by Unknown
David drifted back to the conversation. Wilkins was still talking, emphasizing the unit’s close links with the local community, all that dull jazz, and David started thinking about last night. As if by telepathy, both he and Nicola had been slightly cooler towards each other than the previous night of blustery, passionate sex, as if two successive nights of that sort of thing was somehow not quite where they were at yet. It didn’t mean they weren’t somewhere, although they didn’t talk about it, and David could feel that Nicola hadn’t regretted anything they’d done together; she was just taking it easy, needed an early night, something which also suited him, despite the hardening in his trousers when they’d kissed goodnight at the Cruickshanks’ front door.
As he walked round the inky teardrop of the Keptie Pond towards the Fairport, David had been unable to get the thought of tracking Neil down out of his head. How do you get hold of a private detective? How do private detectives actually do their job? Isn’t there something he could do himself to find the guy? Was Neil still in Auchmithie? There weren’t that many houses there, say a few dozen – what if he just went door-to-door, see if anyone knew him?
Here, sitting in Wilkins’ office, he was getting nowhere. He wasn’t going to be told anything useful by the mouthpiece of an organization only too used to warding off bad publicity. There had been more than one case, when David was growing up, of a marine losing the plot and killing himself, or worse, taking his wife and kids with him. The stress of actual combat on men with a tendency towards violent killing had some pretty terrible consequences, but it seemed to be a price the military were prepared to pay. Just don’t expect them to shout about it. And anyway, he had realized last night that it no longer really mattered to him what this sergeant major told him. Even if he told him the details of Neil’s discharge from the unit, it wouldn’t make any difference. Either way he knew now that he definitely had to find him, to talk to him about everything, to try to make sense of it all.
But he’d come this far with the whole undercover bullshit, so he asked anyway.
‘What about instances of trouble with individual marines? Either with other soldiers or local people.’
‘I’m not sure what you mean.’
‘There have been incidences of marines fighting with locals, or fighting with each other while on base, haven’t there?’
Wilkins gave him a look which said he knew all along that this was why David was here, and that he wasn’t going to get anything.
‘Very occasionally,’ he said with a small sigh. ‘But we deal with any kind of insubordination swiftly and through the proper channels.’
‘Is that what happened with Private Cargill in 1992?’ David thought he might as well go for it, just to see Wilkins’ reaction.
‘I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to talk about individual cases,’ said Wilkins with a smile. ‘And besides, that seems like a very long time ago, so I wouldn’t even have that sort of thing to hand, even if I wanted to tell you about it.’
‘But you were Sergeant Major of the 45 back then?’
‘I was.’
‘So you might remember.’
‘I might.’
‘But you won’t talk about it.’
‘I won’t.’
And that was pretty much that. David asked a few more questions to try and disguise the fact that he obviously wasn’t really a journalist. He didn’t know if Wilkins had him pegged, but he thought he might. He didn’t much care. He now just wanted to be away from here, away from this pristine, unreal office, with its dagger-and-globe coat of arms on the wall, its framed pictures of men in uniforms standing on parade or hunkering down in a foreign land on some training exercise. He wanted to be away from the smug authority of the sergeant major, the easy assuredness, and the face which knew that he could kill this little shit sitting opposite him given half a chance and different circumstances. So in the best form of undercover tabloid journalists everywhere, he made his excuses and left. Sergeant Major Wilkins saw him to the door with a toothy smile, and David felt like punching him in the face. Instead he shook hands and headed out the door, away from the base and back towards town, where Nicola and Amy were waiting to be picked up and taken back to Edinburgh. As he drove past the kid at the gate with the gun he tried to imagine Neil handling a similar weapon. He found he could picture it all too easily.
The drive back to Edinburgh seemed to take forever. The sun slowly baked them in the rusty can of David’s car, and roadworks on the Forth Bridge left them stationary for an hour amidst angry drivers, shimmering tarmac and clammy exhaust fumes. Amy seemed sullen in the back, quietly sighing in between picking up and putting down a book about witches, wizards and trolls. David told Nicola that the visit to Condor had been a waste of time, and she didn’t pursue it.
When he dropped Nicola and Amy off, David wanted to go inside with them, but he could clearly see that some mother-and-daughter time was needed, that things were maybe moving too fast between him and Nicola for Amy’s liking, so he reluctantly left them to it.
Nicola was grateful that David had got the message. Whether Amy was cranky about David, or about being taken up to Arbroath all the time, or about all the talk recently of death and funerals, or just about having to go to school tomorrow, she didn’t know, but she felt as if she had been neglecting her daughter over the last couple of weeks, as if this whole thing with David had taken over. She silently chastised herself for it. When they got in the house, Amy seemed to cheer up, especially when they ordered out for pizza, got the ice cream out and put the Shrek DVD on. Snuggled up on the sofa, Nicola tried to put all thoughts of David out of her head for the evening, leaving behind the grown-up world of sex, flirting, death, police stations, funerals and all the rest, at least for a few hours. She didn’t want David to think that she thought shagging him at the weekend was a mistake, so she didn’t want to totally cool off on him, but she sensed somehow that he got it, that he realized she had to spend some time with Amy, her number-one priority, that she had to take at least a breather from him, from whatever was going on between them, for both her own sake and for Amy’s. This relationship (she was using that word to refer to herself and David now, that was a step in itself) was going somewhere, but she sensed it was still fragile, and they were going to have to take it easy if they didn’t want to spoil it, damage it, break it early on, before it had barely got going.
She thought about Gary’s funeral. The look on Gary’s parents’ faces as they stood by the graveside. This was real life, and it hurt. She didn’t know the details of David’s visit to Condor, but he’d said it was useless. Maybe that was for the best. She sensed that David was being drawn towards Neil somehow, but what good would that do?
David was greeted at work on Monday morning with an official written reprimand for poor timekeeping. One more warning and he was out the door. It was bullshit, really, an excuse to fire him. He wasn’t the most punctual, but then neither was anyone else, and if they were being strict they would have to fire every bastard in the whole of Still Waters, something they would probably be doing soon enough anyway.
He spent the day on the internet trying to work out how to find Neil. It turned out there was a huge online industry based around trying to find people, most of which involved credit card details and a fee. He tried the free ones first, directory inquiries and the like, but there were no Cargills listed for Auchmithie. He tried for Arbroath and got 150 replies but none with the N initial. He eventually bit the bullet and signed up for a service which claimed to trawl through electoral rolls, birth, death, marriage and divorce certificates, title deeds, land registers, bad debtor lists and so on. By the end of the day, for his thirty-five quid he had a long email detailing just about everything he already knew about Neil Cargill, and precious little else. Born in Arbroath in 1969, went to school, joined the Marines in 1988, left in 1992, joined the police force the same year, left in 1994, parents died the same year, not long after that he sold the family home and then… nothing.
He just disappeared. He wasn’t on any of the lists they’d searched: not registered to vote, or to pay tax or receive benefits, or with any banks or credit card companies, he didn’t seem to own any property, or run a business, or even exist. Except Nicola’s dad said he had turned up in Auchmithie only a couple of years ago. So much for the paper trail.
David thought about complaining to the internet company who had essentially just fleeced him, but then he started wondering about how easy it might be to simply hide yourself away, to disappear from society if you wanted to. Presumably he had been trained in the Marines how to survive on his own, how to use the land resourcefully to stay alive. He wondered if there were many people doing that in Scotland – it seemed unlikely, more like the kind of thing you’d hear about people doing in the States. But then there was plenty of room in this country, plenty of space to disappear into if you wanted, there was that whole big dumb middle of the country with nothing in it but hills and forests if you seriously wanted to be on your own. And he had no way of knowing if Neil had even stayed in the country. He was a trained fighting machine – maybe he was abroad somewhere, earning money as a mercenary? David was letting his imagination get away with him, but it was possible, wasn’t it? Or then again, maybe he had changed his name and identity, and he was still living in Scotland. But wouldn’t that show up on this internet search he’d just paid for? Not if he hadn’t done it officially, if he was living under an assumed name somewhere, keeping himself out of mischief, and nobody was asking questions.
By the end of the day, he was no further forward. As he struggled across town through the festival traffic (would this fucking festival never end, he thought) he realized that there was only one thing he could do. Neil had last been spotted in Auchmithie two years ago, so he would go there and ask. It was simple. Maybe if he asked the right question to the right person, he might get a lead. Sitting baking on a sweaty bus stuck in traffic on South Bridge, he resolved to go back up north at the weekend, see what he could uncover.
During the week, the good weather finally broke. Thunder and lightning rolled across Edinburgh, pellets of rain punching free from bellies of clouds and down onto the city, leaving behind squally showers and the fresh smell of wet concrete. David phoned Nicola to tell her what he had planned and, more importantly, just to hear her voice again. He had spent the last few days obsessing about Neil, but every time he thought of Nicola he perked up a little, and would feel a slight pang of regret that he wasn’t with her at that moment. He wanted to concentrate on her, on making sure this relationship (that’s what he was calling it now, he realized) worked, but he kept getting sidetracked with this search for Neil.
‘You’re beginning to get the hang of the “treat ’em mean” thing, I see,’ said Nicola.
‘What?’
‘We finally get round to shagging on Saturday, and it takes you until Wednesday to phone?’
‘Jesus, Nicola, I’m sorry but I’ve…’
‘I’m joking, you idiot. Wind up. What happened to your sense of humour?’
‘I’ve been a bit preoccupied the last few days.’
‘Let me guess – Neil Cargill?’
‘Wow, telepathy, I’ll need to add that to the list of your many gifts.’
‘You’re compiling a list of my many gifts?’
‘Not really.’
‘But if you were, what would be on it?’
‘You know, the usual – wit, beauty, charm, intelligence, ability to fuck outdoors at the drop of a hat.’
‘Yes, that is one of my best attributes. I notice wit came before beauty in that list. Funnier than I am pretty, aye?’
‘Well, you’re pretty funny.’
‘Boom, boom.’
‘Anyway, sorry for not calling sooner. I really enjoyed last weekend, despite there being a funeral involved.’
‘Yeah, I know what you mean. I had a great time too. Let’s do it again sometime. Although maybe without the funeral part. Or maybe that’s what got us randy. Maybe we should go and hang out at cemeteries every weekend, get ourselves going. I’m talking shit, amn’t I?’
‘Yup. Kinky shit. The best kind of shit, so don’t let me stop you.’
‘I’ve stopped already.’
‘Shame. Anyway, guess what I’m doing this weekend?’
‘Let me see, taking me out for a romantic dinner for two in a top Edinburgh restaurant? I’ve always fancied the Atrium. They apparently do a magnificent squid starter.’
‘It sounds great, but no, not this weekend. Maybe next. Another guess?’
‘Well, if you’re not keeping me in the manner to which I am not accustomed, would it have something to do with tracking down Neil, perhaps?’
‘Bingo. I’m going to Auchmithie.’
‘Do you have an address for him?’
‘No. I’m just going to ask around.’
‘That doesn’t sound like much of an idea.’
‘It’s all I’ve got. I’ve spent all week on the internet trying to find out about him.’
‘Ah, the fount of all knowledge. What did people do before the internet?’
‘Good question. Anyway, I got nowhere. It seems he stopped existing around ten years ago.’
‘And yet he was seen two years ago in Auchmithie.’
‘Exactly. Wanna come along?’
‘I don’t think so. Much as I would like to tramp around strangers’ doors in a tiny, close-knit community asking about a man last seen in the area two years previously, I have a daughter to look after, remember? Even though Amy likes her granny and grandpa, she’s been in a huff about continually getting dragged up to Arbroath. So I think sticking around in Edinburgh for the weekend might be best.’
‘I thought she might be in a huff with me – you know, the new man in her mum’s life and all that.’
‘There might be some of that involved as well, to be honest, but don’t let that worry you.’
‘But I do.’
‘Well don’t, it’s to be expected.’
‘I really like her, you know.’
‘I know.’
‘And I really like you as well.’
‘I know.’
‘And I’m serious about us.’
There was a moment’s pause.
‘That’s good to hear, David, because so am I.’
‘That is also good to hear.’
There was another pause.
‘Good,’ said Nicola. ‘Now that we’ve got the awkward serious relationship stuff out the way, how about we joke some more about your daft idea of going to Auchmithie?’
‘It’s not daft.’
‘You think?’
‘I think.’
‘OK.’
‘What does O K mean?’
‘Is this the start of our first argument?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Shame, I always like the first argument in a relationship, there’s something so fresh about it that other, later arguments never quite capture.’
‘Maybe we’ll never have any arguments.’
‘Now that is a daft idea. Anyway, you have fun in Auchmithie. When are you going?’
‘Friday after work. I’ll stay in the Fairport, but I’ll probably go straight to Auchmithie in the early evening, see what I can find out, and then go back on Saturday.’
‘Will you phone me when you get to the Fairport?’
‘Sure. You worried about me?’
‘Nah, I just want that saucy housewife landlady to know that you’ve got a woman waiting for you elsewhere. She’s definitely after you, you know.’
‘It’s so nice that you care.’
‘Yeah, well, just phone, OK? I am genuinely interested in what you find out, you know.’
‘I know.’
‘Not that you’ll find out anything.’
‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’
‘You’re welcome.’
‘I miss you,’ said David. ‘Sorry if that seems a bit weird to say, since we’
ve only just re-met and stuff, but it’s true so I thought I might as well come out and say it.’
There was a pause, the line crackling slightly.
‘I miss you too, doofus.’
There was another silence down the phone.
‘We really have got the awkwardness of the awkward serious relationship stuff nailed, haven’t we?’ said David.
‘Damn straight.’
13
Auchmithie
It was seven o’clock as David turned off the Arbroath back road for the last couple of miles to Auchmithie. High, grey clouds raced across the evening sky and a flustered wind made the trees along the roadside whisper secrets as David rounded a bend in the road and was suddenly in the village.