And the Land Lay Still (51 page)

The landlord was as welcoming as the premises. When Peter told him he was setting up as a private investigator he said,
Investigate folk round here, pal, and ye’ll wind up in the docks. Dobie, his name was. He wanted three months’ rent up front in return for which Peter got a set of keys. Anything else was ‘found’. What do you mean? I mean, if ye want anything else, find it yersel. There were marks and holes in the walls where once must have been fixed shelving. There was a phone sitting on the floor in one corner of the main room. Peter picked up the receiver. The line was dead. The Eagles’ tune went through his head again.

What was this place before? he asked.

Before what?

Before now.

Dobie threw him a look that suggested he should mind his own business.

Windae-cleaning, he said.

A windae-cleaner needs an office?

A business needs an office, pal. You need an office, don’t ye?

Aye, but windae-cleaning?

Windae-cleaning, roof repairs, building work, plumbing. Emergency call-oots. That enough for ye?

I just thought in case any of your old customers drop by, Peter said.

They’ll no, Dobie said. We just stored stuff here, he said. Any mair questions?

Peter shook his head and, as if that meant he’d tried to end the discussion and it wasn’t his prerogative to do that, Dobie went on speaking.

Ye’ve got tae keep moving, he said. Keep ahead of the game. There’s money in windae-cleaning but it’s territorial, ken. I went part-shares wi another guy that already had a patch. We were daein the other work tae but there’s only so much ye can dae in one area. We wanted tae expand on tae somebody else’s patch but somebody else didna want us tae. So … He gestured with one hand at the space they were in. It’s better this way, he said.

What about your partner? Peter said.

He moved on, Dobie said. An amicable split, he said.

There wasn’t a trace of amicability anywhere on his face.

*

The bookshop closed, but long before it did Peter was away. His possessions from the Partick flat went into two or three cardboard boxes, plus half a dozen more for books and pamphlets, and that was him, out of Glasgow. A guy in his close who had a car ran him and the boxes through to Leith, wouldn’t take anything for it, especially not when he saw what Peter was going to. Jesus, he said, you’ve got to be kidding. I always knew Edinburgh was a dump, but this … Peter said, If anybody comes asking, you’ve no idea where I went. He said it without conviction, knowing that if Croick wanted to he’d track him down in a matter of hours.

He despised himself for taking Croick’s advice but he’d have despised himself more if he’d had to go back to Slaemill. He’d thought of London, wondered if he could disappear down there, but he’d had a good look at himself and what he saw was not a man ready to tackle London again. He hated Canterbury and Croick but he’d colluded with them, he was as responsible for what he was as they were. More so.

He felt so low it was liberating. It gave him a burst of something like energy. He had the phone reconnected – it only took three weeks and another deposit – and scoured the thrift shops on Leith Walk and Great Junction Street, picking up a mattress, pillows, a couple of chairs, a desk. He ate fish suppers and Chinese carry-outs and managed to restrict his drinking to cans of beer. He got a Post Office Box Number because he didn’t want folk turning up unannounced at the door and finding the office was also his bedroom. No name on the door, no indication of what was behind it. The front room smelled less damp than the back and had an electric fire hanging off one wall, so that was where he slept. In the morning he moved the mattress through to the back. He had about a hundred quid left in the world.

He took out an ad in the
Evening News
and the
Scotsman
, three days a week for two weeks:

Then the box number and phone number. Everything, with some latitude, was contained in those lines. All the money he had left was in his back pocket. He thought, sink or swim, Mr Bond, sink or swim, and wondered if that was a line some villain had once said to Sean Connery or Roger Moore or whoever the fuck was playing 007 these days. If it wasn’t, he thought, it should be.

To his amazement, the ad worked. After two days he’d had four phone calls and a couple of written inquiries. The good folk of Edinburgh had plenty they wanted to find out about their spouses, relatives, friends, rivals, work associates. Mostly it was: who are they sleeping with, who are they talking to, who are they paying, where do they go, where have they gone? There were worried parents, vengeful wives, controlling husbands, men who knew their business partners were ripping them off and needed proof. They wanted to know but they didn’t always want to see. I’m your man, said Peter, I’m your eyes. When the two weeks were up he renewed the ad in the papers. He came up with a name, JB Investigations, because he wanted to keep his own name out of it: if the thing died and he had to do something else, he didn’t want his history stalking him, not any more than it already was. Later he put an entry in the Yellow Pages, which had only been going a few years. For a while JB Investigations was the only listing under Detective Agencies. People liked going through the Yellow Pages just to see what was in it, and when they saw Detective Agencies they desperately tried to think of reasons why they might need one. Some days the phone never stopped ringing. Aye it did. He thought about hiring a secretary. No he fucking didn’t.

He didn’t drive and that was a handicap, but the city was small enough for it not to make his work impossible. There were only so many hotels, so many bars, so many saunas doubling as brothels, and usually no shortage of taxis. Sometimes he arranged to meet potential clients on neutral territory, sometimes they insisted on coming to his place of business. He discovered something: they weren’t put off by the location, nor by the run-down look of the place or him. Nor by the absence of paperwork, the emptiness of his desk, the fact that he hardly ever took notes. Nor even by the smell of booze that still came off him some mornings. On the contrary, these things seemed to reassure them.

For a while, even though he was keeping his fees low, he was making a profit. That felt good. He bought a seemingly unused Minox spy camera in a pawnshop and found he could take pictures of people virtually in front of their faces without them noticing. Across a street, in a doorway or upstairs window, he was as good as invisible. The original Mr Bond again, almost. He snapped parting kisses, close embraces, married men entering strip bars or gay clubs, or public toilets miles from where they had any reason to be. The work was seedy and tedious but he didn’t mind, it was who he was now, and the best thing was it wasn’t what he’d been doing before. He’d left one clandestine world behind and entered another where the secrets were dirtier but somehow the dirt didn’t cling so much. He forgot about Canterbury. He almost forgot about Croick.

And, he couldn’t help himself, the gatherer in him accumulated information about the city and its inhabitants. The filing system inside him kicked into action. Edinburgh didn’t make a show of its wealth but the place was awash with it, old money and new swirling around among an assortment of lawyers, bankers, property developers and ethically challenged politicians. And there were the women – wives and mistresses influential and ambitious in old-fashioned ways, but some of them infused with a contemporary determination no longer to be exploited by their men. There were plenty of shady transactions out there, and there was plenty of sex, even if only furtively expressed. If you had an instinct for sniffing out secrets, Edinburgh was rich territory.

Something else: if you gather information you can move it on. Not the secret stuff his clients paid him for, not that, but there was always by-product. He dusted off his old journalism skills, renewed his union membership. He sold a story or two to the
Evening News
. He thought, detective agency, news agency, what’s the fucking difference?

He felt like he had his drinking under control. His other expenses were minimal. He put a lot of money away. He wasn’t so stupid as to believe there weren’t rainy days ahead.

EDGAR
: And what was going on politically at this time? For you, I mean.

BOND
: Nothing. I didn’t care about politics any more. There was the Winter of Discontent, then the devolution referendum, then Thatcher winning power. I didn’t give a damn about any of it. Croick wasn’t on my back. That was all that mattered to me.

EDGAR
:
You
didn’t care about politics? About devolution? Oh, come on!

BOND
(
sniffing
): I was done with it. But there were other people who weren’t prepared to let the devolution thing drop. I was interested in them.

EDGAR
: I see. You didn’t care but you were interested. And who were they, these interesting people?

BOND
: Nobody much. A few activists from Labour, the Nats, the Liberals – MPs, councillors, a trade unionist or two. And just some ordinary people.

EDGAR
: Ordinary?

BOND
: Sometimes they were in some group or other, but they were fundamentally ordinary, decent people with a cause.

EDGAR
: Decent?

BOND
: Aye, they were. All sorts. They said the Scotland Act had failed because it had been cobbled together at Westminster out of political expediency. It didn’t come from the people and when the people saw it they didn’t think much of it. So
their
campaign – the Campaign for a Scottish Assembly – was going to have to do it differently, build from the ground up. It was a hopeless cause, but they believed in it. Most of the media weren’t interested. The new Tory government wasn’t interested. I went to one of their meetings just out of curiosity. I recognised plenty of faces but there was nobody keeping an eye on things. Nobody
securing the premises
, as Croick would have said.

EDGAR
: Except you.

BOND
: That’s not why I went. I was a free man. I just went for myself.

EDGAR
: And no Croick.

BOND
: No Croick.

EDGAR
: Not a sign of him?

BOND
: Not a trace. It was like he’d ceased to exist.

BANG!

He’s broken something, saying those words. Did he say them?
He’s broken a spell. One second Edgar was there, shimmering in the armchair, the next he isn’t. Like
he’s
ceased to exist.

Peter struggles off the settee. Everything is a struggle by this stage. The deputy High Commissioner is running the show now. Peter reaches the chair, grapples the empty space where Edgar was. No Edgar. Gone. Not even a sticky drop of that stuff you get, the sauce left when someone spontaneously combusts. Not a trace, just like Croick. Fuck. He was enjoying their wee heart-to-heart. But that’s how it happens. Whenever he has company he likes, he ends up alone.

Not quite alone. There’s always the deputy, if he can only pin the bastard down. He turns from the empty chair, sways, points and says, I want a word with you. Then his legs give way.

When he woke it was 1985. March. A cold wind was blowing through Leith from the north, rattling an empty beer can up and down the street. And someone was knocking at his door. He rolled off the mattress, finding himself still fully clothed. Whoever it was wasn’t giving up. Not hammering, not aggressive, just persistent. Like they really needed him to answer.

He found his watch. It was eight o’clock, presumably morning. He made it to the door, unlocked it.

Hello, Peter. Long time no see.

He had neither the strength nor any reason to stop him coming in. In he came, and took charge. Jesus, Peter, what a tip! He went through to the back room and filled the kettle, filled the sink with hot water and started washing up mugs and plates, the accumulated crap Peter hadn’t been dealing with. He restored a bit of order. When he went out again it occurred to Peter that he could lock the door, or go out himself and not come back till Croick had given up on him, but he did neither. Instead he changed out of his four-day-old clothes, washed himself. And when Croick came back he let him in at once.

You’ve almost made yourself presentable, Croick said. He’d bought the makings of breakfast and got to work at the hob. Peter hadn’t realised how hungry he was. He gulped starchy, greasy
chunks of bacon roll and washed them down with scalding tea. Croick ate more gently, like a doting mother.

How’s business? he asked.

Good, Peter said. Because it wasn’t so bad. The volume of cases rose and fell, more or less according to whether he was off or on the booze. The same with the number of stories he sold. There were some weeks he never touched a drop, other weeks he didn’t even see go by. Somehow he kept resurfacing. Croick seemed to understand this. He seemed to understand everything.

I can help you out, he said. He took out his wallet, stuck a couple of twenties on the table between them.

I don’t want your help. We’re through, remember?

Peter, Croick said. He’d finished eating. He put his mug of tea down and looked straight at him. Don’t take offence. I hear what you’re saying. Actually, it’s the other way round. I need your help.

Fuck off, Peter said.

You don’t mean that, Croick said. He made a slight gesture to indicate that things were as they had been before, the two of them sharing food and drink in Peter’s abode. Look, we didn’t treat you so well. As it happens, I’m not the favourite son at the moment either. Take the money. It’s theirs, not mine.

Forty quid was forty quid. Peter reached for it. A line was crossed.

Fact is, Croick said, I need a place to crash.

There are hotels, aren’t there? Peter said. And safe houses?