‘You say that as if you already know they’re wrong.’
He slid the envelope unopened into his pocket. ‘I’m afraid I’m not very keen on the author.’
‘Oh, well.’ Mrs Dunn held the front door open for him. ‘You never know, they’ll maybe surprise you.’
Murray thanked her and turned to go. He was already on the path when she called him back.
‘Dr Watson, Jamie the postie told me you were doing a rare tear the other day. You know, the roads here are good, as they go, but you have to take care. We had a bad crash here a few years back.’
‘I heard.’
Mrs Dunn nodded her head, as if everything she needed to say had already been said.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
THE WIND THAT had battered against Mrs Dunn’s windows was battering against Murray now. It occurred to him that this was the kind of night when ill-prepared walkers drifted from pathways and died of hypothermia. He wondered if he should turn back, but kept trudging forth, head down against the wind, like some gothic rambler compelled to wander the world.
Murray saw the lights of a car blinking from the distant curves and bends of the road ahead as if to emphasise how far he had left to walk. The warmth of Mrs Dunn’s living room had blown away in the wind. He started to murmur a song his father used to sing late on sleepless nights when he and Jack were boys. It was a ballad about what it was to be a cowboy; the impossibility of ever finding love and the inevitability of a lonely death. Sometimes, when he was young, it had seemed to Murray that misery was all he had. He would nurse it to himself, not daring to let it go for fear of losing himself. Murray remembered taking the point of his maths compass and twisting it slowly into his palm, digging a homemade stigmata. It was stupid. All of it. Life and what you made of it. Stupid.
He heard the rumble of the vehicle’s engine, saw its headlights round the bend and stepped aside into the verge as a large, grey Land-Rover hove into view. The vehicle slowed to a halt beside him and the driver wound down his window.
‘Murray Watson?’
‘Yes?’
His first thought was that something had happened to Jack and this person had been sent to find him, but the man was smiling beneath his shaggy beard.
‘Hop in and I’ll give you a lift.’
‘I’m going in the opposite direction.’
The man grinned. His teeth shone piratical against the black of his beard and the dark of the night. He said, ‘We’re on a small island, how far can it be?’
The wind picked up tempo, bringing a hail of rain with it. Murray jogged round to the passenger side, pulled open the door and climbed in. The stranger might be a descendent of Sawney Bean intent on reviving the family business, but if he was offering a lift, Murray was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. He snapped the seatbelt home.
‘Good lad.’ The driver was wearing a chunky Shetland knit. His long hair was twisted into two plaits fastened with mismatched elastic bands. ‘There’s a place down here I can turn.’
Murray thought he could smell the faint taint of marijuana beneath the pine car-freshener scent he always associated with long journeys and travel sickness. He said, ‘This is good of you.’
The stranger reversed the Land-Rover into the entrance of a field then looked at Murray.
‘You don’t remember me, do you?’
Murray stared at his face. Some memory stirred, and then slithered from his reach.
‘Maybe it’s the beard?’
‘You’re pretty beardy yourself.’ The man laughed. ‘I probably wouldn’t have clocked you if Mrs Dunn hadn’t mentioned you were on the island. She likes her academics, does our landlady.’ He stuck out his hand. ‘Jem Edwards. You used to go out with Angela Whatsit, didn’t you? I was in her year. We went for a drink a few times.’
‘God, yes. You were there the night we went to see The Fall.’
‘That was a good gig.’
The driver held out a hand and Murray shook it. Jem looked older and broader, but he remembered him now. He’s been one of Angela’s archaeology crew. Good-natured, hard-drinking, tendency to dress like a Viking. Murray could have hugged him.
‘Didn’t you used to play the bagpipes?’
‘Still do. But not so often at parties these days.’ Jem turned the jeep. ‘So where are we headed? Tell me you’ve found a wee shebeen full of beautiful women, good whisky and fearless fiddle-players.’
Murray laughed and realised that the archaeologist’s hearty normality might have the power to edge him into hysteria.
‘Sadly not. Do you know the crossroads on the marsh above the limekilns?’
‘I know the limekilns — they’re where our new dig’s planned — but as for the rest, you’ll have to be my guide. What are you doing here, anyway? You’re a historian, aren’t you?’
‘English lit.’ Murray wiped a patch of condensation from the windscreen. ‘If you go straight on for now, you’ll see a turning on the left, just after the church.’ He sank back in his seat and began to tell Jem an edited version of his quest.
They saw no other traffic on the road, but the archaeologist kept his speed low, sailing smoothly over hills and round bends. They passed a cluster of cottages here and there showing a lit window. Then they were into the dark countryside, the full beam of their headlights unveiling drenched hedgerows and waving trees that looked like they might swoop down and snatch the car up into their branches. Something that might have been a weasel or a stoat dashed across their path and into the undergrowth. The solid bulk of St Mungo’s Church appeared on their left. The headlights glanced into the graveyard, bending across the crooked headstones and slumbering tombs. Jem slowed the car.
‘Left here?’
‘Yes, the road deteriorates now.’
‘No problem, we’re in a tank.’ Jem turned the wheels onto the roughcast path and their conversation back to Murray’s quest. ‘So this woman Christie could be key?’
‘She was intimate with Archie at the most interesting period of his life.’
‘It must be amazing to be able to speak to someone who actually knew the person you’re researching.’
‘I guess that’s never going to happen to you?’
‘Not unless someone invents time travel. It’d end in disaster, anyway. We’d be hailed as gods, given the best of everything for six months then sacrificed to the harvest.’
They had left the church behind now and were climbing towards higher ground. Murray’s phone beeped, letting him know he had voicemail.
Jem said, ‘You should check that.’
Murray took it from his pocket. The stern female robot that guarded the exchange told him he had three new messages. He pressed 1 to listen and his brother’s voice was suddenly in his ear, Murray I. . He pressed 7 and deleted without listening. The next message was also from Jack. Murray, you fuckwit. . He scrapped that as well, though he guessed his brother meant the insult to be an endearment. The final message was from Rab Purvis.
Murray, I’ll keep it brief. I had a drink with Phyllida McWilliams in Fowlers. Apparently she used to be bosom buddies with Professor James’s daughter Helen in the old days. She says the reason Fergus was in James’s bad books was simple. He got Helen up the duff then did a runner. Not the done thing back then. Poor girl had to get scraped out. According to Phyl, Helen always claimed he forced her, but Phyl was never a hundred per cent convinced. She says Fergus was a charmer, and she would have given him one for free — you know our Phyl. All in all, it sounds like the James family have good reason to bear Fergus a grudge, so maybe you should take what they say with a fistful of salt. Do me a favour and delete this message, and Phyl says don’t let on it was. .