Louise Welsh - Naming the Bones

Murray turned back.

‘Yes?’

‘Whatever went on between you and my wife, it’s over now. Understand?’

‘Yes.’

‘I knew you would.’

The BMW swung out from its parking space and Murray walked towards the sloping pathway home. Fergus passed him on University Avenue. Neither of them waved goodbye.

GEORGE MIEKLE HAD lost none of his gruffness. The bookfinder nodded down at the pavement with the gravity of a funeral director presenting a newly embalmed corpse to its relatives.

‘That tells you all you need to know about Edinburgh’s road maintenance. Nigh on forty years it’s been there.’

Murray could make out the name Christie etched roughly into the concrete. He took out his mobile phone, lined up the camera function and snapped. It looked shit, the letters lost in the greyness of the concrete and the damp morning. Done well, it could make a nice image for the book. His brother would know how to capture it. He pushed the thought away.

‘Were you here when he did it?’

‘I was, yes.’

‘And Christie?’

‘Christie? No, she wasn’t there.’

Meikle turned and started to walk down the street. Murray took another useless shot with his camera-phone, and then followed, jogging a bit of the way before catching up with the bookfinder.

‘Archie obviously thought a lot of her.’

‘Aye, he did.’

The older man spoke without looking at him, his face set straight ahead. Murray supposed this was what fishing was like, flinging out your line, watching it drop into the deep waters, and then waiting patiently for a pull on the lure.

‘So what did he do? Wait till the workies were away, and then fire in with a stick?’

Meikle gave him a curt nod.

‘That’s about the size of it.’

They walked on in silence, the older man setting the pace. A bus disgorged its passengers onto the street and Murray forced his way through the waiting queue, muttering a mantra of ‘Excuse me’, ‘Sorry’, ‘Excuse me’. Meikle had drawn further ahead and Murray had to negotiate a squad of draymen unloading a beer lorry, before he drew level.

‘Can you spare time for a coffee?’

To his own ears he sounded like a desperate adolescent trying to set up a first date, but Meikle glanced at his watch.

‘I’ve got thirty minutes before I’m due back. There’s a place over the way, if you’re not fussy about hygiene.’

Meikle stepped into a queue of traffic stalled by a double-parked delivery van. Murray hesitated then hurried after him just as the delivery driver pulled away. The van tooted its horn and Murray raised an open palm in a gesture that was part command, part apology.

Meikle was already climbing the entrance steps to the café. Murray followed him into a broth of hot fat, hamburgers and chips. His bowels shrank, as if giving him due notice of what would happen if he dared eat anything. A motherly waitress in a blue tabard leant against the counter chatting to an old man who sat alone over a cup of rusty-looking tea. ‘Naw, hen,’ the old man said, ‘I’m sweet enough.’ They both laughed, and he repeated it, ‘Sweet enough’, though it wasn’t much of a joke the first time. The aisle was almost blocked by a toddler strapped tight in its buggy, like a dangerous criminal under restraint. Its mother sat at a table next to it, reading Heat . A milky coffee congealed in front of her, beside a plate of chips smothered in tomato ketchup. She pressed a chip into the redness, with a gesture that suggested a lifetime of stubbed-out cigarettes, and placed it in the child’s outstretched hands. The toddler squeezed it into puree and let it drop. The woman muttered, ‘For fuck’s sake, Liam’, and started to pick the mess from his jacket.

Meikle tucked himself into a plastic bucket seat at one of the free tables and set his elbows on its Formica surface.

‘Twenty-five to, the clock’s ticking.’

Murray shifted a scattering of white sugar with the edge of his hand, a snow plough piling through a fresh fall, and set his tape recorder on the table.

‘I wanted to ask you about Christie.’

‘I thought it was Archie you were interested in.’

‘It is, but Christie’s a big part of his story. What did you think of her?’

‘I didn’t think anything. She was his girlfriend, his bird as we used to call them, that was all. I guess you could say she was the Yoko Ono of the group.’

‘She split you up?’

‘We were pals, not bloody civil partners.’

The waitress ambled over, leaned her bottom against the opposite table and asked what they wanted. Murray noticed the home-made UDA tattoo on her wrist as she wrote their order on her pad. She gave the table a half-hearted wipe, and sugar grains rained onto Murray’s lap. Meikle waited till she had gone and then said, ‘Not that I’ve anything against gays.’

Murray tried to dust himself down, but some of the grains were caught in the trouser-folds around his groin and he gave up.

‘Of course not.’

‘It’s just that I’m not one, so mind you don’t put otherwise in your book.’

‘Message received and understood.’

The woman with the magazine put a chip into her own mouth and the toddler let out a pterodactyl caw.

Meikle said, ‘And don’t put any of that “doth protest too much” stuff in there either. I’m just setting the record straight.’

‘Straight as a die, George.’

The older man gave him a stern look that turned to a laugh. The waitress smiled as she set their coffees on the table between them.

‘Somebody’s happy, anyway.’ She took the bill from her pocket and placed it between the cups, asking, ‘Whose shout is it today then?’ as if they were seasoned regulars.

Murray pulled his wallet from his jacket and handed her a five-pound note.

‘Quite right. I bet your dad shelled out enough on you over the years, eh?’

Murray said, ‘He’s not. .’

But she had already counted his change onto the table and was making her way to a trio of workmen in fluorescent waistcoats.

‘Nosy besom. See she’s serving the Diet Coke men quick enough, anyway. No waiting around for them, eh?’ Now that his venom had been spent, Meikle softened a little. ‘Christie was all right as far as I was concerned. I mean, you wouldn’t have expected Archie to go for someone run of the mill. She was a good-looking girl. Didn’t say much, but nice to have around. Good wallpaper. I called her Yoko because after she came on the scene Archie and me saw less of each other. That’s the way it is with some guys once they hook up. They don’t hang out with the lads any more. Maybe it’s no bad thing. I spent too much time hanging out with the lads over the years. Look where it got me.’

‘I spoke to Professor James. He said Christie never said a word in his writing workshops.’

Meikle’s voice was low.

‘What else did he tell you?’

‘That Archie had the potential to make it big, but he wasn’t sure he’d have had the discipline.’

‘He’s changed his tune.’

‘Oh?’

Murray stirred his coffee, wary of losing the other man with the wrong question.

‘James couldn’t stand Archie or his poetry. It was him who made sure Archie was chucked out of uni.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Who do you think? It’s not like I spent my time hanging around with professors.’

‘If he wasn’t welcome, why did Archie keep going to the poetry workshops?’

‘Why shouldn’t he?’

Murray could hear the heat of pub arguments and long-ago resentment in the older man’s voice. He levelled his own tones and said, ‘No reason, but why go where you’re not wanted?’