The Hollow Tree, page 8
He paced quickly through the austere beauty of the surrounding parkland. Knott crunched behind, murmuring into his phone.
The world was asleep. The fields were flat and empty. A diffuse scramble of birds rose suddenly from the high, leafless trees.
Watson checked the news on his phone: stories about hospitals and Brexit, football, and some celebrity or other. He looked at the news in Wales: nothing. He flipped to the Scottish section, and stopped.
DEATH AT WEDDING IN ARGYLL
PA Reporter
Police have said there are no suspicious circumstances around the death of a guest at a wedding at a hotel near Dunoon.
The naked body of Daniel Merrygill, 49, was found on the hotel grounds in the early hours.
It is believed he had taken his own life.
A guest at the wedding said that Merrygill, a civil servant, had written a message in his own blood on the hotel wall.
The 48-year-old was found naked, eyewitnesses say, his body found in the early hours of this morning.
“It was a horrible thing to have at what would have been a beautiful wedding,” the source said. “We were all partying and then the body landed in the garden. I recognised him, he was part of the wedding party. He was naked and covered in tattoos, all letters, and numbers, like a Ouija board. It’s clear he was dead from the fall. I pity the bride, that’s her big day ruined. How can you get over that?”
A spokesman for the Poet’s Hotel, Argyll and Bute, declined to comment.
The wedding, of a Ms. Vivienne Banks and Mr. Wayne Provan, has been cancelled and police have ruled out any further investigations in the case.
People walked past him as he stared at his phone. A woman giggled as she carried her shoes. A man spoke in Russian.
Watson was frozen. He shook his head.
“Sir?” Knott said, stopping beside Watson. His breath was silver in the air.
“Where is Bax?” Watson said, eventually.
“At Scar Top. I assume.”
Scar Top was the Watson home in the Tyrdale valley.
“You know, we should start thinking about Bax’s responsibilities. His capacity,” Knott said. “He takes on a lot for you. For us. How much do you pay him?”
“I don’t. But he’s a soldier, he can take it. He’s loyal. But where the fuck is he? I need to speak to him.”
“I’ll give him a call,” Knott said. “Now the big game is afoot.”
“Can you let him know I need a word, urgently?”
Knott sighed and checked his watch.
“I will,” Knott said. “What is this urgency?”
Watson shook his head.
“Let’s get out of here.”
In the car park, hidden behind frosted topiary, they found Knott’s large dark car.
Watson slumped in the back. The car hummed to life. He looked out the windows as the woods began to move past.
“Did Raymond call?” Knott said, impassively.
Watson nodded, and closed his eyes. The glass moved in his mind. Gliding over words, over combinations and paths, tracing its own occult parabola.
Words could not be unsaid, and sights could not be unseen. But he had to take the right path, as Sorley said. As Sorley always said. Right, and right, and right again. And the right path led to Ullathorne.
As Knott hit the main road, Watson opened his eyes, and phoned Alyce.
The phone made a strange beeping noise. He took it from his ear and looked at it. The beeping continued.
“I’m sorry. This number is no longer available,” a metallic voice said, as cold as the dead.
8.
It was three in the morning, and again Shona could not sleep. The streetlamp’s corona glimmered around the edges of her window. A faint glow on the wall, cast by a tiny light on her charging laptop, pulsed weakly. Dim lights, small lights, all faint in the dark.
She could check on her father, who was being released from hospital in the morning. But she could not constantly check on him.
She sat up, her long black T-shirt draped over her knees. She felt alone. She felt alone because she was alone. The world outside was vast and hostile, and here, this place of safety, was changing. It was drifting, untethered. The walls about her suddenly seemed to be cardboard, paper—temporary. Her father, probably safe now, and warm and dreaming of gardens and skies—temporarily. One day, he would be gone. And then—what?
“Fuck’s sake,” she said.
She stood up and rubbed her face and felt her side. Moving to the window, she pulled aside a blind. Nothing out there amid the parked cars. A stilled ice cream van. The short strip of shops was closed and shuttered. The sick yellow light of the sleeping city tainted the sad heavy clouds, like cotton wool soaked in piss.
There was a sudden loping movement. A fox, russet and sleek, snuffled in the street. Lit dimly by the electric lights, it was alert and driven. It bobbed and slinked between two hedges, and was gone.
Shona thought of her mother. Long gone, now. Dead in her youth. Her father weeping, and a dark church, filled with more weeping. What could she remember of her? Just an uncertain smile, and reddened eyes looking down from a metal hospital bed. No grave. Her ashes, cast by her father, somewhere in the hills. Shona pushed it all away, as she had always done. She turned around. There was another movement in her room.
MacDiarmid leapt onto her bed, and yawned, and then in a sleek instant formed a neat furry circle in the heat of the sheet. Shona sat beside her and ruffled with a finger the short hair around her cheek. MacDiarmid leaned into her, rubbing Shona’s fingers with a heavy head, her eyes half closed. She began to purr, the tip of her tail twitching.
“Dopey cat,” Shona whispered.
She lay beside the humming feline, and looked to her side table—there were two folded papers from Reculver. One was an interview with Gary Watson MP. She reached for it and flicked on the side lamp, which flung sudden shadows across her room. The corners retreated. The furniture gained edges, surfaces, weight, and mass.
“What’s this fucking nonsense, then,” she said, to herself, unfolding the paper.
It was a printout of a short online interview with the Northern Recorder, a mass-market tabloid in northeastern England. There was a large picture of Watson. He had shaved the sides of his hair, and his longer hair on top had been swept into a kind of quiff.
He beamed from the page, teeth white and straight, his tie knotted tight, his neck and shoulders gym-toned, his skin unmarked by age or illness. His clothes were new and immaculate. His eyes gleamed.
Westminster Focus: Question Time with Tyrdale MP Gary Watson
The outspoken MP talks to Northern Recorder’s political editor Paul Tankard.
How you doing, Gary?
Never been better, Paul. You call me in my office in Westminster; been a busy day doing the people’s work. A few key votes, but as I said to the PM from the stage of the Tyrdale vote—you’ll never need the Whips to speak to me. I’m fully on board with the project. Blood, sweat, and tears: that’s what I am prepared to give. But today’s been a good day, we won the votes handily—so it always feels that way when you know you have taken the right path. But as I always say, any day spent outside Tyrdale is not a perfect day—looking forward to racing back up for constituency work in the recess. Can’t get home soon enough.
What are the key priorities for the year ahead, Gary?
There’s many—fulfilling our manifesto must be the main commitment: we put in that document many promises, many pledges, which we have to see through. We must honour those. So, there’s migration reform—hopefully we’ll see the back of that. There’s the Safe Seas Charter for protecting the south coast from refugees—very close to my head and my heart, as you know. There’s the Constitution Act to protect the Union, unravel the error of devolution, and bring back some measure of sensible control back to the centre. The major free trade deal with the nuclear powers. And, of course, I’ll be fighting for the Tyrdale people: especially traditional families: protecting them from others who may do them harm, restoring their faith in nation and honour, and ensuring their healthy, decent numbers grow. But there is no time. We have to work for it—to strive, to fight and to win.
You’re a Tyrdale lad—is your voice heard in Westminster?
I am indeed, and proud of it. I’ve always said my vision for the nation starts on the banks of the Tyr and the generations my own family have spent in and around the dale. It’s in your blood, that soil. My childhood in those vales was idyllic.
From the Pennines you can see for miles—and I’ve always said you can see the future of Great Britain from there. As you know there’s a cadre of northern MPs now, and we have the Say Yes to North group at Westminster. Some say I am their leader, which is very kind. I am the chair of the group in Parliament. I wouldn’t say we are acknowledged as a major force as yet, but the PM knows we are there, and to be fair to him, he spends time with us and knows what we’re all about. He is sound that way. I think he’s smashing it, despite the doubters and the weaklings.
You’re a back bench MP right now—what are your ambitions for higher office?
We all have ambitions, Paul: didn’t you always strive to be at the top of your game? I’m no different—I am ready to serve King and Country in any way that the PM sees fit. If a role of duty was to be offered to me, I would put my all into it. But first and foremost, my ambitions are for this country—to be a lean, mean machine of a modern country with an empire of opportunity behind it and ahead of it. A great, strong, unashamed nation—tough as teak with both feet set in the glories of our past and our blue eyes set fearlessly on the time when tomorrow comes.
How do you relax, Gary?
To be brutally honest, Paul, I try not to. Since my wife, Sarah, passed, I mash the sixteen-hour work days, wherever I am. That’s how I was brought up and that’s what I expect of myself. I expect and demand rigour and discipline within myself, and thus, Paul, those around me. I do like to read when I can—mainly the Romans, the Greeks. Big fan of the Stoics. Look them up. Top advice. And I like to listen to audiobooks on my train journey north—innovative business theory, mainly, and a spot of modern hard rock when I need a lift. I slap on some of the heavy stuff when I’m cracking on with the irons. I like gyms. But you would know that if you’ve seen me!
Thanks, Gary.
Over and out. Got to crack on. See you round the ’dale.
“Fuck’s sake,” Shona said, shaking her head.
The cat opened her eyes and mewed. Tiny teeth gleamed in a pink mouth. She trilled. It seemed as loud as a roar in the night.
“Shut up, fatty,” Shona whispered, and dropped the paper onto the floor, flicked off the lamp and closed her eyes again in the restored darkness.
She needed to sleep, even if, at its end, she would have to endure waking up again.
9.
There was a lot to do and a train to catch. Shona needed to pack.
Her father was now home, watching TV, slumped in his corduroys. Bernie was there, too, bashing pots in the kitchen and loudly singing an old folk song. Shona, holding her half-empty travel bag, raised a theatrical eyebrow to her father as Bernie ululated.
Hugh Sandison had shaved off his beard. It made him look older, his jowls pink and tender, and he had a small white scar on his chin she had not noticed before. He acknowledged his daughter’s mild display of sass with open hands.
“She has a fine voice, Shona,” he said. “What can I say?”
Shona was kneeling on the carpet in their living room, trying to extract her laptop charger from a complicated mass of cables that coiled in and around a table leg.
“Well, she has a voice,” she said. “You’re right there.”
“Aye, well, young lady,” he huffed. “As I see it, you’re buggering off to that England chasing some story. Ms. Comfort, on the other hand, is volunteering to look after this old man while he ails in his dotage, so I think I can bear an old folk song now and again.”
Bernie bashed pots and sang “Hares on the Mountain.” Shona pulled angrily at a white cable, which only made a loose tangle into a fast knot. There was a large pair of grey headphones attached to a plug socket, charging.
“Are these Bernie’s?” she said, pointing to them.
“No, she bought them for me, to listen to my music,” he said. “Grand, aren’t they?”
Shona nodded briefly, and yanked forlornly at her charger cable.
“For fuck’s sake,” she muttered. “This is a fucking snake’s wedding.”
“Your language, my love, is still abominable,” her father said, smiling. “You wouldn’t catch me using rough words in that manner.”
“Dad, you called that Henry at the allotment an ‘arrogant cunt’ a wee while ago, so,” she said.
“That was a factual observation. I’ve heard enough about his onions. He was saying my patch is getting too messy, out of control. The cheek of it.”
“Is it?”
He shook his head. Then, reluctantly, he nodded. “But maybe there’s some benefit to having the bugs and insects in the long weeds. I hope.”
“Didn’t you say there’s a load of junk equipment to get rid of?”
“There is, but it’s none of Henry’s beeswax. Snob. You should see the nick of his shed: solar panels! Cunt.”
Bernie was trilling away in the kitchen. She sounded happy.
Shona looked to her father. His eyes were watery. His ears seemed larger. “Well, maybe you were slowing down with the gardening because you weren’t feeling too good, and—”
“Mind yourself,” he interrupted. “I haven’t been slowing down. My allotment just needs a wee tidy-up. A bit of moving things about. Bernie will help me.”
Shona took a deep breath, and finally freed the offending cable, which swung heavily in her hand. “Thank fuck,” she said.
“Anyway—when’s your train, and when you back again?” her father said, sounding tired, looking to the TV.
“There’s one every hour,” she said, pushing away a stray lock of hair. “And I’ll be back in a few days. Got a place to stay in the town. Ranald wants a news feature—if there’s a story there.”
“Ah—so you’ve been commissioned?” he said, with a sudden burst of informed interest. Hugh had been a journalist in his day. Decades at the Herald, including a decade as night editor, and a few before that in local press in Fife. He often said he had printer’s ink under his fingernails. He knew the trade, inside and out.
“Yep. Ranald wants it sooner rather than later,” Shona said, noticing the change in his mood.
“Can you rustle up the tale in a week?”
“I’ll bloody have to, won’t I?” she said, jamming a pair of drying black and silver socks into her bag. “And let’s face it, Dad,” she added, rolling a top and sliding it down the side of her belongings, “we’re bloody skint.”
“Need the cash,” he said, nodding. “That’s no lie.”
Shona was running late. She bent over and stroked Mac-Diarmid, who was lying regally on a bill from the council, which had been dropped on the carpet. MacDiarmid evidently thought it was her new bed. The cat slowly blinked, unimpressed.
“So, it will be one of those human-interest tales? Because in my experience, love,” her father went on, “the story behind a suicide is not often dramatic or of interest to other people. Sad, tragic, devastating to the family, but not of interest to readers of the papers. We used to avoid them, back in the day. Not in the public interest. The public might be interested, but that’s different, you know.”
Shona knew this—which irritated her—but knew there was more to this story. The messages, the stones, the burning caravan, the money appearing in Viv’s bank account. There was something else. Beyond her ken. But not for long.
“So, what’s your plan?” her dad asked. His eyes were back on the snooker. Perfect coloured globes clinked politely on an enclosed jade lawn.
“I’m meeting one of Ranald’s freelance snappers at Darlington station,” she said, “and going to the caravan place, then he’s dropping me at Ullathorne. So, I’ll be on my phone the whole time. If I need to turn around and come back, I can do—okay?”
She zipped her bag, and rested it on the table, and knelt beside her father.
His eyes moved from the screen to hers. His eyes were pink at the edges, watery. His newly revealed skin was tender. He put a slow hand to her face. His fingers trembled on her skin. “Best of luck, my love,” he said, softly. “I’m fine. Don’t you worry about me. Get the story. But come back soon now.”
“I will, Da,” she said, and kissed him on his forehead. He smelled of soap and coffee. His skin moved under her lips.
He raised a hand, and with a tender finger moved a lock of hair from her eye and placed it behind her ear.
“I’m in need of a haircut badly,” she said, smiling.
“Looks like someone has already done it badly,” he said.
“Dad.”
“Off you go. Get the story,” he said, winking, “and haste ye back.”
She stood, and kissed him again, but could not say goodbye.
“Bernie!” she called to the kitchen, as she rushed to her room to grab her mobile phone.
Bernie stopped singing for a moment. “Yes, my dear?” she yelled.
“Don’t let Dad cook,” Shona shouted. “And don’t let him on that allotment.”
“Shona?” Bernie called back, and Shona heard footsteps, and her father loudly complaining.
Bernie appeared in the frame of her bedroom door. At the end of her short arms were pink rubber gloves. “Are you in charge of the shopping around here, Shona?” she said, quietly.
“Yeah, why?” Shona said, grabbing her phone from the side table of her bed.
“It’s just I’ve been going through the cupboard and there’s a lot of out-of-date food there. There’s some tins well past their sell-by date,” Bernie said.
