by Black, Tony
I don't know what I expected from Amy, she had too few miles on the dial to understand. Christ, I was only coming round to the realisation that Debs losing the baby was such a big deal because it was also my one chance to right the wrongs with my father. And now I wasn't going to get another chance to prove I was nothing like him.
I wired into the Guinness and took up a copy of The Hun, which seemed to be replacing the Daily Ranger as the pub's paper of default. There was a story about Maggie Thatcher being sick.
'And that's fucking news is it?'
'Come again, mate?' The barman lit.
I rustled the paper at him. 'Says Thatcher's been in hospital ... nothing frivolous I hope.'
He mopped the bar top, grinned. 'She'll have been in for an oil-change, they took her heart out in the eighties.'
It was the only explanation I'd heard that made sense. I smiled and ordered a chaser, turned over to the sports pages.
On any given day of the week Amy will be dressed to impress. She sauntered in, white mules, white jeans (skin-tight) and a pillar-box red crop top that showed a stomach so flat you could eat your dinner off it. The diamanteé stud in her navel, you could argue was over the top, but who'd listen?
'Gus boy, how do?'
'Mair to fiddling.' That's a Scots spoonerism for you, does it have a meaning? Does anything?
Amy settled herself at the bar, ran her fingers through long black hair. She was a show stopper, men's eyes lit up like Chinese lanterns about the place.
She looked relaxed, any animosity for me was on the down-low. I was delighted because I had no desire to rake over that old ground. One of my few remaining sources of pride was the fact that I'd trained Amy well at the paper. I was likely being overly-generous on myself, she was a natural. Amy had ways of getting to the bottom of things that I couldn't even fathom. And that's why — despite our recent history — I'd called her.
I said, 'I need your help?'
She leaned over the bar and ordered a rum and coke. She got the fastest service I'd ever seen. 'Yeah, help with what?'
'A case.'
A smile. Wide, a from-the-heart job. 'You're working on something ...'
'In a manner of speaking.'
'Well, that's great!'
'Calm down, I wouldn't get too excited about this one. Let's just say, I'm not overly optimistic of getting a result.'
'Work's work ... it beats staying at home and watching Cash in the Attic.'
'You've a better chance of scoring cash there, it has to be said. And I warn you, I don't see much scope for excitement.'
She sipped her drink, leaned towards me and planted a hand on my thigh. 'I'm an excitable girl! Try me.'
I removed her hand, she curled the red-talons round her glass again, threw her head back and laughed. It was Amy being Amy. When I gave her the details of the case, she mellowed and put on her serious face. I spelled out for her that I had some niggling concerns about just what was behind Urquhart's tale.
'You think he's hiding something?' she said.
'That I don't know.'
She shrugged at me, the immaturity of her years writ large on her face. 'He's a minister, though.'
I nearly laughed. 'There's no sin but ignorance.'
'Is that another quote?'
'Yes. It definitely is.'
I could see my point had registered. Amy was off her stool and tipping back the last of her drink, setting ice-cubes rattling on the side, before she slammed the glass down.
'Right, I'm on this,' she said. Amy was heading for the door as she spoke again. 'I'll be in touch,' she tipped her head and winked. 'I still have a few moves, you know.'
There wasn't a man in the pub she didn't convince with those words, as she clacked heels and turned for the door.
* * * *
I set off down the Royal Mile, towards Abbeyhill. Downhill was a far easier schlep, I even got to fancying I might make some sense of things as I went. After all, hadn't Nietzsche said 'all truly great thoughts are conceived by walking'. He might even have been right. But I got as far as the Tron Kirk before I realised my only thought was for coffee to clear my head.
Time was, drinking on an empty stomach had been 'fries with that' to me but these days my body was waving the white flag. I abandoned my principles and ducked into Starfucks. A little protest group — one beardy student in a great-coat and flip-flops — stood outside with a banner blasting the firm for tax avoidance. I shook my head at the absurdity, but inwardly hoped he'd be picketing Jimmy Carr at festival time.
I put in my order and stood at the counter, waiting for them to ring up.
'Can I take your name, please?' said the yoof on the till.
'Y'what?'
Eyes rolled skyward, then a plastic smile. 'Your name ...'
I looked around, the queue was stretching to the door now. 'It's not a mortgage application, son ... it's a coffee.'
I felt a hand on my elbow. 'They write it on the cup, and call out your name.' It was a woman in a Boots uniform, she had the courtesy to pin down the corners of her mouth and shrug shoulders as she broke the news.
'Oh do they? ... I missed that meeting.'
The counter lad was frowning now, 'Sir, we're busy.'
I smiled, my best headlamp rictus. 'Please, call me Gus!'
I was stepping back from the counter, joining the 'collect your order here' queue as my mobi started ringing.
I recognised the caller ID.
'Fitz ...'
'How do?'
'Yeah, never better ...' He seemed unmoved by the politesse.
'Well, hold that thought because I'm about to piss on your parade.'
That was the thing with Fitz, he didn't do soft-soaping. 'I take it you ran a check on Caroline.'
He bit. 'Jesus, Dury, watch what yeer saying!'
He was always over-cautious about talking on the phone, there was no reason for it, apart from him having seen too many Bourne movies.
'Okay ... sorry. What have you got for me?'
'Do you want the good news or the bad?'
The way he was going, I wouldn't have predicted a choice. 'Well, I always like to get the bad news out the way first ...'
'Urquhart hasn't filed a missing persons for his daughter. That's the first hurdle right there. But on top of that, we've no trace of her ... Caroline isn't on our books for anything.'
With all my suspicions about Urquhart this didn't surprise me. What confused me no end was why he wanted me to find her at all. 'So, we've only his word to go on that she's even here ... It doesn't make sense.'
'Oh, she's here.'
'What?'
I felt a shove on my back and the queue edged forward, I was pressed against a large man in a sheep-skin coat who, from the back anyway, could have been a distant relation of the late Giant Haystacks.
'Christ Almighty ...' he said, his voice a low girlish teeter that didn't fit his scale.
'I'm sorry ...' Like I was arguing the toss.
'Gus ... Gus ... one large latte.'
I felt a wince inside me as an American accent mangled my name from behind the counter. A large paper cup was plonked down in front of me.
'Hope you enjoy your coffee, Gus.'
I didn't know whether to smile or chuck up at the sentiment. Went for a nod, paired with a conspiratorial wink that said I wasn't buying into all this false-bonhomie bullshit.
'Dury ... you still there?' Fitz sparked up on the end of the line.
'Yeah ... just grabbing a coffee.' I manoeuvred my way back onto the Mile, headed down for the crossing. 'Go on ... you were saying.'
'Caroline Urquhart is in Edinburgh ... or at least, someone her age and going by the same name is.'
'How do you know this if she's not on your books?'
He sighed, sounded like a lengthy explanation was beyond him. 'Because I ran her details with the Health Board as well ...'
'Jesus. That's a bit of a result.'
'It is and it isn't ... I don't have an
address. She gave a homeless hostel as her address, but I checked with them and she's moved on.'
I stopped in my tracks. 'Shit.'
'Well, you'd think.'
'I hope you're going to tell me otherwise.'
'No, Gus, I have no idea where Caroline is.' He let a gap on the line stretch out between us and I felt my hopes evaporating, then, 'But if you have nothing better to do, I have an idea where you might, just might mind, catch a hold of someone who does.'
* * * *
My feelings about being this deep in the heart of Leith were conflicted. I'd grown up here, but without the store of happy memories most people associate with childhood. Every street still hugged me like a returning son, I loved the place, I just couldn't bear being here for long.
Leith was changing, the old bricks and mortar buildings crumbling to decay and being ripped down. In their stead came the chrome and glass wank-itechture that was infesting the entire city. Most of the flats they flung up when money was cheap were unsaleable now but it didn't seem to stop them. Ever the eye to the main chance, or ever hopeful, I couldn't decide which.
I came off Commercial Street and took myself onto Lindsay Street. Fitz had given me the details of a midwife who worked out of Leith Mount. He didn't know her, or even of her. All he had was a name on a computer screen and a few details, some of which listed Caroline Urquhart as one of her patients.
There was a car park for the practice, I took a look for the white Micra that belonged to Janice Dawes, the midwife I was about to doorstep. Fitz had supplied the reg-number for her car so it was a simple matter of waiting for her to show. They were always on the go, these midwives, so with any luck I wouldn't have to wait long.
I found the car in the staff-parking bays and stationed myself under the overhang of the roof. I was sparking up a Silkie when the door to the practice wheezed open. It was an Asian woman, heavily-gone, and a doting husband holding the door for her. I couldn't halt the smile I had for them. Did I still want some of what they had? I didn't doubt it, but I knew that boat had sailed without me on it a long time ago.
I was on my fourth or fifth Silkie when the sound of comfortable shoes squelching on wet tarmac came towards me. It was a squat woman, not exactly heavy but not exactly doing the Dukan Diet either. She had that hard-won look, the one that gets some women tagged as pushy, or as we were prone to say in this neighbourhood, not backwards at coming forwards.
I watched her wrestle a bag into the passenger seat of her car and start to make her way round to the driver's door. She was opening up as I leaned over the roof.
'Hello, Janice is it?'
She thinned eyes. 'Yes.'
I tried a smile, for all the good it would do me. 'I was wondering if I might have a word with you.'
The aperture of her eyes returned to normal. She pulled her chin back into her neck, 'Do I know you?'
'No. I don't think so ...' I looked up to the heavens, tried to inveigh that familiar Scots expression of disgust for the weather. 'Looks like rain.'
I knew she'd caught me indicating the interior of the car, that's probably why she flicked the central-locking and walked round to my side of the vehicle.
'I'm not carrying any drugs, if that's what you're after.' Her tone was sharp, the look in her eyes nothing short of fierce. I pitied the poor junkie that would try jumping her.
I tried to laugh off the inference, even if it had been a particularly low blow to take. 'You have me all wrong; look, I really do need to have a talk with you ... about one of your patients.'
She looked perplexed now. The tight bun her hair was tied in seemed to grip her features into a more angular slant. 'What on earth are you on about?'
'Caroline Urquhart ...' I let the name hang between us like gunshot.
'Caroline ... Are you a relation?'
I'd tried and failed with that tack before. 'No. I'm employed by her father.'
'Her father ... she never mentioned any family.'
I could see I had her interest now; I waved a hand towards the car, held it out. 'That's a spit of rain ...'
I sensed cogs turning behind those steel-grey eyes of hers. She looked at me, then quickly back to the door of the practice she'd come out of. I could sense some concern for Caroline but I could also sense a huge dose of uncertainty for what the hell I was all about.
I stepped towards her, ramped it up. 'Look, I don't care what you think of me, but that girl and her baby need help; now either you're going to be the one to help her or we're relying on someone else out there being a very good Samaritan.'
She fiddled with the keys in her hand. She looked at me, in the eye, then averted her gaze towards the ground. A sigh, 'I haven't seen her in weeks.'
'How many?'
'Two, three ... maybe a bit longer. She just vanished ... I was very worried because she was in a bit of an emotional state.'
'How do you mean?'
'She was alone, apart from that boy, and she said she didn't plan to keep the child. She'd asked me about adoption straight away.'
'She had a boyfriend?'
The nurse's top lip twitched, she looked out to the medical practice again. 'I don't know, just a young lad. He didn't have a job, anyway. I think he was wary of Caroline coming to the hospital for some reason. The officialdom, the forms and so on ... they were both terrified of them.'
'And that worried you?'
The midwife tightened her brows and drew a deep breath, 'Yes, of course. She's due any day now, you realise.'
'What?'
'Yes. Very soon. I have to admit, I've been beyond worried for her ... what did you say your name was?'
I steered her back on course. 'Does it matter? ... Look, you must have an address for her?'
'A place down in the flats. I went there a few times but it's since been boarded up. I don't think anyone's living there. Do you think it was a squat, maybe?'
I nodded. 'Yeah, more than likely.'
The midwife started to tug at the sleeve of her jacket, she looked nervy now. I could see her demanding I report to Social Work with her if I gave her any more room for manoeuvre.
'Look, I really can't tell you any more,' she said.
I made to move, put my hands in my pockets. 'Just one more thing ... let me have the address and I'll be on my way.'
* * * *
At one time, I'd taken to schlepping up Calton Hill to sit on a bench and watch the world go by. I admit it, I'd been known to take the odd tin or two along. On any given day, rain or shine, you could be guaranteed a host of tourists and locals alike. They were a distraction, but there was a way of avoiding them. If you got within spitting-distance of the National Monument you were screwed — and likely to be handed a camera, asked to take a photograph for someone — but there was a bench overlooking the Old Town that nobody went near.
So, I'd sit there, just clocking the sky and the concrete smear that was the city beneath. I'd become detached, near alpha-state; and that wasn't the tins.
It all went tits up for me when they started knocking the shit out of the place to develop a site next to the Cooncil offices. There was talk of turfing people out their homes with compulsory purchase orders. A Save Our Old Town campaign got going. It was Capitalism gone mad and I couldn't get my head around it. To say it soured the view was putting it mildly.
I left the bench alone when the diggers went in. The Scottish Government was putting a stop to cheap tins anyway, so that was gonna hit my recreational skite right on the head.
As I reached Leith's Banana Flats I wondered what the view was like from up there. That was the thing with Edinburgh, the scene was forever changing. You just never knew what was round the next corner. You thought you knew the place and then it surprised you with the news that, actually, you didn't know it at all.
The midwife had given me an address for a flat that was on a street I'd never known existed, and I grew up in Leith. When my brother and I were young enough to go bikes we played boneshaker over the cobbles. I could
n't see any kids nowadays doing that, unless you could get it on the Nintendo Wii.
The address was at the back of a winding row of properties that the builders had been slap-happy with. It looked like an Airfix-kit scheme. There were tenements in the city standing the test of centuries but these boxy hovels looked to have passed their shelf-life about twenty years ago. The residents obviously agreed, ripping apart the ones that had already been burned out and chucking their charred contents on the street.
The walls were covered in graffiti. Tagging, mainly. You get your school of thought that this kinda thing ruins an area; me, I say, how much worse can they make it? Scrubbing it off's only turd polishing.
I took to a stair that smelled of piss. Even with all the windows panned in, the piss was still rank enough to make me want to chuck. I stuck my face behind my jacket and waded through the detritus of aerosols, needles and White Lightning bottles. The place I wanted was the last in the row; I wondered if it was truly the end of the road.
I could see why the nurse would think nobody lived here. I wouldn't — and I'm not the one stopping at The Balmoral. I pressed on the door's windowpane; there was no give, it wasn't opening up. As I looked in the letter box, a blast of damp hit me but I also detected some movement.
'Probably bloody rats ...'
I banged on the door.
Nothing.
Tried again on the windowpane.
A clang this time. Like a door closing.
I hollered in the letterbox, 'Caroline, is that you? My name's Gus, Gus Dury, your father asked me to find you.'
I put my ear to the slot.
There was no movement anymore. The place was grave-still — too still — I sensed there was someone in there. I toyed with the idea of putting my foot to the door when, suddenly, a whoosh of stale air came at me as the door's windowpane came through.
I caught a glance of a pot in flight.
I fell back.
My back smacked off the concrete landing just as I saw a blur of shaved head loom over me and cosh me across the face with a heavy fist.
Next thing I saw was the dancing canaries.
* * * *
'Hello, can you hear me? Hello ... hello.'
