The Business

'…No, I don't think I want to look down that…'

'…No, you're right, maybe not.'

'Definitely not.  I could get beheaded or something.'

'They behead people for that sort of thing there?'

'Actually they don't have the death penalty at all.  More civilised than the US in that respect.'

'Yeah?  Well, fuck them.  How many aircraft carriers they got?'

'Not a lot of call for aircraft carriers in landlocked Himalayan states.'

'Stealth bombers?  Cruise missiles?  Nukes?'

'You're right, they're pathetically ill-equipped to enter an escalating correctional-system conflict with Old Glory.'

'You do realise you could end up with three passports at the end of this?'

'Dear holy shit!  I hadn't thought of that!'

'Well, you —'

'Hold on, I got a call waiting.  Oh, shit.  I got a bad feeling about this, Luce.'

Miss Heggies was sitting on the parapet at the end of the mile-long reflecting pool, her feet dangling almost in the water, her usually neatly bunned hair hanging down in grey lengths around her undone collar.  She didn't look round when I parked the old Lancia on the gravel behind her.

I went up and sat with her on the stone, my legs drawn up under my chin.  A very light rain, what we'd call a smir in Scotland, was falling from the bright grey overcast.

'I'm very sorry, Miss Heggies.'

'Yes,' she said dully, still staring at the flat water. 'Sorry.'

I put my arm out tentatively.  She inclined millimetrically towards me.  She didn't exactly relax and start sobbing, but. she leant against me and put her arm round my waist, patting me.  We sat like that for a while.  In Scotland, sometimes crying is called greeting, and it only struck me then that it was odd that something you usually did when you were saying goodbye to somebody, one way or another, should also mean welcoming.

On the way back to the house I stopped and looked up at the place.  So did she, gazing wonderingly at it, as though taking in its baroque confections of stonework for the first time.  She sniffed, buttoning the collar of her dress and tucking up her hair.

'Do you know what's happening to Blysecrag, Ms Telman?'

'Apparently it's going to the National Trust, but I think only on condition you get to stay.'

She nodded.  I pulled a piece of paper out of my pocket. 'And this is my inheritance.'

She squinted at the note. 'David Rennell?  He used to be a gardener here.  Nice lad.  Mr Ferrindonald found him a job with the company.'

'Yes, most recently just outside Glasgow.  I'm sorry if this isn't a good time, Miss H, but Uncle Freddy obviously thought this was important and I'd like to talk to Mr Rennell as soon as possible.  Would you make the introduction?'

'Of course, Ms Telman.'

I didn't really need the introduction from Miss H, apart from having my identity confirmed quickly; Uncle F had told David Rennell to answer all my questions if I ever got in touch.

'You've been in there?'

'Yes, Ms Telman.  There doesn't seem to be any big deal about it any more.  People are wandering in and out, clearing up and that sort of thing.' He had a nice Yorkshire accent.

'Call me Kathryn.  I'll call you David, all right?'

'All right.'

'So, David, what was there?  What did you see?'

'Just a big empty room.  There were containers for etching materials in there, but I talked to one of the guys; they were empty and just put in there the other day, after everything was moved out.'

'What was moved out?'

'I don't know.  Whatever it was it all disappeared in the middle of the night, on the twentieth.  Somebody saw a load of desks being shifted next morning.  I think some of them might still be around in the warehouse.'

'Could you describe the room in more detail?'

'About ten metres by twenty, ceiling the same height as the rest of the factory, with the usual ducting and so on, carpet tiles on the floor, lots of cables lying around and coming out of opened conduits in the floor.'

'What sort of cables?'

'Power cables.  Lots of others, like printer cables and that sort of thing.  Ah, I picked up a couple of connectors and plugs and so on.'

'Ah-hah.  Well done.  Could you possibly do me a favour, David?'

'Certainly.'

'…and maybe take some time off?'

* * *

I was to meet David Rennell in the car park at Carter Bar, right on the border between England and Scotland.  It was a coolish, blustery day.  The view from the shallow pass, looking north into the undulating hills, forests and fields of the Scottish lowlands, was moodily dramatic and changing all the time under the clouds that sped and tumbled above.  I got a veggie burger from a van at one end of the car park and sat eating it in the car.  Very stake-out.  Meeting on the border; very cold war.

It had been a good drive.  I'd left the phone off for most of it, just driving the Aurelia across the moors on secondary roads, thinking.

Thinking a lot about Uncle Freddy, about what a laugh he'd been and how much I was going to miss him and the occasional invitation to Blysecrag.  Probably next time I wanted to go I'd have to pay, and there would be a National Trust shop, and lots of those carmine-coloured ropes with brass hook-ends attached to brass stands that corral visitors into the accepted circular route in your average English stately home.  Ah, well.  It would mean more people would get a chance to see the weird old place.  For the good, in the end.  No grouching about that.

Uncle Freddy was another matter.  Another one dead.  My real mother, Mrs Telman last year (her husband — technically my adopted father, according to the legal paperwork — ten years earlier, not that I'd seen him more than once); now Freddy.

I wondered if my biological father was still alive.  Probably not.  The truth was I didn't want to know, and if I was honest with myself I'd have to admit that I'd be relieved to discover he was no longer in the land of the living.  Guilt about that.  Was this the same as actually wishing him dead?  I didn't think so.  If I'd had the choice, if somehow I could make him alive by thinking him so, I would.  But I didn't want to meet him, didn't want some bogus emotional reunion, and anyway it didn't seem fair that he might have survived when the people I'd cared about most, my mother, Mrs Telman and Uncle Freddy, were dead.

What had been his contribution to my life?  One drunken ejaculation.  Then he'd slapped my mother around, gone into prison for theft, come out to pursue his career as an alcoholic and turned up at my mum's funeral to shout names at me and Mrs Telman.  At least he'd had the decency not to contest the adoption.  Or he'd been bought off, which was more likely.  And — if he knew I'd become, by his standards, disgustingly rich — he'd never bothered me for cash.

I supposed I ought to make enquiries, find out if he was still alive or not.  One of these days.

The drive went on; the weather came and went, sending rain and sun and sleet and slush.  The high roads across the moors were wild and grey one moment, then sun-bright and fresh with purple heather the next.  I stopped at Hexham to put some four-star into the Aurelia's tank and was reminded of the calibratory nature of travelling in a covetable car: if guys in garages start to admire the car more than you, you're getting old.  Honours even, then.  I drove on into the north.

David Rennell arrived in a dark blue Mondeo.  I bought him a burger and a soda and we sat in the steamed-up Aurelia, for all the world like a married-to-others couple having a clandestine meeting towards the end of the affair.  Rain beat on the roof.

David Rennell was a tall, wiry-looking guy with short auburn hair.  Bless him, he'd brought a couple of Polaroids of the desks they'd moved out of the mysterious, no-longer-top-secret room in the middle of the Silex plant.  Not ordinary desks.  Too many shelves.  Lots of holes in the flat surfaces for cables.  He'd brought a handful of the connectors and plugs that had been lying around the place.