And the Land Lay Still (53 page)

Weeks went by. Peter was desperate to talk. He trailed round bars in Leith and fell in with other solitary bastards, just so he could steer the conversation round to Willie McRae, tell them what his take was and ask them what they thought. Mostly they didn’t think anything and if they did it was uninformed rubbish. He was in these dens of hard, hard drinking and he drank pints of cola, it fizzed around his teeth and he felt superior to the men he was with because they were drunk and ignorant and he was sober and informed. The downside was he was only temporarily sober and not informed enough. There was only one person whose opinion he wanted to hear, and that person wasn’t there.

And then the call came. It summoned him out of sleep and he crawled across the floor and reached the phone around the time he remembered he still hadn’t had a drink in a fortnight.

Croick spoke in a kind of sickroom whisper, as if he had the flu.

It’s me.

Where are you?

Glasgow. Can you come over?

Aye. When?

Now.

It’s three in the morning.

There are all-night buses, aren’t there?

Not sure.

How come you can’t drive a fucking car?

There was something slurring his speech. Maybe drink, maybe something else.

Are you all right?

Just get over here. He named a hotel near Central Station. Room 431, he said. If they stop you on the night desk, say you’re a friend of Mr Brown in 431. That’s all you need to say.

Anything you want?

Just yourself. I need to show you something.

Right.

Good man. Knew I could rely on you. Listen.

What?

I might not be here.

Croick’s voice was fading in and out.

What? Peter repeated.

What I mean is. No, forget it. I’ll be here. Need to show you. Don’t worry.

Should I be worried?

No. What happens …

What happens when?

No, no, don’t mean that. The voice slurred off again.

I can’t hear you, Peter said.

There was silence at the other end of the line. Then, as if from a great distance, Peter heard Croick’s voice: I’m sorry.

It didn’t sound like an apology for not speaking clearly.

Sorry for what? Peter said.

But Croick had hung up.

At the bus station there were a few buses sitting in darkness, some cleaning staff, and a guy in a black waterproof jacket that might have been a uniform. He stuck his tongue in his cheek and shook his head. Nae all-night bus here, mate. It’s Wednesday. That’s just at the weekend.

He had to wait till five for a Glasgow bus. He got the hotel number from directory inquiries and tried calling from a phone box but nobody picked up. When the bus pulled into the stance a queue formed out of nowhere, men in working clothes, men in business suits, men with purpose. Most of them went to sleep for the duration of the journey. Peter sat awake, asking himself questions, asking Croick questions. What does Croick have to be sorry about? What is it he wants me for? Where were you at Easter? Were you in the Highlands? What happened? What have you done, Croick, what have you done?

At a quarter to seven he was walking through a Glasgow city centre already busy with taxis, delivery vans and buses. The hotel didn’t exactly advertise its presence. Its name was in black letters in
a flickering light box over a glass door, and if you blinked you missed the entrance. Once inside, though, Peter was surprised at how the space opened up. There was nobody on reception. He walked on a sticky carpet through the lobby and round the corner to where the lift was. He smelled stale smoke and old beer. Somewhere not far away he heard the clash of dishes and cutlery, someone singing: breakfast in preparation.

He got into the lift and pulled the cage shut. The fourth floor was the top floor. There was probably some operations procedure about always taking the stairs but he couldn’t remember ever learning it. The lift ascended creakily. When it stopped he eased forward to peer left and right before stepping out. He felt like he was acting in a film, playing the spy he never really had been. He was in a deserted corridor, doors evenly spaced all the way along it. Worn red carpet, featureless walls. He made his way to 431 and listened outside. He thought he could just make out voices on a radio or television. He knocked. After a few moments he knocked again. Are you there? he said. He didn’t want to say either of their names out loud. He knocked again. Croick, he said under his breath. Then, louder: Croick!

The Spy Who Never Was
, he thought. Good title for a Bond movie.

He looked up and down the corridor again. He began to have a bad feeling. What the fuck was he doing here? He should walk away.

He could have walked away. Same as it ever was. He sees that now. Instead he inspected the door more closely. It had a traditional mortise lock with a push-down handle. He reached for the handle and tried it. The door was not locked. He eased it open, and stepped inside.

There was a bedside lamp throwing a low light across the room. The covers of the bed, a double, were still on but rumpled where somebody had been lying on top. Pillows, three of them, had been pushed up against the headboard. The headboard was joined to wee tables, one on either side of the bed, and it was on one of these that the lamp stood. There was a telephone on the other one. The headboard also had a built-in radio-and-alarm system with speakers. It must have been stylish for about a year in the 1970s. The voices Peter had heard were coming from the speakers,
a news programme, slightly off-station and turned so low he couldn’t make out what was being said.

A copy of
The Times
lay discarded on the bed. Beside the lamp was a glass, an empty half-bottle of gin and an empty bottle of tonic water. Croick’s tipple. A key with a tag on it that said 431. A pair of shoes was placed neatly under a chair by the window. On the chair was the familiar holdall. The curtains were closed. Peter went over and carefully pulled the edge of one curtain to one side in order to see out. He was looking at the back of another building. No windows, no watchers, no witnesses. He let the curtain fall back into place.

The radio voices continued to chat. They had nothing to do with whatever was going on in the room. Nothing was going on in the room. He went over to the bed and switched the voices off.

The door to the bathroom was ajar. The light was on, buzzing like a bluebottle. He forced himself to go in.

Croick was lying in the dry bath, fully clothed apart from his shoes. His head, resting on the fourth pillow, lolled to one side. The fluorescent light drained all the colour out of him. There wasn’t much to drain. A long splatter of blood and tissue arced up the wall. More blood coiled round his neck and trailed down the white surface of the bath. The pillow was dark with blood. At the other end of the bath the shower curtain had been looped up out of the way, and the shower head was dripping fat drops of water on to Croick’s socks.

Peter backed out, breathing fast, and waited till his gorge had subsided. When he looked back in he saw that the tiled floor appeared to be completely clean. Nevertheless he slipped off his own shoes, reached for a towel hanging over a rail on the back of the door, and draped it across the floor. Then he stepped on to the towel and over to the bath. He’d never had a view down on to Croick’s head before. There was a patch of baldness under the dark curly hair. The bullet hole in the right temple was a narrow black tunnel full of congealed blood. Croick’s right arm was slumped across his chest and there was a gun in the hand. Peter couldn’t see the make without moving the hand and he wasn’t touching anything, but he could see it was compact, lightweight, almost certainly .22 calibre. Not that that proved anything. The
fact that it was in Croick’s hand didn’t prove anything. The only thing that Peter knew for sure was that Croick was dead.

Either somebody had killed him or he’d done it himself.

Peter started to make calculations. He was a contestant in a game show and the clock was counting down and he had to get everything in the right sequence or else he was out. Croick had phoned him at three. Not from the phone beside the bed, Peter hoped. Four hours later Croick was dead. He knew Peter was on his way, so either he wanted him to find him like this or he didn’t. But why would he bring Peter all the way to Glasgow just to see him dead? Why did he say sorry on the phone? Why was his death so like that of Willie McRae?

Does a man get in the bath to shoot himself? Does a man, under orders from another man, knowing he is going to be shot, walk into the bathroom and get in the bath without a struggle? Maybe. If he’s ready to go. If he’s had enough. If he
wants
to go.

Had the pillow deadened the sound of the shot? No one had come. But the hotel didn’t seem like the kind of place where people would interfere if they didn’t have to.

The game-show clock was almost out and Peter didn’t have the answers let alone the sequence. He looked at the corpse. He was getting used to it now. The eyes were shut, which made it easier.

Croick, the game-show host, said, You’re too late, Peter.

No he didn’t. Couldn’t. Because he was dead.

Croick said, You’re just in time, Peter.

No he didn’t.

Get a grip, Peter thought. Once you go out, that’s it. You’ll never see him again. He stood watching, just in case there was anything more Croick would like to say. To see if, lying there in his own blood in the bath, he could answer any of the questions pounding in Peter’s head.

Just in time for what? Peter said. No he didn’t. That was later. He didn’t say a word. He kind of nodded goodbye. Reached for the towel and hung it back on its rail. Pushed the bathroom door back to where it had been. Had he touched the handle? No, only the door itself. He took out his handkerchief and wiped the area he’d touched. He put his shoes back on. He went over to the chair and, using the handkerchief, pulled the zip of the holdall open.
Carefully he sifted through the contents. Pair of socks, pair of pants, shirt. That was it. He zipped the bag back up.

There was a built-in wardrobe. Again using the handkerchief, he opened it. One jacket on a coat hanger. He felt the pockets. Empty. He closed the wardrobe and went over to the bed. The bedside table on which the bottles were sitting had a wee drawer. He opened it. A Gideon Bible and a wallet so fat it was distorted. He lifted the wallet with the handkerchief. Without opening it he could see the edges of the notes. He heard Croick’s voice. No he didn’t. Aye he did.
Take it. It’s theirs, not mine.
He thought, why the fuck not?

Unless of course he was being set up. Who would be setting him up? Croick? But Croick was dead. Somebody else? Canterbury? Didn’t make sense. Still, Croick had told him to come and by the time he’d arrived Croick was in the state he was. What did Croick have to be sorry for? Letting him down? Or setting him up?

Need to show you.

Maybe he had phoned from this room, and maybe he wasn’t on his own when he did. Peter tried to remember the exact tone of Croick’s voice. What tone of voice signified someone was pointing a gun at your head?

What happens.

None of it made sense.

I need to show you what happens.

He heard it clear for the first time. That was what Croick had been trying to say on the phone. Was it?

Time to go. He put the wallet back, complete with the cash. One small victory over himself that maybe he’d always regret, because there could have been five hundred quid there, maybe more. Fuck it. He took the wallet out again, holding it in the handkerchief, flicked it open, made a pincer of his thumb and forefinger and slid the notes free. Much more. Twenties, fifties, there was even the rich red of a hundred or two at the back. He stuck the lot in his pocket and put the wallet away again. Definitely time to go. Had he touched anything else with his hands? No, only the money, which was now his. The radio. He turned it back on again, low, and wiped the switch. The curtains? Didn’t matter. He
retreated to the door and gently opened it. The corridor was still empty, but a trolley loaded with a linen basket and cleaning equipment was now parked halfway along. No sign of a cleaner or chambermaid. He hadn’t heard anybody working either. This disturbed him. He glanced at his watch. He’d been inside the room fully half an hour. Too long. He stepped out, closed the door and quickly wiped the handle. As he walked towards the lift he heard its clunking mechanism in operation. Somebody coming up. He thought, here’s my James Bond moment. I dive in the laundry basket or maybe just bend down behind it, shuffling mops and looking servile, and the hard bastards getting out of the lift heading for 431 don’t even notice me, and I coolly walk to the lift and take it to the ground floor. Aye, that’ll be fucking right. He turned and ran in the opposite direction, past the green fire-exit signs, and bolted down the stairs. Never moved so fast before or since. A minute later he was out in the beautiful damp air of a grey Glasgow morning.

It was eight o’clock. He made his way to Central Station and with one of his new twenty-pound notes bought a ticket to Edinburgh, and soon after that he was slowing his heart on the slow train, the one that went through the wastelands of de-industrialised Scotland, a tour of devastation calling at Uddingston, Bellshill, Cleland, Shotts, Fauldhouse, Breich, West Calder, all those places nobody outside Scotland thinks of as Scottish, the Scotland so real it defies the imagination, the train of half-empty carriages and people who got on for a couple of stops and off again, the train he felt safe on because who in his right mind would use it as a getaway vehicle? And turning his still-shuddering body to the window he drew out the wad of notes and counted one thousand four hundred and forty pounds of dead man’s money and wondered if he’d just got lucky or unlucky. He stuck it back in his pocket and stared at nothing until the train rolled through the tunnel into Waverley, and nobody was there to arrest him or follow him or mug him or murder him, no matter how many times he checked over his shoulder as he scuttled down side streets, no matter how many doorways he ducked into, nobody was there, and he walked and waited and walked and waited till he could get into an off-licence for a bottle of something
comforting, and then it was on to the sanctuary of JB Investigations to consult with the bottle and to begin the conversations in his head that would go on and on for ever and ever till doomsday.