Louise Welsh - Naming the Bones

Murray sat at the table, wrapped in his brother’s coat. He whispered, ‘Are you back with Lyn?’

‘No.’ Jack went through to the other room and there was a sound of rummaging. He came back and flung a pair of trousers and a jumper at Murray. ‘You were right. I was a stupid cunt. Like the song says, you don’t miss your water till your well runs dry.’ He looked at Murray anxiously as if trying to weigh up his state of mind. ‘There’s good news, though. You’re going to be an uncle.’

‘Cressida’s pregnant?’

‘Christ, I hope not. That’s why I came to see you. Lyn’s going to have a baby, our baby, and now she won’t have anything to do with me.’ He raised his brown eyes to Murray’s. ‘I came to see you because I was fucking depressed.’

Murray thought of the blazing cottage on the moor side, Christie and her child together in the red Cherokee and Fergus’s Saab abandoned by the desecrated grave up by the limekilns. He said, ‘Jack, I think I might be going to jail.’

‘I’VE GOT TWO boys, terrific wee fellas. Six and eleven, they are.’ Murray was alone in the dark, watching the expression on his father’s face switch from eager to anxious. ‘I’ve no seen them in a long while. They telt me they were fine, but how do they know? Have you seen them, son?’

Jack’s voice was warm and reassuring.

‘I’ve seen them, they’re absolutely fine. .’

‘Aye, well, that’s good.’ Their dad regained his happy aspect. ‘On their holidays, aren’t they?’

‘That’s right.’ Murray heard the smile in his brother’s voice. ‘Away with the BBs.’

Murray leant forward, elbows on knees, chin resting on his clasped hands.

Jack was asking his father if he recognised him and the mischief was back in the old man’s face. ‘If you don’t know, I doubt that I can help you out.’

Up on screen the two men laughed together.

‘No idea at all?’

Their father’s stare was intense.

‘I don’t think I know you, son.’ He hesitated and a ghost of something that might have been recognition flitted across his face, bringing a smile in its wake. ‘Are you yon boy that reads the news?’

Jack said, ‘You’ve rumbled me.’ And the old man slapped his knee in glee.

Murray got to his feet. He pushed through the black curtains and out into the brightness of the white-painted gallery. Jack was standing where he had left him, his face anxious.

Murray gave him a sad smile.

‘Maybe you can let me have a copy.’

His brother reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a DVD. Murray took it from him and shook his hand.

Murray wasn’t sure how he had got through his first police interview. Jack’s roll-neck had covered the marks of the ligature and Murray had blamed the croak in his voice on a cold combined with a night on the batter, but he couldn’t imagine that his faltering performance had been convincing. Perhaps it helped that the Oban police were too overwhelmed by the clues they already had to want any more.

The morning had uncovered empty petrol cans in the boot of a distinguished professor’s recently abandoned Saab. The professor himself was suspected to be somewhere in the depths of a newly breached sinkhole. There also seemed a probable link between him and the razed cottage no one had seen burn down, and from it to the cottage’s owner, dead in her car with a vial of poison at her feet and a baby’s disarticulated skeleton beneath the blanket covering her lap.

Murray’s story that Christie hadn’t answered her door, despite his appointment, appeared to be believed, and his connection with Fergus picked over, but not unkindly. Eventually two detectives from Strathclyde police had called at his Glasgow flat to thank Murray for his cooperation.

If they were surprised by the boxes of Jack’s possessions piled in the hallway, or the unmade bed-settee in the sitting room, the officers managed to hide it. The four of them gathered in the small kitchenette. The policemen seemed to occupy twice the space the brothers did, and it was a squeeze. Jack, canny as ever, had stationed himself in the open doorway, leaving the detectives and Murray to squeeze together in the little galley with their backs against the kitchen units.

The officers accepted the offer of a cup of Jack’s over-strong coffee. The making and pouring of it proved a palaver, but eventually it was done and they each held a steaming mug in their hands.

The elder of the detectives favoured Murray with a stern smile. ‘I’ve got to say, Dr Watson, your face was in the frame when we found out you and Professor Baine were colleagues, especially once we discovered your relationship with his wife.’

He glanced slyly at Jack, as if checking for his reaction.

Murray said, ‘It’s all right, I already told my brother.’

‘Ah.’ the policeman sipped his coffee, grimaced, and set it on the kitchen counter at his back. ‘Your brother.’ He looked at Jack. ‘I gather you were there too?’

Jack gave one of his winning grins.

‘My girlfriend had just shown me the door. I was feeling a bit sorry for myself and decided to visit Murray. I ran into a crowd of archaeology students on the boat over, we got talking, had a few drinks together, and then I stumbled down to the But ’n’ Ben. The fire at the cottage must have been well under way by then, but sadly my route didn’t take me anywhere near it.’

‘Aye,’ the policeman nodded. ‘That’s what your statement said.’

The knowledge that their statements had been circulated as far as Glasgow bothered Murray. He asked, ‘So what wrapped up the investigation? Or aren’t you allowed to say?’

This time it was the younger detective who spoke. His face was impassive, and he might have been talking about a jumped red light or a stolen bicycle.

‘DNA samples taken from his house indicate that the baby whose bones Ms Graves was found with were those of a daughter she’d had with Professor Baine.’

‘Christ.’ Murray wiped a hand across his face. ‘So where does that leave things?’

The younger detective shrugged. His tight smile gave away nothing.

‘Officially, it’s accidental death and suicide. As to what actually happened, your guess is as good as mine.’ He levelled his gaze to Murray’s. ‘Better perhaps.’

The older officer’s expression was grim. ‘The bottom line is, we’re not looking for anyone else in relation to their deaths.’

Murray looked down at his feet, sinking into one of the silences he’d always been prone to, but which seemed to be affecting him more frequently. Jack filled what threatened to become an awkward pause.

‘We both appreciate it. Like you say, I guess the whole story will remain a mystery.’

‘You never know.’ The young detective turned to go. His coffee sat cooling in its cup. ‘Cases that have been dead for thirty or forty years can suddenly get resurrected.’ He looked at Murray. ‘Like old bones.’

The exhibition didn’t open until the following day, and they were alone in the small Glasgow gallery except for the curator busy on her laptop at the front desk. The place was less prestigious than the Fruitmarket, but this time it was a solo show, and according to Jack that made it okay.

They walked side by side through the exhibition, their father’s face shining from every wall. It was still hard, but Murray found he could look now. The montages devised from photos of their dad when he was young were his favourites; the Glasgow boy superimposed on the American landscapes he’d admired so much. There were even a couple of him with his arms around their mother, the pair of them relocated to a 1950s consumerist utopia. After her death his father had abandoned thoughts of emigration. Strange to think they could have become Americans. Strange too to remember that Jack had never known her, that he didn’t even possess the shadowy memories Murray had nurtured.