‘Hey, Bridesmaids is on the pay-per-view. Let’s get tipsy and watch it together,’ I suggested.
Because I didn’t want to leave.
‘Okay,’ she said, with a little smile. ‘As long as you’re all right.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You sure?’
‘I told you. It’s forgotten.’
But it wasn’t forgotten. It couldn’t be, because I didn’t want to forget it, any more than I had wanted it to stop.
Elements
Heike Gunn’s voice filled the inside of Parlabane’s hire car as he drove through the Trossachs and on towards Kennacraig. He had the volume high and his foot to the floor on a clear morning, enjoying being behind the wheel for the first time in more than a year. It was crisp and still, Loch Fyne creating a spectacular if unnerving illusion: its placid surface reflected the image of the mountains, making it appear as though there was a dizzying plunge beneath the level of the road.
Sarah had liked Savage Earth Heart, probably more than he had. He could still remember her singing along to ‘Western Pagodas’ as they drove past distilleries on a weekend break to Speyside, though he had always been tempted to skip the next track, ‘It Meant Nothing’, as it unavoidably reminded both of them of the time she had a one-night stand with a colleague.
He missed her. Sometimes he would tell himself what he missed was the way it felt when they were together, that he only missed the woman she used to be. Maybe that was true, but it was hard not to think that they could both be those people again, that with a little luck and a bit less pressure they could get it right.
It felt good to be out here on the road, the scenery reminding him of pleasant things too long forgotten. When had he last been out here climbing? It had to be years. How did that happen? He used to love it, used to live for it, so much that when he was back from a trip he would see the city around him in three dimensions while everyone else lived in flatland. Time was, he couldn’t look at a building without seeing toeholds, mapping out how he would scale the thing.
It was something they couldn’t share, however. Sarah didn’t like heights, and she got increasingly worried about what might happen to him when he was indulging what she saw as a pointlessly risky pursuit. There was also, he knew, a concern in her mind that the more adept he remained at climbing, the more tempted he might be to break into some office in search of evidence to stand up a story. This concern was not entirely groundless, he had to admit, but it wasn’t a temptation he had actually succumbed to since the time it landed him in jail.
The music was beautifully clear, the hire car boasting a very beefy sound system. Mairi had given him an advance copy of the new album, which was her way of underlining what was at stake, as one listen told him that this was a band striding boldly up to the next level.
Smuggler’s Soul was confident, mature and accomplished, if a little safe, suggesting the influence of big-label A&R. However, everything Parlabane knew about Heike Gunn gave the impression she was stubborn to the point of bloody-minded, so he didn’t imagine this move to a stadium-baiting epic sound had constituted a surrender on her part, or even a compromise. She was thinking big. The question was, had she become spooked by just how big this was looking to get? Maybe she had decided she needed a bit of alone time: breathing rather than bailing.
As he examined the lyrics for clues to her state of mind, he was certain that these songs were not the work of someone who was starting to crack under pressure. Savage Earth Heart’s third album wasn’t quite a manifesto for world-domination, but it was the bold and confident work of someone who was aware the world was watching, and was happy to showcase her talent. Perhaps for that reason it was a little less personal, volunteering fewer candid insights into Heike’s inner self and her vulnerabilities. It was outward-looking, optimistic and discernibly careerist.
Heike had unmistakably chosen the path to stardom, a path that would take her a very long way from Parlabane’s destination. As he drove the lonely miles towards the ferry port at Kennacraig, he wondered whether she’d had second thoughts about where it might ultimately lead, and whether she could ever truly come home again. Did she look into her immediate future and fear she had created a monster? And was she scared that the monster was her?
Parlabane had never been to Islay, and had therefore never taken a ferry from Kennacraig either. The longer he drove, the less likely it seemed that such a place would turn out to exist. He kept thinking he must have wrongly programmed the sat-nav, as surely there ought to be a settlement nearby if he was approaching a port; a fishing village at least.
As the hire car snaked through the glens, there was a point when the looming landscape ceased to seem a vertical playground waiting to be explored and began instead to underline how remote and isolated Parlabane was. It was a transformation largely effected by the lingering presence of a black Audi in his rear-view mirror. It had been behind him since Inveraray, too far back for him to get a look at the driver but close enough that he was always in its sight. Parlabane attempted to salve his paranoid instincts with the logic that it was hardly the same as constantly seeing the same car behind him in a built-up area. When there was only one road, it didn’t count as being followed: you were merely in front of another vehicle. However, those paranoid instincts had been on the money of late, and the prospect that this was another Met tail was at the optimistic end of his imaginings.
Parlabane had successfully hacked a laptop belonging to a senior figure at the MoD: that part was not so much in the public domain as in the ‘embarrassingly public’ domain. The Westercruik Inquiry was interested in ascertaining how he had acquired it, though that was small potatoes in the grander scheme. What was truly under investigation was corruption and collusion linking the MoD and the defence industry. They knew that the security failings required for it to have ultimately fallen into his hands would need to have been many and varied, and therefore if he gave up his source it may well be the first domino. Consequently, there had to be a lot of people getting nervous that Parlabane would crack: powerful, connected and ruthless people, all of whom would sleep better tonight if he happened to have a tragic accident out here in the middle of nowhere, with no witnesses.
The black Audi turned off at Tarbert, leaving him feeling less relieved than logic should have dictated. The car was gone, but the fears that it had unleashed were still loose in his head.
When he finally saw the sign for the turn-off, directing him down a narrow road with only the sight of water in the middle distance indicating a connection to maritime activities, he was half expecting to find a wizened old man with a wooden raft and a long pole. Instead he found a jetty and a building that advertised itself as the ferry terminal, but which more closely resembled a newsagent’s or a building-site office.
As he parked in the queue and glimpsed movement in his rear-view, he was startled to spot the black Audi rolling slowly into line behind him. At last he got a close look at the occupant. He was male, mid-to-late forties, squat and jowly, sporting close-cropped grey hair and wearing a suit. Could be a cop, could be something else.
If he was a cop, what did these Met dicks think Parlabane was going to do? Bury the secret of the stolen laptop beneath a bronze-age cairn in the Hebrides?
And yet if he wasn’t a cop …
Parlabane contrived to drop behind him once their cars were on board, waiting in his vehicle until he saw the guy exit the Audi. It was one of the advantages of having identified a tail that the bastard had to pretend to be oblivious of him, and this allowed Parlabane to surreptitiously snap his picture with his phone as the guy took a seat in the forward lounge. Another one to add to the polis gallery, and if he wasn’t polis then it was good to have a documented image of whoever had been sent after him.
He decided he should go right up and make conversation, just to see how the guy reacted. More importantly, it would make the prick understand that there was a whole host of witnesses who could testify to having seen them talk,
which might put a spoke in any grim plans he had.
Parlabane was about to make his move when the guy got up and headed for the bar. He followed at a short distance, but it was long enough for someone else to get in the queue between them. Nonetheless, it wouldn’t stop him making conversation as the guy left with his drink; indeed the more forced it appeared, the better.
Then he heard him order.
‘I would like a black coffee, please.’
He spoke in a gravelly European accent, and unless UKIP’s worst nightmares had come true and even the security forces were now overrun with immigrants, then he wasn’t Parlabane’s problem.
‘First time to Islay?’ the purser asked him.
‘First visit,’ he replied with a friendly chuckle. ‘But not my first taste of it, yes?’
‘You like the malts, then?’
He gave an eager laugh.
‘I am on, how you say, a pilgrimage.’
Christ.
It was a timely reminder of how paranoia was a symptom of gross egotism and self-obsession. Yeah, like Parlabane was that important to the Westercruik Inquiry that they would send someone to follow him from Edinburgh to the Mull of Kintyre.
He drove off the boat at Port Askaig and headed south-east. He checked the time as he reached Bridgend, and felt amazed that he had been driving through Edinburgh only a few hours ago. It barely seemed like the same country, or indeed the same century. He drove past crisp white-painted houses, looking out to sea in little rows like they were huddled together for warmth. He saw tiny cemeteries, headstones counting in mere dozens rather than hundreds. Dry-stone dykes ran along single-track roads, often bereft of any markings. And every so often, he’d come over a hill or around a headland and see the black, triangular-topped towers of a distillery: western pagodas.
Parlabane thought of Heike’s father Ramsay Gunn, who had been witness to so many scenes of uprising, turmoil and change around the world that he was like the zeitgeist’s advance location scout, and yet had come back here, where it was easy to imagine time standing still. He must have felt that this was somewhere his daughter would be safe, a place of stability and certainties, but the one thing he hadn’t been able to give her was a mother.
As he drove slowly along the single track, he could see white heads of surf rolling towards the shore. He recalled Angus’s remark about the next pub west being in Canada, and thought of what he’d learned about the woman he was planning to doorstep.
Flora Blacklock was an Islay native who had been a champion solo sailor back in the eighties. This had led to her being the subject of a painting by Ramsay Gunn, as part of a series of portraits that depicted women triumphant over their corresponding elements: air, stone, fire and, in Flora’s case, water. Of all his models and muses, it seemed she was the only one who had developed a lasting relationship with Ramsay’s daughter.
It must have been difficult for her growing up, Parlabane thought: watching these women move in and out of her father’s life, wondering why they didn’t stay. Flora, at least, had never left the island.
The house was a low, L-shaped stone building in grounds that stretched back towards an inlet bay. He could see a sailing boat tied up at a jetty, and recognised it as the same vessel from the painting he’d seen online. These days Flora ran boat trips around the Hebrides for bird-watchers and other adventure-minded wildlife lovers, but these were advertised as leaving from Port Charlotte, so this wasn’t her commercial vessel. Had she taught Heike some seacraft, he wondered. If so it would be the ideal way to drop off the radar. She could be anywhere from here to Shetland and there would be no way of tracing her.
The wind whipped at him as he climbed out of the car and walked towards what he couldn’t decide was the front or back garden. As he passed through a gap between dry-stone dykes in lieu of a gate, he saw the woman he had come to speak to, striding from the house towards a flat-bed Toyota Land Cruiser. She tossed an armful of ropes into the back, then finally noticed him as she was slapping her hands together to dust them off.
She looked late-fifties, her silver hair tied back and tucked under a blue cap. She was dressed in jeans and a polo shirt revealing taut and wiry arms.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked, an openness in her tone suggesting she actually would if she could. She regarded him with a smile of patient curiosity, like she was pretty sure he was in the wrong place but interested to know what had brought him here.
‘Hi. You’re Flora Blacklock, aren’t you?’
‘That’s right,’ she confirmed, dangling her car keys absent-mindedly in her right hand.
‘My name is Jack Parlabane. I’m a journalist and I’m doing a feature on the band Savage Earth Heart. I realise this is a bit of a Hail Mary, but would you happen to know where I might find Heike Gunn?’
His heart leapt as he noticed she was nodding, but there was something apologetic about her smile that told him his celebration was premature.
‘Yes. She’s in America,’ she said, her tone almost pitying that he could have failed to be aware of this. ‘On tour.’
‘No,’ he corrected her, ‘that’s not for another couple of weeks.’
‘Oh. I was sure she said June, but she must have meant the end of the month.’
He tried not to think about the distance he had travelled in order to hear this. The woman hadn’t spoken to Heike in weeks. Still, she was one of the few people who might be able to offer some insight into the real woman behind the public persona, so the trip could yet prove worthwhile. He had to be delicate, though. It wouldn’t do to worry the woman by letting her know Heike was missing, not least because it wouldn’t be long in going public after that.
‘Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?’
‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘But I’m just on my way out. I’ve a boat down in Port Charlotte and I need to prep her for tomorrow. If you don’t mind following me down the road we can talk while I work. That’s unless you’re any good with ropes, in which case you can make yourself useful.’
Parlabane got back in the hire car and trundled behind the Toyota, which he guessed she was driving slowly as a courtesy to his axles. Ironically the pace slowed further not long after they hit proper tarmac, as they got stuck behind a tractor. He noticed from the dashboard display that his Bluetooth-connected phone had recovered a signal, and as his car crawled along, the modern time-to-kill reflex prodded him in its usual way.
Call her.
He could see water less than half a mile away. He might only be two minutes from the port. It would be sod’s law if this was the one time she picked up, when he didn’t have long to talk. Then he thought that maybe sod’s law could work for him, because if now was the one time she picked up, then at least they’d get to speak.
He tried not to dwell on how desperate that logic sounded as the ringing tone pulsed through the car’s stereo. There was a familiar click as it diverted to voicemail: not even her voice either, just a standard network recording.
Fuck.
He grabbed a handful of ropes from the back of the flatbed and followed Flora aboard her tourist tub, the Hecate. She dumped her bundle on the foredeck and sat down on a bench, where she began cutting heavy-duty plastic tape into even lengths with a short-bladed knife.
‘All these years Heike’s been in the limelight,’ she said brightly. ‘And you’re the first journalist ever to come and ask me about her.’
She spoke with an odd mixture of pride and disappointment.
‘An untapped resource,’ he replied.
‘And all yours. So what would you like to know?’
‘When did you last speak to her?’ he asked.
‘In the flesh or on the phone? She was last here for a couple of weeks just after Christmas, but the last time I spoke to her must have been, let me think, a few weeks back when the band were playing in Glasgow. I was supposed to travel down to see the show but I had a bad cold and couldn’t face the trip. Why did you think she might be here, incidentally?’
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‘Eh, it was Angus Campbell who suggested it. I’ve been interviewing all the members of the band for a piece, but Heike’s proving a little elusive. He said you and she were close, so if she was laying low before the American tour he thought this might be where I’d find her.’
‘Angus. Yes. Not seen him in years. He couldn’t wait to leave, to be honest. Always wanted to travel.’
She smiled at the thought, presumably picturing a younger version of the shaggy-headed road-dog. Then she sighed.
‘I’m sorry he gave you a duff tip. Have you come far?’
‘Edinburgh.’
‘Oof. At least you got a dry day for it.’
She picked up another length of rope and began whittling at the frayed end of it with the knife. Her fingers were rough and callused, criss-crossed with a thousand nicks and scratches.
‘I gather you’ve known Heike a long time.’
‘Since she was a girl.’
‘You must be very proud of what Heike’s achieved.’
‘Proud, aye. Though not surprised. She was always very strong-willed, and a grafter. They say hard work only beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard, so she had the perfect combination to succeed. Young Angus not so much. It always bothered Heike that he never made the most of himself. He had the gifts: his father was a fine musician, great accordion player.’
‘Heike’s father must have been a high bar for her to measure herself against,’ Parlabane suggested. ‘I imagine that could easily have been intimidation as much as inspiration. Do you think that’s why she went into music rather than art?’
He knew this was a bloody stupid question, but reckoned it would boost his music-journo cover to pose a query that indicated no understanding of the creative process.
‘Och, that’s the kind of thing you’d really have to ask Heike herself. I can recall with a fair degree of accuracy the things she did and said when she was nine years old, but as for what goes on inside her head, you might as well ask me about quantum theory.’
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