by Ken McClure
EIGHT
MacLean’s breathing started to even out; he could think clearly again. The spectre of Carrie’s damaged face was still uppermost in his mind. Of all the hellish quirks of fate it had to be an innocent child who got hurt while he himself remained unscathed. Tansy would recover but Carrie? That was another matter. And even if she did, what would she look like?
It started to rain and MacLean switched on the wipers briefly to clear the screen. He had parked in a quiet street in a residential district on the south side of the city. He could not sit there much longer before unseen eyes behind lace curtains started to entertain notions of informing the police that an uninvited stranger was unpleasantly close to their possessions. He started the engine and moved off slowly, still trying to formulate a list of priorities.
With a bit of luck Der Amboss were going to think that Sean MacLean had died in the fire, at least until their own man failed to return. Even then it might take them long enough to work out what had really happened, provided, of course, that he himself remained out of sight. First he would have to get rid of the car, somewhere where it wouldn’t be found for a long time, preferably never. Next he would need somewhere to stay and that meant money.
MacLean stopped the car again and brought out his wallet. It contained thirty-five pounds. He would need more than that. He remembered the bill- fold he had removed from the pockets of the bomber and searched through his haversack to find it. It contained a hundred and sixty pounds in sterling and five hundred US dollars. That would do for the moment. He looked for ID in the back of the billfold but found none. There had been a leather key holder in the man’s pockets however. MacLean opened the zip and found two Yale type keys. The trademarks on them said that they were of French or maybe Swiss/French origin. There were no clues to identity. He wondered who would be waiting behind the door they opened. A wife? A girlfriend? They would be waiting for a man who would most definitely not be coming home.
MacLean headed out of the city. There were a number of secluded small lochs to the south of Edinburgh, which he knew well enough from the fishing trips of his youth. The plan was now to get rid of the car in one of them. He decided on one with a long track leading away from the road to the waters’ edge. He wanted to be out of sight of the main road in case stray headlights should pick him out.
Choosing this particular loch left MacLean with one major problem to overcome and that was the water-keepers cottage. To reach the loch he had to pass it. In his favour was the fact that the house nestled near the foot of a steep hill. He wouldn’t need to have the engine running to pass it. When he reached the top of the hill leading down to the cottage, he turned off the ignition and the lights and waited for a few moments to let his eyes become accustomed to the gloom then he started to free-wheel down slowly.
His heart was in his mouth as he passed the dark windows of the cottage. The curtains were closed and an old van was parked in front of it. That would help to muffle any sound as he passed. MacLean held the Granada’s momentum in check, praying that the brakes would not squeal or the tyres crunch loudly on gravel. He drifted slowly past and eased his foot off the brake pedal to let the car to run a little more freely. As soon as he had rounded the bend at the foot of the hill he turned the ignition on again, pushed the stick into third gear and took his foot gently off the clutch. The car slipped smoothly into drive.
MacLean followed the perimeter road until he came to the gate he was looking for. He knew that beyond it was a grassy bank about fifteen metres above the surface of the loch. The main attraction was that there was no gently shelving bank here. The water went straight down for forty metres. He parked the car as near the edge as he dared and got out to take a look below. There were no obvious obstacles that he could see in what moonlight there was so he let off the hand-brake and heaved the car over the edge. For one awful moment he thought that it was going to stick, with the ground acting as a fulcrum under its middle but with a little persuasion to the rear bumper, the Ford tipped up and plunged down into the water.
Clouds passed over the moon and MacLean had to wait until it slid out again before he could see that the car was floating. It bobbed gently up and down on its nose. ‘Sink!’ he hissed. ‘For God’s sake, sink!’
Gradually, the water started to bubble and the car stopped bobbing. Very slowly and with great dignity it slipped beneath the surface. There was a brief boiling on the surface as it disappeared then everything was calm again.
MacLean stood up and came to terms with the fact that he was ten miles from the city and had no transport. His clothes were filthy. He was covered from head to foot in soot and ash and mud and he felt as if he had just run a marathon. He looked up at the sky and felt the first drops of rain on his face. All he needed but the truth was that discomfort and pain didn’t matter. They were a welcome diversion from what was going on in his head.
He was close to exhaustion by the time he reached the city. The rain had done much to clean the soot and mud off him but cold and wet had robbed him of what little energy he had left and he was dog-tired. It was the morning rush hour. People were scurrying past but the heavy rain ensured that no one paid him any close attention. He managed to get on to a crowded bus heading towards the centre and got off when he saw the sign for the Royal Commonwealth Pool. It had given him an idea but first he would need to do something about his clothes.
He knew there was a branch of a large chain store in one of the neighbouring streets but came across an Army and Navy store before he reached it and decided it was a better option.
‘Get caught in the rain?’ asked the assistant.
MacLean nodded and attempted a smile in reply. He listed what he wanted and left the shop carrying two plastic bags. He made his way to the Commonwealth Pool and asked for a ticket to the Sauna Suite.
‘Just off the night shift?’ asked the attendant.
MacLean nodded.
MacLean wanted to tear off his filthy, wet clothes but no longer had the energy. He had to take his time and do it slowly. The chrome tap below the showerhead seemed like the key to paradise. He turned it on and let the warm water cascade over him, soothing away the agony of the past few hours. He appeared to be the first customer of the day and entered one of the three Sauna cabins to spread out his towel and lie down on the wooden slat bench. The dry heat invaded his limbs like a healing balm.
When he’d had enough, MacLean showered and wrapped himself in the sheet he had been given. He settled down in one of the loungers in the recovery area and fell asleep. He was still sleeping some three hours later when the attendant did his rounds. By rights, he should have woken the sleeping man to tell him his time was up but the place wasn’t busy; he let him be.
It was three in the afternoon when MacLean finally woke. He bought some shampoo and a disposable razor from the attendant who made a point of telling him how he had disobeyed the rules to let him sleep on. MacLean was suitably grateful. He shaved, dressed and put his old clothes into one of the plastic bags. Tipping the attendant the price of a beer he left feeling ravenously hungry.
There was a pub across the road from the pool. MacLean dumped his old clothes in a convenient trash bucket and made for it. He ordered a beer and a couple of sandwiches left over from lunchtime. He saw that the barman had a first edition of the Edinburgh Evening News and asked if he might take a look. The barman slid it towards him. The story had been too late for the morning papers but here it was splashed over the front page.
‘Bad business that,’ said the barman.
There was a photograph of the smouldering remains of the white bungalow. ‘Man Dies in City Fire Tragedy’, said the headline. MacLean could feel his heart thumping as he read the story. The man, thought to have been a Mr Dan Morrison, believed to have been lodging with Mrs Tania Nielsen and her daughter Carol, had perished in the flames after a mystery explosion tore through the quiet bungalow by the Union Canal. Gas Board officials were investigating the cause of the explosion. Mrs Nielsen’
s daughter was said by hospital authorities to be critical while she herself was still in a state of deep shock. It was the second tragedy to have befallen her in recent times. Only last year her husband had been found dead while working on his car. Police had no comment to make at this stage.
‘Bloody Gas Board,’ said the barman.’
MacLean returned the newspaper and left.
The sky was beginning to cloud over; it would start raining again soon. MacLean started looking for lodgings in the area he was in. It was convenient and it was sensible because of the proximity of the university. This made it the heart of bed-sitter land, home to a large, ever mobile and largely anonymous population.
He walked down the main road looking at the signs in windows of the various houses.
MacLean found it hard to put a label on the locality. Normally it was possible to generalise about an area of the city. It was either upmarket or down, decaying or recovering. But here, there seemed to be such a mix that no such generalisation was possible. There were dark, brooding villas that hadn’t seen a lick of paint for years and there were bright, renovated properties which flaunted their refurbishment. There was a girls’ private school and a two star hotel advertising Friday night dinner dances.
MacLean passed an old folks’ home and shuddered at the name. He could see the inmates seated round the walls of a large ground-floor room, sitting in high-back chairs, gazing unseeingly at a television whose back took up pride of place in the bay window. Sunset Valley? The thought of it was enough to make you shuffle off your mortal coil without further ado, thought MacLean. He stopped at a sign that advertised ‘Quiet Rooms to Let’. It was the word ‘quiet’ that made him ‘enquire within’.
The landlord was a west highlander with a soft accent and a slowness of speech that MacLean could have found irritating if conversation were to be prolonged. It was his intention that it shouldn’t.
After a monologue on the rules of the house and a look at a couple of the rooms available, the man said, ‘You’re a bit old for a student I’m thinking.’
‘I’m a visiting lecturer,’ lied MacLean. ‘Chemistry.’
‘Now that’s very interesting… ‘
‘Would you like some payment in advance?’ asked MacLean swiftly.
‘A week if you please.’
MacLean counted out the money and the man smiled and gave MacLean his key. ‘I’m Mr MacLeod, I live just there.’ He pointed to a ground-floor door. ‘Let me know if there’s anything you require.’
MacLean lay down on the bed and listened to the receding footsteps. A downstairs door closed and there was silence. The room was cold and the ceiling blank and featureless, a good thing to concentrate on while he considered what to do next. Until yesterday, he believed that he had plumbed the greatest depths of despair that were possible for any man. Now he knew different. He was personally responsible for what had happened to Carrie and the thought brought such anguish to him that his body developed a slight tremor. He clenched his fists to stop the shaking but that only worked until he relaxed them again. He had to find out how Carrie was but first he had to know if Tansy had recovered from shock.
He wondered if Tansy would remember much about what had happened. She had already been in shock when he found her kneeling on the grass in the garden. The chances were that she had been blown out of the house by the explosion. It was possible that she might not have registered much happening around her after that. She might even think that he really had died in the fire.
For a moment MacLean considered that it might be a good idea to let her continue to believe it and take the chance to disappear from her life altogether but he couldn’t do that. It was too late. The worst had already happened and Tansy and Carrie meant too much to him. He would call the hospital.
He feared that they wouldn’t tell him much if he admitted he wasn’t a relative. Things would not be that much better if he said that he was, but at least he should be able to discover whether or not Carrie was still alive.
MacLean could see that the rain had started again as he waited for his call to be transferred to the relevant ward.
‘Are you a relative?’ asked the nurse.
‘Mrs Nielsen’s brother.’
‘Her brother?’
‘Victor Nielsen. I’ve just arrived back from the United States.’ MacLean remembered that Carrie had spoken of an uncle Victor and Tansy had added that he worked in the USA.
‘Mrs Nielsen is improving,’ said the sister. ‘She has no serious injuries and she will probably be released in a day or so.’
‘And her daughter?’ asked MacLean, feeling sweat break out on his brow.
‘Carol’s condition is serious but stable. She’s been transferred to a burns unit at another hospital.’
‘Has my sister been told?’ asked MacLean.
‘Not yet,’ replied the nurse.
‘Can I see her?’
The nurse hesitated and said, ‘I really don’t thing that’s a good idea at the moment. Mrs Nielsen is heavily sedated. Might be as well to give it a day or two.’
‘I’d like to leave my phone number for her if she improves before then. Is that all right?’
‘Of course. When she’s well enough I’ll tell her you called.’
MacLean put down the phone. At least Carrie was alive.
On Thursday evening MacLean was lying along his bed, fully clothed and with a glass of whisky in his hand. He had read nearly every word in the evening paper and was now reduced to reading the business section. He was looking at the share prices of pharmaceutical companies when the phone rang.
‘Victor?’ said Tansy’s voice uncertainly.
MacLean felt his throat tighten. The pause seemed to go on and on before he could summon the courage to say, ‘Tansy, it’s not Victor. It’s me… Sean.’
‘Sean!’ exclaimed Tansy with a sob in her voice. ‘They told me you were dead! The papers…’ A torrent of disjointed words flowed from her. ‘They told me but I knew… I knew from the dreams… You pulled Carrie from the flames… I saw you… You weren’t in the house. Oh Sean!’ She broke into more sobbing.
MacLean did his best to soothe her until she began to calm down.
‘But if you didn’t die in the fire. Who did?’ said Tansy.
‘Lehman Steiner’s man. They found me, Tansy. They sent a man to fire bomb the house. It was his body they found.’
There was a long pause before Tansy asked, ‘Where have you been Sean? Why didn’t you come to the hospital?’
MacLean heard the note of accusation in her voice. He said, ‘It was best to let people think it was me who died in the fire. Lehman Steiner will see the newspaper reports. They’ll stop looking for me and we can be free of them forever, the three of us.’
MacLean hoped to prompt Tansy into saying something about Carrie but she didn’t. He had to ask, ‘Have you seen Carrie since the fire?’
‘No, they transferred her to another hospital but she’s out of danger, thank God.’
MacLean knew from Tansy’s voice that the hospital hadn’t told her the full story. ‘Did they tell you why they were transferring her?’ he asked.
‘No,’ replied Tansy innocently. ‘I supposed they were taking her to the children’s hospital. Why?’
MacLean screwed his eyes tight shut and said, ‘They’ve taken her to a serious burns unit Tansy.’
‘Oh my God!.. Oh God no! Not her face!’
MacLean heard a hysterical note creep into Tansy’s voice. The distance between them was like iron bars. It would have been so much better to be able to hold and comfort her. ‘It’s early days yet,’ he said. ‘It’ll take a couple of weeks to assess the damage properly.’
‘You must know!’ accused Tansy. ‘You saw her when you brought her out of the fire.’
‘It was dark and she was covered in soot. I couldn’t really tell,’ said MacLean.
Tansy calmed down and MacLean did his best to reassure her in spite of his own misgivings. He gave he
r his address and asked her to come there as soon as she was discharged from the hospital. He would warn the landlord that his wife would be joining him this weekend.
In the event Tansy arrived at ten-thirty next morning. There was an awkward moment when she and MacLean faced each other in the hallway for the first time since the fire but it passed when MacLean took her into his arms and they held each other tightly. The tears ran freely down Tansy’s face. ‘When they told me you were dead I just wanted to die myself,’ she whispered.
MacLean wiped away her tears and started to lead her upstairs with his arm round her shoulders. He noticed his landlord had his door ajar and was watching them. ‘Don’t see each other much then?’ he asked.
MacLean pretended he hadn’t heard.
Tansy asked the questions and MacLean filled in the blanks in her memory.
‘So Vernay told them where we stayed?’ said Tansy.
‘They tortured him,’ said MacLean, remembering the awful scene in Vernay’s apartment.
Tansy shook her head and said in exasperation, ‘It was all going so well. We were so happy, the three of us together and now…’ Her expression changed to one of deep sorrow. She asked sadly, ‘Do you think we’ll ever be able to get it back, Sean?’
‘If we want it enough,’ said MacLean softly. ‘We can do it.’
His words seemed to give Tansy strength. She started thinking positively. ‘We could rebuild the bungalow with the insurance money,’ she said and then almost immediately realised why that was not a good idea. ‘No,’ she said distantly, ‘It would have to be somewhere else. No matter, as long as the three of us are together.’
The mention of the three of them brought Carrie into the conversation again. Tansy started to probe MacLean about Carrie’s chances of a complete recovery. She asked how long the treatment would take. Would there be much pain? Would she miss much schooling? MacLean fended off the questions saying that there was no way he could answer them without seeing Carrie.
