by Caro Ramsay
I wonder how much Rod has been confiding in him. ‘So what is the croft like up here?’
Forty minutes later the Land Rover pulls to a halt outside a small two-storey stone construction built into the lee side of a hill. Further down the hill, about a hundred yards away, are the ruins of old sheep steadings, little more than heaps of rubble. As I climb out, the road beneath my feet is little more than a dirt track.
As he walks me round the outside, showing me the thickness of the walls, he tells me that it hasn’t been a working croft for years.
‘At the moment I think it’s the local coffee stop for cops trying to figure out what happened to Lorna. It’s been extended over the years, of course. These close outbuildings were absorbed by the main building then an attic was added. A kitchen was put on in 1910.’
I see the porch looks barely weatherproof, the front door is panelled wood with flaking veined paint, but the area in front of the croft is landscaped immaculately, just like his house in Eaglesham. There is a round pond and, set in the middle of it, a wheel of small buckets.
‘Perpetual motion?’ I ask.
‘Fascinating, isn’t it?’ He pads around, still talking, followed by Rosie, the little fat collie with no teeth. All this is his land. He offers to show me the nearby hydroelectric scheme one day, and proceeds to wax lyrical about the POWs who worked on it, the engineering feat involved. I know the four huge pipes that run down the hillside to Loch Lomond; it’s always looked a bit Dr Who to me, never mind hydroelectric.
I can’t help but look over to Ben Lomond lying to the right. The Rest is well hidden by the hills. There’s no way across, it’s too far, too rough. The only way is down on to the road and drive the long way round. Costello was right about Lorna coming out from a car. The sun is setting, the night is warm, summery, and the clouds are gathering over the hill tops.
The lack of light makes me look at Eric; he seems his usual slightly potty self. He is mesmerised, watching the buckets fill and empty as they go round.
‘That’s impossible,’ I say.
‘The trick is the water that’s pumped up the central column.’
‘So you cheat.’
Eric laughs and says that he has something interesting to show me. Inside the house smells like Eric, of Land Rover and damp dog. I follow him under a frame of scaffolding that seems to be holding up the ceiling in the hall, to get to the door of the living room. It has a sofa of worn cracked leather, and carpets so dirty the pattern is long gone. A large barometer has pride of place on the wall opposite the wood-burning stove, and there are books stacked high in the corner. Only Rosie’s basket seems to be devoid of dog hair, her water bowl is pristine. There are drawings and files everywhere. Two drawing boards, both of them broken, are lying against the wall. I stop and look at something on top of an old wooden sideboard, a construction of glass tubes, like the one Mary has in the hall at Ardno. He sees me look. I run my finger along the topmost pipe. It’s so narrow you can’t see the inner cavity or the walls; there’s merely a hint of moving water. At first it looks like a huge hotchpotch of glass tubes, but on closer inspection there is a precise symmetry to it all. It’s so dense it’s impossible to follow one pipe to another. It’s like a transparent three-dimensional maze.
‘Do you like it? It’s something I’ve been working on.’
‘What is it?’
Eric smiles. ‘It’s a water clock.’
‘Oh, Mary has one in the house. Do they work?’
‘Alex’s is one of mine. Yes, they’re the oldest form of timekeeping in the world. Incredibly accurate, engineering at its finest and purest. They’re called clepsydra, the thieves of time. I’ve been working on this one for some time and it’s nearly right but not quite.’
I am fascinated by this. ‘How does it work?’
‘Would you be interested?’ He smiles. ‘I thought you would think it was a waste of time.’
‘Anything that you have a passion for is never a waste of time.’
‘I’ll get it going.’ He opens a drawer on the sideboard, takes out a syringe and places it on the sideboard. Then he smooths out the felt that the water clock stands on and lays a spirit level on it. He picks up three bottles of coloured ink – red, blue and yellow – then lines them up with a precision that I would be proud of. He draws a tiny amount of blue up into the syringe and injects it into the tap at the end of the bundle of three neatly bound glass tubes. He repeats it with the yellow bottle and then the red, injecting each into a different place. He stands back, checks his watch. He waits. I sense I am to watch this and not comment. Once his wristwatch has reached some pertinent time, he opens the tiny tap at the top of the maze and waits. And waits. And watches. With all the expectancy of a young lover awaiting the first sight of his sweetheart, he holds his breath as the first drop of clear water winds its way down the narrow glass pipe where it meets a bubble of black dye. They float towards each other, embrace, and an azure cloud forms. A slow blue comet rolls it way to the end where it forms a perfect sphere. It steals yellow, and turns deep emerald, hinting at lime round the edges. The colour is not constant, it swirls to the colour of olives, then weakens to buttercup. The water halts at the edge of the tub, pauses before taking the final plunge on to the aluminium gutter below.
Eric leans in and peers at the water drop as it forms a red teardrop; the surface tension builds, then it lets go. The receiving cup takes charge of the red drop with a quiet ‘bip’, a rather pleasing sound like an honest raindrop. Eric holds his breath, watching again, waiting again; that fascination will never leave him. Another drop runs down the channel, hesitates, then also slips on to the cup below. For a moment nothing happens but then the cup begins to register the extra weight, recognizes its own tipping point, and begins, infinitesimally at first, degree by degree, to sink down on the end of its off-centre spindle. Just as slowly, the next cup lowers to take its place. Eric looks at his watch and frowns a little.
‘That has turned the wheel exactly one sixteenth of its circumference, twenty-two point five degrees. One sixteenth of a minute, one cup every three point seven-five seconds. One minute per rotation. It has to be perfect, it has to be right. But it isn’t. Yet.’ Eric sits back on his old velvet chair. ‘There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.’
‘Gandhi?’
‘Correct. But all time is an illusion.’
‘Einstein. It is beautiful, isn’t it?’ I sit down on the other chair, a battered old brown leather thing. As the cups fill with water, a small glass slide is being counterweighted and it slowly lifts like a portcullis. The dark blue water scuttles under yellow, they mix in wave form but stay separate.
‘Now that is clever,’ I say, impressed. ‘So when that little bucket fills it lifts the door slightly.’
‘And as the level of the water rises it escapes into the bucket, which becomes heavier and lifts the barrier so the water gets through, reducing the pressure. When the weight drops the barrier falls back. Its own little perpetual motion system, if such a thing could ever exist.’ He leans forward and closes the small glass tap on the pipe. The dripping stops, the wheel slowly stops turning. Eric Mason can stop time.
I then notice that the sofa and the chairs in the room are all pointed towards the water clock, the way my parents’ chairs used to point towards the telly.
‘You spend a lot of time looking at it?’ I ask. He looks at me to see if I’m taking the mickey. ‘I can see it being therapeutic, watching time pass like that. This is a work of art, but do you see a practical use for it?’
‘Do you?’ He regards me with sludgy brown eyes. ‘I mean, they are effective timepieces but you have to have a very small electric pump in there and that kind of spoils it. If it were outside, though, all I have to do is regulate the rainfall. That’s the experiment out there, but it’s broken with all this rain pissing down all the time.’ He turns a tap again, the water starts moving, almost imperceptibly.
‘Is there a pump in the one in
Mary’s hall?’
‘At Alex’s house.’ He corrects me automatically. ‘Just listen.’
Then I hear it, the sound of water and time passing in perfect harmony. A metronome of life.
‘Has that always fascinated you, the dance of water and time?’
‘Time and tide wait for no man,’ he says. ‘They both go quickly on their way. No matter what happens to water or minutes, sooner or later, they both … I can never find the right word … escape, retreat? Water can be diverted, dammed, blocked or stored. Time can be ignored or delayed, but they will both pass. The end result is always the same, water goes to ground to join the great cycle of life. Everything goes to ground.’
He closes his eyes again, his head back, fingertips meeting, tapping one on the other in time with the drops of the water clock.
I lean back in the seat and do the same. The water drops tune into my heartbeat, and for a while they are one.
Complete peace falls on the room.
We both jump as a playful tinny tune sounds out in the room. He looks at me in horror.
‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Mobile.’ He gets up and digs about in various pockets of the jacket he left hanging over the door handle. He looks at the number ID with some surprise.
‘It’s Mary,’ he says to me.
‘Is there a problem?’ I ask, reaching into my own pocket for my mobile. There are no missed calls on it.
Eric takes the call. ‘Mary?’ he says.
There is silence, and he pulls a face at me. He is about to repeat himself when a quiet voice says, ‘Hello.’
Not Mary.
‘Hello?’ Eric tries again.
Silence.
‘Mary, is that you?’
‘It’s me.’
I am now on my feet; both of us know that something is wrong. Eric holds the phone so that we can both hear the childish whisper, the rasping breath.
I say, ‘Charlie?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s Elvie here, and your Uncle Eric.’
The reply is automatic and polite. ‘Hello, Elvie. Hello, Eric.’
‘Hi, is your mum there?’ Eric asks, keeping his voice light.
‘No.’
I take the phone from him and watch as Eric puts his shoes back on muttering, ‘Bloody kids, what’s he playing at?’ under his breath.
‘Does your mum know you’re on the phone?’
‘No.’
‘Can you go and get Mum for me?’
‘She’s not here.’
I roll my eyes heavenward. ‘OK, Charlie, where did you get the phone?’
‘On the floor.’
‘And where is Mum?’
‘Not here.’
Eric says, ‘Alex is in Glasgow, she must be there.’ Just as Charlie is whispering in my ear, ‘Nobody here.’
‘You say there’s nobody there?’ I repeat for Eric’s benefit.
Eric looks round; Charlie is not a stupid boy. ‘And where are you?’
‘Kitchen.’
Eric puts out his hand for the mobile.
‘OK, look, Charlie. It’s Uncle Eric here, and this is what I want you to do. You end this call and I’ll phone you back and you answer, OK? Do you know how to do that? Don’t turn the phone off now.’ Eric presses End Call and waits for the number to go red to show that Charlie has hung up. He then calls Alex’s landline. ‘Mary will be about somewhere.’
‘Unless she’s had an accident,’ I say.
Eric looks at me, one eyebrow raised. All kinds of things are running through my mind. Has she fallen down the stairs, had some kind of fit?
‘There’s no answer.’ He holds the phone out for me to hear it ring, then go on to answerphone. Still nobody picks up. Eric ends the call and scrolls back up to Mary’s mobile number and presses Call. It is answered immediately by scratching and bumping. I imagine the clumsy little fingers over the touch screen.
‘Uncle Eric?’
‘Hello, Charlie, did your mum give you your tea?’
‘Yes.’
‘And where is she now?’
‘Dunno.’ There is a faint sniffle. ‘Mum’s not here.’
Eric picks up his jacket and swings it over one arm, knocking some papers to the floor. I bend down to pick them up, handfuls of drawings of extensions and chimneys, water clocks and swimming pools, reinforced floors for indoor pools and a drawing I recognize as his own back garden. I put them back in the file, in roughly the right order, when he taps me on the shoulder and mouths jacket on. I get up and slip the fleece back on, check my own phone, and we duck under the scaffolding to get to the front door. I jump at a deep grinding under the floor, then a whirring sound surrounds us.
‘Generator,’ explains Eric. ‘Come on, we need to get going.’
I look out the hall window across the barren moor. The clouds have closed in, the heather is waving around in the gale and rain spikes down. Eric still has the phone clasped to his ear. I follow him as he walks to the front door, keeping his voice calm, teasing. ‘So she’s not being a lazy big sleepyhead and still in her bed?’ He steps over the dog’s bowls, still talking down the phone.
‘She’s not here.’
Eric slips his arms into his jacket, then picks up the keys to the Land Rover, and I follow him across the grass. ‘Where are you, Charlie?’ He opens the door to the vehicle.
‘Kitchen. I’m cold.’ He is nearly crying.
‘Cold?’
‘Yes, Eric.’
‘Why are you cold?’
‘The door’s open.’
‘What door?’
‘The back door. I’m hiding in the kitchen.’
‘Hiding?’ Eric starts the engine, he raises his voice. ‘Why are you hiding, Charlie?’
‘In case they come back.’
It is three minutes past midnight when Eric punches in the numbers on the keypad. The Land Rover grinds to a halt on the monoblock near where Charlie has his swings.
I jump out of the Land Rover and run across the paving, up the steps to the shattered glass of the patio doors. Even in the darkness I can see the blood. Eric is saying to Charlie, ‘I’m just outside, son, but you stay where you are.’
The patio door swings open at the push of my fingertip.
‘Charlie? Are you still here?’ Eric goes up the steps to the kitchen; I grab his arm and pull him back. There appears to be blood smeared everywhere. He reels slightly, both hands to his mouth, silencing the horror. There is one set of shoe prints, tramlines of drag marks. I hear Eric mutter, Oh, Mary.
‘Don’t stand in that,’ I say. Something awful happened here.
I carefully step round the kitchen that Eric designed. White units, black and white marble tiles. Mary keeps it pristine. Her handbag lies on the floor, open, contents scattered as if she had dropped it. That’s how Charlie had got the phone. Fruit has spilled from the basket on the worktop and an apple has rolled as far as the toe of my shoes, leaving its own little bloody track. We are both silent. I lift a large knife from the rack. Eric looks at me, shocked, but I am not taking any chances.
He turns the phone off and we stand still, listening. I move round the central island warily. I can deal with anything if I have surprise on my side.
‘Elvie?’ Eric is still at the door, pointing. I see smears on the white tiles then notice they have been made by a foot too small to be Mary’s. It is the perfect outline of a little boy’s shoe, dragging the blood towards the kitchen cupboard next to the Belfast sink.
‘Charlie?’ I say, with as much authority as I can muster. ‘It’s Elvie. Do you want to come out?’
‘No.’
SATURDAY, 9 JUNE
Alex Parnell looks like any other successful businessman who’s just got out of the car after a long drive; the only sign of his stress is the play of the fingers of his right hand on the cuff of his left sleeve. He wears a well-cut lightweight suit, a brittle blue that matches the colour of his jumpy eyes. His silk tie lies loose at his neck, his polished handmade shoes
click on the marble floor as he paces. He has an iPhone clasped to his ear.
DCI Anderson retreats into the living room with the gold table and the Chinese rugs. He wasn’t at work when he got the call and is dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans. He watches Alex Parnell unobtrusively then glances at the original Howson above the door, a pastel of a bare knuckle fighter in grey and black, as if making the connection, the hard man connection. The water clock is still in its glass case, ticking away with a drop, drop, drop. It seems to be mocking me.
Parnell was on the phone when he first walked through the door, and has remained so ever since. Even when Charlie ran from me into his daddy’s arms, the wings of his Batman pyjamas crumpled and flapping, Parnell only interrupted his conversation briefly to bounce Charlie on the arc of his hip. I heard him whisper into his son’s ear about him being a brave boy and to be a wee bit braver for a wee bit longer. Mummy would come back. Anderson has followed me into the living room, to give the man some privacy in his own home. Only Costello, a nosey wee tyke at the best of times, remains to watch. I presume that’s part of her job. The stairway down to the kitchen is taped off; in the absence of any other explanation, it is a crime scene.
Parnell is no sooner off the phone than it rings again, and he holds up his hand in apology. Charlie is burrowing his face in Parnell’s trouser leg, gripping on to the silk with small sticky fingers. Anderson nods in acknowledgment while Costello pulls a face of ill-concealed impatience.
Parnell is saying, ‘Thanks, I’ll let you know … yes, as soon as I do … I might take you up on that … but I really have to go now …’ and on it goes. The voice at the other end rattles on. He walks up to one of the four marble statues, a Greek goddess holding a lamb, before he turns round and paces back. Costello stalks him, walking up to the same statue, bending down as if to see if there’s a price on it. She glances at the white staircase, then to the Howson, the double-opening front door, the security locks. She is clearly thinking one thing. Money. Money. Money. If Mary has been taken by the Night Hunter, Parnell might go down the I have the money, the expertise, the contacts. I’ll flush the bastard out myself route. The same thought went through my mind. But Mary was taken indoors, she was snatched. The others had been taken while out running. Was that a different MO or a progression of the same?
