My brother looked confused.
‘I said: isn’t that right, Malky?’
He nodded, his mind clearly on more pressing matters. ‘I need a word, Robbie.’ He pulled me aside. ‘It’s Tina. We got to the toilets no problem and I… you know... let her get on with it, but when she came out she wouldn’t put her pants back on. She said they were dirty.’
‘Dirty?’
‘Aye, you know, dirty but not with dirt.’
‘So where are they?’
‘I told her to leave them.’
‘Why didn’t you just put them in a carrier bag and stick them in your pocket or something.’
‘I wasn’t touching them.’
‘She’s a child. They’re child’s pants. You’ve got to expect a few skid marks.’
‘We’re not talking skid marks, Robbie, we’re talking handbrake turns here, and I don’t know how well things have been, you know… tidied up down there. I wasn’t wanting involved. We’ll need to get her home for a bath.’
Tina took hold of my hand. ‘I’m cold, Dad, and I’ve got a sore tummy.’
A roar from the home support. The wee woman in the furry hood bounced up and down clapping her hands as the boy with the yellow captain’s band wheeled away from the penalty box, windmilling an arm, his teammates chasing him in celebratory mode.
‘Told you,’ Malky said. ‘Never fails.’
I hadn’t seen the goal being scored and so couldn’t say if, immediately before the ball hit the back of the net, a member of the opposition had sustained a foot injury. The losing team didn’t seem to be complaining, just a lot of heads being held in hands, nothing unusual. Except for one thing. On the far side, amongst the forest of away-support umbrellas, a solitary arm was raised and a clenched fist pumped the air, once, twice, before being hastily withdrawn.
‘If I’m not back in five minutes, take Tina home,’ I told Malky. ‘Tell Dad about her little accident. He’ll know what to do.’
As the ref blew for the restart, I was already walking briskly down the side of the park. Billy must have noticed. I could see his bulky frame peeling from the away support and walking equally briskly in the opposite direction.
I broke into a jog, slipping and sliding in the mud. Each step threatened to send me sprawling. I didn’t know what Billy had on his feet, but he was covering the ground very quickly for such a big man. By the time I’d rounded the corner flag and was running behind the goals, he was a good fifty yards ahead and increasing his lead with every slippery step. Where was he running to? On our left there was a twenty-foot-high wire fence, to the right a steep embankment and the rugby fields below. To make it to the main road on the far side, he would have to run the length of two football pitches. Could he keep up this pace? I was determined to find out. Extending my stride, planting one foot in front of the next, I ploughed on until in one particularly boggy patch I left a shoe behind. When my stocking foot came down in front of me, my heel skidded on the wet grass. I toppled backwards, arms flailing trying in vain to regain my balance. The fall knocked the wind out of me. I managed to climb to my knees, head bowed and staring at the sodden turf, fighting for a breath. By the time I’d staggered to my feet and recovered my shoe, Billy had an unassailable lead. He could afford to slow down and walk the rest of the way. All I could do was about turn and hope that I could catch Malky before he set off for home.
‘What was all that?’ Malky asked, when I’d re-joined him. Like most of those present, his eyes were off the football match and onto the nutter who’d gone for a cross-country run in a pair of casual shoes. ‘Look at you. Don’t think you’re getting in my car in that state. Get yourself cleaned up.’ He marched off as the final whistle blew.
Tina laughed in a worried kind of a way. ‘You’re all muddy, Dad.’
‘I know, Tina,’ I said. ‘Let’s go home.’
As I reached down for her hand, someone came from behind to take hold of my other arm in a firm grip. ‘You promise you’ll have your brother send one of the big teams to watch my boy?’
I looked down at an earnest face, bright and shiny and protruding from a ring of faux fur.
‘Promise?’
I nodded.
‘Then, here.’ The woman who had once had the sheer temerity and strong bones to conceive a child with Big Billy Paris, pressed a piece of paper into my hand, then went off in search of her lump of a laddie to tell him the good news. I unfolded the paper. Three letters: TAS, and the name of a place I’d never heard of: St Edzell Bay. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.
10
Situated on the east coast, south of Aberdeen, north of Dundee, the private airport at St Edzell Bay was a former RAF base. Cinderella to the ugly sisters at Lossiemouth and Leuchars, it had been decommissioned shortly after World War Two and most of the buildings didn’t look like they’d been given a lick of paint since. As I drove down the mile-long access road, a two-seater light aircraft dropped from a low winter sun, landed with a skip and a hop and taxied along the runway towards a series of misshapen hangars between which a control tower protruded like a mushroom from a lawn after a shower of rain. Beyond that a wide stretch of deserted beach dissolved into the North Sea, the top of the waves blowing smoke. Not the day I’d have chosen for a flying lesson. Not that there was any day I’d have chosen for a flying lesson.
‘He’s not here,’ the security guard said, leaning an elbow out of the window of a hut that was partly wood, but mostly glass.
‘He did used to work here, though?’
The guard thought about that for a moment. ‘Who’s asking?’
‘His lawyer.’ I reached up to the window and handed him a business card. He studied it, lips moving silently as he read.
‘It’s urgent that I speak to Billy,’ I said.
He tossed the card aside. ‘Step out of the car, please.’
I alighted. The guard came down from the glass box and met me on the opposite side of a red and white striped barrier. He was so overweight I couldn’t see how anyone could miss him, but, just in case, he had on a hi-vis fluorescent yellow bib, over a navy boiler suit. A baseball cap with the initials TAS embroidered across the front was pulled down to the rim of his mirrored sunglasses.
‘This isn’t about that fishing gear, is it?’ he asked, way too casually, taking a quick look around. He jerked a thumb at a stack of newish looking fibre-glass rods that were propped up against the far side of the hut. ‘Billy told me the stuff was legit. Said he found it in a skip, and—’
‘I don’t know anything about fishing tackle. I’m just looking for Billy.’
The features under the peak of the baseball cap relaxed. Two podgy fingers pinched a leg of the sunglasses and pulled them from his face. He stuffed the frames into a breast pocket of his all-in-one, folded his arms and rested them on the barrier. ‘Then it’s about the...’ He cocked his head at some indistinguishable locus somewhere off to his rear and right. ‘You know...?’
I didn’t.
‘The crash,’ he whispered, followed by another shifty look about. ‘Are they trying to pin that on Billy?’
‘Should they be?’
The guard considered that question like it hadn’t previously occurred to him. ‘Well, he left in a bit of a hurry, didn’t he?’
I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about, but made a show of mulling over the question. ‘I suppose so,’ seemed a viable enough answer.
‘And he’s... you know...’
‘What?’
‘Well he’s not exactly a choirboy, is he?’ The guard pushed himself off the barrier. ‘I’m not holding anything against him. Served his time. Just ’cause he’s been inside doesn’t make him a bad person. Well, I suppose it does, but—’
‘When was the crash again?’ I asked. ‘I forget the exact date.’
‘Thirtieth November.’
‘Oh, yeah. That’s right, St Andrew’s day,’ I said, hoping to sound like I knew what I was talking about. ‘And who was it that cras
hed?’
He stiffened, replaced his sunglasses and gave the peak of his cap a tug. ‘What is this? Who are you?’ he demanded, arms out by his side as though if at that moment he’d had a gun to go with his mirrored shades he’d have drawn it.
‘Don’t steam up your specs,’ I said. ‘I’m not here about the crash. I’m just looking for Billy.’
‘Aye, so you’ve said already. You’re not the first. I’ve had them all up here. Cops, Health and Safety, Air Accident Investigation. All wondering where Billy boy has gone.’
‘Cops ask you about the fishing gear — yet?’ It was a threat. Admittedly not a very good one. Whatever, it was a threat that sailed past the fat man like a military stealth drone over a radar station.
‘I’ll tell you what I told them,’ he said. ‘Billy’s all right and I’m saying nothing that’s going to stick him in.’
‘Good for you.’ If threats didn’t work perhaps the old Robbie Munro charm would. ‘I can see you’re a pal of Billy’s and you don’t want to get him into any trouble. I’ll tell him that when I see him. But how about you answer me just one question?’ Before he could form an objection I continued. ‘Do you know where Billy is?’
He thought that over. ‘No,’ he said at last with a decisive shake of the head. He may have had the look of someone who could be lured anywhere by a biscuit on string, but he wasn’t going to be led into any rash statements.
‘Okay. How about you tell me a little about the set-up here? I take it you’re head of security.’
He straightened when I said that, gave the hem of the hi-vis vest a little tug, and then slouched. ‘No, that’s Oleg. I’m just one of the operatives.’
‘What was Bill’s job here?’
He scratched the back of his head. ‘What did Billy do? Billy Paris?’ he said, as though I’d just sprung the topic of my missing client upon him. ‘Billy was... I don’t know what you’d call him. Janitor, handyman. Wasn’t supposed to do security because of his record, except sometimes he’d fill in if one of the boys was off or wanted away early. The rest of the time... Hold on. That’s two questions. You said you only had one question and now you’re asking more.’
I tried a different approach.
‘Who’s the boss around here? Who owns this place?’ I waved my arms around so that he might better understand.
He pointed to his hat and each of the three embroidered letters in turn. ‘Thorn Aero Systems. Who do you think is the boss?’
Thorn? It could only be Sir Philip Thorn. He of the big fat cheque. The cheque that was contingent upon my finding Billy Paris.
‘And Sir Philip isn’t here, before you ask.’
I was quite glad about that. It wouldn’t have looked too good if I’d been shown into the boss’s office and started firing questions at him about the whereabouts of the very man he was prepared to pay me handsomely to find. Not the sort of thing to instil client/solicitor confidence.
‘What about this Oleg guy?’ I asked.
‘Oleg works days. Not like the rest of us. Guess who’s pulled nightshift on Christmas Eve? And nightshift the day before.’ He stabbed himself in the orange tabard with a finger. ‘That’s my Friday and Saturday night both buggered.’
‘Can I speak to him?’
‘He’s not on duty.’
‘I thought you said he worked days?’
‘Aye,’ but not Mon-days. He doesn’t like them. So it looks like you’ve wasted your time.’
Maybe it did to him, but I wasn’t prepared to accept that I’d driven one hundred miles for nothing. I was sure there was still some helpful information on Billy that could be gleaned. I just needed an opening.
Pretending to leave, I did a double-take at the fishing rods propped against the glass hut as I walked away. ‘Where do you fish about here?’
‘In the sea,’ the security guard said. ‘Where do you think?’
I laughed at my own stupidity. ‘Good choice. I hear tell there’s plenty of fish in it.’
He cracked a grin. ‘So they say. I’ve been trying for weeks and never caught a thing.’
I didn’t know much about the sport of angling. One summer holiday when we were boys, my dad had taken Malky and me on a sea fishing excursion and we’d caught heaps of mackerel. Some years later I’d had a go at fly-fishing on Linlithgow Loch. That was when I realised that hurling hundreds of yards of clothesline with some feathers tied to the end into a gale force wind, while trying to not capsize a rowing boat, was an over-rated past-time, as well the most ineffectual way of catching fish ever invented. Then again, perhaps it was supposed to be difficult. Otherwise it seemed unsporting for grown men to spend so much time, money and effort trying to outsmart a creature with a brain the size of a peanut. Maybe with me in charge the contest would be more evenly matched. In any event, it seemed I’d found my way in. Once I was off the subject of Billy Paris and onto that of impaling silver darlings on silver hooks, I had the security guard’s undivided attention. All I need do was keep feeding a line, let him swallow the bait and soon he’d happily swim into my net.
11
‘You’ll catch nothing with bread,’ I said, looking into a plastic tub filled with stale crusts. We were perched on a rocky outcrop jutting out from the beach, with the tide on the turn and a merciless wind coming straight at us. A spray of surf hit me in the face like a handful of hurled carpet tacks. ‘You see that?’ I yelled, pointing to the North Sea with one hand, wiping my face with the other. ‘It’s full of things trying to eat each other.’ I spat out the taste of salt. ‘They’re looking for meat. They’re not making sandwiches.’
The man in the hi-vis vest had a name, Hugh, or Homer to his friends, a group to which I was now affiliated thanks to my self-professed and hugely exaggerated knowledge of fishing. I suspected my new friend’s nickname had more to do with the Simpsons TV show than a love for the poetry of Ancient Greece. I’d agreed to spend his lunch hour presenting a tutorial on the fine art of angling.
It was while I’d been making a show of inspecting the rods and other fishing tackle, recently acquired at a knock-down price from my missing client, that I’d learned Homer had worked security at the airport for five years, having been kept on when it was acquired by Philip Thorn eighteen months previously. More innocent questions revealed that the airport’s security team consisted of nine personnel operating on a complicated rota system, with three on duty at any time around the clock. The airport was only in use during daylight hours. It ran helicopter tourist trips, trained would-be aviators and was the headquarters for a local flying club. The security team’s hours were long and tedious. One watched a bank of CCTV monitors from within the main building, while the other two alternated between manning the gatehouse and making regular perimeter patrols, something which, of late, Homer had been contriving to do with a fishing rod in his hand. So far he’d caught nothing but seaweed.
‘The best equipment is no good unless you use the right bait,’ I said, jumping along the rocks and back onto the beach, shouting at him through the wind. Lugworm casts were scattered everywhere across a seemingly endless stretch of sand. ‘You see these squiggly things? Get yourself a spade. Dig right down deep under each one and you’ll find a big ugly worm. Best bait in the world. Keep them in a bucket of sand and they’ll be happy as Larry.’ Happy until he skewered them on a steel hook and threw them into the waves. Not a good way to go, even if you were an invertebrate.
With that piece of advice I’d more or less exhausted my knowledge of angling. Homer was keen to start digging right away. I preferred to view today as more of a theory session. Best not to get bogged down with the practical side of things, like actually fishing. Thankfully, the threat of a sudden downpour put an end to the outing. A great lump of weather was heading our way, a mass of dark cloud dragging a curtain of rain across the waves, the horizon no longer visible. If we ran, we might make it back to the shelter of Homer’s glass hut before we were completely drenched.
‘Let’s go!’
I picked up some of the fishing gear we’d left lying unused on the beach. ‘Come on!’
Homer remained fixed limpet-like to a rock. Staring out to sea, he removed his baseball cap and used it to wipe spray from his face. I could barely make out his words as the stiff on-shore breeze ripped them from his mouth.
‘I can’t help wondering what happened,’ he called to me. ‘He was here one day and gone the next.’
Now we were getting somewhere. During our time on the beach I’d not so much as breathed the name of Billy Paris, hoping that in the midst of our friendly fishing banter Homer would let something slip.
‘Did he tell you where he was going?’ I shouted back. It was worth a soaking if I could find a clue in my search for Billy.
He replaced his cap and looked down at me as though I were crazy. Maybe I was — spending an afternoon holding forth on a subject I knew very little about. I usually reserved that for the comfort of a courtroom, not a rock in the middle of the sea.
‘Homer,’ I said, ‘did Billy ever say anything that might give you an idea where he’s gone? And before you say anything, I know you’re not a grass. You’re his pal. But I’m his lawyer. I’m trying to help. If I don’t find him fast, he could end up in a lot of trouble.’ And not just Billy. I’d be in a lot of trouble too if Beardy ever came up with his promised warrant and found a kilo of smack or a gun in that cardboard box.
‘I’ve told you already. Billy just upped and left after the helicopter crash. I’m not talking about him. I’m talking about Mr Thorn.’ He stretched a finger at the briny. ‘Hard to believe he’s out there. Him and his girlfriend. They’ve not found any wreckage yet. The sea’s been so rough the last few weeks they’ll probably wash up in Norway or...or…’
Homer’s knowledge of the Nordic states dried up as the first drops of rain started to fall. The glass hut was a four-hundred-yard dash. To make it I’d have to have set a new land speed record. I might have tried if it wasn’t for the fact that my fishing buddy seemed to be suggesting that Philip Thorn was lost at sea, possibly along with a female friend and a helicopter. How could Thorn be giving instructions to Maggie Sinclair if he was at the bottom of the ocean? More importantly, just how soggy was his chequebook?
Present Tense Page 6
