confidentiality, or was she protecting a colleague?
Another bottle of wine was opened. Annie drank most of it. She apologised for being so maudlin. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you all this, spilling my secrets.’
‘You don’t have to explain.’
‘Really? Are you sure?’
I wasn’t sure but I said yes and Annie continued, wanting to tell me everything; to share her secrets, funny stories and her bad decisions. It should have been intimate. It felt more like a therapy session.
I once had a patient who believed that the clock ran faster for her than anyone else. She was a university student and she was convinced that her exam time was concertinaed and that ‘her clock’ would speed up, giving her less time, which is why she could never finish.
The same clock ran slower for other people, she said. Annie acted like that. The world had conspired against her and she wanted me to know that it wasn’t her fault.
24
The flight from Bristol Airport to Edinburgh takes just over an hour and I’m on the ground before 8 a.m. Ruiz is waiting for me in the lounge, leafing through the pages of the
‘Do you think if I got enough people to vote we could get London declared part of Scotland?’
‘Why?’
‘Well, the Scots get more of our taxes than anyone else. They’ve got better health care, free prescriptions and no student fees. I could be a Jock, as long as I didn’t have to eat sheep’s guts and support the Scottish rugby team.’
‘They are pretty terrible.’
‘Total rubbish.’
He tosses the paper on a seat. ‘Come on.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘Breakfast. I’m famished. I ate Chinese last night - gave me thunderous wind. Not even the Scots can fuck up breakfast.’
Ruiz leads me to his hire car. Something small and compact. He continues to spout his theories on Scottish devolution as we pull into the morning traffic and head towards Edinburgh. The sunrise is pink and misty, leaving tentacles of fog clinging to the valleys where church spires seem to float like islands in rivers of white.
Parking near the old city walls, Ruiz leads me through a maze of alleys until we reach the Royal Mile. The buildings are made of slate-grey stone and look as though they’ve risen directly from the earth.
It’s twenty years since I’ve been to Edinburgh. Julianne and I came up for the ‘Fringe’ with a crowd of university friends. We camped in tents and it rained for a week, but we filled our boots with satire and comedy.
Ruiz chooses a cafe, which looks positively medieval. Most of the patrons are tourists carrying video cameras and city guides. Taking a table near the window, he orders a full breakfast with extra sausages, toast and a pot of tea.
‘Do you know what that stuff does to your arteries?’ I ask him.
‘Do you have a chart? I love charts.’
The waitress is a big-boned Polish girl with bleached hair and a nose-stud. I order the poached eggs on sourdough toast on her recommendation. Ruiz looks at me as though I’ve asked to be castrated.
Once she’s gone, he takes out his battered notebook and rests it on the table.
‘Hey, you want to hear a Scottish joke?’
‘Maybe you should avoid Scottish jokes.’
‘Nonsense. The Jocks have a great sense of humour. Look at Gordon Brown.’
The tea arrives and he opens the silver pot and jiggles the bag impatiently. Then he unhooks the rubber band holding his notebook together.
‘You want to ask the questions?’
‘No, you talk.’
He starts with Ray Hegarty. His security business was solvent, the tax returns up to date, with no major debts or lawsuits. Ray was the public face of the company, a bona fide hero, decorated for bravery after he rescued two children from a flooded stormwater drain.
His son, Lance, left school at sixteen, signed to play football for Burnleigh. A knee injury ended his career before he turned eighteen. Initially, Lance tried to find work as an assistant coach, but then he trained as a motorcycle mechanic.
‘The kid has had some problems. Two years ago he was arrested and deported from Croatia with twenty other hooligans after England played a World Cup qualifier. He also has convictions for racially aggravated assault and low-range drink driving.’
Breakfast is served. Ruiz tucks a paper napkin in the collar of his shirt and scoops baked beans on to a corner of toast.
‘I came up with nothing on Danny Gardiner. Kid’s clean.’
‘You still haven’t told me what I’m doing here.’
Ruiz gives me a wry smile. ‘You were right about the school teacher.’
‘Gordon Ellis?’
‘Yeah, but he wasn’t always called Ellis. He used to be Gordon Freeman, but three years ago he took his mother’s surname and became Gordon Ellis.’
‘Is that important?’
‘It helps if you’re running away from something.’
Ruiz is going to tell me the story in his own time. He slurps a mouthful of tea and dabs his lips with a napkin.
‘What do you know about his wife?’
‘Natasha?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Ellis said they met at school. Childhood sweethearts.’
‘Well, he wasn’t lying.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Natasha’s maiden name is Stewart. She was thirteen when Gordon Ellis started teaching at Sorell College. It’s a private girls’ school here in Edinburgh.’
‘She was his student?’
‘Music and drama. I put in a call to the headmaster and set off a dozen alarm bells. Twenty minutes later I had a plummy-voiced solicitor on the phone telling me to ever so politely fuck off.
‘According to her school yearbook, Natasha left in year nine Gordon Ellis transferred a year later. She claimed to be nineteen when they married, but her proper birth certificate puts her at three years younger than that.’
‘How old is she now?’
‘Officially, she’s just turned eighteen.’
‘Maybe they hooked up after they both left the school,’ I say.
‘OK, but why lie about Natasha’s age on their marriage certificate? ’
I think back to my meeting with Natasha outside the school. She was picking up Billy, who is Emma’s age.
‘But she has a son?’ I say.
‘Not her boy,’ replies Ruiz. ‘That’s where it gets really interesting. ’
Wiping his plate clean with a half-slice of toast, he consumes it in two mouthfuls and finishes his tea. Then he pulls fifteen quid from his wallet. Leaves it on the table.
‘You still haven’t told me what I’m doing here.’
‘We’re meeting a family. They’re called the Regans. They don’t live far.’
