This time Murray told the truth.
‘Nothing at all, except that she was concerned I might expose some disagreement you had with Fergus and dent your reputation. She was warning me off.’
‘My reputation has nothing to fear from Fergus.’ James sighed and Murray got a feeling that an opportunity had been lost. ‘How well do you know Professor Fergus Baine?’
‘Not well at all. He’s only been part of the department for three years. He came here from down south, met and married Rachel in what Mills and Boon would describe as a whirlwind romance.’ Murray tried to keep the bitterness from his voice. ‘Last year he was appointed head of English literature.’
‘Have you read any of his books?’
‘I glanced through his last couple.’
‘Of course, it’s only politic to at least take a glance at your colleagues’ work, even if you can’t stand them.’
‘What makes you think I can’t. .’
‘Don’t bother to bullshit me, Murray.’ The Americanism sounded strange in the professor’s mouth. ‘You’ve got as much love for him as I have. Admit it.’
Murray said, ‘We’ve never really seen eye to eye.’
The older man’s laugh sounded exasperated.
‘I imagine that is as much of an admission as I’m ever going to get. Did you know he published a slim volume of verse years ago?’
‘No.’
‘No reason why you should. It sank, pretty much without trace. It’s out of print now, but I think you’d find it well worth reading. Tell me where you’re staying and I’ll send you a copy.’
Murray felt like hurling his phone across the expanse of wind and dark. He’d lost control of the interview again, the old man turning it back to poetry, the work, not the life.
‘I’m not sure I’ll have the time. I need to concentrate my researches on Lunan and his circle.’
‘Fergus was part of his circle.’ The voice grew softer in his ear, becoming one with the wind and trembling grass. ‘Indulge me. Remember, I used to be a professor of English literature, I do know of what I speak.’
‘Once a professor, always a professor.’
‘They could put that on my gravestone.’ James grew serious. ‘Remember, Dr Watson. Some people never essentially change. In my opinion, Fergus Baine is one of them. Think of how he is now and that will tell you pretty much how he was back when Lunan and he were friends — and they were friends, whatever smoke Baine has tried to blow in your eyes.’
‘Will you tell me what the two of you fell out about?’
‘I can’t. It affects someone else, someone blameless. What I will say is that Fergus Baine was a prodigy of mine who abused his position. His move down south in 1978 wasn’t entirely voluntary. I gave him a reference for a post in England to get him out of the way, but if I had any power he wouldn’t be back in Scotland, working at my old university, and certainly not in the capacity he occupies.’
‘Where would he be?’
‘In Hell.’ The old man laughed. ‘Or still in the south of England. Tell me where you’re staying and I’ll ask Iris to send you a copy of his poetry tomorrow by first-class post. I promise you’ll find it interesting.’
Murray gave him the address of the B&B, as far as he remembered it, then said, ‘It was Bobby Robb that I really wanted to find out about.’
‘Bobby Robb was an ignorant fool.’
‘What makes you say that? The way he looked? Talked?’
‘Certainly not the way he looked, though God knows he looked like an idiot, but then most of them did. Long hair and beards, dressed like Gypsy Rose Lee strung about with bells and cockle shells. No, Bobby Robb was a mess, but he wasn’t the worst. It wasn’t the way he talked either. Robb wore his working-class roots on his sleeve, but I’ve met too many intelligent working men and too many idiot toffs to judge a man on his accent. It was Bobby Robb’s preoccupations that declared him stupid. He was interested in what has been rechristened as New Age. Occultism, astrology, all that superstitious nonsense the Elizabethans were fascinated with. Excusable in the sixteen hundreds, but astoundingly brainless in the twentieth century.’
‘Did Archie engage with it too?’
‘Archie could be foolish, but he wasn’t dense. I remember him making fun of Robb, calling him the sorcerer’s apprentice, but I never paid much attention. Back then a lot of people were fascinated by these things, encouraged by drugs, I suppose. They had amazing sensory and quasi-religious experiences that made them begin to think there were existences apart from this one.’
‘You were never tempted to try it for yourself?’
‘Try what?’
‘LSD, acid. A lot of educationalists got into it — turn on, tune in and drop out.’
‘I couldn’t drop out. I told you, my father was an engineer at Barr & Strouds, I had a good Presbyterian upbringing and a family to support. No, I was never tempted. I’m what they used to call a square — like you, Dr Watson. Anyway, I find the world we inhabit rather impressive. I also believe it’s the only one open to us. Why be in a rush to leave?’
Murray fell twice on the way down the hill, but the going wasn’t so bad once he reached the road. The moon was a wisp of itself, veiled by the same clouds that hid the stars. He used the light on his phone as a torch for a while, but then the notion that his progress might be monitored for miles around began to bother him, and so he pocketed it and let his eyes adjust to the gloom. The little house he had noticed on his journey out was in darkness now, the toy tractor still upturned in its garden. The rain came on as Murray had known it would. He kept his head down against the spray and upped his pace, not wanting one of the inhabitants to look out and be frightened by the sight of a stranger walking by so late, on such an inhospitable night.
Helen Trend had been palpably anxious about what her father might say. Her hate for Fergus Baine seemed to outstrip even the professor’s. Murray couldn’t imagine James taking departmental disputes home to share with his children over the dinner table. He weighed up a list of his academic contacts, hoping to identify someone who might know the manner of Fergus’s disgrace, thought about asking Rachel, and rejected the idea almost as it occurred.
The wind seemed to attack him from all sides, the rain swirling around him, blowing into his face, clouding his vision. Murray took his glasses off and wiped them, though he knew it was a useless gesture. He remembered Cressida smiling as she asked if he minded, her orange dress flaring as she’d cleaned his lenses, all the better to view Jack’s exhibition.
He thought about the Pictish men, or whoever they were, who had built the broch, imagined them tucked safe within its bounds, huddled together with their dogs and their livestock. They would have had more sense than to trudge through the dark and the wet. He wondered if Lunan had ever walked these paths at night, muddy and drenched to the skin, asking himself what the hell was going on.
Chapter Nineteen
MURRAY TOOK CHRISTIE’S first novel, Sacrifice, down to the dining room with him. He saw the landlady’s eyes on it as she placed his cooked breakfast on the table. Murray set the book aside, making a conscious effort not to rub his hands together with the joy of fried bacon, eggs and sausage materialising before him with no effort from himself.
‘That looks great.’
Mrs Dunn acknowledged his thanks with a nod. She went back into the kitchen, stepping neatly round a cat that had stationed itself in front of the electric heater glowing from the centre of the room, and returned with a pot of coffee and a round of toast.