Gillian Galbraith - Where The Shadow Falls

As they bumped rhythmically over the bridge, Alice looked westwards, up the Forth estuary, seeking any distraction from this unpleasant situation. Between black clouds, shafts of sunlight were falling on the water, casting a silvery sheen on the vast expanse of tranquil, grey sea. In seconds the sun itself began to emerge from behind the dark clouds shadowing it, drifts of a borage blue sky exposed in its wake, and, as the car crossed the border into Fife, Alice became aware that her chauffeur had, finally, begun to relax. The car was no longer hurtling along at breakneck speed, and other vehicles were even being permitted to overtake them. Eric Manson lowered his shoulders and leant back into the driver’s seat, letting out, as he did so, a deep sigh.

‘Families, eh? Who’d have them!’ he said ruefully.

‘Sometimes more pain than pleasure, but not usually.’

‘You travel light, though, Alice. No commitments anywhere.’

‘I’m not an orphan, Sir.’

‘You’ve no man yet?’ Him and Mrs McLaren. Great minds, she thought, determined to side-step the question, certain that it was yet another volley in his little war of attrition. On the other hand, this time her interrogator was, himself, bruised and battered, unlikely to intend to commence hostilities on such a loaded subject. So instead, she smiled at him indulgently and shook her head. No reason for him to know. After all, he had met Ian Melville and their mutual antipathy had produced combustion on first encounter. His views on her lover’s suitability were all too predictable and unwelcome, and his dislike had been, as far as she was concerned, a positive endorsement of Ian.

Like the weighted, spherical toy clowns once favoured by little children and impossible to knock over, Eric Manson’s spirits soon bobbed back up, and by the time the Dunfermline turn-off was reached he was busy ripping the wrapping of a packet of cigars with his teeth, ready to smoke his companion out of the vehicle. Hands free of the wheel, he struck a match, sucked hard, and began to exhale acrid fumes into the enclosed space. His reluctant passenger wound down her window, aware that any complaint, or reminder that the car was her workplace, would be met with derision, the man’s delight in annoying her having been re-awakened with the resurgence of his normal, bumptious mood.

They turned right off the Carnbo road up a track marked ‘Blackstone Mains’ and began to climb into the Ochils. Within minutes the wheels of the Astra had sunk deep into its rutted surface and a strange swishing noise came from the car as its undercarriage compressed the undergrowth. After about quarter of a mile they arrived at the Mains, an austere farmhouse surrounded by a quadrangle of steadings, and saw a handmade wooden sign directing them further up the hill to ‘The Cottage’. The gradient of the final slope was steeper yet, their route resembling a dried-up river bed, little more than pebbles and shale with occasional boulders washed up here and there. Where the road ended they parked their motor, glad to stretch their stiff limbs, and both feeling as if they had travelled into some more remote past, a sanctuary untouched by the new century.

They looked around themselves in all directions, and saw laid out before them the glory of the place, a one hundred and eighty degree view of undeveloped countryside. Somehow they had reached paradise. Not the gaudy sort promised in every travel agent’s brochure, but something altogether finer and rarer, the true abode of the blessed. In the foreground were low undulating hills, scattered clumps of whin still yellow in bloom, and, sparkling in the bright sunlight, a series of burns bordered with flag irises and meadowsweet, culminating in marshland, larks and curlews calling high above. Beyond, in the distance, was a vast area of flat, fertile ground dotted with woodlands, the whole scene dominated by the great, shining expanse of Loch Leven. Looking on such a sight, the meanest spirit would have felt elated, a poet’s soul inspired.

In its condition as a moss-clad ruin, the cottage in the shade of the huge sycamore tree had once enhanced the rural idyll, but it was being restored, and its appearance now jarred, reminding the onlooker that, somewhere within the garden, the snake would be coiled. New PVC windows had replaced worn, wooden ones, and grey, cement tiles were edging out old, red pantiles. Even its sandstone facade had been marred by a patch of harling; metal gutters had been removed, plastic imposters taking their place. And all around lay the detritus of the DIY man: half-filled syringes of mastic, broken slates, soggy plasterboard and sheets of torn polythene. An unsightly yellow Portakabin had been dumped in the lee of the building, and the sound of drumbeats began to come from it. A whey-faced, teenage girl emerged. She saw the two strangers, but showed no alarm at their unexpected appearance.

‘Who yous after?’ she enquired dully, brushing a strand of dark hair out of her eyes with her hand.

‘Mr Norris. Colin Norris,’ DI Manson replied.

‘He’s out, away for the day.’

‘Where?’

She shrugged her shoulders, ‘You’ll need to ask ma mum.’

‘And where’s she?’

‘Shops. She’ll be back soon. You’ll just have to wait.’

A tall, thin boy, dressed all in black, leapt out of the cabin and flung his arms around the girl. She giggled and the two of them then returned, twined around each other, into their den. Instantly, loud laughter could be heard, followed by an increase in the volume of the music, which made the air vibrate to the pounding rhythm. Fleeing from the noise, an Indian runner duck waddled out of the cabin followed by its five upright ducklings, the family finding refuge through the open door of the cottage.

‘This place is a fucking pigsty,’ DI Manson muttered, lighting up another cigar.

‘I’d live here tomorrow,’ Alice said, knowing as soon as the words left her mouth that such a remark would be incomprehensible to her companion, a truth so impossibly unlikely that to utter it could only be a form of provocation.

‘Yeah, right,’ he said, ‘-and on your bloody own, I’ll be bound.’

Noticing a small outhouse with a corrugated iron roof, Alice went to explore it, bending double to go through the low doorway and finding herself in a foetid, unlit space. A loud moaning sound followed by a chorus of high-pitched squeals frightened her, and she peered into the blackness trying to make out the creatures responsible for the din. As her eyes became accustomed to the darkness she saw the curved outline of a large, prostrate pig. It was lying on its side, multiple teats exposed, and a mass of tiny piglets were tugging at them and scampering over each other, desperate to get their share. Delighted, Alice called out to her companion, ‘Come and see this, Sir.’

But DI Manson did not follow her into the hut. When she left it, eyes now dazzled by the sunshine, she found him sitting on the edge of a stone water-trough staring at the sole of his shoe, mobile phone in his left hand.

‘Thanks, Alice!’ he said. ‘Thanks to you I have stood on a massive bloody nail, and it’s gone straight through… and this place is covered in shit. I’m taking no chances, I’m going to get a tetanus jag right now at the surgery in Kinross. I’ll be back to pick you up in, say, two hours’ time. Norris himself is elsewhere, after all.’

As the rear of the car disappeared from the view, Alice noticed a ripple in the water of the trough as a stray raindrop fell from the sky. Soon, ripples collided with ripples as a summer downpour began, and she looked around for shelter, unwilling to intrude into the Portakabin, but keen to avoid a soaking. The porch would have to do; some refuge there, and as she ran towards it a red Escort bumped up the slope, coming to a halt with a heavy grinding noise. A woman got out, head bent against the rain, weighed down by four full carrier bags, and began to drag herself and her cargo to the doorway. Alice watched her slow, lurching progress, bags swinging against her legs, until finally they came face to face at the front door.