‘Is that what you were doing when I met you?’
‘The weather was too poor to drive down, but I could see her grave from the ridge.’
The rain battered against the metal roof of the car, a hundred drumming soldiers marching forth to halt the outrage.
Murray said, ‘It’s worse tonight.’
‘It helps. No one will be about and the ground will be soft.’
‘Isn’t there a chance it might have been dislodged? If it has, we may not be able to find it.’
‘Perhaps.’ Christie was in the seat beside him, but her words seemed to come from far away. ‘Her face was the last thing I covered. I swaddled her in my scarf, as if I was about to take her out for some air, then I tied it around her head. The people of the islands used to believe children who died as infants had been stolen by the faeries and a faery replica left in their place. I can understand why. She looked like my baby, but I knew she wasn’t. My child had gone.’
Murray glimpsed Christie’s ghost-white face as she turned towards him. Perhaps the fear showed in his expression, because she said, ‘It won’t be as bad as you’re anticipating. Imagine it’s simply the poems we’re excavating. We wrapped them in polythene. You don’t even have to go into the box, I’ll take them out for you.’
‘What then?’
‘You drive me home, collect the papers and photographs I promised you, and leave.’
‘And you?’
‘Will wait some days, perhaps months. Who knows, maybe remission will return and I’ll be spared for years. But I’ll have my child’s body and the means to make a good death when the time comes. Do you know how important that is?’
Murray stared at the road ahead and thought of the promise he and Jack had made to their father.
‘Yes, I know what a good death can mean.’
She reached out and stroked a finger down his cheek. It was a lover’s touch and he flinched.
Christie whispered, ‘I always half-thought he would come back. Some nights I still do. I sit by the window reading, something catches my eye and I think, There’s Archie, come for me. It used to frighten me. I’d wonder if he would still be angry, what he would look like after all that time. Do you remember “The Monkey’s Paw”?’ Murray nodded, but perhaps Christie didn’t see him in the darkness, because she continued, ‘A husband and wife wish for their dead son to be returned from the grave. No sooner is the wish from their mouths than they hear a hideous banging at the door. When they open it, in place of the hale and hearty boy they dreamt of stands a mangled wreck of a corpse half cut to shreds by the wounds that killed him. Wounds that now have the power of endless torment rather than the power of death.’
She reached out her hand to touch his face again and he said, ‘Don’t, I need to concentrate on the road.’
‘They never found his body. As long as it was missing, there was a chance he was still alive somewhere.’ Christie sighed. ‘I wouldn’t mind if he came back drowned.’
Murray imagined Archie striding towards them through the blackness, his body bloated and bloody, his ragged clothes strung about with seaweed.
He asked, ‘Did Fergus do away with Bobby?’
‘No.’ In all the long evening it was the first time she’d sounded shocked. ‘Fergus is an exploiter of women, but he’s not a murderer. Bobby was an old man who had a heart attack.’
‘He was a drain on resources. Fergus looked after him, gave him a flat and who knows what else.’
Christie was back in this world. She said, ‘I’d been sending the old fool money for years. Giving in to bribery doesn’t incriminate you in murder. Bobby contacted Fergus after he moved back up to Scotland. There was a piece in the newspaper referring to Professor Baine and Bobby came across it. I can just picture him.’ There was something unseemly in her laughter. ‘Sitting in some horrid bar, ringing the article with a pen borrowed from the barmaid, ordering a whisky and knowing that his ship had come in.’
‘He was scared. He’d made a circle of protection around his bed.’
‘He was always scared. The day we arrived on the island he made a circle of protection around the cottage. Much good it did us.’
‘Did Archie believe in all that stuff?’
‘What stuff?’
‘The occult. Spells.’
‘Archie didn’t believe in anything much, certainly not in himself.’
‘He believed in poetry.’
‘That’s the kind of meaningless statement I’d have thought an academic would avoid.’
Murray stole a glance at Christie. Her head was resting against the rain-streaked window, her expression hidden.
‘He believed in you and your child. I found a list of names among his papers in the library. He was trying to decide what to call it, wasn’t he?’
Christie’s voice was gentle.
‘He talked to her. Laid his head on my belly, recited poetry, sang songs and told her his dreams. A jealous woman might have grown bitter, but I understood. Archie had never had anything much to look forward to before. This baby was to be all the Christmases he never had.’ She sighed. ‘It was more than that. He thought the child would save him. The reality was rather different.’
‘And Fergus?’
‘He worshipped Fergus.’
‘Was he worthy of Archie’s faith?’
Christie lifted her head from the glass and straightened her spine against the passenger seat. Her profile looked brittle.
‘Neither Fergus nor the child turned out to be Jesus Christ.’
‘I’m beginning to think Professor Baine bears more of a resemblance to Judas Iscariot.’
Christie snorted.
‘Archie would have hated that kind of melodrama.’
Murray kept his tone mild, though Christie’s words had hit their mark.
‘If Fergus can supply you with the means to kill yourself, he could do the same for Bobby.’
‘That was one of Fergus’s few truly altruistic gestures.’ Christie’s voice was a monotone and it was hard to tell if she was being sincere or sarcastic. ‘He went to Switzerland with his mother. He’d promised to make sure she didn’t suffer too horribly at the end. I think it was a transformative experience. He came back convinced of the individual’s right to die.’
Murray remembered the death of the professor’s mother. Fergus had been absent from the university for an appropriate period, but perhaps it was unsurprising that no mention had been made of trips to Swiss clinics. He recalled Baine’s stoicism, his dignified receipt of condolence, and the new house that had followed. Rachel had moved in soon after.
‘He isn’t here with you tonight.’
‘Fergus doesn’t know about the dig.’
‘And you didn’t enlighten him?’
‘He would exhume her body, but he wouldn’t give it to me. The one thing I’m worried about is the possibility he did it years ago, but I don’t think so.’
‘Why not?’
‘Fergus has a talent for forgetting. All sensationalists do. The rest of us sustain ourselves on memories and police ourselves with obligations. Men like Fergus can set these things aside. Oh, he can make a plan and see it through, you only need to look at his career to know that. But Fergus lives largely in the moment. As long as he’s getting his own way, he forgets. He doesn’t have a conscience to remind him.’
Murray thought about Rachel. His sadness was shot through with guilt. He’d believed hers the guiding hand, but could he have unwittingly exploited her, too dazzled by her zest for sex to interrogate her motives? Had he been like Fergus, unquestioning as long as he was getting his own way? He wondered what she had done to herself, and if Fergus was taking good care of her.
The car heater was on full blast, but the windscreen was fogging. Murray reached forward and wiped it with his palm. The makeshift road seemed to be getting narrower and he suspected that before long they would have to abandon the car and make their way on foot. He asked, ‘Do you know where we are?’