His heart was in his mouth as he passed the dark windows of the cottage. The curtains were closed and an old van was parked in front of it. That would help to muffle any sound as he passed. MacLean held the Granada’s momentum in check, praying that the brakes would not squeal or the tyres crunch loudly on gravel. He drifted slowly past and eased his foot off the brake pedal to let the car to run a little more freely. As soon as he had rounded the bend at the foot of the hill he turned the ignition on again, pushed the stick into third gear and took his foot gently off the clutch. The car slipped smoothly into drive.
MacLean followed the perimeter road until he came to the gate he was looking for. He knew that beyond it was a grassy bank about fifteen metres above the surface of the loch. The main attraction was that there was no gently shelving bank here. The water went straight down for forty metres. He parked the car as near the edge as he dared and got out to take a look below. There were no obvious obstacles that he could see in what moonlight there was so he let off the hand-brake and heaved the car over the edge. For one awful moment he thought that it was going to stick, with the ground acting as a fulcrum under its middle but with a little persuasion to the rear bumper, the Ford tipped up and plunged down into the water.
Clouds passed over the moon and MacLean had to wait until it slid out again before he could see that the car was floating. It bobbed gently up and down on its nose. ‘Sink!’ he hissed. ‘For God’s sake, sink!’
Gradually, the water started to bubble and the car stopped bobbing. Very slowly and with great dignity it slipped beneath the surface. There was a brief boiling on the surface as it disappeared then everything was calm again.
MacLean stood up and came to terms with the fact that he was ten miles from the city and had no transport. His clothes were filthy. He was covered from head to foot in soot and ash and mud and he felt as if he had just run a marathon. He looked up at the sky and felt the first drops of rain on his face. All he needed but the truth was that discomfort and pain didn’t matter. They were a welcome diversion from what was going on in his head.
He was close to exhaustion by the time he reached the city. The rain had done much to clean the soot and mud off him but cold and wet had robbed him of what little energy he had left and he was dog-tired. It was the morning rush hour. People were scurrying past but the heavy rain ensured that no one paid him any close attention. He managed to get on to a crowded bus heading towards the centre and got off when he saw the sign for the Royal Commonwealth Pool. It had given him an idea but first he would need to do something about his clothes.
He knew there was a branch of a large chain store in one of the neighbouring streets but came across an Army and Navy store before he reached it and decided it was a better option.
‘Get caught in the rain?’ asked the assistant.
MacLean nodded and attempted a smile in reply. He listed what he wanted and left the shop carrying two plastic bags. He made his way to the Commonwealth Pool and asked for a ticket to the Sauna Suite.
‘Just off the night shift?’ asked the attendant.
MacLean nodded.
MacLean wanted to tear off his filthy, wet clothes but no longer had the energy. He had to take his time and do it slowly. The chrome tap below the showerhead seemed like the key to paradise. He turned it on and let the warm water cascade over him, soothing away the agony of the past few hours. He appeared to be the first customer of the day and entered one of the three Sauna cabins to spread out his towel and lie down on the wooden slat bench. The dry heat invaded his limbs like a healing balm.
When he’d had enough, MacLean showered and wrapped himself in the sheet he had been given. He settled down in one of the loungers in the recovery area and fell asleep. He was still sleeping some three hours later when the attendant did his rounds. By rights, he should have woken the sleeping man to tell him his time was up but the place wasn’t busy; he let him be.
It was three in the afternoon when MacLean finally woke. He bought some shampoo and a disposable razor from the attendant who made a point of telling him how he had disobeyed the rules to let him sleep on. MacLean was suitably grateful. He shaved, dressed and put his old clothes into one of the plastic bags. Tipping the attendant the price of a beer he left feeling ravenously hungry.
There was a pub across the road from the pool. MacLean dumped his old clothes in a convenient trash bucket and made for it. He ordered a beer and a couple of sandwiches left over from lunchtime. He saw that the barman had a first edition of the Edinburgh Evening News and asked if he might take a look. The barman slid it towards him. The story had been too late for the morning papers but here it was splashed over the front page.
‘Bad business that,’ said the barman.
There was a photograph of the smouldering remains of the white bungalow. ‘Man Dies in City Fire Tragedy’, said the headline. MacLean could feel his heart thumping as he read the story. The man, thought to have been a Mr Dan Morrison, believed to have been lodging with Mrs Tania Nielsen and her daughter Carol, had perished in the flames after a mystery explosion tore through the quiet bungalow by the Union Canal. Gas Board officials were investigating the cause of the explosion. Mrs Nielsen’s daughter was said by hospital authorities to be critical while she herself was still in a state of deep shock. It was the second tragedy to have befallen her in recent times. Only last year her husband had been found dead while working on his car. Police had no comment to make at this stage.
‘Bloody Gas Board,’ said the barman.’
MacLean returned the newspaper and left.
The sky was beginning to cloud over; it would start raining again soon. MacLean started looking for lodgings in the area he was in. It was convenient and it was sensible because of the proximity of the university. This made it the heart of bed-sitter land, home to a large, ever mobile and largely anonymous population.
He walked down the main road looking at the signs in windows of the various houses.
MacLean found it hard to put a label on the locality. Normally it was possible to generalise about an area of the city. It was either upmarket or down, decaying or recovering. But here, there seemed to be such a mix that no such generalisation was possible. There were dark, brooding villas that hadn’t seen a lick of paint for years and there were bright, renovated properties which flaunted their refurbishment. There was a girls’ private school and a two star hotel advertising Friday night dinner dances.
MacLean passed an old folks’ home and shuddered at the name. He could see the inmates seated round the walls of a large ground-floor room, sitting in high-back chairs, gazing unseeingly at a television whose back took up pride of place in the bay window. Sunset Valley? The thought of it was enough to make you shuffle off your mortal coil without further ado, thought MacLean. He stopped at a sign that advertised ‘Quiet Rooms to Let’. It was the word ‘quiet’ that made him ‘enquire within’.
The landlord was a west highlander with a soft accent and a slowness of speech that MacLean could have found irritating if conversation were to be prolonged. It was his intention that it shouldn’t.
After a monologue on the rules of the house and a look at a couple of the rooms available, the man said, ‘You’re a bit old for a student I’m thinking.’
‘I’m a visiting lecturer,’ lied MacLean. ‘Chemistry.’
‘Now that’s very interesting… ‘
‘Would you like some payment in advance?’ asked MacLean swiftly.
‘A week if you please.’
MacLean counted out the money and the man smiled and gave MacLean his key. ‘I’m Mr MacLeod, I live just there.’ He pointed to a ground-floor door. ‘Let me know if there’s anything you require.’
MacLean lay down on the bed and listened to the receding footsteps. A downstairs door closed and there was silence. The room was cold and the ceiling blank and featureless, a good thing to concentrate on while he considered what to do next. Until yesterday, he believed that he had plumbed the greatest depths of despair that were possible for any man. Now he knew different. He was personally responsible for what had happened to Carrie and the thought brought such anguish to him that his body developed a slight tremor. He clenched his fists to stop the shaking but that only worked until he relaxed them again. He had to find out how Carrie was but first he had to know if Tansy had recovered from shock.