by Louise Welsh
Her voice was empty of rancour.
Murray said, ‘What really happened?’
She ignored his question.
‘There should be a bottle of water in the boot. Will you fetch it for me, please?’
He got it and handed it to her.
‘Tell me Fergus made everything up.’
‘I already did.’
‘Convince me.’
Christie’s voice was devoid of emotion.
‘Fergus lied. Miranda died of neglect. It’s a measure of your own madness that you could even contemplate the possibility I’d make a sacrifice of my own child.’
Murray looked into the dark and then back at the old woman, searching for the truth in her face. Her eyes held the reflection of the burning cottage. Murray said, ‘I’m going to go now.’
Christie nodded.
‘It’s all right. I’m not alone.’ She looked up at him. ‘Do you think I’ll meet them again?’
‘Who?’
‘All of them. Archie and Bobby.’ She hesitated and added, ‘Fergus.’
‘I don’t know. Would you like to?’
‘If we could be young again. We had a lot of fun in the early days.’ Christie smiled. ‘A lot of good times.’ She looked at him. ‘Maybe you could meet them too.’
‘No.’
‘I’ve read all your articles, Dr Watson, everything you ever published. Archie’s in every word, even when you’re writing of something else, just as he’s in your thoughts, even when he’s absent. And now you’ve lost him too.’
‘Not completely. There are papers in the library.’
‘Who do you think gifted them to the archives? I only gave away worthless doodlings. Enough to tantalise, but too little to tell.’ Her voice was soft and comforting. ‘Anything of worth went up in flames tonight.’ She lifted a hand from beneath the blanket and stroked his mud-smeared fingers. ‘Who would miss you? Your wife?’
‘No.’
‘Family?’
He looked away.
‘I thought not.’ Christie’s voice held the promise of peace. ‘I can always tell.’
She took something from her pocket and put it to her lips. Murray made no move to stop her. Christie started to choke. He held the water bottle to her lips. She drank, then raised a vial to her mouth and drank again. The coughing overtook her. He tried clumsily to ease it with more water, but most of it escaped her mouth and ran down her front. Her coughs faded to faint gasps. Murray held her head and pressed the water against her mouth, but Christie had grown limp. He let her sink back against the seat and saw her face flush in the glow of the premature dawn. He stood there for a while gazing at her body, knowing that if he lifted the blanket he might get closer to the truth of the child’s death, but unable to bring himself to.
He wasn’t sure how long he’d been frozen there when he was roused by the sound of a rook cawing. He turned and saw it treading the edge of the path like an old-world minister on his way to kirk. The crow met his stare and set its beak at a quizzical angle. The bird looked scholarly and demonic, and Murray couldn’t chase away the thought that it was Fergus, transformed and returned for his revenge. He rushed at it.
‘Go on, away with you.’
The bird flapped its wings and fluttered a yard or two before landing beyond his reach and continuing its perambulations, still fixing him with its dark stare.
Murray slammed the car door, guarding the bodies from the rook’s iron beak. He took off his scarf and wiped the handles and steering wheel clean of fingerprints, not sure why he was bothering, except he supposed he didn’t want his memory associated with any of it. Then he started to walk across the fields towards Pete’s bothy, the rook’s caws grating on in his head long after he was out of earshot.
Chapter Thirty-Three
THE WATER BOTTLE was still in his hand when he reached the bothy. Murray looked at it as if unsure how it had got there, and then launched it into a corner. The room was freezing and he fired the Calor heater into life. The flames blazed blue, and then took on an orange glow that made him think again of Christie’s cottage. He wondered how long it would burn.
Murray pulled off his jacket and saw the package James had sent him still miraculously jutting from his pocket. He took it out and laid it on the table. One end was scuffed and edged with mud, but otherwise it had weathered the dreadful adventure better than he had. It seemed that paper was more durable than flesh and blood. James had been trying to tell him something, but it didn’t matter now. He had got as close to Archie as it was possible to get. All the rest was nothing.
Murray stripped off his clothes and washed outside at the water butt, not bothering about whether he soiled his drinking water. He dried himself in front of the heater, still shivering, then slid his belt from its loops, shoved his filthy clothes in a carrier bag and sealed it. They would tell their own story.
He guessed that Pete would come round at some point to discuss the island’s finds. Murray would add to its discoveries. It couldn’t be helped. He wondered about writing an account of what had happened, but found he didn’t think that he could write; he, who had lived half his life with a pen in his hand.
Murray took the whisky from the shelf where Fergus had placed it and drank a good long swallow straight from the bottle. He started to cough as hard as Christie in her last throes and it was a battle not to splutter the precious spirit across the floor.
Archie had slammed out of the cottage, or maybe he had been slammed from it. Either way the door had crashed in its frame, expelling him from the disaster that lay inside.
Murray remembered the red corduroy notebook he had held in his hands in the National Library all those weeks ago, the list of names:
Tamsker
Saffron
Ray – will you be my sunshine?
What visions had sprung in Archie’s mind from Christie’s swelling belly? What hopes had he harboured? The poet had been right to let their loss propel him into the waves. Archie had purified himself, accepted his share of blame and escaped the future, the pain, the whole fucking uselessness of living on.
Murray sat naked in front of the fire, his elbows resting on the table, and took another deep draught. He looked up at the hook he had noticed when Pete first showed him the cottage. He supposed it had been used for drying herbs or curing meat.
What had Archie thought of as he walked down to the shore, his hair flying around his face? Had he known death was waiting for him, or had he simply given himself over to the fates in the same way Alan Garrett had? Murray raised the bottle to his mouth again and imagined Archie on the little jetty, freeing the small boat of its moorings then jumping aboard. If his fate had been a throw of the dice between Death and Life-In-Death, surely better that Death should win.
Murray gave the bottle another tilt and slid James’s envelope towards him. Fergus’s face gazed out in black and white from the book’s back cover. He’d been handsome when he was younger, a blond shock of fringe falling across his eyes, every inch the poet. Murray had an idea what lay between the covers, but he let the book fall open and began to read where fate had chosen.
A moored boat tied tight
Has more play than you
Wood and water
Earth and rope
He worked his way through the rest of the bottle, reading the poems as he went. Each swallow and every word seemed to make him more sober. There were computer programs that could decode vocabulary and syntax to show the truth of his conviction. Perhaps someone would pursue it. Rab Purvis maybe. He took a pen and wrote on the title page:
These poems were written by Archie Lunan.
That would be the extent of his biography.
He drank the final dregs in the bottle and sent it across the room. It landed unbroken and rolled until it rested softly against the wall.
If there had been an open fire in the cottage, Murray would have taken his notes and consigned them to the flames. He could have spent an hour ripping them apart
instead, then scattered them to the wind, but it would simply be another delay, an empty gesture in a night of weighty deeds.
Instead Murray took his belt from the floor, where he had dropped it. He used the chair as a step and climbed up onto the table, hoping it would take his weight. The belt had been his father’s. It was a good one, made from Spanish leather. Originally it had boasted a buckle in the shape of a Native American chief in full headdress. Jack had replaced it with a plain silvered one and given it to Murray. He’d given him the old buckle too, wrapped in an envelope he’d marked Cowboy Chic. It was an old joke from when they were teenagers. A long time ago.
Murray slid the belt’s tongue through its buckle, not bothering to fasten it. He’d never got round to getting it shortened to fit his waist and he reckoned it would be long enough.
It was better to decide your exit for yourself. You could be a long-legged, wisecracking urban cowboy, good for a laugh or a wise word, and then, quicker than you could credit, an old man unable to recognise the people you held most dear.
The people you had held most dear.
Murray wiped his eyes. He tied the belt around the hook, gripped the collar he’d made and swung on it for a moment. The knot above tightened, the buckle crushed against his hand, a painful flaw in his design.
It would have to do.
Murray stepped back down onto the floor, the cardboard gritty against his bare feet. He dragged the table a little to the left, climbed back up and fitted the makeshift collar around his neck.
It was still dark outside. Somewhere a bird crowed. He thought of the rook pacing the path beside Christie’s body, and drew a hand across his face; a moment’s courage and then peace.
Soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Murray stepped from the table, seeing Archie’s face at the window as he fell. His legs kicked and the noose tightened, belt buckle biting into his neck as he’d known it would. There was a rushing in his ears, an ocean’s weight coming towards him, and above it another sound.
Someone – Archie? – grabbed his legs and raised him shoulder-high, taking his weight. Murray could feel his assailant’s face against his hip, their arms around his knees swinging him back to the table’s raft.
‘You stupid fucking bastard!’
The voice was loud and frightened and instantly recognisable. The belt was still around his throat. Murray clawed at his neck, but the noose stayed tight. Jack leapt up on the table beside him and pushed his hands away, trying to ease the buckle loose. Murray could hear him panting and smell the alcohol on his breath. At last he got it free and Murray managed to take one deep whooping lungful of air and then another.
His brother pressed his head against Murray’s chest. After a moment Jack pulled away and managed to untie the belt from its hook. He said, ‘You better be trying to kill yourself, Minty, because if this is some fucking sex thing, I’ll bloody swing for you myself.’
Murray grabbed his brother in a hug. He’d all but lost his voice, but he managed to croak, ‘We let him down, Jack. We promised he’d die at home and he didn’t. He died on his own in that fucking place.’
‘I know he did.’ His brother was holding him tight. ‘But they’d told us there were days, weeks maybe. Dad knew we were doing our best. He was proud of you, Murray. He loved you. He wouldn’t want you to do anything like this. You know that. He’d be fucking furious. Now, come on. Let’s get down from here and get you dressed.’
Murray sat at the table, wrapped in his brother’s coat. He whispered, ‘Are you back with Lyn?’
‘No.’ Jack went through to the other room and there was a sound of rummaging. He came back and flung a pair of trousers and a jumper at Murray. ‘You were right. I was a stupid cunt. Like the song says, you don’t miss your water till your well runs dry.’ He looked at Murray anxiously as if trying to weigh up his state of mind. ‘There’s good news, though. You’re going to be an uncle.’
‘Cressida’s pregnant?’
‘Christ, I hope not. That’s why I came to see you. Lyn’s going to have a baby, our baby, and now she won’t have anything to do with me.’ He raised his brown eyes to Murray’s. ‘I came to see you because I was fucking depressed.’
Murray thought of the blazing cottage on the moor side, Christie and her child together in the red Cherokee and Fergus’s Saab abandoned by the desecrated grave up by the limekilns. He said, ‘Jack, I think I might be going to jail.’
Postscript
Glasgow
Chapter Thirty-Four
‘I’VE GOT TWO boys, terrific wee fellas. Six and eleven, they are.’ Murray was alone in the dark, watching the expression on his father’s face switch from eager to anxious. ‘I’ve no seen them in a long while. They telt me they were fine, but how do they know? Have you seen them, son?’
Jack’s voice was warm and reassuring.
‘I’ve seen them, they’re absolutely fine …’
‘Aye, well, that’s good.’ Their dad regained his happy aspect. ‘On their holidays, aren’t they?’
‘That’s right.’ Murray heard the smile in his brother’s voice. ‘Away with the BBs.’
Murray leant forward, elbows on knees, chin resting on his clasped hands.
Jack was asking his father if he recognised him and the mischief was back in the old man’s face. ‘If you don’t know, I doubt that I can help you out.’
Up on screen the two men laughed together.
‘No idea at all?’
Their father’s stare was intense.
‘I don’t think I know you, son.’ He hesitated and a ghost of something that might have been recognition flitted across his face, bringing a smile in its wake. ‘Are you yon boy that reads the news?’
Jack said, ‘You’ve rumbled me.’ And the old man slapped his knee in glee.
Murray got to his feet. He pushed through the black curtains and out into the brightness of the white-painted gallery. Jack was standing where he had left him, his face anxious.
Murray gave him a sad smile.
‘Maybe you can let me have a copy.’
His brother reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a DVD. Murray took it from him and shook his hand.
Murray wasn’t sure how he had got through his first police interview. Jack’s roll-neck had covered the marks of the ligature and Murray had blamed the croak in his voice on a cold combined with a night on the batter, but he couldn’t imagine that his faltering performance had been convincing. Perhaps it helped that the Oban police were too overwhelmed by the clues they already had to want any more.
The morning had uncovered empty petrol cans in the boot of a distinguished professor’s recently abandoned Saab. The professor himself was suspected to be somewhere in the depths of a newly breached sinkhole. There also seemed a probable link between him and the razed cottage no one had seen burn down, and from it to the cottage’s owner, dead in her car with a vial of poison at her feet and a baby’s disarticulated skeleton beneath the blanket covering her lap.
Murray’s story that Christie hadn’t answered her door, despite his appointment, appeared to be believed, and his connection with Fergus picked over, but not unkindly. Eventually two detectives from Strathclyde police had called at his Glasgow flat to thank Murray for his cooperation.
If they were surprised by the boxes of Jack’s possessions piled in the hallway, or the unmade bed-settee in the sitting room, the officers managed to hide it. The four of them gathered in the small kitchenette. The policemen seemed to occupy twice the space the brothers did, and it was a squeeze. Jack, canny as ever, had stationed himself in the open doorway, leaving the detectives and Murray to squeeze together in the little galley with their backs against the kitchen units.
The officers accepted the offer of a cup of Jack’s over-strong coffee. The making and pouring of it proved a palaver, but eventually it was done and they each held a steaming mug in their hands.
The elder
of the detectives favoured Murray with a stern smile. ‘I’ve got to say, Dr Watson, your face was in the frame when we found out you and Professor Baine were colleagues, especially once we discovered your relationship with his wife.’
He glanced slyly at Jack, as if checking for his reaction.
Murray said, ‘It’s all right, I already told my brother.’
‘Ah.’ the policeman sipped his coffee, grimaced, and set it on the kitchen counter at his back. ‘Your brother.’ He looked at Jack. ‘I gather you were there too?’
Jack gave one of his winning grins.
‘My girlfriend had just shown me the door. I was feeling a bit sorry for myself and decided to visit Murray. I ran into a crowd of archaeology students on the boat over, we got talking, had a few drinks together, and then I stumbled down to the But ’n’ Ben. The fire at the cottage must have been well under way by then, but sadly my route didn’t take me anywhere near it.’
‘Aye,’ the policeman nodded. ‘That’s what your statement said.’
The knowledge that their statements had been circulated as far as Glasgow bothered Murray. He asked, ‘So what wrapped up the investigation? Or aren’t you allowed to say?’
This time it was the younger detective who spoke. His face was impassive, and he might have been talking about a jumped red light or a stolen bicycle.
‘DNA samples taken from his house indicate that the baby whose bones Ms Graves was found with were those of a daughter she’d had with Professor Baine.’
‘Christ.’ Murray wiped a hand across his face. ‘So where does that leave things?’
The younger detective shrugged. His tight smile gave away nothing.
‘Officially, it’s accidental death and suicide. As to what actually happened, your guess is as good as mine.’ He levelled his gaze to Murray’s. ‘Better perhaps.’
The older officer’s expression was grim. ‘The bottom line is, we’re not looking for anyone else in relation to their deaths.’