To Be Continued

by James Robertson

  On the Thursday afternoon (Ms Brown had reported), as the search for the missing man continued, an employee of a roofing company arrived at the Don’t Care Much Home, looking for a ladder that he had mislaid. The previous day he and a colleague had been clearing vegetation and sludge from rones, downpipes and drains (a practice which to the present author seems both unnecessary and inconsiderate of other users). They had been called to assist colleagues at another job and had driven off in their van, forgetting to take the aforesaid ladder with them. The roofer went to retrieve it but it had been removed. Supposing that another colleague had already collected it, he went away but was back twenty minutes later. It was then that Mr Elder Senior was spotted, occupying a flat portion of the Don’t Care Much Home’s roof. A quick assessment of the situation showed that he must have used the ladder to reach the roof and then pulled it up after him. It was not clear how long he had been there. Beverley Brown was summoned, she quickly made a phone call and in a few minutes was joined by a pair of police officers (one male, one female).

  Despite having been missing overnight Mr Elder seemed physically unharmed and was in lively spirits. He had established a kind of campsite in the middle of the flat area, and it was later established that, in addition to the clothes he had on, he had brought with him other items from his room, including a rug, a cushion, an extra jersey and his toothbrush. He was sustaining himself with a supply of assorted biscuits, which filled his pockets and which he must have been secretly collecting for several days. When hailed from the ground he responded with expansive gesticulations and shouts liberally seasoned with words that some might deem offensive or unsuitable for broadcast across the rooftops of suburban Edinburgh. He also got to his feet and performed a kind of stumbling circuit around the roof as if marking the boundaries of his territory. A second, shorter ladder was produced by the roofer, and one of the police officers tried to set it in place against the wall. However, Mr Elder became agitated and veered so close to the edge that it was necessary to remove the ladder and withdraw. After some minutes he settled down again, but any further manoeuvres with the second ladder resulted in renewed agitation.

  More telephone calls were made, and soon the group on the ground grew to include a doctor, a team of firemen, the roofer’s mate and the roofer’s boss. A number of idlers, bystanders and onlookers, with their dogs and children, also gathered in the road, and offered various suggestions as to how best to resolve the situation. These included encouraging Mr Elder to jump, hosing him off the roof with a water cannon, and shooting him with a tranquilliser dart or Taser gun. When these ideas began to be loudly chanted by competing sections of the crowd, the police were obliged to disperse it, as Mr Elder was understandably irritated by these insensitive remarks.

  Some members of the public objected to the police’s attitude, accusing them of brutality and a callous disregard for the fundamental rights of freedom of assembly and freedom of expression. The police showed remarkable restraint in the face of this provocation, and eventually most of the crowd lost interest and went home for their tea.

  With the general populace removed, Beverley Brown attempted to persuade Mr Elder into lowering the ladder and either descending it or allowing somebody to go up. He did not approve of these proposals and told her so in robust terms, intimating that he was behind with his work and did not wish to be further disturbed.

  It was about this time that the roofer who had forgotten to take away the ladder realised that he had also left some tools, and that they too were in the possession of Mr Elder. These tools were a plastic bucket and a long-handled metal ‘scoop’ for clearing the rones. The bucket, it was later found, had served as a waste-disposal unit for Mr Elder. His ‘work’, meanwhile, seemed to be to test the durability and fixings of the bitumen felt on the flat roof, and also to ascertain whether the slates on an adjoining stretch of pitched roof were firmly attached to the sarking boards underneath. He utilised the scoop’s handle, which had a hooked end, to prise up the slates and also to check for any slight gaps under the edges of the strips of felt. Although hampered by the limitations of his equipment, he had nevertheless discovered many of the slates and a good proportion of the felt to be inadequately secured. A pile of slates and torn pieces of felt was testimony to the progress he was making.

  As rain was expected that evening, it was decided, as much for the sake of the Don’t Care Much Home’s ability to withstand water incursion as for Mr Elder’s health, that he should be encouraged to desist from his labours immediately. While Ms Brown and the police continued to engage him in sporadic conversation, commending his perseverance and attention to detail, the fire crew entered the building and swiftly but quietly gained access to the roof via a skylight on the far side of the pitched section. Waiting until Mr Elder took a break from his work and in fact was engaged in brushing his teeth, three firemen swarmed over the roof ridge and grappled him off his feet. For a few seconds he put up some resistance, and then – according to Ms Brown – he began to laugh, and the firemen joined in, and then Mr Elder began to cry, which the firemen did not, but kindly and gently helped him down to the ground where he was indeed tranquillised by the doctor, though not with a gun.

  Since then, Douglas concluded, his father had been back in his room, mostly asleep. On the occasions when he woke he was quite amenable and seemed none the worse for his outing. The roofers were still repairing or replacing the materials that he had so methodically identified as faulty.

  The present author confesses to having constructed the narrative of these events not only from the younger Elder’s report and responses to numerous questions from the Munlochy women, but also from imagining the scene himself to the best of his ability. He has not, however, added anything purely of his own invention, although he may be guilty of one or two embellishments, as is usual in the art of creative or fictional writing.

  Douglas had been astonished and troubled by the story Beverley Brown had told him. Clearly it was a relief to know that the episode was over and that his father was neither hurt nor in any danger. Laughter, some of it from Douglas, filled the car at various points during his relation of events. The general view, in which even Corryvreckan concurred, was that Thomas Ythan Elder had performed heroically, demonstrating fortitude, initiative and commendable levels of thrawnness. Rosalind and Poppy both expressed a great desire to make the acquaintance of such a man, and Poppy said that no doubt his influence accounted for Douglas’s own independent-minded, self-confident character. Douglas opined that he was not so sure about that.

  Douglas’s second telephone conversation had been with his Erstwhile Partner or Girlfriend, Sonya Strachan (forty-seven), to inquire after the health of her son, Magnus, a player of the game of Rugby Union, who had been involved in a motor accident. Sonya had been sharp with him at first, accusing him of callous indifference and desertion in her hour of need, and in fact her spinosity did not diminish much during the conversation. Douglas was tempted, he told the company, to remind her that if indeed her son, Magnus, had been in a crash involving their car this was only because she (Sonya) had deserted him (Douglas) in his hour of need by refusing to let him borrow what was rightfully half his anyway. He felt, however, that this would not be helpful, so instead inquired after Magnus’s condition. Sonya became tearful, then regained her composure. Magnus was feeling better, and the doctors were confident that he would make a complete recovery. He had a broken leg, some cuts and bruises, was sore all over and suffering from whiplash, but his physical fitness had helped to reduce the severity of his injuries. When Douglas questioned her about how long Magnus’s coma had lasted, Sonya said that he had not been in a coma and wondered where on earth he, Douglas, had got that idea from. From her last text message, Douglas replied. Sonya said that at the time of sending it she had been tired and distressed, and that this had made her confused, and anyway Magnus had been sleeping so deeply at the time that he might just as well have been in a coma, and had Douglas only made contact at last in
order to split hairs? Further questioning established that Magnus had actually been knocked unconscious when the collision took place, but had come round by the time an ambulance arrived. The hospital was monitoring him to make sure that there was no brain injury, and he would probably be allowed home the next morning (Saturday).

  Douglas asked when and how the accident had happened, and Sonya said that for a man who worked, or until recently had worked, in journalism he was incredibly badly informed. Had he not seen the television news or read the papers? Douglas began to explain why he had not seen any news for three days, but Sonya overruled him. The accident had happened on Tuesday evening. Magnus had been returning from a special training session involving another rugby club in Stirling. He had given a lift to another player whom he had dropped off at his home, a farm a few miles outside Edinburgh, and was driving along a quiet country road when the ‘criminal idiot’ (Sonya’s term) responsible for nearly killing him had come out of nowhere and smashed into the side of the car. What further angered Sonya was that the criminal idiot had been taken to the same hospital as Magnus and because he too had a broken leg was being treated as a patient in the same way, as if he were as innocent as Magnus. A policeman was on duty outside the room occupied by this ‘imbecile’ (again, her term), which was as well for him or she would have been in there extracting his innards with whatever medical instruments were to hand. Sonya understood that he had already been charged with reckless driving and that other charges were likely to follow, but why (she said) such a person should be ‘handled with kid gloves’ was beyond her. Douglas would have willingly addressed some of these issues but Sonya said she had to go, would be at the hospital in the morning and expected Douglas to be there too, to help transport Magnus home. Before Douglas could ask if there was anything left of his half of the car, or for that matter of her half, she terminated the call.

  The news of this accident was received in a quiet and sombre manner by the other occupants of the yellow car. Relief was expressed that the young man Magnus was not too badly injured, and Poppy wondered if anybody else had been hurt and who the criminal idiot was who had caused the accident.

  To both these questions, Douglas was able to supply answers, as a result of his third telephone conversation, which had been with his Erstwhile Colleague at the Spear newspaper, Oliver (‘Ollie’) Brendan Buckthorn (fifty-two). Unfortunately, the present author is not in a position to provide a full account of this conversation, as at this juncture he fell into a sudden and profound sleep – possibly induced by the motion of the car on a particularly twisty stretch of road – and was only restored to consciousness when the soothing and familiar tone of Douglas’s voice was sharply interrupted by a question from Rosalind Munlochy. The present author humbly apologises for any inconvenience to his readers caused by this lapse on his part.

  [To be continued]

  EXTRACT FROM A TELEPHONE CONVERSATION BETWEEN OLIVER BRENDAN BUCKTHORN AND DOUGLAS FINDHORN ELDER, CONDUCTED ON 31ST OCTOBER 2014. NOTE: THIS IS A RECONSTRUCTED TRANSCRIPT AS THE CONVERSATION WAS NOT RECORDED. CONSEQUENTLY NO CLAIMS ARE MADE AS TO ITS ACCURACY OR AUTHENTICITY. IT IS INSERTED HERE FOR THE BENEFIT OF READERS WHO MIGHT OTHERWISE BE PERPLEXED OR DISAPPOINTED BY THE UNRELIABILITY OF THE SELF-STYLED ‘RELIABLE NARRATOR’ OF THE PRECEDING ITEM. NOW READ ON

  ELDER: Ollie?

  BUCKTHORN: Dougie! Is it yourself?

  ELDER: It is. Where are you?

  BUCKTHORN: At the paper, where else?

  ELDER: Can you speak?

  BUCKTHORN: What the fuck do you think I’m doing? Where are you?

  ELDER: Let’s say I’m on my way home.

  BUCKTHORN: You are? You took the ball of wool, then?

  ELDER: I didn’t need it. Ollie, listen, I haven’t got long, so I need you to tell me what all this is about me being in the shite?

  BUCKTHORN: You don’t sound like yourself. You sound forceful and focused.

  ELDER: And what’s the big story in the paper you texted me about?

  BUCKTHORN: There you go again, straight to the heart of the matter. You’ve not seen the paper? Do they not have paper shops in those parts?

  ELDER: They don’t have any shops. Not where I am.

  BUCKTHORN: Well, I’ll keep you a copy of yesterday’s edition, but you should try to get hold of it yourself. Can you not get the online edition on your phone?

  ELDER: On my phone? Not a chance, even if it was working. Just run the essential bits by me. What’s been going on?

  BUCKTHORN: Right, well, let me see. What day is it?

  ELDER: I think it’s Friday.

  BUCKTHORN: Right you are. So that was Tuesday when it all happened. God, you should have been here, Dougie. It was like something out of a novel, or even a James Bond movie.

  ELDER: It was?

  BUCKTHORN: No, not at all. I just said that to draw you in. Well, then. It was nine o’clock on an ordinary Tuesday evening at the Spear. Nothing much was happening. Oliver Buckthorn, a sub-editor made somewhat cynical after years at the job, though still a romantic at heart, was at his desk tweaking a few bits and pieces on his screen. Through the window he could see the city lights of Edinburgh, or Auld Reekie as it used to be known, owing to the thick pall of smoke –

  ELDER: Ollie, I haven’t got all day.

  BUCKTHORN: I’m scene-setting.

  ELDER: Well, cut it out.

  BUCKTHORN: Is that really you, Douglas? Where was I? Oh yes, suddenly my phone rang. My mobile phone. This is significant. It was a fellow asking me if he was speaking to the Spear and in the same breath telling me there’d been a road accident. Two vehicles, one driver hurt but not seriously, the other driver missing in action, which was a little odd; I mean, had he run off or what? I was about to redirect the caller to another line, when he started on about how one of the cars was a hearse and that far from being full of corpses it was stuffed to the gunnels, if hearses have gunnels, with cases of malt whisky. ‘The word is out,’ he says. ‘There’s people coming from all points of the compass. You want to see it.’ ‘What do I want to see?’ says I. ‘What I’m seeing,’ he says. I asked him where he was and he says he’s on a little road about halfway between Linlithgow and Broxburn that usually manages to bear the weight of a tractor and a couple of delivery vans every day, but right at that moment it’s going like a fair. Those were his very words, ‘going like a fair’. ‘In fact,’ he says, ‘it’s like yon film, the one with the teuchters in it.’ I was about to ask him to elaborate when I heard this other, angry voice in the background asking who the fuck he was speaking to, and then he rang off.

  Well, I sat for about ten seconds looking out at the lights of Auld Reekie and contemplating whether life was too short, too long or just about right, and then blow me if my mobile didn’t go off again. This time it was a woman, and she’d be the kind of caller you seem to like, Dougie, because she didn’t dawdle, she didn’t scene-set, she just shouted her information. Hardly needed the phone in fact. ‘It’s going to be Whisky Galore! in Winchburgh!’ she yells, and then she was gone. Malt whisky, Douglas, Whisky Galore! D’you see a pattern developing, a theme? I did. I looked around for my coat, and I got reception to order me a cab, and I’d hardly done that when the mobile rang again. This time it was a song I got. Do you remember that hit by the Weather Girls, ‘It’s Raining Men’? Well, this was several men giving me a few bars of ‘It’s Raining Drams’, but they hung up before I could get any details out of them. So I decided I’d better go out there myself. I grabbed the emergency camera from Roy’s desk, told him and Grant to hold the fort and the front page, and headed out into the night. Are you still there, Douglas? Are you with me so far?

  ELDER: I’m with you, Ollie.

  BUCKTHORN: Good. You were so quiet I was missing you. I told the taxi driver to head for West Lothian. ‘Can you be a bit more specific?’ he says. ‘Somewhere in the Winchburgh–Broxburn–Linlithgow triangle,’ I tell him. ‘Is that near Bermuda?’ he says. He was one of them smart fellows that do
n’t know when to just zip up and drive. I told him we’d know when we got there, because I had a suspicion we would, and I was right. As soon as we were off the main roads and into the countryside the heavier the traffic grew, but we just kept going, like a spoon into treacle, until eventually we came to a complete stop and the driver tells me he can’t get any closer to whatever it is we’re getting close to. There are flashing blue lights and brighter, white ones about a hundred yards away. So I pay the boy and cut off across a big field. And there’s this stream of people coming in the opposite direction, all clutching cardboard boxes to their chests and staggering occasionally as they work their way across the muddy ground. It’s very ordered, very quiet, and a noticeable thing is that nobody is carrying more than one case. ‘Hurry along or you’ll miss out,’ one of them says to me, so I hurry along until I reach the road at the far corner of the field, and there I see a sight never to be forgotten in the annals of Oliver Brendan Buckthorn. Are you on the edge of your seat, Douglas?

  ELDER: I’m standing.

  BUCKTHORN: Just as well or you would fall off. There’s a crossroads, lit up by several sets of headlights, and in the middle of the crossroads is a red Volkswagen Polo tangled up with a long black hearse. It’s like something Eduardo Paolozzi might have thrown together on an off-day. The hearse’s bonnet is embedded in the Polo’s driver side and to me it looks ominous for whoever’s been behind the wheel of that car. The flashing blue lights belong to an ambulance, and the crew are just at that moment taking someone on a stretcher towards it. Well, I haven’t worked on a newspaper all these years for nothing. I whip out the notebook and start jotting down details. The hearse’s doors, including the one at the back where you slide the coffins in, are all wide open. There’s a pile of wet cardboard and broken glass gleaming in the headlights beside the hearse, and the air is so heady with whisky fumes you could get drunk just breathing. I look around for somebody official but all I can see is a few hooded characters around the hearse and I’m pretty sure that whatever they’re up to it isn’t official.