gazed down the silent hallway. The McLintocks’ apartment was so very hushed. Several doors gave off the hallway, which was decorated by black-and-white prints of old Edinburgh. Auld Reekie. The medieval city with its Luckenbooths and witch-burnings, the Stinking Style and the royal gibbet.
From somewhere he got the peculiar sense of a clock, somewhere, having stopped. It was a silence comprised of tension, and absence. But maybe it was simply the tension: they were, after all, in someone else’s flat, which they had entered with illicit use of a stolen key.
‘So, what now, Nina? I don’t quite see why we’re here. If the notebooks are gone then we might as well quit. Get out. No?’ He searched for her reaction. He was happy to continue but he didn’t want to take pointless risks.
Her gaze was narrowed by contempt, or something close to it. ‘Ach. Hell with that. We search! There may still be something? Clues!’
She was already unzipping her large blue quilted anorak; as she dropped the hood, her hair loosened, and shimmered. He gazed, unwittingly recording the details: he couldn’t help it, all those years of journalistic training made him do it – this was the stuff that made an article come alive. Details. Description. Details. With her very twenty-first-century anorak now discarded, standing petite and slender in black jumper and grey jeans, she looked like a young and comely widow; yet she also looked as if she was dressed for a break-in. Dark clothes and raven-dark hair. Quite hard to see.
‘Let’s try the sitting room. And his study. Study first.’
He followed her gesture.
‘Here. Dad’s study. They had one each.’
The door opened; they entered the study. The light switch was dimmer style: Nina carefully calibrated the dial – finessing it so they had just enough light to search. Not strange blazing light at the windows, not at two a.m.
The study was definitely the man’s private space in a shared apartment. The decor was austere. Scottish rugby paraphernalia – team photos and faded rosettes – adorned the walls. A medieval globe in a corner. A large photo of Nina stood proudly on the big wooden desk. A slightly smaller photo – Adam guessed it was the older sister, Hannah – was positioned beside it.
Sitting next to the photos was a strange ceramic object, a piece of pottery; it looked old and exotic. Adam had once been to Mexico City, and this item definitely looked Aztec, or at least Mesoamerican.
He picked it up, and turned it in his hand. Deciphering the painted image on the jar. It showed a man with no hands and feet praying at an altar. The image was so disquieting he almost dropped the pot.
‘What the hell?’
She nodded. ‘Yes. It’s odd, isn’t it? He brought it back from South America last year.’
‘After his trip?’
‘Yeah. Creepy, huh? There’s a couple more in the kitchen. Just as sinister.’
Adam replaced the pot on the desk, took out his phone camera and grabbed a couple of shots of the jar.
‘You think it’s relevant?’
‘No. Yes. Who knows? We need to hurry up—’
‘OK, I’ll do the desk.’
Adam felt like a burglar, or an undercover cop. He got the distinct feeling he should have worn gloves. Leave no prints. If anyone caught them doing this it would be ghastly.
He leaned towards a shelf. As he did, a car passed, very slowly, at the rear of the tenements. Was it parking? The blood ran a tiny bit colder in his veins. Adam stared at the far wall of the study: the wall was mainly glass and gave on to a kind of fire escape, and the darkness of chilly Edinburgh beyond. But the car passed on.
Slowly, he sorted along the shelves, turning over books, and peering in a box of cufflinks, fruitlessly.
Leaning down, he pulled at a drawer. For several minutes he rummaged, but there was nothing here. Just files of paperwork. A cancelled mortgage. A cheque book stub. Then floppy disks, and old cassette tapes with handwritten labels. Arwad. Damascus. Aleppo. A brief history of technology in one drawer, and little else. He’d had enough: he didn’t even know what he was looking for. ‘Nina. This is pointless. How about the living room? Let’s look at it laterally, different kinds of clues?’
She stared in the half-light. Then she nodded; together they prowled out of the study, and walked along the hallway. The door to the dark living room creaked, and squealed. Another dimmer switch was turned. But a quick glance around the room gave Adam no hope they would find anything here, either. It was just another nicely furnished, middle-class living room, with feminine touches.
The large windows were single-glazed: the flat was cold. Adam was glad he had kept his coat on. He wondered how Nina could stand the cold without her anorak: maybe all that alcohol was providing insulation.
She walked across the room to bookshelves stacked with volumes, and began pulling down books, one by one, her small, empty rucksack by her side. Adam paused, and cast another glance at the walls, where abstract art was juxtaposed with framed photos.
There was Archibald as a young man, probably receiving his doctorate: he was wearing a scholastic gown and smiling, and clutching a scroll of paper. Next to it, his wife – or so Adam guessed – photographed as a very young woman: attractive and smiling in some sunlit, foreign place. Deserty beige rocks and red sand formed a background. Taken in Morocco, perhaps?
The rest of the decor similarly implied shared yet divergent interests, in history, art, architecture. More prints of medieval Scotland hung above the scoured and unused fireplace. A lurid Victorian penny dreadful engraving of Sawney Beane, the Scottish cannibal, decorated one far corner.
A final photo of Archie and a woman, also framed, stood aslant on a small antique writing table. Adam walked over and examined the photo. The woman was definitely an older version of the young traveller in Morocco.
‘Your stepmother?’
Nina was furiously paging through books and didn’t hear him, or ignored him.
‘Nina.’ His voice was a hiss. ‘Nina!’
She swivelled, eyes narrow and green in the half-light. ‘What?’
‘Is this her? Your stepmum?’ He lifted up the silver-framed photo.
A grimace. Yes, that was her.
Adam returned the photo carefully to its allotted place.
‘Tell me about her.’
‘Why?’
‘Because.’ Adam shrugged. ‘If you want my help, I need to know as much as possible. Context.’
Their hunt resumed. ‘Context?’ Nina flung the word down as if she wanted to stamp on its neck. ‘OK. Sure. Ach. I’ll give you context. But while I’m doing it – help me.’
‘How?’
She indicated the wide shelves, the many hundreds of volumes. ‘He used to write in books, annotate them. He was notorious for it. Scrawling on every
