Tombstoning (16 page)

She sent a fully-recovered Amy off to find out when the penguin parade was on, and sat down opposite one of the many empty enclosures to think.

It was all getting a little weird. On the one hand, despite herself, Nicola was getting pretty excited about David. Friday and Saturday nights had proven there was definitely something there between them, and the fact that they’d pretty effortlessly picked up each other’s lives after a fifteen-year gap was surely an indication that they were in sync with each other somehow. They had – oh, she didn’t know how to put it without sounding cheesy – some kind of empathy with each other. Perhaps they didn’t have the same attitude towards the past, but they seemed to have a similar view of the present. They had ended both nights buzzing from drink and content in each other’s company, and then they had done the same thing, only in more sober and sombre mood, last night too. If anything, the shock of Gary’s fall had somehow thrown them together even more. The two of them were now the last people to see him alive, they were a two-person club, and they would always have that inexplicable thread running between their lives.

But then, there was a dead body in the mix. Someone she had been laughing with only two days ago was now dead, and his parents must be distraught. She tried to imagine how she’d feel if anything happened to Amy, but couldn’t picture it. No, that wasn’t quite right, she could imagine it, she probably thought ten times every day about how desolate, how pointless her life would be without Amy. It was the same for all parents, she assumed, there was something in parenthood that transcended all that other shit about loving till death do you part. The only real love in the world was between parent and child.

She tried to imagine what her parents would be like if anything happened to her, and she couldn’t really picture that either. She was the eldest of five kids, so she’d always been like an extra parent to the rest, looking after her little brothers and sisters, helping out around the house, grown up before her time, really, which was why, she always suspected, she had taken to motherhood so easily.

She realized with surprise that she wasn’t really as shocked as she should be about Gary. He wasn’t her friend, she hadn’t known him, really, so his death hadn’t had that much impact on her. Secretly, she admitted to herself, she was a little bit excited about it. It was a terrible thing to admit, and she felt genuinely awful for Gary’s parents, but the mystery of his death also offered a horrible vicarious thrill, as if she’d been watching a film or reading a book. It was bizarre, how he’d ended up at the cliffs on that night. She’d been reading Nancy Drew books for Amy recently – when she herself was little she’d loved the ham-fisted adventures Nancy would blunder in on, always sorting things out by the end, with or without those two Hardy Boys twats who would sometimes turn up and ruin things. She felt guilty and vaguely absurd thinking these things, but also strangely keyed up. Kirsty had snidely said the other night that Nicola had led an adventurous life, trekking round the world and coming back with a baby, but the reality of her round-the-world jaunt had been mundane. You never learnt anything, racing through other people’s cultures and countries, sampling the pre-prepared tourist trinkets, or hanging out with the other globally migrant workers in the same way that Australians now seemed to congregate in Edinburgh as some kind of coming-of-age ritual. It wasn’t the grand adventure she’d hoped for, her trip, and the only good thing to have come out of it, really, was Amy, and while she didn’t regret a minute of her life with her daughter, changing nappies and cleaning up puke for years wasn’t exactly James fucking Bond. Now she worked a steady job, looked after her daughter, didn’t get out much and liked the odd large glass of wine – hardly the stuff of high-powered professionals, let alone something as glamorous as undercover agents or millionaire arms dealers. She loved her life, she
did
love it, every aspect of it, but it really wasn’t exciting.

And yet, what was a mysterious dead body if not exciting? The trouble was, Gary’s death could well be a mystery that was unsolvable. After all, they had never come to any conclusion about Colin’s death fifteen years ago. That was the terrible uncertainty of life – that sometimes you just never get to find out what really happened. It was nothing like a Nancy Drew story, was it? In both Gary’s and Colin’s cases, there were three possibilities. Either they’d fallen by accident, jumped on purpose, or been murdered. If it was an accident, then the trail ended there. If it was suicide, did anyone ever know the real cause? Even those that leave notes – not very many, she remembered from a forensic show on telly – leave big gaping holes in the hearts of those they love, don’t they? Big, unanswered questions, as well as anger and shame. But what were the chances? She didn’t know anything about statistics or probability, but she remembered something recently from the news about cot deaths – in fact hadn’t David mentioned it? – that once was a tragedy, twice was murder. Did that apply to other similar deaths? Maybe that was stupid, but it lodged in her brain as an idea, it seemed to logically make sense that the same thing happening to two people in the same place, two people who had the same backgrounds and who had known each other, well, that couldn’t be coincidence. Which left murder.

But that was ridiculous as well. For a kick-off, who the hell would be murdering people? And at Arbroath cliffs, of all places? That sort of shit just doesn’t happen in a place like Arbroath. But then again, there were stories on the news every day about deaths, murders, terrible things happening in small towns all over Scotland, all over Britain, everywhere in the world, so why the hell shouldn’t it happen in Arbroath, just because it was the place where she grew up?

She felt confused, her head cloudy with the swirling possibilities of it all. That she might never know what happened to either Colin or Gary nagged at her a little, gnawed away at her sensibilities, raised as she was on easily-compartmentalized and solvable problems, murder mysteries that were over in an hour or two on television.

She wanted to talk to David about all this, but she wasn’t sure how to bring it up. They were both going to be heading back to Arbroath, she realized; maybe they would do it together this time, and maybe she could discuss some of it then. Their relationship was getting off to a strange start. So far they’d been to a museum, a school reunion, Arbroath Abbey and a hospital together, and their next dates were at a cemetery and a police station. It wasn’t normal, but it was interesting, she gave it that.

She saw Amy coming round the corner with a glum look on her face.

‘They don’t do the penguin parade today,’ she said. ‘They only do it on special occasions now.’

Nicola looked around her. This zoo was going to the dogs, she thought. When she was little she’d been brought here for a special treat, all the way from Arbroath, and they’d had elephants back then. Admittedly they were squeezed into a tiny enclosure and looked like fat businessmen bursting out of grey suits, so it was maybe better that they weren’t here any more. They’d also had bears which, unbelievably, some kids had fed orange juice. Recently the zoo had got rid of their giraffes as well, and most of the big cats. Now the penguin parade was being scaled down. What was the point? It had become a steep hill with some monkeys and lizards. Maybe it was for the best, she didn’t really approve of zoos anyway. Still, she regretted that Amy wouldn’t be having the kind of eye-widening experience that she’d had when she came here for the first time. She wondered for a minute whether other aspects of life were being similarly scaled down, all the risk being taken out of life in an ever more litigious world, but then she thought that was just her grumpy, thirty-something side getting the better of her. Fuck that, there was still plenty of excitement in life. Not least what had happened to Gary Spink.

She took Amy’s hand and headed slowly up the hill in search of an animal enclosure that might also contain some excitement.

All day the phone never stopped ringing, driving David nuts as he tried to avoid working. So when it rang just before five, as David was putting his computer to sleep and throwing things into a drawer, he considered for a moment not answering it. But then he thought it might be Nicola, and picked up.

‘David Lindsay?’

Oh shit. It was Mr Bowman. David’s mind pictured the old soak across the table from him and Gary in Tutties, and fast-forwarded through the conversation that was about to happen. He knew how this was going to go, and he didn’t like it, but he couldn’t see how it could be avoided.

‘Yes,’ he said with a heavy sigh.

‘It’s Jack here, David. Mr Bowman. I’m just calling because I heard the terrible news about Gary. Shocking, absolutely shocking. I can’t really believe that we were sitting chatting on Saturday, and now he’s dead.’

‘Tell me about it,’ said David, already wanting this conversation to end.

‘How on earth did it happen?’

‘How the hell should I know?’ David felt like he was back at school for a moment, being accused by the teacher of something someone else had done. He felt his cheeks flush involuntarily.

‘I’m sorry, what a ridiculous thing to ask you. I do apologize. I’m just a little shocked, you understand.’

You’re fucking shocked, thought David, but he kept his mouth shut.

‘What do you want, Mr Bowman?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I said, what do you want? Why did you phone me?’ It sounded unnecessarily harsh, David realized, but he knew exactly why Mr Bowman had phoned, and he wanted to get through it as quickly as possible.

‘Ah, well,’ said Mr Bowman. ‘And please call me Jack. Of course you remember Gary agreeing to come to the school this week, to talk to some of our older pupils about the dangers of… well, this is incredibly awkward, I suppose, considering… but anyway. He was going to talk about tombstoning, you recall, and now… But considering what has happened, I think it’s probably more important than ever that someone comes to the school to have a chat with some of the kids about the cliffs and the dangers.’

‘And you thought of me.’

‘I know it must seem terribly heartless, considering Gary’s death, to bring it up just now. But don’t you see? Things could really get out of hand now. Word will get out about this straight away, and we could have two dead martyrs for these tombstoning idiots to worship. We both know Gary would never have been doing anything so stupid, but teenagers are very impressionable, and they don’t often take much notice of the truth unless it’s shoved down their throats, unless they’re faced with it in person. Which is where you come in, if you’d be willing. I think it would be fantastic if you would take Gary’s place, and come and talk to some of the pupils.’

David had already decided he would have to say yes before Jack had even started to ask. He absolutely did not want to be standing in front of some belligerent schoolkids, spraffing shit about not jumping off cliffs, in the vain hope that none of them would break their stupid fucking necks in the future. He absolutely did not want to be put in that position, but for some strange reason – some masochistic instinct, some kind of penitence for the deaths of his two friends, for which he was utterly blameless but felt guilty about nonetheless – he knew he had to do it. It was his own pathetic little exhibition of martyrdom, except only he would know about it.

‘That’s fine,’ he said. ‘I’d be happy to do it. I’m going to be back in Arbroath on Friday for Gary’s funeral. I could do it then, in the morning sometime. How about eleven?’

Jack obviously couldn’t believe what he was hearing, and there was silence down the phone for a second’s beat.

‘That would be fantastic, David, really it would,’ he said. ‘I’ll make the arrangements at this end. If you just ask for me at the school reception when you arrive. I’ll take you out for lunch afterwards, if you like. It’s the least I can do. If that doesn’t clash with the funeral.’

‘That should be fine,’ said David. He felt exhausted.

‘Well, I’ll let you get on with things,’ said Jack. He sounded delighted with how his day had gone. David wished he felt the same way. ‘I’ll see you on Friday, then.’

‘See you then.’

David had the receiver halfway down when he heard the teacher again.

‘Oh, I take it you met up with Neil on Saturday?’

‘What?’

‘Neil Cargill. We discussed him briefly, you remember? I wondered if he was going to the reunion at Bally’s.’

‘Yeah, well, he didn’t show up, as expected.’

‘Really? Only I saw him when I left Tutties.’

‘What?’

‘I saw him, just a short while after you left Tutties. I finished my drink and headed off, and I literally walked past him outside the pub. I have a good memory for faces and names, you see, and of course we’d just been discussing him, so he was at the forefront of my mind. Anyway, it was only after we’d passed each other that I remembered who he was, so I shouted after him, but he didn’t turn round. It was definitely him, though. I assumed he was in the area because he was heading along to Bally’s for the reunion.’

‘You’re sure it was him?’

‘I might be getting on a bit but the old grey matter still works, just about. My family is blessed with cancer and heart disease but not senility, so the memory remains intact, for now. It was definitely Neil.’

‘Well, he wasn’t at the reunion,’ said David, but then thought back to what someone had said in Bally’s, who was it again? One of Gary’s mates had claimed to have seen him in the place. His memory was hazy, soaked in the booze of the night.

‘I suppose some people just don’t go in for that sort of thing,’ said Jack. ‘Anyway, I’ll let you get on. I’ll speak to you on Friday.’

David put the phone down and sat for a moment. It was only Monday but already this week had gone to shit. He had a talk to give at a school, a funeral to attend and a police statement to file before the week was out. Great. Better get home and get a drink inside me fast, he thought as he slung his jacket on and headed out the door.

The week dragged grudgingly towards Friday, and as it did something started to creep into David’s mind. That name that seemed to keep popping up at odd moments in Arbroath finally lodged itself in his subconscious, then slowly floated up to the surface of his thoughts – Neil Cargill. He gradually started thinking more and more about Neil, mentally picking at the scab of his childhood memories of the two of them – the four of them including Colin and Gary – and how their lives had been together back in the 80s. It seemed like an entirely different universe, the 1980s. People were still worried about nuclear bombs and the cold war, for fuck’s sake, so it really
was
a different universe. Not that any of the four of them had been worried about that sort of thing. Most of the time all they worried about was which girl they were going to try and get off with, or where they’d get enough money to get drunk at the weekend. That was life in a small town, David thought: they were like goldfish swimming in their own tiny bowl, minuscule attention spans and flapping mouths agog, while outside the bowl a whole world was getting on with wars, love, death, famine, politics, all the stupidly important shit that teenagers everywhere resolutely ignored, never mind those in a dead-end former fishing town flung half way up the east coast. In eighteen years of childhood, David could remember visiting Edinburgh and Glasgow on only a few occasions for a gig or football match. It wasn’t that these places were impossible to get to – both were a couple of hours on the train or bus. The nearest city, half an hour down the coast road, was Dundee, seen as something of a seething metropolis by the vast majority of Arbroath residents. The fact that it was seen as a culture-free joke of a city by the rest of Scotland spoke volumes for how far adrift Arbroath and the people in it were from the larger scheme of things in Scotland, and beyond into Europe and the rest of world.