‘Well, that’s me popular with the bar staff, an entire delivery offloaded with no help from yours truly.’ Rathbone sounded pleased with himself. ‘What was I saying?’
‘Bobby Robb had more than just a big collection of occult books.’
‘Who?’
‘Crippen, as you called him.’
‘Oh, aye. I had to redecorate before the boss saw the state of the place. You can imagine how delighted I was at that — took me a sander and three coats of varnish to cover up his handiwork.’
‘Why?’
‘I was meant to do an inspection every six months, make sure the place was ship-shape, but I’d kind of let it slide. It’s a good gig, looking after amateur landlords’ flats. As long as you’ve got a wee black book full of reliable tradesmen, it’s money for old rope most of the time. But word soon gets round if you slip up.’
‘No, I meant what did you have to cover up?’
‘I’m getting to that.’ Now that he had decided to tell his story, Rathbone’s voice was full of relish at the strangeness of it. ‘Crippen was lodged in a one-bedroom flat on the High Street, three floors up above the Starbucks. A lot of stairs for an old man, but he looked fit enough. I would have bet he had another ten years in him. Just goes to show.’ The landlord paused, giving them both time to take in the impossibility of ever knowing the future, then went on, ‘The place wasn’t that clean, but I didn’t expect it to be. Crippen never had much of an acquaintance with soap and water, so it didn’t take a genius to work out he didn’t own a pair of Marigolds. It wasn’t a problem, my sister’s generally happy to earn a few bob cleaning for me, as long as there’s nothing too nasty involved. I checked out the kitchen and the sitting room, everything was pretty much as it should be, except for dust and beer stains, but as I said, I expected as much. The shock came when I went into the bedroom. I’ve found all sorts in my time; bloodstains on top of the mattress, used condoms underneath, mice in the skirting, beetles under the wallpaper. I even had a pair of students who let their kitchen get so fucking beyond them they boarded it up and made it into a no-go zone — needless to say, they didn’t get their deposits back. I thought they were the worst I was ever likely to see, but they were just lazy cunts. Crippen’s bedroom. . well, that was something else. Like a scene from a horror movie. To tell you the truth, there was a moment when I thought about calling the police, but I decided it’d be a waste of their time. I mean, if you could be arrested for crimes against decorating, that cunt Lawrence Llewelyn Bowen would be doing a twenty stretch, right?’
‘So what had he done?’
‘He’d covered the floor in writing.’
‘The entire floor?’
‘Not all of it, no. The bed was in the centre of the room and he’d made a kind of circle of words around it. When I first saw it, I thought it was going to be some major confession, where he’d hidden the bodies of hundreds of missing schoolgirls or something, but thank Christ it was just a load of crap.’
‘Can you remember any of it?’
‘I knew you were going to ask that, but no, I couldn’t really read it. He’d used some kind of indelible paint and written in this sort of old-fashioned curly script. There were numbers and symbols too, like a lot of algebra in a circle round the bed. Whatever it was it gave me the bloody heebies. I gave it a good hard scrub, tried turps, ammonia, everything I could think of, but it wasn’t for budging. In the end I had to hire a sander and take the surface off, then go down to B&Q, for deck varnish and seal it. I had to do the whole bloody floor or else the join would have shown. It was a fucking hellish job, dust everywhere.’
‘I don’t suppose you took a photo of it on your camera-phone or anything, just to show to your mates?’
‘Why would I want to show them sick stuff like that? I wanted it gone before Baine came round and took the job of managing the flat off me.’
Murray started at the familiar name.
‘Who?’
‘Baine, the guy who owns the place. He’s a university bloke like yourself. Oh, Christ.’ John Rathbone’s voice filled with sudden realisation. ‘Don’t say you know him.’
‘No, I don’t think so. What does he look like?’
‘I never met him. I just speak to him on the phone and send any paperwork to his uni office over in Glasgow. He talks like he’s got a boiled sweet in his mouth, but then a lot of them do.’
‘No.’ Murray hoped the lie didn’t sound in his voice. ‘I don’t know him.’
‘Thank fuck. Not that I’m saying you would have grassed me up.’
‘But it would have been a waste of your decorating skills if I had.’
Rathbone gave a bitter laugh.
‘That’s the funny thing. He phoned up, thanked me for my help over the years, and asked if I could show the estate agents round. End of story. Told me to take him off my books, he was putting the place on the market. I would have been as well not bothering. I’ll tell you something for nothing, though.’
‘What?’
‘I got the feeling he was relieved to get the place back. I think he’d rented it out to the old boy as a favour, a guy that’d done well helping out an old pal that was down on his uppers — kind of cool, when you think on it. Though why a professor would want to keep up with an old soak is beyond me. Maybe he had fond memories. Crippen told me that him and Baine went way back. I guess they were students together or something. He was an intelligent man, Crippen. Just pissed it up against the wall.’ The landlord sounded wistful. ‘It happens.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
MURRAY STOOD AT the top of the castle, gazing out to sea. He remembered Alan Garrett’s note, Interested in the beyond. Had Lunan had any interest in the occult? Some of his poetry held an atmosphere of the Celtic otherworld, and Christie’s novels were generally shelved in the bookshops’ horror section; but these were fictions while it seemed Bobby’s library had masqueraded as fact. He would need to visit the Geordie’s landlord. Buy him a whisky and see if he could remember any of the books’ titles. People sometimes recalled more when they had a drink in their hand.
Murray glanced at his watch. He would have to start walking if he were to be sure of catching the ferry home. He hopped down from the crag, thinking now about Fergus’s uncharacteristic kindness towards Bobby. Strange that a man’s charity should make him suspicious.
He felt his phone vibrate back into life, and then heard its irritating jingle. Murray glanced at the display and cursed as his fingers, clumsy with the cold, struggled to hit the right button to accept the call.
‘Murray?’
His stomach swooped at the sound of his name on her lips, but even with that one word he knew something was wrong. Rachel’s voice had lost its cool tone, the barrier of mockery she’d managed to preserve between them, even when he was inside her.
He asked, ‘Are you okay?’ and heard the answering note of concern in his own voice.
‘Yes, fine. Listen, have you checked your email?’
‘Not recently, no. Should I?’
There was a pause on the line. One of the horses grazing in the shelter of the castle looked at him with mild, brown eyes. He wondered where Rachel was. In the home he had never visited, or in her office, safe from prying ears. He listened for her breath, but couldn’t hear it beneath the sound of the wind.
‘Rachel?’
‘Yes, I’m still here. This is. .’ She paused again and this time he waited, following the curve of the horse’s sleek brown back with his eyes, amazed, as he always was when he saw them in the flesh, at how big the creature was.