"It's not just me, Cameron," he says tolerantly. "You know that."
"Then what —?"
"Let me be frank with you, Cameron."
"Oh, be as frank as you like, Detective Inspector."
"I don't think it's you, Cameron, but I think you know who it is."
I put my hand to my brow, looking down and shaking my head, then sigh theatrically and look at him, letting my shoulders slump. "Well, I don't know who it is, McDunn; if I did I'd tell you."
"No, you can't tell me yet," McDunn says quietly and reasonably. "You know who it is, but… you don't know that you know." I stare at him. McDunn's going metaphysical on me. Oh, shit. "You're saying it's somebody I know."
McDunn splays one hand, smiling smally. He chooses to tap his fag packet round and round on the tabletop again rather than speak to me, so I say, "Well, I'm not sure about that, but it's certainly somebody who knows me; I mean, I think that card with my writing on it proves that. Or, it's something to do with those guys in the —»
"— Lake District," McDunn sighs. "Yes…" The DI thinks my theory it's the security forces trying to fit me up is pure paranoia. "No." He shakes his head. "I think it is somebody you know, Cameron; I think it's somebody you know well. You see, I think you know them as well… well, nearly as well… as they know you. I think you can tell me who it is, I really do. You only have to think about it." He smiles. "That's all you have to do for me. Just think."
"Just think," I repeat. I nod at the DI. He nods back. "Just think," I say again. McDunn nods.
Summer in Strathspeld: the first really hot day that year, air warm and thick with the coconut smell of gorse — swathed richly yellow on the hills — and the sweet sharpness of pine resin, lying dropleted on the rough trunks in thick translucent bubbles. Insects buzzed and butterflies filled the glades with silent flashes of colour; in the fields the corncrake stooped and zoomed, its strange, percussive call stuttering through the scent-laden air.
Andy and I went down by the river and the loch, clambering up the rocks upstream then back down, watching fish jump lazily out on the calm loch, or strike at the insects speckling those flat waters, jaws snapping underneath; dispatching, swallowing, leaving ripples. We climbed some trees looking for nests but didn't find any.
We took off our shoes and socks and waded among the rushes surrounding the hidden, scalloped bay where the stream draining the ornamental pond near the house splashed down to the loch, a hundred metres up the shore from the old boat-house. We were allowed to take the boat out ourselves by then as long as we wore life-jackets and we thought we might do that, later; get in some fishing or just some pottering around.
We climbed the low hills northwest of the loch and lay in the long grass under the pines and the birch, looking out over the small glen to the forested hill on the far side where the old railway tunnel was. Beyond that, over another wooded ridge, unseen and heard only on occasion when the breeze veered from that direction, was the main road north. Further beyond that, the Grampians" southernmost summits rose green and golden-brown into the blue sky.
Later that evening we were all going into Pitlochry, to the theatre. I wasn't too impressed with this — I'd rather have seen a film — but Andy thought it was all right, so I did too.
Andy was fourteen, I'd just turned thirteen and was proud of my new status as a teenager (and, as usual, of the fact that for the next couple of months I was only a year younger than Andy). We lay in the grass looking up at the sky and the fluttering leaves on the silver birch trees, sucking on our reed stalks and talking about girls.
We were at different schools; Andy was a boarder at an all-boys school in Edinburgh and came back only at weekends. I was at the local high school. I'd asked my mum and dad if I could go to a boarding school — the one in Edinburgh Andy was at, for example — but they'd said I wouldn't like it and besides it would cost a lot of money. Plus, there wouldn't be any girls there, didn't that worry me? I was a bit embarrassed about that.
The comment about the cost confused me; I was used to thinking of us as being well-off. Dad ran a garage and petrol station on the main road through Strathspeld village and Mum had a wee gift and coffee shop; Dad had been worried after the Six-Day War when they'd introduced the fifty-miles-an-hour speed limit and even issued fuel-rationing books, but that hadn't lasted very long and, even though petrol cost more nowadays, people were still travelling and using cars. I knew our modern bungalow on the village outskirts overlooking the Carse wasn't as grand as Andy's mum and dad's house, which was practically a castle and stood in its own estate: ponds, streams, statues, lochs, rivers, hills, forests, even the old railway line passing through one corner of it; one big garden in effect and vast compared to our single acre laid to lawn and shrub. But I'd never thought of us as really having to worry about money that much; certainly I was used to getting more or less what I wanted and had come to think of this virtually as a right, the way only children are apt to if their parents are anything other than actively hostile to them.
It never occurred to me that other children weren't spoiled as a matter of course, the way I was, and it would be years — and my father would be dead — before I understood that the expense of sending me to a boarding school was just an excuse, and the simple, sentimental truth was that they knew they would have missed me.
"You have not."
"Bet you I have."
"You're kidding."
"I'm not."
"Who was it?"
"None of your business."
"Ah, you're making it up, you little tramp; you never did."
"It was Jean McDuhrie."
"What? You're kidding."
"We were in the old station. She'd seen her brother's and she wanted to see if they all looked like that and she asked me so I showed her mine, but it was only if she'd show me hers and she did as well."
"Dirty wee rascal. Did she let you touch it?"
"Touch it?" I said, surprised. "No!"
"Ah! Well, then!"
"What?"
"You're supposed to touch it."
"No, you're not, not if you just want to look."
"Of course you are."
"Rubbish!"
"Anyway, what did it look like; was there any hair on it?"
"Hair? Ugh. No."
"No? When was this?"
"Not long ago. Last summer maybe. Maybe before. Not that long. I'm not making it up, honest."
"Huh."
I was pleased we were talking about girls because I felt this was a subject where Andy's two extra years didn't really count; I was effectively the same age as him, and maybe I even knew more than he did because I mixed with girls every day and he only really knew his sister Clare. She was away shopping in Perth with her mother that day.
"Have you ever seen Clare's?"
"Don't be disgusting."
"What's disgusting? She's your sister!"
"Exactly."
"What do you mean?"
"You don't know anything, do you?"
"Bet I know more than you do."
"Crap."
I sucked on my hollow reed for a while, staring up at the sky.
"Have you got hairs on yours, then?" I said.
"Yeah."
"You haven't!"
"Want to see?"
"Eh?"
"I'll show you it. It's pretty big too because we've been talking about women. That's what's supposed to happen."
"Oh, yeah; look at your trousers! I can see it! What a bulge!"