The Dreams of Bethany Mellmoth

by William Boyd

  I forced myself to stop thinking. Time for some sleep, I realized, fatigue suddenly overwhelming me like a drug. Drug. Yes, drug … An idea was taking shape. I was recalling a film I’d made, early in my career, Beautiful Lie, Ugly Truth (2002). My only memorable line in it was ‘Knowledge is power’ – but it had been enough to get me noticed because of the manner in which I’d acquired that knowledge (before I was killed). Perhaps the same trick might work here and now. I still had a good portion left of the £1,000 that Stella had given me – this ruse required a certain disbursement of funds – but it might just give me the leverage I was clearly going to need if I was going to extricate myself from this particularly noxious can of worms.

  I locked all the doors of KT-99 from the inside and slid into my sleeping bag. Under the tarp the darkness was absolute and reassuring. I had a final slug of Glen Fleshan and settled down to sleep. Knowledge was power, yes, but action was consoling: at least I was going to do something, not just be buffeted around by these people and these forces I didn’t understand, flipped here and there like a steel marble in a pinball machine. No, I was going to change the game, I was going to bring my own intelligence to bear on the whole sordid …

  I woke up an hour later with a lurch, my heart thudding, timpanically. Funny how your unconscious mind still remains on watch while you sleep. There had been a noise, an unusual noise – no night-bird calling, no sudden rain-patter or wind-rush. A pebble-fall, something stepping nearby.

  I groped for my big metal LED torch. With three fat D-batteries inside this thing could not only send its 750-lumen beam some 200 yards, it could also do duty as a lethal club. I wasn’t going to switch it on just yet, though. I pulled on my boots and quietly opened KT-99’s rear door, jolting at the coldness of the night air that rushed in. I stepped out. Rattle. That was the sound I’d heard. Something had slid on the scree beyond my rock enclave – someone circling round. I moved away from the Defender, back to the huge boulders, and stepped out into the darkness, my eyes wide, trying to see but seeing nothing. Of all my senses my ears were going to be most useful. And my nose. I could smell something – like gasoline, something rank. I strained to hear. Breaths. Someone panting, someone who’d climbed as high as I’d driven. My hearing seemed to zone in on some presence in the dark, a few yards away. Something living, as if I could feel the hot blood pulsing in it. I pointed the torch.

  Click.

  Two eyes glowed.

  Then I saw the branched twin trees of ten-point antlers. A huge bloody great big stag stood there, blinded and affronted by my blazing white torch beam. It gave some sort of hoarse throat-tearing bark, not like a dog, more like a sea creature, and was gone, veering round and galloping off into the night, the sound of boulders and shale slipping as it careered across the moraine.

  I stood there, swaying, a shivering, shriven homunculus, driven back to my inarticulate Stone Age self as a result of this encounter with a looming stag in the impenetrable night. So big! Like a house, and its glowing eyes and branched antlers making it seem like some mythic night-figure haunting the dark.

  I calmed down after a few seconds and went meekly back to KT-99 for a consoling dram of Glen Fleshan. My hands were trembling as I settled down again in my sleeping bag, the acrid smell of the deer still in my nostrils. That was enough excitement for one night, I thought.

  Part Six: Knowledge is Power

  In Beautiful Lie, Ugly Truth my character had to bluff his way into a gentlemen’s club in Pall Mall. I remember standing chatting to the director (forgotten his name) saying, is this really plausible? They have people on the door in these establishment clubs; club servants who know every member from birth, you can’t just walk in off the street.

  Wrong, the director said (Guy Start, that was his name). Everybody in that world wears a uniform; everybody in that world has a certain ordained attitude. Don the uniform, mimic the attitude and then all you need is a plausible reason for being admitted. Doors will open. It made a kind of sense – and, now I remember, Guy was obsessive about what we wore, how we reproduced that uniform: our haircuts, signet rings, choice of tie, of shoe, how much dandruff on the shoulders, one vent or two in your jacket (or ‘coat’, as Guy called it – he was a bit of a toff himself), but the point was well made, all the same. The right clothes, the right bravura and a convincing reason – ensure these factors are correct and access was possible almost anywhere.

  I took out the glass flask from the cool box and decanted some of the fluid into a thoroughly washed-out cola bottle and drove into Mallaig. I found the shop I was looking for just off the high street: Fraser Niven, Gentleman’s Outfitters. I bought a dark charcoal grey suit, a white shirt, a banded tie and a pair of black lace-up shoes. Before I left the shop, thus suitably attired, my old clothes in a carrier bag, I asked directions from Mr Niven, the gentleman’s outfitter himself, to the nearest secondary school.

  Fraser Niven was a small portly bald man with a diffident air but he was happy to answer my question and listed three of the secondary schools that the town of Mallaig and environs boasted.

  Of the three proffered I instinctively chose the private school a few miles out of town, set in its own estate – my ‘attitude’ might have more purchase there, I calculated, and there would be more social pretensions swilling around than in a state school. Ardenthill College, the place was called, co-educational, 400 boys and girls from thirteen to eighteen years old, fees £25,000 a year, plus extras.

  Ardenthill was clearly an old stately home sold off and transformed into a school. I drove past twin lodges through open gates up through parkland towards a rather ugly red-sandstone, over-decorated, but very Victorian Gothic Revival castle. Battlements, turrets, flying buttresses, tracery windows, gingerbread trim – nothing had been left out of the Gothic inventory. The castle was surrounded by newer, duller buildings – a cafeteria, classrooms, sickbay, drama centre and so on and, dotted here and there amongst the landscaped park, I could see other boarding houses and playing fields.

  Ardenthill was a mid-level private school no doubt struggling to survive in the current economic climate, despite the exorbitant fees charged to the class-conscious, socially aspirational parents who were sacrificing themselves to send their offspring there. It had a less than well-tended aspect on closer inspection. Rusting scaffolding on the west wing. Unmown lawns in front of the chapel. Peeling paintwork on the cast-iron guttering – its discreet shabbiness telling you that, alas, corners were having to be cut, expenses being spared. Perfect.

  I parked KT-99 outside the main entrance and strode in, telling the first member of staff I encountered that I had an appointment with the headmaster. I was shown up a wide, sweeping staircase to the headmaster’s office on the second floor where his secretary could find no record of the appointment I had made with Mr Feveral, she was extremely sorry to say, and indeed the headmaster was away at a Scottish Public Schools conference in Perth and wouldn’t be back until tomorrow. I’ve come all the way from Edinburgh, I said to the secretary, in my coldest, most patrician English accent – this is inexcusable. I want to enrol both my children, Ben and Annabel, in this school and you can’t even manage to keep a simple appointment.

  She was abjectly apologetic. I calmed down, and a new appointment was made for the following week. I was well inside the citadel now, all doors would be open for me. Could I take a stroll around in the meantime, I asked? Gain some sense of the school and its amenities? My son, Ben, loves chemistry. We’re very proud of our science block here at Ardenthill, the secretary said, and showed me how to reach it, a short walk back down the drive and turn left.

  The science block was a featureless glass and concrete building. Boys and girls were streaming out at the end of class. One of the girls – rather pretty in the school uniform of a Fair Isle sweater and navy corduroy skirt – showed me into the chemistry wing.

  I walked up scuffed linoleum stairs, scenting the familiar astringent odours of chemistry labs the world over. Tears pric
kled at the corners of my eyes as I peered into a classroom – wooden benches, high stools, sinks, ranked bottles with multicoloured fluid inside.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  I turned. A young woman stood there in a white coat. She had long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail and was wearing heavy-rimmed spectacles. In her mid-twenties, I guessed. A chemistry teacher? Yes, it turned out. I explained I was a prospective parent. She showed me into another, grander lab – pointed out pieces of equipment that were clearly meant to be impressive. Centrifuges, distillation towers, powerful microwave ovens and the like. She mentioned terms such as vacuum filtration, separatory funnels, titration, condensers and I nodded as if I knew what she was talking about, duly impressed.

  I stopped her and introduced myself. We shook hands. She said her name was Isla MacNab. She had a soft Highland accent and, as she removed her heavy spectacles and slipped them in a pocket of her white coat, I realized – in the time honoured way – that she was really rather beautiful with an innocent, unselfconscious style. Wasted as a chemistry teacher in an undistinguished private school, I thought, spontaneously. She was one of those women who didn’t really know how attractive she was, I surmised. And then wondered if this was a male fantasy … Is there such a person as an attractive woman who is unaware of her attractiveness? No matter, Isla MacNab was between chemistry lessons and she could tell me everything I needed.

  We sat down. I asked her if she would do me a favour. I was aware of her staring at me rather more intently than was normal. She had the whitest skin and blue-grey eyes. Not a trace of make-up. A small perfect nose – the kind of nose you would buy in a nose shop. Perfectly straight, flared nostrils. Her lips were –

  ‘What can I do for you, Mr Dunbar?’

  I took out my bottle of River Jordan water.

  ‘Somebody told me this was water but I don’t think it is. Is there any way you could analyse it for me?’ I smiled as engagingly as I could. ‘In about ten minutes.’

  She looked at her watch, then at me for a moment, shrewdly, reminding me of Callum Strang’s pointed assessment of me. Was it something they did up here on the west coast of Scotland? Look at people askance …

  ‘I could try,’ she said. ‘Maybe. What exactly –’

  ‘I’ll pay you,’ I said quickly. Then added, ‘For your time and expertise.’

  ‘That’s a plus,’ she said and picked up a test tube. ‘Anyway, I’ve got a spare hour now, before the fifth form.’

  She poured some of the fluid into it, shook it and sniffed it.

  ‘If it’s not water,’ she said, ‘then it’s probably a salt of some kind in solution. Pretty basic stuff. You need a precipitate.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘You lower the solubility by adding a reagent – so it falls out of solution.’

  ‘I see. Yes.’

  ‘Ethanol, for example.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  She fetched a rack of clean test tubes and poured some of the fluid into four of them. Then she went in search of other bottles and with a pipette added a few drops from them to each test tube. Immediately the third test tube clouded with some sort of chalky precipitate.

  ‘Bingo,’ she said.

  She took the test tube to a centrifuge and within seconds, it seemed, returned with a watch glass containing a fine layer of crystals, like crushed rock salt. I reached to dip my finger in it to taste it but she grabbed my wrist firmly.

  ‘Not a good idea.’

  ‘Good thinking,’ I said.

  She looked at me disapprovingly and said, with some sternness, ‘That would have been an extremely foolish thing to do, Mr Dunbar. What if you’d tasted it and dropped down dead in ten seconds? That would’ve rather messed up my day.’

  I felt my blush spread from my cheeks to my neck.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Just an instinct.’

  She took some kind of tiny spoon implement and dipped it in the crystals. Then she lit a Bunsen burner and held the crystals in the flame. The orange burnt blue and green in a quick flare of colour.

  ‘Could it be a drug?’ she said. ‘A pharmaceutical drug? That would be my guess. If you hide a new drug in solution it’s a very effective disguise.’ She smiled. ‘I used to work for a drug company. Before I became a chemistry teacher.’

  A drug. Yes, things were beginning to make sense, suddenly. I had failed to get a part in a film called Artificial Fire but had read the script with interest, if only because it revealed how many billions of dollars could be made from a successful drug. Super-drugs, they were called. Every major drug company in the world was searching for that mother lode. A global marketplace. Erectile dysfunction, antidepressants, a cure for Alzheimer’s. Billions and billions of dollars as long as the licence was granted. In this film, Artificial Fire, a whistle-blower in a huge multinational drug company had tried to alert a journalist to the fact that –

  ‘Will that be all, Mr Dunbar?’

  ‘Thank you, Miss MacNab. You have no idea how helpful you have been.’

  I took out my wallet and laid two £50 notes on the laboratory bench.

  ‘My contribution to the staff Christmas party. I’m incredibly grateful.’

  I smiled at her. She had that shrewd look on her face again, contemplating me. She really was incredibly attractive in that kind of pure, unselfconscious way …

  ‘Lovely to meet you,’ I said. ‘I’ll be sure to tell the headmaster how kind you’ve been.’

  She picked up the £50 notes.

  ‘Were you in Die Standing, by any chance?’ she asked. ‘Are you that Alec Dunbar?’

  ‘What? Ah, yes, I was. I am.’

  ‘Good movie. Shame you got killed.’

  I drove back to Mallaig, thinking hard. It was not so much a precise plan that was forming in my head – more a general course of action that was emerging. The details could come later once my motivation was clear. If the mountain won’t come to Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain, was that the expression? It seemed to me it was time to make my presence known and felt, I thought, one way or another.

  In Mallaig high street I found a general store. I bought a roll of gaffer tape, a pair of pliers, a packet of firelighters, five wire coat hangers, an oven tray and a simple wind-up kitchen timer. Down on the dockside I found a ship chandler’s and bought the other key ingredient I needed.

  I drove around a bit, taking care I wasn’t being followed, and then headed back to Clachan Mor and my cleft between the huge rocks. I backed KT-99 in and secured the tarpaulin.

  I cooked myself a supper of pork sausages and fried potatoes, washed down with what remained of the Glen Fleshan. This would be my last night on the mountain, I calculated. If everything went to plan, tomorrow would see some kind of reckoning – and with a bit of luck this baffling, annoying, potentially dangerous, vanishing game would be over.

  Part Seven: The Trap

  I spent the morning preparing myself. I cut my wire coat hangers into the requisite lengths and bent them into shape with the pliers. Then I studied my ordnance survey map with due concentration looking for the ideal location for my emerging plan. I wanted somewhere not too far from Mallaig, a twenty-minute swift drive would do, and I needed a sea cliff and a nearby forest. After ten minutes or so I had narrowed the possibilities down to two and eventually settled for the one closer to Mallaig. Timing was key, if this plan was going to work, a few extra minutes in my favour could be a life-saving dividend.

  I hauled down the tarp covering KT-99, bundled it away and packed up my camp. I didn’t think I would ever forget my two nights on Clachan Mor. I climbed into the front seat and replaced the battery in my phone. I called my agent. Where’ve you been, dear fellow? Gervase said, piqued. They want to see you for Fatal Assignment III. I’ll be back in London tomorrow, I said, with more confidence than I was actually experiencing.

  The problem that faced me was that having called the police to a double-murder that promptly vanished, and that they assumed was a mali
gn prank, it would be hard to persuade them of my continuing reasons for feeling menaced. Everything I was wholly convinced of would seem like paranoid fantasy to a disinterested listener. The water wasn’t water – it held some sort of powder in solution. But if I took the flask to a police station what would or could they do? It wasn’t lethal, it wasn’t poisonous – what charges could be pressed, what protection could I be offered? No, the key aspect of my little ruse was that I had to manufacture some real culpability – only that way would I be able to make my case to anyone prepared to listen.

  I left the battery in the phone and drove off down the mountain, sure that I would now be registering on the surveillance screens. Target activated. I didn’t feel excited – I felt faintly sick. But for some reason I found my mind turning to my very first film, Giorni di Mal (2001), directed by the late great Ruben Mavrocordato. He had cast me straight out of drama school – I think he thought I was the new Terence Stamp or David Hemmings or Peter O’Toole. He had perverse faith in me and my talent, bless him, and made me dye my hair platinum blond and I only wore black throughout the movie. We shot the film in the toe of Italy in August and I wandered through this rocky, burnt-out southern Italian landscape, in merciless heat, carrying a sawn-off shotgun looking for someone. There were encounters on the way – a priest (of course), a blind tinker, a lost child – the most interesting being with a young prostitute (played by the incandescent Fioralba Tizzi – Mrs Mavrocordato, as it happened).