Isabel looked about her, for no reason other than that she felt a slight twinge of fear. That was in itself irrational, but she felt it.
“The face that he remembers could be the face of the driver who killed the donor,” she said. “It could have been imprinted in memory—whatever sort of memory—after he had been knocked down and the driver came and looked down at him.”
Jamie’s lip curled. “Really, Isabel!”
1 2 0
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h
“Yes,” she said quickly. “Really. And if it is the face of the driver, then we may have a description of the person responsible for the death.”
Jamie thought for a moment. It was now obvious to him what Isabel had been doing in the library. “You’ve found a report of the accident?” he asked. “You know who the donor was?”
“I think so,” said Isabel. “We know that the donor was a young man. That’s as much as Ian knows. So I put two and two together and concluded that a sudden, violent death on the day on which they called Ian in for his transplant would probably supply the identity of the donor. And it has. There’s nothing bril-liant in that. It’s all pretty obvious.”
But was it? It crossed her mind that she was assuming too much, and too readily. There might have been other incidents, other young men who could have been donors, but no, Edinburgh was not a very large place. It would be unlikely that two young men had died a sudden death that night. Her assumption, she decided, was reasonable.
Rather against his better judgement, Jamie felt himself being drawn in. He could not resist Isabel, he had decided.
There was something about her that fascinated him: the intel-lectual curiosity, the style, the verve. And she was an attractive woman too. If she had been a bit younger—quite a bit younger—
then he could have imagined that she would have been every bit as exciting as Cat. Damn Cat!
“So?” he said. “So who is he? And what do we do?”
We do, he thought. I should have said you do, but once again, I’ve played straight into Isabel’s hands. I’m trapped. In nets of golden wires.
Isabel was oblivious of Jamie’s struggle with himself. She had invited him to meet her to discuss what she had found out; F R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E
1 2 1
she had not asked him to join her in her inquiry. Of course, if he wished to do so, then that would be very helpful; but she had not asked him.
“Well,” she began, “we now know who that unfortunate young man was and where he lived. We know that the police appealed for information.”
“And that’s it,” said Jamie. “We . . . you don’t know whether they ever found the driver.”
Isabel conceded that this remained unknown. But now, at least, they had a description of the person who might have been responsible.
“But what do you do with that?” asked Jamie. “Go to the police? What would you tell them? That somebody else is having visions of a face and here’s a drawing?” He laughed. “You can imagine the reception you’d get.”
Isabel thought about this. She had not imagined going to the police—just yet. Jamie was right in thinking that it would be difficult to convince them to take her seriously and that they would be unlikely to pursue the matter further; unless, of course, the push came from the family of the victim. If they could be persuaded to do something about it, then the police could hardly refuse a request from them at least to consider Ian’s story.
Her thoughts were interrupted by Jamie. “Why are you doing this, Isabel?” he asked mildly. “What’s the point?”
She looked at him. It was her duty, was it not? If this was really information about who was responsible for the hit-and-run incident, then surely she had a duty to do something about it—any citizen would have that duty simply because he or she was a citizen. And there was more to it than that. By listening to Ian’s story, she felt that she had been drawn into a moral 1 2 2
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h relationship with him and his situation. Isabel had firm views on moral proximity and the obligations it created. We cannot choose the situations in which we become involved in this life; we are caught up in them whether we like it or not. If one encounters the need of another, because of who one happens to be, or where one happens to find oneself, and one is in a position to help, then one should do so. It was as simple as that.
She shrugged. “The point is that I have to do this,” she said.
“I can’t walk away from it. That driver needs to be called to account. And Ian needs to know why he’s seeing that face. In each case, the solution lies in the uncovering of the truth.”
Jamie looked at his watch. He had another pupil—this time one who came to his flat in Saxe-Coburg Street on the other side of town, and he would have to leave. But he still wanted to find out what the next step was. Isabel may have been incorrigi-ble in his view—and she was—but he still found everything that she did very interesting.
“What now?”
“I go and see the family,” said Isabel.
“And tell them that you know who might have been responsible for their son’s death?”
“Probably,” said Isabel. “Although I shall have to be careful about that. One never knows.”
“I’ve said it before,” warned Jamie. “Just be careful. You can’t go charging into people’s grief, you know.”
Jamie said that and then stood up. He had not intended to offend Isabel, but he had. She looked down at the table, which was of darkened pine board, with no cloth. It had been a refec-tory table somewhere, in a school perhaps, and was worn with age. She stared at it.
F R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E
1 2 3
Jamie reached out and put a hand on her shoulder, lightly.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean it to come out like that.”
She said nothing. Jamie had made her sound like one of those people who intruded on the sorrow of others; those reporters from the gutter press who hounded the bereaved so that they could get a story or a photograph. It was not like that with her. She did not want to see these people out of curiosity; she did not want to see them at all. Did Jamie not understand that she was acting out of duty? That there were times when you just had to do that? The easiest thing to do would be to forget all about this; to tell Ian that she had been interested in his story but that she could do nothing about these visions of his. Yet that would be to ignore the fact that the family of the young man who had been killed might have a very strong desire to find out who was responsible for the incident. What might they say to her if they knew that she knew something and had not brought it to their attention?
Jamie sat down again. “Look,” he said. “I have to go. And I’m sorry that I said that. I’ll phone you soon. And I’ll help you do whatever it is that you want to do. Is that all right?”
“Yes. But you don’t have to.”
“I know I don’t, Isabel. But you seem . . . Well, let’s just leave it. We’re friends, aren’t we? You help your friends. That’s just the way it is. Sometimes I wish you were . . . a bit different, but you aren’t.” He stood up again, picking up his bassoon case as he did. “And I actually rather like you the way you are, you know?”
Isabel looked up at him. “Thank you,” she said. “You’ve been a very good friend to me.”
He left, turning round and waving to her as he went out of 1 2 4
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h the front door. She returned his wave and then, after treating herself to a Danish pastry and a quick cup of coffee, she left too.
Outside, at the end of George IV Bridge, where the road sloped down to the Grassmarket, a small group of tourists stood about the statue of the small Scottish terrier, Greyfriars Bobby. Isabel walked past them slowly and heard the guide intone: “This statue commemorates the loyalty of a dog who sat by his master’s grave in the Greyfriars Kirkyard for fourteen years. He never left his post.”