‘But it was him who broke into the house, not you. He was the one in possession of an illegal weapon. And it was him who shot the poor girl.’
– And it’s him who’s threatened to kill me and every member of my family if he ever gets free.
‘Oh, my darling girl, people say things like that in the heat of the moment, overcome by anguish and anger. Deep down he must know it’s his own fault. And, anyway, he’s in custody isn’t he? In no position to do you any harm.’
– He is to be extradited back to the UK. The courts have agreed to it and he has not contested the decision.
‘Well there you are then, cariño. Soon he’ll be back in his own country and will forget all about you. When do they take him away?’
– They bring him back from Madrid today, and a police officer from the UK will come to Malaga tomorrow to take him to London.
Ana senses there is something more. It is impossible to say how she feels such things, but they gather somehow in the air around her and she can almost touch them. ‘And?’ she says.
– It’s ironic, Aunt Ana. The Guardia will take him in an armoured truck to the airport in the afternoon, and Paco told me today that he will be among the detail assigned to guard him. My own brother-in-law! It is just as well that this man Cleland will never know.
Ana smiles. ‘Well there you are, then, mi niña. He couldn’t be in safer hands.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Linn Crematorium sprawled across a hill on the south side of the city to the west of Castlemilk, a housing estate built in the 1950s to accommodate people cleared from Glasgow’s inner-city slums. It was built around an old mansion called Castlemilk House, constructed on the site of a thirteenth-century castle. But there was nothing in the rows of drab pebbledash blocks that bore any resemblance to the castle which had inspired their name.
When Mackenzie stepped off the plane at Glasgow Airport it was overcast and drizzling, what Scots called smirr. It was in stark contrast with the sunshine he had left behind in London.
He felt an odd sensation returning to the city of his birth, the place where he had spent the first seventeen years of his life. Unhappy years remembered now as having passed entirely on days like this, grey and sunless and wet. He wore a dark suit, a white shirt, and the black tie he had eventually found in a men’s outfitters in Fleet Street. In a holdall he carried a change of underwear and his toilet bag. Just one night in this haunted town before flying out tomorrow to Spain.
Through the window of his taxi, he watched rain-streaked red sandstone tenements drift past, the colour leeched from them somehow by lack of light, like watching a black-and-white movie of his childhood spool by. None of it seemed familiar and he had not the least sense of belonging.
The south-side suburbs were greener, tree-lined streets in leaf, the huddled hulk of Hampden Park floating past as they climbed the hill towards the crematorium. Through wrought-iron gates bearing the city crest and the date 1962, then down a long curving drive, past the departing mourners from the previous cremation, to the concrete and coloured glass structure that offered faith and flames in unequal measure.
Mackenzie felt self-conscious, still clutching his overnight bag as he stepped from the taxi. No time to drop it off at his uncle’s house before the funeral.
There were only three vehicles left in the car park, and just five souls in the waiting room. At first he thought he’d made a mistake with the time, for he didn’t recognize any of them. But then was shocked to realize that the white-haired old man with the stoop and the silvered bristles on a cadaverous face was his Uncle Arthur. The old man’s suit looked several sizes too big for him, the collar of his shirt curled up at both sides. The knot in his tie pulled far too tight. The colour seemed washed out of his once bright blue eyes, leaving them a pale, insipid grey. He was diminished in every way. Mackenzie remembered, with guilty regret, almost relishing the opportunity to confront his uncle at his aunt’s funeral. No pleasure now in sticking it to this shadow of a man who had once been a vigorous and robust teacher of physical education. Almost as if his uncle had contrived to deny him even that.
The old man extended a big hand, deformed by arthritis, and Mackenzie felt obliged to shake it. Shiny reptilian skin like crêpe paper crinkling in his palm. He was anxious to let it go, but his uncle held on and placed his other hand over the back of Mackenzie’s.
‘Good to see you, John. I’m glad you could come.’
Mackenzie had no idea what to say. He had harboured such hatred over all these years, he was unprepared for the warmth in his uncle’s handshake and the apparent affection in his watery washed-out eyes. Had the old man forgotten how much he disliked his nephew, how often he had dished out discipline with Mr Kane, or with the tawse that he sometimes brought home with him from school – half an inch of thick leather strap divided in two at one end, and delivered on to the palms of outstretched hands, leaving stinging weals on the inside of the wrists?
Had he forgotten all the harsh words, the derision, the contempt, perhaps even jealousy, for the prodigy his brother had bequeathed him? Had he forgotten that final shouting match which had sent Mackenzie running to his room to pack a bag and leave, never to return?
‘Your Aunt Hilda missed you, you
