Tom Knox: The Babylon rite

Straight away turned out to be impossible: he’d have to wait twenty minutes. But that was OK: his train wasn’t leaving until four thirty.

Strolling to the window, he lingered. Edinburgh Castle brooded on the skyline, dour and cliched and impressive. The dark Scottish streets glistened in the smirr.

Then his own phone rang. Adam took the call, though he didn’t recognize the number. An Edinburgh prefix… ‘Hello.’

The answering voice was young, and female, and rich with Scottish vowels. ‘Hello, is that Adam Blackwood of… the Guardian?’

‘Yes.’

‘You wrote the piece about my father?’

‘Sorry?’

A short, distinctive pause. Then, ‘My name is Nina McLintock. Archibald McLintock was my father. I’m sorry to bother you but…’

‘Go on. Please.’

‘Ach, it’s just…’

She sounded distracted, maybe even distraught. Adam felt a sudden rush of sympathy. He blurted, ‘I’m so sorry for what happened, Miss McLintock, it’s so shocking. I mean I was there, I spoke to your father just moments before, before the suicide, I actually saw the crash…’ Even as he said this Adam chastened himself. It felt like a silly boast, or something presumptuous, and using the word suicide was just graceless. But the girl seemed encouraged by his words, rather than offended.

‘Call me Nina. Please call me Nina. I want to talk with you. You saw it all. The police told me, you spoke to my dad just before.’

‘Yes, but I-’

Nina McLintock was not for pausing. ‘So you know! My father was not in any way depressed. He was happy. These last weeks he was really happy. I know my dad. He wasn’t suicidal. Just wasn’t.’

The first raindrops rattled on the window.

‘I think he was murdered.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Murdered. He was killed. I’m sure of it, but meet me and I’ll tell you why. Tell you everything.’

The Hinnie Tavern, Edinburgh Old Town

The Hinnie was one of those Edinburgh pubs that seemed to contain a slightly rancid, off-putting darkness, in the heart of the Old Town, under the louring stone bulwarks of the castle, down a tiny medieval wynd so obscured and sooted by history that only the initiated knew those ancient, uninviting steps led down to an equally ancient, uninviting pub.

Glum drinkers stared into glasses of The Famous Grouse. Old men ignored each other at the bar, drinking pints of 80 Shilling. Another young man gazed aggressively at Adam, with the stare of an antlered male stag on a hillside in the rutting season: fuck you.

Adam raised his glass and toasted him, staring right back, making the boy visibly seethe. Come on then, Adam thought, I am descended from some of the worst English criminals in the history of transportation. My grandfather killed dingoes with his bare hands. You think you’re harder than me?

Adam felt guilty about his temper, but he also had a pleasing confidence in his physical capabilities, which sometimes came in handy. He recalled the day they beat up the Lebanese boys in Cronulla, gave them a hiding for nearly gang-raping his sister’s friend when the police wouldn’t do anything. Too racially sensitive, mate.

His father, of course, was — or at least had been in his prime — exactly the same. A bit of a drinker, a bit of a bruiser. Almost liked a fight; he and Adam used to wrestle and box when Adam was a lad. So the propensity must’ve come from Dad.

Don’t let anyone push you around, son, unless they have a gun. Then go get a gun. That was what his dad used to say. Dad was a real larrikin, a true Aussie, albeit descended from centuries of English cutpurses and highwaymen. Mum had been very different.

‘Hello?’

Startled from his thoughts, he looked up — to see a young woman, standing directly opposite, extending a delicate white hand.

Nina McLintock.

She didn’t look anything like he had expected; she had remarkable pale skin, and lush dark hair. She was also petite and slim and wearing dark clothes and a white shirt or blouse: she looked like a figure in a monochrome photo. The only thing that told him this was sandy-haired Archie McLintock’s daughter was the eyes, they were the same intelligent grey-green. The sad eyes he had seen in Rosslyn Chapel.

‘Recognize you from the paper. I’m sorry I’m so late.’

He lifted hands as if to say no worries.

She hastily explained, ‘We’ve got this Facebook page. For my dad. Seeking info. Look. Ach. Sorry. Do you mind if I get a drink first?’

She was obviously a local: the barman, who had stared at Adam as if he was a large and ugly centipede, smiled at her shouted request and brought her drinks over. An action almost unheard of in a British pub.

Nina smiled, introspectively. There was true sadness there, which made her look quite beautiful — and a little haunting, Adam thought.

‘This is your local?’

She nodded and shot down her Scotch in one gulp. Then she turned to her glass of Tennants, which seemed a bit too big for her very small hands, but she managed to down a quarter of it anyway. Then she said, ‘I’ve got a flat down the road, in the Grassmarket. I like it here, the fact it’s so rough. The fights can be fun. You know in Scottish we have five hundred words for fight: a stramash. A fash. A brulzie. All different.’

He gazed at her pint glass.

‘Yes. And I’m a recovering teetotaller.’ Her eyes twinkled. ‘I tried to be sober. But my God, the boredom. Like Byron said, Man, being reasonable, must get drunk. I like Byron. You?’

‘Uh…’

‘Sorry I talk too much. Drink too much and talk too much. Too quickly.’ She set her pint down. ‘Sorry…’ And for a moment the vivacious energy seemed to leave her.

Adam said, ‘What’s this about a Facebook page, then?’

‘My sister. Hannah. Teaching in London, lecturer. She and I both believe it wasn’t suicide. So we’ve set up a Facebook page, asking for help. ’Cause the police won’t do anything. Muppets. They say the car was fine, not tampered with. And I don’t buy it. Hence the page.’ She turned slightly as if to address the pub. ‘Adam, my father was not mad. Not a nutter. I don’t believe it. ’

‘You really want to talk about this?’

‘Yes! I want to know what you think. You spoke to him last.’ Her eyes fixed earnestly on his. ‘What was he like? His mood that day?’

‘OK well…’ Adam hesitated. ‘I suppose you could say he seemed pretty happy when I met him. However, he did say something very odd. Which might imply he was — ah — a little unbalanced. Sorry.’

‘What? Nina leaned close, but not angrily. ‘ What did he say? ’

Adam felt uncomfortable. ‘I mean, well, all his life he wrote those academic books, very scholarly works, sceptical, rigorous, highly respected. But then, suddenly, in Rosslyn that day he said to me: oh it’s all true, there really is some truth here. Rosslyn, the Templars, the Norse elements. He appeared to reverse everything he believed. I was quite shocked.’

‘You weren’t the only one! He said exactly the same to me. A few weeks ago.’

Her face was flushed. ‘On the phone. He made this strange, passing remark. That his whole life’s work had been pointless, that he had been wrong about the Templars, there really was a deep deep secret. Some mega-conspiracy. Yet he laughed when he said it. I thought he was talking blethers-’

‘Sorry?’

‘Thought he was talking nonsense. Thought maybe he was drunk. ’Cause he was fond of a dram. The McLintock genes.’

‘So what convinced you? And how does that lead to…’

‘My thinking he was murdered? Loads of things — his behaviour over the last year or two, for a start. About eighteen months ago he just disappeared, went off on some crazy walkabout. Spain, France, South America even. We had no idea where, or why, he told me and Hannah nothing. When he came back he was richer, quite a lot richer. I mean he was never poor, but he was never rich either, writing books about how there is no Holy Grail and all your favourite fairy tales are pathetic and gibbering nonsense does not necessarily make you loadsamoney, y’know?’