by Allan Watson
‘Yes?’ he asked in a voice that sounded more irritated than helpful.
‘I’m looking for my wife and daughter,’ I told him. ‘Teri McVey. The girl’s name is Alice.’
The man stared at me without a flicker of expression and then said with an air of resignation, ‘How long have they been missing?’
I shook my head vehemently. The man’s stupidity irked me more than it should have. ‘No, they’re not missing. I’m the father of the girl who was abducted yesterday.’
At this the policeman’s eyebrow arched upwards. ‘Sorry sir, not sure I’m quite with you. Are telling me that your daughter has been kidnapped?’
‘Yes,’ I almost shouted at him. ‘Yesterday afternoon. An old man took Alice while she was out shopping with my wife. He took her to the Garden of Remembrance in Kinburn Park. The police found her there and brought her back.’
The eyebrow returned to its normal position and the man’s mouth formed a patronising little line. ‘Are you sure about this sir? It’s the first I’ve heard of any kidnapping going on around here.’
My annoyance faded to nothing. A little pocket of cold formed deep in my gut and began to spread outwards like a pool of blood. For the first time I realised that Teri had omitted to tell me how the police had became involved in the search for Alice. She hadn’t said whether she had gone to the police station or whether someone had phoned them from the shop. The third possibility made me feel sick with fear. What if the two police officers just happened to be passing and offered their assistance? Who would have known if they were real or not. Phantom police officers? I no longer doubted the old man could do anything he pleased. They could have been illusions created for the purpose of the old man’s game. I even began to wonder if Alison McCulloch was real or not. The thought was terrifying and it made me wonder where Teri and Alice were now. What had come calling for them when I was out? I knew I was probably being ridiculously paranoid but this new scenario took root in my head like a virulent weed and began choking the life from rational thought.
‘Are you all right Sir? You don’t look too well.’
I tried to tell the man about how two police officers had sat in our flat with Teri and I for four hours the previous afternoon, I wanted to tell him about the crackling radios and the cups of tea, but realised no sound was emerging from my mouth. I tried to remember the names of the two police officers, but they had slipped completely from memory as if they had never existed. I was dimly aware of the main doors opening behind me and footsteps coming closer. I heard the sergeant say ‘Hey Charlie, Think I might need a bit of help with this guy. Not the full shilling if you ask me.’
A hand settled firmly on my shoulder. ‘Hey, Mr McVey! How’s things? Sorry to hear about Denise. Your wife was telling me about her this morning when I picked her up.’
I turned my head and looked into the smiling face of Charlie Johnstone. I wondered how on earth I had managed to forget his name. I felt like a man who has been trapped in a free falling elevator which halts its doomed plunge barely two feet from the bottom of the shaft. Reality was returning so fast it made me feel slightly dizzy. Now the desk sergeant was looking confused.
‘Hang on a minute, Charlie. Are you saying this guy’s wife and daughter were in here this morning? And what’s all this about a kidnapping?’
Johnstone rolled his eyes at me and shrugged his shoulders. ‘You’ll have to excuse Bill here, Mr McVey. He’s been on leave for two weeks and only came back on duty at lunch time. Obviously no-one has filled him in on our exciting afternoon yesterday.’
The sergeant looked increasingly sheepish as Charlie Johnstone ran through the events of the day before, ending with how Alice had been found safe and well in Kinburn Park. I thought the man was going to apologise to me but all he eventually said was, ‘Well someone might have bloody told me about it.’
I ignored the desk sergeant and asked Johnstone, ‘You don’t happen to know where Teri and Alice are now do you? It’s just that I dozed off when I got back from my walk this morning. I know I should have come straight round but……….’
Johnstone held his hand up waving away my excuses. ‘Your wife will be at the hospital Mr McVey, or at least that was where she said she was going. To tell you the truth she was a bit angry at you not being there this morning. I wouldn’t worry about it though, both of you are under a lot of pressure right now. If I were you I would hotfoot it along to Ninewells and kiss and make up. Oh, and mind and let us know how that girl of yours is doing. Samantha was pretty cut up when she heard about how ill Denise was. She took quite a shine to your daughter yesterday.’
‘Yes of course I’ll keep in touch,’ I said. ‘About this morning though, did Alice tell you anything about the old man?’
The policeman shook his head. ‘No luck there I’m afraid. We didn’t really want to push her too hard, she’s only a child after all. It’s strange, it’s as though she has no memory of yesterday afternoon at all. Maybe that could be a good thing as she doesn’t seem to be suffering from any sort of trauma that’s normally associated with these cases. A police doctor gave her an examination and said there was no sign of any abuse having taken place if that puts your mind at rest. I’d keep an eye on her however, there’s always the chance that she’s repressing what happened yesterday. I hope not, as those things can be like time bombs, ticking away for years before suddenly blowing up in your face.’
I felt like telling Johnstone that I better than anyone else knew the consequences of buried memories, but I merely thanked the young policeman and left the police station. I decided he was right about how I should go to the hospital immediately and I began walking up North Street to where my car was parked. Without warning another vehicle pulled up beside the police station with a screech of brakes as if the driver had only spotted the building through the fog at the last minute. I thought it was foolhardy of the man to be driving at speed in this weather, and it would have served him right if he had clipped one of the parked police cars sitting nearby. I would have enjoyed hanging around to hear him explain such a thing to the dour desk sergeant. I turned away and resumed my walk, working out in my head what I would say to Teri when I got to the hospital in Dundee. Behind me in the fog a familiar voice called out, ‘Matt? Matt McVey? Is that you?’
I spun about and saw the driver of the car coming towards me. I should have been able to see his face, but the fog had picked that moment to play games with me, obscuring his features until he was close enough to grab hold of both my arms.
‘Matt, its me. Derek. Christ almighty, this weather is fucking awful isn’t it.’
I was astonished to recognise Teri’s younger brother Derek. I couldn’t think what he was doing here, other than to persuade Teri to push me off the sea wall. We had never really got on and I could imagine how my fling with Rita had gone down with him. His next words however threw me off balance completely.
‘It’s the old man, Matt. He’s dead.’
The feeling I had experienced in the police station of being caught up in some terrible dream returned to me. I stared hard at my brother-in-law’s face, half expecting to see the Derek mask crack open, revealing the true face of my tormentor. His hands left my arms and I considered fleeing into the fog. Then I realised with a jolt that he wasn’t talking about the old man haunting my life. He was speaking of his father. Teri’s father.
Derek stuck his hands in his pockets and looked at me so earnestly I almost felt sorry for him. ‘He slipped away this morning. Another massive stroke the doctor said. Quick as anything. We don’t think he suffered.’
‘I’m really sorry, Derek. I thought a great deal of your dad.’
I was lying and from the probing look Derek shot at me, he knew it too. He let it go however. This was neither the time nor the place for a family quarrel.
‘You know, it’s uncanny bumping into you like this. Teri left an address if we should need to get in touch with her. She probably never dreamt that anything would happen. He
ll, none of us did. Teri will take this badly, she was really fond of the old boy. Anyway the thing is, I’ve been driving around in this fog and couldn’t find a way into the street where your flat is. I was just about to dump the car and go on foot when I saw you come out of the police station. Hey, you’re not having any trouble here are you?’
There was a hint of protective threat in Derek’s voice at this last part. On the day Teri and I had married, good old Derek had taken me aside and told me he would snap my arms if I ever laid so much as a finger on his precious sister. As quickly as I could, I told him about Alice going missing, possibly abducted, and then Denise being taken into hospital.
‘Bloody hell,’ he said when I’d finished. ‘Never rains but it pours does it?’
This was typical insensitivity from Derek. I’d just told him one of his nieces had been kidnapped by a strange old man, while another lay seriously ill in hospital, and his only response had been a banal turn of phrase. I knew he wasn’t intentionally being callous but I hated him all the more for it.
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Maybe it would be better if you broke the news about dad to Teri.’
I let the suggestion hang in the air for a moment, pretending to think it over. I could see Derek just wanted to get back home. The thought of having to cope with a hysterical Teri at the hospital was obviously too much for him to take. He peered at me anxiously, afraid that I would insist he carry out his family duties to the bitter end. In truth, what he suggested suited me fine. It may sound obdurate, but the death of Teri’s father was a godsend to me. Armed with this piece of bad news I could turn Teri’s anger at me into a grief that would need consoling. That was why it helped to have Derek out the way. If he accompanied me to the hospital, it would be his shoulder she would cry on.
‘You go on home, Derek, I’m sure there’s arrangements to be made for the funeral. I’ll make sure Teri phones home tonight. Mind and drive carefully.’
Derek’s look of grateful relief as he climbed back into the car almost made me want to grin like a fiend. I waved as he drove off into the fog, his tail lights looking like demonic eyes before they were swallowed up in the murk. The next time I saw Derek it would take three burly policemen to stop him from trying to rip my face off with his bare hands. It might have all turned out differently if my car keys had been in the jacket I was wearing. Such a small thing. A set of car keys. The difference between life and death. I only realised they must still be in my other jacket when I reached the car and spent two futile minutes searching through my pockets.
Returning to the flat, I opened the walk-in cupboard in the hallway and fished my car keys from the jacket I had worn on the journey up to St Andrew’s. I also took my wallet and Visa cards. If I wanted to book Teri, Alice and I into a hotel I would need money. As I pulled the cupboard closed something fell over with a dull clatter and landed at my feet. With a shock I found myself looking at the silver tipped, ebony cane I had discarded outside Craigtoun Park. I closed my eyes and again heard the bone snapping sound it had made beneath the wheels of my car. It wasn’t possible that it should be whole again and hidden in the hall closet.
I knew I should kick it back into the shadows where it belonged, but I stooped down and picked the cane up, feeling the lacquered finish of the wood beneath my fingers. I half expected to experience some sort of hallucination or weird flashback but nothing happened. I smiled and propped the cane back in the corner of the cupboard. Whatever power it had contained was gone now, I was sure of that. Patting my pocket to double check I still had the car keys I pulled the flat door closed and half ran down the stairs.
I actually had my hand on the handle of the street door when a deafening blast of music came from behind the downstairs flat. I was barely a foot away from the door and on impulse thumped upon it with my fist. It was a token gesture. I didn’t care if our mysterious neighbour played his records all night at full volume. I did not intend to be there. It was only as I made contact with the wooden door that I realised I was once more holding the cane. As I stood there dumbfounded by this revelation, there came a sudden ear piercing shriek of a stylus being pulled across old shellac and then an ominous silence descended in the small standing space at the bottom of the stairs. For a moment I thought the mystery music lover was finally going to make an appearance, but I was wrong. Instead, the music started up again. This time however there was no wild, free running reel. From behind the door drifted a sad lament played mournfully on a lone fiddle.
Something happened to me that I can’t explain. I forgot all about leaving the flat, I forgot all about holding the cane - the cane I was so certain I’d put back in the cupboard. I just stood there rooted to the spot as tears ran unbidden down my cheeks. The music was touching something deep inside me, it spoke of sorrow and death. For a short time I surrendered to the feelings of desolation that the music conjured around me. Then there was a few seconds of clarity in which I realised I was crying and knew with utter conviction I was being played like a helpless fish, impaled through the jaw on a hook forged by the old man in the Garden of Remembrance.
The melancholy feeling evaporated instantly in the heat of my anger. I was too stupid to realise this mad rage was as contrived and false as the sorrow which had preceded it. With a scream of defiance I launched myself at the door of the downstairs flat. There never had been a downstairs neighbour. The old bastard had been hiding in there all along. The door gave on my third kick and I swept into the darkened room, brandishing the cane before me like a black sword.
The room was dark and gloomy, the heavy curtains shutting out the light from the street. It smelled of disuse and old dust, and was devoid of carpets and furniture with the exception of a battery operated record player which sat alone in the middle of the room. Scattered on the floor around the record player were dozens of 78 RPM discs.
The music came to a finish and the stylus stuck in the end grooves making a scratch-click noise that repeated over and over again like a rusty mantra. I brought the cane down upon the record player, the blow smashing the disk to smithereens, and then kicked the turntable halfway across the room. The surviving records on the floor I trampled with a fury I didn’t stop to question. Shellac spilt and cracked beneath my heel like the carapaces of huge dead beetles. When the pieces were too small to damage any more I looked around for something else to destroy. The violence had tasted good on my palate, it was delicious.
At the end of the room a dark curtain partitioned off what had to be a recess. The old man’s lair, his own drab Garden of Remembrance. He had made a mistake filling me with so much frenzied anger. I would smash his head in with his own cane. It occurred to me that what I had seen standing in the car park with the cane in my hand, might not have been a scene from my past. It could have been the future, the here and now. In the back of my mind I was dimly aware the room was filling with the stink of shit. Further proof the room’s occupant was at home. Using the end of the cane, I snagged the curtain and swept it aside.
All the rage and madness subsided as if a switch had been thrown and soul wrenching despair flooded in to fill the space it had vacated.
The old man was not there. Facing me was my mother.
CHAPTER 15
Two days after my fourteenth birthday Grandfather Crone came to stay with us. Some fool of a doctor had deemed him sane enough to return to the loving bosom of his family. It was a two week trial visit with a view to becoming a more permanent arrangement if Grandfather Crone behaved himself. Mum wasn’t happy about it, but the doctors emphasised how he had been on a radical new drug program since his escape and subsequent recapture in Grandmother Crone’s bedroom four years before. The doctors claimed to have stabilised his behavioural problems. I don’t think mum was entirely convinced, but she probably felt obliged to give it a try. He was her father after all.
The weeks leading up to his visit were fraught with tension and rows. Quite often I would see mum with her arm around my sister Brenda, whispering in her ear. Brend
a who was sixteen by then had blossomed into a pretty young woman. I never noticed the change until it had already happened. As if by magic she had suddenly sprouted breasts and her slim boyish hips filled out. I never heard what was discussed between them, but it sounded as if mum was reassuring my sister. The penny dropped when I found mum screwing a brass bolt to the inside of Brenda’s bedroom door. I remembered the way Grandfather Crone had stood in the doorway of Gran Crone’s bedroom, his small, dark eyes fixed upon June McCaully’s privates. I remembered the way he had drooled and made excited clicking noises. That was when I became fairly certain that Grandfather Crone’s past misdemeanours had been mainly sexual in nature. and mum was concerned with Brenda’s safety.
My birthday was ruined by the gloomy atmosphere filling the house. I received my usual cards and mum remembered to buy me a present, football boots and Subutteo floodlights, but the big day itself was a non event. Brenda was more sullen and moody than usual, while even little James, normally a chatterbox, seemed quiet and apprehensive. When I blew out the candles on my birthday cake I wished that Grandfather Crone would die of a heart attack before he got the chance to come and stay with us. For the rest of the evening I kept a wary eye on the telephone, willing it to ring, bringing news of the old man’s death from the hospital. It never happened and I went to bed disappointed.
Two days later I watched from the window as an ambulance pulled up outside our house and two orderlies assisted Grandfather Crone from the rear of the vehicle. He looked frail and used a black cane to steady himself as he walked. I remember the way the sunlight caught on the metal handle, making it glint like a fiery morning star, a harbinger of disaster. Although he was more bowed and ancient, the sight of him still made me afraid. The obscenely disproportionate head with its pursed little rectum of a mouth, the liver spots like ink blots on his flaking scalp, his neck scrawny and thin like a chicken’s. Yes, he frightened me very much.
