‘I’d best be getting back,’ she said awkwardly, ‘Nigel and Marjorie will be wondering where I am.’
They looked at each other for a moment then Tansy said, ‘Oh, Sean.’ She put her head against his chest and closed her eyes She felt so relieved when he put his arms round her and kissed her hair. ‘I wish there was another way,’ she said.
‘Everything will be fine,’ whispered MacLean. ‘I promise.’
They arranged to meet in the morning after Tansy had been to the bank to get her husband’s birth certificate and MacLean had obtained suitable passport photographs of himself to go with the application form he’d obtained from a post office. He’d forged signatures on the back of the photographs to testify to his identity as Keith Neilson which matched the false details he’d entered on the form. He and Tansy set off for the main Post Office with Tansy coaching him all the way.
MacLean waited anxiously in line. He was usually impatient in queues but on this occasion he was not unhappy that the man in front of him appeared to be asking a string of questions that the counter clerk seemed unable to answer. While he waited, he looked at the photographs of himself and re-examined Keith Nielsen’s birth certificate. Nielsen had been born in Aberdeen and his mother had been called Christabel. He was reflecting on how nice the name sounded when the clerk said, ‘Next.’
MacLean pushed the documents and the photograph under the glass partition and tried to look casual. It was difficult when he felt the clerk compare him to the photograph. The truth was he didn’t look that much like himself in the photograph let alone Keith Neilsen. He concentrated on the posters on the wall until the unsmiling man looked back down and continued writing. Why did post-office clerks never smile, he wondered. He looked along to the other queue and saw another dour individual stare balefully up at the customer he was serving. Were they trained to show no emotion? Did they practise that vinegar stare? Maybe that was why they closed the office for half an hour on Friday mornings. Staff training. He pictured a row of clerks with dead eyes being trained to say, ‘Next.’
The thump of a rubber stamp broke MacLean’s train of thought and told him that he was getting his passport. The clerk slid the document under the glass and returned Keith Nielsen’s birth certificate. MacLean put the papers in his inside pocket and said, ‘Thank you.’
The clerk looked through him and said, ‘Next.’
MacLean and Tansy separated but met up for lunch together in a small cafe behind Princes Street. MacLean had been to a travel agent.
‘Any problems?’ asked Tansy.
‘None.’
‘When will you go?’
‘There’s a flight on Tuesday.’
‘Will I see you before then?’
MacLean shook his head. ‘It’s best that we don’t meet again. Your friends might get suspicious.’
Tansy opened her mouth to protest but MacLean held up his hand and said, ‘I have to be alone for a bit. I need to prepare myself. I’ll call you as soon as I get back.’
‘You will take great care won’t you,’ said Tansy with sad eyes.
MacLean nodded and smiled. ‘You bet,’ he said.
MacLean spent the weekend in hard physical exercise. He wanted to feel fit for whatever the future held in store for him but there was also a therapeutic value to be had in pushing himself to his limits. It cleared his mind for the duration and freed him from the anxiety that was otherwise constantly with him. His training ground was the Pentland Hills, a range of hills skirting the southern fringes of the city.
On Saturday morning early, MacLean climbed the steep path to the top of Turnhouse Hill and started running along the Pentland Ridge. He traversed its entire length, clambering over the tops of Carnethy, Scald Law, and East and West Kip before he allowed himself a break of fifteen minutes to eat his two chocolate bars and recover. Then it was all the way back again, fighting against the pain but courting it at the same time because it blotted out everything else. His level of physical fitness was acceptable but his mental state posed questions.
Only a few months before, he had been on the verge of suicide. How complete was his recovery? His growing love for Tansy and Carrie had done much to heal the wounds but had he recovered sufficient grit and resolve to take on Lehman Steiner and all that might imply? He reluctantly had to conclude that there was no way of knowing. Just like in life no one really knows who is going to be a hero and who is going to be a coward until the real test comes. For most men it never does but MacLean suspected that, in the next week or so, he personally would be sitting the exam.
He reached the end of his run and allowed himself to collapse exhausted on the slopes, high above Glencorse Reservoir, his chest heaving and his heart thumping against his ribs. He lay on his back in the rough grass and watched the clouds race towards the Firth of Forth. Visibility was good; he could see an oil production platform being towed out of the estuary towards the North Sea. It brought back memories.
On Sunday, MacLean repeated the same punishing schedule, this time with the added burden of stiffness in his limbs from the day before. On the return journey along the ridge he altered his route to take him through a pinewood west of Caerketton. This would be his final self-imposed test. He was again close to exhaustion, a state when physical co-ordination was at its worst but that was what he wanted. Now he would see if Nick Leavey’s assertion that mental strength could overcome physical problems were true. All it needed was concentration.
Making sure that he was alone, he chose a branch some three inches thick and standing two metres off the ground. He turned his back on it and closed his eyes for a moment, picturing where the branch was. Still with his eyes closed he took out a coin from his pocket and threw it up in the air in front of him. When he heard it land he whirled round on his left heel and struck out with his raised right foot at where he remembered the branch to be. His foot made contact and the branch broke with a loud crack and fell to the ground.
He was pleased; he moved on through the forest, picking out imaginary enemies in the form of branches to the left and right of him and making his feet deal with them. As he neared the edge of the wood he picked out four final ‘enemies’ all to be taken out within a self-imposed five-second window. He took one long deep breath and hit the first with an eye-level kick from his right foot, the second he struck with his left hand, the third with another right foot kick and the fourth and final branch succumbed to a blind strike from the heel of his right hand.
MacLean emerged from the wood and found two hikers in red kagoules sitting less than ten metres away. They were in their early twenties and had stopped eating their sandwiches to stare at him. They had obviously witnessed his last ‘battle’.
For a moment the three looked at each other, the two hikers motionless with their sandwiches in mid air, MacLean with his chest still heaving from the effort, unshaven, hair soaked with perspiration and with his sweat shirt clinging to his body. Finally, MacLean broke the silence. ‘Another fine day,’ he said and walked off.
At four thirty on Tuesday afternoon MacLean’s flight landed in Geneva, its wheels sending up clouds of spray. It was raining, but then it usually was in Geneva. He paused for a moment at the head of the steps to look at the familiar terminal building and felt that in some ways it should have been like a homecoming but it didn’t feel like that at all. The universal greyness held a menace that reached out and caressed his skin as he descended the steps. The stewardesses smiled at the passengers but saw none of them. The uniformed passport controller took his document with an air of lethargy and asked the purpose of his visit. ‘I’m a tourist,’ said MacLean. The man waved him through with a casual wave of the hand. He was back.