by Louise Welsh
‘Give me the box and I’ll make sure she gets a decent burial.’
Her voice was plaintive.
‘Why can’t I have her?’
‘Because you can’t be trusted to keep her safe.’
‘I’m her mother.’
‘And her murderer.’
Christie tightened her grip on Murray’s arm and looked up into his eyes.
‘He’s lying.’
‘Come on, Christie.’ Fergus’s voice was reasonable. ‘I don’t know what you told young Dr Watson, but I was there, remember? We may be old, but neither of us is senile. You and Bobby used her for your little occult experiment.’
The box was still at Christie’s feet. She leaned down and touched it with her fingertips, as if reassuring whatever lay inside of her fidelity.
‘You lie.’
‘You know I don’t.’ Fergus was closer now, facing them through a curtain of soft drizzle. ‘You didn’t just kill her. You killed Archie too.’
‘No, he killed himself.’
‘Technically I suppose that’s true. But we both know he would never have taken that leaky sieve out into a storm if he and I hadn’t come back to the island and found a butcher’s shop.’ Fergus looked at Murray. ‘She didn’t tell you that did she?’
Murray said, ‘She gave me her version of events. Why don’t you give me yours?’
Christie spat, ‘Do you think he’s going to tell you the truth?’
Fergus sounded clear and rational against Christie’s passion.
‘Lunan and I had got fed up of our country idyll. He’d tried to persuade Christie to come back to the city with us, but she was adamant. The child wasn’t due for weeks, so we left her here. I thought she’d come trailing after us as usual. I didn’t see how anyone could stomach living alone with Bobby Robb for any length of time. But it seems I underestimated his charms. Lunan couldn’t drive, so a fortnight after we’d deserted, he persuaded me to bring him back. His excuse was he’d left his manuscript behind. If he had, it was deliberate.’
Christie started a soft, keening mantra: ‘You’re lying, you’re lying, you’re lying, you’re lying …’
For the first time Fergus lost his cool.
‘I’m not bloody lying, and you know it. Who are you trying to fool? Him?’ He pointed at Murray. ‘Let’s see if he wants to help you after he’s heard the truth.’
‘You’re lying, you’re lying, you’re lying, you’re lying …’
Christie continued her chant, and it seemed to Murray that the waving trees and still-falling rain picked up the rhythm of her words and carried it through the glen. Perhaps Fergus thought so too, because he paused for a moment and when he spoke next his voice wavered beneath its calm.
‘Archie was a chaotic drunk, but looking back I think he was desperate for that child. Maybe he thought being a father would help put some of his demons to rest. Who knows?’ The professor shrugged. ‘I had an interest in it too, of course, so I drove and he drank. By the time we reached the ferry, he was insensible. But when we reached the cottage, he’d sobered up enough to take in what had happened. The child had lived its whole life in the time we’d been gone. When you see something like that …’ His voice trembled. ‘It’s as if your eyes refuse to let you witness it. We stood on that doorstep staring at Bobby and Christie, sky-clad in the middle of a charnel house. God knows what they’d taken while we’d been in Edinburgh, but all of Bobby Robb’s fantasies about purity and sacrifice had been realised. I’m not sure how long we were frozen there, trying to make sense of the scene … all that redness … Archie understood what had happened first. Suddenly he went wild. I thought he was going to murder them both, me too perhaps. I don’t know where I found the strength, but I bundled him out of the cottage. I thought I was preventing another death.’ Fergus took a deep breath. ‘The rest you know.’
‘Why didn’t you call the police?’
‘Why haven’t you?’
It would have taken too long to explain. Murray replied, ‘I don’t know.’
‘I don’t know either. Maybe out of pity for Christie.
She’d realised what she’d done and was screaming fit to wake the dead. Maybe out of a fear I’d be implicated. After all, it was only my word against theirs that Archie and I were innocent. I knew Bobby Robb well enough to be sure that if he went down, he’d do his best to pull the rest of us into Hell behind him. Whatever the reason, it was a big mistake. I opened myself up to blackmail and nightmares.
But I do know I’m damned if I’m going to have the whole thing resurrected.’
Murray could see the fly-blown kitchen, the naked couple leaning over the kitchen table, the baby at its centre.
It was too much. He closed his eyes for a moment then asked, ‘What did you mean when you said you had an interest in the child as well?’
Fergus was close enough for Murray to see his sad smile.
‘Can’t you guess?’
Murray nodded.
‘I suppose I should have.’
Christie ended her mantra. She shouted, ‘If you want her, you’re going to have to come and take her.’
Fergus looked at Murray.
‘Are you going to stand in my way, Dr Watson?’
‘It depends on what you intend to do.’
All this time they had been standing a distance apart, like opposing foes reluctant to fight or flee before they saw each other’s weapons. Now Fergus adjusted his cap and started to walk across the grass to parley face-to-face. This was the Fergus Murray recognised: the lecture-theatre showman, darling of the students, despair of the secretaries, the canteen boaster and distinguished scholar, crass enough to pimp his wife, vain enough for a bespoke academic gown.
Murray looked down at his own mud-drenched clothes and knew that whatever the truth of the child’s death, and whatever followed next, his career was over. He was too stunned to feel the full impact of the knowledge, but he knew it would come, just as a bereaved man knows his numbness will be replaced by grief. He straightened his back, wanting to walk away and leave them to it, but unwilling to abandon Christie to Fergus’s ruthless self-interest.
It was as if his thoughts touched the woman. She stirred and made a noise somewhere between a gasp and a sigh. Murray glanced down at her. Christie’s eyes looked huge. She bit her bottom lip, half-smiling. He looked back at the professor making his way across the grass with his usual assurance, not bothering to stick to the beaten path, and suddenly Murray realised what was about to happen. He shoved Christie from him and yelled, ‘No, Fergus, stop!’ The other man faltered, and for a second Murray thought his warning had been in time. Then the professor fell.
At first it looked as if Fergus had simply lost his footing and skidded backwards onto the mud. But all at once he groaned and began scrabbling for purchase on the slippery ground. The battle was too fast and too desperate for him to cry out again. The only sound was of the wind in the tree-tops and the desperate slap of Fergus’s arms and legs flailing in the wet mud as he fought with gravity, like a man showing how it was to drown. Then it was as if something beneath the earth grabbed him tight around his legs and pulled hard, sliding him swiftly and horribly down the unmarked sinkhole and into the below.
Murray started to run forward, but Christie grabbed his ankle and brought him down.
‘Do you want to follow him?’
He’d landed beside her and their mudspattered faces were unbearably close. Murray scrabbled in his pocket and brought out his mobile. She knocked it from his hand.
‘He’ll be in Hell by now.’
Murray shoved her away. He was beyond speech, beyond thought. He pushed himself up, slipped and cried out in terror of the earth, but it was merely the same mud he had been wallowing in for the last hour. He dropped down onto his hands and knees again and started crawling towards the sinkhole, but he stopped after a few faltering inches, too feared of Fergus’s fate to go on.
Murray sat back up onto his hunkers, sobbing as he had
n’t in a long while. He saw the glint of his phone, picked it up and hauled himself to his feet. He stood there for a moment. Then he started to stagger away from the cottage, careful to keep to the path.
Christie shouted, ‘It was all lies, everything he said, lies.’
Murray set his back to her and followed the curving track to where Fergus’s Saab sat, its lights still glaring. He leant in through the car’s open door. The vehicle was empty, no sign of Rachel. Murray turned and looked at Christie. She was lying spot-lit in the mess of mud they had churned up between them, her hands clutching the tin trunk; a savage pietà. There was a rush in his stomach. He bent double and spewed the remnants of Mrs Dunn’s cakes onto the ground.
Chapter Thirty-Two
MURRAY WIPED HIS mouth on the back of his hand. He walked back, helped Christie to her feet as gently as he could manage, and then lifted the long-dead child’s coffin onto his shoulder. He carried it silent through the darkness and the sludge, like a doom-laden St Christopher. Christie said nothing beyond a whispered thank-you; merely let herself be gripped around the waist and supported back to her car. The rain had almost stopped, but they were already soaked through and coated in filth. Somewhere a bird hooted. It was a strangely human sound and Murray felt his stomach lurch.
Christie was shivering. He took a tartan travelling rug from the boot, wrapped it around her shoulders and then settled her and his other burden in the back seat. Her hand went to the trunk’s hasp and he whispered, ‘Please, you promised. Not until you’re home.’
Christie nodded and shifted her hand to the lid, where she let it rest.
Murray started the engine. There was no point in questioning whether he was fit to drive. He was fit for nothing. He raised the clutch gently and the car eased forward.
‘Thank Christ.’
The dashboard clock glowed 03.45. The whole adventure had lasted less than two hours.
There was no option but to retrace the route they had taken earlier. Murray was shivering too now, his hands so numb he wouldn’t have known he was gripping the steering wheel, except for the fact that somehow he was managing to guide the Cherokee round the curves in the road.
The night was still pitch murk. Murray realised he was driving faster than he had on their journey out, but made no effort to cut his speed. Their tyres would leave marks in the mud which, now that the rain had stopped, would not be washed away. There was no helping it. He kept the headlights off, amazed he could still think of his own self-preservation when deep down he cared nothing for it. He glanced at Christie in the rear-view mirror. Her hand was still resting on the box, but her eyes were shut, her skin yellowed, mouth slack.
‘Christie?’
She started. ‘Where are we?’
‘We’ll be there soon. Stay with me.’
‘Sure.’
The slur in her voice had grown worse, but when he checked her again her eyes were open.
He said, ‘You knew Fergus was going to fall down there, didn’t you?’
‘How could I? The sinkhole wasn’t marked.’
‘I saw your face. You’ve lived here for decades. At the very least, you knew there was a danger of it and you didn’t warn him.’
There was a shrug to her voice.
‘He should have kept to the path.’
‘Fergus should have kept to the path. Archie should never have gone out in the boat. Men who associate with you seem to become careless.’
Her voice held a challenge.
‘In that case perhaps you should be careful.’
‘What about Alan Garrett? Should he have been more careful?’
‘Obviously. If he had, he wouldn’t have smashed himself up against a tree.’
‘Did you kill him too?’
‘I never killed anyone, except maybe Miranda.’
‘Who?’
‘My little girl. And that was a sin of omission.’
‘Not according to Fergus.’
‘He lied.’
‘He’s not here to contradict you. But even if he did, you appear to be a jinx, a magnet for demisuicides.’
Her tone was scornful.
‘A spellbinder.’
‘Being called a witch isn’t the slander it once was.’
She sighed.
‘Dr Garrett was into risk-taking. We talked about it.
He was the kind of man who slowed down on the level crossing when the train was coming, who walked to the brink of the cliff in bad weather, the edge of the subway platform during rush hour. Did you know he was a rock-climber?’
‘Yes.’
‘He’d started climbing freestyle, without ropes. He told me that sometimes he would deliberately take extra risks, go for an unsure hold, let fate have its hand.’
Murray’s voice was dry.
‘I have been half in love with easeful death, called him soft names in many a mused rhyme.’
‘Half in love, half frightened of. Men like that shouldn’t get married, but they do. I suppose they want to anchor themselves to something. I met his wife. It amazes me how these sturdy women ally themselves to reckless men.’
‘Like you did with Archie?’
‘Oh, I was never that robust. If I had been, I would have picked myself up and got on with my life instead of endlessly sorting through the bones.’
It was an unfortunate image, and they both fell silent for a moment. Then Christie said, ‘I don’t know if he’d ever talked about it before, but it excited him, discussing his obsession with someone who understood. I can picture his death as clearly as if I’d been there. He saw the empty stretch of road, the tree, and put his foot down, giving fate one last chance to let him make the corner or crash.’ She snorted. ‘It was one chance too many.’
Murray closed his eyes. He felt the urge to press the accelerator to the floor, to test whether she could maintain her glibness as he raced the car onwards into their deaths.
But he opened them again, kept his speed level and turned the Cherokee out onto the open track at the edge of the moor.
He could see the windows of Christie’s lonely cottage burning brightly in the dark. He supposed it would look beautiful in the summertime, the small white house shining from a midst of green, but tonight it looked like a Halloween lantern, its windows blazing, door glowing like the mouth of Hell. He dropped their speed.
‘Christie, did you leave the front door open?’
He heard her rustling upright in the back seat.
‘No.’
There was a halo around the building. It rippled gently.
Murray glanced at Christie in the mirror again and saw her head silhouetted against the back window, a tuft of hair spiked at a crazy angle.
‘Fergus.’ Her voice was full of wonder. ‘I always knew he’d be the death of me.’
Murray drove on, expecting to hear the sound of sirens, but nothing disturbed the night except the gentle rumble of the Cherokee’s engine. He could see the flames now. They had burst beyond the windows and were licking the outside walls of the house. Soon they would begin to consume the roof. They were less than half a mile from the cottage when Christie commanded him to stop.
Murray eased the car to a halt, got out and helped her from the back seat. The interior of the house had seemed full of natural materials – wood, paper and brightly woven rugs – but the fire smelt toxic, as if the whole place had been formed from plastic. Murray started to cough, his eyes teared, but still he stood there, Christie leaning on his arm, both of them watching the flames’ progress.
Eventually she said, ‘I should have put the photographs and my memoir in the boot of the car.’
He nodded, knowing the answer to his question, but asking it anyway.
‘They’re all in there?’
‘Yes, all your pretty chickens lost at one fell swoop.
Fergus always wanted to know if I’d written any of it down.
I told him no, but I guess he didn’t want to take the chance.’
Her smile wa
s strangely peaceful, as if none of it mattered any more. She turned and lumbered awkwardly towards the car’s back seat. Murray moved and helped her in. The mud was beginning to dry on his clothes, stiffening the fabric. He wanted nothing more now than to be gone.
He asked, ‘What will you do?’
‘What I was always going to do.’
It was too much in one night. He looked back towards the burning cottage, expecting to see car headlights racing towards it, half-hoping for the whole sorry mess to be taken from him. But the only brightness came from the flames. They were alone on the dark expanse of moor.
‘Why hasn’t anyone come?’
‘Perhaps they hope I’m inside.’
‘Are you really hated that much?’
‘Who knows?’ She shrugged as if it didn’t matter. ‘People sleep deeply in the countryside, and I suppose the house isn’t overlooked. They would probably come if they knew.’
‘You don’t have to do this.’
‘I want to.’
‘It would be better to wait.’
‘For what?’ She nodded towards the distant house and placed her hand on her daughter’s coffin. ‘I’ve lost everything and gained everything. Life seldom achieves such perfect balance.’
‘I won’t help you.’
‘You don’t need to. I brought what I needed with me, just in case.’
Murray took a deep breath and walked a few yards into the darkness, wondering if this had always been what she’d intended. He rested his hands on his knees and bent over, fearing that he was going to be sick again. When he returned, she was propped up against the car window with her legs stretched out along the back seat. She’d pulled the blanket up to her neck, and Murray could see that beneath it she was clutching something to her. He was reminded of a woman preserving her privacy with her child’s shawl while she breastfed in public.
She gave him a smile that beckoned visions of the girl she’d been, and said, ‘I’m sorry. The poems weren’t inside Miranda’s coffin.’
‘Were they ever?’
‘I suppose not. It was Fergus who suggested placing them beside her. I thought it was an overly sentimental gesture, but he ran back to the cottage to get them. I guess he didn’t follow through.’
