Bitter Water (17 page)

‘Should we call the police about our uninvited guests?’ I asked.

‘Probably,’ she said and flung something bright at me. I caught it. It was a key. ‘In the meantime, you know where the gun cupboard is.’

TWENTY

‘T
his is great stuff, Brodie. A scoop! “Gazette reporter held hostage at gunpoint”.’ Eddie wrote the banner headlines in the air in front of his desk. ‘We’ll do a front page. All the trimmings. Your personal account, of course. Some added words from me about putting our reporters’ lives on the line for the sake of the truth. Maybe a photo of your sobbing girlfriend . . .’

‘Stop, stop. Not a chance, Eddie. For one thing she’s not my girlfriend and for another she’s been through enough without having her face plastered over the
Gazette
. She’s an advocate, remember. She needs anonymity!’

‘OK, OK. But that’s an effin’ great angle.’ He poked the scrap of paper. ‘Just one thing. What were they talking about: “Your secrets are out”?’

‘It was just a diversion. To make me take the bait for the meeting at the pub. Raking over the Slattery stuff.’ I changed the topic. ‘What about making his point? Why not send out a warning to the public: “repent your sins or face the mad Highlander”?’

‘We could.’

‘But?’

‘We’re not the effin’ mouthpiece of a pair of bampots trying to put the fear of God into our readership!’

‘I thought we were? Fear and anger sells newsprint, you said.’

‘It does. But I’m buggered if we’re gonna jump to the crack o’ his whip.’

It was good of Eddie to be brave for both of us.

Eddie enthused on, ‘So our line is the bampot one. These are nutters who need to be opposed. We have a justice system. It’s not perfect but it’s the effin’ bedrock of our civilisation. No one gets to play God except God.’

Eddie was now leaning across the slew of papers on his desk, jabbing his finger at me. ‘We’re on the side of the law. We reject, utterly, demands by gun-waving eejits! Write it!’

I did. But without mentioning the Marshals’ attempt at blackmailing me. On balance, they’d have a job proving my bloody deeds and I was willing to call their bluff. For one thing, why would the police listen to a bunch of homeless ruffians?

Sandy polished the piece – as in eviscerated and rewrote – and here’s what went out on Friday morning as an editorial:

I then gave a colourful report of the so-called hostage event before concluding with:

It hit the Friday morning editions in a big, front-page splash under inch-high capitals. On my way to my desk across the newsroom, I got nods and smiles, even the odd V for Victory sign. I had about half an hour of enjoying the rosy glow before Morag came over to my desk looking troubled. Which troubled me. We’d had a walk and a drink last night but I didn’t recall upsetting her. I told her about my flit but not about Sam.

‘It’s the phone, Douglas. A man wants you. He sounded really angry.’

I walked over to the group of secretaries and took the handset.

‘Brodie here.’

‘You bloody hypocrite, Brodie! You can sit there and make accusations about
us
! While your own hands are reeking!’

‘I didn’t put a gun to the head of an innocent woman!’

‘. . . and to compare me with Hitler!’

‘I don’t know you any better to judge. I don’t even know your real name. But you seem to be living in some sort of fairy story!’

‘You think I’m mad, don’t you, Brodie? You think you’re dealing with an eejit. That I don’t count!’

‘Here’s what I think. I think if you ever point a gun at me or mine again, I will shoot you down like the mad dog you are!’ I realised I was shouting. The rest of the newsroom had gone quiet. Morag and her fellow secretaries were sitting stunned around me. Eddie was marching towards me.

The line had gone quiet, then, ‘You’ve had your one warning, Brodie. “We have made a covenant with death and with hell are we at agreement”!’

‘Oh, spare me your sanctimonious Bible-thumping!’

The line went dead. Big Eddie was staring at me wide-eyed. A long column of ash tumbled from the fag in his mouth and left a trail down his waistcoat. The whole newsroom was transfixed like refugees from Madame Tussaud’s. A lone phone was ringing. I gave the handset back to Morag. She looked scared; not for me, of me. I turned to Eddie. I flicked the ash from his front.

‘I think we’ve just lost a reader.’

I worked with Sandy to prepare Monday’s front page. It would save us both coming in on Sunday. We’d follow up our hostage edition with a report on the vigilantes’ reaction. This time we could include his quote in full. The moment he’d hung up I’d jotted down in my improving shorthand every word he’d said before I forgot them. It took Elspeth no time to find the reference. ‘It comes from Isaiah, chapter 28, verse 15: “Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us: for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves.”’

‘He’s a big fan of Isaiah, then.’

She shoved her blonde mop back. ‘Isaiah was one of the early prophets. Eighth century
BC
. A bit of a rebel too, speaking out against the aristocracy on behalf of the people. A sort of early shop steward.’

‘So our man likes the comparison?’

Elspeth looked at me gravely over her glasses. ‘It’s in the nature of fanatics. They’re selective in their reading. And their quoting.’

‘Thanks, Elspeth.’ I left her to return to her well-thumbed copy of the Mahabharata. In the original Sanskrit.

TWENTY-ONE

O
n Saturday morning after my swim, Sam and I checked her house from top to bottom. We found they’d got in through a second-storey window, having climbed off the roof of the outhouse. We went round locking windows and empty rooms.

After breakfast I freed up her father’s guns and checked the ammunition. I sat at the kitchen table with the Dixon shotguns laid out like salmon, glinting blue and grey against the leather table cover. I set up my cleaning brushes and cloths and took up the first weapon, cradling it in my arms. Sam sat watching me, supping two-handed at her tea. ‘You love them, don’t you?’

‘That’s a funny thing to say. They’re just guns.’ But she could see I was lying. And I’d be lying to myself if I ignored the thrill I got from handling them.

‘It’s how my dad looked. The way he touched them. Like babies.’

Now I really was embarrassed. ‘They just need cleaning.’

‘So does the porridge pot.’

‘All right, I admit it. They are the most beautiful weapons I’ve ever held.’

‘It’s OK, Brodie. I understand. I’m glad. Give me the other one.’

I stood and handed it to her. She took it, broke it, clicked it shut and aimed down the sights at the kitchen door. She looked handy.

‘My dad taught me. Before the war when we used to go to Arrochar. He showed me. There’s a couple of old whisky barrels full of buckshot lying by the shoreline. I had bruises for a month.’ She rubbed her right shoulder. ‘Then I learned how to take the recoil. Mum hated them. Hated me learning to use them.’ She shrugged. ‘But it was fun and it was something to share with him. I once took a deer.’ She frowned at the memory.

‘Like my father and me. But fish, not monarchs of the glen. You should have seen the flies he made.’

For a moment Sam and I smiled at each other and shared the smiles with the younger Samantha Campbell and Douglas Brodie. Until the phone went. Sam went upstairs into the hall and took it. I heard her voice start formal then soften. She came back down. Her face was fixed.

‘It’s for you, Douglas. It’s your mum.’

I was on my feet. ‘Is she . . .?’

‘She’s fine. She wants a word.’

I’d given her Sam’s phone number when I moved back in. I never expected her to use it. For her phones were transitory mediums compared with a well-crafted letter that could be reread. She had a point.

‘Mum, are you OK?’

‘Yes, of course, Douglas. What a nice young woman. Does she live in the close too?’ Her voice was loud, almost shouting. It was a long way to Glasgow.

‘Sort of. Why are you calling, Mum? Are you sure you’re all right?’

‘It’s nothing to worry about. I just thought you should know.’

‘Know what? What’s happened?’

‘A man came by yesterday afternoon. Said he knew you. An army connection. Said to pass on his regards.’

There was something in her voice that put me on guard.

‘Oh aye. What was his name?’

‘He said his name was Lord. He didn’t give his first name. He was asking after you. I gave him a cup of tea. And a bit of shortbread; he was that thin. A red-haired man. Well spoken. Inverness by the sound of him.’

I could feel the blood congealing in my veins. I found my voice. I tried to keep it level.

‘It was good of him to drop by. But why did you call me about him? It’s lovely to hear you, but you usually avoid the phone like the plague.’

‘Well, I didn’t want to worry you. It’s just you’d never mentioned him before. And . . .’

‘And? What is it, Mum?’ I held my breath.

‘He quoted from the Scriptures. Wait, I wrote it down after. Wait till I get my specs. It was Isaiah 28, verse 15. I looked it up. It’s not very nice. Did I do wrong letting him in, Douglas? I’m a wee bit feart.’

I nearly crushed the handset. ‘Everything’s all right. Don’t you worry. In fact I was planning to come by later this week. Why don’t I pop in this morning?

‘Oh, no, Douglas, you don’t have to fuss. Really, there’s no need.’ But there was. Her relief was audible. ‘But it would be lovely to see you. It always is. I’ll make some tattie scones.’

I hung up. ‘You baaastaaard!’ My cry went echoing round the hall and down the stairwell. Sam ran out and when I’d stopped punching the wall I explained what my mother had said.

Within ten minutes Sam and I were in her garage and I was cranking the Riley. It took three good turns before the engine coughed and spluttered. I nearly broke my wrist as it kicked back each time. On the third go, Sam, behind the wheel, heard the spark ignite and pumped fuel into the engine. It caught, and coughed, and roared, and Sam slid across the seat for me to take over. Soon we were trundling across Jamaica Bridge and on to the Kilmarnock road.

I gunned the Kestrel’s twin cam as we charged across the Fenwick Moors. The morning clouds were lifting and the green hills stretched away either side. Here and there red barns dotted the Ayrshire countryside. In the distance to our right the hump of Arran loomed in and out of the mists. I could have enjoyed the run if it weren’t for the rage and worry.

By the time I’d steered through Kilmarnock and up to Bonnyton, the sun was steaming the damp patches off the tarmac. We came to a halt in front of the line of grey tenements. They seemed to be sagging in the heat, dissolving back to their constituent cement and sand. I looked round at the broken concrete in front of the tenements, at the scrubby patches of green glinting through the mouths of the entries. The back yards were already flapping with filled clothes lines. A different world from Kelvingrove and its blond sandstone terraces perched proudly above the city and the park. It was only then that I realised what I’d done.

‘Sam, look, you don’t have to come in. Sorry, I wasn’t thinking . . .’ I trailed away.

She cocked her head at me. ‘Ashamed of me, Brodie?’

‘Of course not. It’s just . . . well, I’ve never explained . . . I mean my mum . . .’

Sam was smiling at my consternation.

‘Relax, Brodie. There’s nothing to explain. Just tell her the truth. I’ll try not to let the side down.’

I examined her fine fair features and her questioning blue eyes, and wondered exactly which bit of the truth I was supposed to tell. ‘You’re my landlady? That we sometimes work together? That I helped you with Hugh? That one night we shared a bed? That sort of truth?’