was ridiculous, all of it, stupid.
‘Rachel is asleep. Perhaps you can call back in the morning?’ The professor’s politeness was damning.
Somewhere in the recesses of Murray’s brain was the knowledge that now was the time to quit, while he still had the slim chance of writing the call off as a drunken indiscretion. But in the morning he would have lost his courage.
‘I need to talk to her now.’
‘Well, you can’t. Call back at a decent hour.’
The line went dead.
Murray stood and soberly surveyed the sunrise. A door in the empty street opened and some party-goers reeled out, their voices high and excited. A young girl drifted over and draped an arm around his shoulder.
‘Look, Dr Watson.’ She pointed unsteadily across the parkland. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’
The sun was fully up now and only a few streaks of pink remained smeared against the blue. The morning light glinted against the River Kelvin and caught in the trees, shifting their leaves all the greens and yellows in the spectrum. The birds had ceased their revels and calm had settled. Even the concrete hulk of hospital buildings in the distance seemed at one with the day. Murray looked at the new-minted morning and agreed that yes, it really was beautiful.
Chapter Seven
MURRAY WOKE SUDDENLY, not knowing what it was that had roused him. The blind was only half down, daylight filtering weakly into the room. He glanced at the radio alarm, but its plug had been pulled, the glowing numbers dead. Saturday or not, he’d intended to be at the library in Edinburgh for opening time, but his drunken self had opted for uninterrupted sleep. His clothes were draped carefully over the chair in the bedroom, the way they always were when he’d drunk too much. His watch lay on the top of the chest of drawers, amongst the kind of small change a man on a spree accumulates. Five past twelve. He felt like Dr Jekyll, his scholarly intentions ruined by a fiend of his own fabric. Murray slid from under the duvet, found his boxer shorts and pulled them on. Then he paused on the edge of the bed and listened.
Somewhere in the distance a road drill rumbled, but otherwise it was quiet. He went barefoot into the hallway and opened the front door, screening his half-nakedness behind it. He’d neglected to lock up the night before, but no keys trembled in the keyhole. Murray shut it gently. The rush of air caught on the hairs on his legs and he realised he was cold. There was a sudden clatter of footsteps in the stairwell outside. He felt ridiculously vulnerable standing there in only his boxers. Murray turned towards the bathroom, but the snap of the letterbox brought him back into the hallway and the letters sprawled on the mat.
He took his dressing gown from the hook on the back of the bathroom door and went into the kitchen. There was no mineral water in the fridge so he filled a mug with water from the tap, drank it quickly and then poured himself a second. Christ, was this what it was like to be an alcoholic? If Archie had felt this way every morning then it was no wonder his published work consisted of a single collection.
Murray didn’t want to think about the night before; the row with Rab, the phone call to Rachel, Rab and Rachel. The romance had been a knot in Murray’s stomach since it started, but now that it was over – more than over; now that it was ruined – the knot was replaced by a leaden deadness. He realised he’d been sustained by the thought that Rachel – Rachel, to whom he’d have addressed poems if only he could write – Rachel had chosen him. His knuckles tingled where he wished he’d slammed them into Rab’s face.
It wasn’t Rab’s fault. He should send him an email, apologise.
It changed everything; the knowledge that Rachel had slept with him too; Rab’s mouth kissing where he had kissed, his hands on her body. The thought disgusted him, even though he’d supposed she still slept with Fergus.
Fergus.
The phone call came back to him, the memory of the professor’s voice slick with anger. He groaned out loud. His sabbatical stretched ahead, twelve months for his head of department to nurse his wrath and engineer Murray’s successor.
He felt like going back to bed, pulling the sheets over his head and letting temporary death overwhelm the after-drink urge to kill himself. Instead he sat on the couch cradling the cup of water in his hands. A double-decker bus rumbled along the road outside. Murray watched the small ripples disturbing the surface of his drink.
Had there been a moment, a flash of mental clarity in the midst of the storm, when Archie had known he was going to die? He would have been wet already, soaked through by the rain and toppling waves, but the shock of water when the boat upturned must have taken the breath from him. How many times had he gone under before the final descent? How long had it taken? The sea sucking him down then spewing him back to the surface, the frantic struggle to stay afloat, the desperate grab for some purchase met by froth and foam. Or had he been knocked unconscious before he even hit the water? It was possible. The night had been wild, Archie sailing solo. Maybe he had fallen and hit his head against the side or been attacked by the boom. Archie had been careless with his life, sailing into the storm. Perhaps he’d been a careless sailor too. His body had never been found. It left no clues for the coroner. There was no convenient sheaf of newly forged poems slid safe in a waterproof envelope in his jeans pocket, no clues for the biographer either.
Murray wandered through to the kitchen and looked down onto the backcourt. An old man in carpet slippers was scavenging through the bins. He watched him for a while then went into the hallway, picked up the phone and dialled the police. The phone rang for a long time, and then a deep voice said, ‘Sandyford police station.’
‘Hello, there’s an old man out the back of my building going through the rubbish. He’s in his slippers and I’m worried he’s got dementia or something.’
‘Have you spoken to him?’
‘I’m not dressed yet.’
The voice at the other end of the phone was weary.
‘Do you think he’s looking for receipts or anything?’
‘Receipts?’
It was like a foreign word. Murray couldn’t think what it had to do with the conversation.
‘Identity fraud.’
It was in his mind to say that the old man would be welcome to his identity, but he answered, ‘No, I don’t think he’s doing any harm. I just thought he might be confused.’
‘Okay,’ the policeman sighed again. ‘Give me your name and address and we’ll send someone round when we can.’
‘When will that be?’
The voice contained the full quota of contempt that an early-rising man in uniform could hold for a civilian who had only now crawled out of bed.
‘I couldn’t say, sir.’
Murray gave his details, hung up and went back to the window. The old man was gone. He stood there for a moment debating whether to call the police again or get dressed and hunt for him amongst the backcourts. In the end he did neither, simply clicked the kettle on and lifted his mail from the table.
A bill from the factors, a leaflet from the local supermarket outlining their offers in colours bright enough to sicken the famished, a bank statement
