The Guest House

by David Mark

  ‘He’ll want reassurance,’ says Callum, as we head west towards the point. On the landward side the trees are a static army: charcoal-black spears held in claws by straight-backed soldiers. There are broken branches in the road. Something dead and furry lies in a brown-and-red smear by the entrance to the boat house. Further along, a dead bird, its neck snapped, lying on the verge like a broadsheet newspaper.

  ‘I don’t have anything to tell him!’ I say, my voice a hiss, like interference bleeding from a car stereo. ‘I’m not involved. I don’t know how you’re involved, Callum!’

  ‘I never wanted this to happen,’ he says, quietly. I see him move his hand from the steering wheel and for a moment I think he’s going to put his big palm over mine. I flinch away, and he squeezes the wheel.

  ‘How bad is it?’ I ask, staring at the side of his face. ‘Roe said they’re bad people. They did awful things to Theresa just for looking in. She saw men. Wires coming out of them, bandages on their eyes…’

  ‘No she didn’t,’ says Callum, urgently. ‘No, Theresa saw some lights on at the castle and went to investigate and some passing bad lads gave her a seeing to. She hasn’t told the police. Won’t tell the police. And she’s only told you the bare bones.’

  ‘Callum, who are you protecting?’

  ‘You!’ he spits. ‘Us! Just trust me, please.’

  I say nothing. Rain spatters the glass. There’s no other cars on the road. It’s 2.50am and I can think of no good reason for anybody to be out in the dead of night.

  ‘And Mr Roe?’ I ask, quietly.

  ‘A holidaymaker. A weirdo. Got overly fond of you and started making advances. Telling you all sorts of silly stories. You woke up to find him in the house. I gave him a seeing to, and then persuaded you to come with me to see a man I know who’ll make sure it all goes away. You’re an innocent. Naïve. You don’t know what’s going on.’

  ‘I bloody don’t,’ I mutter.

  ‘And the English copper. DCI Cressey. She came to speak to you about a missing man. A man you’d had a couple of drinks with, but you had nothing to tell her. You’ll continue to have nothing to tell her.’

  ‘How is this man involved?’ I ask, tension pounding in my temples and gripping my jaw. ‘Surely I can busk this better if I know what not to say. Who was trying to bribe me?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asks, glancing at me.

  ‘She gave me a piece of paper with our bank details on them. Somebody was trying to get me on their side.’

  He grinds his teeth and flashes a look in the mirror at Kimmy. She’s saying nothing. Glaring through the window, through her own reflection, watching the white caps on the water. Tension is coming off her in waves.

  ‘You don’t mention it unless he does,’ he says. ‘She might be in his pocket. It might have been him making the offer.’ He hits his palm on the steering wheel. Shakes his head.

  ‘It doesn’t seem like you have any of the answers either, Callum,’ I say, and hear my voice catch a little. I can’t stand this. I could handle hating him when I thought he was screwing somebody else. Grief softens the heart but anger gives it steel. Now I feel equally lied to, but I don’t know how far the virus of his deceit has crept into our relationship. I don’t know where we could go from here. It all seems too momentous, suddenly. I want to leap out of the car and run into the woods. Want to sprint back into the real world, where things like this don’t happen.

  ‘We’re here,’ says Callum, and up ahead I see a gap in the treeline. I’ve seen it countless times before and never wondered what might lie beyond. The road is full of abandoned properties and half-ruined crofts. All I know is that we’re only a couple of miles from the castle at Glenborrodale.

  Callum rolls the car slowly through the gap and we’re quickly enclosed in thick forest. He slows down and slides down the window, peering out at the muddy track beneath the wheels. He turns back to Kimmy. ‘Two vehicles at least. Heavy.’

  ‘Fuck,’ mutters Kimmy. Beside her, Mr Roe gives a groan.

  ‘What will happen to him?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Callum, and we move forward into the dark of the wood, the lights turned into a dancing black mesh by the movement of the trees. He glances at him. Shakes his head. Looks at me as if he wants to tell me something and clamps his mouth together to stop it coming out. ‘He got himself into this. I wish it could be different.’

  We carry on up a dirt track, claw-like branches skittering against the windows and bodywork, and then we’re emerging into a clearing, where a small white-painted cottage sits halfway up a slope, its near side sheltered by a semi-circle of trees. A Porsche Cayenne and something that looks like a London black cab are parked side by side on the small patch of shingly drive, blocking the view of the front of the house. All I can make out are dark windows, and the top of a red door. Through Callum’s open window I can smell something incongruous and nostalgic: the mingled scents of comfort, of home. A peat fire, salt air, damp earth.

  I look at Callum and it feels for a moment as if we’re young lovers again, sneaking away to a countryside bothy for a night of passion. I remember the time before the kids. Before life started pulling him down. He’d been vibrant, once. So full of self-belief. Maybe Bishop had reminded me of him, a little. The cocksure certainty that everything would work out. The years have chipped away at him: reduced his confidence, his self-belief. Humbled him. There have been times I’ve thought it was for the best – that his arrogance was an ugly thing and something we shouldn’t be holding up as laudable in front of the kids. But I miss it. I miss him telling me that I worry too much; that he’s got a plan, that he knows a guy who knows a guy and he can get what I want a bit cheaper than on the high street. I’ve acted so bloody holier-than-thou. Taken the shine off every one of his mad schemes. And now he’s done something that’s so far beyond our world I don’t know if he’ll ever come back.

  Behind me, I hear Kimmy open her door. She takes Roe under the armpits and drags him out after her, letting him drop to the hard, mud-streaked ground. He gives a groan. His eyes stay closed.

  ‘Whatever happens, you have to trust me,’ says Callum.

  I get no chance to reply. He opens his door and slips outside. As he moves, I see the knife, sheathed, stuck in the back of his jeans.

  I climb out of the car. It’s cold. We’re higher up the mountain here and I know that if the sun were out we would be able to see across to Coll and Mull through the gaps in the trees.

  ‘Get his arm,’ says Kimmy, and I realise she’s talking to me. She heaves Mr Roe to his feet. I slip an arm around his waist, and together we drag him across the long grass and scattered stones to the front of the house. I see a wisp of smoke rising from the chimney. As we squeeze between the two cars, the drawn curtains at a downstairs window twitch, and a moment later the front door creaks and opens inwards, a warm yellow light briefly illuminating the curious quartet on the doorstep.

  The man who’s opened the door is huge. Six foot seven if he’s an inch. Huge. Introverted.

  ‘You’re the one who brought Theresa…’ I begin, and stop myself as I feel Kimmy’s fingers squeeze my wrist.

  I glance down at his hands. He’s got something metallic wrapped around his fist. Something cold and black. I realise it’s the pommel of an old sword, guarding his big fist like an iron cage.

  He stares through me. Looks at Mr Roe, then at Kimmy, and finally gives his attention to Callum.

  ‘Two minutes early,’ he says, in a low growl.

  Callum shrugs, his manner completely transformed. ‘Want me to go kill some time in the woods? Think I saw your mum up there, grazing.’

  He doesn’t rise to it. Looks at me. ‘She okay? The lady?’

  I don’t know how to reply. Is this him? Is this the one who they’re all terrified of?

  ‘He’s in, yeah?’ asks Kimmy, beside me. ‘It’s just, this dying bastard’s leaking all over me and I wouldn’t object to a place by the fire, if you could shift you
r big arse.’

  The man I knew as Lachlan is about to speak when a voice drifts out from behind him. It’s Glaswegian; dry and breathy, like the crackle of a dying fire.

  ‘Bring them in, big man. Fierce fucking night. Fierce. And there’s a lady present, I’m told. Two, if you count Kimmy, and plenty of people have counted Kimmy. Make room, lad. Let’s get this over with, eh?’

  Callum looks up at Lachlan, daring him to contradict the instruction. Slowly, like a rock being rolled away from a tomb, Lachlan steps aside, and we shuffle into a small, whitewashed corridor. A wooden door stands open to our right, and the warm peaty smell is drifting out. Callum leads the way and I hobble in behind, finding myself in a room that smells of peat and whisky. Something else, too. Something chemical. Medicinal.

  It’s a small, comfy room. Seventies carpets. A low, Ercol sofa and matching armchair. Open fireplace, peat smouldering away. The walls are flock wallpaper. Gypsy horse brasses and a couple of Rembrandt reproductions hang lopsided on single nails.

  By the window, his back to the fire, sits a small man. He’s completely hairless: not so much as a smear of fuzz on his head, eyebrows or chin. His eyes are sunk deep, like belly buttons in a plump gut, and there’s a malformed lumpiness to his features, as if the bones in his face have shifted like tectonic plates and made bumps and ridges where there should be none. He’s sitting in a high-backed rocking chair, his hands in his lap, dressed in comfortable loungewear and a too-big jacket. He could be fifty. Could be ancient. I don’t want to be harsh, but my first thought is that he looks as though he’s wearing a stocking over his face. My second, perhaps unkinder, is that he looks like a penis wearing a condom three sizes too small.

  ‘How you going?’ asks Callum, in front of me, as I slip my arm from Mr Roe’s waist and Kimmy gives him a shove. He topples into the centre of the room and lies there as if dropped from a great height. The man in the chair stares at him for a moment. It’s hard to read his expression, with the deep-set eyes and the perfectly bald features. But when he looks at me, he’s smiling: a big red curve of a thing, a livid slash of colour in the pasty features.

  ‘You’ll be the missus,’ says the man, and he reaches down to his sides. There’s a clinking of metal and he rolls forward. I grasp what I’d mistaken for a rocking chair is in fact a vintage wheelchair: the sort of thing old ladies and gentlemen would employ to take the air at a spa town in Victorian times.

  ‘Like it?’ he asks, staring up at me. ‘I’m a slave to the old ways. Born into the wrong time. Nobody makes things properly anymore. Sorry, where’s my manners? I’d stand to greet you, but my body’s not co-operating. Takes me an age to get out of my chair and I can never be sure I won’t have embarrassed myself – much as the big man at the door there does his best to save me from such petty humiliations.’

  I look to Callum for guidance. He’s chewing on the inside of his cheek, listening to the man as if he were the greatest orator of his time. Beside me, Kimmy rubs at her eyes.

  ‘Boring you, am I, love? I see you’ve had a wee weep. Or did our pal here get off a shot of the CS before you brought him along?’

  Kimmy doesn’t speak. I stand awkwardly, unsure what to say.

  ‘I’m Pope,’ he says, and there’s that smile again. ‘I understand you’ve been unnecessarily ensnared in a business transaction that I have an interest in. A gentleman of my acquaintance has gone and got himself disappeared. There’s talk of a nasty nick to the neck. Talk, too, of a fancy English copper coming up and making waves. I’m not a well man, Ronni. You can see that for yourself. And I don’t need aggravation at my time of life. That’s what I told Callum here. I said, Callum, I’m not so young as I was, and I suffer with my nerves. Do me a favour and go round up your pretty wife and ask her to come see me. We can chat. Set the world to rights. Explain a few things. And while you’re there, how about you pick up that zombie-looking prick who’s been staying in the guest house. We can get together. Light a fire. See how the land lies…’

  ‘Mr Pope,’ I say, and the tremble in my voice isn’t forced. ‘I don’t really know what’s going on. Callum and I are separated. As far as I know he’s with this lady now, and I don’t know why they’re here, or why you wanted to see me, and it’s all a bit much with the kids at home. As for Bishop, I don’t really know him, and I just hope he turns up safe and sound. I’m really rather out of my depth, if I’m honest.’

  Pope doesn’t alter his expression. Up close, I can see that his eyes are an unsettling blue, and as he stares into me the pupils expand and dilate and seem to form new patterns, like ink dropped in water.

  ‘You’ve coached her well, Callum,’ says Pope, still looking at me. ‘You said all that without moving your lips. Trouble is, I’m a bit neurotic. Paranoid, even. And I still get this horrible feeling she’s going to hold a grudge about one or two things, and she’s going to make a fuss. The big man there told me what the delivery boys did to your friend’s feet. A liberty. A genuine liberty. It will be repaid, I promise you that. You can watch if you want. But I need you to respect an old man’s wishes and keep your own counsel for a few days more. I can arrange that in several ways.’

  I feel the presence of the big man in the doorway. Look down to Mr Roe. An expression of genuine pity ripples across my features and I see a flash of delight in Pope’s own, mangled expression.

  ‘Fond of him, are you? Aye, he’s a character. Done some good turns for a lot of people over the years and it’s a pity he’s spending his final days on this earth looking like something thrown together from old animal bones, but there’s never been much justice in the world. He’ll have told you, I’m sure. Told you why he’s here.’

  ‘He’s taking wildlife pictures,’ I say, trying to please.

  ‘Yeah, course he is. And Bishop’s just a nice man passing through, and you didn’t get the note from DCI Cressey, and all of this is such a dreadful misunderstanding. Am I right?’ He shakes his head, then looks up at Callum. ‘I can’t believe you brought her, son. If it were me, I’d have had it away in my toes. Got her and the kids and pissed off somewhere safe for a few weeks. I mean, I’d have found you, but I’d have appreciated the chase, and a corpse looks so much better with a tan, don’t you reckon?’

  ‘Leave off, Pope,’ he begins, and the man in the chair holds up a hand.

  ‘Mr Pope, please. I liked the way she said it.’

  ‘Fine, Mr Pope. We’re good. There’s no spanner in the works, no fly in the ointment. We’ve got everything the way it needs to go. Supply sorted, demand sorted, route sorted. You’re safe. Give yourself this chance. Trust the people who’ve never let you down. Ronni and me, we’re going to have a long talk, but you can trust her as much as you trust me. As much as you trust Kimmy here, or the big man at the door.’

  Pope grips the wheels of his chair. Moves forward and back, the tyres leaving grooves in the carpet. At length, he looks at Mr Roe.

  ‘He’s not died, has he? I wouldn’t like that. He’s paid for a product. Paid for a certain standard of care. I don’t like the idea of him snuffling his last in this piss-poor croft in the middle of nowhere.’

  I move towards him. Bend down to put a hand under his head and help him up. Pope raises his hand: Caesar holding back a baying crowd. ‘No, let Kimmy show her maternal side,’ he says.

  Beside me, Kimmy gives a little snort of laughter. Moves forward to help him up.

  Pope stares at her. Waits until she’s on her knees, both arms under Mr Roe’s arms, trying to haul him up. Then the shape behind me detaches itself from the wall and moves past me with the momentum of a runaway train. Callum turns too late. Lachlan smacks his right fist into his jaw and there’s a crack like the breaking of a branch. The metalwork surrounding his huge hand glints in the firelight as he raises his arm like a club, and brings it down on the back of Kimmy’s neck. Pope doesn’t move.

  And I’m standing stock-still, my hands at my mouth, and Pope’s eyes are staring up into mine.

 
‘Now,’ he says, licking his lips and wheeling himself forward. ‘Let’s try it all again, and without the lies.’

  ‘You’ve killed her,’ I mumble, staring at the broken shape on the floor, laid out over Mr Roe like a shawl. I look to Callum, unconscious on his side, a great purple swelling on his left cheek. ‘Why did you do that? What have we done?’

  He laughs. It’s a dry, snickering sound: a cartoonish, unpleasant snuffle. He shakes his head. ‘You really don’t know, do you? Don’t know what you’ve got caught up in. Who I am.’ He gestures at Mr Roe. ‘Who he is.’

  ‘No,’ I say, shaking my head. A tear spills, and I cuff it away, angry with myself. ‘I just want this to be over.’

  He looks disappointed. Then he turns to Lachlan. Shrugs. ‘Go on, lad. You heard the girl.’

  And the big metal hand comes at me like a cannonball.

  PART THREE

  25

  Now…

  5.56am

  Seashell Lodge, Acharacle, Ardnamurchan

  She isn’t often lost for words. Her life has seen no shortage of luxury. She knows the best restaurants in Monaco, where to get the best gimlet in Tunis at 3am on a Tuesday morning. She’s made love inside a mummy’s tomb and fucked her knees bloody in a private box at the opera house in Palermo. For a time she spent her nights living aboard a yacht in South Dock Marina, Southwark, only venturing onto dry land when the need for fresh champagne superseded the desire to stay naked upon silk sheets and rose petals with a very bad man. But the view that greets her as she sits up in bed is enough to make her pause and do nothing but commune with something that, though she hates the word beyond measure, cannot be thought of as anything other than sublime.

  A big golden sun is rising over a perfectly aquamarine lake; the sky swirled with pinks and purples, flashes of gold. The mountains beyond are impossibly perfect – great tartan pleats of heather and rain-sodden green, clinging to sheer rock and folding politely inwards to make room for waterfalls that cascade like spilled sugar.