Authors: William Meikle
Doug's car was parked out back, in front of the garage. Inside the rotting shed, my old two-door, one litre Nissan was quietly rusting to a long-overdue grave. But I didn't mind. Today, and probably as long as Doug was working for me, Adams Detective Agency had a new company car...a nice shiny Land Rover. It was last year's model, only four thousand miles on the clock, with reclining seats, automatic gear stick, power steering, four-wheel drive and more toys than any machine had a right to.
Doug had bought it not long after the Amulet case...it was the closest thing he could get to travelling while still inside a house. He said it made him feel secure, and I could see what he meant as I stepped up into the driver's seat and the door shut behind me with a satisfying clunk. The machine was as big as an elephant, and half as maneuverable. Driving it was like wallowing in mud, but the high-driving position made me feel superior. Once I'd finally reassured myself that I knew the difference between the controls for the indicators and the windscreen washers, I was able to drive it, carefully, out of the garage area and onto the streets of the city.
At every corner I leaned against the camber, convinced the vehicle was going to topple over, and at Anniesland Cross I took a bend too sharp, and had my heart in my mouth for a long heartbeat until I was sure all four wheels were on the ground. I slowed down and lit up a cigarette, trying to ignore the convoy that started to build up behind me on the road.
I felt washed out and stressed after just ten minutes driving, never mind four hours, but once I got out of the city and onto straighter roads I was able to stop concentrating so much and feel my way into the rhythm of the car. After another twenty minutes I was finally able to relax slightly, and mull over the case.
It seemed simple enough. Boy falls out with domineering father, leaves home under a cloud, father dies, boy says "So what?" It was a familiar enough story, repeated in hundreds of families every year. Only two things rankled me. First the whole
My boy isn't my boy
spiel didn't feel right. I'd been lied to often enough to know that Ms. Malcolm hadn't been telling me everything she knew...but then again, clients rarely did. The second thing was the secrecy in the pub. If the old lady was right, then there was no chance of them not knowing who I was after...not in a small town in the Highlands.
I let it go. There was no use in going over it again...not until I'd seen the lay of the ground for myself. I lit the first of a long chain of cigarettes, opened the window, turned up the stereo, and cruised through the scenery while Robert Johnson told tales of standing at the Crossroads and getting his lemon squeezed.
About an hour in, the rain started to fall, but the huge wipers treated it with disdain. I was alone on the road as I crossed Rannoch Moor...a landscape of peat bogs, black pools and flowing mist that unsettled me more than any city street at night ever had. I took my speed up to seventy and concentrated on the road, only relaxing fully once the road rose up towards Glencoe Pass.
I stopped and pulled over into a lay-by at the top of the pass to stretch my legs. The view was stunning enough to stir the dormant highland genes of even the mostly cynical city dweller. The rain had abated to a fine drizzle from an almost clear sky, and it lay like a silvery skin on the road that twisted away down the glen. High up on a bluff to my left, a line of six climbers started the ascent up the ridge. I marveled at the size of the backpacks that they carried...huge bulging bags that I would have had trouble lifting, never mind taking up a mountainside.
The tall, majestic cliffs on either side were a mass of greens, greys and browns, the colors merging and fading to a misty wistfulness in the far distance. A perfect rainbow arced over the road, showing the way to the North, to the real Scotland past this formidable natural gateway. High overhead a buzzard soared, its hunting calls piercing the still air. For long minutes I had the whole road to myself, and I let the tranquility fill me up.
I was called back to real life when an old car wheezed into the lay-by behind the Land Rover.
"Hey, mate," a Glasgwegian voice said. "Am I on the right road to Skye?"
I wandered over to the car so that I could avoid shouting...somehow it would have felt like sacrilege, there in the glen. As I got closer to the car, I realized I knew the driver.
"Small world, Jim," I said. "You're a long way from
The Halt
."
"Derek Adams? What in the name of the wee man are you doing out in the fresh air? No good will come of it, I can tell you that for a bob."
Jim Morton was a reporter, someone I'd shared a beer with from time to time. We had worked together in the past, and worked against each other at other times. I wondered which one it might be this time.
"Are you working?" I asked.
He looked furtive, although it was hard to tell, as his expression always looked like he was hiding something.
"Is that a professional question or a friendly one?"
"That depends," I said.
"On what."
"On whether you give me the professional or friendly answer."
He laughed, and got out of the car. It was my day for giving out free cigarettes, and we lit up together.
"I'm working," Jim said finally. "But it's a wild goose chase if you ask me. Somebody reported a werewolf. A fucking werewolf! And even more unbelievable, Johnny Brown has sent me out here to do a 'strange people in the islands will believe anything' story about the locals."
We sucked smoke in silence for a bit.
"What about you?" he asked.
"There's a lost boy needed for his father's funeral," I said. "But if he's a werewolf, he's in big trouble with his mammy."
Silence fell again, but with Jim it never lasted long.
"Fucking countryside," he said, "If it's brown it looks like shit, if it's green it smells of shit, and if it's brown
and
green, it
is
shit."
He hawked out a spit that looked disgustingly firm.
"Where are you headed?" he said.
I thought about lying, but there was little point...and he was a good enough poker player to spot it.
"Skye," I said.
"Wonders will never cease. So am I. This heap of shit will never make it," he said, kicking the car. "I'll leave it in the next car park if you'll take me the rest of the way?"
"I'm only going to be there the one night, maybe even less," I said.
"Fuck it. If it takes any longer than that, Johnny Brown can pay for a fucking taxi."
I liked Jim, but his vocabulary left a lot to be desired for a reporter. It would have been better if his mother had washed his mouth out with soap at an early age.
We left the lay-by and he followed me as we headed to the next town. I was going slowly again, due to the twists, turns and gradient of the glen, but wee Jim had no such bother...he drove the whole hill less than three feet from my back bumper. I almost did an emergency stop, just to let him hit me...the Land Rover could take it...but the damage would only make Doug cry...and I'd seen enough of that.
Jim kept tight on my tail through Glencoe village until I parked in a huge, empty car park. No doubt in summer the space was full of coaches and tourists in too-loud, too-casual clothes, but now, in late spring, the concrete expanse looked sadly out of place amid the scenery. Jim pulled up beside me and I had another cigarette while he transferred his gear into the back of the Land Rover.
"Don't bother about giving me a hand," he said sarcastically as he hauled a huge camera out of the boot of his car, "I can see you're busy."
"I wouldn't want to strain anything," I replied, "There might be a highland lassie waiting for me at the end of the high road."
"In your dreams," he said as he passed me with a large suitcase. "Word of your ineptitude with the women is bound to have stretched this far by now."
"Look who's talking."
"Aye, you're fucking right there," he said. He closed the Land Rover boot and cadged another cigarette from me. "Five years ago I got divorced. You'd have thought the smell of married man would have faded by now, but I cannae get a woman to have a second look at me."
"Never mind," I said, "Where we're going there's plenty of sheep."
"Fucking countryside," he said, and ground his cigarette out with a vengeance. "The sooner we get going, the sooner I can get back to the city and breathe some decent air. Are you coming?"
"No, it's just the way I'm standing," I said, but I put out my own cigarette and headed for the driver's door.
"Shit, you've gone up in the world," he said as he climbed into the passenger seat and took in the surroundings.
"Clean living and abstemious behavior," I said.
He laughed.
"Aye. That'll be the fucking day."
For the next two hours he kept up a string of anecdotes mixed liberally with profanity. By the time we reached Kyle of Lochalsh and the new bridge across to Skye I felt grimy, like a laborer after a long hard shift.
"So where exactly on the island are you headed?" I asked as we crossed the wide span, island hopping across to our destination. I was hoping it wouldn't be too far. Even with the windows full open and the air conditioning on his after-shave was starting to overpower me.
"Portree," he said. "Some shit-hole of digs probably. That damn editor of mine is as tight as a duck's arse..."
And off he went again into another rant. Over the past two hours I had realized that Jim was nowhere near as good company when he was sober as he was when he was drunk. Or rather, when I was drunk. I resolved that I'd have a drink in my hand the next time I talked to him...if only to wash the foul taste from my mouth.
At least the scenery was diverting. I'd never been on the island before, and each corner brought mountain views or seascapes, cliffs and rolling hills, untamed wilderness and immaculate farms. Even the occasional villages were neat and well spaced out. The rain showers stopped completely as we passed through Broadford and we continued on the rest of the journey to Portree in glorious sunshine. It felt like a different planet, and I found myself wishing that I wasn't working, that I could stop anywhere I wanted and just dawdle.
Jim Morton however, seemed immune to the island's charms.
"Fucking peasants," he said as we passed two men wheeling barrows of peat cuttings. "Nobody needs to live like this in the 21st Century. Next they'll be telling us that they prefer it this way. No fucking way. Listen, Derek," he said conspiratorially, "What do you say we find a wee pub tonight then get blootered, like in the auld days?"
Actually the idea was appealing...but wee auld women who reminded me of my granny always made me feel guilty when I wasn't actually working for my money.
"I'll maybe manage a pint or two if I can't track my man down straight away," I said, "But I might be back on the road straight away if things go right."
"Trust me," he said. "This is Tcheuchtar-land. Nothing ever goes right here for folk from the city. It's inbred into them to hate us."
I thought he was going to go off on another one of his rants, but instead he banged hard on the dashboard.
"Stop. Stop here."
I did an emergency stop in the middle of the road...my old instructor would have been proud...and luckily there was no other traffic around.
"I knew it. I knew the bastard would shaft me," he muttered.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"That is," he replied, pointing at a sign on the road.
'The Highland Guest House...first right.'
"That's my digs. Tartan, shortbread and nylon sheets...no entry after 9.00 p.m. I knew it. I fucking knew it."
I pulled over to the side of the road, and Jim was still muttering as he unloaded his kit from the Land Rover.
"Give me a hand with this," he said. "I don't know why I have to carry all this shit around anyway...I'm a reporter, no' a fucking photographer."
I got out and took his suitcase, following him up the drive to the guesthouse. It was obviously a private house that doubled as a Bed and Breakfast establishment during the tourist season...a modern, square bungalow surrounded by lawn and concrete. It looked about as inviting as Barlinnie Prison on a wet Sunday.
A tiny white dog, no bigger than a rat, ran down the driveway, yapping at us until Jim growled at it, sending it scurrying away, yelping.
"Did some bad man frighten you?" someone said, and suddenly I pitied Jim. I knew what was coming even before the landlady came round the corner of the house. She was built like a battleship...most of her weight in her bow, a bosom of massive proportions that was heading towards us at speed. The floral pattern on her cleaning pinafore was so bright it could dazzle passing motorists, and her unnatural looking blue hair had been scraped so tightly back from her ears that her skin seemed stretched, like a full bin-liner. She cradled the dog in the crook of her elbow, where it sat and smirked at us.
"Yes?" she said, in a voice that meant "No".
"I've got a room booked," Jim said. He tried out-staring her, but she'd had decades of practice with 'difficult' customers, and he looked away first.
"I don't suppose you're Mr. and Mrs. Conway from Prestatten," she said, looking us up and down.
"We might be travelling incognito," I made the mistake of saying. All it earned me was a look that would have withered any lesser man.
"The only other booking I've got is for a single gentleman. A man from the newspapers," she said proudly.
Jim took his time with his reply.
"That would be me," he said, "Single, and from the papers...but unfortunately no gentleman."
"It's only a single," she said, looking suspiciously at me, "And I don't hold with all that modern hanky-panky."
I couldn't resist it.
"But we're researching how hospitable the islands are to the pink community. You wouldn't want a bad review, would you?"
You could see the conflict building in her. After ten seconds or so I gave her a break...I didn't want to be around if she exploded.
"Actually, I'm not staying...I was just helping him with his luggage. He's not very strong you see...limp wrists, if you catch my drift?"