Ross had never been to the capital before. He’d always fancied a wee trip there, maybe of a weekend, but somehow there had never been the time, and nor had there been any hurry. When you’re in a country for two days, you try pretty hard to see the sights. When you’re there several years, you figure you’ll get around to everything eventually.
Once he got there, he felt more like a ghost than a tourist. It didn’t feel like free time to do what he wanted, it felt like he had opted out of his life, faded from society, drifting unseen. He checked into a small hotel near Les Halles, paying cash up front and giving a false name so that his real one didn’t get fed into any databases.
Time dragged. Two days felt like a week. That was when ‘Now what?’ really gave him both barrels. He walked the museums, ate cheaply away from the hotspots, tried to lose himself in the movies after dark, when he most needed escape and distraction. Paris was stuffed with cinemas. There were the big multiplexes on the Champs Elysées and around Montmartre, but it was the little independent ones that really gave the impression of profusion. These were crammed and crowbarred improbably into the tiniest little spots, showing an amazing diversity of fare, and fortunately, little of it dubbed. He was tempted by a few rarities, but some unspoken need for comfort caused him to succumb to a place off Rue du Louvre showing a new print of Dr No.
He’d only ever seen Bond films on the telly. Proper Bond films, that was, not the Pierce Brosnan shite that was even more of a spoof than Austin Powers, though not as funny. He remembered watching them at home as a kid, his mum making a big fuss, turning it into a bit of an occasion. In their heyday the Bond flicks probably weren’t intended by Mr Broccoli as family entertainment, but in Ross’s household they were a sight more likely to gather both generations around the box than any Disney effort. When his dad was finally persuaded to buy a VCR, the first time his mum showed any interest in learning how to work the thing was when Thunderball was on. She did love her Bond movies. Ross even wondered whether his dad’s surname being Fleming was what had attracted her to him; there certainly didn’t seem to have been much else, not that had survived. It was one of the few enthusiasms he remembered his mother giving much expression to, though he was sure there were others that, for whatever reasons, she kept to herself. He had been planning to buy her the Connery DVD box set back when he got his first salary cheque, but by that time she had started digging him up about breaking it off with Maureen, so his good intentions were the first casualty of his huff.
It wasn’t exactly like he’d ditched Maureen at the altar or anything. They hadn’t set a date, they were just ‘engaged’.
‘Let’s get engaged.’ That’s what Maureen had said. Not, ‘Let’s get married.’ The implicit awareness of doing it by increment must have told them both there was something missing. Marriage was an all or nothing deal, surely; something you wanted absolutely. You didn’t say: ‘Let’s move up to DefCon Two and see how it looks from there.’
When something came along that he did want absolutely, he could see clearly how much the pair of them were kidding themselves. By declaring their engagement, they’d just been hoping their relationship would turn into something it was not. Too many people thought the same thing but weren’t smart enough to get out in time. He only had to think of home to see what those people looked like a few years down the line.
That said, he missed them. For all he knew how much they’d be doing his box in after five minutes, he missed them: Dad cocooned in his deluded patriarchal fantasy world and intellectually sedated by his religion; Mum fed up listening, tuning the conversation out when he was holding forth. It was probably a form of emotional self-defence when there was so much aggro. Watching Michelle with Rachel when she was being difficult brought home how aching it could be to watch parent and child at loggerheads, and Ross was just the uncle. His mum had spent years watching her husband and her son locked in permanent ideological conflict, and he felt guilty that he’d never considered how much it must have hurt.
As he walked back out into the Paris night, he felt suddenly very alone and very vulnerable. For the first time since moving to France, home seemed an achingly long way off. He couldn’t return, though. It would be the first place they’d look, and he didn’t want to bring any danger there either. He guessed one consolation of him and his parents being in an ongoing cream-puff was that at least he didn’t need to worry about them being wound up over not hearing from him for a while.
Disgorged from the cinema, he walked beneath the street lights, where the post-movie sense of disconnection was far more acute than normal. Paris was looking alien, dangerous, untrustworthy. He was starting to feel conspicuous amid the crowds, like his own alienation was making it externally manifest that he was a fugitive who didn’t belong. It was irrational, but it was irresistible too. He felt a need to get away again. Being on the move had felt right: transit as procrastination, putting off ‘What now?’ for a while, but travelling hopefully only worked when you had a destination to arrive at. Otherwise, travelling itself would become part of ‘What now?’.
He wished he could be somewhere he felt less alone. He had the means and the freedom to go anywhere he wished, but none of the places he’d daydreamed about held quite the same allure under his current circumstances as they had when he was driving to work on a cold grey morning. He’d always fancied a few days in Prague, for instance, but now it would just be another unfamiliar place to feel lonely and exposed in.
His hotel was in sight, but there was too much going on in his head to let him sleep. He decided to stop at a little tabac for a nightcap. He had a pression and a brandy, sitting at the bar. Someone had left a copy of L’Equipe, the sports paper, lying next to a plastic water jug advertising the Ricard pastis it was there to top up. Ross flicked through it idly as he sipped his brandy, then happened upon something that truly startled him. It wasn’t the content itself, but the fact that it referred to a matter which would have dominated his thoughts in recent weeks had his life been carrying on as normal.
He hadn’t even known it was happening.
It still meant precious little in his current scheme of things, but it made up his mind where he ought to go. Home, he knew, was not an option, but a city imminently playing host to twenty thousand Glaswegians would do in the meantime.
Ross left his drinks unfinished and headed back to the hotel, where he packed his bag. As soon as he had a new destination, he knew he couldn’t wait to begin travelling. Staying where he was, even just until morning, would feel like needlessly hanging around somewhere he could be caught. He’d have more chance of sleeping on a train than in the hotel now that he’d made up his mind he was leaving. He made some calls and found out that he could get a train departing just after one in the morning. There was a connection in Marseille, less than an hour’s wait, then onwards again. He’d be in Barcelona by early afternoon.
Him and twenty thousand Celtic supporters.
He thought of his dad, of being taken to games at Parkhead as a kid. It was the only thing he could say he’d ever really seen his dad passionate about, and, in time, the only thing they truly shared, the solitary conduit left through which they could communicate.
He had to talk to him, had to talk to someone. He looked at his watch. It was late, but not too late. Dad usually stayed up past midnight, and it was only twenty to. He’d give him a ring. They’d trade platitudes, awkwardly as ever, then get on to talking about the game. His dad’s voice would change, and he’d again become the man who used to throw him up in the air and play cowboys with him out in the back garden. The man who used to make him feel safe, like nobody could hurt him, whether they be monsters, Alsatians or bad boys from Blantyre.
Dislocation
Jane eased the Beetle along cautiously in second gear, following the winding track through unbroken shade amid tall trees and clustered shrubs. The S-bends negotiated a needlessly indirect path through the wood, ruts and tyre-marks at the edges testifying to past impatience with the
route, which could have easily featured as a rally stage. As she tugged the steering wheel sharply around another hairpin curve, she reckoned the only thing she was more likely to encounter than a souped-up Subaru was a little girl in a red hooded coat on her way to grandma’s with a woven basket. Except that she was the one heading for a rendezvous with the big, bad wolf.
The track finally emerged at the border of quite the most enormous gardens she had seen without paying the National Trust for parking. Here there were more trees and shrubs, but smaller, and very precisely located upon rolling, immaculately kempt terraced lawns. A gravel path and a short stone staircase bisected the greens, leading at the top to an expanse of flagstones as wide as Buchanan Street and not much short of half as long. More arbour stood amid the stones, as did several short lamp-posts and a fountain. And behind all of that, there stood a structure grand and imposing enough to suggest that calling it Maison Rla an Tir was an act of seriously piss-taking false modesty. Château would be nearer the mark.
He’d said he didn’t want money. He should just have sent her a photo of the place, that really would have said a thousand words.
It was three storeys tall, all hewn dark stone and shuttered windows. She took a guess there’d be twenty rooms in there, but really she had no idea; it could be twice that. There were outbuildings too, two of them, neither of which looked modest enough to fit the word ‘garage’. Small hangars was closer, but in her mind that word normally described flimsy-looking aluminium shells, not such sturdy, stone-built constructions. Perhaps ‘hangar’ popped into her head because, as well as there being a number of cars parked on the gravel, there was also a helicopter tailplane visible behind the near side of the house. Jane reckoned it safe to assume that the remainder of a helicopter was indeed attached, tailplanes on their own never having caught on as a garden ornament.
Besides the size, the other thing that most struck her was how perfectly and precisely everything had been maintained, from the paintwork on the shutters to the flush edging of the lawns; from the pointing and slatework to the absence of moss or weeds between the flagstones on the forecourt. It was unnervingly disciplined. Even the ivy gripping trellises on the house’s front edifice looked like it had been warned not to stray, on pain of a sharp smack on the fronds. The attention to detail was not so much loving as slavish, as much painsfearing as painstaking. She got a sense of absolutely nothing having been missed or overlooked, no corner cut, no compromise ever made, rendering an effect that she found coldly inhuman. The only place she’d ever observed anything like it was Disneyland. This was only marginally less sinister.
She parked the Beetle alongside the other cars – a Clio, a Megane, a BMW Z4 and another Beetle – and sat for a moment to see whether anyone would emerge to greet her. From the house, nothing stirred. Most of the windows had their shutters opened flat against the wall, but she could see no movement inside; in fact, the way the late afternoon sun was reflecting off them rendered the glass all but opaque.
‘I’ve come this far,’ she muttered to herself. She climbed out and walked to the front door, up a short staircase guarded on either side by statues: a griffin on the left and a wereworm on the right.
Here be dragons, right enough.
She reached for the doorbell, barely able to believe that was what she was doing. Ding-dong. Is the criminal mastermind of the house in?
As at the gate, her hand didn’t reach its target before being pre-empted. The door swung inward slowly, into a dark entrance hall, wood panelling visible only as far as the sunlight spilled. Jane saw merely an elbow around the outside of the frame as the door opened, before the figure behind it stepped to the side and revealed herself to be the girl from the supermarket.
Jane gaped for a second.
‘How the hell did you get here?’ she spluttered. ‘Who are you?’
‘My name’s Alexis. I got here the same way you did, though by more legal means. Come in. You’re expected.’
‘That would be one way of putting it,’ Jane said, stepping inside.
Alexis closed the door. Jane stood on the spot upon a marble floor, her eyes adjusting to the unlit interior after the brightness of the sunshine. She smelled furniture polish and wood oil. It was pleasant enough on the nose, but it made her think of museums; add apple and wet parka and it would be redolent of her old primary school. It did not smell like a home.
She looked up and around. A wide staircase lay ahead, climbing two storeys in a wide, straight-sided ascent of steps, galleries and marble balustrades.
‘This is just like mine at home,’ Jane said, aware that Alexis had noted her gawping.
‘I’d give you the ten-cent tour, but we’ve things to do. A lot of it’s off-limits anyway. Come on.’
Jane followed Alexis along a corridor to the left. The marble gave way to polished wood, the panelling to painted off-white walls, but the sense of being in a museum did not diminish. She passed a suit of armour – an actual suit of armour – standing upright like a sentry in a corner. Antique weapons festooned the walls: pistols, muskets, swords and daggers.
Alexis opened a door on the left-hand side of the corridor and led her into a broad sitting room. Sunlight streamed in through the windows, but served only to contrast with the dark wood of cabinets and rich colours of upholstered armchairs and sofas. There was also room – plenty of room – for a large oak table and eight chairs, the sight of it suggesting to Jane boardroom rather than dining room. A small log fire burned in the hearth beneath a marble mantelpiece wider than the frame of Tom’s garden shed.
The room felt warm, but not uncomfortably so. Jane guessed the fire had been recently lit, in advance of a drop in temperature as the sunlight faded.
‘Take a seat,’ Alexis offered. She smiled with politeness more than warmth, the girl looking distinctly uncomfortable, and not a little embarrassed, in Jane’s immediate presence.
‘Thank you, but I’ll stand,’ she replied. She was stiff and tired from the journey, and the sofas looked inviting to stretch out upon, but sitting felt wrong. The need to remain on her feet was compelling, instinctive.
‘How about a drink? Coffee?’
‘Some water would be great.’
‘Sure thing,’ she replied, eager to retreat.
‘Oh, before I forget,’ Jane called out. ‘I’ve got your phone.’
‘It’s not mine. I was just the courier.’
‘Whose is it?’
‘You’ll see,’ she mumbled, biting her lip.
Jane stood in front of the fire, her eyes drawn to the flames. She’d have loved to have a real fire at home, but there seemed something daft about it in a standard Wimpey place, even if you had a working flue. The dance of tongues and colours was hypnotic and soothing, made all the more attractive by comparison with the view above the mantelpiece, where a huge mirror hung. Jane looked exactly like she felt.
She noticed a flash of movement in the glass as the door opened, the dryness in her throat suddenly accentuated by her anticipation of the water Alexis had gone to fetch. When she turned around, however, it was not the girl who stood before her: it was him. She didn’t know how many people were in the building, nor did she have any firm expectations of who the voice on the phone would belong to, but when she saw the figure standing there, she had no doubt whatsoever that this was the man who had brought her here. Never in her life had the phrase ‘looking like he owned the place’ been anywhere near so apposite, and not just because he did.
It wasn’t an arrogance, nor a proprietary air. It was a confidence, an absolute certainty. She couldn’t picture him strutting or indulging any kind of ostentatious gesture to underline his status. He looked so utterly sure of that status that he had nothing he needed to prove to anyone.
Jane tried to summon up anger, but felt only anxiety; defiance withering by the second. She’d had fantasies of slapping his face, whatever that face turned out to look like, but now that she saw him she knew she might as well ball her fist and punc
h the solid stone walls.
He wasn’t big, not particularly; maybe five-ten at the most, built solidly and athletically but not muscle-bound. He wore a crisp white shirt and camel-coloured trousers that she’d have described as chinos if they didn’t fit so perfectly as to appear tailored. His hair was dark, matched below by a tight beard, both thatches flecked unapologetically with silver-grey. His skin was tanned and weathered, the light copper shade testament to years in the region’s climate as opposed to a recent fortnight on the beach. The face was coldly daunting; not aggressive or severe, but as indifferent and impregnable as the walls outside. If she had to age him, she’d guess late forties, maybe early fifties, but while he doubtless had the body of a man half that, his eyes suggested they had witnessed more than a man twice those years.
‘Mrs Fleming,’ he said simply. She expected a redundant platitude, a ‘good of you to come’ or a ‘glad you could make it’, but none was issued.
‘Yes,’ she responded, economically in kind. ‘And you are?’
‘Bett. My name is Bett. If you’ll take a seat, I will tell you what I know first, and then I imagine you’ll have some questions. As time is of the essence, I’d recommend that you keep the rhetorical, petulant and just plain stupid ones to a minimum.’
Jane’s indignation caught in her throat as she replied: ‘Under which category would you file “Where is my son?”‘ She feared her words would choke in tears, but her voice held out. Her eyes didn’t quite manage as much.
‘Under unanswerable,’ Bett replied. He turned a hand as a gesture for her to sit. ‘So let us move swiftly from that which I don’t know to that which I do.’
Jane remained standing. She didn’t want to concede anything to this man, but more importantly, she feared that if she did sit down, the last of her composure would collapse and she’d be reduced to a blubbing wreck.
All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses an Eye Page 21