Rachel came back on the line.
‘I wanted to ask if you could do me a favour.’
‘Anything.’
He was as obedient as Pete’s grinning dog, with none of its bite.
‘I think you might have received an email by mistake. You’ll be able to spot it, it’ll have been sent yesterday by someone you don’t know and will have a rather large document attached. Will you delete without opening, please?’
‘Is it a virus?’
‘Yes.’ Relief sounded in her voice. ‘A particularly ghastly one. It’s designed to leech onto every contact in your address book. Clever, but nasty. Apparently it wipes the hard drive of any computer it’s opened on. I’m frantically phoning everyone I can think of.’ Her laugh sounded strange. ‘It’s embarrassing, like chasing ex-partners to let them know you’ve got VD.’
‘Rachel, are you okay?’
‘Fine, just. .’ Her voice faltered. ‘Just a little overworked.’
‘And your computer’s wrecked. Did you lose much?’
‘I’m pretty good at backing-up, it could be worse.’ Her voice wavered again. ‘I’ve got to go. I’ve an army of people to phone. But please, Murray, delete that email. I wouldn’t want you to lose all your research.’
He said, ‘I miss you.’
‘Don’t, there’s no point.’
The line went dead.
Murray stood there, the phone warm in his hand, watching the tide’s unstoppable shift. He supposed the view should give him a sense of proportion, but all he could think of was Rachel and Fergus, Fergus and Rachel. The wind flapped at his waterproof. He turned even though he knew no one was there. But there was something beyond the rustling noise of his hood. He could hear it. A distant pinprick of sound that rushed to a roar. His chest tightened and the thought, so this is how it goes, burst into his head, along with a vision of his father’s face. The herd of horses turned together and raced down into the glen, the thud of their hooves absorbed by the almighty surge of sound. Murray felt himself drop to his knees, and then had an abrupt flash of comprehension as he saw the Harrier Jump Jet screaming through the valley. He could have shouted his lungs empty, and no one would have heard. But he simply whispered fuck, fuck, fuck under his breath, then got to his feet, wiping the mud from his knees, and started to make his way down.
* * *
He hadn’t reached Everest when he heard the rumble of Pete’s tractor behind him. Murray waited for it to stop, knowing the man had come to offer him something and hoping he was right about what it would be.
Pete climbed from the cab, the terrier at his heels. This time his smile was shyer, as if he was already embarrassed at what he was about to say.
‘Were you serious about wanting to stay longer?’
‘Aye, deadly serious.’
‘I might have somewhere for you then, if you don’t mind roughing it.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
MURRAY SAT AT the island shop’s computer and logged into his email account. It wasn’t quite three o’clock yet, but it had started to rain again and the skies outside were already dark. It felt good to be in and warm while the island was washed by wind and rain once more. The lamps had been lit against the gloom and a Calor gas heater hissed in a corner by the counter. Somewhere a radio was tuned to drive time, and he could hear the presenter detailing news of roadworks in the centre of Inverness. The small store, which had been so busy on his last visit, was empty of other customers. The shop man had given him a mug of instant coffee and told him to shout through to the backroom if he needed anything else. Murray took a sip from the steaming cup, relishing the sense of aloneness and study that had been a comfort to him since he was a child.
The number of new messages made him feel helpless for a moment, but there was only one he was interested in reading. He scrolled through the previous day’s entries and found it, the sender’s address a combination of letters and numbers that looked random, the subject heading Tis Pity She’s a Whore, the attachment tantalisingly present.
He hadn’t believed Rachel’s story, but staring at the message with its strange title, remembering the strain in her voice, he wondered if he might be wise to delete it, as he’d promised. Rachel had never asked anything of him before, though God knows he’d wanted her to. He rested his hand on the computer mouse. It was in his nature to investigate, but some knowledge was tainting. Pandora’s box, Eve’s forbidden fruit, Bluebeard’s young wife with the key to her husband’s private room. Succumbing to temptation could signal disaster.
He trailed down his inbox, hovering on indecision, deleting junk and outdated messages from the department about meetings he was now exempt from. He scrolled down further, hoping for a message from Rab that might tell him why Professor James had it in for Fergus. There was nothing. But tucked in amongst the list of unsolicited offers and enquiries was a message from Lyn.
Murray leaned back in the chair and gazed at the ceiling of the shop. A couple of yellowing remnants of sticky tape swayed in the rising warmth from the heater. Left over from Christmas decorations, he supposed. He sighed, leaned forward and clicked open Lyn’s message.
Dear Murray
I’m a woman who keeps her promises. I asked around about your smiler, Bobby Robb, Crippen as you called him, Crowley as they called him here. It seems he was one of our regulars until three years or so back, though the word is he was still a slave to the bottle — it’s amazing the constitution you need to be a successful addict. I don’t have much for you beyond that except that he was ‘a scary shit’. Apparently he was into weirdigan stuff, spells, magic, and wasn’t above dropping a curse or two if it looked like someone might cross him. My source also said Bobby was a frightened man who slept with a ‘circle of protection’ round his bed — whatever that is. A word to the wise. Tempting as it might be for you to leap on this, you should remember that the streets are a hard place to survive. People develop different strategies for keeping themselves safe. If this was Bobby Robb’s, it seems like a pretty good one to me. A lot of our clients are daft enough to believe in different dimensions. I wish I could, I’d leave mine in a flash. I’m not sure how much you know about Jack’s activities. It’s easier for me to assume nothing. It would mean one less person took me for a fool. I can’t help wondering, though, that evening you asked me about Cressida Reeves. I thought you were interested in her for yourself, but maybe you knew? Either way, Cressida is off the market. Jack has moved out of our flat and in with her. I wish I could say goodbye to bad rubbish, but we’ve been together a long time. If you speak to him, please tell him I miss him. He won’t take my calls any more. I kept my promise to you, even though your brother broke all the ones he made to me.
Lyn x
The kiss at the end made Murray’s eyes tear. He blinked, then read the email again, cursing his brother even as he wrote the scant details Lyn had given him into his notebook.
Murray had no stomach for the rest of his messages, but somehow Lyn’s words had decided what he would do about the email Rachel had asked him to delete. If love was a game of cheating and deception, then it was better to know what you were up against. He found the anonymous email again and opened it.
Murray tensed, half-expecting the screen to descend into blackness or display some childish victory halloo before fading into computer codes and nothingness, but the body of the email was empty. He moved the cursor to the virtual paperclip, ready to click open the attachment, but then the photographs started to slowly unveil themselves without any help.