The Babylon rite

9

Morningside, Edinburgh

Nina McLintock and Adam Blackwood halted at the corner of Springvalley Terrace. The night had cleared and it was now piercingly cold, with a keening wind off the Firth of Forth, and the street was wholly deserted. Glittery with silent frost.

‘It’s in that block there,’ Nina said. ‘Stepmother’s flat. He moved in with her a coupla years ago.’

Adam followed her anxious steps, looking up at the severe windows as he went. The terrace comprised one of those sandstone tenements which in England would have been considered lower class, if they existed at all; in Scotland these large, sombre blocks of Victorian apartments had a posh ambience, especially here in Morningside, the upmarket inner suburb of Edinburgh.

A burst of noise behind them — drinkers falling out of a shutting pub — hurried the two of them around the curving pavement to the front door of the tenement block.

‘How are we going to-’

‘I know where he kept his spare key. He was a bit of a lush. If you get home drunk a lot, you learn to hide a spare key.’

Adam nodded. He could empathize with that, all right. He remembered his own days of drinking: the fights and the forgetfulness. Locked out of his home in Sydney. After Alicia.

‘Here.’ Nina thrust a hand through some railings, and scrabbled in the soil of a small front garden. ‘Just here, under the rosebush. Second rosebush on the right.’

She rummaged under the dead roseless plant while Adam glanced up and down the street, increasingly fretful. This didn’t look good. Two people loitering on an empty street at one in the morning, digging in a stranger’s garden.

He strove to repress his greater anxiety: the unnerving two-way logic of what he was doing. Either Nina was deluded and he was painfully wasting his time because he was so pathetically desperate for a story; or she was right, and Archie McLintock had been murdered. Which meant a murderer.

‘Quick!’ He could hear footsteps, somewhere. Round the curving corner, coming their way.

‘Got it.’ Nina stood, brandishing two very muddied keys.

The footsteps were louder now, right behind them. It was one of the drinkers from the pub. Tall, shaven-headed, wearing a dark coat. The man abruptly paused, under a streetlamp, to light a cigarette, scratching a match into flame. Adam stared, even as he tried not to stare. There was something odd about the man’s hands, cupped around the cigarette: they were decorated with large tattoos. Tattoos of skulls. Was he really just a drinker? Or a murderer?

The secret that can get you killed.

This was nonsense; Adam calmed himself. Just a drinker…

Flicking the match, exhaling smoke, the man continued, passing by. He gave them a fraction of a glance, and a trace of a boozy smile, as he loped on down the road.

Adam and Nina stared at each other in the cold and frosted lamplight. She shook her head. ‘Come on.’

Wiping the mud from the keys with the sleeve of her big anorak, Nina turned and paced to the front door. The first key slotted in; they stepped inside. The hall was dark and hushed with tragic silence, it felt like the shrouded hallway of someone who had recently died. Adam’s hand reflexively moved to the wall, but Nina shook her head and whispered, ‘ No light switch.’ Instead she used the light on her mobile phone to guide them, warily, up four steep flights of stairs.

Faint noises echoed. A soft Edinburgh voice floated up from somewhere; he heard a TV turned off. The muffled noises of posh tenement life.

‘37D.’ The effete beam of her mobile phone just picked out the number on the doorway and she lifted the second key to the Yale lock.

Then a shrill voice from below sent a rush of schoolboy fear through Adam. As if he had been caught, in the most flagrant way, by a headmistress.

‘What is it? Who is it? I’ll call the police!’

Light flooded the stairwell.

‘Crap,’ Nina said, very quietly. ‘It’s the landlady. Sophie Walker. Say nothing.’ She stepped to the banister and stared down. ‘Oh, God. Sophie, hello, I’m so sorry to scare you — we didn’t want to wake anyone — it’s just… you know…’

The woman was briskly climbing the stairs. She was about fifty, with a hint of hippyishness: wearing a Greenpeace T-shirt under a thick purple cardigan, and supermarket jeans and sandals. Her stern face softened as she ascended.

Because Nina had started to cry.

It was probably an act, Adam reckoned, but if so it was a brilliant act. The grieving daughter of the beloved father. How could anyone object to Nina returning to her dead father’s apartment, no matter the unusual circumstances?

‘I know Rosalind is away, and this is a terrible intrusion,’ Nina sniffed. ‘I just wanted a few wee photos. Of my father. Please forgive me.’

Sophie Walker crooned with sympathy as she came over and hugged Nina. ‘Oh please. Nina. Don’t you worry, please sweetheart. I’m so awfully sorry about what happened — and of course I understand.’ The landlady flickered a glance at Adam.

Nina explained, her voice tremulous, ‘This is Adam. He’s… he’s a good friend who’s been helping me. Y’know, deal with this. But I know it’s late and this must appear crazy.’

‘I lost my own father last year, I entirely understand, it’s such a terrible thing — it always hits you more than you expect. The only reason I was so paranoid is because of the break-in. Before. But you know about that.’

Nina lifted her face. And gently detached herself from the hug. ‘Yes. He told me, of course. Were you frightened?’

‘Not me, no! But he was so upset. You know they took all his notebooks, don’t you? His precious notebooks from his trip.’

‘Yes.’

‘But why did he refuse to go the police? Very odd. And then of course that man — the argument — anyway that’s why I’m so paranoid.’

‘Which argument? There were lots, Sophie. His mood swings at the end.’

‘In the flat, a few days later. With the American. I heard the voices.’

Adam watched the two women, bewildered, unable to gain a purchase on the conversation.

Nina sighed. ‘Was he really that upset?’

‘Oh I think so. Oh yes, he was very unsettled. First a break-in, then the arguments. A colleague perhaps? Anyway.’ The woman hugged her arms around herself, her purple cardigan tight around her chest. ‘Look at me, this is not the time for chatter. I’m so sorry for everything Nina. If you ever want to… you know… just call. I’ve been through it. You have to give yourself space, let yourself grieve.’ She gave Adam another glance, this time entirely unsuspicious. ‘It’s such a raw night, I’ll be going, and I’ll let you… get on with things. Goodbye. And call me!’

‘I will Sophie, I will. Thank you.’

The two women hugged again. Then Sophie Walker disappeared down the cold tenement stairs, heading for her ground-floor apartment. Without a word Nina, swivelled, turned the key in the lock, and she and Adam entered the flat.

It was very cold and truly dark inside, the apartment exuding a maudlin scent of beeswax polish. Adam flicked a hallway switch, which engulfed them with sudden light.

‘You never told me any of this. A break-in? An argument? Surely this is relevant?’

Nina’s reply was fierce: she turned and gazed at him with her green eyes wet and wide. ‘Because he never told me. Any of it.’