Murray glanced at the page; it was an address. Catching up, he said, 'I won't mention your name.'
Beltane stopped and fumbled a silver flask out of a side pocket. 'It's not often I arrive at the door of a pub and walk away.' He unscrewed the cap, poured, held it out. 'Reinforcements.' Murray made a gesture of refusal.
'Have you always been teetotal?' Murray shook his head.
'No. Billy said something that made me think you weren't always a teetotaller. It's not a pleasure I could give up. I can't imagine life without it.'
Murray stood a step or two ahead of him on the path. He said impatiently, 'Can't you?'
Beltane laughed and began walking again, the flask open in his hand.
'Isn't it bloody marvellous,' he said, 'how we unburden ourselves to strangers?'
17 Suspect
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 16TH 1988
'You live in the past,' Mother said to Murray, whose head felt as if it had been split and packed in the seam with pieces of burning coal. Passing a long watch one night in an hotel outside Memphis, just before Seidman's wife turned the key in a car ignition and got herself blown away, a black guy from the Witness Programme, a dapper young lawyer offended by the South, had shouted how primitive wasn't the same as stupid; and ruffled, where normally he was as smooth as an FBI man, had given his African examples, all kinds of ways of making things with simple tools and devices – like hollowing out canoes with fire – stuttering as the fleshy red faces split into grins. Thinking of that, he suffered the image of a stripe of slow fire consuming the trunk of a great felled tree. The wood was hard, remarkably hard, but fire ate it out.
When he arrived, he had bent and kissed her and she had smiled and put her hand up to his face.
'Should you not still be in hospital?'
'I signed myself out. You couldn't get a decent cup of tea.'
'First Malcolm and now you. My two wounded sons.'
'Beds are scarce. They were glad to get rid of me.'
'I don't understand what's going on.'
'There's nothing to understand. Accidents go by twos.' No, he thought as he said that, accidents go by threes; drawing her with him through the tiny hall. 'Now that I'm here, I feel fine. I couldn't miss my Sunday visit.'
And it was true that settled across from her with a cup of tea, he fell into a disbelieving kind of peace, fingering its presence like stolen jewellery. The headache unclamped its bands.
Out of a drifting unguardedness, he told her, 'There was a dream I kept having while I was in hospital. I was in a wood like the one at Coirvreckan, only much bigger. It kept wakening me out of my sleep. It was a nuisance.'
'A wood at Coirvreckan,' Mother said dismissively, 'there wasn't any wood at Coirvreckan. It was a bare place.'
At once he knew she was right. It was a long time ago, and he had only been a child; yet it was a strange mistake. The land around that croft worked by his father's three unmarried brothers would have challenged even the imagination of a child to conjure up a wood. There were only a few trees and what there were all pulled to the side by the wind.
'This was a forest – even while I was walking I knew it would take me days to walk out of it. Then I'm lying on the ground and there are people looking down at me. They – want me to sing.'
'They would be out of luck there,' Mother said. 'You could never carry a tune.
'The dream isn't too bad until then. But then a man pushes his way through the crowd. He has rings that flash in the sun and he leans down and puts his hands over my eyes.' The rings, dazzling lights in the sun, and then darkness. 'At first, when he's pushing his way through – I see his hands first – I think I'll know him, but when he bends over I see he's got no face – not a proper one. It's a turnip lantern, like Halloween. The kid's stuff you get in dreams'
The white flesh of the turnip shone in silvery stripes where the tough outer integument had been hacked off. Gouged rectangles for the eyes, a triangular vacancy – a syphilitic gap – for the nose, the mouth an untidy gash. Instead of hair it wore a festal crown of black spikes, and the light from the candle inside shone out through the mouth and nose socket, but not through the eyes. The eyes were dark.
Mother said, looking at him attentively, 'I'm worried about Malcolm. He wasn't looking well last Sunday – when you weren't here.'
Murray waited a moment, took a deep breath, before saying carefully, 'That would be because I was in hospital.'
'He keeps things from me. He thinks I would worry, but I can tell when something is wrong.' She leaned forward, her blind seeming gaze accusing him. 'I would expect you to tell me.'
'He's old enough to tell you what he wants you to know.'
'You are the elder. A brother should care for a brother.'
'Oh, I'm in good shape for looking after him.' He raised a hand as if to touch the bruised envelope of flesh by his eye, but, realising what he was doing, did not complete the gesture. Embarrassed, he said, 'It must have been all that fresh air when I was young.'
If then any thought came to his mind, it was of his father's changes of duty from one lighthouse to another, continual changes, to edges where the land made a fist of rock and ended or across the sea to islands, every move exchanging one remoteness for another, heads turning as you walked into another class of strangers; but Mother, fixing her gaze on his lips, said, 'Your visits to your uncles did you little good. I know what kind of place you were in when you got that hurt. Calum and Angus are dead now, but not your father or any of his brothers would have stepped inside a place where drink was sold.'
That was so ridiculous, it made him want to laugh and he was surprised to hear it come out as a groan. 'That's not you. That's not you now, not anymore.' The headache reasserted itself with a sharp discomfort. 'When Malcolm brings his bottle of wine this afternoon, will you refuse a glass from it?'
That was childish. In her presence he regressed arms whirling shrinking down a tunnel eat me drink me...
'If your father could hear you now,' she cried, matching his anger.
'But he can't. He's dead. And whatever you think, it wasn't anything to do with me.'
He had been in Glasgow when it happened, the fifteen year old son who had run away from home. What blame could he have for that accident? A man falling from a high place, arms whirling, shrinking down the clear air to the grey rock.
They shared their dismay in silence until she explained it away to herself.
Gazing at him with an air of being offended, she said, 'You live in the past.'
And when Malcolm arrived with Irene, later than usual, he came with empty hands. There was no bottle of wine. 'I had to stop on the motorway for something to eat. You didn't forget I was away on a course? They put in an extra session this morning and it trailed on. Irene ate because she was tired of waiting. We were sure you would have eaten too.'
'No,' Murray said quietly. 'We waited.'
'We were sure you would have eaten, Mother,' Malcolm called. She came to the door of the kitchen carrying an oven glove. 'I didn't buy in anything special. But there's always plenty. I have a pound of mince and sausage rolls and six slices of Silverside. And York ham – a half pound and a quarter. Bits and pieces that have to be eaten up.'
There seemed no way of preventing her from buying unrealistic amounts of food. Wilfully, she bought and stored and had often to throw away meat, fruit, pastries, sweet biscuits, of which she ate surprising amounts.
When she turned back into the kitchen, the three of them were left to study one another. Malcolm cleared his throat. 'You don't look as bad as I'd expected. Irene said you were looking terrible.'
'It's worse than it looks,' Murray said, exactly reversing the sense of what he had intended to say. He squinted evilly at his brother out of the slant of his injury.
'I was sorry I couldn't get in to the hospital. Did you have many visitors?'
'Eddy Stewart.'
'I was sorry I couldn't manage in.'
'I had plenty to think about,' Mur
ray said. Irene laughed.
He was conscious of her in a way he did not want to be, every movement of her shoulders, every inclination of her head, a gesture in which she enclosed the palm of her right hand in the fingers of the left. Because he had wanted to look only at her since she came into the room, deliberately he had kept his eyes turned away as if they had quarrelled. Now when she laughed, she lifted her chin and stretched the white smoothness of her throat.
She said, 'Murray's going to find who killed John Merchant.'
'You know that's stupid,' Malcolm said.
'Look for then. Blair Heathers is paying him to do it, isn't that right, Murray?'
'Why would Heathers do that?' Malcolm asked blankly. 'What on earth could you find out?' Another idea struck him, 'was that what you were doing when you got attacked?'
'No,' Murray said. 'I was asking questions about Frances Fernie.' In the stillness, he could hear the clatter of a pot being put down in the kitchen. 'I couldn't understand why she'd claimed my brother was sleeping with her. That was before I knew she was a friend of Irene's, of course.'
'Mother doesn't know anything about this,' Malcolm said.
'We've kept it from her.'
'I can understand that. When I saw Frances Fernie, she told me it was you who introduced her to John Merchant. Was she telling the truth?'
'You're the one who's supposed to care about Mother,' Malcolm said bitterly. 'All right, all right. Why not? They hit it off.'
'Is that the new name for it – fixing your boss up with a whore?'
'For God's sake!' He let his voice rise, so that Murray, despite himself, glanced uneasily in the direction of the open kitchen door. 'You're unbelievable. People don't think that way about relationships any more. Sex isn't dirty any more.'
Irene laughed again. 'Oh, Murray,' she said. 'Your mouth's open. You're staring at him as if he'd gone mad.'
Taking heart from her support, the younger brother cried, 'You've spent too long spying on bedrooms in third-rate hotels. Too many divorce cases- you think the whole world's a dirty little keyhole.'
In a flush of pure rage, Murray gathered his weight under him to spring up. In the same instant, however, he saw the colour drain out of Malcolm's face. Settling back, he said in the tone of a man offering information, 'You're behind the times. People don't need that stuff for a divorce anymore.'
Although – that's human nature – for other reasons they still want to know; and will pay someone to pry...
Mother came out of the kitchen, taking off her apron. 'Did none of you hear the door?' They had put a light in the kitchen for her that flashed when the front door bell was rung. 'You're all so busy talking,' she scolded, smiling.
They heard her opening the door and then the deep note of a man's voice.
'It sounds as though she's letting someone in,' Malcolm said in surprise, and Murray twisted in his chair to see the tall figure of Ian Peerse precede Mother into the room. Behind him, he heard his brother blunder to his feet.
'I was explaining to Mrs Wilson,' Peerse said, studying them all from his great height, 'how sorry I am to disturb you on a Sunday.'
'What is it?' Malcolm sounded panic-stricken.
With an unhurried movement, Murray too stood up and came between Malcolm and his mother. Smiling at her. He said quietly to Peerse, 'Did you tell her you were a policeman? What makes you think you can get away with a stroke like his?'
Peerse bent courteously over the old woman. 'This is my first chance to see Murray since he came out of hospital. We're old friends, though he left the police and I stayed on.' And, with a glance at Murray. 'It was good of you to invite me in, Mrs Wilson.'
'A friend of Murray 's?' She was bewildered. 'I thought you said you were Malcolm's friend. I don't hear as well as I used to.'
It was unprecedented for her to admit her deafness.
'You can see I'm fine,' Murray said. 'Thanks for looking in.' He made a move as if to walk back with Peerse into the hall.
'We were just going to sit down at the table,' Mother said. 'Would Mr Peerse not like to join us?'
'No –' Murray began.
'If it wasn't too much trouble? I think Murray feels it might be too much for you.'
'There's plenty,' Mother said firmly. 'I always make sure there's plenty of food in the house. I'm always being told it's wasteful.' She glanced indignantly at Murray. 'But there you are, you see. It means you never have to worry if someone comes in unexpectedly.'
'It seems as if you're joining us for dinner,' Irene said, smiling up at Peerse. 'Since you're an old friend of Murray's, you can sit here opposite him. I'll set another place, shall I, Mum Wilson?'
Settled at the table, Malcolm said, 'My mother doesn't know – about what happened last week. She doesn't know about Frances Fernie – or – any of that. We've kept it from her.' He spoke just too softly for her to hear.
'You surprise me,' Peerse said, taking the cue for the pitch of his voice with a cruel exactness. 'I don't see how you'll be able to keep that up.'
Mother had refused Irene's help in bringing food. Murray saw her hesitate now at the kitchen door, and that her eyes were fixed on Peerse's mouth with a painful attentiveness.
'My mother's deaf,' he said softly, 'she's not senile. She's trying to find out what's wrong.'
As they ate, however, Peerse began to question Malcolm, choosing his moment and always in that maddeningly exact lowered tone.
'I don't swallow,' he said, chewing with neat pursed lips and, in fact, visibly passing the bolus down the long passage of his throat. 'I don't go at all for the story that you were with the Fernie woman.'
'It's not the kind of thing you tell lies about,' Malcolm said bitterly.
'Don't answer him,' Murray warned. 'This isn't official. He has no right to be here.'
'It's not the kind of thing a man would want his wife to know about,' Irene offered, with the air of a woman making a point on her husband's behalf.
'So why didn't he deny being there?' Peerse asked, very reasonable in his turn.
'Shut up,' Murray said in a harsh whisper. 'Leave it!'
At which Peerse raised his voice to compliment Mother as she sat down again. 'That was very nice, I enjoyed it. We were talking about the case I'm working on just now. I'm afraid it's murder – not the best subject for Sunday dinner.'
'Oh, no,' Mother said, 'I'm not a great reader, but I like watching the television. There's a lot of good programmes – and I like the detective ones.'
'This case of mine was about an alibi,' Peerse said, taking a cream cake from the plate she had set down and dividing it neatly in half. Somehow Murray had never thought of him as having a sweet tooth. 'A man was found dead in the street at five o'clock in the morning. From other evidence, we knew he must have been left there at some time after midnight, and the doctor's best guess was that he'd been killed around nine o'clock that same evening.'
Mother was listening with a frown of concentration. 'Wait now,' she said. 'Would that man be the man Malcolm worked for? The one who was killed – by that woman, Irene, the one who killed the other man?'
'I think you're right, Mum Wilson,' Irene said. She laid her hand on Malcolm's arm. 'I can't imagine who else it could be.'
'John Merchant,' Peerse confirmed. He was silent for a moment and certain secretive little pouchings of his upper lip suggested he was licking cream from his front teeth while keeping his mouth decorously shut. 'He had a mistress. I was the one who had found out she existed, and so I went to see her. Talking to her, I knew there was something wrong. I have an instinct; she couldn't hide it from me.'
'You felt it was her that did it?' Mother asked. With this topic, it seemed all her suspicious uneasiness had vanished. Remembering how she enjoyed the crime series on television, Murray could have sworn that her eyes had brightened. With something to make her alert, she seemed younger; and it came to him with a pang how featureless her life must be. 'She was the one that killed him!'
'It seems no
t,' Peerse said, nodding down at her, 'since she has this wonderful alibi. Merchant wasn't the only man she went to bed with – there's this other one who claims he came to her room at eleven that same night and stayed with her until the next morning.'
'Wait, wait, but,' Mother cried, 'and even supposing that's true, she still could have killed him, couldn't she? For I'm sure you said a minute ago that Mr Merchant was murdered about nine o'clock. Well, that's before this other man was there at all.'
'But it's just the time when somebody must have taken the body and left it in the street.' Peerse stretched out his hand, hesitated, took another of the flaky pastries full of cream. 'I know I shouldn't. It's greed.'
'There's not a pick on you. You're lucky. You can eat as much as you want to,' Mother said impatiently. 'Maybe there was two of them, and the other one took the body away.'
Peerse sighed. 'There's a general opinion that's not likely. This is the second murder, you see, and both of them were... messy. It's natural to assume we're dealing with a madman. And the mad don't work in pairs. That's what they tell me – and it makes sense.'
'But you have a hunch,' Mother said, relishing the word.
Before he could answer, Irene intervened. 'Madman? I thought it was a woman. Murray's friend Billy Shanks calls her Jill the Ripper.'
'Journalists,' Peerse said, offering just the single word as if the disdain he put into it were a sufficient explanation; but then inconsistently added, 'Physically, there's no reason why it shouldn't be a woman. It doesn't take strength, not with the right knife. With a butcher's knife properly sharpened, meat falls apart. The first blow causes shock – and there's a possibility that in Merchant's case it actually paralysed him without killing him, which let them do other things to him before he died. That may mean specialist knowledge, or perhaps it was nothing more than luck.'
'Luck?' Malcolm exclaimed incredulously. 'For God's sake!'
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