NINETEEN

At the hospital, Dangerfield left Harry in the same drab seating area where they had waited the day before while he went in to see how Wiseman was — and to find out if Harry was still persona non grata.

Ten minutes later, he was back, the expression on his face hinting at the answer before he even opened his mouth. 'He's looking a lot better. Reckons they'll discharge him tomorrow. Refuses to see you, though, Harry. Says the police obviously suspect you sabotaged his car and, until they rule you in or out, he doesn't want to have anything to do with you.'

'Great.'

'Advised me to kick you out of my house, as a matter of fact.'

'Even better.'

Dangerfield smiled. 'Magister always was too quick to believe the worst of people.'

'So, what do we do now?'

'I'll go back and try to talk some sense into him. I have to arrange for him to meet Jabber's wife and daughter, anyway. Widow and daughter, I should say. Why don't you wait in the car? Sit here long enough and there's no telling what you might catch.'

—«»—«»—«»—

Harry wandered off glumly towards the exit. Wiseman's readiness to believe he had tried to kill him would have been risible had it not been so depressing. He was an intelligent man. Could he not grasp the absurdity of the idea? Apparently not.

Which only made it more obvious that the sooner Harry was off the hook the better. The day had yielded one tantalizingly frail lead. And he was determined to follow it.

At the hospital's main reception area, he sweet-talked the woman on duty into letting him consult a copy of the Aberdeen telephone directory. There was only one S. McMullen listed. He jotted down the address and headed for Dangerfield's car.

Sure enough, the street map located S. McMullen in the Torry district of the city. He had her. And therefore…

'Gotcha,' he announced, for no-one's benefit but his own.

—«»—«»—«»—

Dangerfield was out within half an hour. He drove Harry away, heading straight for Sweet Gale Lodge, where he proposed to spruce himself up before heading back into the city to meet Mrs Lloyd and her daughter. Harry, of course, was not invited.

'There's plenty to eat in the fridge. Help yourself. That goes for the wine rack too. And I've got Sky on the television. Watch a film. Or a football match. There's always one on. Take it easy. I won't be back late. I wish I was having a quiet night in myself.'

'This relaxing evening you're sketching out for me sounds great, Danger, but contemplating my appointment with the local constabulary tomorrow and knowing how they've convinced Magister I'm party to some crazy plot to do him in isn't likely to put me in the ideal frame of mind for slurping your claret and surfing the satellite channels.'

'Miss Sinclair will force the police to put up or shut up. In the end, it'll be the latter. Once they've admitted defeat, Magister will have to fall into line. I still think it was an accident. These hire cars get some seriously rough treatment. Magister was just unlucky.'

'But not as unlucky as Jabber.'

'Too bloody true.' Dangerfield tut-tutted. 'Poor old Jabber.'

'We'll never know now whether his memory of being on the castle roof fifty years ago was genuine or not.'

'No.' Dangerfield looked round at him. 'We won't, will we?'

'Watch out!' Harry saw the van braking in front of them before Dangerfield did. By the time their own brakes were on, they were closing fast. But, thanks to Mercedes technology and a tiny margin for error, they stopped a couple of feet short of the Transit's bumper.

'Christ almighty,' said Dangerfield, slapping his forehead. 'Nearly another bloody accident.' He grinned crookedly. 'At least this one definitely wouldn't have been your fault, Harry.'

—«»—«»—«»—

At Sweet Gale Lodge, while Dangerfield took a bath, Harry phoned Donna. He did not mention the police's doubts about the crash being an accident, far less their suspicion that he was somehow responsible for it. And he did not even hint at what he intended to do that evening. As far as Donna was concerned, he and Dangerfield were dining with Lloyd's grieving relatives and giving them as much help as they could.

'I should be able to leave tomorrow. Wednesday at the latest. And you'll be pleased to know I did buy a camera yesterday. So, I'll have pictures to remember this weekend by — whether I want to or not.'

—«»—«»—«»—

Dangerfield set off shortly after seven o'clock, leaving Harry on the sofa, supposedly watching a Test Match in the West Indies on Sky Sports Xtra.

'I guess you don't see a lot of cricket in Canada,' said Dangerfield as he hurried out.

'None at all,' Harry responded, adding 'Thank God' under his breath.

'See you later.'

"Bye.'

Harry waited a minute or so after the front door had closed before he prodded at the remote, silencing the commentary. He listened for the sound of the Mercedes starting, followed by the crunch of its tyres on the gravel of the drive. Then he jumped up, stabbed the off switch on the television and went to fetch his coat.

—«»—«»—«»—

Harry had to wait twenty minutes for a bus into the centre, but he was in no particular hurry. In some ways, the later he left it the better.

He would have travelled by tram back in 1955. He remembered the streets of Aberdeen as mostly cobbled, lit by gas, traversed by grim-faced people in belted overcoats, old before their time. It was a different world, as so much of his past seemed to him, despite the fact that he had lived in it.

Old Blackfriars had altered little in its essentials, but the barmaids were younger and prettier — and that went for most of the customers as well. Harry ordered a toasted sandwich and took his beer off to the non-smoking area to await its delivery, smiling at the thought of what he would have said fifty years ago were the chances of living to see any part of an Aberdonian pub unobscured by a blue-grey haze.

He took out the postcard he had bought in Braemar, still lacking an appropriate stamp, and made a start at filling it in. Darlings D and D, Having a grotty time. Wish I wasn't here. Well, that was undeniably true. As far as it went.

It had not, in fact, gone any further at all when his sandwich arrived. He washed it down with a second pint, restrained himself from ordering a third and concluded, at half past nine by the Town House clock visible through the pub window, that the time was ripe.

—«»—«»—«»—

The number 12 bus took Harry out past the ferry terminal and the fish market, over the Dee and into Torry, an area of the city he had never previously explored. Nothing he saw as the bus trundled past down-at-heel shops and Victorian terraces suggested he had missed much. He traced his progress on Dangerfield's map and hopped out when the bus got as close to his destination as he judged it was ever going to.

He headed downhill towards the docks, a large oil storage tank squatting floodlit beyond fencing at the bottom of the street. Halfway to it, he hung a right into a short cul-de-sac of two-up-two-downs and walked slowly along towards its end, before stopping in the darkest midway point between a pair of street lamps and gazing across at the house opposite.

There was a light visible at the ground-floor window, but the curtains were closed. The window above was unlit, as was the dormer above that. The house was in fact only one of two on that side with a dormer. An extra bedroom perhaps. Converted by Bernie McMullen before his untimely death, making it more plausible still that his widow had taken in a lodger recently.

But how to prove it? Harry hesitated to march across and ring the bell. He could not force Shona to let him in, far less insist on searching the house. If she brazened it out, what was he to do? He had no Plan B to fall back on. And Plan A was hardly distinguished by its subtlety.

Then, quite suddenly, in the form of leather-shod footfalls approaching from the corner, providence intervened. A hatted, raincoated figure was steering a direct course for the very door Harry was watching, moving fast, at a faintly pigeon-toed gait that was instantly familiar.

—«»—«»—«»—

The man was on the point of sliding a Yale key into the door lock when Harry tapped him on the shoulder. 'Hello, Barry. Long time no see.'