Come to Harm

by Catriona McPherson

  “Is everything is clear? Good. If everything’s clear, please go on to the sample question. We can talk through this one.”

  Mrs. Watson nodded with shrewdly narrowed eyes and read aloud: “Mark the line to show how strongly you agree with the following statement: There’s no smoke without fire. You know what this is like? This is just like a séance. Make the mark wherever you feel drawn to make it. Let yourself be guided, empty your mind.”

  “Well,” said Keiko, but bit her lip as Mrs. Watson marked the paper with a languid hand.

  “What would you do if people started coming out with real messages,” she said. “Could you use that?”

  “Do you believe in the spirit world, Mrs. Watson?” Keiko said, sidestepping Mrs. Watson’s question. She hadn’t put anything in the profiler about such paranormal things, since most British people were supposed to be so rational that they would scoff. And she didn’t want to offend the others.

  “I’d like to,” said Mrs. Watson. “I sometimes feel as though there’s someone nearby. Don’t you?”

  “Not really,” said Keiko, although she shivered as she spoke. “But I’ve never lost anyone close to me.”

  “And long may that last,” said Mrs. Watson. “I don’t recommend it.”

  Keiko hesitated. Was Mrs. Watson thinking of her niece Dina? If she was speaking Japanese she would have been able to tiptoe up to the questions, but in English the intrusion would be—

  The doorbell rang.

  “You run along,” said Mrs. Watson. “I know exactly what to do. You concentrate on the newcomers.”

  It was Mr. McKendrick, dressed in a dark suit and black tie. He checked his step for a moment in the living room doorway when he saw Mrs. Watson bent over her paper, and looked rather ostentatiously at his watch.

  Mrs. Watson raised her eyes without raising her chin, regarded him over the top of her spectacles. Then taking in his black tie she lifted her head. “Of course, it’s Tam Cleland’s funeral this morning,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it when I heard he was gone.”

  “Aye, he looked such a tough old goat,” said Mr. McKendrick.

  “But Mrs. Mackie was saying there’s nothing at the church.”

  “No, it’s the crematorium, just. And no do.”

  “Crematorium!” said Mrs. Watson. “He’ll be turning in his grave.” Then she put one hand over her mouth to smother the giggles.

  Keiko got Mr. McKendrick settled and took him through the introduction, Mrs. Watson looking up at intervals and nodding. He viewed the mug of biros sternly and reached into his pocket for his fountain pen.

  “No smoke without fire,” he said softly. “No smoke without fire. Would that be barbecue smoke? Because this was supposed to be about food, if you remember.”

  “The food questions will come later,” Keiko said. “This is just smoke.”

  “You’re not allowed extra instructions, Jimmy,” said Mrs. Watson. “It wrecks the methodology.”

  Mr. McKendrick turned slightly away from her and addressed Keiko. “It’s true, you know. I was a volunteer fireman in my younger days. Even when there’s only smoke there’s either just been a fire or there’s going to be a fire. Or if there isn’t, it’s because someone sees to it that there isn’t. So would that be a yes or a no?”

  “It’s not a clear yes or a clear no,” said Keiko. “You need to mark the line to show what mixture of yes and no. More yes? More no? Can’t say?”

  “Just let your mind drift, Jimmy,” said Mrs. Watson, without looking up.

  “And if you don’t know, if you can’t say, you leave it blank?” said Mr. McKendrick.

  “No,” said Keiko. “If you can’t say then it would be in the middle. Neither yes nor no. You see?”

  Mr. McKendrick nodded, kindly. “Aye well, I suppose that’s why you do a dry run, isn’t it after all,” he said. “To iron out these wee hitches. You’ll need to ditch this one before you get going for real, eh?”

  Keiko smiled tightly. “Mr. McKendrick,” she said, “remember these answers are strictly anonymous. You should use one of my pens instead of yours, so that all the sheets are the same.”

  Mr. McKendrick moved as though to put the lid back on his pen, then catching sight of Mrs. Watson staring at him, he set the nib down on the paper.

  “I’ve nothing to hide,” he said, “and I trust you.”

  seventeen

  By evening, she had twenty-five completed papers and was sitting at her desk rewriting the instructions—Do not confer during the experiment and Please do not discuss your answers with anyone—when Murray arrived, dressed in running clothes.

  “How did it go?”

  “Tremendously well,” said Keiko, flopping back down onto the sofa. “But I’m exhausted. Twenty-five people and it might have been more, except there was a funeral.”

  “Tam Cleland, yeah,” Murray said. “So now you know all there is to know about the people of Painchton?”

  “More than I expected to,” said Keiko with a laugh. “I know that Tam Cleland’s daughter-in-law is to blame for such a small funeral and she’s ‘been through the house and stripped it bare.’ Miss Morrison told me all about it.”

  “Miss Morrison.” He nodded slowly. “Okay. You’re fine with her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” Murray said.

  “Who am I not fine with?”

  “Well, there’s me,” he said, grabbing hold of her hand and pulling her to her feet. “I didn’t tell you in case you tried to get out of it, but I reckoned tonight would be the perfect time to get started on you.” Keiko opened her eyes wide. “At the gym.” He looked appraisingly at her and she felt her neck lengthening, her chin lifting. “I know you never came round like I said, but have you got any workout clothes?”

  _____

  It was only a few yards round the corner to the workshop, but still Keiko let go a breath of relief when they arrived without being seen. She felt fluorescent in the unaccustomed pale clothes and her feet, darting in and out of view, drawing her eyes down towards the tennis shoes, were as white and bulky as puffballs. She had imagined the people in the flats above the shops leaving their armchairs and padding to their windows to see her, drawn from the television by something even brighter.

  “New trainers, eh?” said Murray with a small smile as he stooped over the padlock at the workshop door. “What brought that on?”

  “I’m going to be very fit and healthy despite the steak and kidney pudding and the apple pie and the cheese scones,” Keiko said, stepping neatly around the question.

  “You don’t have to, you know,” said Murray, clicking switches off and on until the right selection of spotlights left the motorbikes draped in darkness and picked out the exercise machines. “Just say you’re not hungry.”

  “But they’re all so kind,” said Keiko. “Mr. McLuskie brought me a pie the size of a tyre when he came today.” Murray said nothing. “And a big bowl full of extra … whatever it was that was in the pie.”

  What Mr. McLuskie had told her was in the pie was squashed flies.

  “A fly pie, hen,” he’d said. “Also known as a flies’ graveyard. Fine old traditional names are dying out. Like blood oranges. Ruby red oranges they call them now, and these would be Abernethy slices, I suppose, but the Japanese are not a squeamish people, I know, so fly pie it is. And I’ve put a wee bowl of extra filling in your fridge for you to make toasties. I know you’ve a toastie-maker in that kitchen of yours because I gave it myself.”

  “Thank you,” said Keiko, meaning it to encompass everything.

  “Och,” said Mr. McLuskie, flicking his hand that way that had seemed so rude to her at first, but which she was getting used to. “I promised Etta I’d do my bit, keeping you from fading away, wee thing that you are, so far from home and you must wonder what the h
e—eck you’re doing here, eh?” He sat down heavily, one hand on each knee, dropping backwards into the seat with a sigh. As he did so a gust of warm sweetness rushed towards Keiko’s nostrils and, as she bent over him to explain the questionnaire, was she only imagining that she could taste it, like a cloud of icing sugar hanging in the air around him?

  “No smoke without fire,” he said, stifling a yawn.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee, Mr. McLuskie?”

  “Och no, I wouldn’t want to put you to it,” he said. “But if the kettle’s going on anyway, I’ll keep you company. Tea, mind, not coffee. Nice change to be asked too. Etta’s up to high doh this weather and I can raffle.”

  “I’m sorry?” said Keiko.

  “My wife is not herself these days,” said Mr. McLuskie. “Anybody’s guess why not. So it’ll be a wee treat to have somebody make me tea.”

  “And a slice of pie?” said Keiko, holding it up to him as though she had made it and was tempting him.

  “I shouldn’t really,” he said. “I brought it for you.”

  “But I like that,” said Keiko. “I mean, the way you appreciate your own … Mrs. Imperiolo took me out for fish and chips, and Malcolm is doing something with suet and kidney for me.”

  “Fish, eh?” said Mr. McLuskie. “Well, at least she never had you at that so-called Indian or the so-called chink—uh, Chinese, I beg your pardon.”

  “I don’t understand you, Mr. McLuskie,” Keiko said. He had followed her through to the kitchen and was watching her setting out cups and plates, the questionnaire forgotten in the other room.

  “See, me? I’m a traditionalist,” he said.

  “I am very glad to hear it,” said Keiko. “You will be an important part of my study. I cannot tell you why, but I assure you.”

  “I make plain and pan, morning rolls, bridge rolls, cottage, farls and batch. Mince pies, steak pies, sausage rolls, bridies. All with Malcolm’s special mixture. Honest food from right here.”

  “And you make the pastry to go around?” said Keiko.

  “Aye, from the finest flour, butter, lard, and salt, with these two hands,” he said. “And then there’s fruit scones, drop scones, tattie scones, soda scones; never mind the teacakes. And speaking of cakes! Vanilla slices, cream horns, French fancies, coconut rocks, your fly pie there, fruit slab, Chelsea buns, yum-yums … you name it. Of course I could fling together a hundred kinds of muffins, wee bits of dried blueberry and choc chips that might as well be rabbit pellets for all the taste of them. Of course I could be shovelling out croissants and cookies and rocky road—a child of five could. But I am a Scottish Master Baker, see? And there’s nothing can go inside a panini that can’t go in a good morning roll.”

  Keiko formed her lips to attempt a reply but could not think of anything. Mr. McLuskie sailed on.

  “But the thing is, Imperiolo’s café and chippy and Indian and chink—Chinese—you’ll forgive me, hen—have got folk from all over the country, down south, France even, raving on about how marvellous it is, all over that Internet, and then there’s McLuskie’s Bakery and … not a sausage! Nothing! My customers just aren’t the type to …”

  “To post online reviews,” said Keiko.

  “Exactly! It doesn’t mean I’m not as good a baker as Kenny is a whatever he calls himself these days. He hasn’t shaken a basket of chips for twenty years. I’m still up at four every morning with my yeast. He just sits in his office at his computer.”

  “He’s probably writing reviews,” said Keiko. Mr. McLuskie crashed his cup down into its saucer. “I didn’t mean that,” she blurted. “I was only joking.”

  “Ho ho!” said Mr. McLuskie. “You’ve hit the nail on the head, hen.”

  “I was joking.”

  “Oh no, you’ve cracked it.”

  “Please!”

  “I am going to make you a cake,” said Mr. McLuskie, standing up. “Royal icing and sugar roses, because you are a wee sweetheart. You’ve made my day.” And he left, the questionnaire forgotten.

  _____

  “Keiko?” said Murray. “You’re miles away.”

  Keiko blinked and smiled at him. “Sorry,” she said. “I was thinking about Mr. McLuskie.”

  “I bet nobody’s gone off in a dwam about him for a while,” Murray said laughing.

  “I told him something about someone and I shouldn’t have.”

  “Who?” said Murray, staring hard at her.

  “Kenny Imperiolo.”

  Murray considered this for a moment and then shook his head. “You’re better off staying away from both of them,” he said. “Best thing.”

  “I can never tell whether you’re serious or joking,” said Keiko staring at him.

  “I’m never joking,” Murray said. “Remember? I only laugh so I don’t scream. Right then.” He walked towards the gym machines, but Keiko put out a hand to stop him.

  “I’d like to learn another bike first, please,” she said.

  “Gold Flash,” he said, once again doing the trick with the tarpaulin that made him look like a children’s conjuror and made Keiko want to giggle. “BSA Golden Flash. 1950 to 1961. So called because of the colour. Although they did do them in black and chrome too—pretty rare. I’ve had a set of black front forks and mudguards for years, probably never get a hold of the rest.”

  Keiko listened and nodded but could not see in this machine anything like the glamour of the Harley or the spidery elegance of the Vincent. This one seemed to be nothing but trouble. Murray told her about the innovative plunger suspension, which wore out too quickly, and the brakes not strong enough to allow a sidecar. She could feel a frown form on her brow, too tired to take a scholarly interest in such a catalogue of failures. She was glad when he stopped talking and threw the cover back over the bike again.

  “Right. No more skiving,” he said. “What do you weigh?”

  “Ah, fifty kilos,” said Keiko. “I don’t know in stones.”

  “That’s okay. Metric’s best,” Murray said. “Do you mind?” He walked towards her and put a hand around her upper arm, warm thin fingers reaching right around it. “Flex,” he said. Keiko tensed the muscle with all her strength, one foot lifting slightly off the floor in its weightless trainer.

  “Go on, flex your bicep,” he said sternly.

  “I am flex—” she started.

  Murray smiled. He squatted down in front of her, cupped one hand around her right calf, lifted the leg from the floor and laid the other hand flat against the front of her thigh.

  “Point your toe,” he said, curving his palm around her thigh as it stiffened. Keiko wobbled and put one hand on his shoulder to steady herself. She stared down at the top of his head, at the glint of his eyes through his lashes.

  “Flex your foot up?” he asked quietly, and she did, feeling his hand squeezing the small ball of her calf. She relaxed and Murray set her foot gently back down. She took her hand away from his shoulder and crossed her arms as he stood upright and looked down at her.

  “It’s a miracle,” he said. “You have absolutely no muscles. How do you walk around?”

  Keiko started laughing. “You’re very rude to me,” she said. “Maybe I’ll go home and eat my pie.”

  “Multi-gym, leg press, incline bench, treadmill, cross-trainer,” said Murray—cursory, so different from his caressing descriptions of the motorcycles—then started to work at the fastenings on one of them. The contraption, which looked to Keiko like the mechanism of an elevator, had no obvious place in it for a human body to be added.

  “Weight-lifting?” she asked. He smiled at her over his shoulder but said nothing, spun the loosened weights free, and stacked them in their place in the pile. Then he straightened and held up his hands to Keiko, showing her two absurdly tiny weights like doughnuts in his palms.

  “No,” she shouted. “I am not as
feeble as that.”

  “Nothing feeble about it,” said Murray. “You have to start from where you are. This is where you are.”

  He settled Keiko into the contours of the machine, nudging her feet into place and pushing her head gently back into the rest, then swung the bar over her, talking her through the exercise in minute detail. When she tried it, just as he said, shoulders down, stomach tight, her eyes opened wide with surprise at the resistance of the silly little weights. She felt the tendons on her neck and heard her ears crackle.

  “Won’t this make me look like those orange ladies?” she asked, releasing the hold. “They’re very ugly.”

  “How can you ask questions when you’re breathing in?” said Murray watching her arms.

  She stopped and replaced the weight. “But will it?”

  “No,” said Murray. “They increase the weight. You’re going to up the repetitions. You’ll look more like me than them. As long as you do what you’re told. Do you trust me?” She nodded. “Will you do what you’re told?” She nodded again.

  “And if I eat the pies? Will it cancel out?”

  “You can’t eat the pies,” said Murray. “You don’t want to, do you?”

  “Malcolm wants so much to show me the pudding.”

  “You don’t need to worry about Malcolm,” said Murray. “I’ll tell him to leave you alone.”

  Keiko lay down and moved the weights again. “Have you always done this?” she asked him. “Have you always been …” She couldn’t think of a way to say it that wouldn’t make his eyebrow lift that way it did. “Only Malcolm and your father are so different.”

  “Dad?” He was surprised, she could tell, but not shocked, not horrified. Perhaps Malcolm was right and it wasn’t Mr. Poole who had made Murray so sad after all.

  “I saw his photograph,” Keiko reminded him. “And I just wondered if his health, you know, was what made you decide to be the way you are and why Malcolm didn’t … join you.”

  “His health?” said Murray.

  “I assumed it was a heart attack,” Keiko said.