Fifty-five
Spencer McIlhenney had thought that his weekend was ruined; most ten-year-old boys would have been pleased to see the December snow, but to him it was an enemy. It had wiped out his rugby session for that weekend, but worse the impending holiday break meant that he had played his last game for the year. He lived for rugby: his coach had told him that he showed real promise, and that if he grew to be as big as his dad, he might play at a decent level. Privately, Spence hoped that his growth would slow. His favourite position was fly-half, and he could not think of a single international Number Ten who was as bulky as that.
The boy was gazing morosely out of his bedroom window when he saw the car pull up outside. Several others were parked in the street, but there were no fresh tyre marks in the snow; even those his dad's car had made were almost covered over. He had tried to console himself with his PlayStation, but he knew all the games too well for them to be any real challenge. His dad had gone out too, on one of his mysterious missions, and Lauren and Louise, his stepmother, were closeted together somewhere. He liked Louise, and was still a little in awe of her, because of her former career, but not even she had been able to break his mood.
There was only one person he could think of who was capable of doing that; by some miracle, he climbed out of the Toyota that drew up at his front door. He jumped from his perch and crashed downstairs, opening the front door before the caller was halfway up the path. 'Uncle Mario,' he called out, then yelled over his shoulder, back into the house, 'hey, Lauren, it's Uncle Mario.'
'Hush, kid,' McGuire grinned, 'don't tell the whole street. This is an undercover operation.'
He stamped the snow off his feet and wiped them on the mat before stepping into the house. Louise was in the hall to greet him. 'I thought you weren't coming,' she said. She ruffled Spencer's hair. 'But I know someone who's glad you did.'
'I take my godparenting very seriously,' he told her. 'I couldn't let the day be a total write-off.'
'Where did you get the car?' Spence asked him. 'It's a Rav 4, isn't it?'
'That's right. It's Paula's; she made me bring it rather than mine, since it's got four-wheel drive. I have to say, it handled like a dream on the way up here. Fancy a drive in the snow?'
The boy's face lit up. 'Yeah!'
'How about you, Lauren?'
'Yes, please. Can Louise come?'
Her stepmother laughed. 'That's nice of you, dear, but Louise is quite happy in front of the television. Besides, I'm expecting your father home in an hour or so.'
'That's sorted, then,' said Mario. 'Kids, do your ski boots still fit you?' Both children nodded. 'And have you kept your skis in good order, like you should?'
'Of course we have,' Lauren replied, severely.
'Right, dig them all out, and your suits, then change into warmer clothes. We're off for an afternoon on the ski-slope at Hillend.'
Spencer gazed up at him as if he was a god descended from Olympus: his weekend was saved.
Fifty-six
Dan and Elma Pringle were in a place that had been beyond their reach or their worst imagining, but which they had reached nonetheless.
They sat side by side in the small office in the Royal Infirmary. Their surroundings might have been brighter and more modern than in its predecessor, the vast Victorian village where Ross had been born and where Elma's father had died, but they noticed not at all. Wherever they were, they would simply have held hands and stared at the wall.
The door behind them opened. Neither turned; they sat and waited as the consultant took his seat behind his desk. His name was Lewis Curry, and they had seen him before, on the day of their daughter's admission, when it had been his duty to tell them that the best they could hope for was that she would live the rest of her life in total helplessness, with no idea of who they were or of what she had been or might have become.
'Hello again,' Mr Curry said quietly. 'Have you been to see Ross?'
'We looked in on her before we came along here,' Elma replied. She had taken on the role of spokesperson. 'She looked very peaceful; it doesn't seem so bad when you see her asleep like that. Who knows? We're expecting her brother back from Hong Kong tomorrow. Maybe she'll just wake up and it'll be all right.'
The consultant looked down at his hands. 'No, Mrs Pringle. She will not awaken tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that. I wish I had grounds for offering you a different prognosis than at our last meeting, but I don't. The fact is that things have resolved themselves since then. Your daughter seems so peaceful for one reason: there is nothing going on inside her head, no dreams, no reaction to light or sounds around her, nothing at all. What little brain activity we were able to detect following her admission has disappeared; only the vital centres continue to function, because of the ventilator. In my opinion and in that of my colleagues, she is clinically dead.'
Elma was struck dumb; her mouth fell open. Dan's eyes flickered, then his head dropped, and his shoulders began to shake.
The consultant had seen it before, all too often. Even in the strongest, most confident and most intelligent of people, there was always an element of denial. It was worse for them in a way: when the truth eventually hit home, it hit harder. 'Would you like to see someone?' he offered. 'We have a hospital chaplain and he'll be pleased to talk with you.'
'No,' Elma whispered. 'We don't know him and he doesn't know us. Anyway, he couldn't change what you've told us. What happens next?' She asked for Dan's sake: they both knew the answer for they had discussed the question, but she felt that he needed to hear it from Mr Curry.
'At the moment,' he said, 'the machine is keeping her breathing, and her heart beating. You may continue that, or you may ask us to switch it off.'
'And if we did, what would happen?'
'If the brain is dead, the body must follow. If she can't sustain respiration on her own, her heart will stop.'
'So if we ask you to switch the machine off, we're taking a gamble that she'll be able to breathe on her own?'
'I wouldn't call it a gamble.'
'Can we have a few minutes alone?' Dan mumbled, from somewhere down in his chest.
'Of course.' The consultant rose and left the room.
The Pringles sat there, still hand in hand. Eventually Dan lifted his head and they gazed at each other. Neither spoke, but he gave a single tiny nod, then looked away.
Mr Curry returned a little later. Elma looked up and him and whispered, 'Yes.'
He led them along to the small one-bed room where Ross, their only daughter, lay; the electrodes they had seen earlier had been removed from her head, but the thick tube was still in her mouth. There was a chair on either side of the bed, as if she had been expecting them. Her father sat on her right, her mother on her left, and each took one of her hands in theirs. When they were settled, Lewis Curry reached across and withdrew the tube, then signalled to his registrar, who switched off the ventilator.
If they had looked up at the monitor at the bedside, Dan and Elma would have seen the steady peak of her heartbeat grow irregular, until it stopped and became a straight line on the screen.
Fifty-seven
However hard he tried not to, George Regan could not help thinking back to the previous Saturday afternoon. His son had pleaded with him to take him to Easter Road, but he had been tired, and in any event the prospect of Hibernian battling it out with Aberdeen did not excite him. So, in the end, he had given him his bus fare and his ticket money and had let him go on his own. He knew as he gazed idly and unseeing at the television that he would regret that piece of selfishness for the rest of his life.
Saturday was the worst day so far: it was the weekend, and the house should have been full of George junior, of his noise, his boisterousness, his vibrancy. He had never known such quiet. He closed his eyes, but that was worse: he imagined himself in the coffin with his boy, and the vision made him wrench himself from his chair.
He strode through to the kitchen: Jen was cooking, her usual res
ponse to times of crisis. It was her hobby, the thing that made her happiest. 'What are you doing?' he asked her.
'I'm making a beef casserole. It'll be more than we'll eat ourselves, but I'll put it in the freezer so that it'll be done if we have visitors. After that I thought I'd make a rhubarb crumble.'
'Fine, love, but before you do that can we get the hell out of here? This place is doing my head in.'
She looked at him, her eyes slightly heavy, the effect of her sedatives, he guessed. 'Mine too,' she admitted. 'Maybe things will be better after the funeral.' He knew that they would be worse, but he let her have her illusion. 'Where do you want to go?' she asked.
'Uptown?'
'In that snow?'
'It'll be okay. The main roads are cleared, and the traffic won't be as bad as usual.' He had a sudden, positive thought. 'I'll tell you what. Let's go to a travel agent and book a break for Christmas. I don't fancy spending it here, so let's go somewhere with a bit of sun.'
'Are you sure? He'll be with us, George, wherever we go.'
'Aye, but at least the wee bugger'll be warmer.'
She sighed. 'If that's what you want, let's do it. Give me a minute, while I change and put a face on.'
George knew that it would take more than a minute, but he smiled and nodded. As Jen went upstairs, he pulled on his rubber boots and went outside to scrape the snow off the driveway as best he could, and to start the car, so that the heater would be effective when they were ready to leave.
He had just cleared the last of the tarmac when he heard his mobile ring. He patted his waxed cloth jacket, looking for it in one of its deep pockets, until he remembered that he had left it on the kitchen table. He bustled back to the door, risking Jen's wrath by bringing snow into the house, as he grabbed the phone and pressed a key to receive. 'Yes,' he barked.
'Is that Detective Sergeant Regan?' a prim female voice asked.
'Yes, who's this?'
'It's Miss Bee, Betty Bee. If you remember, we met in the car park the other night, although I'm sure that I'm only one among many people you've spoken to.'
'I remember you. What can I do for you?'
'You can accept my apologies, for I believe they're owed to you. Normally I have excellent recollection; I don't know what came over me this time. I can only suppose that I took your question too literally. You asked me, if you recall, if I had seen anyone in the street after I drove out of the car park. I told you that I hadn't, and that remains the case. However, I've just remembered something else that might be of interest to you. I'm only sorry that it didn't come to me sooner.'
Out of the corner of his eye, Regan saw Jen, standing in the kitchen door. She was looking at him curiously, and seemed about to ask who was on the phone, until he put a finger to his lips. 'What was it?' he asked.
'It was a man. He wasn't in the street, though; he was in the car park itself. I was on the last of the down ramps, close to the barrier, when he came running up towards me. I really do mean running, as if someone was chasing him, only there wasn't anyone else, there was just him.'
'How close did he get to you?'
'Not close enough for me to be able to give you a detailed description, I'm afraid. I caught him in my headlights for an instant, but he swerved off to the side, into the dark.'
'Was it your impression that he didn't want to be recognised?'
'Mmm.' Betty Bee paused. 'That might have been the case.'
'Can you tell me anything about him, race, size, age, even if they're approximations? Could he have been a teenager?'
'Definitely not. His clothes were wrong for one thing: he wore a long overcoat, hardly a young person's garment. I only had the most fleeting glimpse of his face, but I don't think he was that young. He was a white man, dark-haired and solidly built. That's all I could swear to.'
'In the circumstances, that's pretty good. Thank you very much.'
'Does it help?' she asked.
'Honestly, I don't know. But it's interesting. How can I get back to you if I need to?'
She recited a mobile number; he wrote it down, then read it back to confirm that it was correct. 'Thanks again,' he said. He ended the call, staring out of the kitchen window as he pondered its potential significance.
'What was that?'
He looked across at Jen. 'Maybe nothing, but it's got my brain working again. If you don't mind, darling, I'm going to postpone that trip to the travel agent till later. First, I want to talk to my boss.'
Fifty-eight
Thanks to a sperm count that was much closer to twenty than the twenty million regarded as a marker of fertility, Mario McGuire knew that his chances of having children of his own were of the same order as those of a single tadpole trying to swim the Atlantic. Since he had made the discovery, early in his marriage to Maggie Rose, he had been philosophical about it, but he had taken particular pleasure in the company of Lauren and Spencer all through their childhood.
He was godfather to them both, and took his responsibilities seriously; their first communions had each brought a tear of pride to his eye.
The big detective's soft centre would have come as a surprise to the many villains he had terrorised over the years, but it was in evidence as he pulled his borrowed car into the park at the Midlothian Ski Centre. It had been known as Hillend when he had first brought the children there four years earlier, and he doubted that many of the citizens of the Edinburgh area were aware of the name change. When first he had looked out on to the morning, he had been concerned that it might have been closed because of the severity of the overnight snowfall, but a phone call had reassured him that it was operating normally.
Its beauty was that it had artificial runs, and was floodlit; it was in use all year round, apart from the two weeks in June when it was closed for maintenance. Both Lauren and Spencer had taken naturally to the sport, and after four years had reached expert status and had graduated to the most severe runs. They donned their ski-suits and boots eagerly; when they were all ready, Mario bought them each a strip of tickets, and they set off for the lift to the top of the slope. He let Lauren go in front, but kept Spencer beside him.
When he stepped out of his seat, he realised that they were almost alone. He felt himself frown, wondering if the sport was on the wane.
'Is this as good as Italy or Switzerland, Uncle Mario?' Spencer asked him. He had learned the basics of skiing in the Italian Alps, on holiday with his parents. He smiled as he thought of it: his dad, big Eamon, had been absolutely useless, but fortunately he had inherited his mother's eye and sense of balance.
'It's not the same thing at all,' he replied. 'What you have to remember is that this is an artificial slope. It's very good, and it's a far more reliable place to ski than any of the Scottish resorts, just because it doesn't need snow, and has the lights, but don't think for a minute that it's anywhere near as good as the Alps.'
'I want to be a downhill racer when I grow up,' the boy said.
'I thought you wanted to be a rugby star?'
'Maybe I'll be both.'
'I don't think you'll manage that, kid. If you play top-class rugby, they won't be keen on you skiing. There's too big a risk of injury.'
'Maybe I won't tell them. Will I be as good as you one day?'
'You're as good as me now. This slope is just about the best I can do these days, and you two handle it easily.'
'It's great to be on snow,' Lauren exclaimed, 'and not just the artificial.'
'So enjoy it, then.' He watched as she set off, gliding carefully but gracefully down the run. Spencer set off after her, and soon overtook her.
'Hey, no racing,' Mario yelled after him.
They made run after run, staying on the slope for over an hour, until there was hardly anybody else there, and their passes were almost used up. 'Two more runs each and that's it,' he said, as the slope's only other occupant, a bulky figure in a white suit and heavy goggles, a designer skier if ever Mario had seen one, made his way to the lift. He paused. 'Te
ll you what, you two go up on your own this time. I'll watch you from down here and see how your style looks. And remember, Spence, no racing!'
As he spoke, he was aware of the snow beginning to fall afresh. 'Get up there: if this gets any heavier, that'll be us for the day, for they'll close the slope.'
Handing two tickets to the attendant, the youngsters poled across to the lift, jumped on and headed for the top once more. When they were a little more than halfway up, Mario felt a pang of concern: the snow had thickened and they were out of his sight. He waited for a few minutes, his unreasonable anxiety growing, until finally he saw Lauren's red suit as she slalomed her way downhill.
She was smiling as she reached the foot, turning to look at her brother. But Spencer was nowhere to be seen. 'Where is he?' she asked. 'He was ready to come after me; he said he was going to race me anyway.' She raised her goggles and he could see the alarm in her eyes. 'Maybe he fell,' she ventured.
'Maybe,' Mario conceded. 'Let's go up and find him… although if the wee sod skis past us when we're on the lift I'll kick his arse for him.'
They made their way across to the lift, but it had stopped. 'Closed,' the attendant said, firmly. 'The snow's too bad.'
'Start it up,' the detective ordered. 'The boy's still up there.'
'He'll ski down; I watched him, he's good.'
Mario raised his goggles and looked him in the eye. 'I'm a police officer,' he told him, more calmly than he felt. 'Start it up and that's an order.'
The man caved in and switched on the continuous belt. Mario settled himself into a support, only to see Lauren jump on board beside him.
'Hey, you stay here,' he told her.
'Like hell I will,' she replied, sounding exactly like her mother.
They rode the lift peering through the ever-thickening snow, but seeing nothing. The journey seemed to take an eternity, but at last they reached the top. There was no sign of the boy.
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