Blackstone's pursuits

In which the Earth moves … again

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Back to back like old school chums, we dressed ourselves in heavy sweaters, jeans and boots … Primavera seemed to have everything in that vast holdall.

I drove us down Holyrood Road and into the Queen’s Park, up the hill to the wee loch, where, thanks to the trippers, no ducks ever had it so good. The moon was long gone, but there was a hint of daybreak in the east as we set off up the steep slopes of Arthur’s seat, so that we could see the path well enough. Prim took the lead; gallantly, I thought, I allowed her to go ahead. It took me around three minutes to realise that she had mountain goat in her ancestry. Our conversation dried up as I saved my breath to keep up with her brisk pace. Up and up we climbed, scrambling hand and foot up the final stretch, until we came to the summit of the old volcano, to stand beside the Solstice cairn.

At our backs, the street lights of the Old Town shone softly, and the floodlit buildings stood out on the hill, with the Castle at its summit. Before us, as we looked east, recovering our breath, the day was beginning to assert itself. Around twenty miles away, we could see the outline of North Berwick Law, a slightly scaled-down version of the hill on which we stood. All down the Forth, in the mouth of the estuary, lighthouses still sent out their signature beams; on the great seagull’s head that was the Bass Rock, away across at Barns Ness in Fife and most distant of all on the Island of May.

I took out two Mars bars which I had secreted about my person, and handed one to my lady. ‘There y’are, Springtime. Our first breakfast together!’

She looked and laughed, ‘Did you make these at the same time you made those tuna rolls yesterday?’

‘Aye. I’m a dab hand. They’re not a patch on my Curlywurly though!’ See me, see sexual innuendo!

We looked eastward again and saw the line of light along the horizon deepen, and eat its way upward into the sky, diluting and beating back the darkness. Patches of morning mist lay in gullies along the plain between the Lammermuir Hills and the sea, moving and shifting very slowly, as they began to yield to the rising temperature.

‘It’s like being in an aeroplane, above the clouds,’ said Prim. ‘Do you do this often?’

I looked down at her, held in the circle of my arm, and I smiled. ‘Never done it in my life before. It’s been one of those things you think of doing, but never quite get round to. Tonight, this morning, whatever, I realise that I’ve been saving it to share with the right person.’

‘That’s very profound, for you, Osbert.’

‘Aye, but don’t worry, I’ll be back to normal soon.’

Around the Law, in the distance, the light began to intensify. We watched as it strengthened; we watched the rotation of the planet at the horizon dipped, revealing the great golden ball, and the day began. ‘D’you realise what’s happening, Primavera? The Earth’s moving for us!’

She squeezed me tight, almost crushing my ribs. ‘I was right, Blackstone. You’re a romantic to the core.’ She stood up on tiptoe and she kissed me, softly, her arms round my neck, my arms encircling her narrow waist. ‘D’you still fancy me, then, even in this gear?’ she asked.

‘Dressed from head to toe in a black bin-liner, I’d still fancy you,’ I said in a sudden outburst of total candour. Something welled up in my throat, and I realised it was a lump.

Suddenly there was a noise below us, a panting, scrambling noise. We looked down in surprise, to see the first of the morning joggers cresting the summit. She pulled herself on to the small flat peak and fell face-first against the cairn, gasping.

‘Morning,’ said I.

The woman looked round. ‘Christ, you’re early,’ she spluttered.

‘Oh, I’m sorry to disappoint you, Miss,’ I said. ‘I’m not him. He’s got a beard, and he wears a dress. You never know though, if you wait long enough, this is the sort of place where he might turn up. More likely it’ll be in Glasgow, though. He’s more needed there.

‘Come Magdalene,’ I said, tugging Prim’s waist, and wincing as she nipped my bum to shut me up. ‘We’d best get back down.

‘So long,’ I said to the speechless, knackered jogger. ‘Enjoy the morning, it’s worth the effort.’

We picked our way down the almost sheer path from the summit, on to the gentler, but still steep descent. Two more runners were starting out from the road below. As we walked hand in hand, more relaxed than on the ascent, a flight of swans made their way slowly and clumsily across the sky, on their way to St Margaret’s Loch and another hard day’s work, posing for tourist photographers and gobbling stale breadcrumbs.

‘They’re not very good at flying, are they,’ said Prim.

‘Thank the Lord for that. They’re good in the water and aggressive on land. If they were air aces as well the CIA would be training them as operatives!’

As we walked on down the path, a piece of the day before came back into my mind. ‘Prim, that bottle in the kitchen. Prozac. Why should Dawn be on the happy pills?’

She looked up at me anxiously. ‘I don’t know. It came as a shock to me. Dawn’s always been moody, very up one minute, very down the next. Maybe, with me being away, there’s been no-one to help her through the down bits.’

‘Not even Willie Kane?’

‘Seems not.’

There were three more parked cars when we reached the roadway, one per jogger, I assumed. We drove around the south side of the great hill, until the Old Town stretched before us again, blinking itself awake. I parked and we walked up to the High Street, to pick up the makings of a real breakfast from Ali’s.

The turbanned one was on duty early as always. If there are people there and pennies to be taken in, Ali will take them. ‘Hullaw ther, Ozzie,’ he bellowed. I’ve never been quite sure whether Ali accentuates his Scots accent. ‘Hullaw tae you, hen,’ he added, catching sight of Prim.

‘Ali, this is Miss Phillips. Remember her and don’t give her any of your past sell-by stuff.

‘See him, love,’ I said, pointing to the grinning Asiatic. ‘This one is Edinburgh’s cheekiest grocer. Ali thinks customer relations means … No. On second thoughts I don’t think I’ll tell you that!’

Ali’s one of my best pals. He and I, and eight other nutters, play five-a-side football together at Meadowbank Stadium, every Tuesday evening in life. We arrange our lives around our weekly session, which, like most informal football clubs, is simply on excuse for a few bevvies.

Ali’s at his best as a defender. Me, I see myself as a cultured midfielder, in the Jim Baxter mould. The truth is, the Great Jim and I have one thing in common. We’re both Fifers; that’s it. Where he could have opened a combination lock with his left foot, mine is purely for standing on. The other one isn’t up to much either, except that in our team, I am the acknowledged master of the toe-poke, a distinctive way of shooting, stiff-ankled, with great power and accuracy. The toe-poke is derided by all serious footballers, and brings me much scorn, but usually from opponents, as they pick the ball out of their net.

That morning, instead of a neat through ball, Ali passed me bacon, eggs, rolls, bread, orange juice, honey, milk and, on a ‘Please,’ from Primavera, square, spicy, sliced Lome sausage. Continentals look down on the British as sausage-makers. Their idea of sausage is something to be sliced razor thin, something that looks as if it came out of an animal, rather than being made from it. Give me German, French, Italian or Spaniard, and let me confront any one with a square slice of Ali’s Scottish sausage, grilled, in a white crusty roll. That would put the buggers in their place.

We ate ours with HP sauce for extra body, washing them down with orange juice. Then we showered and dressed for the day. I suggested showering together to save energy, but Prim offered me a pound coin for the meter.

Afterwards, we sat upstairs on the sofa in the loft, Primavera in my dressing gown and me in a sort of towelling kilt thing with a Velcro fastening that an ex had given me one Christmas and which I found buried in a heap at the foot of the wardrobe. The doors were open, and Wallace lay somnolent on the terrace, looking back at us, occasionally and disdainfully. Wallace lives for three things, sunshine, sleep and sustenance. The last of these takes many forms, most of them crunchy.

On our first morning together we drank honey-sweetened tea, settling into our new situation. I punched her shoulder lightly. ‘Hey, Springtime. If I get that job we were talking about how about bringing the rest of your stuff down here?’

She looked at me, seriously for once, just a bit guarded. My stomach twitched.

‘It’s fine where it is just now. First things first. I’ve been putting off the evil hour, but I’ve got to find out what’s happened to my sister.

‘I don’t believe for a second that Dawn killed that poor wee man; but she has disappeared. Before we think about what we do with that fiver, I’ve got to know where Dawn is, and to be sure she’s all right. Oz, you’re the detective. I need your help.’

I squeezed her hand. ‘I told you love, I’m an enquiry agent, not a private eye. Different jobs, different people. But for you and Dawn, I’ll help all I can.’

I sat silent for a while, trying to think not just about facts, but about the conclusions which they suggest. All my working life, I’ve trained myself not to use my imagination, or to encourage in any way embroidery by witnesses. All of a sudden I found that putting my mind to work, as well as my listening, interviewing and literacy skills, was a stimulating prospect.

‘Okay then. What we have to do is to think of the options, and discount them if we can.

‘One, and let me finish. Are you wrong, and did Dawn bump off Mighty Mouse? Did she encourage him to embezzle the money, and set up the bank account, with the intention of killing him when the time came?’ Prim frowned at me, and shook her head.

‘Think of how we found Kane. He died having sex, or at the very least in an aroused state. The police lab will know by now which it was. Whichever, he was Dawn’s lover, so that seems to put her at the scene. Did she get him excited, get on top of him and at the right moment produce that knife from under the bedclothes and summon up the strength to shove it up under his chin? That’s Option One.’

‘And I don’t believe it, not for one bloody minute!’ said Prim, vehemently.

I shrugged my shoulders. ‘I don’t either, but it’s the easy option, and that’s the one the police will go for, unless we can show them different.

‘Option Two. Dawn has another man, an accomplice. They found Kane, set him up by the oldest means known to mankind, then the other bloke killed him. That paints a nasty picture, and I don’t buy that either, but again, when they know the whole story, the police would. They could even find a second suspect without too much trouble.’

She looked at me, puzzled. ‘Who?’

‘Raymond Archer. He knew everything about that firm. He could have done everything that he told me Kane did, if he’d had Dawn to help him. Sending me along to find the body could just have been part of it.’

‘Okay,’ said Primavera. ‘So what’s Option Three?’

‘Someone else knows about the fraud, and about the bank account. He breaks into the flat, and kills Kane. He tried to make Dawn give him the fiver, but she persuades him she doesn’t know where it is. He leaves and takes her with him.

‘Again, that someone else could just be Archer.’

I squeezed her hand again and turned her face towards me. ‘Those are all the possibilities I can see. I prefer the third one, for a very good reason. If either one or two was right, the banknote wouldn’t still have been there for the police to find and you to pick up. My best guess is that Dawn’s been taken, and that she’s safe. Without her, the guy has a slim chance of getting his hands on that fiver.’

She looked me in the eye, earnestly. ‘Thanks Oz, but there is a fourth choice. Maybe Dawn wasn’t there at all. Maybe the story I spun the police was true. Maybe it was someone else.’

‘Yes, Prim, and maybe Willie Kane, the poor, innocent, browbeaten, middle-aged, infatuated stockbroker with the wee body and the huge cock, wasn’t just two-timing his wife, but your sister as well, in your flat. Because he sure was diddling her. She wrote and told you all about him. Nijinsky, remember?’ That was what I thought. But what I said was, ‘Okay love, let’s check that out. She was with a theatre company, yes?’

She looked at me gratefully. ‘Yes, the Lyceum, usually.’

‘Right, we’ll go there this morning. I’ve got a couple of quick interviews. I can do them both by ten-thirty, and type them up later, after we’ve been to the theatre and after we give our statements to Dylan.

‘Meantime, let’s see what the papers say.’ We had picked up a Scotsman and a Daily Record at Ali’s. With little to go on, each paper gave the story inside-page treatment, reporting that the police were still trying to identify a man found stabbed to death in a flat in Ebeneezer Street. He was described as around forty, portly, and around five feet four inches in height.

It struck me, idly, that if we handed the fiver to Archer, and sold our story to the Record, we would make more than the ten per cent cut on offer. It came to me also, forcefully, through the enshrouding mist of love, that as well we would stand to do at least six months each for wasting police time, withholding information, stealing evidence, and anything else the Clever Bastards chose to chuck at us.

I gulped, and looked down at Prim, her head resting happily against my chest, her hand lying innocently on the outside of my thigh. I decided that I would keep the dangers of our tightrope walk across the chasm of uncertainty strictly to myself.

‘The things you do for love, Oz,’ I whispered. She heard me and smiled up, quizzically. As she did, her hand moved fractionally on my thigh. I stood up quickly, before she found out, before she was ready, that it’s true what they say about us Scots guys, even when our kilts are made of towelling.