Moon Country

by Peter Arnott

  “What did ye ’hink o’ her?”

  “How?” said Ronnie, like an unsure boxer, fists screwed up against his face.

  “Ah think you should have got aff wi her.”

  “Ah thought YOU were gonnae get aff wi her!” said Ronnie.

  Hunter tutted.

  “Ah could be her Da.” He thought for a moment. “Reminded me ae yer mither,” he said. “At that age,” he added.

  “I fuckin hate hippies,” Ronnie expanded.

  “How d’ye ken she was a hippy?” Hunter answered, mockingly.

  “Why the fuck are you talkin like that, onywey?”

  “Like whit?”

  “Like a fuckin fermer ur sumthin!”

  “D’ye hate fermers anaw?” Hunter asked, making of country folk, as he had with Denise, an attempt to prise Ronnie from his narrow, schemey view of humanity. But Ronnie, further education declined for the moment, lapsed into silence. Hunter waited till his boy could think of something else to say.

  Finally, he did.

  “The road’s windy as fuck. Makes me fuckin puke,” said Ronnie.

  “D’ye want these hills no tae be here anaw, Ronnie? That it?” Hunter said, swerving to avoid the grocery lorry that had just delivered vegetables to the Bide a Wee Hotel.

  “What the fuck d’ye want fae me?” asked Ronnie, finally. “What are we fuckin daein up here?”

  Hunter smiled.

  “Wir oan holiday,” he said. He smiled and made an unreliable promise, as fathers do. “We’re collecting your sister and wir gaun tae see yer mither,” he said.

  8.2

  “Okay, Maggie,” said DS “Danny” Boyle so sexy, so strong, so purposeful as they left Mr McIvor all flustered with a nice cup of tea from Mr Dean and got back into the car and set off towards the M74 and Glasgow. “What do we know?”

  Maggie looked down at her notes. She waited for him to continue, flattering him, encouraging him to enjoy his powers. He indeed went on, answering his own question in the way she knew he liked to.

  “He stayed in the hotel for one night. The tailor was his first call, his second was to a phone box in the East End. That has to be where he arranged for the car and the weapon.”

  “So what does that tell us?” he asked, enjoying himself.

  “He’s got money.”

  “He’s got money … but he waits a week from when he’s let out of prison before he comes home. Why?”

  “He was waiting for it.”

  He nodded as to an apt pupil, with maybe just the first faint glimmerings of awareness that she liked it and that it was fun to give her things she liked.

  “He was waiting for the money.” He smiled. “He was waiting for someone to send him the money. Who would send Tommy Hunter money? Except somebody who owed him money.”

  “Frank Wheen.”

  “Frank Wheen!”

  They’d already talked about all this back in the office, of course. About what they were now sure forensics would report about the fingerprints in Agnes’s house, and that the samples of still warm vomit he’d scraped from her carpet would turn out to belong to a third party, though that party being Frank himself would surely be too much to hope for.

  But they were like a pair of excited kids, the two of them … working it all out, saying it out loud again to enjoy it again.

  “It’s lucky we’ve got Sally on our side,” said Maggie, Sally being Sally Harrower, the girl from the CID who Superintendent Bellamy had bloody near assaulted at the Christmas party two years ago, and was consequently no friend of his. The thought of Bellamy made her wonder something else aloud:

  “So what’s Superintendent Bellamy up to? What’s this task force all about?”

  “Time. That has to be about time. He thinks that if this lot all cools down he can maybe get away with it.”

  “Get away with what?”

  “He knows he can’t stop an investigation, but he thinks he can limit it if he’s the one who suggests it.” Boyle turned to her, his eyes flashing with excitement. “But if we get to Hunter first, he can tie Frank to the robbery, and everything else will fall into place. There’ll be nowhere for Bellamy to hide.”

  All concern, she turned to him, anxiety for his success in every sinew.

  “But how?” she said. “Bellamy will tell Frank everything he knows … before he’ll tell us.”

  “We know where Hunter’s going,” said DS “Danny” Boyle, thinking of the postcard from Moon Country. And he barked out a laugh that startled her. She nearly wept for joy.

  They turned into the slip road that would lead them on the motorway to the East End where the now empty theatre of Jack Webster’s pain was waiting for them.

  Poor Jack!

  8.3

  Her bottom was the light of Mr Lawrence’s life. For the few moments he spoke to Janette before she went upstairs to change, Mr Lawrence, owner and proprietor of the sinking ship that was the Bide a Wee Hotel, couldn’t wait to stop talking to her face so he could see her bottom again. He was obsessed with it. He had always said he’d come to Scotland for the scenery.

  It was an apple, a planet, a peach of a bottom. The cheeks of it clung to his consciousness, enclosed him in their ripe darkness. The shape of it made such promises of firmness and smoothness. Mr Lawrence knew that he’d never get closer to its texture than he was now, would never bathe in the heat of it on his moustache. But it didn’t hurt to worship it as it went up the stairs, as it receded from him. And soon it would be in that black skirt he’d bought for it.

  There weren’t many pleasures in his life.

  The thing was that her face had just been telling him that her bottom would soon be moving on. That she was very grateful for the time she’d spent here, but that she had been talking to some people about a job further north or back out on the islands, and she was sorry, but she thought she was going to go and would it be okay if she just worked here till the end of the week, and maybe leave some stuff until she got settled?

  He wasn’t listening. He was in mourning already. His happiness was soon forever to be out of his fingers’ reach. He’d even stolen knickers from her drawer, the drawer in the wardrobe in the box room upstairs where she slept — clean ones, he wasn’t a pervert — and had even thought about putting them on, thought about joining the shape of his bottom to hers. He hadn’t done that, of course, they’d have stretched and she’d have known. So he’d just kept them, just for a day or two at first, and then returned them … but then he had taken another pair in exchange. This exchange of linen had become habitual, like her underwear drawer was a heavenly lending library. When he was alone, or, in bed, when Mrs Lawrence was in the bathroom, he’d take the latest pair from his pyjama jacket pocket, putting his thumbs at the sides, opening them out. So perfect. Then next day he’d put them back in the drawer so he could imagine her wearing them, filling them, picture them under her skirt, her jeans. He’d meant to stop doing it … he’d thought, more than once, perhaps she’d find out … and mock him … humiliate him. But that idea was quite exciting too. So he kept up his borrowing and returning so that both of them had a fresh pair every day. He even felt like he had her permission by now. That she thought of him fondly, even. As fondly as he did of her.

  He wondered if any knickers she left behind for later collection would lose their charm when her bottom was far away from them. Would their promise age, as he was aging inside?

  “I can’t pretend we won’t miss you, Janet,” he’d said to her, mispronouncing her name the way he always had.

  “I’ll miss you too,” she’d said. “Thank you, Mr Lawrence.”

  “Upstairs and do some hoovering and then get changed for serving,” he’d said, his face engorging in anticipation of the sight of it working beneath her jeans as she ascended the stairs.

  With her boss’s eyes burning a hole in her posterior, and feeling a wee bit creeped out as usual when she’d been talking to him, Janette went upstairs to pack before getting changed. She was one of t
hose women who rehearse their packing a few times days before actually having to pack. Which turned out to be providential.

  For her part, Mrs Lawrence had fallen in love with the Highlands from the start. That was why he — Mr Lawrence — had come here, because the missus had wanted to, from the very first time they came up here on their hols from Wolverhampton. It had been the estate agents who’d put them on to the Bide a Wee Hotel, and had talked about the excellent mortgage deals available for buying a going concern. And she’d always liked to cook, she’d said. And besides, she’d said, the region was an excellent source of locally sourced produce. Saying the word sourced like that. Twice.

  The trouble was that Kinloch Rannoch’s very special attractions also made it particularly reliant on a regular clientele, a clientele to be built quietly over a period of time, and whose loyalty had to be wooed, won and maintained. The main road from Pitlochry past Loch Tummel was, of course, achingly spectacular, with its banks of forest rising steeply from the waters, but, unfortunately, other than to Rannoch station, the road didn’t go anywhere. So it wasn’t the kind of place you’d come across on your way somewhere else. It was the kind of place you had to know about, which accounted both for its beauty and for its seclusion. And though Mrs Lawrence liked to cook, with the best will in the world, it couldn’t be said that she was very good at it. Janette was an asset, of course, around the place, but they didn’t really have the business now to justify even one full-time member of staff. And now she was leaving.

  He watched her climb the stairs for perhaps the last time.

  Her bottom, Mr Lawrence reflected as it turned the corner and went out of sight, could be considered as a religious object rather than an economic one. He blinked twice, his eyes stinging. And he jumped as he always did when he heard as he did every morning around now the sudden skirl of the pipes.

  That bloody music booming around the bloody place didn’t help. But Mrs Lawrence was of the opinion that their being in Scotland meant that everyone would enjoy the pipes and drums of the Cameron Highlanders playing a medley of their greatest hits. Loudly. All the time. That Scottish people would like it, and so would visitors of Scottish antecedence from the Antipodes and the Americas, and that even what she called “the continentals”, their being weaned on translations of Walter Scott that frankly flatter the old boy’s halting, lumpen prosody, would respond to the neo-Celtic romanticism that this music as played in march time by the British Army is mysteriously taken to exemplify. Even at breakfast time.

  As a consequence, what had been a quiet but steady going concern was now, in inexorable slow motion, going down like the Lusitania, and all the Twittering and Facebooking and linking to websites in the world couldn’t do anything about it. She didn’t even ever put the Corries on for a bit of bloody variety.

  Mr Lawrence looked across the wasteland of his dining room, the smell of overcooked venison burgers attacking his nostrils, just as the Cameronians went into a spirited rendition of “Hey Johnny Cope”, this being at least doubly ironic since the tune celebrates the massacre of (largely) Camerons — by the Jacobite army which was in its turn exterminated by the regimental ancestors of the players. Unafflicted by the postmodern irony of it all, this Englishman abroad took his last pair of stolen Scottish knickers from his trouser pocket and sniffed them sadly.

  8.4

  Frank couldn’t nail the moment of his crucifixion down exactly. He couldn’t tell you exactly when and how he’d understood from Eleanor that she was relaxed about his coming sacrifice. That she didn’t mind all that much. That he’d already served his purpose for her. That she thought that his loss was bearable to her. That his life was a price that she was willing to pay. For her life. For her peace.

  It wasn’t a surprise to him exactly. He’d always known she was a pragmatist. But he hadn’t expected her to be quite so relaxed.

  It was nothing she had said. It had been something in the ease with which she had agreed, over lunch, that, no question, whatever was happening with Tommy Hunter, whatever agenda he might be following, the consequences of Hunter’s drawing police attention were potentially catastrophic. Frank was right. He and Joe had to find Hunter first, talk to him, find out what was going on. Evaluate the danger. Deal with it.

  It was the way she talked about it with concern for him and not for herself … as if she were already safe, as if she’d already brought the shutters down, as if their destinies were already divorced. She wished him well and everything … but …

  Frank had told Eleanor weeks ago about the money that he’d sent Tommy after Tommy’s release. He had considered with her whether he ought to do that. Of course he had. In the world Frank lived in now, the fulfilment of contracts was something that was just supposed to happen, something that offered a hedge against chance. He had explained that to her. He had been afraid that if he hadn’t paid Tommy his share of the robbery that had been the foundation of their fortune, Tommy would come after it. So having promised him the money when he went in, he’d paid it, as he’d promised, when Tommy came out.

  He’d made that decision with her help and he still stood by it. I’ve no first-hand testimony available, but Frank must have got word to Tommy he’d do that. It was either that or he’d have to have arranged to have Tommy killed, which, what with inflation and Tommy’s reputation, would have cost him almost as much, and besides, that wasn’t really him. Not any more. He wasn’t a gangster any more. He’d never really been a gangster, he told himself. It had just been circumstances.

  A long time ago, understanding that money can only ever come of money, he’d accumulated capital in a primitive way. That’s all. And just as she’d agreed to that action back then, to the blagging, I mean, so Eleanor, his entrée to a wider, richer life, had agreed to this now, agreed that the life they’d built together on whatever basis was now endangered, and that if the means to be adopted to secure the cultured life they’d built together involved him regressing to the uncultured methods of his past, to Frank’s firstly making an undeclared payment to a criminal co-conspirator, and if that didn’t work, to his risking his life by going up against the unpredictable force of nature that was Tommy Hunter, that was fine with her too.

  It was a bit too fine with her, Frank now reflected, his kale salad sitting uneasily on his queasy tummy.

  But he was clearly out of control, Tommy Hunter. If nothing else, Tommy’s quite obvious madness, and the accompanying inevitability that Tommy would be caught eventually, and then questioned, made it essential that he get to him first. Eleanor could see that as clearly as he could. She’d calmly accepted that Frank had made an investment in Tommy’s quiescence that had not paid off (a circumstance of which it was vital that brother Joseph should never learn, clearly), and that now, tits up, the situation had to be corrected, and there was no way he could do that without bringing his brother along with him. Muscle and risk were inherent in the attempt to secure peace by war. That had all made perfect sense to her.

  He was a little sad about the fact that she’d agreed with him so readily, that’s all.

  She’d accepted everything he told her calmly, when the admission of his weakness and fear had cost him so much pain. Too quickly, too easily. Like she’d already thought of it. Like he was already lost. Like she already was thinking how she’d look in black. And thought that would be okay too. He himself was not essential to that which she was sending him out to defend. He was expendable. And if he was lost, well, that was too bad. He was extraneous to her good, comfortable life.

  “Take care of yourself, Frank,” is what she’d told him as he and Joe had left after lunch, and it had sounded so final. As if she was offering an occasional employee a disinterested farewell. He’d looked back at her before getting in the car, at her standing there in the driveway that curved past the Georgian porch and into the garden to the right that swept down the brow of the hill for nearly half an acre. She’d stood there in front of seven bedrooms, three public rooms, all with restored original f
eatures, like she was guarding all of it from him now, too, that whatever line the accidents of the last two days had meant that he had fallen across, he had already fallen so far away from her that there was no going back to the other side. He was dangerous to her now. To all she had. She was going to protect it, he knew that. She’d protect it, his children, their future, his achievement, from him, if she had to. That’s what it had meant, that last half-sad look. It was goodbye. Just in case.

  As they drove away Joseph looked fucking pleased with himself for some reason. That didn’t help Frank’s mood. The territory they were driving into was where Joe lived, he reflected, however novel the physical geography of the Highlands. Whereever they were going, he was entirely in his brother’s power for the first time since the last time Joe had forced his head into the toilet. Unwilling to think too deeply about either his brother or his wife, let alone his past or future, Frank allowed himself to continue his bath time dwam, and Joe drove them in silence towards Callander, where Mr Macreesh was waiting on the police station roof, and where Superintendent Bellamy had said he would meet them.

  While Jack Webster, dead, was wrapped up in plastic sheeting in the boot of the car, and his head bounced with a clonk every so often as they went over speed bumps or into potholes on the way. Frank wondered absently what that noise was? The car wasn’t buggered as well now, was it!? That would put the tin lid on things. Then he forgot about it.

  9.0

  The following reconstructions do not pretend to answer every question every reader may have about them. In particular, the commentary around the words spoken must be admitted to being unreliable. The words quoted, however, assert themselves to be a true record.

  9.1

  INT. BIDE A WEE HOTEL – LOBBY – DAY