It was McBride who was first to break off the cut and thrust. ‘So, what’s all this about you feeling crap? This is not the “Tricky Dickie” I used to know. Some woman been giving you a hard time? Or is it a case of you not giving them a hard enough time? Have you considered Viagra?’
McBride’s sparkling wit did not meet with the expected response. His drinking partner flushed and, for a moment, his gaze dropped. Then he fixed McBride with a despairing stare. ‘You’re hardly the person to be giving lectures on relationships with women.’
McBride didn’t need to be a clairvoyant to appreciate that this topic was going nowhere. ‘Take it easy, old mate – just extracting the urine. More to the point, where are the decent places to eat in Dundee these days? I’ve barely had an edible meal since I arrived.’ He knew he could not have chosen safer ground. Next to haranguing politicians, Richardson’s favourite subject was food. He could spend almost as long discussing it as he did devouring it.
For five minutes McBride was given an unwanted rundown on every new restaurant and hotel that had opened in the city in the preceding twenty years. It was a price worth paying for the mood of conviviality to return.
Having worked his way through the deficiencies in most of their menus, Richardson suddenly chose to drop the matter before reaching his ultimate in haute cuisine conversation, desserts. ‘So, Campbell, what’s this I hear about you and Adam Gilzean? My spies tell me you have business with him. True or false?’
It was one of the oldest tricks in the reporter’s handbook. Change the subject without warning and watch for the spontaneous response of the person you’ve just wrong-footed.
McBride was just as accomplished. ‘Been keeping your ear to the ground, eh?’ he replied with what he hoped passed for nonchalance. ‘Business would be too strong a word. He dropped me a line about my book, telling me his son is an innocent man. That’s it really. Don’t suppose that comes as any news because I gather he was a regular in the letters column on the same subject.’
‘Correct. He became a bit of a pain in the behind after a while. Don’t know who he thought he was kidding with all his protestations that his murderous son was some kind of saint. I wouldn’t waste any time on him – he’s just one of the regulars that everyone avoids.’
The dismissal of Adam Gilzean as a newspaper-office crank prompted long-forgotten memories for McBride. Every local paper attracts the oddballs with axes – most of them exceedingly blunt – to grind and when their letters are no longer published, they turn up in person at reception. Then they start phoning, usually at the times when normal people are asleep. Reporters would rather have their eyes poked out by red-hot needles than permit the number of their direct line or e-mail address to fall into the hands of such individuals.
McBride reflected that, although his bookstore conversation with Adam Gilzean had been hostile and one-sided, it had also been brief – a concept utterly unknown to the eccentrics who inhabit newspaper-office reception areas. Whatever Gilzean was, McBride told himself, he was no crank.
‘You’re probably right.’ He shrugged, having no desire to contradict Richardson. ‘I’d forgotten people like that existed.’
Richardson tapped the bottom of his empty glass on the bar and coughed theatrically. ‘Going without a cigarette is bad enough. Didn’t know I was also in a desert with no oasis.’
McBride held two fingers up to John Black, who was at the end of the bar struggling to cope with a group of loud women who appeared to have no idea what they wanted to drink or who might be paying for them. The man who owned The Fort grimaced and gestured back with two fingers of his own but started to pull a couple of pints anyway.
‘How long do we have the pleasure of your company for, then?’ Richardson suddenly asked. ‘What’s next on your high-flying agenda?’
McBride hesitated, genuinely uncertain but unwilling to open the subject up. ‘How long is a piece of string?’ he replied easily. ‘There’s not a lot going on at the moment so I’ll probably hang around for a day or two taking in the sights then head back down for Christmas. Depends if they want me to sign any more books in the area.’
They drank together for another hour then shared a taxi back into Dundee. McBride was dropped at the Apex Hotel before the cab headed north up Lochee Road and turned into a cul-de-sac on the slopes of the Law, the hill which dominates the city’s skyline and which had given McBride the title for his best-selling book. Richardson got out of the taxi and entered the newly built block of flats where he occupied a top-floor apartment.
From its main window, he could see out over the river to Fife, the pinprick lights of the late night traffic on the Tay Road Bridge and the Apex sitting on the waterfront. He gazed at the architecturally challenged hotel and wondered how long McBride would remain in the city and whether they would become friends again.
9
Snow was still falling when McBride arrived outside the home of Adam Gilzean.
In central Dundee, seven miles away, the early morning traffic had turned it into the kind of grey slush that made you wish you’d never got out of bed but, there, in the countryside, he was in the middle of a scene on one of the Christmas cards that filled the shops. Fields that were usually postage stamps stretched endlessly white and only the telegraph poles marked where they finished and the hidden hedgerows began.
Tyre tracks told him he hadn’t been the first to use the road that day but, after turning off the main highway and heading up the hill towards the cottage, he hadn’t passed another vehicle. Evidently the locals had more sense than he did. He didn’t care. Fresh, out-of-town snow and the silence that accompanied it always made him feel like one of the last people on earth, which wasn’t a bad experience if you had to spend most of your life in London.
Adam Gilzean had probably chosen the location of his new home for different reasons, he thought. If your son had been banged up for the murder of a young woman who’d never done anyone any harm, your neighbours weren’t all that likely to be offering a cup of sugar. Moving away seemed a sensible option.
He had selected well. The cottage was thirty yards off the road and the nearest house was quarter of a mile away. Nothing stood between it and the main route down into Monifieth and McBride realised that Adam Gilzean, if he was at home, had probably seen him coming for the last five minutes as he fought with the snow all the way up the hill. The swiftness with which he answered McBride’s single press of the doorbell confirmed the theory.
But whoever Gilzean had been expecting to see, it was not the man facing him. His gasp of surprise practically burst from him and he seemed to momentarily lose his ability to speak.
McBride broke the silence. ‘Mr Gilzean – I thought it would be best if we had a chat. I hope you don’t mind me turning up like this but it seemed the thing to do.’
‘How did you know where I lived?’ Gilzean stumbled out. It was an automatic question and he didn’t trouble to wait for any kind of answer, even an evasive one, before drawing himself quickly together. ‘Yes, yes, come in.’ He pulled the door wider, gesturing McBride in out of the snow that was starting to fall heavier than ever.
For a few moments, they pointlessly discussed the weather, the way awkward strangers do, even those with important topics in mind. The fact that the outdoor conditions might, for once, have made the climate a legitimate conversation piece was still an irrelevance between the two men standing eyeing each other in the short hallway.
Gilzean pushed open the fifteen-panel glass door leading into the main room of his home.
‘Let me have your coat. Take a seat. Coffee or tea?’
‘Coffee, thanks – just a drop of milk and touch of sugar,’ McBride responded, pulling off the faded-red all-weather jacket he’d transported halfway round the world with him and dropping into a two-seater sofa.
Gilzean disappeared back into the hall, taking the coat with him, and McBride looked around the room.
It was unexpectedly modern and had been the subject of m
uch recent renovation since ceasing to be home to several generations of farm workers. The walls, which should have bulged unevenly after a century of settlement, were as flat as a billiard table, tastefully decorated in shades of cream and adorned with a dozen paintings, most of them originals and all of them in fashionable frames. The two armchairs, like the sofa McBride occupied, were taupe and placed either side of an efficient wood-burning stove. It was not the residence of someone lacking taste or money.
When Gilzean returned, he carried before him a silver tray bearing two cups of coffee, four scones, fresh butter and a small pot of jam – more style. Adam Gilzean was even less like the photo-fit of a newspaper-office’s reception area nutter.
He spoke quietly. ‘Did you get the note I left at Waterstone’s?’
McBride nodded.
‘I’m glad. Sorry again about that business when you were doing the signings. It just gets on top of me. Thanks for taking the trouble to drop round. But I’m not really sure why you came. You wanted a chat?’
McBride gave up trying to spread the unyielding butter on to his scone. ‘Yes, though I’m not all that certain either about why I’m here. It just seemed necessary, in a way, to go through things with you.’
‘I think you’re right. So, what can I tell you?’
McBride pushed a hand into the inside pocket of his jacket and produced a micro-cassette recorder with its innards held in place by yellow tape. He moved his coffee cup and placed the device on the table between them. ‘Do you mind if I switch this on? Force of habit. Saves taking notes and, anyway, the old shorthand isn’t what it once was.’
‘Be my guest.’
McBride depressed the red record button. ‘Can I start by asking a couple of silly questions?’
Gilzean arched both eyebrows and motioned his head in agreement. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘OK. First, did you also send me a letter via my publishers in Edinburgh?’
Gilzean appeared puzzled. He shook his head several times. ‘Absolutely not. What kind of letter?’
McBride ignored the question. ‘Right. This may sound strange but did you go into the Central Library in Dundee and cut something out of a copy of The Courier.’
His host looked even more baffled. ‘I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re speaking about. Cut what? Why would I?’
‘It doesn’t matter. I just needed to know these things. Sorry to seem so mysterious but, for reasons I won’t go into, it was important to ask. More to the point – would you like to tell me why your son is innocent?’
McBride’s words had the same effect as producing the combination to a locked vault. The perplexed look on the face of the man in the armchair opposite vanished, he leaned forward almost in disbelief and eagerly started to speak, retrieving the sentences he had grown weary of uttering three years earlier.
‘He’s innocent because he didn’t do it! And if you want to know why I know that, it’s because he was with me, sitting in my home, when he was supposed to be killing Alison. He was by my side for more than four hours. We chatted and watched television and had supper together. There was no way he could have done it. He was miles away!’
‘That’s what you told the court when you gave evidence. But the jury didn’t believe you. Why should I?’
‘Because it’s true.’
‘Prove it.’
‘I’ve tried to do that from the minute he was arrested. But how am I supposed to prove something like my son visiting me when no one else was there? I know folk – the jury as well – think I was just covering up for him, the way a father would.’
He raised his hand and pointed at a bookcase on the wall behind the sofa where McBride sat. It contained several photographs of the same young man, obviously his son, and numerous books, the most prominent of which was a Bible. ‘As God is my witness, Bryan is not guilty.’
McBride nodded understandingly but thought that, in any other context, the gesture might have seemed overdramatic. ‘Why did he come round that night?’ he asked. ‘Not many sons would spend four hours chatting with their dad when they could be in the pub or with a girlfriend instead. It’s not exactly what young folk do, is it?’
‘No. But that night was special. He’s a good son, very good. It was two years to the day since my wife – his mother – had died. He knew how I’d be feeling and came to help me along. We helped each other, as it turned out, just the way we did exactly a year before. I don’t know if you’ve ever suffered the bereavement of someone close to you, Mr McBride, but it doesn’t go away quickly. It doesn’t go away at all, if you must know.’ He was on the edge of tears.
McBride looked gently into the eyes of the figure facing him.
‘It doesn’t. But what you do is hang on to the good memories and, bit by bit, it gets a little easier as time passes.’ There was no need for McBride to explain how he knew this. How could he tell him that the only way, in the early years, is to hit the ‘off’ switch in your head so that you blot out the thought of the child you loved because of the pain that comes with knowing he has vanished from your life forever? How can you make someone understand the paradoxes that the death of a small boy throws up? There’s the rage at your God for letting it happen so you reject him as cruel or non-existent. But the only way through it is to be glad for every day the two of you shared. So you thank the God you deserted for the gift he gave you. And you pray to the omnipotent being who probably isn’t there that he’ll take better care of your child in heaven than he did on earth and will keep him safe until the day he reunites you.
McBride became aware that Adam Gilzean was watching him closely, trying to work out what was in his mind. He said firmly, ‘As I see it, there’s one – or rather two – things that get in the way of what you’ve told me. If Bryan wasn’t there, how did one of his hairs get on to the tie that choked Alison? Then there were his fingerprints on the wine glass – and the intercourse. You can hardly blame the jury for not quite believing you, can you?’
Adam Gilzean looked down into his half-empty coffee cup, saying nothing for so long that McBride was on the point of repeating his questions.
‘Do you think I haven’t asked myself that a thousand times, Mr McBride?’ He shook his head wearily. ‘Look, he lived in the flat half the time. Of course some of his hairs were bobbing about. And it’s not too surprising that his fingerprints were on a lot of the stuff there. Anybody’s house would be the same. It’s hardly enough to imprison someone for life, is it?’
McBride did not answer. ‘What about the sex?’ he asked.
Gilzean was dismissive. ‘The two of them having intercourse was hardly unique. Of course there would be traces.’
‘That wasn’t the way the court saw it, Mr Gilzean.’ McBride was trying hard to reconcile sympathy with realism. ‘Looked at from their point of view, one and one makes two and two makes guilty.’
Gilzean slowly shook his head. ‘I’m not stupid. I can put myself in their place but they were wrong. If you don’t believe Bryan is innocent, what are you doing here?
It was the best question of them all. McBride did not respond and the silence was broken only by the soft whirring of the recorder. Eventually, he switched it off, smiled and said, ‘Fair point. But I have been known to be wrong.’ He rose from his seat. ‘I’d best head back before I get snowed in.’
Gilzean seemed reluctant to break off the conversation. He pushed himself slowly to his feet, starting to speak but hesitatingly. ‘Of course – I’ll get your coat.’ He took a step towards the door into the hall but turned to face McBride again. He spoke haltingly. ‘Will you go to see Bryan? I can easily arrange it. Maybe he’ll convince you. He’d be extremely happy to see you – extremely.’
He looked eagerly at his visitor. ‘It would mean a lot to him – me too.’
McBride reached out and put a soft hand on Adam Gilzean’s arm. ‘I’d be delighted,’ he said quietly. ‘In fact, I was going to suggest it. Just fix it up and give me a ring with the details.
’ He wrote in his notebook and tore a page out, handing it to the pleased man by his side. ‘That’s my mobile. It’s never switched off.’
They shook hands as they parted and Gilzean held his grip. ‘I’m very glad you came, Mr McBride. You’re making me feel hopeful for the first time in more than three years.’
The snow had gone off, the heavy sky giving way to a sharpness of light that world-traveller McBride only ever experienced in Scotland – and the further north he went, the brighter it seemed to become. He stood by the car door and sucked in the panorama extending before him. At the bottom of the hill, beyond the white roofs of Monifieth, the River Tay sparkled as it joined the North Sea. Behind their seamless junction, the sands of Kinshaldy Beach, where he used to run, lay untouched by snow.
He took in the scene for several minutes and, for the first time since arriving back from London, asked himself why he had left the area. His fingers curled round the tape recorder in his pocket, the way a child clutches a security blanket. It didn’t really matter that he knew the reasons. It wasn’t an occasion for logic.
He at last got into his car and thought that, like his arrival, Adam Gilzean had probably watched his departure performance with curiosity. He thought about that too for a few moments and came to the conclusion that the man whose son was languishing in Perth Prison had undoubtedly also gazed out over the vista in contemplation many times.
10
It was only when he arrived back into the centre of Dundee that McBride remembered what he had been trying to forget, that it was Christmas Eve.
In City Square, the town’s official tree blazed with light in the falling darkness, doing its best, but not quite succeeding, to overcome the handicap of being positioned behind a pavilion of fairground dodgem cars that no one was using. Last-minute shoppers scurried between stores, their hands full of panic-purchase presents and their feet sodden by the slush banked up on the pavements.
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