his career brought to an end over something he did not do? You’re a lawyer, aren’t you? Doesn’t that offend everything your profession stands for?”
David McLean seemed slightly taken aback by her question, and for a few moments he did not reply. Then, “Of course it would offend me. But we’re not talking about an innocent man here. We’re talking about a man who was grossly negligent; a man who should have known much better.”
“Unless he wasn’t careless at all,” said Isabel quickly. “Unless somebody else changed the figures, later on, in order to make it look as if he had been careless.”
David McLean was quite still. “What do you mean by that?”
Isabel felt her courage come flooding back. “I mean exactly what I said. What if somebody else, encouraged, shall we say, by another, falsified the figures to make it look as if the drug had been administered in far greater quantities than it actually had been? Do you see what I mean?”
This last question came out as a challenge, although she had not intended it to sound that way. I have virtually accused his clients, she thought. I could hardly make it more obvious.
David McLean must have reached the same conclusion. He glanced out of the window, briefly, then let his gaze return to Isabel. She felt uneasy, but she was angry now and would not be intimidated.
“I shall do exactly as I please, Mr. McLean,” she said, rising to her feet to indicate that their conversation was over.
He was thrown off balance by her getting up. “Be careful,” he said quietly. “Just be careful.”
Isabel, who had started to walk back to the counter, spun round to face him. “Are you threatening me?”
He looked anxiously in the direction of a customer who was examining a packet of dried pasta which he had taken off a shelf. The customer looked up, surprised, and then quickly went back to studying the packet. Edinburgh was not a place where one showed a reaction to that which one overheard. “Of course not,” David McLean said. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m just telling you to be careful.”
Eddie was watching her from the counter. He had just finished serving a customer, and when she joined him he was wiping his hands on a piece of paper towel. “Are you all right?” he whispered.
She felt a sudden fondness for Eddie, in spite of the five hundred pounds. He was concerned for her, and she found his anxiety touching: this mixed-up, damaged boy was actually concerned for her. She reached out and touched Eddie on the forearm. “I’m fine, Eddie. I’m fine.”
Eddie glowered at David McLean, who was now leaving the shop. “What did he want?”
“He wanted me to…” Isabel trailed off. It was too complicated, and she was wrestling with a question. He seemed to know about Jamie; he knew his name and knew that he was a musician. She wondered whether Jamie had told him this, or whether he had found it out. And if he had found it out, then he must have gone to some lengths to do so, which meant that he was taking a close interest in her affairs. He had said that he was not threatening her, but why else, she wondered, would he tell her to be careful? A warning? You simply did not walk up to somebody you had never met, reveal that you knew all about her, and then say, Watch out. That happened in novels, perhaps, but not in real life. And I am real, thought Isabel, and this life, this delicatessen, this problematic young man beside me, are all real and immediate—part of the brief, sparkling privilege that I have of consciousness in a universe where, as far as we could tell, there were few signs of consciousness. Looked at in this way, a few words of threat from a man in highly polished brogues and wearing a Scottish clan ring were nothing.
She turned to Eddie. “We don’t have to worry about him,” she said. “But thank you, anyway. We’re on the same side, aren’t we, Eddie? You and me.”
And then she leaned forward and planted a kiss on his cheek. He gave a start, as if he had suddenly had a jolt of electricity, and Isabel wondered: Did that girl with the piercings not kiss him?
Eddie looked at her. “I wanted to say sorry properly,” he muttered. “So…I’m sorry. I’m useless at telling people things.”
She put an arm around his shoulder. She wanted to. “You’re not useless.”
Eddie fumbled in his pocket. “And here’s the money I owe you. I gave it to my dad for his hip operation.” He lowered his eyes. He was ashamed. “And he spent some of it. That’s why it’s taken time to pay you back.”
Isabel was appalled, and in her abhorrence could say nothing. Two wrongs had been done to this wronged young man: she had written him off as a liar and his father had misused the money he had given him—gambling, drink, it did not really matter how. She stared at him.
“Anyway,” Eddie said to her, “he’s been given a date for his hip now. It’s in two months. So he’s in a better temper.”
“Pain is an odd thing,” said Isabel. “It makes people do things they wouldn’t otherwise do. You know that, don’t you?”
Eddie nodded. He knew.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SHE WAS IN THE GARDEN the next morning, Sunday, with Charlie when she made her decision about Christopher Dove’s paper on the Trolley Problem. It was nothing that Charlie had said—he had several sounds at his command, one of which could have been
