If it hadn’t been for the booze and the sense of despair that blurred Leo’s senses and deadened his awareness, he might have perceived a black-clad creature standing under the trees, watching him. A vicious, ghastly, obscene presence that had been hollowed out and then deformed by years of self-pity.
The beast enjoyed watching its pathetic nemesis, feeling smugly superior as it observed his clumsy, inebriated movements, safe in the knowledge that its presence would be obscured by the dark forces it felt in full communion with, now that a perfect sacrifice had been made. The same forces it had petitioned to deaden Moran’s extra-sensory powers. The same forces that would make it look like an accident when the moment came. The beast would be guileful and patient. It would wait for the optimum opportunity to present itself and then strike, like a viper.
The subway trains were surely less frequent than they had once been, Leo pondered, as he people-watched through an alcoholic lens. He was fed up waiting on draughty platforms. A surge of irritation welled inside him and he vowed to write a stern letter to some operative or other. By the time the initial rumblings of the train could be heard further up the tunnel, the platform had become uncomfortably busy with commuters and some high-spirited students undertaking the subway circuit pub crawl. Leo stepped out towards the edge, determined to stake his rightful claim to a seat; he had been here first.
The beast edged towards its enemy, its coat collar up, a hat brim pulled down over its brow. Moran was quite evidently oblivious to its presence. Perhaps it had overestimated his powers. Perhaps he wasn’t worth swatting like a fly, after all. Still, it had come thus far, so why miss out on all the fun? The commuters straightened up in anticipation of the train’s arrival, jostling slightly for position with the selfishness found among strangers. The beast could smell the booze from its target now; perfect – it would seem like so many other Glasgow drunks who had stumbled towards an inevitable early demise beneath hooves, charabancs, trams, trolleybuses and steel wheels . . .
The beast glanced right, towards the dumb mouth of the tunnel. The twin headlights of the train appeared, the noise now dramatic, portentous, cinematic.
Just one little push would be all it would take.
* * *
The toy clattered to the floor and bounced towards the platform edge and the abyss beyond. The nearby commuters ignored it, perhaps too tired, perhaps too self-consciously British to become the centre of attention. Yet it was instinctive for a gentleman such as Leo to stoop down and halt its progress. He brandished the trophy at the child’s mother, who took it with a murmur of uneasy thanks (she, too, could smell the booze). The infant, a cute, plump, two-year-old boy with a thick head of dark hair, smiled mischievously at his chevalier. Leo gave an impromptu bow, then turned to watch the flashing of the train’s side slow to stasis. He would never know how Buzz Lightyear had saved his life.
And the beast would never fully understand that there are forces at work in this world brighter and more powerful than the ones with which it had sought alliance.
39
LEO could experience euphoria amid his depressions which would burst into his consciousness like a skyrocket. The next morning, some peculiar chemical process had, perversely, stimulated his serotonin to cause a hypomania that made him feel as though he needed to take a dose of lithium carbonate, a substance of which he was currently bereft. So he began drinking again instead, uncorking a bottle of 1971 Solera before luncheon. He manically tidied and polished, regularly pinching little quantities of pulverised tobacco from a precious enamelled Hungarian snuff box and snorting it like a cocaine fiend.
By three o’clock, Leo had wheeled his television set from its closet and was sat upon a sofa amid a growing pile of pistachio shells, absentmindedly watching DVD episodes of Frasier and sipping more and more dry sherry. He speculated for a moment upon a misplaced notion that unopened pistachio shells meant that their possessions were bad, as with mussels. Perhaps the seafood analogy made a lateral link, because he then called Rogano’s and reserved a booth for a pre-theatre meal, and dressed for the evening.
The bar in the City Halls was deserted but for the ghost of Charles Dickens, who quaffed a gin punch in the corner. Leo was dressed magnificently in a two-piece charcoal lounge suit with an open-necked white shirt and a scarlet Paisley-pattern cravat. He smelled of spicy aftershave lotion and brilliantine. He had continued drinking through dinner (the scallops had been excellent) but felt relatively sober, the alcohol serving only to quell the ecstatic rushes of the daytime, and his senses were quite clear. He would slip into the auditorium during the forced applause for the opening piece, an atonal, discordant contemporary work. To Leo’s ear it was about as musical as a piano falling down a flight of stairs. He smiled at his younger self, at a time when he had been so eager to form an opinion upon whatever seemed to him moderne.
Leo loved attending concerts. He loved the egalitarian way in which for little more than a tenner one could purchase a seat at any of the city’s superb venues, to hear one of Scotland’s, or indeed the world’s, best chamber or symphony orchestras. He loved the internationalism of the events, the fact that the musicians came from near and far. He loved the genteelness of it all, the black ties and white gloves, the way the audience would gladly give of their applause, which the conductor and soloists would then humbly and generously share with the rank and file. All of them – beholder and performer – bonded by a mutual love of classical music, communing momentarily through the most wondrous of emotions which its live rendition evoked. Leo felt a surge of rapture as the pianist’s fingers whirled up and down the keyboard; she barely had to glance at Chopin’s notation. Then the tempo slowed, almost to a standstill, then built again before dissolving into its reflective phrase, the final notes gentle, poignant, beautiful. It was as though for a brief moment the planet slowed upon its axis to pause in beatific meditation.
Sometimes, when at home, Leo would put on his headphones and identify every line of instrumentation he could, then return his perception to the piece as a whole again, and somehow appreciate its beauty all the more. That was the crux of the genius of Mozart et al; this ability to pull disparate strands together and weave them into an overarching melodic theme. Some of these little narratives were barely audible, barely perceptible, unless one sought them out; perhaps, for example, simply the second violins gently shadowing the main phrase, light to the touch but no doubt adding some important nuance to the overall mix. Perhaps it went beyond genius – perhaps it was miraculous. Yet genius always struck Leo as precisely the same as a miracle anyway, in the same way that elegant, finely tuned physics governed dirty rainwater running in a gutter.
By interval time he was in good spirits. The first three of the Études had been brilliantly performed with much finesse and subtlety of emotion by the captivating young woman from Lithuania; Leo had already decided to send a spray of flowers to her hotel the next morning in gratitude, before she left town. Also, he had been most fortunate with his neighbours: no air-piano players, no programme leafers, no peppermint suckers, no bag handlers, no loud nasal breathers, no restless, floppy-haired children dragged along against their will because they were considered ‘gifted’ by their hopeful West End parents; indeed, no fidgeters whatsoever. Now he had his pre-ordered double Black Bottle and soda to look forward to, before the night’s highlight.
He exchanged smiles with the white-haired lady beside him, and turned, ready to join the shuffling throng to the bar. As he did so, he happened to glance upwards, towards the balcony, drawn by some inexplicable instinct. A shadowy figure was making its way to the rear exit.
Leo knew instantly that it was the killer of Helen Addison – and what’s more the killer knew that it had been spotted.
The audience ebbed forward and filtered into the lobby at an agonisingly slow pace. Leo excused himself as he pushed through the mostly elderly patrons, repeating the words ‘sorry, emergency’ as he did so. At this rate the murderer would be out of the upper circl
e and down the stairs before he could get out. Leo tried to control his breathing, anguished thoughts flashing through his mind as the lighted exit sign gradually drew nearer. ‘Oh God, help me,’ he whispered as he passed through the doorway.
On to the landing, a break in the crowd – the opportunity to dash down the stairs. He rushed towards the automatic doors. They opened on cue.
Into the cool, moist night air. He glanced left, then right. Nothing.
He made to dial Lang, with images of armed cops sealing off the area, but he knew it was too late. He cancelled the call, and then realised the unlikelihood of Lang dispatching a firearms squad on one of his whims anyway. He might not even have picked up when he saw the caller ID.
Not even the mouth-watering prospect of the young pianist and the marvellous Scottish Chamber Orchestra performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. XXVII, the Larghetto of which Leo always found achingly moving, could dispel the evil that had invaded his evening. And so he strode through the Merchant City, then along Argyle Street, the shock gradually fading, his breathing steadying. He tried to find a suitable bar in which to soothe his nerves but they were all too busy, too noisy, too young. At last he found a little howff in Oswald Street, the kind of joint where no one asked your name. He availed himself of a large Scotch which he washed down with a pint of heavy. Then out, and the long walk home; he couldn’t bear the prospect of a festive Glasgow taxi rank.
Rain drummed noisily on his umbrella and danced in the gutters while his leather soles click-clacked on the pavement, only the sodium light of the streetlamps and the birds’ evening lullaby for company.
40
A DAY had expired since the beast had followed the sad Glaswegian to the City Halls. It had intended on disposing of him outside, after the concert had finished: a surreptitious blade in the ribs as it brushed by, then it would have slipped off like a shadow into the night. But its presence had been detected. Damn it, it would have been Shakespearian . . . operatic, even, to have left him bleeding to death on the steps. Never mind. He was out of the picture now anyway. And should Leo Moran ever return to Loch Dhonn the beast would share with him the little surprise he had just purchased.
The beast’s thoughts then turned towards the stooge. It had enjoyed the power it had wielded over him, regularly spiking him with horse tranquilliser and even the odd handful of the magic mushrooms it had picked last autumn for good measure. It had worked a treat; the idiot was rendered even more docile and malleable than usual, and had started hallucinating and behaving more and more erratically, thus heaping more and more suspicion upon himself. What a joy it had been finding the unsent love letter! What kind of a person would send such a thing to the home of a grieving family? they would all ask. What kind of beast!
But the jewel in the crown of the strategy had been simplicity itself: get the dolt to help move a pile of scrap metal. Among that scrap metal plant a foot-long brass cylinder – the phallus still smeared by the consummation of Helen Addison with the dark lord – and watch to make sure the idiot handles it. All the while the beast had been fastidious to wear gloves.
The outstanding portion of the plan was also simple: borrow a boat and head over to Innisdubh for the rituals in order to coax that hippie bitch, who was next on the list, and the stooge out into the dead of night at the same time. Then row by the usual place and quickly stash the accoutrements of the black rites – best to travel light as there would be further to walk this time. Then replace the boat, kill the bitch and fuck her with the brass shaft (ensuring not to smudge the stooge’s print); leaving the coppers to put two and two together and blame the wandering stooge who had clearly forgotten to wipe the rod clean – the strange hypnosis brought on by the rituals would seem like the murderous culmination of his recent anaesthetised, erratic state. The beast would stash the phallus somewhere nearby with the crucial evidence on its smooth surface, concealed, but not so well that it wouldn’t be found. It would stash the knife with it, too. The beast would run back to the hidey-hole in order to stow the robes, and head for home. It would take a special ceremony to lure both of the targets, but it had been easy to procure the required precious items belonging to them both, and anyway, the beast believed it enjoyed its master’s favour and had the thirteenth baron, who was of its own bloodline, to intercede on its behalf.
The beast fondly remembered the item it had used for Helen’s rite – her first brassiere of adolescence – taken and cherished all of these years. Then it had swiped the little rag doll she was holding when she arrived for her sacrifice. Its white innocence was even stained by a dark splash of its owner’s arterial blood.
The beast had already planted it in the stooge’s abode, where the inevitable police search would uncover it.
Bombardier William John Minto regained consciousness, for the twenty-two hundred and twelfth time. He felt hardly any pain, just a strange sensation on his left side, as though dry ice had been applied to his nerve endings. He looked down. His uniform had largely disintegrated in the intense heat and much of the skin on his abdomen was pink or charred. He climbed out of the slit trench. The smoking remains of his comrades, like contorted mannequins, lay on the hillside, which had been shorn of snow in an instant. Some of the napalm fizzed angrily in the rough grass. One thing you cannot convey about warfare is its smell, which is the smell of death. And as the combined odours of burning petroleum, polystyrene and human flesh made Minto retch, he realised that this smell was a thing that he would never be able to convey to anyone; it was just too evil a thing.
He flinched as the American F86s, having realised their miscalculation, screamed overhead and lit the horizon with a gorgeous blossoming of orange flame, which contrasted vividly with the drab grey of the gigantic landscape.
I’m the only one left, thought Minto as he stumbled down the valley, the cold affecting him now, the brutal cold. I’m the only one.
He awoke in a sweat, panting, the experience so vivid it might have happened yesterday. The strange thing had been that the Yank medics at the MASH, then everyone in his unit back at base, then everyone back home in Scotland, had treated him as a conquering hero. Why? Because he had survived a bombardment and his pals hadn’t? It was like lionising someone for rolling two sixes. Survivor guilt had gnawed at him over the years, and ever since he had longed to perform some gallant act to justify that undeserved adulation. But as time passed by, Shona’s influence had worn down his resolve. Then came that filthy deal they had done with the baron. He had voiced his disapproval, but he was just as guilty. More guilty, in fact. At least Shona had had the guts to sign away her soul. He had simply walked out of the room.
Bill knew this feeling of insomnia like an old lover. It was the reason he and his wife didn’t share a bedroom. There was no use fighting it; years ago he would have sunk enough White Horse to send himself into oblivion, but then had come Shona’s ultimatum. She had been right on that score. Bill had been utilising the Scotch for more than just its sedative effects; he was self-medicating to ease the memories which stalked his sleep and showed no signs of abating as the 1950s and then the new decades of the 1960s and 1970s unfolded. And so he had made his pledge. Then – irony of ironies – he had found himself working behind a bar, his own bar. Still, he had not succumbed. Sometimes, in his dreams, he would revisit the nebulous sensation of whisky blooming out through his body like a warm, golden panacea. And as it flooded through his consciousness every ancient wound was healed, every inadequacy muffled, every faulty neural circuit repaired. Then he would wake, his mouth dry and vile, his nerves frayed, nausea sitting in his belly and gloom pressing upon his soul; hungover as though he had actually imbibed spirit the previous night. But these occasional crises were quelled by a meeting at a group he had discovered in Oban; never again had a drop passed his lips, not even so much as a scoop of sherry trifle.
Bill decided to go for a walk, an old trick the recent thaw made more palatable. He got out of bed, threw together winter apparel, and stole out of the ho
tel.
It was approaching three o’clock.
The thaw had indeed arrived, and yesterday’s rain rendered the last snowfall a mere memory; only the odd stubborn patch of slush remained. Bill went southwards, down the Loch Dhonn–Kildavannan road. He felt blue as he marched, thinking about his dream and wondering if a man ever escapes his past. And then he thought about that poor lassie Helen, and about what had happened to her, and he wondered if the police would ever catch her murderer. And he wondered if her father Stuart, that nice family man who used to smile pleasantly as he waved a morning hello, would ever find any peace, or if he would remain like him, haunted forevermore by the tragedy of doomed youth, waking during the dead of night, eyes wide open, with no one to quell his desolation.
The Ghost of Helen Addison Page 23