Louise Welsh - Naming the Bones

It was as if his thoughts touched the woman. She stirred and made a noise somewhere between a gasp and a sigh. Murray glanced down at her. Christie’s eyes looked huge. She bit her bottom lip, half-smiling. He looked back at the professor making his way across the grass with his usual assurance, not bothering to stick to the beaten path, and suddenly Murray realised what was about to happen. He shoved Christie from him and yelled, ‘No, Fergus, stop!’ The other man faltered, and for a second Murray thought his warning had been in time. Then the professor fell.

At first it looked as if Fergus had simply lost his footing and skidded backwards onto the mud. But all at once he groaned and began scrabbling for purchase on the slippery ground. The battle was too fast and too desperate for him to cry out again. The only sound was of the wind in the tree-tops and the desperate slap of Fergus’s arms and legs flailing in the wet mud as he fought with gravity, like a man showing how it was to drown. Then it was as if something beneath the earth grabbed him tight around his legs and pulled hard, sliding him swiftly and horribly down the unmarked sinkhole and into the below.

Murray started to run forward, but Christie grabbed his ankle and brought him down.

‘Do you want to follow him?’

He’d landed beside her and their mud-spattered faces were unbearably close. Murray scrabbled in his pocket and brought out his mobile. She knocked it from his hand.

‘He’ll be in Hell by now.’

Murray shoved her away. He was beyond speech, beyond thought. He pushed himself up, slipped and cried out in terror of the earth, but it was merely the same mud he had been wallowing in for the last hour. He dropped down onto his hands and knees again and started crawling towards the sinkhole, but he stopped after a few faltering inches, too feared of Fergus’s fate to go on.

Murray sat back up onto his hunkers, sobbing as he hadn’t in a long while. He saw the glint of his phone, picked it up and hauled himself to his feet. He stood there for a moment. Then he started to stagger away from the cottage, careful to keep to the path.

Christie shouted, ‘It was all lies, everything he said, lies.’

Murray set his back to her and followed the curving track to where Fergus’s Saab sat, its lights still glaring. He leant in through the car’s open door. The vehicle was empty, no sign of Rachel. Murray turned and looked at Christie. She was lying spot-lit in the mess of mud they had churned up between them, her hands clutching the tin trunk; a savage pietà. There was a rush in his stomach. He bent double and spewed the remnants of Mrs Dunn’s cakes onto the ground.

MURRAY WIPED HIS mouth on the back of his hand. He walked back, helped Christie to her feet as gently as he could manage, and then lifted the long-dead child’s coffin onto his shoulder. He carried it silent through the darkness and the sludge, like a doom-laden St Christopher. Christie said nothing beyond a whispered thank-you; merely let herself be gripped around the waist and supported back to her car. The rain had almost stopped, but they were already soaked through and coated in filth. Somewhere a bird hooted. It was a strangely human sound and Murray felt his stomach lurch.

Christie was shivering. He took a tartan travelling rug from the boot, wrapped it around her shoulders and then settled her and his other burden in the back seat. Her hand went to the trunk’s hasp and he whispered, ‘Please, you promised. Not until you’re home.’

Christie nodded and shifted her hand to the lid, where she let it rest.

Murray started the engine. There was no point in questioning whether he was fit to drive. He was fit for nothing. He raised the clutch gently and the car eased forward.

‘Thank Christ.’

The dashboard clock glowed 03.45. The whole adventure had lasted less than two hours.

There was no option but to retrace the route they had taken earlier. Murray was shivering too now, his hands so numb he wouldn’t have known he was gripping the steering wheel, except for the fact that somehow he was managing to guide the Cherokee round the curves in the road.

The night was still pitch murk. Murray realised he was driving faster than he had on their journey out, but made no effort to cut his speed. Their tyres would leave marks in the mud which, now that the rain had stopped, would not be washed away. There was no helping it. He kept the headlights off, amazed he could still think of his own self-preservation when deep down he cared nothing for it. He glanced at Christie in the rear-view mirror. Her hand was still resting on the box, but her eyes were shut, her skin yellowed, mouth slack.

‘Christie?’

She started. ‘Where are we?’

‘We’ll be there soon. Stay with me.’

‘Sure.’

The slur in her voice had grown worse, but when he checked her again her eyes were open.

He said, ‘You knew Fergus was going to fall down there, didn’t you?’

‘How could I? The sinkhole wasn’t marked.’

‘I saw your face. You’ve lived here for decades. At the very least, you knew there was a danger of it and you didn’t warn him.’

There was a shrug to her voice.

‘He should have kept to the path.’

‘Fergus should have kept to the path. Archie should never have gone out in the boat. Men who associate with you seem to become careless.’

Her voice held a challenge.

‘In that case perhaps you should be careful.’

‘What about Alan Garrett? Should he have been more careful?’

‘Obviously. If he had, he wouldn’t have smashed himself up against a tree.’

‘Did you kill him too?’

‘I never killed anyone, except maybe Miranda.’

‘Who?’

‘My little girl. And that was a sin of omission.’

‘Not according to Fergus.’

‘He lied.’

‘He’s not here to contradict you. But even if he did, you appear to be a jinx, a magnet for demisuicides.’

Her tone was scornful.

‘A spellbinder.’

‘Being called a witch isn’t the slander it once was.’

She sighed.

‘Dr Garrett was into risk-taking. We talked about it. He was the kind of man who slowed down on the level crossing when the train was coming, who walked to the brink of the cliff in bad weather, the edge of the subway platform during rush hour. Did you know he was a rock-climber?’

‘Yes.’

‘He’d started climbing freestyle, without ropes. He told me that sometimes he would deliberately take extra risks, go for an unsure hold, let fate have its hand.’

Murray’s voice was dry.

‘I have been half in love with easeful death, called him soft names in many a mused rhyme.’

‘Half in love, half frightened of. Men like that shouldn’t get married, but they do. I suppose they want to anchor themselves to something. I met his wife. It amazes me how these sturdy women ally themselves to reckless men.’

‘Like you did with Archie?’

‘Oh, I was never that robust. If I had been, I would have picked myself up and got on with my life instead of endlessly sorting through the bones.’

It was an unfortunate image, and they both fell silent for a moment. Then Christie said, ‘I don’t know if he’d ever talked about it before, but it excited him, discussing his obsession with someone who understood. I can picture his death as clearly as if I’d been there. He saw the empty stretch of road, the tree, and put his foot down, giving fate one last chance to let him make the corner or crash.’ She snorted. ‘It was one chance too many.’

Murray closed his eyes. He felt the urge to press the accelerator to the floor, to test whether she could maintain her glibness as he raced the car onwards into their deaths. But he opened them again, kept his speed level and turned the Cherokee out onto the open track at the edge of the moor.