulled back, a bouquet of roses and irises in her hand, her lips parted, her face shining. Beside her stood a thin, bent man who was, I guessed, her father. But then I looked closer and saw that it was Iain.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘Are you saying Iain was already ill when you married him? That the illness he died from was a recurrence of something he’d had before?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘When that photograph was taken,’ she said slowly, ‘Iain looked as healthy as he did when you first met him. If anything, healthier. I found this after he died, when I was looking through our photograph albums. And not just this. Every photograph I have of him has changed. As though he had always been days away from death.’

  I stared down at the photograph, unable to comprehend.

  ‘Surely it’s not possible,’ I said.

  ‘How possible were any of those things you’ve just finished telling me about?’

  I handed the photograph back to her and we walked on. I thought of Duncan and the Comte d’Hervilly, how they had fingered my photographs of Catriona. But Catriona had been dead and beyond their reach. What then had been the purpose of all that, and why had they troubled to have her body disinterred?

  ‘I can’t do anything now for Iain,’ I said. ‘But I have to find a way to put an end to all this for myself. And you – you may be in danger too.’

  ‘If I were still active in the church,’ said Harriet, ‘I’d suggest an exorcism, or whatever it is they do in these cases. But I no longer know what to think. I prayed for Iain night and day, the whole congregation prayed for him, but it didn’t save his life. I think that this is something beyond the reach of ordinary prayers.’

  ‘Is there anyone in the church you could still speak to? Even if ordinary prayers won’t work, perhaps there’s something else.’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe. I’ll have to think about it. What about you? Will it be enough just to stay out of Mylne’s way?’

  I shrugged. I had not really thought much further than that. Keeping away from Duncan certainly seemed the essential thing. But perhaps I could do more.

  ‘I still have my books,’ I said. ‘The ones I bought, and a few Duncan gave me Maybe I should get rid of them.’

  ‘That seems like a good idea. Get rid of everything. Your notes, photographs, anything linked to that business. If you cut yourself off entirely, there’ll be no way Mylne or anyone else can get through to you.’

  We reached her door. She invited me in for tea, but I reckoned she had seen enough of me for one day.

&n
bsp; ‘I’d better be getting back,’ I said. ‘The sooner I get to work sorting all that stuff out, the better. When can I see you again?’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I have to be away for a few days. I promised my parents-in-law I’d spend the half-term break with them in St Andrews. They’ve booked us into a hotel for the week. I was to have gone today, but there were things I wanted to get straightened out here first. You’re lucky you found me in.’

  ‘When do you get back?’

  ‘Not till next Saturday. I want to have Sunday to myself: I need a proper rest before going back to work on Monday. My mother-in-law’s very keen on walks. But I’ll ring round a couple of people I know from the church, see what they think. Ring me on Saturday evening and I’ll tell you if I have anything.’

  ‘You don’t have to stay involved with this, Harriet. I brought it on myself, I have to deal with it alone.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘This matters to me,’ she said. ‘I want to help. Please don’t shut me out again.’

  I remembered how I had treated her in the spring.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I won’t. I promise.’

  * * *

  I took a bus back to Tollcross. Still new to the area, I stayed on too long, getting off halfway up Bruntsfield Place. I started to walk back.

  Here, in a region of tenements dating from the last century, the buildings were old and grimy. A shabby pall hung over the street, decaying shop-fronts and grime-choked windows denying both air and sunlight the opportunity to pass. Depressed by the main road, I decided to take a more circuitous route through the side streets and alleys that meander through the district. I turned off at the next opening and was soon engulfed in a maze of narrow, unfamiliar streets, streets that seemed older and darker than their smart neighbours to the west.