Naming the Bones (8 page)

‘It all blew up in my face a bit. Some people thrive on controversy, Fergus for example, but I don’t. It got me down. Rachel dropped into my office one afternoon to commiserate and we went for a few drinks, quite a few drinks. Then when the pub closed I remembered that there was another bottle at my place. There’s always another bottle at my place.’ He gave a sad smile. ‘I didn’t expect her to come and then when she did I didn’t expect anything more than a drink. I was going to tell you.’ He laughed almost shyly. ‘But a gentleman doesn’t talk about these things.’

‘You bloody talked about it to Lyle.’

‘Oh, come on, Murray. I’m an overweight fifty-five-year-old poetry lecturer and Rachel’s a thirty-five-year-old dolly bird. I had to tell someone. Anyway, I’d been drinking.’

‘You’ve generally been drinking.’

‘That’s a prime example of why I didn’t tell you. You can be such a fucking puritan, I thought you wouldn’t approve.’ He gave a low laugh. ‘And then you told me that you and she . . . Well, I was jealous, I admit, but not jealous enough to throw it back in your face.’ Rab raised his pint to his lips and then wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. His tone slipped from apologetic to defensive. ‘I don’t see what you’re getting so hot under the collar for, anyway. She’s another man’s wife. She doesn’t belong to you, me or anyone else in the department she might have fucked, except maybe Fergus, and if so I’d say he’s doing a very poor job of holding onto his property.’

It was the female player’s turn again. Rab moved his drink as she pulled the cue back then fired a white ball across the baize. Murray watched it sail into the depths of a corner pocket, sure as death.

He imagined taking the pool cue from her hand and smashing it into Rab Purvis’s beer-shined face. Teeth first, then nose. He’d leave the eyes alone. He’d always been squeamish about that kind of thing.

Lyle said, ‘Are you okay, Murray?’

He didn’t answer, just got to his feet and left before any more damage could be done.

Murray had been walking for a long time. Once a police car slowed and took a look at him, he ignored them and they drove on past, but their interest seemed to be the signal for his feet to start a winding route home. He left the main road and wandered uphill into the confluence of wide lonely streets that made up Park Circus, the jewel in the crown of Glasgow’s West End. Sometime after parlour maids and footmen decided they’d rather risk their health in munitions factories or the battlefield, the smart residences had been converted into hotels and offices. Now they’d been deserted for city centre lets and were slowly being reclaimed by speculative builders. Murray drifted past the weathered To Let signs, half-seeing the sycamore shoots sprouting from neglected guttering, the broken railings and chipped steps that might tumble the unsuspecting into the dank courtyards of window-barred basements. The plague-town atmosphere of the shuttered houses and empty streets matched his mood.

He took his mobile from his pocket and accessed the number he’d taken from a list in the front office and stupidly promised himself he’d never use. The night was starting to turn. He’d reached the top gate of Kelvingrove Park. Down below in the parkland’s green valley, birds were beginning to sing to each other. Murray pressed Call and waited while his signal bounced around satellites stationed in the firmament above, or whatever it did in that pause before the connection was made. He let it ring until an automated voice told him the person he was looking for was unavailable, then hung up and pressed Redial. This time the other end picked up and Professor Fergus Baine’s voice demanded, ‘Do you know what time it is?’

Murray cut the call. He sat on a wall and listened to the birds celebrating the return of the sun, then after a minute or two his phone vibrated into the stupid jingle he’d never bothered to change. He took it out, glanced at the caller display and saw the unfamiliar number flashing on the screen.

‘Hello?’ His voice was slurred.

‘Is that you, Murray?’ Fergus sounded wide-awake. Did he never sleep? ‘What do you want? Something urgent, I imagine?’

‘I wanted to speak to Rachel.’

It was ridiculous, all of it, stupid.

‘Rachel is asleep. Perhaps you can call back in the morning?’ The professor’s politeness was damning.

Somewhere in the recesses of Murray’s brain was the knowledge that now was the time to quit, while he still had the slim chance of writing the call off as a drunken indiscretion. But in the morning he would have lost his courage.

‘I need to talk to her now.’

‘Well, you can’t. Call back at a decent hour.’

The line went dead.

Murray stood and soberly surveyed the sunrise. A door in the empty street opened and some party-goers reeled out, their voices high and excited. A young girl drifted over and draped an arm around his shoulder.

‘Look, Dr Watson.’ She pointed unsteadily across the parkland. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’

The sun was fully up now and only a few streaks of pink remained smeared against the blue. The morning light glinted against the River Kelvin and caught in the trees, shifting their leaves all the greens and yellows in the spectrum. The birds had ceased their revels and calm had settled. Even the concrete hulk of hospital buildings in the distance seemed at one with the day. Murray looked at the new-minted morning and agreed that yes, it really was beautiful.

Chapter Seven

MURRAY WOKE SUDDENLY,
not knowing what it was that had roused him. The blind was only half down, daylight filtering weakly into the room. He glanced at the radio alarm, but its plug had been pulled, the glowing numbers dead. Saturday or not, he’d intended to be at the library in Edinburgh for opening time, but his drunken self had opted for uninterrupted sleep. His clothes were draped carefully over the chair in the bedroom, the way they always were when he’d drunk too much. His watch lay on the top of the chest of drawers, amongst the kind of small change a man on a spree accumulates. Five past twelve. He felt like Dr Jekyll, his scholarly intentions ruined by a fiend of his own fabric. Murray slid from under the duvet, found his boxer shorts and pulled them on. Then he paused on the edge of the bed and listened.

Somewhere in the distance a road drill rumbled, but otherwise it was quiet. He went barefoot into the hallway and opened the front door, screening his half-nakedness behind it. He’d neglected to lock up the night before, but no keys trembled in the keyhole. Murray shut it gently. The rush of air caught on the hairs on his legs and he realised he was cold. There was a sudden clatter of footsteps in the stairwell outside. He felt ridiculously vulnerable standing there in only his boxers. Murray turned towards the bathroom, but the snap of the letterbox brought him back into the hallway and the letters sprawled on the mat.

He took his dressing gown from the hook on the back of the bathroom door and went into the kitchen. There was no mineral water in the fridge so he filled a mug with water from the tap, drank it quickly and then poured himself a second. Christ, was this what it was like to be an alcoholic? If Archie had felt this way every morning then it was no wonder his published work consisted of a single collection.

Murray didn’t want to think about the night before; the row with Rab, the phone call to Rachel, Rab and Rachel. The romance had been a knot in Murray’s stomach since it started, but now that it was over – more than over; now that it was ruined – the knot was replaced by a leaden deadness. He realised he’d been sustained by the thought that Rachel – Rachel, to whom he’d have addressed poems if only he could write – Rachel had chosen him. His knuckles tingled where he wished he’d slammed them into Rab’s face.

It wasn’t Rab’s fault. He should send him an email, apologise.

It changed everything; the knowledge that Rachel had slept with him too; Rab’s mouth kissing where he had kissed, his hands on her body. The thought disgusted him, even though he’d supposed she still slept with Fergus.

Fergus.

The phone call came back to him, the memory of the professor’s voice slick with anger. He groaned out loud. His sabbatical stretched ahead, twelve months for his head of department to nurse his wrath and engineer Murray’s successor.

He felt like going back to bed, pulling the sheets over his head and letting temporary death overwhelm the after-drink urge to kill himself. Instead he sat on the couch cradling the cup of water in his hands. A double-decker bus rumbled along the road outside. Murray watched the small ripples disturbing the surface of his drink.

Had there been a moment, a flash of mental clarity in the midst of the storm, when Archie had known he was going to die? He would have been wet already, soaked through by the rain and toppling waves, but the shock of water when the boat upturned must have taken the breath from him. How many times had he gone under before the final descent? How long had it taken? The sea sucking him down then spewing him back to the surface, the frantic struggle to stay afloat, the desperate grab for some purchase met by froth and foam. Or had he been knocked unconscious before he even hit the water? It was possible. The night had been wild, Archie sailing solo. Maybe he had fallen and hit his head against the side or been attacked by the boom. Archie had been careless with his life, sailing into the storm. Perhaps he’d been a careless sailor too. His body had never been found. It left no clues for the coroner. There was no convenient sheaf of newly forged poems slid safe in a waterproof envelope in his jeans pocket, no clues for the biographer either.

Murray wandered through to the kitchen and looked down onto the backcourt. An old man in carpet slippers was scavenging through the bins. He watched him for a while then went into the hallway, picked up the phone and dialled the police. The phone rang for a long time, and then a deep voice said, ‘Sandyford police station.’

‘Hello, there’s an old man out the back of my building going through the rubbish. He’s in his slippers and I’m worried he’s got dementia or something.’

‘Have you spoken to him?’

‘I’m not dressed yet.’

The voice at the other end of the phone was weary.

‘Do you think he’s looking for receipts or anything?’

‘Receipts?’

It was like a foreign word. Murray couldn’t think what it had to do with the conversation.

‘Identity fraud.’

It was in his mind to say that the old man would be welcome to his identity, but he answered, ‘No, I don’t think he’s doing any harm. I just thought he might be confused.’

‘Okay,’ the policeman sighed again. ‘Give me your name and address and we’ll send someone round when we can.’

‘When will that be?’

The voice contained the full quota of contempt that an early-rising man in uniform could hold for a civilian who had only now crawled out of bed.

‘I couldn’t say, sir.’

Murray gave his details, hung up and went back to the window. The old man was gone. He stood there for a moment debating whether to call the police again or get dressed and hunt for him amongst the backcourts. In the end he did neither, simply clicked the kettle on and lifted his mail from the table.

A bill from the factors, a leaflet from the local supermarket outlining their offers in colours bright enough to sicken the famished, a bank statement that would show he earned more than his needs, a plain white envelope and a letter stamped with the logo of Christie’s agents. He hesitated between the final two, and then tore at the seal of the agent’s letter.

Dear Dr Watson

Ms Graves has asked me to advise you that she has given your request serious consideration, but has regretfully decided to decline. Ms Graves has strong views on the privacy of artists, and while she wishes you every success in your critical analysis of Archie Lunan’s poetry, she does not see what a discussion of their time together would achieve. She now considers this correspondence closed and has asked me to bring to your attention the government’s recent anti-stalking legislation.

Yours sincerely

Foster James

Niles, James and Worthing

Murray swore and crumpled the letter into a ball.

The airwaves were full of people talking. Child-murderers and drugs casualties, people who had once sat next to someone famous on the bus, even the dead were in on the act, revealing scandals from beyond the grave. Everywhere people were blogging, Twittering and confessing; TV shows ran late into the night detailing private lives that would have been better kept private; but Archie’s old love would consider a second approach grounds for prosecution.

He smoothed the letter out and re-read it. The trick would be to bump into Christie casually, at a poetry reading perhaps. Somewhere with wine and easy company where he could lay on the charm, get her talking about old times before he admitted that yes, it was he who was writing Archie’s biography.

Some chance.

He smoothed the paper again, knowing it had to become part of his file. Did it tell him anything beyond what was said?

Murray whispered. ‘You never left, never got any distance. That’s why you care so much.’

He slit open the second envelope with his thumb, wondering what the penalties for stalking were and if stalkers were still allowed to teach. The green paper inside had been carefully folded in half. The type suggested that the sender had only recently come into possession of a word processor. Fonts battled for prominence, but boldest of all was the heading:
God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Service times were detailed beneath.

Murray crumpled the page and balled it into the recycling bag, trying to smile at the thought that – Rachel aside – it was the best offer he’d had in a while.

Chapter Eight

MURRAY SEEMED TO
have been waiting a long time. He decided to count to a hundred then ring the doorbell again. He’d reached eighty-five when a shadow appeared, advancing slowly towards him beyond the thickened safety glass.