LENNOX

He looked past Ewan and Paul in the truck to the darkness outside. On the other side of the loch occasional lights glimmered in the distance. He remembered being in that water with Sandy, surrounded by their body, gliding with such power.

He scrunched his eyes shut and touched his temples, paused the Paramore track playing on his headphones. He didn’t think it made a difference but he’d seen it in enough movies to try. He concentrated on Sandy, touched his earlobe and tugged, hoped to hear their voice ring.

Nothing.

Maybe they were sleeping or out of range. Or dead.

He resumed playing the track as they left the loch behind, the land flattening to a floodplain of trees, fields and sheep, just visible in the night. It was a shadow world, darkness except for their headlights. He never saw proper darkness back in Edinburgh, there was always ambient light in a city. He looked up and saw stars, more than ever before, strings and patterns instead of the occasional flicker back home. He wondered about Saturn, Enceladus. He imagined what it would be like to have a giant ringed planet taking up half the sky, looming over everything.

The van was tense. He didn’t know what was happening with Ewan and Paul, but it had to do with Heather. Lennox tried to disappear into the melodies and groove in his ears. He closed his eyes, imagined hearing Sandy step into the track, start singing over it in their weird head voice. He wondered for the millionth time what his birth mother was like – tall or short, fat or thin, black or white. He’d created countless scenarios to explain why she might’ve given him up or why he was taken from her. She was an international spy or a promising Olympic gymnast, focusing on her career. Ridiculous pipe dreams. Most likely she was an addict or in an abusive relationship, mental-health problems, unable to look after herself, let alone another human.

He thought about Geoff back at the children’s home, the nearest he had to a father figure in the last few years. He was just a balding middle-aged manager, struggling to cope like everyone else. The one thing Geoff had taught him was to be kind, think of the feelings of others. And Lennox had repaid him by stealing his car. Thinking of the children’s home made him remember Estelle, the twelve-year-old who obviously had a crush on him, followed him around both at home and at school, stared at him across the playground. It was annoying but, like everyone at the home, she had abandonment issues and he couldn’t hold it against her. He wondered how she would get on without him. He’d jumped in to protect her a couple of times at school from dickhead bullies. Without him there, she might get picked on more, and he felt bad about that. She would be sad but soon her affections would find some other target. We all need someone to hold on to, to keep us going, even if we don’t know why.

The flow of the groove in his ears had a soothing effect, and he almost forgot where he was and what he was about to do. Eventually he opened his eyes and could see Paul was talking. He sighed and stopped the track.

‘I don’t want to know what you’re doing tonight but can you at least tell me what happened down south?’

Ewan was in the middle seat. He made an exaggerated turn to Lennox, to hand the explanation over to him. Lennox just stared him out. Ewan straightened his shoulders and turned back.

‘What do you mean?’

Paul slowed as they came up behind an Asda lorry. They drove past a golf course, over a bridge, through a roundabout and into a more built-up area. This was the start of Inverness.

‘Come on,’ Paul said. ‘The news said you went missing after two violent incidents in East Lothian. That you shouldn’t be approached.’ He glanced at Lennox. ‘You don’t seem like violent criminals.’

Lennox shrugged.

‘I was married to Heather for sixteen years, I know her. She’s the most caring woman I’ve ever met. She wouldn’t be involved without good reason.’

‘You should take this up with her,’ Ewan said.

The streets were lined with buildings now, but it still had the feel of a dinky city, light traffic, small houses, a sense of space.

‘I’m asking you,’ Paul said.

Lennox didn’t want to be a part of this. These two were sparring over Heather, the same macho bullshit he saw everywhere. He hated alpha males, whether they were old journalists, divorced truck drivers, school bullies or random cops.

‘It’s a misunderstanding,’ Ewan said.

‘Whatever you’ve got Heather mixed up in, she doesn’t deserve it. She could do with a fucking break, understand?’

‘If she’s so amazing how come you’re divorced?’

The air chilled in the cab. They drove over a wide river and Lennox saw church spires, lots of grass.

‘We went through some stuff,’ Paul said. ‘You don’t want to know.’

‘Try me,’ Ewan said.

Paul went over a roundabout too fast, then a couple more turns. The shops and houses were replaced by offices and factories, corrugated iron walls and plastic signage. Fences around the buildings, CCTV up high.

‘Our daughter died of leukaemia,’ Paul said. ‘We never came back from that.’

Lennox thought about Heather. Stones in her pockets, saved by Sandy. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried again.

<Sandy? Are you there?>

It was like Paul had sucked the air out of the truck. Lennox felt embarrassed for Ewan, a hapless guy stumbling through, just like everyone else. He thought he knew something, but he didn’t. That’s what Lennox was coming to understand from Sandy, none of them had a clue about life, the way the universe worked. There was so much mysterious, incomprehensible shit out there making a mockery of their pathetic concerns, their wee lives.

‘Anyway,’ Paul said to Ewan. ‘What’s your interest in this? You weren’t mentioned in the news. How come you’re involved?’

Ewan shook his head.

‘I was given a story,’ he said under his breath. ‘Told to follow up, but it didn’t make sense. So I kept asking questions and it led me here.’

The truck slowed in an industrial estate. They went past a kitchen showroom, Scottish Water offices. Paul peered at the signs in the streetlight. Lennox noticed that the lights were far apart, gloomy areas between. They turned past an Asian food wholesaler and a Volvo garage.

Lennox concentrated again, clenched his fists. <Sandy?>

Paul turned to Ewan and Lennox. ‘Just don’t fuck with Heather. If you fuck with her, you fuck with me. Understand?’

Paul pulled in between overhead lights. He put on the handbrake and nodded across the road.

‘We’re here.’

There was a large hangar with Carter’s Recovery over the door, a giant carwash for articulated lorries and a concrete lot full of cars and vans, all enclosed by a high fence topped with barbed wire. The gate was locked with spikes on top but it looked easy to climb.

Lennox jumped so hard he thumped his fist on the roof of the truck.

The joy in Sandy’s voice was unmistakable and it ran through Lennox’s body like an electric shock.