He was pretty much out of breath by the time he had lugged it back through the undergrowth so he gave himself a moment to recover. Although it was bitterly cold and there was a biting wind coming in off the sea there was sweat running down his face by the time he had raised the stone to the limit of the jack and inserted the end of a thick branch beneath it. He collected two more branches and pushed them under the stone to ensure that it would stay clear of the ground when he withdrew the jack. It was now a case of building a new, higher platform for the jack and raising the stone a bit more.
After three such manoeuvres Macandrew reckoned that he now had enough height to turn the stone over so he selected the thickest branch he could find, slid it in under the edge and started to apply leverage.
The veins were bulging on his forehead when he finally felt the stone start to move. It moved slowly upwards until it was very close to its point of balance and pressure was suddenly taken off his arms as the weight was transferred to the fulcrum. One final push and the stone tumbled over on to its back. Macandrew supported himself for a moment on the lever he had been using and looked down at the patch of bare ground that the stone had been covering. A myriad crawling things were hitting the refugee trail in search of a new home. He started deciphering the inscription on the stone and almost immediately made out the name Macandrew. It was such a good feeling to know that he had found what he’d come for.
Feeling both pleased and relieved, he painstakingly cleaned up the writing — which had been well preserved — with twigs and read that the stone marked the spot where James Macandrew and his wife, Matilda were buried. He searched his pockets for a pen and something to write details down on. James had died at the age of fifty-seven, five years before his wife who had been fifty-eight at the time of her death.
Macandrew returned to the car to fetch his camera. He didn’t feel sad or maudlin, just... comfortable. It made him think of what Karen Bliss had said about roots.
He couldn’t be sure how, or indeed if, the photographs would turn out so he was careful to look after the piece of paper on which he’d written down details of the inscription. It was the back of the bill from the hotel he’d stayed at the previous night. He put it in the zipped back part of his wallet, noticing as he did so, how dirty his hands were... and how dishevelled his clothes had become. Should he drive back to Edinburgh like this or should he check into the hotel in Ayr again in order to have a bath and clean up? He opted for the latter. Apart from anything else, it would be a shame to leave Ayrshire without doing the tourist things. He should at least visit the village of Alloway and Robert Burns country. Whatever happened now, his trip to Scotland had been a success.
He had a bath and changed clothes before spending the remainder of the day driving round the Rabbie Burns trail and generally getting a feel for the area. The accents wouldn’t have changed that much in the last hundred years or so and he reckoned that the same fields were being ploughed, albeit with different machinery. He felt well satisfied when he came to the end of the tour of his roots and it was time to set off back to Edinburgh. It was already dark and most of the commercial traffic would be finished for the day. With a bit of luck he should be back by ten o’clock.
Fifteen minutes into the journey, the heavens opened and it rained so hard that the wipers had difficulty clearing the windshield. From Macandrew’s point of view, it couldn’t have happened at a worse time. He was heading back up the dual carriageway towards Glasgow, keeping a lookout for the slip road that would take him off on to the road to Edinburgh. In the event, he overshot it and was becoming resigned to having to go through Glasgow when he picked up another sign for Edinburgh via a road he had overlooked when planning the journey — the A71. He turned off onto that, switched on the car radio and flicked through the stations until he found some music he liked — Ella Fitzgerald singing, Summertime.
The rain eased and visibility got better: traffic was lighter away from the main route and the car’s heater was working well. He was beginning to feel more relaxed when, in negotiating a roundabout, his headlights picked out a road sign that almost transfixed him. It said, MOSCOW.
Macandrew tightened his hands on the wheel as his head filled with thoughts of Jane Francini and the little girl she became when mildly sedated, the girl who lived in Moscow but didn’t speak Russian... Emma Forsyth.
Ten
Macandrew now realised that neither he nor Karen Bliss had even considered a place other than the Russian capital when Emma had said her home was near Moscow. He even recalled feeling vaguely relieved when she had come out with it because she had been making them feel uncomfortable by sounding so perfectly sane and rational. There had been such a ring of truth about everything she’d said that anything to remind them that they were dealing with a deranged woman had seemed strangely welcome.
As he thought back to the events of that morning, he remembered Karen asking her why she didn’t speak Russian and Emma’s bemusement at the question. They had been happy to take that as a sign that everyday logic was absent from her thinking — a clear indication of mental dysfunction. But if Emma’s Moscow had not been in Russia then her reaction had been perfectly understandable. But surely this was all some kind of weird coincidence. “Emma” couldn’t possibly have meant the Moscow he had just seen direction to on the traffic sign. Common sense rebelled at the idea. There were probably lots of Moscows in the world. Hell, there was even one in Idaho, now he came to think about it. This niggling train of thought however, occupied him all the way back to Edinburgh and was still on his mind when he picked up his room key at the front desk.
‘Did you have a good trip, Doctor?’ asked the girl on duty.
‘I found exactly what I was looking for.’
‘Not many people can say that in life,’ said the girl.
Macandrew smiled at the philosophy and asked — almost on a whim — ‘Tell me, is Forsyth a Scottish name?’
‘It certainly is,’ said the girl.
‘I was afraid of that.’
Macandrew lay down on the bed for a few moments, looking blankly up at the ceiling while he tried to think things through in a calm and rational manner. A Scottish Moscow and a Scottish name: it could still be coincidence but he could no longer dismiss it out of hand. He would have to go back and take a look at the place. Something told him that he wouldn’t have peace of mind unless he did. He remembered that the tape of Karen’s interview with Jane Francini was in his travel bag and came to a decision. He would drive out to the Scottish Moscow in the morning and listen to the tape on the way.
Macandrew slowed as he neared the roundabout just north of Galston where he had seen the sign the night before. Seeing it made him just as uneasy again. Perhaps even more so this time because the Francini tape was playing and the sound of Jane’s Emma Forsyth voice was bringing back things he’d been trying to forget. He had played it through twice with an extra playback of the section containing the description of the house where the Forsyth family lived — Fulton Grange.
On a cold November morning, Moscow did not seem any different to many of the other small villages he had passed through on the way. It was grey and nondescript. There were certainly no big houses to be seen and very little signs of life outside the small ones. There didn’t even appear to be a shop in the village. Two elderly women, shapeless in heavy winter coats and headscarves, were talking on a corner. One of them had to rein back her dog to stop it making a run at Macandrew’s car. The women regarded him suspiciously as he passed slowly by, a half smile on his face by way of apology for invading their space.