It is only a short walk from the hotel to the top of Leith Street, and the turn into Princes Street. The equestrian statue of Wellington stands mounted on a plinth at the foot of the steps to General Register House, looking out over North Bridge.
For some reason I am acquainted with the history of this building. Built in the eighteenth century with funds seized from defeated Jacobite estates, it lay empty for nearly a decade, becoming known as the most magnificent pigeon house in Europe. It also provided a refuge for thieves and pickpockets before work resumed on its interior, turning it into what it is today — one of the oldest custom-built archive buildings still in continuous use anywhere in the world. Only nowadays they call it the ScotlandsPeople Centre.
At the reception desk in the main lobby, I buy, for fifteen pounds, a day search pass, and am escorted through the magnificent circular, glass-crowned Adam Dome, where the ancient records of sasines are stored on shelves that follow the contours of the room and rise in majestic procession to the golden dome high above. Desks with computers are set at intervals around the walls, but this is not the place where I will conduct my search.
The assistant takes me through a hall, past the Reid stairs, which lead to the historical and legal search rooms on the first floor, and into the Reid room itself, where computers sit before blue chairs in serried rows, on tables set along either side of the room. A man and a woman sit at a table in the centre, and the woman looks up and smiles as I approach, and asks to see my pass.
‘Have you used a computer in the search centre before?’ she asks.
If I have, I have no recollection of it and shake my head. She leads me to a desk and I sit down in front of a computer, feeling like a child on his first day at school. She pulls up a chair beside me, to boot up the computer and log me in.
‘Now, what exactly are you looking for?’
‘Anything at all about a Neal David Maclean.’ I fumble in my shoulder bag and bring out the extract of birth.
‘Ah, you must have accessed ScotlandsPeople online to get that?’
‘No.’ I am thinking as quickly as my hangover will allow.
‘It was given to me by a friend. I promised to do a search for him while I was here in Edinburgh.’
She touches the extract. ‘And that’s your friend? Neal Maclean?’
‘No. It’s a relative of his. He just wanted me to find out as much about Neal as I could.’
‘Well, you have his birth certificate, so that’s a good start. Is he married?’
‘I think so, yes.’
‘Let’s have a look then.’ She leans across me to tap at the keyboard. I suppose this is something I should be doing myself, but she seems happy to help, bored perhaps from sitting for endless hours at her desk in the library silence of this room. ‘Yes, here we are, this looks like him. Married to Louise Alice Munro, February fifth, 1998. Married young. Just twenty years old.’
I squint at the screen and see that Louise Alice Munro is two years older than Neal, which is unusual. And she must have fallen pregnant very quickly after their marriage. Or perhaps a premature pregnancy was their reason for marrying at such a young age in the first place. ‘Is there any way of establishing whether they have had any children?’
‘That might take a while.’
And I think there is no point. I know they have a daughter. ‘Let’s skip that, then.’
‘Do you want to go back the way? Parents, grandparents.’
I shake my head. ‘No.’
And she frowns. ‘I don’t really understand —’ she glances at my pass — ‘Mr Smith. What exactly is it you think you can find here?’
I am at a complete loss. I really have no idea.
‘I take it he’s still alive?’
‘Who?’
‘Neal David Maclean.’
‘I believe so, yes.’
‘Well, if you only believe so, maybe we should check that first.’
And as she leans across me again, I smell her perfume — something floral sweet — and I feel the warmth of her body. She initiates another search and hits the return key to bring up the result. She straightens in her seat, pulling down her jacket where it has ridden up over her breasts.
‘Well,’ she says, and gives me the strangest look. ‘Your friend might have briefed you a little better, Mr Smith. Neal David Maclean has been dead for over two years.’
And I gaze at the winking cursor on the screen. A fit man, a sailor, used to the outdoor life, Neal Maclean had died in his late thirties from a heart attack. Was it any wonder his wife had looked at me as though she had seen a ghost?
Chapter twelve
Karen’s trip out towards the airport was not on a tram this time, but in a taxi. Which took a much more direct route, heading west on the A8, past Corstorphine and the old art deco Maybury Roadhouse at the roundabout, freshly painted and home now to the Maybury Casino. But the airport was not her destination.
She was unaccountably nervous. Not because she had skipped school, or stolen money from her mother to pay for the taxi, but because she was embarking on a voyage of discovery, to confront the demons she had tried so hard to keep in check these past two years.
Guilt had been the most prominent of them. A creeping, destructive sense of guilt that had eaten away, like so many termites, at the very foundations of her self. So much so that she had felt compelled to invent a new self, to gloss over the old, to pretend that she was someone else altogether, raising two fingers to the world as if she didn’t give a damn.
Her father’s final words had stripped away all that selfdelusion.
Tell Karen I love her, even if I never could be the dad she wanted me to be.
Who had she wanted him to be? She had no idea, and looking back she realised that she was the one who had changed, not him. He had been everything she had wanted him to be when she was younger. She had adored him, would have done anything for him. Just, she knew, as he would have done anything for her.
How hurt and frustrated must he have been when the daughter who adored him turned into the sullen, resentful teenager she had become?
Of course, she’d had no idea, then, of the estrangement that existed between her parents. She had been far too selfabsorbed for that. But again, in retrospect, she could see all the signs. Remembering the whispered arguments in the bedroom, the silences at the dinner table. How increasingly he was detained at work and came home late. And although her mother had claimed the other night that he had used his work as a means of escaping her, Karen now wondered. Perhaps it was disappointment in his daughter that had kept him away from home, and that was what had driven the wedge between him and Karen’s mum.
Yet more guilt.
Tell Karen I love her.
The written words had gone through her like a knife. Cold, hard, sharp-edged. And they had met with little resistance. Her mother’s spoken words had echoed in her mind for hours afterwards. It was only ever about you. What had she meant? Had she been jealous of the relationship between Karen and her dad? Or was she blaming Karen for her father killing himself? Karen might have asked, had she not been afraid of the answer. Though, she hadn’t spoken to her mother since. And, the way she felt now, never would again.
The hours after she read the note had been spent crying in her room until she physically ached. Then had followed a stripping away of all the layers of pretence she had built around herself since her father’s death. In the bathroom, she had hacked away the longer, green hair on the top of her head, and then dyed it black like the rest. One by one, the piercings and lip rings were removed, leaving tiny holes in pale, naked skin. She scrubbed her face until it was devoid of the least trace of make-up, then stood staring at herself in the mirror, searching blue eyes for truth. Wondering not who it was she had become, but who she had been. And what she had done.