by Jeff Gulvin
Imogen could hardly take this in—fear and relief in as many moments. Here were two policemen sitting in her kitchen, telling her the man she knew she loved was not who he said he was. It was so unreal she almost looked around for the hidden camera. The policeman flattened the magazine on the table, then turned to a page with the corner bent over. It was a picture of a tiger, and next to it was a smaller one of the American.
‘It’s the only picture we could get. The SSPCA told us about it.’
Imogen wasn’t listening to him. She was staring at the name beside the photograph: Dr Connla McAdam.
‘Is that him?’
Imogen did not reply.
‘Miss Munro.’
She looked up, eyes dull all at once. ‘What?’
‘I asked you if that was him.’
Again she looked at the picture. ‘Yes,’ she said softly, ‘that’s him.’
The policeman cleared his throat again and glanced at his colleague. ‘As you can see, his name is not Brady. Quite why he told you it was we don’t know. Have you ever seen him before?’
‘Before when?’ She was numb now, all her senses closing down.
‘Before he came here to buy a painting.’
Connla McAdam. No wonder she felt she knew him. Connla McAdam from Jackson City, Wyoming. ‘No,’ she said, not knowing why she lied.
‘Can you tell us exactly where he is?’
‘No, not exactly. What do you want him for?’ She fought to stop her voice from cracking.
The policeman sat back. ‘Well, we’re interested to know why he suddenly decided to change his name, for one thing. He seems to have been in Scotland for a while and he’s not done so elsewhere. We’ve checked with two other hotels, one in Tomintoul and one in Dunkeld.’
Imogen could feel the colour in her cheeks. Her chest was tight all at once. Connla McAdam. Connla McAdam in Scotland. She sat very still, her hands trembling in her lap. She stared beyond them both till they blurred into hazy blue images. She focused on the window pane, the smear on the glass and the pink cherry blossom beyond it. She bit her lip.
‘I’m sorry.’ The policeman’s voice came as if from faraway. ‘This is obviously a bit of a shock.’ Imogen bit her lip harder, blinked, then focused on their faces again.
‘What d’you want with him? Changing your name’s not illegal.’
‘We found a pistol in his hotel room in Tomintoul. We’d like to know if it’s his.’
‘A pistol?’
The policeman nodded. ‘It’s serious, you see. You know they’re illegal.’
‘Of course. After Dunblane.’
He looked at her then, gently, like a father would his naive daughter. ‘Clearly he seems to have lied to you.’
‘Clearly.’ She stood up suddenly. ‘Is there anything else I can help you with?’
He seemed to consider that for a moment, then he got up. ‘Well, no, I suppose not. Not at the moment anyway. We’ll go and take a look where you said. West of Loyne, was it?’
‘Yes.’ She broke off again and sucked breath. ‘When you catch up with him, tell him not to come back here.’
He glanced down at her then, a kindly expression on his face. ‘I’m really sorry.’
She held up a palm, eyes shut tight.
‘We’ll let ourselves out, eh.’
They left her and she sat on a chair, listening to the ticking of the clock on the wall. Connla McAdam, the boy from Jackson City, Wyoming. The boy who’d sat on the log, staring at sand when the sheriff came looking for her brother. The phone rang. She stared across the room for a few moments then picked it up.
‘Yes?’
‘Imogen.’ Patterson’s voice.
‘Yes, Colin.’
‘I was so worried about you. The police have been in the village. That man you’re seeing; he’s not who he says he is.’
‘I know. Thank you, Colin.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes. Thank you.’ She put the phone down and rested her weight on it, pressing until her wrist turned white with the effort.
She moved into the lounge, hugging herself, an emptiness in her gut, as if somebody were scraping at her with a palette knife. Her gaze settled on the window sill and the little Indian figure. Then all the lies hit her: everything he had told her, each little yarn he had spun. If you want good dreams, pray to the grandmother moon. She trembled physically, thinking what a fool she had been. Then another thought struck her and she climbed the stairs and the small ladder to the loft. It was dry and warm, with a single lightbulb, and most of the floor space, as well as the shelves, were solid with canvas or glass-framed watercolours. Imogen had no index system, but she knew which were her paintings and which were her aunt’s, and she went straight to the one she wanted. A watercolour painted two years previously, the loch and the hillside from the window of her lounge, and there on the sill was the ghost dancer. She knew what had happened in Dunkeld now; he had seen the greetings card they had made of this picture and he must have recognized the figure. He had seen it before, which told her everything she needed to know. She remembered it as if it were yesterday, lying there among the thickened branches of the pinion bush as her brother’s body was lifted out of the river.
Custer County, and the sheriff bustling through the doors to his office in the Challis. No sun now. The two-street town windswept and barren, a gale coming in off the mountains. One hand on Connla’s shoulder, eyes stony, a nod to his deputy to lift the flap in the counter. Ewan’s body already on its way to the hospital in Salmon for an autopsy. Her mother crying. Her father silent, scuffing the toe of his boot against the linoleum. The sheriff talking in hushed tones to Connla, who sat, elbows on the table, fists into his jowls, not looking at anyone. Then he slid over to his mother with unfallen tears in his eyes and she seemed unable to hold him.
And the sheriff looking puzzled, one eyebrow raised, a pad of paper and a pen before him, looking from left to right and then, after a glance at her parents, crooking his index finger at her.
She had climbed onto the seat opposite him, smelling his sweat, aware of the damp patches under the arms of his shirt and the way the shadow on his chin had darkened throughout the day. He looked tired, with little red lines in the whites of his eyes and hair flattened on his scalp from his hat.
‘How’d you find him, honey? How’d you know where to look?’
Pushing out her bottom lip and thinking hard and being very frightened, she had no answer to give him.
And she had no answer now. Downstairs again, she went to the window and picked up the little figure, the heat of tears in her eyes. What kind of cruel game was this? She held it, cold against her skin. No wonder she felt she knew him. No wonder he seemed to know her. Lies; all of it nothing more than lies. And the time they had just spent together, that special closeness only ever experienced as a teenager with the freshening of first love. He had robbed her of the feelings, cheated her, taken them at a cost. Tears flowed now; silent, angry tears. She thought of the watercolour she had painted and felt prostituted, as if she had given up the only bit of self she had. Eagles. She shook her head bitterly. That was just his way of saying goodbye without saying goodbye. He’d be halfway to London by now.
She wandered the house—her studio, the garden, down to the loch—and the peace and solitude and privacy she had cultivated over so many years was shattered. Never had she felt so cheated. And the sheriff’s face again in her mind and then tension in her throat and memory. Ewan up to his neck in water.
How’d you find him, honey? Tell me how you found him? Did you know where he was all along?
No, she didn’t. But she couldn’t tell him how she had found him because she didn’t know herself. The way he looked at her, the way the deputies looked at her—there were no women in those days. Hicksville USA, nothing like welfare workers or woman cops or anything. She had no answer for him and he didn’t believe her, just like he didn’t believe Connla. And in their way her parents didn’t
believe her, either, had never believed her. And here she was facing it all over again.
In the studio the large canvas haunted the easel. The black of the rock, no deer, no mountain or sky, just the stone and the image of her brother etched into it. Like he had been before she’d found him—his essence, his passing, his spoor or scent or whatever. It was that which drew her along the trail to the cliff, where she was so scared the only way she could look down was to lie flat on her belly. And the worst of it was to come later: the knowledge that when she had seen him up to his neck in water, Ewan was still alive.
Connla dipped his feet into rock boots and worked them over his ankles, wincing in pain. They were too small for him; his toes were mashed up against the edges, giving him maximum pressure points on the rock. His sit-harness and gear loops were laid to one side; dulled metal hardware in the sun. He stood at the base of Devil’s Rigg and looked above his head. He figured the eyrie would be close to the top, maybe this side, maybe round the first of the heavy grey buttresses. Granite. He pressed one hand against it; it ought to be solid enough. Granite wasn’t crumbly or liable to break off like some limestone. The rock was cold and polished under his fingers, but the first hundred feet of slabs looked easy, no more than a steep walk using your hands for holds only in the odd place here and there.
After that it looked more difficult, but even so it was nothing he couldn’t handle. There were sheer patches and the odd overhang, but he figured he could avoid the worst of it if he was careful. He was basing all this on where he had seen the eagles appear to settle. It was hard to tell, russet and brown against black and grey, high up, the birds were soon lost amid the cliff face. Still, he had no pictures of panthers and he had spent a small fortune, all of which he’d have to earn back somehow. If he could get a couple of Scottish eagles on film he could think of at least one US publication that might buy them. It was only a pity they weren’t the white tails that Imogen had seen.
He thought of her now, Imogen, whom he knew he loved with a vengeance. The little girl from Wyoming who’d had a crush on him as a kid, the girl he had protected from the jibes of her brother. Why did he love her? How could he love her? Thirty years, and only a few days together, days marred by the labyrinth of lies he had woven. Yet he did love her. He was certain of that. He wanted to remain here in Scotland, to be close to her, hold her, have her hold him; the only link with a childhood lost the day her brother died.
There was movement above him and the male eagle suddenly took to the air with a slow beat of his wings. Larger than the female, and darker in colour, with three wing beats he was riding the airwaves like a gentle surfer easing away from the wall. Pushing all thoughts of the past and future out of his head, Connla fixed the camera round his neck and started up the mountain.
After a hundred feet the going got much tougher. He decided he would traverse the first bulbous pillar to the next gully, where, from the ground, the climbing looked easier. He fixed a piece of protection into a crack and hung there for a moment, dipping his hands in the chalk bag which hung from his belt. He looked down; it still wasn’t sheer, but if he took a tumble it would last a hundred feet, and the mountainside was littered with boulders. He made the traverse with no problem, however, congratulated himself and rested for a moment. The male eagle was long gone, not even a speck against the horizon, but his mate was still up there somewhere.
Connla climbed higher, watching the rock wall as it splintered into sections, grassy tufts like oddments of hair on a peeling scalp. As he ascended, he realized the shape of the rock formation was like a sleigh or a wheel-less wagon of some sort. Devil’s Rigg. He climbed on, and then he saw new movement high to his right, 200 feet away, a ledge with the cliff falling sheer beneath it. It was the female eagle, the wind ruffling her feathers; he could see her clearly now through the lens of his camera. Her eye was bright and fierce, watching for pine marten and wall rats. She shifted her weight from one razored foot to the other; hooked beak ready to tear anything that threatened her baby to pieces. Connla looked at his position and hers, considering his best option. He could snap away from here, but the angles weren’t as good as he would have liked—there would be too much wall in the background—and he knew that with stealth he could sneak a lot closer. Heck, he had done it with a Siberian tiger.
The wind had risen, though, and it was cold against the back of his neck. His pants felt all at once too thin, and his knees scraped the rock as he manoeuvred himself round. He decided his best bet was to climb a lot higher, maybe make the summit of this face, then shift along and sling an abseil rope, approaching her from the left and above. The mountain was sectioned. From the ground he had seen the way the rock pushed out and then dropped back to form grassy gullies and recesses of varying sizes. Imogen’s words suddenly stuck in his head: Lots of ravines and crevices.
He climbed the next section, feeling the adrenalin surge in his veins. This pitch would be more difficult than the last, and he had no back-up from any belay, just the friction boots, the chalk and the strength in his own fingers. He bit the bullet and climbed, swinging over the outcrops and working his way round an overhang with a three-fingered mantelshelf to contend with. He was sweating and his muscles ached, but he was getting higher and higher. And then he was in the next, more gentle section, a grass-topped sloping plateau, and he breathed more easily. The eagles were still above him and a good distance to the right. The slope he was on wasn’t steep, but it stretched for perhaps a thousand metres. It was littered with boulders and rocky outcrops bulging up from the grass. He could see crevices and thin, steep gullies, some small, some not so small. Devil’s Rigg.
Again he checked his position and knew he would have the best vantage point if he got above the eagles and traversed. He could come down the largest, most imposing buttress and shoot his pictures with mostly sky as the background. With this in mind, he started up the grassy slope, ruing his friction boots all at once on the damp dew-laden grass. This plateau was north-facing, and most of it would perpetually be in shadow. He half walked half climbed, gear clanking at his waist. He should have left it below and just brought the odd rock or friend or peg to use for the belay. But he felt better with it and he needed the abseil rope. The next section was climbing again and the rock face was very smooth and polished. He would be exposed up there and he began to wonder whether it had been such a good idea after all. He paused to think for a moment, considering other options. There was clearly another way up somewhere because he could see goats grazing in the distance. He pondered briefly, then moved up towards the face. Suddenly the ground fell away in front of him in a very deep ravine, broken by clumps of grass and trees and large patches of exposed rock. There was no way across, so he had to go round, which was long and laborious when all he wanted to do was scale that final wall and traverse to where he thought the eyrie was.
He skirted the ravine and finally made it to where the grassy area rose steeply to the sheer wall of stone. Dipping his hands in his chalk bag he rubbed his palms together, took a breath and climbed. He had got maybe ten feet when the friction point on his right foot gave way and he stumbled, lost his grip and dropped to the grass. He landed and slithered, tried to grip and then started rolling. Sudden panic in his throat: he had no axe to break his fall. And the ravine. Within seconds he was in space, falling head over heels with the cry caught in his throat.
Imogen was woken by the sound of knocking. It was late evening sometime; she must have dosed off. Her neck ached where it was cricked in an awkward position, pushed against the armrest on the settee. Her first thoughts were of Connla, and they were warm and gentle, then she remembered he was a liar and that she had been cheated and that hollow feeling engulfed her again. She sat where she was, very close to tears. Get a grip, she told herself. Thirty-seven years on your own, you can do thirty-seven more. Could she? She doubted it. Bleary-eyed, she answered the door.
It was the two policemen again. She let them in and sat down at the kitchen table. The older
one did the talking. ‘We found the Land-Rover Discovery rented to McAdam, where you said at Loch Loyne. One of the tyres was flat and there was no sign of him.’
That was odd. If he had been planning to take off he would have done so in the car, surely. He could change a wheel. Imogen looked at the clock on the wall, ten already and dark outside.
‘We’ve left a man out there in case he comes back,’ the policeman went on. ‘When did you say you left him?’
‘Early this morning.’
The younger policeman sighed. ‘Well, maybe he got out some other way.’
‘What, and left a Land-Rover for you to find? That’s likely.’ Imogen got up, took an already opened bottle of wine from the fridge and poured herself a glass. She rummaged in the dresser for the packet of cigarettes she had broken open earlier. Behind her the policemen were leaving. ‘We’ll keep you posted,’ they said. She spoke without looking round. ‘Don’t bother. He’s nothing to do with me.’
When they had gone she sat and drank the wine, poured a second glass and lit a cigarette. The phone rang again. She looked at it, sighed and shook her head. It rang and it rang, and in the end she had to answer it. Mercifully it was Jean.
‘How are you? Have the police been round?’
‘Yes. Twice.’
‘His name’s Connla McAdam, not John Brady at all.’
‘I know.’
‘I’m sorry, Imogen.’
‘Not as sorry as I am. Jean, I feel such a fool.’
‘I know. I know. Don’t, though. You weren’t to know he was telling lies.’
Imogen sighed. ‘How come the police knew about me?’
‘I don’t know for sure. Apparently somebody from the newspapers had been on to the hotel. I think it was Andy McKewan told the police, mind.’
‘Good old Andy.’ Imogen felt tears threatening again. ‘You know what, Jean. I think I’m going to move.’
