herself. Archie had one hand on his knee. His other hand was hidden. Clasped around Christie’s waist or lost in the closeness of the pose? It was difficult to tell. Archie’s face was half-obscured by his hair and moustache, but he looked alive in a way that none of the other photographs had shown him. Murray wondered when it had been taken. That last summer up on Lismore? The look was right, the seventies hair and careless clothes, the treeless scrub of heather in the background. He would take a copy with him when he went to meet Christie Graves. Perhaps she would remember the moment it was taken, and maybe that memory would prompt others.
He pulled the jotters towards him. They were similar to those he recalled using in primary school, with boxed-in lines on the front cover for the owner’s name, subject and class, which Archie had left blank. He lifted one in the air and shook it gently. A couple of dried leaves slid from between the pages. Murray laid them carefully to one side and added them to his list.
Leaves – 2
The words looked stupid. He scored them out then took one of the leaves between his thumb and index finger and held it up to the light, seeing the veins still branching beneath the crisp surface. There was no secret message scratched on its desiccated flesh. He placed it gently back on the desk and opened the notebook. A list of words ran close to the margin on the left-hand side of the page, vocabulary or notes for a poem cramped in Archie’s now-familiar script.
Dune
Dawn
Dream
Dome
Diadem
He could see no connection between the words and any of the poems in Moontide. Murray leaned back in his chair and started to read, making notes in his own Moleskine notebook as he went along. He was a third of a way through the jotter when he came across the entry made in another hand.
I love you and she will love you too.
Beneath, Archie had added:
She loves me! But how can she be so sure that my new love will be a she?
Murray made a note of the exchange, wondering if it offered some kind of insight or was simply a joke. He’d assumed Archie’s sexuality was confirmedly heterosexual, but then the seventies had been a time of challenged boundaries, even in Scotland, and Archie’s love affair with the drink had frequently placed him between berths. Maybe he’d occasionally flopped into men’s beds in the way that he had so frequently flopped (Murray imagined that the word was often appropriate) into women’s. It was worth considering. At this stage almost anything was worth considering.
Murray had propped the photo against the desk lamp. He looked at it again, the grinning face and flying hair. How long after it had been taken had Archie drowned?
He worked until two, then decided to take some requests for reference books to the front desk. He supposed he should eat something. He’d woken with a sore head and mild nausea, remnants of the wine he’d drunk at the opening and of the semi-sleepless night that had followed. He should phone Jack, tell him . . . tell him what?
Murray filled in his request form neatly and went out into the corridor, closing the door gently behind him. He heard Mr Moffat’s jovial tones just before the man himself hove into view. The senior librarian was wearing his customary politician’s suit and tie. His sparse, white hair was cropped short in a style that might have looked thuggish on a less amiable countenance, but which lent Mr Moffat a jolly, monkish cast. He was walking fast, talking animatedly to an older, thinner man dressed in khaki trousers, a checked shirt and saggy cardigan.
Murray would have been content to let the pair pass with a friendly nod of the head, but the librarian hailed him warmly, his round face a testament to the pleasures of books and extended lunch breaks.
‘Good afternoon, Dr Watson.’ He shook Murray’s hand. ‘Everything working out okay?’
Murray’s voice felt rusty. He’d been in conversation with the remnants of Archie Lunan all morning, but this was the first time today that he’d opened his mouth to speak to the living.
‘Good, yes. I’m not sure what I’ve got yet, but it looks promising.’
‘Wonderful.’ Mr Moffat turned to his companion. ‘George, this is Dr Watson, through from Glasgow for a look at some Archie Lunan ephemera we didn’t know we had.’
‘Oh, aye.’
The older man looked unimpressed, but he held his right hand out anyway. Mr Moffat stood over them while they shook. For a bizarre moment Murray thought he was about to clasp their two hands together like a minister at a marriage ceremony, but the librarian confined himself to his usual easy grin.
‘George Meikle is our head bookfinder.’
Murray wanted to tell the bookfinder to call him by his first name, but the action seemed too awkward. Instead he indicated the request forms in his hand.
‘I was just heading in your direction.’
Meikle’s face remained dour.
‘I’ll take you along to the desk then.’
George’s surliness was at odds with his offer and Murray wondered if he was grabbing the opportunity to escape the weight of Mr Moffat’s cheerfulness.
‘Excellent.’ The librarian couldn’t have looked happier had he introduced Lord Byron to Percy Shelley. ‘Still, it’s a pity we don’t have more for you, Dr Watson. I often wish some poets had been more assiduous with their legacy.’
Meikle made a harrumphing noise that might have been a laugh or impatience.
‘Some of them are over-assiduous.’
‘George has a point.’ Mr Moffat lowered his voice as if he were about to tell a risqué joke. ‘We’ve been gifted signed notes to the milkman, but your man . . . one slim volume and a cardboard box of papers. Tragic. It’s going to make your job pretty difficult.’
‘There’s more than you might think, references in other texts, letters and the like, and I’m hoping more will turn up once I start talking to people who knew him.’
‘I’m a great believer in optimism.’ Mr Moffat was already turning away. ‘And there’s always George. He’ll help you out where he can.’
Murray groped for some way of saying he didn’t need any help beyond the room already provided. But he was already looking at the broad back of Mr Moffat’s blue suit as he headed away from him, along the corridor to his office.
George snorted with the same mixture of amusement and impatience he’d shown earlier.
‘This way.’
He started down the hallway in the other direction and Murray followed him, too polite to let on that he already knew his way around. He couldn’t think of anything to say. It was like this sometimes when he had been deep in work, as if his mind stayed trapped in the wrong mode, the best part of him caught in the pages he was carrying.
Lunan had been trying to write a sci-fi novel. Murray smiled at the irony. He’d been hoping to uncover lost verses by a neglected poet and instead had chanced upon notes for a pot-boiler. Maybe Lunan had been bored, or perhaps he’d decided to fight penury
