Parlabane watched dusty flurries of snow zip from left to right across the A9 north of Pitlochry. The sight gnawed at him, nagging like a disapproving voice as to the wisdom of pursuing this journey, and the voice wasn’t only talking about the possible road conditions around the Drumochter Pass.
He was chasing a flyer here, and if he was chasing it through a blizzard in a recently purchased second-hand car of unproven reliability, then desperation was edging towards suicidal recklessness. What was worse was that it wasn’t the promise of a story that had set him on the road: it was the alternative. While he was undoubtedly intrigued by Lucy Elphinstone’s visit, in truth he wanted a reason not to be in the flat right now. He was feeling boxed in by memories everywhere he looked. Even a trip out to the back court had got him in the gut, when he looked up at the rear of the building and saw the drainpipe he had once scaled when he fatefully locked himself out. Add to that the fact that the place was half the size it used to be and it completed the sense that a big part of himself was missing.
He knew it would pass, but for the meantime it was best to be somewhere else, and besides, he could rattle out filler on his laptop anywhere.
He had called up and agreed to meet Lucy Elphinstone for coffee around the corner on Broughton Street that morning. He told her he wanted to talk things over more in-depth, but mainly he wanted to see if she still felt the same having had twenty-four hours more to mull things over and deal with her grief.
It was a bright airy cafe up the hill from the Barony, the morning sun through its big windows warming the place despite the frost still sparkling where the pavement was in shade. Parlabane had waited for her close to fifteen minutes after their appointed time, and was about to interpret her no-show as a change of heart when she came through the door. She had an air of flustered apology as she took a seat, explaining how an important work-related call came in just as she was about to leave the flat.
She ordered a pot of Earl Grey which she sipped black. She leaned over the cup and breathed in the fumes much as Parlabane recalled breathing menthol vapour to alleviate childhood colds. The fumes alone appeared to have a restorative effect. The flustered air dissipated and she visibly relaxed in her seat. Parlabane felt his own tensions ease, as he was braced for a degree of amateur bereavement counselling and it didn’t look as though that would be necessary.
She looked better, like she’d had a good night’s sleep, perhaps for the first time in a while. Sheer exhaustion must have overcome the wakeful effects of being wired and overwrought.
Before he could ask how she was doing and whether she still wanted him to go ahead with this, she reached into her bag and produced an A4 envelope, from which she slid out a printed list.
‘I’ve typed out names and contact details for everybody I could think of: people who knew Peter personally or knew him and Diana as a couple. Anyone who might be able to offer more insight than I can into what was going on.’
She came across as businesslike and purposeful, though he sensed that beneath this façade she was still struggling to keep herself together. He couldn’t decide whether she was sticking to her purpose despite her turmoil or whether having this purpose was the one thing staving off breakdown. Either way, there was more of a calmness about her, a quiet determination, rather than that slightly frantic neediness he had witnessed the previous day. He reasoned that if she had enjoyed a good night’s sleep, was feeling more centred, and yet she still held these suspicions, then it was worth looking into.
She nudged the list towards him across the table. His hand hesitated before picking it up, conscious of what might be inferred from this simple act. It felt as though he was not merely being handed a lead or taking a job but somehow accepting responsibility for this woman and her emotionally fragile condition.
‘I looked up more about you too, while I was in research mode. I read that you were married to an anaesthetist, though I gather you’re not together any more.’
‘We’re recently divorced.’
He had never said that out loud before, but he knew he had to get used to it. It felt easier saying it to someone who had worse shit to deal with: a matter of fact rather than some defining catastrophe.
‘I’m sorry. I only mentioned it because I assume it means you know a few surgeons. It’s just, I get the impression they’re a strange bunch and I reckoned it would help that you’re familiar with them. I’ve always found Diana to be somewhat cold and aloof, and I’m curious as to whether she is cold and aloof because she’s a surgeon or whether she’s cold and aloof for a surgeon.’
‘My wife called them clever psychopaths.’
The words had come out before he could consider the implications. It was a familiar term that tripped off the tongue without thought: a joke that functioned as a cultural shorthand among anaesthetists. Unfortunately it had sounded very different spoken to a layperson, particularly in this context.
Parlabane put his wipers on but the snow hitting the windscreen wasn’t melting on contact. It was like a hard, brittle dust, brushed aside by the blades, which scraped across the glass with a squeak. It wasn’t snowing, he realised: the wind was whipping the top layer off what had fallen a couple of days ago and scattering it like sand.
The route would be clear after all, but it was a timely reminder, after recent costly lapses in his professional judgement, to always make sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing. He was merely looking deeper than had so far been delved in this story: there was no hypothesis in play here.
The biggest reason for Lucy’s suspicion was that Diana Jager had mentioned a prior incident at Widow Falls, but the most rational interpretation for this being more than a random coincidence was simply that she had identified a risk and that her husband had failed to learn from his near-miss. She had expressed her concern over the fact that the guy drove too fast when he was stressed and angry, and had mentioned that the previous occasion had followed an argument. That both incidents should happen at the same place sounded less dramatic when you factored in that it was an accident blackspot. Lucy said Peter was in a bad way mentally when she last spoke to him, so the most likely explanation was that his stress had led to a fatal accident, with a further outside possibility that it had led him to suicide.
Nonetheless, he had been sure that Lucy had greater reason for her suspicion than she was prepared to let on. There was definitely something she wasn’t saying, but that wasn’t the hunch that was urging Parlabane north. It was the fact that they had found the car but not found a body: that part had triggered his suspicious-bastard reflex from the first second.