Autographs In The Rain Part 47

'She's broken the rules nevertheless. She's not allowed to accept a brief directly from a client; she'd have to be instructed by a solicitor.'

'Is that true?'AUTOGRAPHS IN THE RAIN.

'Of course it's b.l.o.o.d.y true. If you want me to be your technical adviser, you've got to trust me.'

She turned in her seat and looked at him, eagerly. 'Would you be? Our technical adviser, I mean, like for real?'

He whistled. 'Not a chance; not officially. But from the sound of things you need one. Alex might not do criminal work herself, but she knows plenty of advocates. Give her a call and she'll introduce you to someone.'

'But I don't know Alex. She doesn't know me.'

The big policeman laughed. 'One of the things I like about you, Louise, is that most of the time you forget who and what you are. If it makes you feel more comfortable, ask the boss to ask her.' He pointed to his mobile, which was clipped into a car adapter. 'Call him now, if you like.'

'No,' she said. 'You do it for me. I don't like to call Bob at home. Sarah was very good when we had dinner the week before last, but woman to woman, she won't want to hear too much of me.'

'You're too sensitive, but if you like, I'll call Alex myself and ask her for a couple of introductions. They'll be on the payroll, yes?'

'Sure. Elliott and the writer can pay for her, since they've screwed up.'

'Hard woman, you.'

'You better believe it,' she chuckled. 'Whatever c.r.a.p we talk at Oscar time, our business is money-driven. I'm working with Warren because I know that, together, we'll bring the project in on time and within budget.'

'So what happens to the lady lawyer?'

'It's a complicated script; she's intrigued by her client; she falls for him in fact. As she speaks to the witnesses she becomes more and more convinced that he's been set up. She decides to do some freelance investigation of her own .. .'

'Stop!' he cried out. 'Don't tell me any more. You really need that technical adviser. I suppose that all the coppers are b.a.s.t.a.r.ds too.'

'Absolutely.'

'Ah well,' he laughed, 'that's accurate enough.'

He took the Kelso turn-off at Carfraemill, driving more slowly since the road had been used less heavily than the main trunk route and, consequently, the surface was less certain. Eventually, he took another turning, and headed up a twisting hillside track; a few miles on it seemed to peter out.

He drew up in a deserted parking area. 'Okay,' he said. 'Let's see how good those walking boots are.'

They changed into their heavy country footwear, and into thick windproof

206.I.

jackets and gloves. 'What is this place?' Louise asked, looking at a fingerpost on the edge of the parking area.

'Part of the Southern Upland Way. It's a walkers' route that links the east and west coasts. Normally it would be busier than this, but the snow overnight must have kept folk away.'

'That's good,' she murmured.

He led her up the track, heading east, with the sun s.h.i.+ning over their shoulders. Patches of gnarled gra.s.s and brown, twisted heather showed through the covering of snow, and the walkers' pathway was still well defined. They reached the crest of the first hill after a few minutes and looked around the moorland.

'No trees,' Louise commented, surprised.

'No. This is the western edge of the Lammermuirs. If we walked far enough this road would take us to Longformacus, then to the coast.'

She looked around the rolling land. 'What's that over there?' she called to him, pointing to her right into the distance.

Neil followed the direction of her finger. 'I've never noticed it before, but it looks like a trout farm.'

'Won't the water freeze in weather like this?'

'Nah, they keep it circulating.' He took a small pair of binoculars from his pocket. 'It's beside a small river, a tributary of the Tweed, I'd guess.

They'll pump water out of that and through the tanks. That looks like quite a big operation.'

He paused and squinted through his field-gla.s.ses again. 'The boys down here have had a lot of trouble with these places just lately,' he said as he spoke. 'Thefts, but the most recent one turned very nasty.

'That place looks pretty secure, though. Floodlights, high-mounted video cameras; all they need's a guard on a tower with a machine gun. Who knows,' he joked, 'they might have one of them inside that Portakabin.'

He put the gla.s.ses away and they set off again, up the next hill. As they stood together at the top, Louise took his arm.

'Can I ask you something, Neil?' she said. 'How do you manage to stay as... what's the word... controlled, I suppose? Don't you ever feel bitter?

Don't you ever feel angry about what's happened to you and the kids?'

She was standing slightly above him on the slope; on his eye-level as he looked at her.

'I tried, at first,' he answered. 'Somehow, I felt I should. I thought about joining a ma.s.s action against the tobacco companies, until I realised howsilly and vindictive that would have been. Olive smoked when she was a kid because everyone else did, including her mother. Okay, the b.l.o.o.d.y things were advertised, but so's beer, so's chocolate, so are saturated fats, so's s.e.x. So what would I have got into there, suing companies whose shares are probably helping to grow my life insurance policies, my ISAs, and my pension fund, because my wife exercised her right to choose?

'Don't misread me, Lou. I told you yesterday about my nightmare; the one about me pegging out while the kids are still young. I have others, though; dark dreams, dreams with no conclusion.

",'But it's the daymares; they're the hardest to cope with. There isn't a day in my life goes by without me being back in that consulting room, listening to a man who was trying to keep the grief out of his voice as he gave my wife what he knew was a death sentence. There isn't a day when I'm not back in that wee room in the Western, at the end, listening to the click of the diamorphine pump.

'I overcome them by focusing on the positive side of her illness. On her determination, her cheerfulness, the way she never let fear get to the kids, not ever, on the things we did together, on the laughs we had together, in the early weeks and months of it at least. On her sheer courage, Lou; her sheer unbeatable courage.'

She saw the tears that he was unable to keep from his eyes.

'Afterwards,' he continued, not caring about them, 'at first it's indescribable; what it feels like, the numbness where a part of you's been ripped out.

'You wait for the pain to stop; eventually, the immediacy of it does lessen, but you come to terms with the fact that it will always be there, as long as you live. You come to understand other things too, very clearly; most of all, that two souls became one at the instant you and she met, and that although now they may be disjointed, that is only a temporary condition, only for a while.

'All of us, all of the bereft, we find our own truth in the midst of our tragedies. That's mine; I know that one day, our two souls will be one again, as they were when we were both alive. I have nightmares, yes, but I have a constant vision too, one in which Olive and I cruise the cosmos, together.'

'Do you believe in G.o.d, then?'

'I believe that we are all G.o.d, or at least that we are all part of something which for want of a better word we've come to call G.o.d, or Allah, or Jehovah, or that big s.h.i.+ny thing in the sky, or whatever

208.

AUTOGRAPHS IN THE RAIN.'And until that day comes, until you're reunited? How do you live your

life?'