Naming the Bones

Chapter Seventeen

IT WAS A while since Murray had driven. The winding road round Loch Lomond was testing and he arrived in Oban with a sense of relief. The car windscreen started to spot with rain as he drove down into the town. There was a glimpse of sunlight behind the wind-harried clouds moving above the sea, but he knew from experience that it was no guarantee blue skies would follow.

Murray followed the signs for the ferry terminus, then found the Lismore dock and parked at the end of the short queue of waiting vehicles on the quayside. The boat was due in fifteen minutes, but there was no sign of it on the grey waters beyond. He turned off the engine, closed his eyes and tried to empty his mind.

He was woken by the lorry in front rumbling into life. The small ferry had docked and the traffic from the island disembarked. Murray turned the key in his ignition, waiting until the lorry driver had reversed the large vehicle laden with building supplies up a tiny ramp and onto the deck. He edged his own car slowly backwards. The ferryman raised his hand in the rear-view mirror and the engine stalled. Murray scrolled the window down as the man came towards him, his face stern.

‘There’s another sailing at four.’

Murray looked down at the ferry. There were two cars, the building lorry and a post van already sitting on its deck. An empty spot seemed to beckon from beside the van.

‘What about the space on the right?’

The ferryman adjusted his cap. ‘Four o’clock.’ He walked back down the slipway and onto the deck. Murray watched as the ramp was raised and the boat chugged surely out to sea.

An old man standing smoking by the quayside flicked his dout into the sea, strolled over and leaned companionably against the car roof.

‘You’d never mistake him for a sunbeam, eh?’

Murray felt his face warm.

‘What’s his problem?’

‘If you’re enquiring about his temperament, I’d say an undemonstrative father combined with overexposure to the United Free Church and a lack of serotonin. But if you’re asking why he didn’t let you board, my guess would be the building lorry brought them up to weight. Away over to the ticket office and get booked on the four o’clock. The island’s not going anywhere.’

The stranger slapped the car roof and walked on.

The booking clerk grinned cheerily when he asked for a ticket to Lismore.

‘Tired of life?’

Murray tried to return his smile, but the clerk grew suddenly serious and issued the ticket without further banter.

There were five hours to kill. He phoned the tourist board and booked himself into a B&B on the island, then abandoned the car in the long-term car park and took a walk along the front. All the seagulls hadn’t relocated to Glasgow to live off abandoned Chinese carry-outs and dead rats after all. Their country cousins ack-acked machine-gun rattles across the bay as they circled the fishing boats, hovering down from time to time to pick at delicacies the fishermen had eschewed. The scent of brine was sharp in his nostrils and beneath it a bitter smell of decaying seaweed. There was a cold wind blowing in from the sea, carrying a fine spray that might have been rain or spume, as if underlining his ill-preparedness.

Murray went into an outdoors shop and bought a woollen hat, a waterproof jacket, three tartan shirts in a warm, fuzzy fabric, three pairs of heavy socks and a pair of walking boots the salesman claimed would outlive them both. He changed in the shop’s tiny dressing room and regarded himself in the mirror. He looked like an older, more leisured version of himself; or maybe a down-and-out, scrubbed up by social services and equipped for a few more months of pavement life.

The season must surely have been drawing to a close, but the streets were busy with tourists drawn to the town from the outlying countryside, fresh fodder for the Clan Kitchen and the Edinburgh Woollen Mill. He passed a middle-aged couple trailing a pair of disconsolate teenage boys. He and Jack had come here with their father years ago, on their way to somewhere else. He couldn’t remember much about it.

He went into a café that smelt of cheap air-freshener infused with accents of hot lard and Sarson’s vinegar. The room was homely but shabby, as if the proprietor had rejected trade fittings in favour of domestic furnishings not up to the job. The walls were papered with stripes and fleur-de-lis, divided by a floral border, the carpet decorated in a pattern of autumn leaves, not busy enough to camouflage spills and stains. A splotch of something that might have been lentil soup had crusted over the handwritten menu, as if illustrating the quality of the fare on offer. After a while an elderly waitress appeared and Murray ordered fish and chips and a cup of tea.

He was wondering whether his laptop was safe in the boot of the car or if he should nip back and collect it, when his phone rang. Lyn’s name flashed on the display.

The waitress placed his cutlery and a plate of bread spread with margarine in front of him.

‘Are you not going to answer that?’

Murray wanted to tell her to mind her own business, but anecdotes from students with part-time waiting jobs had taught him never to piss-off someone with access to his food.

‘I’ll call back later.’

She went over to the counter and returned with his tea.

‘Ignoring it won’t make things better.’

He took a bite of the tasteless bread, wondering if everyone in Oban considered themselves equipped to advise strangers. The phone burred back into life, Lyn’s name flashing again, like a warning signal on its tiny screen.

He sighed and pressed Talk.

‘Murray?’

‘Hi. Everything okay?’

‘Yes.’ Lyn’s voice was wary. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘You don’t normally call me.’

‘I guess not.’ She didn’t sound convinced. ‘I was phoning to check if you’d seen Jack.’

He thought about lying, but the truth seemed easier, up to a point.

‘Briefly, before his lecture.’

‘So you’re talking?’

‘Not really.’

‘You’ll have to make it up sometime.’

‘Maybe.’

Silence hung on the line. She said, ‘He didn’t come home last night.’

Murray internally cursed his brother for being such a bastard, and himself for answering the call.

‘He probably ran into some mates and went for a drink. You know Jack.’

‘He’s a workaholic. He doesn’t have any mates.’

Murray had the urge to tell Lyn that she was wrong, his brother had one, very special, old friend. But instead he said, ‘Either way, he’s a big boy. I’m sure he’ll turn up.’

‘I’m worried. Your dad’s car’s gone. It was parked outside when I started shift last night.’

‘Ah.’ He hadn’t meant to frighten her, only to get back at his brother. ‘I took it.’

‘Well seen you’re related, you’re as bad as each other. Does Jack know?’

‘He will, when you tell him.’

‘You tell him.’ The relief that had sounded in her voice at the news of the car was hardening into anger. ‘I’ve been up all night at the hostel. I don’t think I could manage any more drama. Where are you, anyway?’

‘Oban.’

‘Of course, the gateway to the islands.’

‘Armpit of the universe.’

‘Harsh.’

‘You’re telling me.’

The waitress squeezed his shoulder as she slid his order in front of him.

Lyn said, ‘It sounds noisy there.’

‘Just my lunch arriving.’ The fish and chips steamed fragrantly on the plate before him, but something in her voice made him say, ‘I’m not really hungry, just killing time.’

‘You need to eat.’

He wondered why women wanted either to look after him, or fuck him then kick him out the door. There was a time when he could have asked Lyn.

‘I wanted to ask you something. Did you ever come across an old guy with an amazing scar at your drop-in centre?’

‘Does the Pope shit in the woods?’

It was an old joke and he laughed to show her that nothing had changed, though he suspected they both knew it had.

‘I’ve got a particular one in mind. Bobby Robb. He had a Mr Happy smile carved across one side of his face.’

‘Glasgow smiles better.’ This time neither of them laughed. ‘The name doesn’t mean anything to me, but then a lot of them don’t go by their given name. I could ask around, if you want.’

‘I’d appreciate it.’

‘On one condition.’

‘What?’

He thought it must be something to do with his brother. The waitress glanced in his direction, as if alerted to potential trouble by the wariness in his voice. Lyn said, ‘You remember Frankie?’

Murray smiled, relieved, and saw the waitress resume her conversation with the fish-fryer. He dropped his voice.

‘Lewis Hamilton in a wheelchair?’

‘Yes. Frank’s really trying to sort himself out. He’s hoping to do an access course at Telford College, then apply for uni.’

‘That’s beyond my powers.’

‘I’m not stupid, Murray.’ The impatience was back. ‘I’m not asking you to shoo him in, I just meant you could maybe talk to him, tell him how to go about things. Frankie’s at a crossroads. He wants to change his life, but it’d still be easier for him to slide back into old ways. If he does, he’ll be writing his own death sentence.’

Murray doubted Frankie’s educational urges were anything more than a ruse to ease Lyn into his orthopaedic bed, but he put a smile into his voice.

‘How can I refuse? Let’s make a date when I get back.’

‘Thanks, Murray.’ Lyn had regained her usual warmth. He wondered if she would ever want to see him again, after Jack had told her his news. She asked, ‘So tell me about your mystery man.’

‘There’s not much to go on. He was an associate of Archie’s, which suggests he was around the fringes of the Edinburgh literary scene in the seventies. He left town for quite a while and only came back recently. He might also have been known as Crippen.’

Lyn gave a small snort of amusement.

‘Crippens are like Jims and Joes in my business, ten a penny. Do you want to interview him for your book?’

‘Yes, but I’m not willing to travel the distance.’

‘So you know where he is?’

‘Not exactly. He’s recently deceased.’

‘That’s not funny, Murray. I’ve been phoning the hospitals all morning looking for your brother.’

He said, ‘You’re too good for him.’ And meant it, but he promised to get in touch if Jack rang. He reckoned it wasn’t a pledge he’d be forced to keep.

Murray hung up and put a chip into his mouth. It was cold and tasted of the cheap fat it had been cooked in. He pushed the plate aside.

He’d emailed Audrey Garrett the photo he’d snapped of Bobby Robb’s lone mourner late the previous night; now he found her number and pressed Call. The line rang out, and then Audrey’s voice said, Hi, you’ve reached the answering service of Audrey and Lewis. We’re having too much fun to come to the phone right now, but leave a message after the beep and . .‘Hi!’

She sounded out of breath and Murray wondered if she had been expecting a call. The thought made him awkward and he stuttered slightly as he spoke.

‘Hi, Audrey, sorry to interrupt you. It’s Murray Watson here.’

‘Ah, yes, Murray.’ There was no trace of antipodean accent in her telephone voice, but he thought he could detect a note of caution beneath her clear tones.

‘I was wondering if you got my email?’

‘Hang on.’

He heard the sound of her feet against the bare floorboards and pictured her walking through the chaotic sitting room to the tranquillity of her office. He asked, ‘How are you?’ but perhaps the phone was away from her ear, because she made no reply. Instead the receiver clunked onto a hard surface and he heard the singsong jingle as the computer came to life.

‘Right.’ Audrey picked up the phone. ‘I’ve got it in front of me.’ She read his message out loud. ‘“Dear Audrey, this may seem like an odd request, but I have attached a rather poor photograph of a woman I think may be Christie Graves to this message. Would you mind having a look and letting me know if it’s her, please? I’m going to be on the road for a while, so will give you a call sometime over the next couple of days. Best wishes, Murray Watson.” This is all rather cloak and dagger.’

‘I suppose it is.’

There was another pause. In his mind’s eye he saw Audrey at her desk, dressed in the same casual clothes she’d worn the evening they met. Then she came back on the line, her voice brisk and the vision was dispelled.

‘Well, I don’t think David Bailey has anything to worry about.’

‘Photography isn’t one of my talents.’

It could have been a cue for Audrey to mention what his talents included, but her voice remained businesslike.

‘Yes, that’s her. Where was it taken?’

‘The funeral of one of Archie’s old friends.’

‘Another funeral? She seems to make a habit of them.’

‘I guess people begin to at her age.’

‘Perhaps. Why didn’t you approach her?’

‘I should have, but I wasn’t sure if I’d got the right person, and it didn’t seem like the ideal moment.’

The excuse sounded lame to his ears, but Audrey said, ‘No, I can see that.’

Encouraged, he asked, ‘How’s Lewis?’

The memory of the small boy’s stare had stayed with him. But perhaps Audrey thought he was trying to ingratiate himself, because her response was cool.

‘Fine. We were just heading out.’

He wanted to ask where they were going, wanted her to ask him why he was on the road, but instead said, ‘I won’t keep you then.’

Her goodbye sounded final.

Murray sat for a moment, holding the still-warm mobile phone in his hand, then pulled his plate towards him and splattered it with tomato ketchup. He’d forgotten to shake the bottle and a clear liquid that put him in mind of blood plasma ran onto his food before the red stuff dripped out. He dunked a chip in it anyway and put it in his mouth. The taste of sugar and cold potato made him want to spit. He swallowed it down and pushed the plate aside, just as the waitress placed his bill on the table.

She looked at his uneaten meal.

‘What was wrong with it?’

‘Nothing, I let it get cold.’

Murray busied himself with his wallet, but perhaps his face betrayed him yet again, because the woman put her hand back on his shoulder and gave it another squeeze.

‘Plenty more fish in the sea.’ She looked at the untouched battered cod on his plate and laughed, ‘It’s true. No quota on how many you can catch in your net either’. She caught the eye of the fish-fryer and went lyrical for his benefit. ‘It’s full of promise for a lad like you. Just you remember that.’

Chapter Eighteen

THE WOMEN IN the tourist board had told him his B&B was about twenty minutes from Achnacroish pier, where the ferry docked. Murray drove slowly along the one-track road that climbed away from the bay, the sea receding in the rear-view mirror as he travelled inland, the mountains ahead in the distance, getting no closer.

The crossing had been smooth, but a faint nausea stirred in the depths of his stomach, as if his own tides had been disturbed. The sky was a palate of grey, iron smudges shifting against gunmetal. The wind was getting up, but there was still a possibility the grey skies might yet blow beyond the island, taking their cargo of rain with them.

Sheep grazed stoically in the fields beyond, their fleeces grey and shit-stained, ruffled by the same wind that bent the tall grasses edging the roadside. He’d left the village behind at the pier, but now and again he would pass a cottage built out of stone as grey and uncompromising as the sky. He slowed to take a corner and saw two children staring at him, hand in hand from the edge of the road, their hair matted, faces bronzed by sun and dirt. They looked like the kind of feral kids that might commune with faeries, and he was almost surprised to notice their stout Wellington boots. Murray raised a hand in hallo and was met with incurious stares.

A few drops of rain smeared the windscreen, but there was no need for the wipers yet. The radio had died, the signal left behind on the mainland. He turned on the CD player and Johnny Cash croaked into ‘I’ve Been Everywhere’.

Murray had a sudden memory of his father singing the song in the kitchen one evening as he dried the dishes, his father’s inflections the same as Cash’s, but his words slower, his voice leaving the tune behind on his adapted chorus, I’ve been to Fraserburgh, Peterburgh, Bridge of Weir, very queer. Dunoon, whit a toon, Aberdeen where folks are mean. I’ve been everywhere, I’ve been everywhere.

Murray turned the music off and, as if on cue, saw the sign for his B&B swinging bleakly at the edge of the road.

He offered to pay in advance, but Mrs Dunn the landlady laughed.

‘It’s all right, son, I trust you. Anyway, you’d not get far if you tried to do a runner. Peter wouldn’t let you on the ferry.’

She was a pensioner of a type he thought HRT and aqua-aerobics had rendered redundant: broad-beamed, big-busted and solid-corseted, dressed in a heather-coloured two-piece too stiff to be comfortable. Her hair looked freshly set, a tinge of blue livening the pewter. He hoped it hadn’t been done for his benefit. He felt as morose as Peter, the sullen ferryman, guardian of the island.

Mrs Dunn got him to sign the visitors’ book, and then started up the small staircase.

‘Your room’s up here.’

He followed her to the tiny landing, careful not to knock his rucksack against the photographs of long-grown-up children lining the walls. The smell of damp reminded him of his father’s house towards the end, before he and Jack had agreed a care home was the only option.

‘You’re on the left. The bathroom’s in the middle and I’m on the right.’

He had a vague sense that he should say something to assure her he was no madman come from the mainland with mayhem and pensioner murder on his mind. But the old lady was ahead of him, pushing open the bedroom door as if there was nothing left to be feared in the world.

The little room was suffused with the sickly glow of a Disney sunset, its small twin beds draped in shiny satin spreads that almost, but not quite, matched the princess-pink walls, the rosebud-sprigged carpet and blushing curtains. A portable TV inscribed with a Barbie logo sat in one corner next to a towel rail decked with rosy towels.

‘Well?’

It took Murray a second to realise she was awaiting his verdict. He tried to put some warmth into his voice.

‘Very nice, thanks.’

Mrs Dunn nodded gravely, as if agreeing with him on an important point of scripture, and then asked, ‘What time do you want your dinner?’

The journey still sat uneasily in his stomach.

‘Don’t go to any trouble, I’ll get something in the town.’

The old woman snorted.

‘There’s no town, son. No café, no pub, come to that. It’s my cooking or nothing.’

The small room seemed to do a quick pulse as the house took an inward breath, closing around him. He drew in the rose-tinted air, silently blessing the impulse that had sent him into an Oban off-licence for a bottle of whisky.

‘What about seven?’

‘Seven’s fine.’

Murray said, ‘I’ll look forward to it.’

But he mustn’t have sounded convincing because Mrs Dunn added, ‘Don’t worry. It’s a while since I poisoned anyone’, and shut the door smartly behind her.

Murray sat on the bed nearest the door, wondering again at his talent for alienating every woman he met. Maybe it was losing their mother early that had done it, though Jack had always managed to use the motherless-boy stuff to good effect.

Murray slid his computer from his rucksack and switched it on, vaguely hoping a wireless signal would appear on the screen. It didn’t.

No café, no pub.

The pink room took another inward pulse. He’d imagined a tourist brochure cliché, a leather armchair pulled close to a crackling fire, a crystal glass of malt in easy reach as he worked on his opus.

The colour of the room was surely irrelevant. He needed to make progress, to start writing, continue with the research, sure, but move on to the text, begin ordering his thoughts before they spiralled out of reach.

He still knew next to nothing about Archie’s childhood, had got ensnared instead in the episodes leading to his death. He could begin with the end, of course; have the poet’s head dip beneath the waves, the fronds of his long hair floating free in the water, air bubbles nestling in his beard, lips parting as he welcomed oncoming peace.

Murray took off his shoes and went into the small bathroom on the landing. He had to rid himself of this Hollywood vision. Drowning would be no better than other deaths. Painful and nasty, with shit and vomit clouding the last moments, a desperate clinging to a life already lost.

The smell of damp was more intense here. The shower was hemmed in a tiny, plastic cubicle sealed with a concertina door. He wondered if it leaked, wondered if he would be able to wash in the small space without breaking anything. The thought made him realise he’d forgotten to pack any soap. Maybe there was a local shop where he could buy some (he hoped to God it was licensed), otherwise he’d be forced to lather himself from the same bar that had slid around his host’s aged body. The disgust the thought brought with it made him feel guilty and he washed his face in the sink, avoiding his reflection in the mirror.

Back in his room he unpacked the box folder that held his notes. Here were his analyses of Lunan’s poems (these, at least, he could be confident of), some notes on suicides he’d managed to glean from Dr Garrett’s research, his interviews with Audrey, Meikle and Professor James, each neatly transcribed and assigned its own plastic envelope. He laid them across the spare bed, mourning the bedroom’s lack of a desk.

So far his work had amounted to little. Maybe Fergus Baine had been right and he should limit himself to a discussion of the poetry, rather than the man. After all, that was what counted, wasn’t it?

He picked James’s folder from the pile. In retrospect, he was surprised the professor hadn’t raised the same objections as Fergus. Murray remembered James being close to fanatical on the importance of divorcing writers’ lives from their work.

Reductive, simplistic, crude and lacking in analysis!

He could still conjure the sound of ripping paper that had shocked the tutorial room as James tore a student’s essay concentrating on Milton’s blindness to the detriment of his poetry both verbally and physically to shreds. But the projected biography of Lunan had raised no barbed comments. Despite the ready excuses offered by retirement and failing health, James had welcomed Murray, granted him hours from the depleted bank of time reserved for his own researches. The professor might simply have changed his opinion on the significance artists’ lives had on their art, or been motivated by a sense of collegiate duty; but holding the folder in his hand, Murray was struck again by a suspicion that the old man hadn’t been as forthcoming as he might have.

Maybe he had simply asked the wrong questions. There was no obligation to help those too stupid or lazy to help themselves, and James had always been impatient of anyone whose standards or intelligence didn’t match his own. The snowstorm of tattered pages he’d scattered into the bin before the author of the Milton essay’s less-than-dry eyes had shown that.

Murray slid the transcript from its folder, feeling again a sense of something unspoken. He took his pencil and put a star next to something James had said: those of us who were left could have served his poetry better.

Perhaps it was guilt at an unfulfilled obligation to posterity that had made the old man reluctant to explore the intersection of his and Archie’s past — especially now he was facing his own death, the prospect of his own un-assured legacy.

Murray drew a squiggle through the star. It was important not to give too much weight to words spoken casually.

You have to remember it was a long time ago, and we were privileged to be at the birth of many remarkable pieces of work.

The professor was realistic. He knew the limitations of individuals against the weight of literature and history. He thought back to James’s overstuffed, abortively feminine room and groaned. The old man’s health might be failing, but at least he had space to think and write. Murray lay back on the bed, put the professor’s interview over his face and closed his eyes.

He was woken by the landlady’s sharpening voice at the door.

‘Mr Watson, your dinner’s waiting.’

Murray sat up, like Dracula risen from the dead.

He would phone James and ask if he knew Bobby Robb, and perhaps while he was answering that question, the questions unasked would also slip into place.

There was no phone signal to be had in his room, or at the melamine dining table where his dinner waited, a slight skin forming over the brown stuff he supposed was gravy. It was a temptation to take his mobile straight out into the evening, but manners prevailed and he managed to work his way through a once-frozen chicken pie, tinned carrots and potatoes followed by half a tin of peaches topped with cream from a can. It was the best meal he’d had in a while, and he said so to Mrs Dunn, before pulling on his new waterproof jacket and stepping out into the bluster of the fading day.

Murray turned his back on the cottage and continued along the road that had brought him there. The bars on his phone remained stubbornly absent. He saw a sign marked Broch, and took the right turn its arrow instructed, into a stony road less finished than the last. It felt good to have a destination, even though he wasn’t sure what a broch was.

Professor James had known Lunan the man and the poet. He had been there at the birth of his sole collection, and though he’d not been present when the poet died, he had been close enough to go to the wake. If Christie insisted on keeping her silence, James might turn out to be the closest approximation of an eye witness available.

A small house appeared on his right, a square of scrubby grass in front of it, fenced off against the sheep. A toy tractor lay abandoned on its side beside the gate. Murray supposed that if you could stand the weather, this might not be such a bad place to raise a family. He’d assumed Archie and Christie were after a new centre for poetry and debauch, but perhaps they’d been hoping to put all that behind them, chasing ‘the good life’ on some hippy self-sufficiency kick. After all, for Lunan it had been some kind of a coming home.

The light was beginning to fade. He glanced at his phone. If he didn’t get a signal soon he would walk back to the car, drive down to the pier and try there.

Years ago, when he was working on his PhD, he’d gone out with a girl who studied archaeology. Angela. He’d fallen for her pale skin and red hair, would have been happy to spend all their free time together in bed, but their main recreation had been hill-walking to ancient sites. Angela had wanted to get engaged. He’d considered it, spent hours working out the pros and cons, and then, when the cons had won, broken up with her. He’d not seen Angela for years, hadn’t thought about her in a while. She was one of the crossroads in his life, a path he might have taken.

There was some sort of structure up on the rise beyond, or was it an outcrop of rocks? It was hard to be sure. He left the road and began to climb. The wind was mounting now, the ground soft beneath his feet.

As he got closer he could see that the structure was the remnants of a circular drystane dyke. Some sheep sheltering in its lea startled at his approach and rushed away with unwise haste, fat ladies running downhill in high heels. He halted and let them pass, the wind tearing at his face, feared that if he moved on he’d inadvertently round them over some unseen cliff.

Angela had probably told him what a broch was at some point. A fort, he supposed, or maybe a large tomb. He walked to where the wall had collapsed and peered into its centre, half-expecting to see the usual detritus that clogged lonely shelters: drained half-bottles of spirits, used condoms and dented beer cans. The interior dropped gently down into a slow dip, like a giant cauldron. Nothing except sheep shit sullied it.

Murray could feel the sense of being observed that had always infected him on his walks with Angela. ‘City-dwellers’ paranoia,’ she’d called it. But at least in the city someone would hear you scream. The sight of a few discarded johnnies would have been reassuring, a sign of life.

He looked back the way he had come. Now that he was at the top of the hill, he could see the day had reached the far side of dusk. The light was still with him, but he wasn’t sure how long it would last. It might be wiser to turn back while visibility was good, rather than risk a twisted ankle on the way down. Murray took his mobile from his pocket and was rewarded by three bars. He hunkered down in the shelter left by the sheep and found Professor James’s number.

He’d expected the phone to ring for a long time, but James answered on the second peal.

‘Ah, yes, I meant to ask if you would remember to pick up a packet of those fig biscuits, please, Helen. Iris likes them with her tea and I suspect the ones in the cupboard might be a little soft.’

Murray coughed, ‘I’m sorry to interrupt, Professor James. .’

‘Who is this?’

‘Murray. Dr Watson.’

He felt like an unsuspecting caller stumbling on a conversation on the party line, but the professor seemed unfazed.

‘I wondered when you would phone. Are you on your way round?’

‘No, I’m afraid not.’

‘I thought you were my daughter Helen.’

The old man sounder frailer than he had appeared the week before and a vague note that might have been confusion had entered his voice.

‘Would you like me to ring back later?’

‘No, best to get me while I’m still here.’

Murray knew better than to ask where the professor was going.

‘A name has come up. I wondered if it meant anything to you. Bobby Robb. He had a distinctive scar. .’

‘Yes, I knew him.’ James’s tone became firmer, as if he were on safe ground now the conversation had shifted to the past. ‘He wasn’t a regular, and when he did attend his work was derivative and confused.’

The professor’s manner was dismissive, as if Robb wasn’t worth discussing.

‘One of Archie Lunan’s friends said he blamed Robb for Archie’s premature death.’

‘I’m afraid that would be beyond my realm of knowledge.’

The statement was like a full-stop at the end of a sentence.

‘Was he close to Archie?’

‘His work wasn’t even in the same stratosphere.’

‘I meant emotionally.’

‘Dr Watson, are you in the habit of monitoring your students’ emotional entanglements?’

‘No.’

‘Then why might you think I would be?’

‘Professor James, I got the impression that you expected me to call at some point. Who did you think I was going to ask you about?’

The line went dead and for a moment Murray thought the professor was going to tell him to get back to him when he had completed his research. But then the old man sighed and said, ‘Your nemesis, of course. Professor Fergus Baine.’

‘My nemesis?’

‘I had a feeling you two were at odds.’

The wind blasted at Murray’s mobile phone. He wondered if Professor James could hear the sheep calling to each other in the background. They might be stupid, but at least they managed to live together in harmony.

‘Not as far as I’m aware.’

‘I must have misunderstood. Where are you? It sounds like you’re calling from inside the drum of a washing machine.’

‘I’m in Lismore. It’s a bit blowy, there’s not much cover.’

‘Have you seen Christie Graves?’

‘Not yet.’ The wind forced Murray to raise his voice. He already regretted walking up the hill instead of searching for a nice warm telephone box. ‘Why did you think I’d want to talk about Fergus?’

‘I thought your generation eschewed researchers, Dr Watson? Surely you don’t want me to do your job for you?’

Murray wondered if the old man was trying to provoke him away from the subject.

‘I’ve already spoken to Fergus about Lunan. He gave the impression they weren’t acquainted, though he did mention they’d met once, at a poetry reading. He said Archie was drunk.’

‘I’m afraid Professor Baine may have been rather economical with the truth. He and Lunan were well acquainted. They were both key parts of my little group.’

An ache nagged at his left leg. Murray shifted against the wall, unable to make sense of what James was telling him.

‘He never mentioned it.’

‘I’m surprised.’ James sounded anything but. ‘Maybe he chose to forget. Clever men are sometimes reluctant to remember fields in which they didn’t shine.’

‘Is there something you’re not telling me, professor?’

He could hear the old man’s smile gleaming across the miles that separated them.

‘Many things, Murray.’

It was the first time the professor had used his given name. Was it an invitation to press further, or simply a tease?

‘Something to do with Lunan?’

‘Why don’t you ask Baine? After all, you’re colleagues. It was a long time ago and what I heard may have been gossip.’

‘What did you hear?’

‘The front door, I think it must be Helen.’ There was a clunk as the receiver was dropped. Somewhere in the distance James said, ‘Did you get any of those biscuits that Iris is fond of?’ And more remote still came the indistinct tones of a female voice answering him.

Murray stood up and stretched. Day had slipped into night now and he would have to walk back in the dark. He held the mobile to his ear, hearing the faraway rattle of Professor James’s domestic life, distant as the sound of the sea heard through a shell. He was about to hang up when a woman’s voice said, ‘Hello? This is Helen Trend. With whom am I speaking?’

He hunkered down behind the shelter again, cupping his hand round the phone to protect his words from the wind.

‘Dr Murray Watson. I think Professor James may have forgotten he was talking to me.’

Professor James’s daughter was briskly cheerful.

‘In that case he’s been struck with sudden senility since yesterday. I’m afraid my father has just stepped out of the room. Nature calls rather frequently these days. You might be advised to ring back later, unless it’s anything I can help you with?’

‘I doubt it.’

‘So certain.’

Helen Trend’s voice assumed an unexpected flirtiness. Murray pictured a well-preserved fifty-year-old with buttery yellow hair. It amazed him that even here, on this inhospitable hillside, his mind could conjure an image worth fucking.

‘We were discussing his poetry circle, more specifically Professor Fergus Baine.’

The voice on the other end lowered an octave.

‘That’s a name I haven’t heard in an age. Why on earth were you discussing that rogue?’

‘I’m writing a biography of the poet Archie Lunan. According to your father, he and Professor Baine were associates.’

The woman laughed.

‘I wouldn’t pay too much attention to anything my father has to say about Fergus Baine, I’m afraid his name is mud in this house.’

‘Do you mind my asking why?’

There was a pause on the line. The sheep had stopped calling to each other, but the hillside was alive with noise. A shrill cry sounded from somewhere in the settling dusk and Murray pulled up the collar of his jacket. He remembered reading of some plan to reintroduce wolves to the Scottish Highlands, wondered if it had ever gone ahead. No, surely the sheep farmers would never allow it.

Helen Trend asked, ‘What institution did you say you were associated with?’

They both knew he hadn’t associated himself with any institution, but Murray didn’t bother to argue the point.

‘The University of Glasgow.’

‘I see.’ Once again there was the slow pause as if she were considering what to say. ‘I’d heard Fergus was back teaching there.’

‘He’s currently head of department.’

‘Yes, so my sources tell me. And you and my father were discussing him in relation to a book you’re writing about Archie Lunan?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did my father tell you?’

He had never been much of a card sharp, but instinct told Murray to conceal the fact James had told him nothing.

‘I’m not sure that I’m at liberty to discuss that.’

‘No?’ The flirtiness was gone now. ‘Then let me phrase my question in another way. Was it anything that might be construed as libellous?’

Despite the cold and the dread of the downward journey, he was suddenly enjoying himself.

‘I’d have to consult a lawyer before I could answer that question.’

‘I could recommend the services of my husband or two of my sons, but there might be a clash of interests.’

In Murray’s mind the soft, buttery hair shifted into Margaret Thatcher’s lacquered helmet. The conversation seemed to be escalating beyond his control.

‘Mrs Trend, I get the feeling I’ve inadvertently offended you. I can only apologise, though I’m not quite sure what I’ve done.’

‘No?’ The laugh returned, sharp against the wailing wind. ‘Let me make it clear then. If you were to print anything my father told you about Fergus Baine that could even be considered libellous, and therefore detrimental by proxy to my father’s reputation, I would have no hesitation in instructing my lawyers to begin a case against you, and remember Dr Watson, I get my legal counsel for free.’

‘I’ve got the deepest respect for your father. .’

His words were cut short by James’s voice on another extension.

‘This is a private telephone call, Helen, hang up, please. I’d prefer to talk with Dr Watson alone.’

‘I was just telling him that. .’

‘Hang up, Helen. I’ll be through shortly.’

Professor James’s voice had regained all of its old authority. Murray gave an involuntary cringe at the meekness of his daughter’s reply.

‘Yes, Dad. Sorry.’

There was a click and a moment that might have been silence, were it not for the wind racing across the hill. Then James said, ‘What did she tell you?’

This time Murray told the truth.

‘Nothing at all, except that she was concerned I might expose some disagreement you had with Fergus and dent your reputation. She was warning me off.’

‘My reputation has nothing to fear from Fergus.’ James sighed and Murray got a feeling that an opportunity had been lost. ‘How well do you know Professor Fergus Baine?’

‘Not well at all. He’s only been part of the department for three years. He came here from down south, met and married Rachel in what Mills and Boon would describe as a whirlwind romance.’ Murray tried to keep the bitterness from his voice. ‘Last year he was appointed head of English literature.’

‘Have you read any of his books?’

‘I glanced through his last couple.’

‘Of course, it’s only politic to at least take a glance at your colleagues’ work, even if you can’t stand them.’

‘What makes you think I can’t. .’

‘Don’t bother to bullshit me, Murray.’ The Americanism sounded strange in the professor’s mouth. ‘You’ve got as much love for him as I have. Admit it.’

Murray said, ‘We’ve never really seen eye to eye.’

The older man’s laugh sounded exasperated.

‘I imagine that is as much of an admission as I’m ever going to get. Did you know he published a slim volume of verse years ago?’

‘No.’

‘No reason why you should. It sank, pretty much without trace. It’s out of print now, but I think you’d find it well worth reading. Tell me where you’re staying and I’ll send you a copy.’

Murray felt like hurling his phone across the expanse of wind and dark. He’d lost control of the interview again, the old man turning it back to poetry, the work, not the life.

‘I’m not sure I’ll have the time. I need to concentrate my researches on Lunan and his circle.’

‘Fergus was part of his circle.’ The voice grew softer in his ear, becoming one with the wind and trembling grass. ‘Indulge me. Remember, I used to be a professor of English literature, I do know of what I speak.’

‘Once a professor, always a professor.’

‘They could put that on my gravestone.’ James grew serious. ‘Remember, Dr Watson. Some people never essentially change. In my opinion, Fergus Baine is one of them. Think of how he is now and that will tell you pretty much how he was back when Lunan and he were friends — and they were friends, whatever smoke Baine has tried to blow in your eyes.’

‘Will you tell me what the two of you fell out about?’

‘I can’t. It affects someone else, someone blameless. What I will say is that Fergus Baine was a prodigy of mine who abused his position. His move down south in 1978 wasn’t entirely voluntary. I gave him a reference for a post in England to get him out of the way, but if I had any power he wouldn’t be back in Scotland, working at my old university, and certainly not in the capacity he occupies.’

‘Where would he be?’

‘In Hell.’ The old man laughed. ‘Or still in the south of England. Tell me where you’re staying and I’ll ask Iris to send you a copy of his poetry tomorrow by first-class post. I promise you’ll find it interesting.’

Murray gave him the address of the B&B, as far as he remembered it, then said, ‘It was Bobby Robb that I really wanted to find out about.’

‘Bobby Robb was an ignorant fool.’

‘What makes you say that? The way he looked? Talked?’

‘Certainly not the way he looked, though God knows he looked like an idiot, but then most of them did. Long hair and beards, dressed like Gypsy Rose Lee strung about with bells and cockle shells. No, Bobby Robb was a mess, but he wasn’t the worst. It wasn’t the way he talked either. Robb wore his working-class roots on his sleeve, but I’ve met too many intelligent working men and too many idiot toffs to judge a man on his accent. It was Bobby Robb’s preoccupations that declared him stupid. He was interested in what has been rechristened as New Age. Occultism, astrology, all that superstitious nonsense the Elizabethans were fascinated with. Excusable in the sixteen hundreds, but astoundingly brainless in the twentieth century.’

‘Did Archie engage with it too?’

‘Archie could be foolish, but he wasn’t dense. I remember him making fun of Robb, calling him the sorcerer’s apprentice, but I never paid much attention. Back then a lot of people were fascinated by these things, encouraged by drugs, I suppose. They had amazing sensory and quasi-religious experiences that made them begin to think there were existences apart from this one.’

‘You were never tempted to try it for yourself?’

‘Try what?’

‘LSD, acid. A lot of educationalists got into it — turn on, tune in and drop out.’

‘I couldn’t drop out. I told you, my father was an engineer at Barr & Strouds, I had a good Presbyterian upbringing and a family to support. No, I was never tempted. I’m what they used to call a square — like you, Dr Watson. Anyway, I find the world we inhabit rather impressive. I also believe it’s the only one open to us. Why be in a rush to leave?’

Murray fell twice on the way down the hill, but the going wasn’t so bad once he reached the road. The moon was a wisp of itself, veiled by the same clouds that hid the stars. He used the light on his phone as a torch for a while, but then the notion that his progress might be monitored for miles around began to bother him, and so he pocketed it and let his eyes adjust to the gloom. The little house he had noticed on his journey out was in darkness now, the toy tractor still upturned in its garden. The rain came on as Murray had known it would. He kept his head down against the spray and upped his pace, not wanting one of the inhabitants to look out and be frightened by the sight of a stranger walking by so late, on such an inhospitable night.

Helen Trend had been palpably anxious about what her father might say. Her hate for Fergus Baine seemed to outstrip even the professor’s. Murray couldn’t imagine James taking departmental disputes home to share with his children over the dinner table. He weighed up a list of his academic contacts, hoping to identify someone who might know the manner of Fergus’s disgrace, thought about asking Rachel, and rejected the idea almost as it occurred.

The wind seemed to attack him from all sides, the rain swirling around him, blowing into his face, clouding his vision. Murray took his glasses off and wiped them, though he knew it was a useless gesture. He remembered Cressida smiling as she asked if he minded, her orange dress flaring as she’d cleaned his lenses, all the better to view Jack’s exhibition.

He thought about the Pictish men, or whoever they were, who had built the broch, imagined them tucked safe within its bounds, huddled together with their dogs and their livestock. They would have had more sense than to trudge through the dark and the wet. He wondered if Lunan had ever walked these paths at night, muddy and drenched to the skin, asking himself what the hell was going on.

Chapter Nineteen

MURRAY TOOK CHRISTIE’S first novel, Sacrifice, down to the dining room with him. He saw the landlady’s eyes on it as she placed his cooked breakfast on the table. Murray set the book aside, making a conscious effort not to rub his hands together with the joy of fried bacon, eggs and sausage materialising before him with no effort from himself.

‘That looks great.’

Mrs Dunn acknowledged his thanks with a nod. She went back into the kitchen, stepping neatly round a cat that had stationed itself in front of the electric heater glowing from the centre of the room, and returned with a pot of coffee and a round of toast.

‘There’s strawberry jam too. I made it myself, with strawberries from the garden.’

Murray was vaguely nervous of home-made produce, but he smiled and said, ‘That’ll be a treat.’ He shifted the book a little to make more space and nodded at the photo on the back cover. ‘I understand she’s a local.’

‘She lives here, yes.’

The woman put the jar of jam on the table and he started to slather his toast with it, hoping she’d kept the cat from the kitchen when she was making it.

‘What’s she like?’

Mrs Dunn was wearing a serviceable skirt topped by a blue jersey that might have been homemade a long time ago, or recently culled from a jumble sale. Protecting the ensemble was a pinny decorated with a map of the cathedrals of Scotland; Aberdeen and Fort William sanctifying her breasts, Glasgow her crotch. The old lady looked like the BBC drama department’s concept of an ideal Scottish housekeeper; Janet to his Dr Finlay. She stared at the book as if she’d never seen it before, her face unreadable.

‘She’s a little different from her photograph.’

Murray looked at the familiar airbrushed image. A soft, doe-eyed face framed by curtains of long hair, Christie in her twenties. The picture bore no relation to the ravaged woman he’d seen at Robb’s funeral.

‘I guess it was taken a while ago.’

The landlady laughed.

‘Before the flood.’

Murray poured himself a mug of coffee, relieved to see her smiling again

‘Are you not having one yourself?’

‘No, I’ll get mine after, once I’ve done the dishes.’ She must have realised he disliked the idea of her cleaning up after him because she added, ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got a machine.’

Murray took a bite of toast and jam. It was good and he said so. The cat blinked at him from its spot in front of the fire, as if letting him know it was onto his game.

‘What’s the cat called?’

‘Archie.’ Murray almost choked at the sound of the familiar name, but the landlady didn’t notice. She bent over and rubbed behind the beast’s ears. It narrowed its eyes and took the salute as its due. ‘He’s an old soldier, aren’t you, love?’ She straightened up. ‘Do you like cats?’

He had never had much to do with them.

‘Very intelligent creatures.’

‘They are that.’

The topic of their conversation stretched his hind legs and started to clean his tummy, working meticulously down towards his tail.

Murray stifled the urge to laugh.

‘So do you see her around the island much?’

‘Mrs Graves?’

He wondered if the title was a courtesy or a slight — a married woman ‘promoting’ another, all the better to underline her spinsterhood — but Mrs Dunn’s features had regained their impassiveness.

‘I couldn’t tell you the last time I saw Christie Graves.’

‘But she still lives here?’

Their moment of communion was gone. Mrs Dunn lifted his empty plate, not bothering to ask if he’d enjoyed his meal.

‘I expect so.’

She went back through to the kitchen, leaving him to his book and his coffee. He drank it quickly, aware of the old woman through the wall, waiting on him to leave. She must have heard his chair scrape against the lino as he got up to go to his room, because she returned, tray in hand, ready to clear the table.

‘Just one thing, Mr Watson.’

‘Yes?’

He gave her the smile he normally bestowed on the departmental secretaries when he had made some administrative screw-up.

‘If you’re going out walking, would you mind taking off your boots at the front door, please? You trailed mud all through the house when you got back last night.’

He apologised, remembering too late that his smile had never had much effect on the women who ran the English department either.

Murray had intended to spend the morning in his room writing up the previous night’s telephone conversation with Professor James, but he had just got started when Mrs Dunn knocked on his door and asked if she could get in to clean. He glanced guiltily at the mud stains on the carpet and told her he would go and explore the island.

This time he took the car and drove to the village shop. Half a dozen vehicles were parked outside, a few men in overalls stationed next to them passing the time of day. They glanced at Murray with enough lack of interest to suggest tourists weren’t unusual, or perhaps that they had heard of his presence and already got his measure.

Inside the shop smelt pleasantly of soap flakes. Murray was cheered to see ranks of wine bottles marshalled together on the shelves, next to whisky, vodka and a surprising variety of rum. Three young girls clustered around a computer set in a corner niche, adding something to a Facebook page. Their stares were more assessing, though no less dismissive, than the loitering men’s.

Murray browsed the postcard rack looking for one of the broch where he had sheltered the night before, but it was missing from the display. Instead he selected a couple of sea views, unsure who he could send them to. He put the cards on the counter and placed an Ordnance Survey map beside them.

‘Can anyone use the Internet?’

The shopkeeper had the kind of doughy look that men with indoor jobs who are confronted by manual workers every day seem to take on. He gave Murray a tense smile wrought from shyness.

‘A pound an hour, longest session thirty minutes if there’s a queue.’ He nodded at the huddle of teenagers. ‘They’ve been on at least an hour and a half. I can ask them to take a break if you’d like to use it now?’

‘No, thanks, just checking for future reference.’

The shop man slid Murray’s map and cards into a paper bag.

‘Over for the walking?’

‘Yes.’ He wasn’t sure why he was lying, except perhaps to make life easier. ‘I’m staying with Mrs Dunn.’

‘Ah, well, you’ll be comfortable enough there.’

The man’s smile faltered and Murray sensed another shopper behind him.

‘Aye, she’s taking good care of me.’

He shoved his purchases into his rucksack and made way for a man dressed in blue overalls with an Oban Times in his hand. It seemed that Murray had chosen the time of day when the island folk congregated. He had to press sideways to negotiate his way to the door. It swung wide just as he reached it and Christie Graves lurched awkwardly over the step. Murray stepped back to let her pass, saw her eyes glance over him, and realised he had been half-expecting her all morning.

Murray sat outside in the car with the Ordnance Survey map draped across the steering wheel. Christie nodded to a few of the people outside as she left the shop, a canvas bag in one hand, her stick in the other, but didn’t stop to pass the time of day. He raised his eyes from the scant roads and many tracks of Lismore, watching as she got into her red Cherokee, and pulled away. Then he counted to ten, and steered his dad’s car out from its space.

Christie drove faster than he dared, but Murray caught flashes of her on the turns and hilly rises of the road ahead. He hit the CD player and Johnny Cash gravelled into life, singing about lonesome prisons and trains that whistled as they went by. It was a song from their childhood. Murray wondered if Jack listened to the CD sometimes, or if it had nested in its tray since before their dad had stopped being able to drive.

The world beyond the car window had a bright, dewy aspect, as if the previous night’s storm had refreshed the countryside. The fields had lost their shit-stained look and taken on the cheerful air of a children’s storybook. Behind the drystane dykes and high wire fences sheep and cows cropped at grass green and even enough to be plastic. The few cottages he passed seemed shrewdly placed, their stone fronts and sloping roofs the perfect complement to neat gardens cordoned off from nature’s wilder reaches by the same artfully built walls that kept the livestock within their bounds. Some small birds swooped in front of his windscreen, their long, black tails wagging. Murray almost hit the brakes, but sped on wondering if the red car had slipped away from him down one of the unmarked lanes that branched off from the road.

The island was small. There would be other opportunities, other ways of discovering where Christie lived, but now that he had begun the pursuit it seemed imperative to press on.

He pushed down on the accelerator, feeling the countryside around him blur and flash, the tarmac whizz into grey, dropping through the gears and speeding into the turn as he rounded yet another rising bend in the road, hoping for the glimpse of red that would tell him Christie was still ahead.

Then suddenly it was all red, the red 4x4 motionless in a passing place, the oncoming post office van in the middle of the road. He cursed and hit the brakes, turning the steering wheel towards the skid that threatened to overwhelm his own small vehicle. There was speed and slowness and an instant when he thought the car would win and pitch him from it, then the wheels obeyed and he drew to a halt a credit-card width from Christie’s bumper.

Fuck, fuck, shit, fuck, shit.

Christie’s eyes met his in her rear-view mirror.

He held up a hand in apology, then pulled down the sun visor, though the morning’s hopeful rays had already been overtaken by cloud.

He had no idea of what he was doing.

Cash sung on about moving the railway station somewhere ‘further down the line’ and the postie drove by, raising a finger from the wheel in laconic salute.

The red car pulled out.

Murray gripped the wheel tight, trying to banish the trembling that threatened to overtake him and followed on, concentrating on keeping a decent distance from the vehicle in front.

He remembered the sullen ferryman’s stare, and Mrs Dunn’s joke that he would imprison Murray if he neglected to pay for his board. An island could easily become a jail. He had no doubt that the islanders already knew of his presence and would hear of his foolish near-crash. He wondered if Archie had ever felt claustrophobic, bounded by the sea and the stares of the locals. Perhaps that was why he had taken to sailing, mastering the ability to leave whenever he wished.

Christie’s car had disappeared in the twists and turns ahead. He pushed down on the accelerator, dropping gear on the curves, anxious about the unseen hazards that might lurk beyond each bend, sure he had lost her. The road straightened out and just at the last moment he caught a flash of red, dropped gear again, pressed the brake pedal gently, and saw Christie’s car turn off the tarmac road into a rough track.

Murray continued on along the main road, still thinking of Christie’s red car travelling the twists of the less-finished trail, like poison passing through a vein.

Murray knew that laptops could damage your fertility, but he balanced his on a pillow anyway and set it on his lap as he half-sat, half-lay on the satin counterpane. It was cold in the room. Murray considered stripping the spare bed of its blanket and draping it around himself, but couldn’t muster the energy.

He took out his mobile and summoned Rachel’s number. He imagined her in a hotel room somewhere in Italy with Fergus, then made himself stop. The whisky was in a carrier bag in the wardrobe. Murray retrieved it, searched the room for a glass and when he didn’t find one, took the briefest of nips straight from the bottle. His reflection mimicked his moves in the girlish dressing-table mirror. Murray hadn’t bothered to shave that morning and the combination of five o’clock shadow and spirits made him look like one of Lyn’s unfortunates.

‘Slainte Mhath.’

Murray raised the bottle to his reflection and touched it to his lips.

He felt like another, but stoppered the bottle and put it back in the wardrobe. He didn’t want to end up like Alan Garrett, his brains smeared against the windscreen of his car.

* * *

There was a phone box by the pier. Murray parked and stationed himself inside, noting the absence of piss and graffiti. There was no phone book either, but he knew the number by heart.

Rab picked up straight away, his voice still the stern side of five p.m.

‘Purvis.’

Murray managed to inject some cheeky-chappie cheer into his words.

‘Shouldn’t that be pervert?’

‘Murray?’

Rab sounded relieved and Murray regretted hating him. He forced himself to smile, hoping to tinge his words with a brightness he didn’t feel.

‘The very same.’

‘I heard you’d gone north.’

Murray wondered who had told him.

‘You heard right.’

‘So what’s up? You missing home, or is there something I can do for you?’

Murray could picture his old friend sitting at the desk in his office, the unframed poster announcing a long-ago reading by Edwin Muir tacked to the wall behind him, the small carriage clock that had belonged to his mother marking time on the bookcase by his side. He heard the hurt sharpen Rab’s voice and softened his own tone in response.

‘Both. Listen, I’m sorry about the other night.’

Purvis’s lungs croaked across the land and water separating the two men.

‘I never thought I’d be falling out about a woman at my age.’ He sighed again. ‘Go on then, tell me what you want.’

‘How do you know I’m not just calling to say hello?’

‘Because you’re not.’

The truth of the statement hung in the silence between them, then Murray said, ‘You’ve been in the department a long time, Rab.’

‘I remember back to when the term postmodernism was a speck in the eye of the little yellow god and dinosaurs roamed the corridors.’

It was Murray’s cue to quip that they were still lumbering around English literature, but he ignored it.

‘Did you know Fergus in the old days, before he went to England?’

Rab’s voice hardened again.

‘Is this something to do with Rachel?’

‘No, with Archie. Apparently he and Fergus were friends.’

‘And Fergus never said?’

‘No mention, even when he was blocking my proposal.’

‘Maybe he didn’t consider it relevant.’

‘Maybe.’

‘But you don’t think so?’

‘Would you? Fergus isn’t usually shy about mentioning writers he’s associated with, especially if it makes him look like he’s got superior knowledge of someone else’s research. If anything, it might have strengthened his objections.’

‘I take your point, but so what?’

‘When I interviewed Professor James he intimated there may have been a reason other than his career that Fergus went to England.’ A warning flashed on the payphone’s display, letting him know his money was almost done. Murray fired more coins into the slot. ‘I think there’s something out of kilter. Fergus likes everyone to know how much he knows, but this time he was desperate to put me off the scent.’

Murray could hear a tapping on the other end of the line and pictured Rab’s free hand drumming against his desk for want of a cigarette.

‘Has it occurred to you that Fergus’s reasons for blocking your proposal might have been genuine?’

‘He didn’t have any reasons, not credible ones anyway.’

Rab coughed and Murray held the phone away from his head. He could see the sea through the thick glass of the telephone box. The waves foaming and peaking, crashing into the deep then resurfacing, shoals of white horses thundering on. He put the headpiece to his ear and Rab asked, ‘How far have you got with the book?’

‘Not very, but then I’ve barely started.’

‘That’s not true, Murray. You’ve been thinking about it for years. You know as well as I do that you need concrete facts to get anywhere. Without them, all you’re doing is speculating. Have you ever considered the possibility Archie Lunan simply wrote a few nice poems, and then slid into the water without much of a splash, never to surface? End of story.’

The payphone flashed its warning again and Murray pushed his last few coins into the slot.

‘I’m going to be cut off soon.’

‘You’d better get to the point then.’

‘James wouldn’t tell me why he and Fergus fell out, but whatever it was still rankled. He intimated that he told Fergus to get out of town or he’d blow the lid on some scandal.’

‘You make him sound like Dangerous Dan McGrew, pistols at dawn.’

‘He was serious, Rab.’

‘Listen, Murray, James is an old man. He might have good reasons for wanting to keep what’s past in the past.’

‘No, he wanted me to find out. He just didn’t want to be the one to tell me.’ Murray slowed his words. ‘If you could ask around, speak to some people you knew in the old days, something might come up.’

‘James always was a contrary sod.’ The tapping ceased. ‘It’s a big ask, Murray. I’m already on Fergus’s shit list.’

‘Who isn’t?’

‘True enough, but I’m more expendable than most. Only a few years till I hit a decent pension. It’d save the department a lot of money to ditch me now.’

‘Did you know Fergus back then, Rab?’

‘You’re not going to let this drop, are you?’

He could see the ferry in the distance. The waves had grown rougher, but the boat looked solid, pressing on against the onslaught.

‘Probably not.’

‘There’s not much I can tell you. I was aware of Fergus when he was doing his PhD — he was tipped for the big time even then — but he was on the east coast and I was on the west. Anyway, you know the way he is, superior with a tinge of slime, except for when it comes to the ladies. He’s all charm then. I’ve often wondered why he didn’t go into politics.’

‘Do you remember anything about the period immediately before he went south?’

This time Rab’s sigh was long and harsh. If Murray hadn’t known the sensitivity of the university fire sprinklers, he would have assumed the other man had lit up and taken his first, hard drag. Murray smiled. It was the sound of capitulation.

‘I’ll ask around, discreetly — very discreetly. I’m not losing my pension for you, Watson.’

‘Thanks, Rab, I appreciate it.’

‘No you don’t. You still want to twist my balls off for going with Rachel.’

Murray laughed at the neatly captured truth, and some of his bile seemed to dissolve. He asked, ‘Have you seen her lately?’

The payphone’s warning message started to flash again.

Rab said, ‘I passed her in the corridor the other day. She. .’

But the pips sounded, and his words were overtaken by the dial tone. Murray stood in the phone box for a while, watching the ferry get closer and hoping that Rab would call him back.

The ship docked and he stepped out into a bluster of wind and spray. A few waiting islanders had got out of their cars to greet some of the disembarking passengers. Their hellos caught in the slipstream and carried across the car park, mingling with the cries of the seagulls; the souls of dead sailors welcoming the travellers home.

Chapter Twenty

‘IS IT BECAUSE of the mud?’

‘No.’ Mrs Dunn lifted a large diary from the telephone table in the hall and held it open for him to see. ‘I’ve got a longstanding booking, a pair of archaeologists from Glasgow University. I’ve phoned around, but I’m afraid you’ve chosen the wrong time of year, Mr Watson. The Bruces are away to Canada visiting her sister, Mrs McIver stopped taking paying guests two years ago, and will not be persuaded otherwise, and the Ramseys and the Gilchrists have also promised their rooms to the dig. I would have let you know earlier, but you only booked for the two nights, so I assumed you’d be moving on.’

The landlady’s lips narrowed into an expression that was final. Murray said, ‘I’ll go up and pack.’

Mrs Dunn nodded. She closed the book and stared him in the eye.

‘I’d have thought you’d be keen to get back to the city. The only people who come here are walkers and archaeologists, and you’re neither, are you, Mr Watson?’

‘No.’

It was an effort not to drop his gaze to the carpet, like a guilty schoolboy.

‘Are you a journalist?’

‘Why would you think that?’

Mrs Dunn held the desk diary to her, like a shield.

‘You were asking questions about Mrs Graves yesterday and then there were all those notes in your room, newspaper cuttings and the like.’ Her voice took on a defensive tone. ‘I couldn’t help seeing them when I was making the bed.’

‘No.’ There was no point in dissembling. Better the truth reach Christie than the island decide he was a tabloid reporter in search of old scandal. Besides, he was heading home. Murray smiled to make himself less threatening. ‘I’m not a journalist. I’m a doctor of English literature.’

The photos of children with Purdey haircuts and eighties flicks smiled down on the scene from the stairway above, like well-fed cherubim. The old woman laid the diary back beside the telephone and gave him an offended look.

‘You should have stated your title in the visitors’ book. I’d be grateful if you could amend your entry before you leave.’

Murray drove to the roughcast path that Christie had disappeared down and parked the car. Mrs Dunn had phoned ahead and booked him on the five o’clock ferry. He’d be back in Glasgow by teatime, would sleep in his own bed that night.

The road looked too jagged for his small vehicle. Murray hesitated, wanting to make progress, but unwilling to risk a burst tyre or, worse still, a broken axle.

He got out and slammed the door, feeling in the pocket of his jacket for his mobile phone. He would have to keep his eye on the time, make sure he left himself space to get back before the sailing.

The cold prickled his skin after the dry air of the overheated car. Murray drew his scarf over his mouth and pulled his hat down over his ears. It had been autumn when he’d started out on his quest in Edinburgh, but already there were intimations of winter. He scented the tang of salt in the wind and wondered what the dark months were like on the small island, set unprotected on the edge of the North Atlantic.

There was no real chance he’d get to speak to Christie this trip. He would have to waste time in Glasgow, then organise himself and come back, rent a cottage or something. He would avoid lodging with Mrs Dunn again. He’d mentioned his research, hoped she might be willing to talk about Lunan’s time on the island, but the old woman had grown brisk, reminding him to pack his stuff before his walk.

‘I’ll need the room clear if I’m to get it ready for Dr Edwards and Dr Grant arriving.’

A slight emphasis on the Dr, as if to let him know other academics didn’t need to be outed.

Murray silently cursed the archaeology department. He remembered them from his time with Angela; a long-haired, cagoule-clad, unwashed crew, not so different, he suspected, from the ancient tribes they studied, except the ancient ones got more than the occasional drunken shag. He stopped and unlatched the aluminium gate to the next field. There was nothing ahead but stony road, sheep and shit. Wherever Christie lived, it was almost certainly too far to walk to and return from before the ferry sailed. He hoped the archaeologists got mud and Guinness on Mrs Dunn’s pink sheets.

He was plucked from his thoughts by the rumble of a diesel engine. Murray turned and saw a small vehicle with outsize wheels, a hybrid tractor-cum-dune buggy, bouncing over the uneven track, pulling a trailer in its wake. He waved a hand, to make sure the driver had seen him, then opened the gate wide, stepping back to allow it room to pass. The vehicle barely slowed as it cleared the opening, but drew to a halt a short distance ahead, waiting while Murray latched the gate. A small Jack Russell regarded his progress from the empty trailer, its tail, nose and ears frozen into inquisitive points.

He was sure the driver was about to turn him back with some warning about bulls or rutting stags, but the man flashed an easy grin.

‘Cheers.’ He was somewhere in his early thirties, compact and wiry, dressed in orange overalls and mud-spattered Wellingtons. ‘Heading for the castle?’

It was the first he had heard of the existence of a castle on the island, but Murray returned the man’s smile and said, ‘I am if I can get there and back before the ferry sails.’

‘Hop in. There’s plenty time if I drive you one way.’

The man’s accent was English, from somewhere in the Midlands, though Murray couldn’t place where.

He gripped one of the bars that composed the open frame of the small cab and hauled himself onboard, unsure of whether he should follow his whim. But the vehicle was already gaining speed, bouncing over the loose stones faster than he would have thought possible. Murray held tight to the crash bar, unable to stop himself jolting with the buggy’s movements, feeling the stranger’s body hard and unwelcome against his side.

‘I saw your car at the top of the road. You’ll be the man who almost wiped out Mrs Graves.’

‘Did she tell you?’

The weathered creases round the driver’s eyes wrinkled in amusement.

‘No, I got it from the Lismore Gazette.’

‘Shit, you’re kidding.’

The man laughed. ‘Jamie the postman.’

Murray thought he could hear the jolting of the cab in his own laugh. He said, ‘I should apologise to her.’

‘We’re headed in the right general direction, but I wouldn’t bother. She doesn’t like to be disturbed.’

‘Not the sociable type?’

The man slowed the pace and looked back towards the trailer.

‘Okay, then, off you go.’

For a second Murray thought his question had offended, but then the terrier jumped from the trailer and started to trot behind.

‘Jinx hates the next bit.’

The buggy rounded a bend and the road fell away from them into a precipitous scree-lined descent. Murray tensed his already tight grip and felt a sudden kinship with the dog. The small man’s grin grew wider. ‘My kids call it Everest.’

His bones were jarring so hard it felt they might soon be loosed from his flesh, but there was something exhilarating in the recklessness of the speed that made Murray dampen the urge to beg the stranger to stop and instead give himself over to the thrill of the plunge. He recalled ten-year-old Jack’s spew, candyfloss pink, catching the wind then coating the tough guy birling the waltzers at the Glasgow Green shows, and laughed out loud.

The man laughed with him.

‘This hill’s the reason I could afford the croft. It makes everything a hundred times harder, but I’ve got to love it. I wouldn’t be here without it.’ The terrier had somehow got ahead of them. Its rump flashed white as it ran, tail bobbing, down the rough track, too close to the tractor’s front wheels for comfort. The driver didn’t bother to slow his pace.

‘I’m Pete, by the way.’

‘Murray.’

‘On holiday?’

‘Aye, a bit of a break from Glasgow.’ His world seemed far away, here in the plunging gloom, the last greenery of the year still clinging to the leaves of the young trees that lined the sheltered track. Murray realised that the path had been dug into the hill and wondered if it was the small man’s doing. He asked, ‘Have you lived here long?’

‘Three years.’

They were almost at the bottom now. Pete put an extra spurt on the last few yards; the dog anticipated the move and resigned the race, trotting up the verge, where she sat grinning as they passed. The cab listed to the left as it turned the corner, out of the shade of the trees and into the open. Pete slowed to a halt.

‘There’s the castle.’

But he needn’t have spoken. Murray could see the ruined structure perched on top of a plug of rock, silhouetted against the sea. Its walls had been reduced by wind or warfare to crooked columns that pointed towards the sky like a warped crown. Some grazing horses raised their heads at the sound of the tractor and then lowered them back to the grass, reassured it was nothing unusual. Murray tried to envision how the scene must have looked when the castle was whole and occupied by some tribe, but his imagination failed. All he could see was the vista spread before him, like Arcadia restored after the devastation of man.

The dog leapt into the trailer, wagging its tail.

‘Decided to trust my driving again, have you, Jinxy?’ Pete reached back and rubbed her hard between her ears, then pointed towards a small white-painted cottage, about a mile from the castle.

‘That’s our place there.’

‘And this is your land?’

‘Some of it.’

‘A beautiful place to live.’

‘Yep.’ The small man creased his face into a weathered grin. ‘You can forget how stunning a landscape is when you see it every day. I do anyway, the wife’s more appreciative.’

Murray wondered if Pete had brought him here in the hope of viewing the scene afresh, through another pair of eyes.

‘And your children?’

He laughed.

‘Desperate for bright lights, big city. The horses are the only thing keeping them here, and them not for long. Meaghan will be off to university next year and I doubt her brother will be far behind.’

Murray scanned the horizon, hoping for sight of a house that might belong to Christie Graves, but apart from the castle and Pete’s cottage, there was only land and sea.

Pete started the engine again. ‘I’ll drop you down at the bottom. You should be able to climb up to the castle and make it back in good time for the ferry. Have you enjoyed your stay?’

‘It was too short.’

‘That’s holidays for you. We threw caution to the wind and took the kids to Corfu last year. I swear I was just off the plane when I was getting back on it again, couldn’t understand where I got the tan from.’

‘Aye, I would have stayed longer, but I screwed up my booking.’

‘Unless someone makes an almighty balls-up, the island will still be here next year. That’s what I told myself as we flew away from the sunshine. Mind you, Corfu would be no place for our kind of farming. Dry as beef jerky, no grazing at all.’

‘Next year will be too late.’

Pete glanced at him, his face suddenly guarded, and Murray realised he sounded like a man with terminal illness or suicide on his mind.

‘My project will have run out of time.’

He told Pete about his research, and the biography he was planning, as they closed the final distance to the ruined castle.

‘You screwed up.’

Pete slowed the tractor to a halt and Murray climbed from the cab.

‘I did indeed.’

‘Ah, well.’ The small man grinned. ‘It happens. You know where we are now. Next time you visit, don’t be a stranger. Drop by and have a dram.’

The Scots word sounded strange married with his flat, Midland vowels.

Murray nodded. ‘You’re on.’

Jinx perched her front paws on the edge of the trailer watching them. Murray reached out to pat the terrier and her teeth snarled back in a growl.

‘No manners, this one.’

Pete shoved the dog gently from its perch and climbed back into his cab. Murray raised a hand in farewell, and then started towards the castle. When he looked back the tractor was bouncing far along the track towards home.

Chapter Twenty-One

MURRAY CLIMBED UP into the grassed-over centre of the castle and stared out to sea, his mind as blank as the white foam frothing on the incoming tide. He would go to Edinburgh tomorrow, seek out the Geordie’s landlord and ask why he’d burnt Bobby Robb’s library. What kind of books were they that the man had felt compelled to turn them into a bonfire, even though he’d already promised them to his niece?

It was a while before he could find a signal and call a directory service for the Geordie’s number. They connected him and he waited, imagining Lauren sitting in the pub’s backroom, absorbed in some existential tome while the phone rang out.

Murray killed the call. He looked at the three bars on his phone, wondering how long the battery would last, then found the phone signal again and pressed redial, determined to check whether the man was on shift and break the cycle of disorganisation that would see him expelled from the island. This time a gruff male voice answered on the second ring.

‘Yes?’

‘Hi, can I speak to the landlord, please?’

‘If you make it snappy.’

Murray hadn’t thought through what he would say and the words seemed to tumble from him.

‘I’m phoning about a recently deceased customer of yours. .’

‘Jesus Christ, let me guess — our dear departed Crippen.’

‘How did you know?’

‘We might not attract the youth market, but they’re still not exactly dropping like flies round here.’ The landlord sounded wary. ‘What about him?’

This time Murray decided to tell the truth.

‘I’m writing a book about someone Mr Robb knew a long time ago. I was hoping to interview him.’

‘Aye, well, unless you’re planning on following him down into the eternal beer cellar, I’d say you were onto plums.’ Someone said something in the background and the landlord muffled the mouthpiece and gave an indistinct reply that sounded impatient. When he returned to the phone his voice was brisk. ‘Look, mate, I’m in the middle of a delivery. I didn’t really know the guy, just sold him a few beers over the years. I don’t think I can help you.’

‘I need to ask you a specific question.’

‘What?’

‘About Bobby’s effects.’

There was silence on the line. For a moment Murray thought he’d blown it and the other man was about to hang up, but then he heard a sigh and the landlord said, ‘Why don’t you drop by later in the day? I’m on until two.’

Murray looked out to where the grey sea met the lighter grey of the sky. The pub would be there tomorrow, but he had the man on the line now. He said, ‘You’ve no idea how good the idea of a pint sounds to me, but. .’

‘But?’

‘I’m up north on an island that doesn’t have a pub.’

‘So you’re a long-distance heavy.’

‘I’m not a heavy at all. I’m a lecturer in English literature.’

‘Christ,’ the landlord laughed. ‘What are you going to do if I don’t cooperate? Make me spell a difficult word?’ He snorted. ‘This island, did you ken it was dry when you went there?’

‘No.’

‘Jesus.’ He laughed again. ‘Did you take anything with you?’

The other man’s delight at his predicament decided Murray against mentioning the shop’s shelves groaning with spirits.

‘A bottle of whisky I’m halfway through.’

There was palpable glee in the other man’s voice.

‘I’m guessing you’re rationing that.’

‘I’m down to around an X-ray of a dram every night.’

The landlord’s snort sounded down the line.

‘This book, is it going to show that old cunt in a good light?’

‘I wouldn’t think so.’

‘And will it have acknowledgements? You know, wee thank-yous to people that helped out in the making of it?’

‘More than likely.’

‘Right.’ The landlord cleared his throat, like a torch singer about to embark on a particularly gruelling number. ‘Have you got a pen and paper handy?’

‘Aye, hang on a minute.’ Murray wedged his mobile between his chin and his shoulder and fumbled in the pocket of his cagoule for a notepad and pen. He found them, put a foot up on a toppled remnant of one of the castle’s stone walls and awkwardly rested the book on his knee. ‘Okay.’

‘Right. My name is John Rathbone. I’ll spell it for you, R-a-t-h-b-o-n-e. Got that?’

It was cold and the ballpoint refused to write. Murray scribbled on the damp surface of the paper, but only succeeded in scratching a hole through to the next page.

‘Yes.’

‘And here’s where you can send my copy when it comes out.’ Rathbone detailed an address on the south side of Edinburgh, taking care to spell any words he thought Murray might have trouble with. ‘On second thoughts, maybe you should send two. I’ll give one to my old dear, she’s always had a thing about me not staying on at school. It’d give her a kick to see my name in print.’

Murray repeated the address out loud and shoved the useless pen and paper into his pocket, resolving to look the man up and check his details if the book ever made it to publication.

‘I’ll send you three.’

‘Cheers, I’ll give one to my bird. No, I’ll save it in case I need to impress a new one.’

‘Aye, the ladies like a bit of culture.’

‘Talking from experience, are you?’

Murray gave what he hoped was a manly chuckle.

‘Some.’

‘The revenge of the swot?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Could be my old dear was right about staying on at school then.’

Murray could feel the conversation drifting away from him. He thought of his fading battery and said, ‘The main thing I wanted to ask was why did you burn Bobby’s books?’

The man’s sigh seemed at one with the wind whispering around the fallen fortifications.

‘So you heard about that, did you? I’m guessing you dropped by here before you set out for Temperance Island.’

‘I never reveal my sources.’

‘No need to. My sister’s girl Lauren gave me pure grief for it.’

‘It’s your flat. I’d imagine that, technically speaking, anything abandoned in it’s yours to dispose of as you see fit.’

‘I wish it was mine to dispose of. A wee place in the centre of Edinburgh? Must be worth a bomb. I would have had that old bum out of it in a shot. Nah, I just manage it for a bloke.’

‘So the books?’

‘Crippen was always going on about his book collection. When it turned out no one wanted his stuff, I promised them to Lauren. She’s a good kid, always got her head in a book. She’s saving up to go to uni, and I thought there might be something in there she could use. But they were filth, so I took them out into the back court and burnt them.’

‘Pornography?’

‘If they’d been porn, I would have kept them for myself, wouldn’t I? Nah, it was spooky stuff, books on spells and the like, horrible.’

‘He had a big collection of occult books?’

‘He had more than that. You should have seen the state of the place. Hang on a wee minute, will you?’

The man put the handset down. Far off Murray could hear him talking to someone. A dark cloud passed across the sky, throwing its shadow over the water. Murray drew his scarf closer, muffling his face against the cold. It was going to rain again. He thought of Hamlet, confronted with the ghost of his father on the castle ramparts at night, and a shiver stiffened the hairs on the back of his neck.

‘Well, that’s me popular with the bar staff, an entire delivery offloaded with no help from yours truly.’ Rathbone sounded pleased with himself. ‘What was I saying?’

‘Bobby Robb had more than just a big collection of occult books.’

‘Who?’

‘Crippen, as you called him.’

‘Oh, aye. I had to redecorate before the boss saw the state of the place. You can imagine how delighted I was at that — took me a sander and three coats of varnish to cover up his handiwork.’

‘Why?’

‘I was meant to do an inspection every six months, make sure the place was ship-shape, but I’d kind of let it slide. It’s a good gig, looking after amateur landlords’ flats. As long as you’ve got a wee black book full of reliable tradesmen, it’s money for old rope most of the time. But word soon gets round if you slip up.’

‘No, I meant what did you have to cover up?’

‘I’m getting to that.’ Now that he had decided to tell his story, Rathbone’s voice was full of relish at the strangeness of it. ‘Crippen was lodged in a one-bedroom flat on the High Street, three floors up above the Starbucks. A lot of stairs for an old man, but he looked fit enough. I would have bet he had another ten years in him. Just goes to show.’ The landlord paused, giving them both time to take in the impossibility of ever knowing the future, then went on, ‘The place wasn’t that clean, but I didn’t expect it to be. Crippen never had much of an acquaintance with soap and water, so it didn’t take a genius to work out he didn’t own a pair of Marigolds. It wasn’t a problem, my sister’s generally happy to earn a few bob cleaning for me, as long as there’s nothing too nasty involved. I checked out the kitchen and the sitting room, everything was pretty much as it should be, except for dust and beer stains, but as I said, I expected as much. The shock came when I went into the bedroom. I’ve found all sorts in my time; bloodstains on top of the mattress, used condoms underneath, mice in the skirting, beetles under the wallpaper. I even had a pair of students who let their kitchen get so fucking beyond them they boarded it up and made it into a no-go zone — needless to say, they didn’t get their deposits back. I thought they were the worst I was ever likely to see, but they were just lazy cunts. Crippen’s bedroom. . well, that was something else. Like a scene from a horror movie. To tell you the truth, there was a moment when I thought about calling the police, but I decided it’d be a waste of their time. I mean, if you could be arrested for crimes against decorating, that cunt Lawrence Llewelyn Bowen would be doing a twenty stretch, right?’

‘So what had he done?’

‘He’d covered the floor in writing.’

‘The entire floor?’

‘Not all of it, no. The bed was in the centre of the room and he’d made a kind of circle of words around it. When I first saw it, I thought it was going to be some major confession, where he’d hidden the bodies of hundreds of missing schoolgirls or something, but thank Christ it was just a load of crap.’

‘Can you remember any of it?’

‘I knew you were going to ask that, but no, I couldn’t really read it. He’d used some kind of indelible paint and written in this sort of old-fashioned curly script. There were numbers and symbols too, like a lot of algebra in a circle round the bed. Whatever it was it gave me the bloody heebies. I gave it a good hard scrub, tried turps, ammonia, everything I could think of, but it wasn’t for budging. In the end I had to hire a sander and take the surface off, then go down to B&Q, for deck varnish and seal it. I had to do the whole bloody floor or else the join would have shown. It was a fucking hellish job, dust everywhere.’

‘I don’t suppose you took a photo of it on your camera-phone or anything, just to show to your mates?’

‘Why would I want to show them sick stuff like that? I wanted it gone before Baine came round and took the job of managing the flat off me.’

Murray started at the familiar name.

‘Who?’

‘Baine, the guy who owns the place. He’s a university bloke like yourself. Oh, Christ.’ John Rathbone’s voice filled with sudden realisation. ‘Don’t say you know him.’

‘No, I don’t think so. What does he look like?’

‘I never met him. I just speak to him on the phone and send any paperwork to his uni office over in Glasgow. He talks like he’s got a boiled sweet in his mouth, but then a lot of them do.’

‘No.’ Murray hoped the lie didn’t sound in his voice. ‘I don’t know him.’

‘Thank fuck. Not that I’m saying you would have grassed me up.’

‘But it would have been a waste of your decorating skills if I had.’

Rathbone gave a bitter laugh.

‘That’s the funny thing. He phoned up, thanked me for my help over the years, and asked if I could show the estate agents round. End of story. Told me to take him off my books, he was putting the place on the market. I would have been as well not bothering. I’ll tell you something for nothing, though.’

‘What?’

‘I got the feeling he was relieved to get the place back. I think he’d rented it out to the old boy as a favour, a guy that’d done well helping out an old pal that was down on his uppers — kind of cool, when you think on it. Though why a professor would want to keep up with an old soak is beyond me. Maybe he had fond memories. Crippen told me that him and Baine went way back. I guess they were students together or something. He was an intelligent man, Crippen. Just pissed it up against the wall.’ The landlord sounded wistful. ‘It happens.’

Chapter Twenty-Two

MURRAY STOOD AT the top of the castle, gazing out to sea. He remembered Alan Garrett’s note, Interested in the beyond. Had Lunan had any interest in the occult? Some of his poetry held an atmosphere of the Celtic otherworld, and Christie’s novels were generally shelved in the bookshops’ horror section; but these were fictions while it seemed Bobby’s library had masqueraded as fact. He would need to visit the Geordie’s landlord. Buy him a whisky and see if he could remember any of the books’ titles. People sometimes recalled more when they had a drink in their hand.

Murray glanced at his watch. He would have to start walking if he were to be sure of catching the ferry home. He hopped down from the crag, thinking now about Fergus’s uncharacteristic kindness towards Bobby. Strange that a man’s charity should make him suspicious.

He felt his phone vibrate back into life, and then heard its irritating jingle. Murray glanced at the display and cursed as his fingers, clumsy with the cold, struggled to hit the right button to accept the call.

‘Murray?’

His stomach swooped at the sound of his name on her lips, but even with that one word he knew something was wrong. Rachel’s voice had lost its cool tone, the barrier of mockery she’d managed to preserve between them, even when he was inside her.

He asked, ‘Are you okay?’ and heard the answering note of concern in his own voice.

‘Yes, fine. Listen, have you checked your email?’

‘Not recently, no. Should I?’

There was a pause on the line. One of the horses grazing in the shelter of the castle looked at him with mild, brown eyes. He wondered where Rachel was. In the home he had never visited, or in her office, safe from prying ears. He listened for her breath, but couldn’t hear it beneath the sound of the wind.

‘Rachel?’

‘Yes, I’m still here. This is. .’ She paused again and this time he waited, following the curve of the horse’s sleek brown back with his eyes, amazed, as he always was when he saw them in the flesh, at how big the creature was.

Rachel came back on the line.

‘I wanted to ask if you could do me a favour.’

‘Anything.’

He was as obedient as Pete’s grinning dog, with none of its bite.

‘I think you might have received an email by mistake. You’ll be able to spot it, it’ll have been sent yesterday by someone you don’t know and will have a rather large document attached. Will you delete without opening, please?’

‘Is it a virus?’

‘Yes.’ Relief sounded in her voice. ‘A particularly ghastly one. It’s designed to leech onto every contact in your address book. Clever, but nasty. Apparently it wipes the hard drive of any computer it’s opened on. I’m frantically phoning everyone I can think of.’ Her laugh sounded strange. ‘It’s embarrassing, like chasing ex-partners to let them know you’ve got VD.’

‘Rachel, are you okay?’

‘Fine, just. .’ Her voice faltered. ‘Just a little overworked.’

‘And your computer’s wrecked. Did you lose much?’

‘I’m pretty good at backing-up, it could be worse.’ Her voice wavered again. ‘I’ve got to go. I’ve an army of people to phone. But please, Murray, delete that email. I wouldn’t want you to lose all your research.’

He said, ‘I miss you.’

‘Don’t, there’s no point.’

The line went dead.

Murray stood there, the phone warm in his hand, watching the tide’s unstoppable shift. He supposed the view should give him a sense of proportion, but all he could think of was Rachel and Fergus, Fergus and Rachel. The wind flapped at his waterproof. He turned even though he knew no one was there. But there was something beyond the rustling noise of his hood. He could hear it. A distant pinprick of sound that rushed to a roar. His chest tightened and the thought, so this is how it goes, burst into his head, along with a vision of his father’s face. The herd of horses turned together and raced down into the glen, the thud of their hooves absorbed by the almighty surge of sound. Murray felt himself drop to his knees, and then had an abrupt flash of comprehension as he saw the Harrier Jump Jet screaming through the valley. He could have shouted his lungs empty, and no one would have heard. But he simply whispered fuck, fuck, fuck under his breath, then got to his feet, wiping the mud from his knees, and started to make his way down.

* * *

He hadn’t reached Everest when he heard the rumble of Pete’s tractor behind him. Murray waited for it to stop, knowing the man had come to offer him something and hoping he was right about what it would be.

Pete climbed from the cab, the terrier at his heels. This time his smile was shyer, as if he was already embarrassed at what he was about to say.

‘Were you serious about wanting to stay longer?’

‘Aye, deadly serious.’

‘I might have somewhere for you then, if you don’t mind roughing it.’

Chapter Twenty-Three

MURRAY SAT AT the island shop’s computer and logged into his email account. It wasn’t quite three o’clock yet, but it had started to rain again and the skies outside were already dark. It felt good to be in and warm while the island was washed by wind and rain once more. The lamps had been lit against the gloom and a Calor gas heater hissed in a corner by the counter. Somewhere a radio was tuned to drive time, and he could hear the presenter detailing news of roadworks in the centre of Inverness. The small store, which had been so busy on his last visit, was empty of other customers. The shop man had given him a mug of instant coffee and told him to shout through to the backroom if he needed anything else. Murray took a sip from the steaming cup, relishing the sense of aloneness and study that had been a comfort to him since he was a child.

The number of new messages made him feel helpless for a moment, but there was only one he was interested in reading. He scrolled through the previous day’s entries and found it, the sender’s address a combination of letters and numbers that looked random, the subject heading Tis Pity She’s a Whore, the attachment tantalisingly present.

He hadn’t believed Rachel’s story, but staring at the message with its strange title, remembering the strain in her voice, he wondered if he might be wise to delete it, as he’d promised. Rachel had never asked anything of him before, though God knows he’d wanted her to. He rested his hand on the computer mouse. It was in his nature to investigate, but some knowledge was tainting. Pandora’s box, Eve’s forbidden fruit, Bluebeard’s young wife with the key to her husband’s private room. Succumbing to temptation could signal disaster.

He trailed down his inbox, hovering on indecision, deleting junk and outdated messages from the department about meetings he was now exempt from. He scrolled down further, hoping for a message from Rab that might tell him why Professor James had it in for Fergus. There was nothing. But tucked in amongst the list of unsolicited offers and enquiries was a message from Lyn.

Murray leaned back in the chair and gazed at the ceiling of the shop. A couple of yellowing remnants of sticky tape swayed in the rising warmth from the heater. Left over from Christmas decorations, he supposed. He sighed, leaned forward and clicked open Lyn’s message.

Dear Murray

I’m a woman who keeps her promises. I asked around about your smiler, Bobby Robb, Crippen as you called him, Crowley as they called him here. It seems he was one of our regulars until three years or so back, though the word is he was still a slave to the bottle — it’s amazing the constitution you need to be a successful addict. I don’t have much for you beyond that except that he was ‘a scary shit’. Apparently he was into weirdigan stuff, spells, magic, and wasn’t above dropping a curse or two if it looked like someone might cross him. My source also said Bobby was a frightened man who slept with a ‘circle of protection’ round his bed — whatever that is. A word to the wise. Tempting as it might be for you to leap on this, you should remember that the streets are a hard place to survive. People develop different strategies for keeping themselves safe. If this was Bobby Robb’s, it seems like a pretty good one to me. A lot of our clients are daft enough to believe in different dimensions. I wish I could, I’d leave mine in a flash. I’m not sure how much you know about Jack’s activities. It’s easier for me to assume nothing. It would mean one less person took me for a fool. I can’t help wondering, though, that evening you asked me about Cressida Reeves. I thought you were interested in her for yourself, but maybe you knew? Either way, Cressida is off the market. Jack has moved out of our flat and in with her. I wish I could say goodbye to bad rubbish, but we’ve been together a long time. If you speak to him, please tell him I miss him. He won’t take my calls any more. I kept my promise to you, even though your brother broke all the ones he made to me.

Lyn x

The kiss at the end made Murray’s eyes tear. He blinked, then read the email again, cursing his brother even as he wrote the scant details Lyn had given him into his notebook.

Murray had no stomach for the rest of his messages, but somehow Lyn’s words had decided what he would do about the email Rachel had asked him to delete. If love was a game of cheating and deception, then it was better to know what you were up against. He found the anonymous email again and opened it.

Murray tensed, half-expecting the screen to descend into blackness or display some childish victory halloo before fading into computer codes and nothingness, but the body of the email was empty. He moved the cursor to the virtual paperclip, ready to click open the attachment, but then the photographs started to slowly unveil themselves without any help.

He remembered where he was and minimised the screen, glancing behind him to check whether anyone had seen his shame, but the shop was still empty, the proprietor still somewhere in the backroom. Murray half-turned his chair towards the door, the better to hear any new customers entering, and then looked at the image again.

It took him a moment to realise what he was seeing. Then he recognised the room, the familiar desk with its pile of unmarked essays, the uncomfortable chair he reserved for students, shoved to one side. It was the night she dumped him, the night he had rushed into the corridor, chasing after the intruder. He could see his own white arse caught mid-thrust on the screen, Rachel’s elegant legs inelegantly spread beneath him.

Murray glanced towards the counter, wondering how good a view someone standing behind it would have of the monitor, realising the computer had been cleverly positioned to allow minimum privacy. He rolled the cursor down the screen anyway, wondering how many snaps the prowler had managed to take. He would phone Rachel afterwards, reassure her that no one could know the woman was her, even if the photo were to be pasted billboard-high in George Square, or more likely distributed amongst a thousand pay-for-view websites.

Jesus, what a mess. But it was a mess they were in together.

He didn’t feature in the next image. Instead there was Rachel with a young man Murray thought he might recognise from postgraduate forums. He couldn’t be sure. The man’s face was turned away and he was naked, Rachel kneeling on the floor between his open legs, her features hidden in his groin. She was naked too, pale and beautiful. Murray felt a sharp surge of jealousy, remembering that they had never completely undressed for each other.

The four remaining images were more of the same, Rachel and sex the only constant. Rachel with a grey-haired man who had kept his watch on. The time was half past three, and she was astride him, her hands fondling her breasts.

Rachel bent over a chair in a hotel bedroom while a hirsute man with a slack belly and balding head held her rear and pointed his erect penis into her.

Rachel on her back, two men with her this time, and the faint blur of other undressed bodies in the background.

Rachel with her legs splayed, the head of some naked stranger pressed between them, her head thrown back, neck exposed so that Murray could see the hollow in her throat he had liked to kiss.

There was a sound behind him. He killed the image and spun round in his chair. Christie Graves was standing at the far end of the aisle, a newspaper and a loaf of bread in her basket. Their eyes met.

The pictures had been so big, so arresting, as loud in his head as the Jump Jet that had brought him to his knees. He couldn’t imagine how she could have missed them. Christie held his gaze for a moment, then looked away and went to the counter.

Murray sat staring at the blank monitor, hearing the shop man’s cheery greeting and Christie’s low replies, feeling a sense of loss that brought back other losses, too sad to even wonder who had sent him the photographs and what he could send them in return. He heard the door swing shut as Christie left the shop, but even then his eyes remained on the black screen of the sleeping machine.

Chapter Twenty-Four

PETE HAD BEEN apologetic about the state of the bothy, but in the afterglow of the race down Everest, Murray had thought it the perfect solution. Back then Rachel’s call had seemed like a spark of hope. She had thought of him, and even though she had hung up when he said he missed her, she’d sounded sad. Sadness had seemed something he might be able to work with. Now he felt that he might drown in it.

In the pale light of the afternoon the small cottage had appeared charmingly simple. Viewing its front room through the beam of his battery torch, Murray thought it embodied a decrepitude that matched his mood. The floor was covered in old cardboard, ‘your original underlay’ Pete had called it, to keep out the damp in the earth that sat directly beneath the wooden floor the crofter had laid when he and his family had camped there three years ago.

Pete dumped the carton of supplies they’d bought at the shop onto the makeshift table that took up most of the first room and swung the beam of his torch around the stone walls.

‘It’ll be a bit isolated for you after Glasgow, but we’re only a couple of miles down the road and I’ll drop by from time to time to see if there’s anything you need.’ Jinx padded around the room, sniffing into corners with an enthusiasm that hinted at vermin. ‘Hi, you. Sit,’ Pete commanded, ‘or you’re going out.’ He primed the Calor heater, the blue flames bursting into life on the third press of the ignition. The dog settled herself in front of the fire. Pete scratched her belly roughly. ‘That’s not for your benefit.’ He turned his attention back to Murray. ‘There’s an extra canister of gas for when this one runs out and there’s butane for the Primus stove. I’ve brought you the wind-up radio we used when we were down here. Do you know how to use an Aladdin lamp?’

Murray said, ‘I think so.’

But Pete showed him anyway. The room grew more present, but no more cheerful, in the lamp’s yellow glow.

‘You’re going back to basics. The kids loved it when we lived here, but that was in summer. I made damn sure our cottage was ship-shape well before the winter came.’

‘It’ll be fine.’ Murray opened the door to the cottage’s second room and saw the sleeping bag and extra blankets neatly folded on top of the camp bed. An upturned wooden box sat beside it, ready to serve as a bedside table. Something about the Spartan neatness of the arrangement made him wonder if Pete had been in the army. ‘I think you’ve thought of everything.’

‘I doubt that,’ the crofter grinned. ‘It’s been a bit of a rush job. But if there’s anything missing, you can let me know.’ He went out to the trailer and returned with a carton of supplies. ‘The plan’s always been to eventually turn this place into a summer let, but it’s got sidelined over the last couple of years. I’m afraid it’s not exactly tourist board standard.’ He set a car battery in a corner, then went back out and returned with another, which he placed beside it. ‘Okay, that’s you got one and one spare. I’ve another charging at home. I reckon they should last you a week at least, but if they don’t, drop round and I’ll swap them. I’ve set up the chemical toilet in the shit box, as Martin liked to call it.’ Pete laughed. ‘You know what teenage boys are like.’

Murray didn’t, but he forced a smile.

‘I take it that’s the outside lav.’

‘Got it in one. There’s a rain butt by the door that you can use for washing, and it’s okay for drinking if you boil first. Sheila says to come down to the house if you feel like a bath or a hot shower.’ He paused. ‘Are you sure you’re all right with this? I feel a bit guilty charging good money for something so basic.’

Murray wished the small man would go, but he knew that he needed to endure the rigmarole before he would be left in peace. He forced a smile onto his face.

‘Don’t worry, it’s ideal.’

‘Good.’ The crofter’s grin looked relieved. ‘I’m hoping the place is still watertight. I put the roof on myself before I moved the family in.’ He shone the beam of his torch up into the eaves. ‘I had a look this afternoon when I brought the camp bed down, there doesn’t seem to be any ingress of water.’ Pete clicked the torch off. ‘Time will tell.’ He reached into one of the boxes he’d brought and pulled out a half-bottle of Famous Grouse. ‘A dram to welcome you.’ He opened it and poured a little of the whisky onto the floor. ‘The old bloke that helped us move made me promise to always do this in a new house. The faeries like a drink too, apparently.’ Pete shook his head at his own foolishness. ‘It’s probably a joke he plays on all the English wankers.’ He took two glasses from the top of a box, poured a large measure into each and handed one to Murray. ‘Cheers.’

‘Good health.’

Murray thought his own toast sounded more like a curse. But Pete smiled and raised the glass to his lips.

‘So is your poet well-known in Scotland?’

‘No, he’s pretty obscure.’

‘This glen’s going to be proper cultured, what with you beavering away down here on your biography, and Mrs Graves up on the topside working on her novels.’

Before the blows the photographs had dealt, Murray might have quizzed Pete on the exact location of Christie’s cottage. Now he merely asked, ‘Do you see much of her?’

‘Not really, no. We phone to check on each other in the bad weather, and if the lines go down we drop round — you have to when you’re as remote as we are, and her mobility isn’t so good these days — but apart from that, we leave each other in peace.’

‘Have you read any of her books?’

‘Sheila’s the reader in our family. She used to be an English teacher before we settled here. She read the first one.’

‘Sacrifice?’

‘I think that was it.’ The crofter smiled apologetically. ‘It wasn’t a great hit, I’m afraid. Sheila usually likes books set on islands.’ He took another sip of his drink. ‘They remind her of here, I suppose, but she said this one was full of dead folk digging themselves from their graves.’

Murray felt a prickling on the back of his neck and resisted the urge to look towards the cottage’s small windows and the night beyond.

‘It’s about a group of hippies who move to the countryside and start dabbling in things they shouldn’t.’

‘Raising the dead?’

‘Amongst other things. It’s a bit silly.’

The wind had got up again. Somewhere a gate was banging, but the crofter didn’t seem to notice. He said, ‘Maybe I should give it a read.’

Pete met Murray’s eyes and his grin was wide enough for madness. Outside the banging became louder, then ceased. Murray wondered who or what had stopped it. He filled the silence with a question.

‘What did you do before you moved here?’

‘I taught too. Science. I decided to get out before I became the first teacher to do a Columbine and go on the rampage with a shotgun.’

The small man laughed. The lamplight caught the creases in his weathered face and twisted his smile into a grimace. Murray wondered if he had a gun up at the white cottage, and if he drank whisky there at night, alone in the middle of nowhere, with his wife and children asleep in the rooms above.

He rubbed his eyes and said, ‘Aye, I sometimes feel that about my students,’ though the thought had never occurred. ‘I still feel bad about almost bumping into Miss Graves’s car, even if she isn’t Booker Prize material. Maybe I should call round with a bunch of flowers or something.’

Pete shrugged.

‘You’ll meet her sooner or later.’ He closed one eye and held the half-bottle to his other, regarding the room through a golden whisky filter. ‘Mrs Graves is unpredictable. Some days she stops and chats, others it’s as if she doesn’t see you. Sheila says that a hundred years ago she would have been fuel for a bonfire.’ He laughed. ‘The way she says it, you’d think it wasn’t such a bad idea.’

‘Your wife doesn’t like her?’

‘She doesn’t like being snubbed. Me, I don’t care. After all, no one moves out here for the company. And it must be hard for Christie. She’s got MS. She had a bad episode a while back which more or less paralysed her. We thought that might be it, but she seems to have bounced back. Still, I’m not sure how much longer she’ll be able to be independent, let alone live in the back of beyond.’ Pete unscrewed the bottle’s cap and poured the remains into their glasses. ‘We may as well finish this, then I’ll leave you to get settled. I promised Sheila we wouldn’t go beyond the half-bottle. She doesn’t like me driving after I’ve had a couple, even when there’s only sheep to bump into.’

Murray nodded at the unmet Sheila’s wisdom, relieved he’d soon be rid of his new landlord. He thought of Alan Garrett and remembered Audrey saying that he wasn’t over the limit.

‘I heard there was a bad crash on the island a couple of years back.’

Pete’s expression grew serious.

‘Not long after we arrived. Sheila was really upset by it. Kept saying what if one of the kids had been walking by when it happened? What if he’d hit them instead of the tree? We’d met him too. Seemed like a nice guy, a family man. I heard he left a wife and kiddie.’

‘Was he under the influence?’

‘Apparently not.’ Pete gave him a half-suspicious look. ‘You didn’t know him, did you? I heard he was a university lecturer.’

‘No.’ Murray remembered the photograph of Alan Garrett that sat at his son’s bedside. ‘I heard about it, though. Bad news travels.’

‘That’s the truth.’ Pete clicked his torch on and off, pointing its beam at the edge of the room, as if the sudden shafts of light helped him think. ‘I shouldn’t do that, I’ll waste the battery.’ He set it back on the table and looked at Murray. ‘If I tell you something, will you promise it’ll go no further?’

‘Of course.’

The crofter looked Murray in the eye, as if assessing his sincerity. Either he decided to trust him, or the pull of what he wanted to say was strong enough to make Pete disregard any doubts, because he continued, ‘I never mentioned it to Sheila — she was upset enough as it was — but I’ve often wondered if he did it deliberately.’

Murray remembered the piles of journals devoted to suicides, the carefully logged statistics detailing artists’ age, gender, sexuality and the means they’d used to end their life. But the notion that Alan Garrett had committed suicide sat badly beside what he knew of his wife and child. He couldn’t imagine how the smiling man on the mountainside could have wanted to abandoned them.

‘Why?’

Pete shrugged his shoulders. There was something in the gesture that made Murray wonder if there had ever been a time when he’d contemplated smashing his tractor into a tree or convenient wall. He remembered the sickening feeling when his dad’s car had slewed towards Christie’s, the relief when he’d managed to bring it to a halt, and said, ‘I guess you’re sincere if you hit something as solid as that at full speed.’

‘That’s the thing.’ The small man’s voice was pensive. ‘You’ll have driven that road a few times yourself now. If you think on it, you’ll remember there’s not much along there that you could crash into that would have much of an impact. Sure, there are plenty dykes, but they’re low. I’ve dwelt on it more than’s healthy. That tree was about the only thing guaranteed to do the job. If he didn’t mean it, it was very bad luck.’

‘Bad luck anyway.’

Pete nodded and tipped back the last of the whisky in his glass.

‘Not a very cheerful subject for your first night.’

‘No.’ Murray forced a smile. ‘So tell me about the sheep.’

The crofter grinned.

‘Why? Is there one you’ve got your eye on?’

They talked farming, then university and education, until the whisky was gone. Murray offered a dram from his own bottle. Pete hesitated, and then turned him down.

‘I’d best get back. That’s one thing about this life, early to bed, early to rise. It doesn’t make you wealthy and wise, but it sure as hell makes you want to avoid hangovers.’ He leant into one of the boxes and pulled out an unset mouse trap. ‘You’ll maybe need one of these. The little buggers like to come in out of the cold at this time of year. Can’t blame them, I suppose. I’ll lend you one of the cats for a few days if they become a problem.’

‘Cheers.’

He must have looked dismayed because Pete laughed.

‘Don’t worry, they’re tiny. Nothing like those big restaurant rats you get in Glasgow, just a bit cheeky. They don’t seem to realise we’re the superior species.’

He rose and pulled on his jacket. Jinx followed her master to the door, tail wagging. Murray got to his feet too. Standing, the two men seemed to fill the room.

‘I almost forgot.’ Pete fished the tractor keys from his pocket. ‘When I collected your bags, Mrs Dunn said she’d like you to drop by tomorrow afternoon, if you can spare the time. You’ve not reneged on the rent, have you?’

‘No, you can trust me on that score. It might be about her bedroom carpet. I got mud on it.’

The crofter laughed.

‘The whole island’s mud, and worse. Landladies can’t afford to get upset about that kind of thing. Likely she wants to feed you up, doesn’t know about all these gourmet tins of sardines and baked beans you hunter-gathered at the shop this afternoon.’

‘Aye.’ Murray leant down and scratched Jinx between the ears. This time the dog tolerated him. He could feel the warmth of the gas heater still stored in her rough fur. ‘That’ll be it.’

Murray stood at the door staring into the cold night, long after the rumble of Pete’s tractor had faded. There must have been a host of clouds hidden behind the night’s blackness, because the world beyond his door was a trembling mass of dark.

‘Starless and bible black.’

He wondered if he would start talking to himself more, now that he was to be so much on his own; found himself envying Pete Jinx’s company. He and Jack had campaigned hard for a dog when they were boys, but their dad had been adamant in his refusal. Murray had secretly suspected they would have had their way if their mother had lived. When he was very young there had been a point where the desire for his mother and for a dog had seemed equally strong. The two impossible wishes had merged and he’d imagined her up in heaven, a remote and smiling Isis guarded by a noble canine companion, the lost dog they never had.

Murray closed the door, turned off the heater and took a last glass of malt to bed with him, then lay in the utter dark, unsure of whether the noises he could hear came from the next room or from beyond the cottage’s stone walls. Mice or the faerie folk tidying up in return for the dram Pete had gifted them. Either option seemed horrid. He pictured Bobby Robb’s bed, shipwrecked in Fergus Baine’s grubby tenement flat, and ringed by spells. He wondered if Archie had believed in the occult too — interested in the beyond — or if the intelligence which had helped him fashion poems from the rough stuff of words had saved him from that particular delusion.

Murray filled his mind with thoughts of Moontide, the perfect ordering of the poems which made the book not simply a collection, but a composition. He pushed away images of Rachel’s face, Rachel’s body, and started to recite the poems inside his head in the sequence Archie had arranged them.

He woke in the middle of the night from visions of a pink tangle of naked bodies, aware of his own irritating hardness, unable to remember whether his nightmare had been of a holocaust or an orgy. Murray lay muffled under the blankets, waiting for the dawn. He saw the first, grey light creep across the room and watched his breath cloud the cold air. He decided to get up and wash anyway, and then drifted back into a dark and dreamless sleep.

Chapter Twenty-Five

THE COTTAGE GREW too small for Murray at around eleven the next morning. He pushed aside the notes he couldn’t concentrate on and pulled on his rain jacket and woollen hat. It was pelting down outside, but he stepped from the cottage and set out with no thought of a destination.

It seemed that he had lived half his life in the rain. Murray pulled up his hood and kept walking, his face lowered against the wind, the raindrops beating a tattoo on his waterproof. Surely the showers should be softer, more refreshing, in the clear air of the countryside, but it seemed to him that this was the same harsh rain that fell on Glasgow. Without the shelter of tenements and pubs the city offered it was free to sweep across the island and seek him out.

Usually such egotism would have made him smile, but now he just kept his eyes down, concentrating on the grass one plod ahead, trying to put Rachel from his mind. It was impossible. She was in the sickness he felt low down in his stomach. He wondered how many more encounters she’d had with other men, wondered if Fergus knew.

Fergus.

For all of his suaveness and learning, he was a cuckold many times over. Murray tried to take satisfaction from the thought and failed. He didn’t give a fuck about Rachel’s husband. It was his own hurt that moved him.

He’d liked her poshness, liked her teases that he was her bit of rough; Murray, the dux of the school. Now he realised she’d considered him gauche, not sophisticated enough to be initiated into her games. She was right, of course. He would have been shocked — was shocked — at the idea of an orgy. His cleverness was of another brand.

It was the sense of specialness he mourned as much as Rachel herself, the belief that she had chosen him above others. His faith had been dented by her marriage to Fergus and her infidelity with Rab, sure. But he had nursed his trust, willing himself to forgive these faults in the knowledge that she had decided to make him her lover. Now he knew she gave her body the way another women might give you a smile, or a touch of her hand; something to be enjoyed, but no assurance of anything. She had made a fool of him.

Had the other men in the photographs treasured her the way he had or had they already known they were one of many? Murray picked up a stick and swiped it through the long grass edging the pathway, letting loose a spray of rainwater.

He wondered how he would ever face her again, and realised that he couldn’t. He would have to look for a new job, though he was working in the one place he had wanted to work since he was a boy. Everything was spoiled. The thought was childish in its intensity. There was nothing for him now, no lover, no family and no job. He would pack up and go home, except there was no home, only a carelessly furnished flat where he laid his head. The only home he had known had been handed back to the council when his father went into residential care. At the time he’d taken comfort in the thought that he and Jack were acting in accordance with their father’s principles, and some new family would be able to bring up their children in its shelter. Now he wanted nothing more than to turn the key he still had in the lock, climb the stairs to the room he’d shared with Jack and lie face-down on the bed.

Ahead of him was an abandoned cottage, a derelict shell of the same design as the bothy he was renting from Pete. This one was missing its roof and front door. Its windows, free of glass, stared. Who had lived there, alone in the middle of nowhere, and why they had gone? Murray shivered. His waterproof was holding up well, but his trousers were soaked through and splashed with mud. It was stupid, letting himself get drenched like this, an invitation to a cold or worse, but he walked on, unsure of where he was going, seeing other derelict cottages and realising that the place hadn’t been the preserve of some lonely crofter or a hermit seeking solitude, but a village.

He looked through one of the vacant doors and saw the grass growing on the floor, the ivy clinging to the walls. How long would it be before the elements toppled these small structures as they had already toppled the broch and the castle? Would future archaeologists dig here, or had records grown so precise every aspect of the recent past would be charted and ready for those who wanted to know? Maybe, soon enough, there would be no one left, no world to chronicle and argue over. All things must end, why not this too? The thought almost had the power to cheer him.

He was still close to the coast, but the track was veering inland now and the sea was out of sight. Murray noticed clumps of plump, dark green shoots in the grass around him. He guessed the ground was boggy and resolved to stick to the path. The sheep who had dotted his route till now were absent here. No birds sang and the sound of the sea, which had beaten a soft accompaniment to the wind when he was on the cliffside, was silenced. He must have descended into the shelter of some glen without noticing, because the gusts of air that had blasted the rest of his walk were gone. All he could hear was the rain drumming against his cagoule and the vegetation around him.

Murray looked at this watch. It was only lunchtime, at least four hours before the dark would come in, but already he thought he could sense the descent of the day. He had a sudden urge to turn back but pressed on, as a not-quite-sober man in a bar might press on into drunkenness.

There were some kind of man-made caves up ahead, small triangular openings in a wall of mortared stone set tight into a high ridge. They looked dark and deep and somehow inviting. Perhaps he could crawl into one of them and die. Murray wondered about braving the boggy ground, but a couple of steps from the path his right boot sunk calf-deep into wetness and sludge, and it took more effort than he would have expected to prise himself free.

‘Fuck.’

He was breathing hard. It would be a horrible way to go, sucked into the mud, a living corpse in a soft, enveloping grave. Stupid to die like that, when there were pills and rope, razors and gin-soaked baths for the taking.

Murray stamped his boot, trying to shake some of the mud from him, though he was already wet through. Christ, at this rate he would die of trench foot.

Maybe he should turn around. He had promised to visit Mrs Dunn that afternoon and if he was going to cancel in good time he would have to get back to elevated ground and find a phone signal. He noticed an unpainted wooden fence up ahead, cordoning off a small square of ground. He would walk to that first, though he couldn’t think what would need protecting out here, where even the sheep didn’t venture.

It appeared to be a depression in the earth, half grown-over with grass. Murray tested the ground beyond the path with his feet. This time it felt firm enough, and he ventured tentatively forth to get a closer look.

‘I’d stand back from that, if I were you.’ The voice was female, high and cultured. It came from the ridge above him. He looked up and saw a figure dressed in a waterproof of the same dark olive-green as the one he was wearing. She too had drawn her hood up against the weather. What little light there was was behind her, her face lost in the shadows. ‘It’s a sinkhole. No one knows how deep it is.’

Murray imagined himself aging as he fell through the fathomless depths, his flesh rotting away, his skeleton still dropping, scream descending.

‘Shouldn’t it be better marked?’

The person on the ridge may have shrugged, but it was hard to tell through the mist of drizzle and the bulk of rainwear.

‘Everyone knows it’s there.’

It seemed futile to point out that he hadn’t.

‘Well, thanks for warning me.’

The figure nodded and turned away. Murray saw the stick, the awkward plunge of the shoulders as it limped from view, and realised that he’d been talking with Christie.

He shrugged his own shoulders. It was all pointless. He had been stupid to think he could write a biography of a man who had died thirty years ago, leaving one slim volume and not much else. The conversation with the Geordie’s landlord had been typical of his researches. Tantalising and half-remembered, a dramatic postscript to a drink-addled man careless of his own sanity. It added nothing to Murray’s understanding of Lunan. The long, lonely walk had decided him. He would go back to the city, write a tract that stuck entirely to an analysis of Lunan’s poetry, and try to think of what to do next.

Fergus had been right. The poetry was the thing, the life an unfortunate distraction from the art. They should delete authors’ names from all books and let the works stand or fall on their own merit. Fuck the egotistical, drunken shaggers who by some quirk of the genes were able to forge the stuff he used to think revealed the world to him. As far as he was concerned, they could sharpen their pencils and stick them up their own arseholes.

If Fergus knew about Rachel’s ‘hobby’, then he was a saint. Murray remembered meeting the couple in the department corridor the day he returned to collect the books he needed. Fergus’s hand gently touching his wife’s arm. In the professor’s place, he would have been tempted to tumble her down the stairs.

It occurred to Murray that his affair with Rachel had coloured his attitude towards the professor. Fergus was gruff and opinionated, there was no denying that, but his actions were consistently on the side of right. He had been outspoken in his opinion that Murray confine his study to Lunan’s poetry, going further than he needed in an attempt to stop him wasting his time. And whatever Bobby Robb’s faults, it reflected well on the professor that he’d provided an old friend with a home.

It didn’t matter any more. Soon they would cease to be colleagues, just as he had ceased to have any relationship with Rachel at all.

There was a shout from the ridge behind him. Murray turned and looked up at the small figure standing precariously at its edge. Christie lifted her hand and waved, though she must have known he had heard her.

‘Yes?’ Murray walked back to where he could hear her more clearly.

‘Can you help me? I seem to have managed to get my car stuck.’

The ridge was too high and slippy to climb. He followed Christie’s shouted directions and took the long way round to where the precipice descended, and then walked along the ascent until he found the track and the red 4x4 slumped half-on, half-off the shingled road, one wheel deep in the mud. The walk had taken him thirty minutes and he was sweating beneath his waterproof by the time he got there, despite the chill rain which had blown in his face since he left the shelter of the valley.

Christie must have been keeping watch for him, because she got out of the car as he approached and stood silently waiting as he walked the last few yards.

‘I tried putting some cardboard down for purchase, but I just seem to be digging myself in further.’

He might have been a paid mechanic summoned to give roadside assistance, rather than a stranger who had walked a mile or so in a deluge to help her.

Murray squatted down and looked at the back wheel. He could see where it had churned the soft mud. Christie was right; she’d been ploughing deeper into the earth. He got to his feet. It was windier up here, the wetness blowing in all directions. The rain could almost be classed as playful, if it wasn’t so fucking unpleasant, the persistence of it. The way it managed to slide beneath his outer layers and onto his flesh.

‘I’ll try pushing. If you bring the clutch up very slowly, we might be able to get it out. If not, I guess I’ll walk back and find someone to give you a tow.’

Christie nodded. She got back into the driver’s seat, leaving the car door open. Murray positioned himself behind the Cherokee, waited until she had started the engine and then pushed with what remained of his strength. The 4x4 was huge. He felt his hands slip down its wet surface and knew that it wasn’t going to budge. He smelt the petrol fumes and realised what he was doing was dangerous. He might slither beneath the broad wheels and be maimed or even killed. Murray felt a sharp stab of anger at Christie for calling him up here when he should have gone for help in the first place. But he went on forcing himself hard against the tank’s boot, walking on the spot as his feet lost their grip and started to slide in the mud, just as he feared they would. He shouted, ‘Pull the clutch up gently!’ and resolved that when she stalled, he would go for help. But then he felt a small threat of movement, his hands slid again and he pressed them hard against the boot instinctively, knowing that if he let up the game would be over, the vehicle stuck tight. Then it bucked and pulled up onto the track with an audible slurp. Churned mud sprayed the air, a depressed Jackson Pollock abstract splashing his whole length. Murray staggered and would have fallen had he not managed to put a hand out and steady himself against the car’s boot, even as it moved onto the shingled pathway.

For a moment he thought she was going to go off without a word. But then Christie stopped the car and leaned out.

‘Thanks.’

‘No bother.’

He searched his pocket for a hanky, failed to find one and rubbed his glasses against his jeans.

‘Where are you headed?’

‘Pete Preston’s bothy.’

‘Jump in and I’ll take you to the crossroads, it’s only a short way across the field from there.’

Murray looked down at his mud-spattered self.

Christie’s voice was impatient. ‘Don’t worry. This car’s seen worse. Besides, I seem to have miscalculated today. I might get stuck again.’

Murray glanced at her as he got into the passenger seat, and thought he could almost detect the hint of a smile.

The landscape looked different from the vehicle’s high front seat. Now that he could lift his head and regard it without being battered by the elements, he could see that they were on a wind-blasted moor. The treeless expanse gave a long view of the depthless heavens. Murray felt like it might rain for ever.

‘Are you part of the dig?’

He had expected their drive to be conducted in silence, and her question surprised him.

‘No, just walking.’

Christie nodded, as if it was perfectly normal to tramp out to this abandoned portion of the island in a storm. She said, ‘I don’t usually meet anyone out here.’ It was unclear whether she was explaining her question or the reason why she’d chosen the lonely spot.

Christie leaned forward and wiped at the condensation misting the windscreen. She’d turned up the hot air and the car felt stifling after the damp chill of outside. Murray had drawn back his hood when he got in; now he unzipped his jacket, pulled his woolly hat from his head and mopped his wet, mud-spotted face with it. He rubbed a hand through his hair. He hadn’t had it cut since the summer break and it felt almost long enough to tie back in a ponytail. Perhaps this was how it started. The slow slide, until you became one of those blokes you used to marvel at, marking the time between giros by beating a track between the bookie’s and the pub.

He straightened his spine.

‘I walked through an abandoned village I don’t remember seeing on the map.’

‘It used to house the lime-workers.’

For a mad moment he thought of lime trees and imagined an orchard of them tended by cottagers who collected their fruit. Maybe his bewilderment showed because Christie continued, ‘You were by the limekilns when I saw you. They employed about fifty men at one time, back in the eighteenth century. It was the extraction of lime that caused the sinkholes. You have to watch out for them, they’re unpredictable and not all of them have been mapped.’

A stanza from The Ballad of Reading Gaol came into his head.

And all the while the burning lime

Eats flesh and bone away,

It eats the brittle bone by night,

And the soft flesh by day

He wiped a hand over his face, feeling the roughness of his bristles and said, ‘Lime’s what they used to use to dispose of dead bodies, wasn’t it?’

Her laugh was like a sudden bark.

‘You’ve a morbid turn of mind. It was an essential element in building-mortar. A lot of those fine townhouses and tenements in Edinburgh and Glasgow wouldn’t be standing if it weren’t for lime made on this little island. What are you doing here?’

The question was abrupt and commanding.

Murray looked at her.

‘I came to see you.’

Christie Graves smiled, and for the first time he caught a glimpse of the beauty she’d been.

‘You sent me a letter, didn’t you?’

He nodded. None of it mattered any more, but he asked, ‘How did you know it was me?’

‘It didn’t really take a master detective. I looked you up when you first sent your request — your photograph’s on the university website. I thought you were familiar when I saw you in the shop yesterday, but I couldn’t place you. The beard makes quite a difference. But in any case, I would have realised when you said that you’d come here to see me. I’m not exactly inundated with visitors.’

She stopped the car and kept the engine running. Murray started to undo his seatbelt, but she said, ‘We’re not there yet, I just wanted to show you where I live.’

The heart of Christie’s house was a two-roomed cottage of the style Murray now knew was typical of the old island, but it had been extended to form a long bungalow with a picture window at its western end, where it would be pleasant to sit with a drink in your hand, on clear evenings, and watch the sun set. The road away from the cottage was still composed of rough stone, but it was wider and more even than the track they had just travelled, and the sleek black Saab parked outside Christie’s fenced garden would have had little trouble driving down it.

‘Very nice.’

‘Are you afraid of the dark?’

It was sudden and unexpected, like all of Christie’s questions so far, and it set off a strange remembrance in Murray. He used to have a recurring dream, of waking to see his mother standing at the door to his and Jack’s bedroom, her silhouette shadowy and indistinct, but recognisably her. It was always marvellous at first, this vision of her and the waves of love that wrapped him warm beneath the blankets, but then gradually he would begin to feel her steady jealousy, because he and Jack were alive and cosy in their beds while she lay cold and dead in her grave. The conviction that she had come to take them with her would sweep over him. Sometimes when he woke the bed was wet. For years he had slept with the bedside light on. Jack hadn’t seemed to mind. Perhaps he had his own nightmares.

‘No, I don’t mind the dark.’

‘I’ll be home tonight. Why don’t you walk over after dinner and you can tell me what it’s all about?’

Murray felt like the marrow had been sucked from his bones.

‘It was about Archie Lunan.’

‘I know.’

It was what he had come for, but too late.

‘I’ve reassessed my project. It’ll focus on Archie’s work rather than his life.’

They had reached the crossroads now. Christie stopped the car and pulled the handbrake on, but kept the engine running. The wipers continued to sweep the rain from the windscreen. She turned awkwardly towards Murray. Now he could see that some of the lines on her face were from pain, and the tiredness it had brought, but her voice belied any suffering. It was mild and unsurprised, the kind of tone he used when trying to guide a slow student into realising an obvious point.

‘Why do you men always give in so easily?’ Christie switched off the engine. The wipers stalled mid-swipe and the rain began to melt into sheets, warping the view of grey sky and green scrub. ‘You went to the trouble of contacting me and then came over here to hunt me down, even though I said I wouldn’t speak to you. Now that I’m willing, you’ve changed your mind. What happened?’

Murray shrugged.

‘I decided it was pointless.’

Christie snorted.

‘Everything is, but we have to find some way of passing the time.’ She sighed. ‘How much do you know about MS?’

He had been ready to open the door and leave. But now that Christie had mentioned her illness, he couldn’t muster the strength to be callous.

‘It’s a slow wasting disease that works on the nerves.’

‘That’s pretty much it. Except that it works on the sheaths that protect the nerves, and it’s not always so slow. If you’re lucky, you can get away with years of remission where nothing much happens. If you’re not, you can find yourself deteriorating rapidly to the point where you need a wheelchair. Or worse.’

Murray didn’t want to know what worse consisted of. He gripped the door handle and said, ‘I’m very sorry to hear that. I hope yours stays in remission.’

‘It isn’t in remission.’ Murray looked at Christie and she gave a small nod. ‘So if you decide you don’t want to talk to me, make sure you’re certain. I don’t have time to grant second chances.’

He opened the car door and got out.

‘Thanks for the lift.’

‘I’ll leave a light on. Tonight or not at all.’

Murray shut the door. He pulled his hood up and began the walk down towards the bothy. Halfway along the road he looked back, making sure Christie had managed to turn the car without getting bogged down in the mud again. She was gone. All that remained was the rain, beating down on the crossroads.

Chapter Twenty-Six

MURRAY PUSHED OPEN the door to the bothy. The last leg of his journey had worn him out, and his teeth had begun to chatter in a way he’d thought only happened in cartoons. He peeled his jacket from him, registering that something was wrong.

The Calor gas heater glowed warmly from the centre of the room, though he had been careful to turn it off before he left. Murray picked up the heavy torch Pete had gifted him and tiptoed towards the cottage’s second room just as the door started to creak open.

The intruder took a quick step backwards into the shadows. He raised his left hand to protect his face and his right came forward, knocking the torch away. It tumbled from Murray’s grip and skidded across the floor.

‘Good God, Murray.’ Professor Fergus Baine looked like he had dressed for his very first country house shoot. His Barbour jacket gleamed newly and his tweed cap was set at a rakish angle. He dusted some invisible spot from his lapel, staring at Murray as if unsure of what he was seeing. ‘Are you okay?’

Murray pulled a chair out from the table and sat down. He was too tired to do anything except rest his elbows on the table and set his head in his hands.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I was in the neighbourhood and thought I’d drop by.’

‘There isn’t a neighbourhood.’

Murray started to laugh, but the chill had him in its grip now. A shiver that could have doubled as a spasm clutched at him and the laugh turned to a cough. Murray pulled off his hat, dragged his jumper over his head and started to rub his chest dry with his T-shirt. University of North Alabama. God, that had been a while ago, back when everything seemed possible.

‘So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war, there never was a knight like the young Lochinvar.’ Fergus’s voice was slick with sarcasm. He lifted the kettle from the Primus stove, felt the weight of water in it and lit the gas. ‘You need to wash yourself in warm water.’ He went through to the bedroom and returned with a blanket. ‘Here, wrap yourself in this while we wait for it to boil.’

Murray draped the blanket round his shoulders, pulled his boots and socks off then stripped away his sodden trousers and underpants. The mud had penetrated his clothing and specks of it clung to his skin. Fergus Baine shook his head.

‘What did my wife see in you? You look like Bobby Sands towards the end.’ The kettle started to howl. The professor emptied it into a bowl, then filled a cup from the rain butt outside and cooled the boiling water with it. He put the steaming bowl and a cloth on the table in front of Murray. ‘Here.’

Murray took the bottle of malt from the table and started to fumble with its cap.

‘You don’t need that.’ Fergus plucked the whisky from Murray’s grip. He took the empty kettle, refilled it and set it back on the stove. ‘Spirits lower the body’s temperature. A hot drink’s always better.’

‘That’s a matter of opinion.’

Murray started to sponge himself. The water turned brackish. He supposed he should freshen it if he really wanted to get clean, but carried on dipping the unfamiliar cloth into the water, wiping himself down the half-hearted way a man might clean an old but necessary piece of equipment that was going to be replaced soon.

Fergus had been rummaging around in the boxes of supplies Pete had set in the corner and found a jar of instant coffee and a tin of powdered milk. He spilled generous measures into two mugs and added water.

‘It’s none of my business, but why are you camping in this hovel in the middle of nowhere?’

‘The archaeology department requisitioned all the good rooms.’

Fergus set a mug of strong coffee on the table and stood cradling his own.

‘You do realise that archaeology has much lower RAE scores than us? They’re way behind on student numbers too.’

Murray’s laugh held an edge of hysteria.

‘These things don’t count for much out here.’ He took the blanket and started to wipe himself dry with it. ‘How did you know where to find me?’

‘I asked at the shop. Always the hub of island life.’

‘No, I meant how did you know I was on the island?’

‘Rab Purvis told me.’

‘Oh.’

‘Don’t look so crestfallen, it hardly makes him a quisling. I was coming over to see Christie and had an idea you might be around so I asked Purvis. He didn’t know I was going to look you up.’

‘Pastoral care?’

‘Something like that.’

The two men looked at each other. Murray was the first to break eye contact. He’d wrapped himself back in the damp blanket; now he went through to the other room, found a jumper and a cleanish pair of jeans and put them on. When he returned he said, ‘You told me you’d only met Archie once.’

Fergus gave a nod that conceded his lie.

‘I suppose I hoped the less fuel on the fire, the sooner it would burn out.’

Murray sat back at the table and cradled the coffee mug in his hand, taking comfort from its warmth. He thought about rescuing the whisky from the shelf where Fergus had placed it and found he couldn’t be bothered.

‘Why are you so against Archie getting his due?’

The older man had taken his cap off, but still wore his heavy jacket. The haggard paleness of his face gave him the air of a distinguished thespian.

‘There was something about Lunan, a core of Romanticism perhaps, that’s dangerous for your type of approach. Sailing when a storm was coming in was stupid egotism. It was typical of Archie.’ Fergus steepled his hands together and rested his forehead on them for a moment as if the strain of memories threatened to loosen his composure. He massaged his temples then looked at Murray. The bright spark of energy that had seemed his defining feature was dulled, but it was still there, a small pilot light in the gleam of his eyes. ‘Ultimately I thought you’d reduce a complex life to a simplistic narrative. Naïve but talented young man comes to the city, falls into decadent ways and is punished for his carelessness by an early death. I didn’t think it would do either of you justice.’

‘You came all this way to say my work’s crap and have the balls to tell me it’s for my own protection?’

Fergus gave the upside-down smile that meant he knew he had scored a hit.

‘I came to see Christie. Her mobility’s reduced to the point where living here’s no longer feasible. The time has come for her to make a decision about where she wants to go.’

‘And you’re here to help her decide?’

Fergus bowed his head in a slight nod.

‘Sometimes it helps to talk things over with old friends.’

‘Was Christie’s illness part of the reason you discouraged me from investigating Archie Lunan?’

‘No, I told you. I thought it a genuinely poor proposal.’

Murray sipped his coffee. It tasted harsh, but it was hot and he took a second swallow. He shut his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, the professor was still there, staring at him, his expression as alert as an inner-city fox. Murray said, ‘I met her this morning, on the ridge above the limekilns.’

Fergus’s voice was free of concern.

‘I’m surprised she can make it that far.’

‘Her car had got stuck in the mud. I helped get it out.’

‘She was lucky you came along. Weather like this, who knows how long she might sit there? Something like that could kill her.’

‘She wants me to come and see her, to talk about Lunan.’

‘When?’

‘It doesn’t matter. I’m not going.’

The same downturned smile twitched Fergus’s lips.

‘It’s the opportunity you were waiting for.’

It was typical of the man to want to rub his victory home.

Murray kept his voice steady and said, ‘I’ll be on tomorrow’s ferry.’

Fergus picked up his cap and set it on his head at a jaunty angle.

‘I think you’ve made the right decision. Confine yourself to the poems. I’ll make sure you get every support from the department.’ He slapped the table with his open palm. ‘Perhaps I should write an introduction for you? I could include a short reminiscence of Archie. It might help set his work in context of the time.’

The urge to punch him ran through Murray like an electric current.

‘I don’t know that I’ll still be a member of the department.’

Fergus had half risen, now he sat back down and gave Murray his kingly look, a wise old lion giving counsel to a talking ape.

‘There will be no awkwardness between us. Rachel and I are going to Italy at the end of next week, but she’ll telephone when we’re back and you’ll come round for dinner. This will be in the past.’ He got to his feet. ‘If you can get your luggage up to the crossroads, I’ll give you a lift to the pier tomorrow afternoon.’

He might have been a father offering to do a favour for a teenage son.

‘There’s a long way round, slightly more civilised than the route Christie takes in that souped-up jeep of hers, and I brought the Saab over. Its suspension is famous.’

Murray had never been that interested in cars. It had been Jack who’d sat in deep communion with packs of Top Trumps cards, memorising makes and models, comparing maximum speeds and fantasising about what he would drive when he grew up. But Murray should have recognised the black Saab parked outside Christie’s cottage. The car was stamped on his memory. The smooth swiftness as it overtook Rachel’s BMW by the reservoir on the way home from their country park tryst. He remembered Rachel clambering onto his knee, unbuttoning her blouse, his shock as she flicked on the car’s interior light, the brilliant shine of white lace before he clicked it off, the dark shadow of the other car.

He said, ‘Don’t you mind? Sharing her with strangers?’

The professor’s voice was compassionate.

‘With strangers, no. It’s part of what binds us together.’

Murray nodded, as if he understood.

‘Did you email me the photographs?’

Fergus’s smile was saintly, a gentle shepherd caring for one of his flock.

‘I thought they might help you get over her, and I knew I could rely on your discretion.’

Murray raised his eyes towards the sloped roof. He saw a trickle of water trailing down the stone wall, following the uneven surface of the rock, forging its path along the lines of least resistance. He said, ‘I’ll get Pete Preston to give me a lift in his tractor.’

‘As you wish. Make sure you get back to Glasgow, where you can be safe and dry. The islands can be unhealthy for us city-dwellers.’

‘Was Lismore unhealthy for Archie?’

‘He died here. I thought you knew that.’

It was a bad joke, all of it. He’d thought all his curiosity was gone, but Murray found himself asking, ‘Fergus, what was Archie like when you knew him?’

The older man paused by the door and looked at the room as if wanting to commit its details to memory. He hesitated. For a moment Murray thought he was going to refuse to answer, but then he started to speak and his voice was low and measured.

‘Archie was scruffy, with a poor sense of hygiene and a tendency to drunkenness. He was slow to anger when he was sober and fast with his fists when he was in his cups, which, as I said, was much of the time. He liked women, but even after he met Christie he was convinced they didn’t like him.’ Fergus paused as if considering what he was going to say next, then went on, ‘But there was no real edge to Archie Lunan, never any sense of suspicion. If he liked you, he liked you, no judgement attached. He’s the only person I ever met to whom I’d apply the phrase, “too good for this world”. He would have made a wonderful father, if he’d managed to turn his back on alcohol.’ Fergus levelled his gaze to Murray’s. ‘Do you know what the main problem with Archie was?’

‘No, tell me.’

‘He thought everyone was as good and as loyal as he was, and of course they weren’t.’

He gave his inverted smile again, but this time his face looked old and worn and inclined to tears.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

MRS DUNN’S PRIVATE sitting room was warm. Murray leaned back in the tasselled easy chair he suspected had once been the preserve of long-dead Mr Dunn and bit into a fruit scone spread with the home-made jam. Archie the cat was basking in front of the electric fire. He peered at Murray through glazed eyes, then lowered his head back onto the carpet and slid into sleep.

‘Not impressed?’ Murray leaned down and ruffled the creature’s furry chest. ‘I’ll add you to the list.’ He sat back, marvelling at the cat’s talent for relaxing. Was Archie neutered? Maybe that was the way to be content, sever all desires.

He had meant it when he told Fergus that he was through with the book. Even now, settled in the warmth of Mrs Dunn’s front room, waiting to hear her story, he was sure he would never write it. But he had left it too late to cancel his visit and the tea and home-baked spread conferred an obligation. Murray glanced at his mobile resting on the occasional table beside him. Mrs Dunn had allowed him to charge it and the small bars on the display pulsed as the battery filled with energy.

He’d had no idea how hungry he’d been, but the landlady’s baking had awakened an appetite in Murray as fathomless as a small boy’s at a Sunday School picnic. He realised he was eyeing a plate of pancakes, even as he chewed on what remained of his scone.

Mrs Dunn settled her broad backside into the armchair opposite and freshened their cups with tea from the large pot on the table between them.

‘Help yourself, Dr Watson. They’ll go to waste otherwise.’

Murray doubted the archaeologists who had taken his berth would let cake go stale, but he filled his plate and asked, ‘How did you know I wasn’t a walker?’

Mrs Dunn took a bite from a slab of iced gingerbread and brushed the crumbs delicately from the solid shelf of her bosom.

‘I’m not sure I would know now. You’ve turned into a bit of a mountain man. But when you arrived your clothes were too new and you didn’t ask any questions about the walking. Even the ones that have been here before want to know what the ground’s like or if there are any bulls in the fields.’ She looked down at her bulk and picked another fragment of icing from her blouse. ‘I don’t know why they ask me. It’s plain I’m not much of a walker these days.’

‘But you used to be?’

‘Oh, yes.’ Mrs Dunn nodded towards the wedding photograph on the sideboard. ‘When I first came here, I could trek with the best of them.’

Murray followed her gaze and saw a thin man in naval uniform arm-in-arm with a slim, young bride.

‘You made a lovely couple.’

‘I’m not being conceited when I agree with you.’ She smiled. Murray searched her face for the girl in the picture, and failed to find her. Maybe Mrs Dunn guessed what he was thinking because she added, ‘I sometimes find it hard to believe it was us.’

‘Were you married on the island?’

‘Along the road at St Mungo’s.’

‘But you weren’t born here?’

‘I would have thought that was obvious from my accent. I’m a Glasgow girl, didn’t settle here until after we were married in 1970.’

‘So you were here when Christie and Archie arrived.’

Mrs Dunn took a sip of her tea.

‘Yes.’

He waited for her to go on, but she rested her cup on its saucer and began to tell him about a granddaughter studying archaeology in Dundee. Murray worked through the contents of his plate and tried to nod in the right places.

Murray had told the landlady about his biography of Lunan while they drank their first pot, now they were on their second and he was still no wiser. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. He sipped his tea, hoping the caffeine would do its job and keep him awake.

‘There’s a few of the young ones gone in for it.’ Mrs Dunn was well under way. ‘They get school visits from the archaeologists when they’re here and then there’s always a need for free labour on the digs, so they get involved and some of them get hooked, like Kirsty. Of course, there’s no guarantee she’ll stick with it, but a degree’s a degree. She can always do something else.’ The old lady beamed. ‘We never used to bother about the old monuments much when we were young. It’s terrible to think on it now, but there were still crofters who took the boulders from the walls of the broch or the old castle to shore up their own dykes, and more than one who knocked down standing stones to make the ploughing faster. No one thought anything of it.’

Murray thought he could detect a faint, bitter scent of singeing fur, but the cat remained motionless on the rug. He said, ‘Things must have changed a lot over the years.’

She turned down the corners of her mouth in a yes-and-no expression.

‘The island looks pretty much the way it always did. But in other ways, yes, a lot has gone. We didn’t get television on the island until 1979. Before then there was a ceilidh somewhere just about every night of the week.’

The landlady’s cheeks were lightly rouged, her lipstick carefully applied. Murray’s bristles itched. He wondered at the effort of making up when there was no one to see you. He sat straighter in his chair and asked, ‘So you didn’t miss the Barralands Ballroom?’

Mrs Dunn laughed, brightening at the slight flirt in his voice.

‘The village hall wasn’t blessed with a sprung dance floor. But back then a ceilidh wasn’t necessarily a dance. More often it was talking and singing, sometimes a wee dram, but not always. Just good company.’

‘And were you made to feel at home?’

‘People tried. I think they were glad of new blood. But, of course, it was hard at first. I didn’t have any Gaelic and there were still some old ones that spoke it. They switched to English out of politeness when I was there, but I knew they’d rather be talking in their own tongue.’ Mrs Dunn looked at her wedding photograph again, almost as if she were turning towards her dead husband for support. ‘There weren’t so many people my age on the island and so a lot of the talk was about the past. Brothers and sisters who had emigrated, old ones who had died.’

Murray could imagine the smoke-laden rooms, the young woman passing round refreshments as the elderly company droned on, correcting each other on the minutiae of events of no importance to anyone outside their circle.

‘You wouldn’t know who they were talking about.’

‘I didn’t have a clue half the time, and it took me a while to realise how ancient some of the old ones they spoke of were.’

The nape of his neck tingled.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Their ancestors were real to them, and they kept their memories alive with words and music. Times were changing, they knew that, but most of them still didn’t feel the need to write their stories and songs down. Maybe they thought the power would go out of them if they were put onto a page.’

The cat rolled over, letting his other side get the benefit of the fire. Murray asked, ‘And now?’

‘Now we have television.’ She nodded towards the set in the corner. ‘I’m as bad as anyone. When it’s dark and cold outside, I turn up the fire and switch on the box. The only chance we have of preserving the past now is by recording it. Kirsty and the archaeologists have helped me realise that. I’m not a gossip, Dr Watson.’ The academic title was like savour in her mouth. ‘I’ve kept my counsel for forty years, but you’re a scholar. If you think anything I remember will help your book, then I’ll tell you what I can, though it isn’t much.’

Mrs Dunn eyed his tape recorder with approval. Murray leaned forward and pressed Record.

‘I know you didn’t come to the island until much later, but I wondered if anyone ever mentioned what Archie Lunan was like as a boy, before he left the island.’

‘My husband was ages with Lunan, but he didn’t remember much of him as a youngster, except that he was clever and the other boys teased him for it.’

‘So he was bullied?’

‘I suppose he was, but John said Archie gave as good as he got. In fact, that’s about as much as John would ever say about him, “He was a bonnie fighter when he was a boy.”’

‘Strange, on an island where the past meant so much.’

Mrs Dunn nodded.

‘Maybe, but my John didn’t like gossip, and as for the other islanders. .’ She paused as if grasping for the right phrase. ‘I think there was a bit of shame attached to Archie’s mother — or maybe not his mother so much as the way she was treated. You see, in a place like this we all have to support each other, whether we get on or not, even more so in those days. But from what I could gather, Archie’s mother hadn’t really wanted anything much to do with anyone. She’d left as a lass and came back with Archie when he was about three. No one knew who his father was, and she didn’t enlighten them, though she styled herself Mrs Lunan. She lived with her father, and when he died she stayed on in the croft for a while. But she was strange and growing stranger. She must have known it, because when Archie was ten or so she left to live with relatives in Glasgow, taking the boy with her. I got the impression that some islanders thought more should have been done for the two of them. They were slow to talk of Archie and his mother in a way they weren’t about others who had gone. The croft went to an old uncle of hers. It was a while after he died that Archie came back.’

‘Did you meet him?’

‘Archie Lunan?’

Murray nodded and Mrs Dunn looked away from him, towards the fireplace where all three bars glowed amber.

‘Not straight away. It’s easy to stay hidden, even in a small place like this, if you’ve a mind to.’

‘And Archie had a mind to?’

‘He must have. I heard reports, of course — they’d gone to the shop and bought provisions, he and Christie had been seen walking along the beach, the odd one with the scar had been spotted driving the old van they shared down to the pier — but I never saw them myself. So I decided to visit.’

Mrs Dunn got up and went to the sideboard. ‘I don’t normally take a drink, it’s not wise if you live on your own, but it can be a help sometimes.’

‘Medicinal.’

‘That’s the word. Will you join me?’

‘It would be my pleasure.’

She took out a bottle of malt and two glasses. The cat got to its feet and stalked from the room, tail held high, as if in disapproval at the early-evening drinking. Mrs Dunn followed it through to the kitchen and returned with a small blue water jug. She poured a measure of whisky into her own glass and a larger one into Murray’s, then topped her drink up with a little water. She pushed the jug towards him and he did the same. He thought she looked tired. He wondered about the children in the photographs that decorated this room as they had the hallway. Did they visit often? And what would they think if they could see him drinking whisky with their mother in the late afternoon, asking questions that made her go pale beneath her carefully applied make-up?

‘Are you sure you want to talk about this right now? We could do it tomorrow if you prefer.’

‘Some things are better spoken of after dark. I learnt that watching the old people at their ceilidhs. Daylight chases some memories away and the night can bring them on.’ Mrs Dunn cleared her throat and began her story. ‘I was probably fairly naïve when I married John, but I’d worked in an office and came from Glasgow, so I thought of myself as “with it” — “streetwise”, as Kirsty would say. I imagine there’s a point early in most marriages when you wonder if you’ve done the right thing. I think I’d reached that when I went looking for Christie.’

‘You wanted to meet Christie rather than Archie?’

‘I was desperate for the company of a woman my age, someone to talk to about music and the latest fashions. Even if there was no one to see me wearing them, I was still interested. I wasn’t bothered about Archie Lunan. I was wondering if I’d done the right thing settling in the middle of nowhere, but I loved my husband.’

Murray raised his glass of malt and took the smallest of sips. The iodine scent of it stung his eyes and burnt against his chapped lips, but it was smooth and warm on the way down. He set the glass on the table, though he wanted to knock the lot back and then pour himself another. He asked, ‘So what did you do?’

Mrs Dunn’s voice took on a thoughtful, far-away tone.

‘I turned into Little Red Riding Hood. I made a cake, packed it up and went through the forest until I met the wolves. That’s something the story got wrong, wolves don’t travel solo, they hunt in packs.’ She caught his eye and smiled as if laughing at her own fancy. ‘Archie’s croft wasn’t one of the better ones, and his uncle had been gone a while before he claimed it. Have you ever been in one of these old cottages?’

‘I’m camping in Pete Preston’s bothy.’

‘Of course you are. So you know well enough what they’re like — barely more than a small barn, no insulation beyond what’s offered by the stone walls. But back then people improvised with straw and wood, whatever they could lay their hands on, I suppose.’

‘Pete’s place is small. It’s hard to think of a family living there.’

‘Open-plan is nothing new. Everything happened in the one room. By the time I arrived that way of life was more or less gone and there were only a couple of blackhouses left. Like I said, they were basic, but they could be warm and cosy too. When I reached the croft where Christie was staying, I realised they could also be squalid.’

Archie the cat came back into the room, licking his lips as if he had just eaten something particularly choice. He pushed his front paws out in a long stretch that emphasised the length of his spine, then leapt onto Murray’s lap.

Mrs Dunn shook her head.

‘You’re not allergic, are you?’

He stroked a hand across the creature’s fur. Archie unsheathed his claws, hooked them through the fabric of Murray’s jeans and into his flesh. The cat purred and Murray tried to keep the pain from his face.

‘I don’t think so.’ He wasn’t sure.

‘I can’t remember anyone being allergic when we were young.’

He ran his hand over the animal’s fur again, fascinated by the way each hair sprang perfectly back into position, the tom’s tortoiseshell markings breaking up then reassembling themselves, an ordered universe.

‘We’ve grown softer.’

‘I wouldn’t say that. But sometimes when you think back it’s hard to remember how things were, how you were. It’s like looking at someone else. The girl who walked down to that blackhouse was nothing like the old lady sitting in front of you today, and yet they both are — were — me.’

Murray nodded. The man he had felt himself to be had changed since he started his quest for Archie.

Mrs Dunn went on, ‘I’m not sure what I expected. Someone a bit like myself, I suppose. A young woman missing the city, but enough in love with her man to shift to an island that didn’t even have a café, let alone a cinema or a dance hall.’

The cat had fallen asleep. Murray traced a finger down a black stripe dappled between its ears.

‘You were looking for a friend.’

‘I think I might have been.’ The landlady took a sip of her drink, and when she spoke again her voice was stronger. ‘I wasn’t certain where the croft was, and back then I didn’t drive. But like I said, in those days I could trek with the best of them, five miles was just a warm-up. Anyway, I had nothing better to do. John had gone to the rigs, to try and get a bit of money to help get us started. He’d wanted me to go to my mother’s in Glasgow while he was away, but that would have been like going back to being a daughter. I was determined to stay in our wee cottage.’

‘But you were lonely?’

‘Very. Still, I made my mind up to stick it out and make the best of things. Deciding to visit Christie was part of that.’

‘How did you know she would be there?’

‘I didn’t. Nowadays people don’t go anywhere without phoning first, but there were fewer phones around and time wasn’t so precious. You called round, and if the person was out, you went away. I simply stuck my cake in my bag and set off.’

‘So was she in?’

‘No.’ Mrs Dunn paused and took another sip of her drink. ‘I stopped a short way off from the cottage to tidy myself up. It was a warm day and I regretted not bringing a flask of water with me, but I’d brought what I considered the essentials: a hairbrush, powder and lipstick.’ She shook her head, but there was no mirth in her expression. ‘What was I thinking? I knew they were hippies, they were hardly going to be impressed by good grooming. Anyway, I was all straightened up and as ready to get acquainted as I ever would be when a man shot out of the cottage like a bullet from a shotgun.’ She shook her head again at her young self’s folly. ‘If he was the bullet, I was the rabbit. I froze and my eyes must have been wide as flying saucers. He tripped over a tussock of grass and landed almost at my feet. If we’d been in a romantic novel, it would have been the start of a great love affair. I certainly behaved like one of those stupid girls in the stories. I gave a silly scream and dropped my bag. The man on the ground started to laugh, and I did too, though whether it was because I thought it was funny or because I’d got a shock, I’m not sure. He got to his feet, graciously returned my bag and asked if I’d like to come in for a cup of tea.’

Murray leaned forward and the cat stiffened in protest, flexing its claws against his leg.

Mrs Dunn went on. ‘I think I knew then that the best thing to do would be to go straight home, but I’d spent three long weeks with only elderly visitors for company. I was desperate to meet young folk — young, city folk. Plus I could give myself a genuine excuse. I’d had a long walk without any refreshment and was beginning to feel a little light-headed.’

Murray could see it, the hot day, the girl in her summer frock, the young man looking up at her from his seat on the grass. He asked, ‘Was he Archie?’

‘I assumed he was, though his accent was posher, a bit more English than I’d expected. I told him I’d dropped round to pay my respects to Christie and was she in? He laughed — he had a nice laugh — and said no, but she would be back soon. I thought, oh well, what’s the harm, and went on in, merry as a wee mouse spotting a rind of cheddar in a trap.’ Mrs Dunn stopped. Her eyes rested on the tape recorder and she might have been checking to see that its spools were still rolling, or reminding herself why she was telling her story. ‘I’d never seen a house like it. It wasn’t just the mess. My mother was a hard worker, but there were six of us living in a single end. It was clean, most of the time, but it was no home beautiful. No, it was the strangeness of it all that overwhelmed me.

‘The table looked as if no one had washed a dish for days. There was some chemistry equipment in amongst the crockery, a Pyrex flask suspended on a metal stand above a Bunsen burner, with an orange tube dangling from it. The funny thing was it didn’t look out of place, even though it was obviously a room where people ate and slept. I could see the bed recess, the bedclothes half-slung on the floor. A woman’s dress was hanging all bunched up from a nail on the wall beside it. I remember that distinctly, because I knew it would leave a mark on the fabric. I wanted to go and straighten it, but there was a man’s shirt draped on top with its arms tied tight around the dress’s waist so it looked like a couple in a clinch. The place stank — a sweet smell, rotting vegetables, unwashed bedclothes and sweat. I could see flies circling in that horrible way that they have, as if they own the place and we’re some bit of territory where they might land if they get the notion.

‘There were books everywhere, or so it seemed. Piled on the table, the chairs, the floor. When I say piled, I don’t mean in neat columns. It was as if there’d been an explosion of books. They were tumbled all over the place, some of them lying open as if they’d been flung away halfway through the reading of them.

‘The man who had invited me in said, “We’ve got a visitor”, and the strangest thing happened. A head raised itself from in amongst the mess on the table and looked at me. There was so much chaos I hadn’t noticed a man asleep in the middle of it. Like I told you, I’d lived in Glasgow all my life up until then. I’d seen plenty of men with scars on their faces, but this one was a humdinger.’

‘A Colgate smile.’

It was as if Mrs Dunn had forgotten he was a doctor of literature. Her voice held a warning note.

‘I wouldn’t joke about it, son.’

Murray said, ‘I went to his funeral the other week,’ like it was some kind of reparation for his lapse in taste. ‘I’m afraid it wasn’t very well-attended.’

Mrs Dunn nodded, taking the empty pews in her stride, and went on with her story.

‘I was standing in a block of sunshine by the open door. I could still feel the warmth on my back and hear the birds singing outside, but beyond that small shaft of light, it was a different world. Some of those stories and songs I’d heard at the ceilidhs must have stuck, because I remembered tales of people getting lost in the faery hills. The faeries lay on a fabulous evening of feasting, drinking and dancing, and next morning set their guest on the right path for home. But when they arrive back in the village, the poor soul discovers a hundred years have passed and all their kin are long dead.’

Murray said, ‘When seven lang years had come and fled, / when grief was calm, and hope was dead; / when scarce was remembered Kilmeny’s name, / late in a gloamin’ Kilmeny came hame.’

‘You would have fitted in well at the ceilidhs, Dr Watson. I felt like Kilmeny herself, too fascinated to turn for home. The one I’d met first said, “Let’s have some of your famous tea, Bobby.” And the other one jumped to his feet, though he’d looked half-dead the moment before. Suddenly I realised they were not much more than boys and felt annoyed at myself for being such a teuchter. I think that was one of my great fears, you see, that I would lose my so-called sophistication and end up a wee island wifie.’

The lights shone warmly in the sitting room and it was only when Mrs Dunn rose and drew the curtains that Murray realised the world outside the window had descended into darkness. Archie the cat stood up in Murray’s lap, raised his tail and presented an eye-line view of the tiny arsehole set in the centre of his lean rump. He jumped elegantly to the ground. Mrs Dunn opened the living-room door and he slid through, tail as straight as a warning flag.

‘As soon as he hears me closing the curtains, that’s him out for the night, hunting.’

‘I guess the pickings are better after dark.’

‘For some things.’

‘It was sunny the day you went to visit Christie.’

Mrs Dunn hesitated, as if reluctant to return to her tale.

‘Scorching. The man I had met outside introduced himself. It turned out he wasn’t Archie at all, but a friend of his. .’

Murray knew the name was coming, but it was still a shock to hear it on her lips.

‘. . Fergus. The other one, the one with the scar, was Bobby. He came back with the water and said, “It was time for a brew anyway.”’ Mrs Dunn lifted her glass of whisky, and rested it on the embroidered antimacassar on the arm of her chair, gazing at it as if she could see the scene in its tawny depths. ‘I was nervous, sitting there with two men I didn’t know, even though they weren’t much more than boys. But the door was still open, the daylight still shining in from outside, so I told myself to relax and stop being such a baby. Fergus did most of the talking. I wouldn’t have entertained him if I’d been on the mainland. He was the kind of lad me and my pals would have laughed at, a bit of a snob, I suppose. But it was nice to have company of my own age, even if he wasn’t talking about the kind of things people our age usually talked about.’

‘What did he talk about?’

‘Poetry, I think. Remember, I’d got used to being in company where I didn’t understand half of what was being said. The other one, Bobby, put the tea in front of me. It was like no tea I’d ever seen before.’ Mrs Dunn broke off and looked at Murray. ‘You’ll be less naïve than I was back then, Dr Watson.’ She gave a small laugh. ‘I’m less naïve than I was back then, but they were simpler times. I got the cake out of my bag. It seemed a shame not to share it with them. Anyway, I had a feeling I’d need something sweet to help me get that brew down. And I was determined to get it down. It’s amazing what folk will do for politeness’ sake.’ Mrs Dunn straightened herself in her chair and smoothed her skirt beneath her hands, though there was barely a crease in it. ‘The two boys held their noses and drank up. I thought, this is funny tea this, but Fergus said, “It’s a herbal infusion, extremely efficacious. Christie introduced us to it.”’ That was the way he talked. But I thought, oh well, if it’s good enough for Christie, it’s good enough for me, and swallowed the lot.’ She took a sip of spirit as if hoping to banish the memory of the awful drink. ‘At first it was wonderful. Three children and all these years later, I can still recall the sensation. I never experienced anything else like it. The pair of them ate the cake like they hadn’t had a decent meal in days.’ She looked him in the eye. ‘A bit like the way you ate the cakes I gave you this afternoon. But it seemed so funny the way they wolfed it down. I started to laugh, then found I couldn’t stop. It didn’t matter, because they were laughing too. I’m not sure how long we sat there, laughing over nothing.’ She took another sip of her drink. ‘What happened next happened gradually, the way the sea sometimes changes colour. It can be the brightest blue, and then, without you seeing where the change came from, the waters turn to grey. You look at the skies overhead and realise the whole scene has transformed and you could be in a different day from the one you were in, a different world.’

Murray kept his own voice calm, unsure of what he was about to hear.

‘That’s the way it is in Scotland.’

Mrs Dunn looked away from him, towards the curtained window.

‘It crept up on me like that. A feeling of dread. Then suddenly, I was terrified.’

‘Of the two men?’

‘Of the men, the room, my own hands, the grass outside, the sound of the birds. I’d been fascinated by the books, now I could see bright shadows of them, little diamonds floating in the air, as dazzling as the stained glass in St Mungo’s when the sun’s behind it. It should have been beautiful, but it was too strange. I’d thought I was going mad, alone without John in the cottage, now I knew that I was. Fergus and Bobby were still talking, but I had no idea of what they were saying. It was as if their sentences were overlapping and repeating. I would hear the same word recurring over and over again, but not the word that came before or the ones that came after.’ Her voice rose and fell as she repeated the words in a far-away chant,

‘I’d thought I was Red Riding Hood, now I was Alice fallen down the white rabbit’s burrow. I wanted to ask if it was a poem, but I couldn’t because worse than the strange sounds and moving colours was the fear. It paralysed me. I tried closing my eyes, but the shapes were still there, organising themselves into patterns behind my eyes. Did you ever have a kaleidoscope as a child?’

‘Yes.’

‘I didn’t. Maybe they weren’t invented, or maybe they were too expensive in those days for the likes of us, but years later my daughter Jennifer got one in a present. I took a wee look through it and felt like I was going to be sick.’

‘Because it was like your bad trip?’

‘You don’t even need me to tell you, do you, son?’

‘I’ve never taken drugs myself.’ It was true, except for the occasional joint, soggy with other tokers’ saliva, passed around at parties when he was an undergraduate. ‘But I’ve read about plenty in novels. You had no idea what was happening, or what they gave you?’

‘No idea at all.’ Her voice softened with the awfulness of the memory. ‘I thought I was going mad. On top of the fear and the visions, I had an urge to vomit and yet I wasn’t sick until it was all over.’

‘Did the others notice you were having a bad time?’

‘They must have, because hands — I’m not sure whose they were — took hold of me. I think I struggled. I have a memory of shouting and of hitting out and of something, someone, pinning me down, but then I was drifting, I’m not sure for how long, in a kind of trance, not awake, not asleep. I prayed I wasn’t dead, because if I had been I’d have stayed in that state for all eternity.’ She stopped speaking and the only sound in the room was the wind tearing down the empty road outside and the hiss of the gas fire. ‘That was the wrong thought to have, because then all of eternity seemed to open up in my head and it was terrifying.’

There was a bang at the window and Murray flinched.

‘It’s okay.’ Mrs Dunn gave him a reassuring smile. ‘That pane’s loose. I’ll need to get it seen to.’

Murray asked, ‘Why do you think they drugged you?’

Mrs Dunn opened her hands, revealing her empty palms.

‘Maybe they thought I would like it. After all, it had no bad effects on them. I suppose they were used to it. Or maybe they wanted to humiliate me.’

The anger was sharp in Murray’s voice.

‘It was themselves they humiliated.’

‘Maybe.’ Mrs Dunn gave a sad smile. ‘There was one particular thing, though, that’s given me the shivers ever since, whenever I think on it.’

She took a sip of her whisky and Murray said, ‘Just one thing?’

‘No, the whole day has the quality of a nightmare, when I remember it. That long walk in the blazing sunshine, the man falling at my feet laughing, Bobby’s scar and worst of all the colours loosening themselves from the books and floating in front of my eyes, no matter if I shut them or not.’

He wanted to ask her to scroll back and tell him the worst part of the memory, but his interruption had distracted her and she was moving on again.

‘I’m not sure if I slept, but I came to sometime hours later. I was in total darkness. I sat up and hit my head on the roof of the recess and for a second I thought I’d been mistaken for dead and buried alive. I would have screamed, except that the feeling of dread was still with me, not so intense, but strong enough to make me freeze.’

‘You were petrified.’

‘Yes.’ She gave him a grateful smile. ‘That’s the word for it, petrified. But I realised that I could hear voices beyond the darkness of what I thought was my coffin and stuck my hand out. It hit wood on one side, but then I found the curtain and drew it back.

‘It was still bright outside, but that didn’t mean much — it was summer and this far north it can still be daylight nigh-on midnight. Christie and your Archie were sat at the table with the other two. God only knows what I looked like, but they behaved as if it were nothing unusual to see a madwoman appear from nowhere. Maybe it wasn’t.

‘There was a bottle of spirits on the table. Fergus offered me a drink. It was almost as strange as the trip, the way they looked at me as if nothing had happened. The night was still warm, but Christie had this muckle big coat wrapped around her.’ Mrs Dunn shook her head. ‘It looked like something you might pick up at Paddy’s Market, but she couldn’t have been more elegant if she’d been dressed from head to toe in couture. I knew then I’d been foolish ever to imagine the two of us talking about hemlines over tea and cake. Christie was one of those women who make their own style. She glanced me up and down without a flicker of emotion, and then she turned to Fergus and said, “Leave her alone. Can’t you tell she’s pregnant?”’

Murray wondered why the landlady hadn’t mentioned it before and asked, ‘How advanced was your pregnancy?’

‘So early I didn’t know.’

‘So how could she?’

Mrs Dunn shrugged as if it was nothing remarkable.

‘Some women can tell these things. But of course it gave me a shock when she said it. The one with the scar laughed and said something like, “When did that ever make a difference to him?” But by then I had come to my senses. I just wanted to be away and home.’

‘What did Archie do?’

‘Nothing. Just sat there as if it had hee-haw to do with him, which I suppose it did, except for that fact that it was his house and his guests.’

‘And no one went with you?’

‘Fergus got to his feet, but Christie told him to sit down. She said something about him having done enough damage and me knowing the way back myself. Then Bobby got up, and for one dreadful moment I thought he was going to offer to escort me, but she said “And that goes double for you.”’ They obeyed her like she was the leader of their gang. I should have been grateful, but for some reason it made me dislike her more. I’d gone all that way, full of hope, and those men had abused me.’

It had been in his mind ever since she mentioned the rough hands and the bed recess.

‘Do you think they. .’ Murray paused, searching for the right word and failing, ‘. . when you were in your trance?’

‘I do remember fighting and shoving, but no. I would have known if anything more had happened. There are ways of knowing.’ Mrs Dunn put a full-stop at the end of the sentence, as if to make clear that certain things were not to be discussed outside women’s realms. Her voice regained its briskness. ‘So that’s it. Not much to do with Archie Lunan perhaps, except that was the life he was living and the people he was mixing with, when he was here.’

‘And he drowned soon after?’

‘A month later. His uncle had left a wee boat, not much more than a rowing boat with a sail stuck on it. Okay for fishing, but not big enough to risk on open water, even if the weather was fine.’

Murray remembered the scant newspaper accounts he had photocopied in the library.

‘And it was wild, the night he went out.’

Mrs Dunn nodded.

‘A bit like tonight. They reckon he sailed round towards the south-eastern point of the island. There’s a reason they put a lighthouse there. A wrecker’s paradise, John used to call it.’ As if on cue, the rain battered against the window, shaking the loose pane in its frame. ‘Archie won’t be having a very good night out there.’

Murray caught his breath.

Mrs Dunn met his eyes and said, ‘It was my eldest boy that named the cat. I never thought of him as having the same name as poor Lunan before.’

‘Why “poor Lunan”?’

‘Because he died so young.’ She gazed towards the windows and the sound of the storm. ‘And because he was with those people. Even in the state I was in, I could see he was out of his depth.’ She looked him in the eye. ‘Bobby had seemed unhinged to me. And Fergus? Well, Fergus had the kind of recklessness boys usually grow out of, if it doesn’t kill them. But Archie. .’ She paused, looking up at the ceiling as if searching for the right words. ‘Archie was handsome in a way the other two weren’t. He seemed separate from them too. Looking back on it, I’m not sure he knew what was going on. He only had eyes for Christie. I remember he reached across the table and took her hand. She let him, but I don’t think she looked at him once.’

‘Were you here the night he drowned?’

‘Yes, safe in bed like the rest of the island. The alarm wasn’t raised until the next day. By then his body had been taken by the currents.’

‘Who raised the alarm?’

‘I heard that it was the smooth one, Fergus, who came looking for him at the shop. God knows where Christie thought he was, but I suppose that even she didn’t think he’d go sailing on a night like that. There was a search, of course, though I think people knew it was a corpse they were looking for. Two days later Fergus and the other one left the island. I hadn’t realised it, but there had been talk about strange goings-on for a while.’ She gave him a smile. ‘The old islanders were maybe unsophisticated by my standards, but they knew a lot more than they let on, a lot more than me when it came to it. The two men were told to leave if they wanted to stay in one piece.’

‘And Christie?’

‘There were those who would have liked her to go too, but she was a different case. She had ties here, and though there were few that would speak to her at first, that never seemed to bother Christie. I dare say she could have been forced out, but she kept herself to herself, and though there was talk about midnight rambles and the amount of time she spent down by the old limekilns, people grew used to her. There were even a couple that were pleased when she published her first book.’

Murray leaned forward.

‘What did you mean when you said she had ties here?’

‘Christie’s mother came from here. I thought you would have known that? She and Archie Lunan were cousins.’ The surprise must have shown in his face because Mrs Dunn smiled. ‘It seems strange to us, but I doubt that would have bothered the islanders if Archie and Christie had behaved. They travel far and wide, island folk. It wasn’t unusual even back then for men to have crossed the Atlantic and back several times, but there were always some who married not far from their own door.’

‘So the cottage where she lives now. .?’

‘Came to her after Lunan died. I hear she’s done a lot to it. I would hope so. But that visit was my first and last.’

She paused and it seemed as if her story might be at a close. Murray said, ‘Mrs Dunn, you mentioned that there was something that chilled you even more than the rest of your experience. Will you share it with me?’

She nodded and her voice took on the same clear quality he now recognised as the tone she used whenever she had something difficult to relate.

‘It was while I was still in the recess. I was groggy, but I could understand what they were saying. The one with the scar said, “She would do. No fuss, not much blood, a quick stab to the heart, over and out. Painless. All that energy released and the prize of a new dimension in store for her.” Fergus laughed, and told him he was talking something-I-won’t-repeat. Then he said, “Anyway, you can tell she’s not a virgin, and that’s what you’re always going on about isn’t it? Purity?” Christie snapped at them both to shut up. I was grateful to her, but I blamed her too. It might not have been logical, but it was her I had come to see.’

‘But she was right about what she said? You were expecting?’

‘Yes, I was.’ She looked back at the wedding photograph on the table by her side then said, ‘I’m afraid we lost that baby. Things just turn out that way sometimes, but I couldn’t help associating the miscarriage with what had happened and blaming them, even though I suspected it was nonsense.’

They sat in silence for a moment, then there was the sound of a key in the lock. Mrs Dunn said, ‘That’ll be my archaeologists. Will you excuse me a moment, please, Dr Watson? They’ll be famished.’

‘And muddy?’

‘As gravediggers on nightshift.’ She put the bottle of whisky on the table. ‘Help yourself to another dram. You look like you could do with it.’

Murray had no idea of how long he had been asleep. He picked up his phone and checked the time. Seven-fifteen. He must have been out for at least an hour. He shoved the mobile in his pocket. His mouth was dry, the dram where he had left it. He raised the glass to his lips and knocked it back, getting to his feet and banging his leg on the coffee table, almost tumbling it over. Mrs Dunn must have been listening out for him because she opened the sitting-room door.

‘I couldn’t bring myself to wake you. I kept you a bit of dinner back.’

‘That’s kind, but I have to be somewhere.’

‘You’re going to see her, aren’t you?’

‘I think I have to.’ He hesitated. ‘Did you ever talk about it with anyone else? A professional?’

‘Life is for getting on with, Dr Watson.’

‘It’s for looking back on too.’

‘True enough. But if you’re wise, you choose your memories. I don’t plan to think on this again, now that I’ve told you.’ She smiled. ‘You’re my sin-eater come to take it away.’ Mrs Dunn lifted a padded envelope from the hall table. ‘This came for you.’

Murray turned it over and read Professor James’s address on the back.

‘Thanks. It’s a book of poetry someone thought I might enjoy.’

‘You say that as if you already know they’re wrong.’

He slid the envelope unopened into his pocket. ‘I’m afraid I’m not very keen on the author.’

‘Oh, well.’ Mrs Dunn held the front door open for him. ‘You never know, they’ll maybe surprise you.’

Murray thanked her and turned to go. He was already on the path when she called him back.

‘Dr Watson, Jamie the postie told me you were doing a rare tear the other day. You know, the roads here are good, as they go, but you have to take care. We had a bad crash here a few years back.’

‘I heard.’

Mrs Dunn nodded her head, as if everything she needed to say had already been said.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

THE WIND THAT had battered against Mrs Dunn’s windows was battering against Murray now. It occurred to him that this was the kind of night when ill-prepared walkers drifted from pathways and died of hypothermia. He wondered if he should turn back, but kept trudging forth, head down against the wind, like some gothic rambler compelled to wander the world.

Murray saw the lights of a car blinking from the distant curves and bends of the road ahead as if to emphasise how far he had left to walk. The warmth of Mrs Dunn’s living room had blown away in the wind. He started to murmur a song his father used to sing late on sleepless nights when he and Jack were boys. It was a ballad about what it was to be a cowboy; the impossibility of ever finding love and the inevitability of a lonely death. Sometimes, when he was young, it had seemed to Murray that misery was all he had. He would nurse it to himself, not daring to let it go for fear of losing himself. Murray remembered taking the point of his maths compass and twisting it slowly into his palm, digging a homemade stigmata. It was stupid. All of it. Life and what you made of it. Stupid.

He heard the rumble of the vehicle’s engine, saw its headlights round the bend and stepped aside into the verge as a large, grey Land-Rover hove into view. The vehicle slowed to a halt beside him and the driver wound down his window.

‘Murray Watson?’

‘Yes?’

His first thought was that something had happened to Jack and this person had been sent to find him, but the man was smiling beneath his shaggy beard.

‘Hop in and I’ll give you a lift.’

‘I’m going in the opposite direction.’

The man grinned. His teeth shone piratical against the black of his beard and the dark of the night. He said, ‘We’re on a small island, how far can it be?’

The wind picked up tempo, bringing a hail of rain with it. Murray jogged round to the passenger side, pulled open the door and climbed in. The stranger might be a descendent of Sawney Bean intent on reviving the family business, but if he was offering a lift, Murray was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. He snapped the seatbelt home.

‘Good lad.’ The driver was wearing a chunky Shetland knit. His long hair was twisted into two plaits fastened with mismatched elastic bands. ‘There’s a place down here I can turn.’

Murray thought he could smell the faint taint of marijuana beneath the pine car-freshener scent he always associated with long journeys and travel sickness. He said, ‘This is good of you.’

The stranger reversed the Land-Rover into the entrance of a field then looked at Murray.

‘You don’t remember me, do you?’

Murray stared at his face. Some memory stirred, and then slithered from his reach.

‘Maybe it’s the beard?’

‘You’re pretty beardy yourself.’ The man laughed. ‘I probably wouldn’t have clocked you if Mrs Dunn hadn’t mentioned you were on the island. She likes her academics, does our landlady.’ He stuck out his hand. ‘Jem Edwards. You used to go out with Angela Whatsit, didn’t you? I was in her year. We went for a drink a few times.’

‘God, yes. You were there the night we went to see The Fall.’

‘That was a good gig.’

The driver held out a hand and Murray shook it. Jem looked older and broader, but he remembered him now. He’s been one of Angela’s archaeology crew. Good-natured, hard-drinking, tendency to dress like a Viking. Murray could have hugged him.

‘Didn’t you used to play the bagpipes?’

‘Still do. But not so often at parties these days.’ Jem turned the jeep. ‘So where are we headed? Tell me you’ve found a wee shebeen full of beautiful women, good whisky and fearless fiddle-players.’

Murray laughed and realised that the archaeologist’s hearty normality might have the power to edge him into hysteria.

‘Sadly not. Do you know the crossroads on the marsh above the limekilns?’

‘I know the limekilns — they’re where our new dig’s planned — but as for the rest, you’ll have to be my guide. What are you doing here, anyway? You’re a historian, aren’t you?’

‘English lit.’ Murray wiped a patch of condensation from the windscreen. ‘If you go straight on for now, you’ll see a turning on the left, just after the church.’ He sank back in his seat and began to tell Jem an edited version of his quest.

They saw no other traffic on the road, but the archaeologist kept his speed low, sailing smoothly over hills and round bends. They passed a cluster of cottages here and there showing a lit window. Then they were into the dark countryside, the full beam of their headlights unveiling drenched hedgerows and waving trees that looked like they might swoop down and snatch the car up into their branches. Something that might have been a weasel or a stoat dashed across their path and into the undergrowth. The solid bulk of St Mungo’s Church appeared on their left. The headlights glanced into the graveyard, bending across the crooked headstones and slumbering tombs. Jem slowed the car.

‘Left here?’

‘Yes, the road deteriorates now.’

‘No problem, we’re in a tank.’ Jem turned the wheels onto the roughcast path and their conversation back to Murray’s quest. ‘So this woman Christie could be key?’

‘She was intimate with Archie at the most interesting period of his life.’

‘It must be amazing to be able to speak to someone who actually knew the person you’re researching.’

‘I guess that’s never going to happen to you?’

‘Not unless someone invents time travel. It’d end in disaster, anyway. We’d be hailed as gods, given the best of everything for six months then sacrificed to the harvest.’

They had left the church behind now and were climbing towards higher ground. Murray’s phone beeped, letting him know he had voicemail.

Jem said, ‘You should check that.’

Murray took it from his pocket. The stern female robot that guarded the exchange told him he had three new messages. He pressed 1 to listen and his brother’s voice was suddenly in his ear, Murray I. . He pressed 7 and deleted without listening. The next message was also from Jack. Murray, you fuckwit. . He scrapped that as well, though he guessed his brother meant the insult to be an endearment. The final message was from Rab Purvis.

Murray, I’ll keep it brief. I had a drink with Phyllida McWilliams in Fowlers. Apparently she used to be bosom buddies with Professor James’s daughter Helen in the old days. She says the reason Fergus was in James’s bad books was simple. He got Helen up the duff then did a runner. Not the done thing back then. Poor girl had to get scraped out. According to Phyl, Helen always claimed he forced her, but Phyl was never a hundred per cent convinced. She says Fergus was a charmer, and she would have given him one for free — you know our Phyl. All in all, it sounds like the James family have good reason to bear Fergus a grudge, so maybe you should take what they say with a fistful of salt. Do me a favour and delete this message, and Phyl says don’t let on it was. .

The tone sounded, cutting off Rab’s last words. Murray thought back to the telephone call from the broch and something James had said: ‘Some people never essentially change. In my opinion, Fergus Baine is one of them. Think of how he is now and that will tell you pretty much how he was back when Lunan and he were friends — and they were friends. .’

James had been right. The two men had been friends. But James was also wrong. Fergus had surely changed. The reckless hippy who had spiked Mrs Dunn’s tea had been replaced by an urbane professor. Then Murray thought of Rachel, the blankness in her face as she’d fucked her way through a host of strangers, and wondered if James had been right after all, and Fergus Baine the same man he was on the night Archie sailed out to meet his death.

Jem said, ‘Everything okay?’

‘Yes, fine.’ Murray saw his own face reflected in the rain-washed windscreen and realised he was scowling. He worked his mouth into a smile. ‘Are you digging for anything in particular?’

The archaeologist’s teeth shone whitely.

‘Ideally a dead body or two.’

‘Sounds gruesome.’

‘Our lot are just resurrection men at heart. There’s a good chance that there was an ancient settlement on the site of the lime-workers’ village. Officially we’re looking for confirmation that the settlement was there, but where there’s folk there’s usually bodies buried somewhere about. The peaty ground round there’s perfect for preserving flesh.’ He gave the last word a ghoulish tinge. ‘They were big into sacrifice, our ancestors. I’m hoping for a martyred bog man. Or a bog lady, I’m not particular.’

Murray recited, ‘Your brain’s exposed / and darkening combs / your muscles’ webbing / and all your numbered bones.’ He pulled himself up and said, ‘I’ll keep my fingers crossed you come across a murder or a graveyard.’

The wipers swept swiftly to and fro, but the rain was winning the war, water streaming across the glass, warping their view. The crossroads came on them suddenly, its white sign worn free of destinations by long exposure to the elements. Jem hit the brakes. Murray was thrown forwards and felt the seatbelt tighten around him.

‘Sorry about that.’ The archaeologist’s laugh was embarrassed. ‘That seemed to appear from nowhere.’ He wiped the windscreen with his hand and peered at the blank sign. ‘Which way now?’

Murray thought for a moment, reconstructing the direction of his journey with Christie.

‘Left.’

‘Sure?’

He hesitated for the smallest beat.

‘Yes.’

Jem turned the wheel.

‘Sinister it is then. Christ, I can hardly see where I’m going.’

‘Rotten conditions for your dig.’

Jem lowered his voice to a comic baritone and sang, ‘Mud, mud, glorious mud, nothing quite like it for cooling the blood. It’ll be like the Somme out there.’

‘I’d have thought this was the wrong time of year.’

‘You’d have thought right. We’re at war with the industrial archaeologists. Word is they want to excavate the limekilns this summer, so we leaned on some contacts and got in first. Forecast was for a dry autumn, but as you can see, the forecast was shit.’

‘So will you postpone?’

‘Come hell or high water, we’ll be out there tomorrow.’ Jem’s laugh was cheerful. ‘We’ve a dozen students stashed around the island. I’ve pledged to keep them from drinking the contents of the shop, indiscreet drug-use and orgies, which is hard if I can’t tire them out.’

‘Does it ever disturb you?’

‘No, they’re good kids for the most part. We were the same when we were their age.’

‘I meant digging up the dead.’

‘I wish, but most of the time it’s not so dramatic. We turn up bits of crockery, bones from the midden, the odd cooking pot. A skeleton or even a skull is big excitement. But I take your point. These people were buried according to whatever beliefs and rituals they had, and then along we come and disturb their rest. But I manage to comfort myself with one thought.’

‘What’s that?’

‘When you’re dead, you’re dead. You won’t hear the sound of the shovel that’s come to dig you up.’

A light shone wanly up ahead.

‘I think this might be it.’

Jem slowed the Land-Rover.

‘A bit of a derelict spot. I wouldn’t fancy it, and I rob graves for a living.’ He pulled the handbrake on. ‘Do you want me to wait?’

Murray pulled his woollen hat back on and zipped up his waterproof.

‘No, thanks. I’m staying not far from here, I can walk back.’ The red Cherokee was parked in the drive, but he was relieved to see no sign of Fergus’s Saab. Murray patted his pocket and felt Professor James’s slim volume stiff in his pocket, still in the unopened envelope it had been sent to Mrs Dunn’s in. He thought about dumping it on the seat of the car, but suspected Jem would go out of his way to return it. ‘It was kind of you to give me a lift in the first place.’

‘No worries. I’m bored out my skull.’ The archaeologist’s sharp teeth were hidden behind a bearded frown. ‘Watch how you go round here. The ground’s good for preservation, but it can be a bit dodgy.’

‘Sinkholes.’

‘Yes.’ Jem gave him a grin that only needed a cutlass to complete it. ‘Sounds like you know what you’re doing.’

Murray returned his smile.

‘I wish I had your confidence.’

He jumped out of the Land-Rover, slamming the door behind him, then raised a hand in thanks and jogged through the rain to Christie’s front door.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

MURRAY STOOD UNDER Christie’s porch light and watched as Jem turned the Land-Rover towards the crossroads. The archaeologist gave a friendly toot, and then he was away, driving back to the warmth of Mrs Dunn’s pink guest room or maybe off to check his students weren’t disgracing the venerable institution now so widely represented on the island.

The Land-Rover’s lights glowed distantly then faded from view, and the cottage’s front door opened, as he knew it would. Christie was all in black, dressed against the cold in a pair of stretch pants tucked into woollen socks and a chunky polo neck that drowned her slim form. She wore silver sleepers in her ears, but was otherwise free of jewellery. It was the kind of outfit a dancer might adopt after a heavy workout, and it looked both stylish and incongruous matched with her stick.

‘You’re earlier than I expected.’

There was a slur to her words, the kind of imprecision that might occur after a couple of drinks.

Murray pulled back his hood. The scent of wood smoke mingled with the falling rain and the damp rising from the sodden earth. It was an ancient smell, the same one the earliest islanders who could yet be resting, preserved beneath the peat, had known a millennia or so ago.

‘Would you like me to take a walk around the block?’

‘Of course not.’

She gave Murray a smile that might have been nervous and ushered him through the small vestibule into a brightly lit lounge. His glasses clouded in the sudden warmth. Murray unfastened his waterproof and rubbed his lenses against his scarf. The exam-day tingles were on him, a cocktail of excitement and dread that fluttered low in his stomach.

The contrast between this room and Mrs Dunn’s overstuffed lounge couldn’t have been greater. The space was long and open, its oak floors laid with good rugs, the ceiling gabled. One wall was completely taken up by a large wooden bookcase loaded with hardbacks. He scanned their spines, looking for copies of Christie’s own novels, but they were absent, or perhaps his eyes simply missed them amongst the mass of other volumes. A large desk was set at right-angles to the shelves, its chair facing into the room to avoid the distraction of the view. A brown couch sat opposite a wood- burning stove, the coffee table in front of it also piled with books.

Everything was simple and well-constructed, a living space composed of clean lines, too practical to be stylish, too cold to be completely comfortable. This was the place where she had lived with Archie. Murray tried to imagine it as it had been, the tumbled bed recess, the squalid table and circling flies, but it had grown too civilised for him to recognise.

Unlike Mrs Dunn, Christie hadn’t yet closed her curtains. Two armchairs sat staring out onto the blackness of the moor through the large picture windows. A slim document folder rested on a small table between them. Christie led him towards the chairs and he saw that her limp had grown worse. The right side of her body swung stiffly with each step, her leg rigid, as if muscle and bone would no longer co-operate.

‘I thought we could talk here.’ Christie settled herself awkwardly into one of the armchairs. Murray took off his wet waterproof, bundled it on the floor beside him and sat. He could see their reflections in the glass. The two of them unsmiling on the high-backed chairs, like an old queen and her younger, more barbarous consort. He wondered how she could stand it, this view of the self imprinted onto dark nothingness, like a glimpse of purgatory. But Christie was looking away from the window, towards him.

‘Have you deliberately styled yourself to look like Archie?’

‘No.’

Surprise made him sound defensive.

‘You gave me a start the day I saw you in the shop. Though now I look closely, I can see you’re not like him at all. Archie’s features were finer, almost feminine.’

Murray was taken aback by his disappointment.

‘Do you have many photographs of him?’

‘Some. I might show you a few later.’

‘It’d be a privilege.’

‘The ones of him as a young boy are charming.’

She was like a cruel child baiting a kitten.

He leaned down and took his tape recorder from his jacket pocket.

‘Do you mind if I record our conversation?’

‘I’m afraid I do.’ He hadn’t noticed the smallness of her mouth before. It was the feature that robbed her of beauty. She twisted it as if strangling a smile. ‘Before we start, let me ask you a question: what would you like from me?’

Murray leaned forward, opening his palms in an unconscious, ancient gesture designed to show he came unarmed.

‘Your memories of Archie, what he was like.’ He paused and said, ‘What you remember of his final days.’

She nodded. ‘Nothing else?’

‘You mentioned photographs.’ To his own ears Murray’s voice sounded as if it had been infused with the oiliness of the life insurance salesmen who had always done so well from his widowed father. ‘I’d appreciate the opportunity to go through them, but obviously I’d also be very keen to see any other notes, letters or memorabilia you have relating to Archie.’

‘Strange how you call him by his first name, as if you know him.’

‘I don’t feel I know him at all.’

‘But you’re in love with him?’

She arched her eyebrows. It was an old-fashioned style he’d encountered in some female academics of her generation, a need to provoke, as if years of being overlooked had left their mark.

‘I’m in love with his poems.’

‘What would your ultimate prize be?’

Murray looked at his feet.

‘To discover a new work, even one new poem.’

Christie smiled. ‘Of course.’ She leaned back in her chair and stared out into the darkness. ‘I think it’s only fair to tell you that I’ve written an account of my time with Archie. It will only be published, even in extract form, after my death. I should also tell you that as far as I’m concerned it’s the only statement I’m prepared to make on Archibald Lunan’s life and death.’

Murray closed his notebook and slid his pen into its spiral spine. She had brought him here to make clear her refusal to cooperate, nothing more.

‘Thank you for being so frank. I’ve taken up enough of your time.’

Christie’s tone was soft and reasonable.

‘Dr Watson, you must realise you’re here because there’s something you can give me.’

He still hadn’t reached out for his coat, though it was on the floor at his side.

‘All I can offer you is the chance to bring Archie’s work to a wider audience, and the possibility of a more secure legacy for him.’

‘No.’ Christie’s gaze was level and serious. ‘That’s what I can offer you.’ Her voice grew brisk. ‘Could you go into the top drawer of the desk, please, and pass me the box you find there?’

Murray crossed the room to her desk. He pulled open the drawer and saw a white plastic box. Even before he lifted it, he knew it held medication rather than the papers he’d hoped for. He handed it to her.

‘Thank you.’ Christie snapped open the lid and Murray glimpsed a bewildering range of pills. She caught his gaze and said, ‘One advantage of living miles from a chemist is that I’m issued with more or less as much medication as I need.’ She selected four tablets. ‘There’s some bottled water by the couch. Could you pass it to me, please?’ He did as she asked, then stood by the window as Christie swallowed the pills, placing each one singly in her mouth then washing them down. She choked on the last one and he moved to help her, but she waved him away. When she’d regained her breath she asked, ‘What would you do to lay your hands on my recollections of Archie Lunan and a final, unpublished collection of his poems?’

Murray turned towards the window so she wouldn’t witness his expression. But once again the darkness threw his image onto the glass.

‘I don’t know.’

The nervous undercurrent he’d noticed before was back in Christie’s voice.

‘I’ve done what all the blackmailers do in the movies and provided you with a sample of the goods.’

Murray wanted to look at her, but stayed where he was, staring out into the blackness, seeing nothing but the room’s reflection and the rain streaking in rivulets down the outside of the pane.

‘A poem by Archie?’

‘No, the poems are elsewhere.’ She slid a page from the folder and handed it to Murray. ‘You’ve got three minutes in which to read it. I think that should be more than enough time for a doctor of English literature.’

Murray asked, ‘What do you want?’

‘Read first, then I’ll tell you.’

The paper was in his hand. He lifted it and started to read.

Archibald Lunan and Christina Graves were born three years apart to two very different sisters. Archie’s mother Siona Roy left the island of Lismore at the age of sixteen to work as a maid of all work at a hotel in Inverness. The war came as a boon to girls like her and in 1939 she moved to Glasgow, where she became a canary bird in one of the large munitions factory. Archie arrived the year after the war ended. Mrs Lunan, as Siona was now known, was never forthcoming about the circumstances of Archie’s birth, but his arrival sent her home, to her father’s croft.

Life was to change a lot in Scotland over the next decade, but many crofters still lived very much as their ancestors had. They heated their cottages with peat which they cut from the ground. Lighting came from oil lamps. They grew crops, baked their own bread, and salvaged what they could in the way of driftwood. Some, like Archie’s mother, collected their cooking and washing water from streams and wells.

The island, rich in plant and bird life, was a paradise for a young boy, but for Siona, fresh from the camaraderie of blitz-torn Glasgow, it may have seemed like a prison. Who can blame her for returning to the city when her father died ten years later?

Siona’s mind may always have been unsettled, or it might have been the years of drudgery on her father’s croft that disturbed it. Maybe it was even her move back to the city and the loneliness that she encountered there that were the catalysts. Whatever the origins of her deteriorating mental health, there’s no record of it until after she and her son returned to Glasgow.

Murray looked up from the single page. Christie smiled at him. ‘Interesting?’

‘Yes.’ He wondered if his face looked wolfish. ‘How much more is there?’

‘A lot.’

‘And this is as much as you’re prepared to show me?’

‘Of his childhood, for the moment.’ Christie slid her hand into the folder, pulled forth a second page and held it out. ‘Here.’

He took it from her and read on.

Edinburgh was still a small city in 1969, but Archie and I could have passed each other daily without knowing. I used to look for him on the street; desperate to meet this ‘son of an abomination’ my mother had warned me about so many times. Eventually I asked around, discovered his local and persuaded a girlfriend to go there with me. Later I got used to places like that, but this was the first time I’d ever been in a working men’s pub.

The barroom was lit by a naked one hundred-watt bulb, the floor strewn with sawdust. Even though we’d never met, I knew Archie straight away. He was slouched at the bar, so drunk he seemed to sweat alcohol. Archie was a good-looking young man, but when he drank his features grew slack and lost their air of intelligence. He behaved stupidly too. I watched Archie embrace a man, and then insult him with his arm still clasped around his shoulders. I heard him flirt like a fool with the barmaid and saw him lavish drinks on strangers who laughed in his face. I told my friend I’d made a mistake and left without speaking to him.

A week later he took the seat opposite mine in the university library and started to read Baudelaire’s ‘Fleurs du Mal’. I couldn’t keep my eyes off him. Eventually I plucked up the courage to introduce myself. Later I’d discover Archie was always shy when he was sober. He offered to take me for a drink, but I persuaded him back to my digs instead. We talked all through the night and when the sun came up we went to bed together.

Murray looked up from the page and saw Christie’s small mouth widened in a smile.

‘You look shocked. We were cousins, not brother and sister.’

‘I’m not shocked. But I’d like to know what happened next.’

‘After we went to bed?’

‘No.’ He forced a smile. ‘After that.’

‘After that, we spent most of our free time together. I soon realised there was no way I was going to be able to keep him sober, so I learned how to drink.’

‘If you can’t beat them, join them?’

‘Drink was his wife, I was just his girlfriend.’

‘Was Archie writing a lot when you knew him?’

Christie took on a look he had seen in other interviewees, a far-away stare as if gazing back into the past.

‘Apart from drinking, it was all he seemed to do. When we first met, Archie was matriculated at the university, but the only classes I ever knew him attend were poetry lectures. He used the library, of course, but that was for his own reading. He would lie around in the morning in his dressing gown, sipping beer and reading detective fiction or sci-fi. At midday he’d go down to the pub for a pint and a bite to eat. Then he’d either browse the local second-hand bookshops or go back to his room and write. He’d step out again at about nine in the evening.’

‘How could he afford it?’

‘Archie had been lucky. His mother had died and left him some money.’

‘An odd definition of luck.’

‘Do you think so? I used to envy him terribly.’

He ignored the playful note of provocation in her voice and asked, ‘Were you writing too?’

‘I didn’t pick up my pen until after Archie’s death. Then it was as if a new well had been sunk in me, it all came bubbling out.’ She reached into the folder again. ‘The final extract.’

He took it from her, noting the page number, 349. Earlier in his quest the completeness of Christie’s memoir might have frustrated Murray, but it no longer mattered if his own book was rendered redundant. There were new poems. The thought thrilled him.

Archie might never have returned to the island if I hadn’t suggested it, but when I did he leapt at the plan. By that time we were a trio plus one. That extra man was vital to our group; Bobby was Renfield to our Dracula. We thought he was harmless.

Ours was an era of new societies, ideal communities and communes. Property was theft, jealousy bourgeois, and anyone over thirty, suspect. We set out with bags full of acid and hearts full of idealism. But it was soon clear the cottage was too small to house four adults and the sickness which had eventually left me in Glasgow returned with a vengeance.

Archie’s sickness followed him too. There was no pub on the island, but he found a ceilidh house where he was very quickly unwelcome. That didn’t bother Archie. He’d already made enough contacts to be able to draw on a seemingly endless source of homebrewed spirits. Some mornings he was as sick as I was and the two of us lay groaning together in the bed recess we’d requisitioned as our own.

As if overcrowding, bad trips, drunkenness and sickness weren’t enough, the weather descended into a long period of dark skies and relentless rain. Bobby would probably have stayed with us for ever, lost in his muddled world of drugs and spells, but very quickly I realised that Fergus was planning to leave. I couldn’t blame him. I had sold the island as an adventure, an opportunity to create, but there was no privacy to be had in the damp cottage, and my hopes of keeping the three of us together until what had to pass had passed were beginning to fade.

Murray read the page twice, and then he set it aside on the table and looked at Christie.

‘You were pregnant when Mrs Dunn visited the cottage, weren’t you? That’s how you knew she was too.’

Christie rolled her eyes. Her voice was impatient.

‘She was the kind of woman Fergus always seems to attract — buttoned-up, but desperate for some kind of adventure, some kind of debauch. The trouble is they never realise how far Fergus is willing to go.’ Was there a gleam of pride in her eyes? ‘He always pushes them beyond their limits.’

Murray thought of Rachel. He asked, ‘Like he did with Helen James?’

Christie snorted in amusement.

‘I very much doubt little Nelly was raped, but what could she say when her mummy and daddy found out she was unmarried and with child? It was the wrong time of year for an immaculate conception.’

‘She had an abortion.’

‘You didn’t strike me as a man who would be against a woman’s right to choose what she does with her body.’

‘I’m not. In fact, I’d go further and say everyone has a right to know what they take into their body. Mrs Dunn lost her baby.’

‘That was nothing to do with me.’

‘Was the baby Archie’s?’

‘I think it was Mr Dunn’s.’

It took all his effort to keep his voice low and his words polite.

‘Was your baby Archie’s child?’

‘I like to think so.’

‘What happened?’

‘I delivered her here, in the bed recess.’ She nodded towards the far corner. ‘Where my desk is now. The first major piece of work I produced there. A perfect little girl.’

It was the same bed where Mrs Dunn had lain drugged. Murray saw it for an instant, the curtain drawn to one side, the soiled bedclothes slung onto the floor. Mrs Dunn had lost her baby. He wiped a hand across his face and asked, ‘Where is your daughter now?’

‘With Archie’s poems, buried down by the limekilns.’

Murray wasn’t sure how long he sat staring in silence at Christie after she had spoken, but eventually he said, ‘I think you’ve miscalculated how much I want to get my hands on Archie’s poems, Miss Graves.’

‘Nature can be cruel.’ Her face tightened. ‘It had its way.’

‘So you took the child and buried it? Simple as that?’

‘More or less.’

‘Did Bobby Robb have anything to do with the baby’s death?’

Christie’s laugh was hard and brittle. She said, ‘Bobby Robb was a fool and a fantasist. We’d tolerated him because he could supply us with drugs, but Fergus had grown sick of him and his stupidity. If the weather hadn’t been so bad, he would have been gone on the ferry to the mainland and a lot of tragedy would have been avoided.’

‘The child would have lived?’

‘No, the child was never going to live. It was small and weak and had been born to fools who didn’t know or care enough to look after it. Idiots who filled the room with smoke and fed it with water when the stupid girl that was supposed to be its mother let her milk dry up and still drank and got high, and the stupid man that might have been its father drank and smoked, took drugs and talked poetry.’ She sighed. ‘We’d thought we could manage it ourselves, but the birth was horrendous. Bobby shot me full of something to help with the pain. It knocked me out so hard it’s a miracle the child was born at all. She must have clawed her way out.’

‘Didn’t Archie do anything?’

‘Archie had been big on having the child. He was full of fantasies about what it would be like to belong to a real family, but when she arrived, sickly and underweight, Archie did what he always did. He drank. When we discovered she was dead, he was sure it was Bobby’s doing. Bobby was always setting his stupid spells, rambling on about purity and sacrifice. Archie jumped to conclusions, even though there wasn’t a mark on her body. Maybe he wanted someone to blame. He beat Bobby badly. He might have killed him, if Fergus hadn’t managed to force him out of the cottage and bolt the door. I was a little mad too, I suppose. I didn’t know what had happened, but I knew that my baby was gone. I held her by the fire and rubbed her body, but it stayed as limp and as cold as she’d been when I found her dead in the bed beside me. Bobby and Fergus finished our supply and I joined them. We didn’t think about Archie until the next day. We had no idea he would take the boat out in the storm. It was stupid.’

Murray whispered, ‘It was suicide.’

But it was as if Christie didn’t hear him.

‘She was tiny. I wrapped her in my silk scarf and we put her in a tin box we’d found in the cottage. Fergus placed the poems Archie had been working on beside her and then we buried her and marked the spot with a stone.’

‘Why?’

‘What else could we do? Archie was missing, presumed drowned, and we were drug-taking hippies in the middle of nowhere. It wasn’t like we believed in God. I had neglected her and lost her. Do you know how the judicial system treats neglectful mothers? How the press crucifies them? How they get dealt with in prison? A funeral wasn’t going to make any difference and jail wouldn’t have made us better people. Archie had paid the ultimate price, people would have thought that I should too. We did what we thought we had to.’

‘And now?’

‘Tomorrow they’re going to start digging where we buried her. It’s only a matter of time before they uncover her corpse and Archie’s poems. It’s the last chance I have to be reunited with her before I die.’

Murray got to his feet. He felt weary in his bones.

‘Where’s your phone?’

Her voice was wary.

‘Why?’

‘Because one of us has to call the police. I think it would be better if it was you, but if you won’t then I’ll do it myself.’

‘There are no police on the island.’

‘I think they might consider this worth the journey.’

Christie leaned back in her chair, looking old and ill.

‘You haven’t asked me where Fergus is.’

‘I know where he is, up to his neck in shit.’

‘He had to go back to Glasgow. Apparently his wife tried to commit suicide. Like I said, he has a penchant for attracting women who want to explore their limits, then pushing them too far.’

The horror of it was hot in Murray’s throat.

‘Will she be okay?’

The woman made a gesture of impatience.

‘I expect so. There’s a difference between seeking attention and doing it for real.’ She looked him in the eye. ‘It takes real courage to kill yourself.’

Christie held Murray’s stare, and he remembered a piece of advice his father had given him: ‘Always approach a trapped animal with caution. It’ll bite you, whether you’ve come to kill it or set it free.’

He wanted to go now, back to Glasgow to see Rachel and find out how she was, but a suspicion that the woman still had more to reveal held him there.

‘Dr Watson, do you think I spent forty years on an island where I’m hated because I’m in love with the landscape? I stayed to be close to my child. She’s been on her own for too long. I want us to be buried together. If you help me, I’ll give you the original manuscript of my memoir, all the photographs and documents I have relating to Archie, and the poems buried beside our daughter. It’s more than you could have hoped for.’

The temptation of it stopped Murray’s breath for a moment. He took a gulp of air and plucked his jacket from the floor.

‘I reckon it’ll be around twenty minutes before I can get a signal. As soon as I do, I’m calling the police. I advise you to ring them first.’

Christie gave a wry smile.

‘It won’t be the ferry or a police launch that takes me from the island, Dr Watson. I already have what I need to transport me. I think I’ve proved my staying power, but I’ve no intention of waiting for the final chapter.’

He took a step towards her.

‘There’s no certainty you’ll go to jail.’

‘My mother would have said that my prison had already been appointed by a higher court — a wheelchair, incontinence, loss of speech, choking to death.’

‘You’re nowhere near that stage yet.’

‘Aren’t I? I didn’t realise you were a medical doctor as well as a doctor of literature.’ She sighed. ‘I’m tired of it all. If it’s time for me to leave my home, then it’s time for me to leave. You said you supported a woman’s right to choose. Well, this is my choice. Fergus understands that at least. He brought me the means.’ She forced herself to her feet and stood, her face raised, her eyes locked on his. ‘All I wanted was for you to help me make a good death, and to bring some peace to Archie and to our daughter.’

It was the words ‘good death’ that did it. Murray sat back down in his chair and put his head in his hands.

Chapter Thirty

MURRAY DROVE SLOWLY, with the headlights off. It was the kind of night that men who wanted to be up to no good craved. The sky was free of moon and stars, the road ahead black, his vision marred by mist and rain. Murray kept his eyes on the darkness before him and asked, ‘How will I know where to dig?’

Christie’s voice was hushed, as if she were still afraid Murray might change his mind.

‘We left a marker. I used to visit every day, but lately it’s been too difficult.’

‘Is that what you were doing when I met you?’

‘The weather was too poor to drive down, but I could see her grave from the ridge.’

The rain battered against the metal roof of the car, a hundred drumming soldiers marching forth to halt the outrage.

Murray said, ‘It’s worse tonight.’

‘It helps. No one will be about and the ground will be soft.’

‘Isn’t there a chance it might have been dislodged? If it has, we may not be able to find it.’

‘Perhaps.’ Christie was in the seat beside him, but her words seemed to come from far away. ‘Her face was the last thing I covered. I swaddled her in my scarf, as if I was about to take her out for some air, then I tied it around her head. The people of the islands used to believe children who died as infants had been stolen by the faeries and a faery replica left in their place. I can understand why. She looked like my baby, but I knew she wasn’t. My child had gone.’

Murray glimpsed Christie’s ghost-white face as she turned towards him. Perhaps the fear showed in his expression, because she said, ‘It won’t be as bad as you’re anticipating. Imagine it’s simply the poems we’re excavating. We wrapped them in polythene. You don’t even have to go into the box, I’ll take them out for you.’

‘What then?’

‘You drive me home, collect the papers and photographs I promised you, and leave.’

‘And you?’

‘Will wait some days, perhaps months. Who knows, maybe remission will return and I’ll be spared for years. But I’ll have my child’s body and the means to make a good death when the time comes. Do you know how important that is?’

Murray stared at the road ahead and thought of the promise he and Jack had made to their father.

‘Yes, I know what a good death can mean.’

She reached out and stroked a finger down his cheek. It was a lover’s touch and he flinched.

Christie whispered, ‘I always half-thought he would come back. Some nights I still do. I sit by the window reading, something catches my eye and I think, There’s Archie, come for me. It used to frighten me. I’d wonder if he would still be angry, what he would look like after all that time. Do you remember “The Monkey’s Paw”?’ Murray nodded, but perhaps Christie didn’t see him in the darkness, because she continued, ‘A husband and wife wish for their dead son to be returned from the grave. No sooner is the wish from their mouths than they hear a hideous banging at the door. When they open it, in place of the hale and hearty boy they dreamt of stands a mangled wreck of a corpse half cut to shreds by the wounds that killed him. Wounds that now have the power of endless torment rather than the power of death.’

She reached out her hand to touch his face again and he said, ‘Don’t, I need to concentrate on the road.’

‘They never found his body. As long as it was missing, there was a chance he was still alive somewhere.’ Christie sighed. ‘I wouldn’t mind if he came back drowned.’

Murray imagined Archie striding towards them through the blackness, his body bloated and bloody, his ragged clothes strung about with seaweed.

He asked, ‘Did Fergus do away with Bobby?’

‘No.’ In all the long evening it was the first time she’d sounded shocked. ‘Fergus is an exploiter of women, but he’s not a murderer. Bobby was an old man who had a heart attack.’

‘He was a drain on resources. Fergus looked after him, gave him a flat and who knows what else.’

Christie was back in this world. She said, ‘I’d been sending the old fool money for years. Giving in to bribery doesn’t incriminate you in murder. Bobby contacted Fergus after he moved back up to Scotland. There was a piece in the newspaper referring to Professor Baine and Bobby came across it. I can just picture him.’ There was something unseemly in her laughter. ‘Sitting in some horrid bar, ringing the article with a pen borrowed from the barmaid, ordering a whisky and knowing that his ship had come in.’

‘He was scared. He’d made a circle of protection around his bed.’

‘He was always scared. The day we arrived on the island he made a circle of protection around the cottage. Much good it did us.’

‘Did Archie believe in all that stuff?’

‘What stuff?’

‘The occult. Spells.’

‘Archie didn’t believe in anything much, certainly not in himself.’

‘He believed in poetry.’

‘That’s the kind of meaningless statement I’d have thought an academic would avoid.’

Murray stole a glance at Christie. Her head was resting against the rain-streaked window, her expression hidden.

‘He believed in you and your child. I found a list of names among his papers in the library. He was trying to decide what to call it, wasn’t he?’

Christie’s voice was gentle.

‘He talked to her. Laid his head on my belly, recited poetry, sang songs and told her his dreams. A jealous woman might have grown bitter, but I understood. Archie had never had anything much to look forward to before. This baby was to be all the Christmases he never had.’ She sighed. ‘It was more than that. He thought the child would save him. The reality was rather different.’

‘And Fergus?’

‘He worshipped Fergus.’

‘Was he worthy of Archie’s faith?’

Christie lifted her head from the glass and straightened her spine against the passenger seat. Her profile looked brittle.

‘Neither Fergus nor the child turned out to be Jesus Christ.’

‘I’m beginning to think Professor Baine bears more of a resemblance to Judas Iscariot.’

Christie snorted.

‘Archie would have hated that kind of melodrama.’

Murray kept his tone mild, though Christie’s words had hit their mark.

‘If Fergus can supply you with the means to kill yourself, he could do the same for Bobby.’

‘That was one of Fergus’s few truly altruistic gestures.’ Christie’s voice was a monotone and it was hard to tell if she was being sincere or sarcastic. ‘He went to Switzerland with his mother. He’d promised to make sure she didn’t suffer too horribly at the end. I think it was a transformative experience. He came back convinced of the individual’s right to die.’

Murray remembered the death of the professor’s mother. Fergus had been absent from the university for an appropriate period, but perhaps it was unsurprising that no mention had been made of trips to Swiss clinics. He recalled Baine’s stoicism, his dignified receipt of condolence, and the new house that had followed. Rachel had moved in soon after.

‘He isn’t here with you tonight.’

‘Fergus doesn’t know about the dig.’

‘And you didn’t enlighten him?’

‘He would exhume her body, but he wouldn’t give it to me. The one thing I’m worried about is the possibility he did it years ago, but I don’t think so.’

‘Why not?’

‘Fergus has a talent for forgetting. All sensationalists do. The rest of us sustain ourselves on memories and police ourselves with obligations. Men like Fergus can set these things aside. Oh, he can make a plan and see it through, you only need to look at his career to know that. But Fergus lives largely in the moment. As long as he’s getting his own way, he forgets. He doesn’t have a conscience to remind him.’

Murray thought about Rachel. His sadness was shot through with guilt. He’d believed hers the guiding hand, but could he have unwittingly exploited her, too dazzled by her zest for sex to interrogate her motives? Had he been like Fergus, unquestioning as long as he was getting his own way? He wondered what she had done to herself, and if Fergus was taking good care of her.

The car heater was on full blast, but the windscreen was fogging. Murray reached forward and wiped it with his palm. The makeshift road seemed to be getting narrower and he suspected that before long they would have to abandon the car and make their way on foot. He asked, ‘Do you know where we are?’

‘Almost there.’ Christie didn’t seem to be looking, but her voice was sure. ‘We should see the first of the lime-workers’ cottages in a moment. Be careful, the ground will be softer here.’

Murray dropped their speed to crawl. They drove on in silence. Soon he saw a shape up ahead, blacker than the darkness that surrounded them. A ruined cottage came into focus, the shadowy forms of the derelict village behind it. He stopped the car, turned off the engine and pulled on the handbrake. ‘What now?’

‘Can you drive any further?’

Murray opened his door. Outside it sounded the way he supposed a rainforest removed of wildlife might, the steady slap and drip of rain against leaves and puddles, accompanied by the white-noise hiss of the downpour. He looked at the ground in the glow of the interior light. Water was pooling into miniature streams and gullies, the earth turning to sludge.

‘I don’t think so. We’re taking a chance as it is.’

Christie leaned into the glove compartment and handed him a rubberised torch. He felt the weight of it in his hand and thought what a good weapon it would make.

‘It won’t take long.’ He saw her profile in silhouette, the set of her jaw, her half-open lips. ‘Just think of the poems and forget everything else.’

She pulled up the hood of her jacket, then opened the door and stepped into the dark. Murray jogged round to the boot of the car and took out the spade they’d stashed there earlier. He had to shout to make himself heard.

‘Are you sure you can manage?’

Christie wrestled her walking stick from the car, then linked her free arm through his. ‘If I can lean on you.’ She pointed her stick straight ahead. ‘It’s this way.’

Murray clicked on the torch, aiming its beam at the path’s greasy surface. Christie skidded and he hauled her to her feet.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes. Let’s keep moving.’

But Murray could feel her already flagging. He put his arm around Christie’s waist, holding her close. She was so light her bones might have been hollow. But still her body weighed on him. Murray swung the shovel, using it like a staff. Hill-walking had taught him that when weather and conditions conspired against you, the trick was to think of nothing, not the distance that remained, nor what would follow once you reached home, nothing but the next step, then the one after and the one after that.

They were almost in the heart of the tiny hamlet now. The trees had grown denser, but instead of sheltering them from the rain they seemed to add to its force, shedding their own hoarded load as they passed. Murray kept the torch aimed at the treacherous ground beneath their feet, but he could feel the stares of empty windows and gaping doors on either side. Christie tugged his arm and pointed towards one of the houses. She said something that was carried away by the sound of the rain. Murray swung the torch in the direction she’d indicated. An abandoned cottage glared at him.

‘There?’

She nodded and they turned their uneasy progress towards it, Murray half-dragging, half-carrying Christie.

‘Careful.’ She yanked on his arm again. ‘Keep to the path.’

He shone the beam across the ground and saw that instead of leading them straight to the cottage, the mud track curved around a patch of green. He corrected his course, swearing softly under his breath, following the trail, thinking they must look like Hansel and Gretel, grown up and evil, visiting old haunts.

The cottage’s doorway was clumped about with long grass. He hauled Christie over it and pulled her inside. Like the rest of the abandoned village, the cottage had lost its roof, so there was no real shelter from the rain within its bounds, but the stone walls seemed to deaden the sound a little. Christie propped herself against one of them. Murray thought she looked bad, but didn’t pause to ask her how she felt.

‘Where is it?’

‘There, just outside, to the left of the door. It’s shaped like a heart.’

Murray gripped the shovel tighter and went back through the opening. He found the marker easily. He could see what Christie meant. The stone was flat on top, pointed at one end and slightly bifurcated at the other. The whimsy disgusted him.

He passed the torch to Christie. ‘Here, aim where I dig.’ Then he took the shovel and prised it beneath the marker. He felt the stone shift and slid the shovel further in. The earth’s grip slackened again. The stone was loose now, but it had the hidden mass of an iceberg and he couldn’t get enough leverage to force it free of its socket. Murray cursed himself and Christie for not having had the foresight to pack a pair of rubber gloves. He squatted down on the ground and wobbled the half-excavated boulder with his bare hands. He could feel the grave-dirt on his flesh, creeping beneath his fingernails. He found a stick and used it to scrape away the mud, probing the ground like an ape hunting for termites. Finally he wedged his hands down the sides of the hollow and wrenched the stone free. The hole started to fill with water.

‘Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.’

Murray lifted the shovel and began digging. He dug in the same way he would approach a desperate walk, taking it one step, one spade-full, at a time. The trees in the valley creaked and shivered with the weight of the rain and the cramping coldness of the night.

In Murray’s mind, he was alone in the small bedroom he shared with Jack. The room was in darkness, save for the light from his desk lamp pooling on the page before him. He felt his eyes droop, then the gentle weight of his father’s hand on his shoulder.

‘Time to stop now, son. Slow and steady wins the race.’

The shovel struck against something solid.

He took the torch from Christie and shone it into the hole. He could see nothing in its depths except the brown water rising from beneath, turning the mud to sludge. Murray got back down on his hands and knees, and stretched into the swelling pool. Whatever it was was too far down for him to reach.

‘Fuck.’

He lay flat on his belly in the mud and tried again. This time he made contact. His fingers were numb and he couldn’t tell if they were brushing against stone or metal, but the surface of the object was smooth, whatever it was set too deep for Murray to get a proper grip. He got to his knees and scrabbled around in the dirt again until he could find his stick, then stretched back into the pool and tried to hollow it free. The stick broke. He cursed, got to his feet and set-to with the spade, attacking the sides of the hole, swearing as this new excavation tumbled earth back into the pit. Finally it was wide enough. He put his glasses in his pocket then eased himself down into the grave. The loamy scent that had been in his nostrils all through the digging seemed to slide down into his throat. He prised the shovel beneath the object, hoping to God he’d have enough purchase to haul himself out, knowing that should the walls collapse in on him Christie would be unable to pull him free. Murray felt the box move. He squatted down in the dirt and gripped the smooth square thing with his dead fingers. He grunted and pulled, feeling all the while that the struggle was two-sided and whatever lay below wanted to drag him down there with it. Once, the box slipped from his grasp and he feared it had broken and he would see the child’s face staring up at him, squashed and leathered, like the bog folk Heaney had written about. But then, with a last sucking slurp that threatened to tug him down, the earth relinquished its dubious prize. Murray leant over the box, hands on thighs, gasping for breath.

‘Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.’

He gripped the box in both hands, took a deep breath, and heaved it up onto the surface. He then hauled himself over the mud-slathering sides of the hole after it.

It was more of a trunk than a box. Larger than he’d expected, but light for all the trouble it had caused him, and obscene in its ordinariness. Still on his knees, Murray turned to face Christie. His hair was plastered to his head, his hands and body coated in mud too clotted for the rain to wash away. His voice sounded old and rusty.

‘Please, don’t open it until I get you back to your cottage.’

Christie pursed her lips, like a woman trying not to laugh. She staggered from the doorway and put a hand on his shoulder. For an awful moment he thought she might kiss him, but she merely stood there, staring down at the makeshift coffin.

‘Thank you.’ The rain was slackening and Murray could hear her breath, harsh and ragged. ‘We should go.’ She danced the torch beam around the site of the exhumation, searching like a seasoned detective for evidence of their visit. ‘Perhaps you should fill that in, so no one wonders what’s been going on.’

Murray took his glasses from his pocket and held them under the rain, trying to wash the lenses free of the spangles of mud which decorated them. He replaced them, lifted the spade and started to shovel the earth back into the grave. Their visit would still be evident to anyone who cared to look, but he had lost all will to argue. He had no idea of how long they had been there, but the light was changing, the dawn creeping towards them much sooner than he would have expected. He wiped the mud from his watch — 02:54 — but even as he checked the time, Murray heard the grumble of an engine and realised that the sweep of light was no premature daybreak. He heard Christie’s gasp and saw her sickened expression a moment before he was blinded by the full beam of a car’s headlights.

Chapter Thirty-One

MURRAY THREW THE shovel to one side and put his hands up in the air. It was a ridiculous gesture born of the American cop shows he and Jack had been addicted to as boys, and he dropped them almost immediately. He shaded his eyes, squinting to see who had interrupted them, but the car’s full beams were still aiming at them from the mud track, and he could make out nothing beyond a blur of smur and bright light. The car door slammed.

‘You should have gone home, Murray.’

Fergus Baine’s voice was full of regret.

‘You’re right as usual, Fergus.’

‘This is between Christie and me. The best thing you can do is walk away and forget it ever happened.’

Christie gripped his elbow. She whispered, ‘Don’t leave me alone with him.’ It was more of an order than a plea, but he could hear the fear in her voice.

‘I’ll go, but I’m taking her with me.’

‘Fine. Did you find it?’

Fergus had stepped in front of the lights. His shadow stretched towards them, tall and thin. He’d abandoned his Barbour jacket for a long raincoat which fell in skirted folds to his ankles, giving him the outline of a Victorian hunter.

Christie’s voice was shrill.

‘You can’t take her from me, Fergus.’

The professor might have been at an overcrowded cocktail party where the hubbub required raised voices. His tones carried sleek and smooth across the grassy divide.

‘Don’t be silly, Christina.’

Murray shouted, ‘What happened to Rachel?’

‘Why don’t you come and see for yourself? She’s in the car.’

He leapt forward, but Christie had him by the arm, her grip tighter than he would have thought possible. She hissed, ‘Don’t. He’s lying.’

Murray shouted, ‘Rachel!’ But there was no reply. It would have been an easy thing to shake Christie free, but he stalled, hesitating, beside her.

‘She’s there, I promise you.’ Fergus advanced slowly towards them, his arms open, like a TV evangelist ready to embrace the world. ‘Let the boy go, Christie. It’s nothing to do with him.’

Murray said, ‘If you’ve hurt her, I’ll fucking kill you.’

Fergus laughed.

‘It’s me she loves, Murray, me she married. You were just a diversion. Look at you, crawling around in the mud on an old witch’s errand. You’re not really Rachel’s type.’

Christie kept her hand locked on Murray’s elbow and hauled herself in front of him.

‘She prefers old men who have to watch because they can’t manage it themselves any more.’

‘Your insults are almost as clichéd as your books.’

Murray heard Christie draw in a deep breath and then another.

‘We’re old friends, Fergus. Can’t we come to some arrangement?’

‘Of course.’ The professor had taken another slow step forward.

He was like a hunter, right enough, thought Murray. One that wanted to take his prey alive, or maybe simply get close enough to make certain his aim was true.

‘Give me the box and I’ll make sure she gets a decent burial.’

Her voice was plaintive.

‘Why can’t I have her?’

‘Because you can’t be trusted to keep her safe.’

‘I’m her mother.’

‘And her murderer.’

Christie tightened her grip on Murray’s arm and looked up into his eyes.

‘He’s lying.’

‘Come on, Christie.’ Fergus’s voice was reasonable. ‘I don’t know what you told young Dr Watson, but I was there, remember? We may be old, but neither of us is senile. You and Bobby used her for your little occult experiment.’

The box was still at Christie’s feet. She leaned down and touched it with her fingertips, as if reassuring whatever lay inside of her fidelity.

‘You lie.’

‘You know I don’t.’ Fergus was closer now, facing them through a curtain of soft drizzle. ‘You didn’t just kill her. You killed Archie too.’

‘No, he killed himself.’

‘Technically I suppose that’s true. But we both know he would never have taken that leaky sieve out into a storm if he and I hadn’t come back to the island and found a butcher’s shop.’ Fergus looked at Murray. ‘She didn’t tell you that did she?’

Murray said, ‘She gave me her version of events. Why don’t you give me yours?’

Christie spat, ‘Do you think he’s going to tell you the truth?’

Fergus sounded clear and rational against Christie’s passion.

‘Lunan and I had got fed up of our country idyll. He’d tried to persuade Christie to come back to the city with us, but she was adamant. The child wasn’t due for weeks, so we left her here. I thought she’d come trailing after us as usual. I didn’t see how anyone could stomach living alone with Bobby Robb for any length of time. But it seems I underestimated his charms. Lunan couldn’t drive, so a fortnight after we’d deserted, he persuaded me to bring him back. His excuse was he’d left his manuscript behind. If he had, it was deliberate.’

Christie started a soft, keening mantra: ‘You’re lying, you’re lying, you’re lying, you’re lying. .’

For the first time Fergus lost his cool.

‘I’m not bloody lying, and you know it. Who are you trying to fool? Him?’ He pointed at Murray. ‘Let’s see if he wants to help you after he’s heard the truth.’

‘You’re lying, you’re lying, you’re lying, you’re lying. .’

Christie continued her chant, and it seemed to Murray that the waving trees and still-falling rain picked up the rhythm of her words and carried it through the glen. Perhaps Fergus thought so too, because he paused for a moment and when he spoke next his voice wavered beneath its calm.

‘Archie was a chaotic drunk, but looking back I think he was desperate for that child. Maybe he thought being a father would help put some of his demons to rest. Who knows?’ The professor shrugged. ‘I had an interest in it too, of course, so I drove and he drank. By the time we reached the ferry, he was insensible. But when we reached the cottage, he’d sobered up enough to take in what had happened. The child had lived its whole life in the time we’d been gone. When you see something like that. .’ His voice trembled. ‘It’s as if your eyes refuse to let you witness it. We stood on that doorstep staring at Bobby and Christie, sky-clad in the middle of a charnel house. God knows what they’d taken while we’d been in Edinburgh, but all of Bobby Robb’s fantasies about purity and sacrifice had been realised. I’m not sure how long we were frozen there, trying to make sense of the scene. . all that redness. . Archie understood what had happened first. Suddenly he went wild. I thought he was going to murder them both, me too perhaps. I don’t know where I found the strength, but I bundled him out of the cottage. I thought I was preventing another death.’ Fergus took a deep breath. ‘The rest you know.’

‘Why didn’t you call the police?’

‘Why haven’t you?’

It would have taken too long to explain. Murray replied, ‘I don’t know.’

‘I don’t know either. Maybe out of pity for Christie. She’d realised what she’d done and was screaming fit to wake the dead. Maybe out of a fear I’d be implicated. After all, it was only my word against theirs that Archie and I were innocent. I knew Bobby Robb well enough to be sure that if he went down, he’d do his best to pull the rest of us into Hell behind him. Whatever the reason, it was a big mistake. I opened myself up to blackmail and nightmares. But I do know I’m damned if I’m going to have the whole thing resurrected.’

Murray could see the fly-blown kitchen, the naked couple leaning over the kitchen table, the baby at its centre. It was too much. He closed his eyes for a moment then asked, ‘What did you mean when you said you had an interest in the child as well?’

Fergus was close enough for Murray to see his sad smile.

‘Can’t you guess?’

Murray nodded.

‘I suppose I should have.’

Christie ended her mantra. She shouted, ‘If you want her, you’re going to have to come and take her.’

Fergus looked at Murray.

‘Are you going to stand in my way, Dr Watson?’

‘It depends on what you intend to do.’

All this time they had been standing a distance apart, like opposing foes reluctant to fight or flee before they saw each other’s weapons. Now Fergus adjusted his cap and started to walk across the grass to parley face-to-face. This was the Fergus Murray recognised: the lecture-theatre showman, darling of the students, despair of the secretaries, the canteen boaster and distinguished scholar, crass enough to pimp his wife, vain enough for a bespoke academic gown.

Murray looked down at his own mud-drenched clothes and knew that whatever the truth of the child’s death, and whatever followed next, his career was over. He was too stunned to feel the full impact of the knowledge, but he knew it would come, just as a bereaved man knows his numbness will be replaced by grief. He straightened his back, wanting to walk away and leave them to it, but unwilling to abandon Christie to Fergus’s ruthless self-interest.

It was as if his thoughts touched the woman. She stirred and made a noise somewhere between a gasp and a sigh. Murray glanced down at her. Christie’s eyes looked huge. She bit her bottom lip, half-smiling. He looked back at the professor making his way across the grass with his usual assurance, not bothering to stick to the beaten path, and suddenly Murray realised what was about to happen. He shoved Christie from him and yelled, ‘No, Fergus, stop!’ The other man faltered, and for a second Murray thought his warning had been in time. Then the professor fell.

At first it looked as if Fergus had simply lost his footing and skidded backwards onto the mud. But all at once he groaned and began scrabbling for purchase on the slippery ground. The battle was too fast and too desperate for him to cry out again. The only sound was of the wind in the tree-tops and the desperate slap of Fergus’s arms and legs flailing in the wet mud as he fought with gravity, like a man showing how it was to drown. Then it was as if something beneath the earth grabbed him tight around his legs and pulled hard, sliding him swiftly and horribly down the unmarked sinkhole and into the below.

Murray started to run forward, but Christie grabbed his ankle and brought him down.

‘Do you want to follow him?’

He’d landed beside her and their mud-spattered faces were unbearably close. Murray scrabbled in his pocket and brought out his mobile. She knocked it from his hand.

‘He’ll be in Hell by now.’

Murray shoved her away. He was beyond speech, beyond thought. He pushed himself up, slipped and cried out in terror of the earth, but it was merely the same mud he had been wallowing in for the last hour. He dropped down onto his hands and knees again and started crawling towards the sinkhole, but he stopped after a few faltering inches, too feared of Fergus’s fate to go on.

Murray sat back up onto his hunkers, sobbing as he hadn’t in a long while. He saw the glint of his phone, picked it up and hauled himself to his feet. He stood there for a moment. Then he started to stagger away from the cottage, careful to keep to the path.

Christie shouted, ‘It was all lies, everything he said, lies.’

Murray set his back to her and followed the curving track to where Fergus’s Saab sat, its lights still glaring. He leant in through the car’s open door. The vehicle was empty, no sign of Rachel. Murray turned and looked at Christie. She was lying spot-lit in the mess of mud they had churned up between them, her hands clutching the tin trunk; a savage pietà. There was a rush in his stomach. He bent double and spewed the remnants of Mrs Dunn’s cakes onto the ground.

Chapter Thirty-Two

MURRAY WIPED HIS mouth on the back of his hand. He walked back, helped Christie to her feet as gently as he could manage, and then lifted the long-dead child’s coffin onto his shoulder. He carried it silent through the darkness and the sludge, like a doom-laden St Christopher. Christie said nothing beyond a whispered thank-you; merely let herself be gripped around the waist and supported back to her car. The rain had almost stopped, but they were already soaked through and coated in filth. Somewhere a bird hooted. It was a strangely human sound and Murray felt his stomach lurch.

Christie was shivering. He took a tartan travelling rug from the boot, wrapped it around her shoulders and then settled her and his other burden in the back seat. Her hand went to the trunk’s hasp and he whispered, ‘Please, you promised. Not until you’re home.’

Christie nodded and shifted her hand to the lid, where she let it rest.

Murray started the engine. There was no point in questioning whether he was fit to drive. He was fit for nothing. He raised the clutch gently and the car eased forward.

‘Thank Christ.’

The dashboard clock glowed 03.45. The whole adventure had lasted less than two hours.

There was no option but to retrace the route they had taken earlier. Murray was shivering too now, his hands so numb he wouldn’t have known he was gripping the steering wheel, except for the fact that somehow he was managing to guide the Cherokee round the curves in the road.

The night was still pitch murk. Murray realised he was driving faster than he had on their journey out, but made no effort to cut his speed. Their tyres would leave marks in the mud which, now that the rain had stopped, would not be washed away. There was no helping it. He kept the headlights off, amazed he could still think of his own self-preservation when deep down he cared nothing for it. He glanced at Christie in the rear-view mirror. Her hand was still resting on the box, but her eyes were shut, her skin yellowed, mouth slack.

‘Christie?’

She started. ‘Where are we?’

‘We’ll be there soon. Stay with me.’

‘Sure.’

The slur in her voice had grown worse, but when he checked her again her eyes were open.

He said, ‘You knew Fergus was going to fall down there, didn’t you?’

‘How could I? The sinkhole wasn’t marked.’

‘I saw your face. You’ve lived here for decades. At the very least, you knew there was a danger of it and you didn’t warn him.’

There was a shrug to her voice.

‘He should have kept to the path.’

‘Fergus should have kept to the path. Archie should never have gone out in the boat. Men who associate with you seem to become careless.’

Her voice held a challenge.

‘In that case perhaps you should be careful.’

‘What about Alan Garrett? Should he have been more careful?’

‘Obviously. If he had, he wouldn’t have smashed himself up against a tree.’

‘Did you kill him too?’

‘I never killed anyone, except maybe Miranda.’

‘Who?’

‘My little girl. And that was a sin of omission.’

‘Not according to Fergus.’

‘He lied.’

‘He’s not here to contradict you. But even if he did, you appear to be a jinx, a magnet for demisuicides.’

Her tone was scornful.

‘A spellbinder.’

‘Being called a witch isn’t the slander it once was.’

She sighed.

‘Dr Garrett was into risk-taking. We talked about it. He was the kind of man who slowed down on the level crossing when the train was coming, who walked to the brink of the cliff in bad weather, the edge of the subway platform during rush hour. Did you know he was a rock-climber?’

‘Yes.’

‘He’d started climbing freestyle, without ropes. He told me that sometimes he would deliberately take extra risks, go for an unsure hold, let fate have its hand.’

Murray’s voice was dry.

‘I have been half in love with easeful death, called him soft names in many a mused rhyme.’

‘Half in love, half frightened of. Men like that shouldn’t get married, but they do. I suppose they want to anchor themselves to something. I met his wife. It amazes me how these sturdy women ally themselves to reckless men.’

‘Like you did with Archie?’

‘Oh, I was never that robust. If I had been, I would have picked myself up and got on with my life instead of endlessly sorting through the bones.’

It was an unfortunate image, and they both fell silent for a moment. Then Christie said, ‘I don’t know if he’d ever talked about it before, but it excited him, discussing his obsession with someone who understood. I can picture his death as clearly as if I’d been there. He saw the empty stretch of road, the tree, and put his foot down, giving fate one last chance to let him make the corner or crash.’ She snorted. ‘It was one chance too many.’

Murray closed his eyes. He felt the urge to press the accelerator to the floor, to test whether she could maintain her glibness as he raced the car onwards into their deaths. But he opened them again, kept his speed level and turned the Cherokee out onto the open track at the edge of the moor.

He could see the windows of Christie’s lonely cottage burning brightly in the dark. He supposed it would look beautiful in the summertime, the small white house shining from a midst of green, but tonight it looked like a Halloween lantern, its windows blazing, door glowing like the mouth of Hell. He dropped their speed.

‘Christie, did you leave the front door open?’

He heard her rustling upright in the back seat.

‘No.’

There was a halo around the building. It rippled gently. Murray glanced at Christie in the mirror again and saw her head silhouetted against the back window, a tuft of hair spiked at a crazy angle.

‘Fergus.’ Her voice was full of wonder. ‘I always knew he’d be the death of me.’

Murray drove on, expecting to hear the sound of sirens, but nothing disturbed the night except the gentle rumble of the Cherokee’s engine. He could see the flames now. They had burst beyond the windows and were licking the outside walls of the house. Soon they would begin to consume the roof. They were less than half a mile from the cottage when Christie commanded him to stop.

Murray eased the car to a halt, got out and helped her from the back seat. The interior of the house had seemed full of natural materials — wood, paper and brightly woven rugs — but the fire smelt toxic, as if the whole place had been formed from plastic. Murray started to cough, his eyes teared, but still he stood there, Christie leaning on his arm, both of them watching the flames’ progress.

Eventually she said, ‘I should have put the photographs and my memoir in the boot of the car.’

He nodded, knowing the answer to his question, but asking it anyway.

‘They’re all in there?’

‘Yes, all your pretty chickens lost at one fell swoop. Fergus always wanted to know if I’d written any of it down. I told him no, but I guess he didn’t want to take the chance.’

Her smile was strangely peaceful, as if none of it mattered any more. She turned and lumbered awkwardly towards the car’s back seat. Murray moved and helped her in. The mud was beginning to dry on his clothes, stiffening the fabric. He wanted nothing more now than to be gone. He asked, ‘What will you do?’

‘What I was always going to do.’

It was too much in one night. He looked back towards the burning cottage, expecting to see car headlights racing towards it, half-hoping for the whole sorry mess to be taken from him. But the only brightness came from the flames. They were alone on the dark expanse of moor.

‘Why hasn’t anyone come?’

‘Perhaps they hope I’m inside.’

‘Are you really hated that much?’

‘Who knows?’ She shrugged as if it didn’t matter. ‘People sleep deeply in the countryside, and I suppose the house isn’t overlooked. They would probably come if they knew.’

‘You don’t have to do this.’

‘I want to.’

‘It would be better to wait.’

‘For what?’ She nodded towards the distant house and placed her hand on her daughter’s coffin. ‘I’ve lost everything and gained everything. Life seldom achieves such perfect balance.’

‘I won’t help you.’

‘You don’t need to. I brought what I needed with me, just in case.’

Murray took a deep breath and walked a few yards into the darkness, wondering if this had always been what she’d intended. He rested his hands on his knees and bent over, fearing that he was going to be sick again. When he returned, she was propped up against the car window with her legs stretched out along the back seat. She’d pulled the blanket up to her neck, and Murray could see that beneath it she was clutching something to her. He was reminded of a woman preserving her privacy with her child’s shawl while she breastfed in public.

She gave him a smile that beckoned visions of the girl she’d been, and said, ‘I’m sorry. The poems weren’t inside Miranda’s coffin.’

‘Were they ever?’

‘I suppose not. It was Fergus who suggested placing them beside her. I thought it was an overly sentimental gesture, but he ran back to the cottage to get them. I guess he didn’t follow through.’

Her voice was empty of rancour.

Murray said, ‘What really happened?’

She ignored his question.

‘There should be a bottle of water in the boot. Will you fetch it for me, please?’

He got it and handed it to her.

‘Tell me Fergus made everything up.’

‘I already did.’

‘Convince me.’

Christie’s voice was devoid of emotion.

‘Fergus lied. Miranda died of neglect. It’s a measure of your own madness that you could even contemplate the possibility I’d make a sacrifice of my own child.’

Murray looked into the dark and then back at the old woman, searching for the truth in her face. Her eyes held the reflection of the burning cottage. Murray said, ‘I’m going to go now.’

Christie nodded.

‘It’s all right. I’m not alone.’ She looked up at him. ‘Do you think I’ll meet them again?’

‘Who?’

‘All of them. Archie and Bobby.’ She hesitated and added, ‘Fergus.’

‘I don’t know. Would you like to?’

‘If we could be young again. We had a lot of fun in the early days.’ Christie smiled. ‘A lot of good times.’ She looked at him. ‘Maybe you could meet them too.’

‘No.’

‘I’ve read all your articles, Dr Watson, everything you ever published. Archie’s in every word, even when you’re writing of something else, just as he’s in your thoughts, even when he’s absent. And now you’ve lost him too.’

‘Not completely. There are papers in the library.’

‘Who do you think gifted them to the archives? I only gave away worthless doodlings. Enough to tantalise, but too little to tell.’ Her voice was soft and comforting. ‘Anything of worth went up in flames tonight.’ She lifted a hand from beneath the blanket and stroked his mud-smeared fingers. ‘Who would miss you? Your wife?’

‘No.’

‘Family?’

He looked away.

‘I thought not.’ Christie’s voice held the promise of peace. ‘I can always tell.’

She took something from her pocket and put it to her lips. Murray made no move to stop her. Christie started to choke. He held the water bottle to her lips. She drank, then raised a vial to her mouth and drank again. The coughing overtook her. He tried clumsily to ease it with more water, but most of it escaped her mouth and ran down her front. Her coughs faded to faint gasps. Murray held her head and pressed the water against her mouth, but Christie had grown limp. He let her sink back against the seat and saw her face flush in the glow of the premature dawn. He stood there for a while gazing at her body, knowing that if he lifted the blanket he might get closer to the truth of the child’s death, but unable to bring himself to.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been frozen there when he was roused by the sound of a rook cawing. He turned and saw it treading the edge of the path like an old-world minister on his way to kirk. The crow met his stare and set its beak at a quizzical angle. The bird looked scholarly and demonic, and Murray couldn’t chase away the thought that it was Fergus, transformed and returned for his revenge. He rushed at it.

‘Go on, away with you.’

The bird flapped its wings and fluttered a yard or two before landing beyond his reach and continuing its perambulations, still fixing him with its dark stare.

Murray slammed the car door, guarding the bodies from the rook’s iron beak. He took off his scarf and wiped the handles and steering wheel clean of fingerprints, not sure why he was bothering, except he supposed he didn’t want his memory associated with any of it. Then he started to walk across the fields towards Pete’s bothy, the rook’s caws grating on in his head long after he was out of earshot.

Chapter Thirty-Three

THE WATER BOTTLE was still in his hand when he reached the bothy. Murray looked at it as if unsure how it had got there, and then launched it into a corner. The room was freezing and he fired the Calor heater into life. The flames blazed blue, and then took on an orange glow that made him think again of Christie’s cottage. He wondered how long it would burn.

Murray pulled off his jacket and saw the package James had sent him still miraculously jutting from his pocket. He took it out and laid it on the table. One end was scuffed and edged with mud, but otherwise it had weathered the dreadful adventure better than he had. It seemed that paper was more durable than flesh and blood. James had been trying to tell him something, but it didn’t matter now. He had got as close to Archie as it was possible to get. All the rest was nothing.

Murray stripped off his clothes and washed outside at the water butt, not bothering about whether he soiled his drinking water. He dried himself in front of the heater, still shivering, then slid his belt from its loops, shoved his filthy clothes in a carrier bag and sealed it. They would tell their own story.

He guessed that Pete would come round at some point to discuss the island’s finds. Murray would add to its discoveries. It couldn’t be helped. He wondered about writing an account of what had happened, but found he didn’t think that he could write; he, who had lived half his life with a pen in his hand.

Murray took the whisky from the shelf where Fergus had placed it and drank a good long swallow straight from the bottle. He started to cough as hard as Christie in her last throes and it was a battle not to splutter the precious spirit across the floor.

Archie had slammed out of the cottage, or maybe he had been slammed from it. Either way the door had crashed in its frame, expelling him from the disaster that lay inside.

Murray remembered the red corduroy notebook he had held in his hands in the National Library all those weeks ago, the list of names:

Tamsker

Saffron

Ray — will you be my sunshine?

What visions had sprung in Archie’s mind from Christie’s swelling belly? What hopes had he harboured? The poet had been right to let their loss propel him into the waves. Archie had purified himself, accepted his share of blame and escaped the future, the pain, the whole fucking uselessness of living on.

Murray sat naked in front of the fire, his elbows resting on the table, and took another deep draught. He looked up at the hook he had noticed when Pete first showed him the cottage. He supposed it had been used for drying herbs or curing meat.

What had Archie thought of as he walked down to the shore, his hair flying around his face? Had he known death was waiting for him, or had he simply given himself over to the fates in the same way Alan Garrett had? Murray raised the bottle to his mouth again and imagined Archie on the little jetty, freeing the small boat of its moorings then jumping aboard. If his fate had been a throw of the dice between Death and Life-In-Death, surely better that Death should win.

Murray gave the bottle another tilt and slid James’s envelope towards him. Fergus’s face gazed out in black and white from the book’s back cover. He’d been handsome when he was younger, a blond shock of fringe falling across his eyes, every inch the poet. Murray had an idea what lay between the covers, but he let the book fall open and began to read where fate had chosen.

A moored boat tied tight

Has more play than you

Wood and water

Earth and rope

He worked his way through the rest of the bottle, reading the poems as he went. Each swallow and every word seemed to make him more sober. There were computer programs that could decode vocabulary and syntax to show the truth of his conviction. Perhaps someone would pursue it. Rab Purvis maybe. He took a pen and wrote on the title page: These poems were written by Archie Lunan.

That would be the extent of his biography.

He drank the final dregs in the bottle and sent it across the room. It landed unbroken and rolled until it rested softly against the wall.

If there had been an open fire in the cottage, Murray would have taken his notes and consigned them to the flames. He could have spent an hour ripping them apart instead, then scattered them to the wind, but it would simply be another delay, an empty gesture in a night of weighty deeds.

Instead Murray took his belt from the floor, where he had dropped it. He used the chair as a step and climbed up onto the table, hoping it would take his weight. The belt had been his father’s. It was a good one, made from Spanish leather. Originally it had boasted a buckle in the shape of a Native American chief in full headdress. Jack had replaced it with a plain silvered one and given it to Murray. He’d given him the old buckle too, wrapped in an envelope he’d marked Cowboy Chic. It was an old joke from when they were teenagers. A long time ago.

Murray slid the belt’s tongue through its buckle, not bothering to fasten it. He’d never got round to getting it shortened to fit his waist and he reckoned it would be long enough.

It was better to decide your exit for yourself. You could be a long-legged, wisecracking urban cowboy, good for a laugh or a wise word, and then, quicker than you could credit, an old man unable to recognise the people you held most dear.

The people you had held most dear.

Murray wiped his eyes. He tied the belt around the hook, gripped the collar he’d made and swung on it for a moment. The knot above tightened, the buckle crushed against his hand, a painful flaw in his design.

It would have to do.

Murray stepped back down onto the floor, the cardboard gritty against his bare feet. He dragged the table a little to the left, climbed back up and fitted the makeshift collar around his neck.

It was still dark outside. Somewhere a bird crowed. He thought of the rook pacing the path beside Christie’s body, and drew a hand across his face; a moment’s courage and then peace.

Soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.

Murray stepped from the table, seeing Archie’s face at the window as he fell. His legs kicked and the noose tightened, belt buckle biting into his neck as he’d known it would. There was a rushing in his ears, an ocean’s weight coming towards him, and above it another sound.

Someone — Archie? — grabbed his legs and raised him shoulder-high, taking his weight. Murray could feel his assailant’s face against his hip, their arms around his knees swinging him back to the table’s raft.

‘You stupid fucking bastard!’

The voice was loud and frightened and instantly recognisable.

The belt was still around his throat. Murray clawed at his neck, but the noose stayed tight. Jack leapt up on the table beside him and pushed his hands away, trying to ease the buckle loose. Murray could hear him panting and smell the alcohol on his breath. At last he got it free and Murray managed to take one deep whooping lungful of air and then another.

His brother pressed his head against Murray’s chest. After a moment Jack pulled away and managed to untie the belt from its hook. He said, ‘You better be trying to kill yourself, Minty, because if this is some fucking sex thing, I’ll bloody swing for you myself.’

Murray grabbed his brother in a hug. He’d all but lost his voice, but he managed to croak, ‘We let him down, Jack. We promised he’d die at home and he didn’t. He died on his own in that fucking place.’

‘I know he did.’ His brother was holding him tight. ‘But they’d told us there were days, weeks maybe. Dad knew we were doing our best. He was proud of you, Murray. He loved you. He wouldn’t want you to do anything like this. You know that. He’d be fucking furious. Now, come on. Let’s get down from here and get you dressed.’

Murray sat at the table, wrapped in his brother’s coat. He whispered, ‘Are you back with Lyn?’

‘No.’ Jack went through to the other room and there was a sound of rummaging. He came back and flung a pair of trousers and a jumper at Murray. ‘You were right. I was a stupid cunt. Like the song says, you don’t miss your water till your well runs dry.’ He looked at Murray anxiously as if trying to weigh up his state of mind. ‘There’s good news, though. You’re going to be an uncle.’

‘Cressida’s pregnant?’

‘Christ, I hope not. That’s why I came to see you. Lyn’s going to have a baby, our baby, and now she won’t have anything to do with me.’ He raised his brown eyes to Murray’s. ‘I came to see you because I was fucking depressed.’

Murray thought of the blazing cottage on the moor side, Christie and her child together in the red Cherokee and Fergus’s Saab abandoned by the desecrated grave up by the limekilns. He said, ‘Jack, I think I might be going to jail.’