You leave him there and go down to check the woman is all right. Mr Azul's screams sound harsh and hoarse and far away.
It's sunset when you leave, locking the quiet house securely behind you. The sun flames orange and pink behind the trees above the house, the breeze is cool rather than cold, scented with flowers and the sea, and you think what a pleasant if rather bland place this would be to settle down.
I jolt awake with a bad taste in my mouth and my left eyelid stuck down again. It's almost dark. I look at my watch. Where the fuck is this guy? I take another look round the house; no lights. Back in the car, I try to use the mobile but the batteries are flat and the Nova doesn't seem to have a cigarette lighter. I head for St Helier.
"Shit." I've just tried the local newspaper but Frank's pal has gone out and they won't give me a contact number.
I'm standing in a phone box near the harbour. I watch a white Lamborghini Countach trundle past on the street outside and shake my head in disbelief. A Lambo. More than two metres broad and barely one high. Just the car to have on an island full of lots of narrow, high-hedged twisty roads and a 60-miles-per-hour speed limit. I wonder if he ever gets the beast out of second gear.
Maybe I should phone the police: hello hello I've just spotted a cretin recklessly in charge of an obscene amount of money is there a reward? (Tempting.)
Every bastard's out. Frank isn't at home, Azul's unlisted, I try the local paper here but they can't or won't help and the airlines refuse to give out information on passengers. I put the phone down. "Shit!" I shout. It sounds very loud in the phone box. I phone Yvonne and William's house but there's only William's voice on the answer-machine. I remember Yvonne saying something about being away on a job for the next few days. I think about phoning her mobile but she hates me doing that so I don't.
Oh, bugger this. If I was some fucking private eye or something I'd head back out to Mr Azul's big house and break in somehow and find something really interesting or a body or a beautiful woman (or just get slugged on the back of the head and wake up wise-cracking). But I'm tired, I've still got a headache, I feel beat and out of ideas and I feel embarrassed dammit. What in the fuck am I doing here? What was I thinking of? Hell, this seemed like such a good idea this morning.
I can still make a flight back to Blighty which will connect with the last plane to Inverness. Forget covering the story. Sometimes a tactical retreat is the only course to follow. Even Saint Hunter would agree. If I feel the need to do something I can always exercise my creative abilities trying to think of a story that'll appease Eddie. Fat chance. I take the Noya back to the airport.
An hour to kill. Time to hit the bar. I start off with a Bloody Mary as this is breakfast in a sense, then cleanse the palate with a bottle of Pils. I buy a packet of Silk Cut and carefully smoke a cigarette — making sure that I'm actually enjoying it, not just doing it out of habit — while managing to fit in a couple of large and very refreshing G&Ts before the flight's called and there's just time for a single knocked-back whisky to provide a bit of nominal support for the Scottish export drive.
I board the plane feeling no pain, eat the evening meal and continue with the G&T theme, land in Gatwick and make the connection via the smoking area of the bar and another gulped Gordon's, then pass on the second offered dinner but not the accompanying booze and quietly pass out somewhere over the West Midlands, to be woken by a dishy blonde with an impudent, dimpled smile and we're here we've landed we've arrived, we're on the stand at the airport and I'd ask her what she's doing later because I'm drunk enough to not care when she says «No» as she probably will, but I know I'm too tired and besides my left eyelid's stuck again and I suspect it makes me look a bit like Quasimodo, so I don't say anything except, "Uh, thanks," which is cool or sad, I'm not sure which.
I walk into the terminal thinking, Well, at least there isn't that smell of sewage around you sometimes get when you arrive in dear old Embra; I'm not sure I could handle that right now. I walk through the lounge thinking something looks wrong somehow, then stop and stand still where the lounge opens out into the main terminal building, suddenly filled with horror and confusion; it's all too small and not shaped right! This isn't Edinburgh! Those amiable but blatantly incompetent buffoons have brought me to the wrong fucking airport! Dickheads! Can't they even navigate, for fuck's sake? Christ, I bet there isn't even a flight back from… Where the hell am I?
I see the sign saying Welcome to Inverness just as I remember where I left the car and where I left from this morning and just before I turn and stamp to the nearest desk and demand in my highest dudgeon to be taken to Edinburgh on a charted Lear if necessary or limoed immediately to the highest-starred hotel within a reasonable radius for a free overnight dinner, bed and breakfast and unlimited bar tab.
Narrow escape from Terminal Embarrassment.
People are walking past looking at me oddly. I shake my head and set a course for the car park.
It's kind of late now and I'm in no condition to drive so when I get the 205 I only take it as far as the outskirts of Inverness where I stop at the first lit Bed and Breakfast sign I see and talk politely and slowly to the pleasant middle-aged couple from Glasgow who run the place and then say goodnight, close the door of my room and fall fast asleep on the bed without even taking off my jacket.
CHAPTER 8 — FRIENDLY FIRE
I head south after what I think's called a hearty breakfast and an even heartier cough. I fuel up at a wee petrol station just before the A9 and phone Fettes while the tank's filling. Sergeant Flavell sounds a little odd when I talk to him and tell him I've been to Jersey for the day but I'm on my way back to Edinburgh. I ask him if I can have my new lap-top back and he says he isn't sure. He suggests I come straight to Fettes; they want to talk to me. I say okay.
South on the A9, sound track Michelle Shocked, The Pixies, Carter and Shakespear's Sister. I catch a bit of radio while I'm changing cassettes just north of Perth and hear something called I'll Sleep When I'm Dead by Bon Jovi which isn't a patch on Uncle Warren's song of the same name and makes me more than reasonably annoyed. Into Edinburgh by late lunch-time, past the signs trumpeting the up-coming Euro-summit. I don't know how they've done it but the typography on the signs makes me want to pronounce the word Edin-burg, and I live in the place, for God's sake.
Christ in a bucket: independent bastarding deterrent, The Genuine Shit Article, cold fucking filtering, Edin-burg, Edin-borow, Sleep when I'm a de-rigueurly long-haired white-skinned head-banging high-pitched middle-aged sub-grunge light-metal Zep-clone. What a pile of shit everything is!
On Ferry Road, within sight of Fettes School's preposterous spire and only minutes from the police HQ, I have the first cigarette of the day, not because I really want it, just to feel bad. (Uncle Warren knows a thing or two.)
This turns out to be smart thinking in a way because when I get to Cop Central they promptly arrest me.
The hotel is dark and very quiet. The cellars are full of junk, most of which might have been useful once but all of which is now covered in water or mud or fungus. Some of the timbers under the floor are white with fuzzy rot. On the lower ground floor you pass through the snooker room, the ballroom and a store room. The table in the snooker room is waterlogged, its baize stained and its wooden sides cracked. The old motorbikes, tables, chairs and carpets in the ballroom look like forlorn toys in some long-neglected doll's house. Rain beats softly against the windows: the only sound. Outside, it is black dark.