Penult (10 page)

Karla remained unconscious for a good
hour and a half. The shadows were growing long in the heath before
she began to stir. I was the one this time leaning in close,
watching her eyes.

“
So … did you cross? Did
you … visit Root … just now?”

“
No,” she said, in a small
voice on the verge of a whisper. “I was only … sleeping.
“

Somehow, I felt gratified. This was
Karla, who bragged about her ability to surf her moods. If she was
unable to make the transition into the Liminality even when she was
already feeling down, maybe I had something to do with it. Maybe,
she was happy with me, or, if not happy, happy enough to stay out
of Root.

Too bad she was sobbing.

***

When we finally reached Inverness, I
almost had to pry Karla off the seat. She didn’t want to leave the
train. She looked and acted stoned, though I knew
better.

We waited for everyone else to exit
first. I hovered by the door, scanning the platform for those
solitary young men—the watchers—who I got into the habit of looking
for in the days when Sergei had a bounty on my head. But Sergei was
dead, and I seriously doubted that his successors had nearly the
emotional investment that Sergei had put into finding me,
especially when they saw the cost of Sergei’s obsession.

“
Sturgie says he and his
friends can help us. You have a picture of Izzie,
right?”

“
Yes.”

“
We can go to a copy shop,
make a flyer. Promise a reward for information. But maybe we don’t
post them just anywhere. We hand them out to Sturgie’s friends. We
don’t want your Dad’s people to know we’re looking for
her.”

“
It was a mistake, coming
here,” said Karla.

“
Why do you say
that?”

“
I just wish we hadn’t
come. I don’t like this place. Too much bad happens
here.”

“
Oh, stop. It’s time we
make some good memories here. It’s not a bad town. It’s not the
city’s fault.”

I led her onto the platform heading
for the one exit before reversing course and heading in the
opposite direction. A young man stood alone beside a waste bin,
clothes rumpled, hair frazzled, his expression distant and
vacant.

A watcher? Perhaps not. But old habits
die hard.

***

Sturgie had apologized profusely in
advance for not being able to meet us with a car. His plan was to
shuttle us back to his flat on the back of his motorcycle so we
could wash up before heading across the river to the pub. I had
texted him the minute we pulled into Inverness station, but he had
yet to respond.

We left the station and waited outside
on the corner where he had told us to meet him. It drizzled just
like in Edinburgh, but here it wafted with the wind weightless, in
no hurry to meet the ground. We huddled together under an awning
and waited as the damp found us anyhow and seeped into our
clothes.

The foghorn in the harbor competed
with nearby sirens. A half hour later and after several more
unanswered texts and calls, he had still not arrived.

“
This is not like him,”
said Karla. “He is usually good with time. Are you sure he said to
meet us here?”

“
He said same corner he met
us to take you away from me my first time in Inverness. This is it,
right?”

Karla studied my face for a moment
before taking my hand and squeezing it.

“
Maybe he has trouble with
his motorcycle.”

I was tired of standing around and
train stations still made me nervous. “It shouldn’t be too far to
walk. Maybe we should just go?”

Karla nodded and we started off down
the street. I let Google maps lead the way. Three blocks down we
turned the corner left to come across a light show of ambulances
and police cars. A small heap of crumpled metal lay smoking against
a brick wall. Paramedics were busy trying to delicately transfer an
accident victim to a stretcher.

Karla took off running. I was right on
her heels.

She evaded a policeman who reached
out, trying to keep her away. She looked up at me, her face
anguished. “It’s him!” She screamed.

A detective pulled us under an awning.
Garish emergency lights reflected off all the dampness.

“
You knew this young
man?”

“
He’s our friend,” I said.
“What happened?”

“
Hit and run, we presume.
Only there we were no witnesses, unless, perhaps, you happened to
see something?”

“
No,” I said. “He was
supposed to meet us at the train station.”

“
Is he … is he going to be
okay?” said Karla.

The detective bit his lip. “I’m so
sorry ,dear. He’s already gone.”

My head swirled. The glare gave way to
darkness. The pavement below beckoned, but Karla steadied me and I
kept my feet.

Chapter 8:
Inverness

Just down the hall from Raigmore
Hospital’s mortuary, Karla and I sat in the special room reserved
for grieving friends and family. Pictures of baby animals, sunsets
and nature scenes dominated the décor.

Sturgie’s college mates came by in
dribs and drabs, many of them sloshed, some teary, some simply
disbelieving. I had just gotten off the phone with Renfrew. The old
man was crushed. He wanted to drive up that night, but Helen
convinced him to stay put. Sturgie’s dad Wilbert, Renfrew’s
estranged brother, would be coming up in the morning to handle the
transport arrangements.

Sturgie’s body was to be shipped to
Cardiff where he had grown up. His body would be laid to rest in
his home town.

“
Never should have called
Sturg,” I said. “We should have just shown up and surprised
him.”

“
James. Stop. These things
happen. No matter what we had done, maybe it was meant to be. Maybe
something worse would have happened.”

“
Something worse? What’s
worse than getting hit by a truck?”

A braided metal cable had been found
on the road, its broken end still attached to a lamp post. Sturgie
had been clotheslined, and as he and his bike skidded across the
blacktop, a lorry had run him over.

I couldn’t rid my head of the image of
him lying broken in the road. And my mine kept returning to that
oddly tangible dream and the man with the coil.

“
Let’s get out of here,” I
said.

We wandered for a time in the
incessant drizzle, hoping to find a place to stay, but there was no
lodging in the area. Karla wanted to go back to the hospital but I
couldn’t stand being there.

We retreated to a bus shelter that
smelt like a urinal and sat on a hard, cold bench. Our eyes were
closed, but neither of us could sleep. I held her and rocked her in
my arms, watching sheets of mist dance under the streetlights,
concentrating on the rhythm of her breathing, trying not to think
bad thoughts.

“
The roots are close,” said
Karla. “Do you feel them?”

“
No,” I said, and I knew
that it was Karla’s presence that kept the embers glowing in my
heart and kept them at bay like a bonfire against wolves. I was
afraid to tell her, though. I know how badly she wanted me to
cross. And yes, we might cross together, but that was never
guaranteed. I wanted to hold her in the here and now, and even if
she crossed alone, I would still be here to hold her.

“
I want to go, but they
won’t come. Something is keeping them away.”

“
Yeah, well. They’ll come
for us when they’re good and ready. I guess.”

“
So what do we do
now?”

“
I don’t know. Go back down
to Wales, I guess. Attend the funeral.”

She pulled away from me and looked me
in the eye. “But we came all the way here. We should still look for
Izzie. Yes?”

“
Yeah. We should. But it
would be nice to get some rest. How about we find a hotel? Get a
few hours sleep. In the morning we can go looking. We have a couple
days before the funeral.”

“
Okay.” She relaxed and
snuggled back.

“
Maybe you can try to in
touch with that friend of hers again. What’s her name?”

“
Gwen.”

“
And I’ll go … I’ll go
snooping around the church.”

She squeezed my arm and looked up at
me. “Are you … okay with that?”

“
Don’t worry, I’ll be
careful. I won’t go inside, that’s for sure. But I can hang out
nearby. See who comes and goes. They all go to mass every day,
right?”

“
Sometimes twice a day,”
she said. “Some days morning, noon and night.”

“
So that’s the plan. I’ll
watch and see if I can spot her. Meanwhile, you try and find Gwen,
and see if she knows anything.”

We left the shelter and walked towards
the city center. It didn’t matter to Karla but I was hoping to find
a bigger, nicer hotel. I needed a good night’s sleep. I didn’t want
to stay in some flea bag, tourist place. I really was getting
spoiled. A year ago I would have been happy to find a dry corner in
some shed.

We found a place off High Street
called the Heathmount, checked in and collapsed on the bed without
taking showers or even stripping off the covers. The sun was high
when I awoke to find Karla already clean and dressed and standing
by the door.

“
I’m going off to look for
Gwen.”

“
Why don’t you borrow my
phone? Try calling her first?”

“
Can’t. Her parents monitor
her calls and texts. If they know I’m in town, this will be a
problem.”

“
So where—?”

“
I will go to her school.
Every day she goes home for lunch. I know the way she walks. I can
intercept her on the way.”

“
Okay. Just … be
careful.”

She scrunched her eyes at me. She
didn’t look pleased.

“
You’re still going to the
church right?”

“
Well, yeah.”

“
Just so you know, you have
already missed the morning mass, but … no worries. Papa sometimes
holds meetings during the daytime. If he’s keeping Izzie out of
school, she’s likely to be with him. And if not, there will be
another mass at six.”

“
How do we get word to each
other if we find her?”

“
Just come back to the
hotel. Leave a note.”

And with that she slammed the door and
left.

***

It was the first minute we had been
apart since we met each in Rome, and I didn’t like the feeling one
bit. I was already anxious, and had to suppress an urge to follow
after her, so needy I had become.

I washed up. It was too late for the
complimentary breakfast downstairs. They were already packing
things away, so I struck out at random until I came across a bakery
and picked up a couple scones in a waxed paper and a cup of
coffee.

I took a deep breath and made my way
towards the River Ness and the ancient church that had been taken
over by the Sedevacantists. I turned right when I reached the
avenue that ran along the river bank. My heart began to pound as I
approached the hulk of lichened stone that had once imprisoned
me.

Drugged, hauled to Inverness at night
and locked away in that dungeon, I had no idea that it could be so
pretty outside. The clouds had broken into shreds and allowed some
bits of sun to seep through to make the river shine and glaze the
wet trees until they glistened.

I remember hearing traffic from my
cell, but at the time I had assumed that they had taken us to
another part of Glasgow. I passed the basement exit from which we
had made our escape, half expecting a mob of ardent Sedevacantists
to come bursting out to grab me. My pace picked up and I gave that
door a wide berth.

When I came around the front I was
startled to find a crisp new sign on the front lawn. This was no
longer a Sedevacantist church. It now belonged to the Swedenborgs—a
Protestant denomination I knew next to nothing about. The
Sedevacantist Catholics were gone.

It was with a strange mixture of
relief and dismay that I turned back to the hotel. My heart calmed,
but it meant we were no closer to finding out what had happened to
Isobel.

I didn’t know what else to do, so I
went back to the hotel, went up to the room and flicked on the
tube. I felt guilty hanging around, watching TV, but I didn’t know
what else to do. It didn’t make sense to wander aimlessly around
Inverness.

When I Googled “Sedevacantist” and
“Inverness” all I came up with was some island monastery in the
Orkney’s called Golgotha. The idea of going there horrified me and
I wasn’t even sure I wanted to share the information with
Karla.

I got worried as the afternoon
lengthened and there was no sign of Karla. It sucked that I wasn’t
able to convince her to carry a cell phone. She had nothing, not
even a cheap slab phone on which I could contact her. That girl
could be so old school it was aggravating.