The Fanatic Read online

  Dawson’s was a large overbright bar in Edinburgh’s Southside, that lurched between douceness and debauchery depending on the time of day. At four o’clock on a Monday afternoon in early spring it was quiet. Office workers were still at their desks; students from the university, with few exceptions, were attending lectures or dozing in the library. The juke-box was silent: the most noise in the place came from three old men settled in one corner, supping halfs-and-halfs and murmuring smug discontents at one another. One student, barely rebellious, was reading the Sun, and nursing his pint like a hospice patient, till all life had gone out of it. A woman, possibly a tourist, since she had a small rucksack beside her, was writing postcards at another table. She was drinking mineral water and to Hugh Hardie looked like she had been disapprovingly sober since the day she was born. The old men, he decided, were at that moment the liveliest patrons Dawson’s had. Himself and Jackie excepted, of course.

  They were in Dawson’s because it was handy for them both. Hugh’s flat was a few streets away in Newington, and Jackie’s workplace, a small publishing house, was not far in the other direction, off the Canongate. Hugh had an idea for a book that he thought Jackie might be interested in publishing. Jackie was pretty certain already that she wouldn’t be but she hadn’t seen him for a while and she seemed to recall that she’d found his eager boyishness irritatingly attractive. Plus it gave her a good excuse to leave work early: the office was too cluttered and cramped to receive potential authors in any privacy. When she had suggested meeting in a pub on the phone, Hugh had named Dawson’s. Now she was returning from the bar with a pint for him and a gin and tonic for herself. She had insisted, in her role as interested publisher, on buying the first round.

  ‘Bit early for this,’ she said. ‘What the hell. Slàinte.’

  He raised his glass, souked an inch or more out of it. ‘Slàinte.’ It was only recently that he’d learnt that this was Gaelic for ‘health’. For years he’d said ‘slange’ thinking it was an obsure Scots term signifying ‘slam your drink down your throat and let’s get another in’. It was watching Machair the Gaelic soap opera that had enlightened him.

  ‘Well, good to see you,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, you too. I can’t remember when I last saw you,’ she lied.

  ‘That Chamber of Commerce day conference on tourism and small businesses,’ he said with precision. ‘Last autumn, remember?’

  ‘Oh aye,’ she said. ‘That was a long time ago. And now it’s spring, and the tourists are almost upon us again.’

  Simultaneously they said, ‘And how is your small business?’, and laughed. It sounded like a line from a Carry On film.

  Carry on Kidding Yourself, Jackie thought. Not for the first time, she found herself entering a conversation that somehow, for her, wasn’t … well, it wasn’t authentic. It had been the same at the conference. So-called experts and consultants delivered talks on resource management strategy, maximising customer/product interface potential, tactical merchandise-redeployment awareness – it all meant nothing and had her nodding off almost immediately.

  Later she and Hugh shared a joke or two at the consultants’ expense, but it was apparent that he had taken in about ten times more of what they had said. And yet he derided them, agreed with her when she dismissed them as bullshitters. She wasn’t naive: he was two-faced in a perfectly harmless way; but then, so was she; and all night maybe he was trying to get up her skirt, but she didn’t mind that. It showed initiative.

  He was transparently shallow but she wasn’t sure she wanted profundity in a man. She wasn’t sure she wanted a man. She was, however, interested in the idea that Hugh might be interested.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you tell us about your book and then I’ll tell you about my small business. Cause that’s the order they’re going to have to come in.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Is that how it is?’

  ‘Aye. That’s exactly how.’

  ‘Okay.’ He didn’t protest, didn’t even hesitate. ‘Well, you know about my ghost tours, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course. How are they going?’

  ‘Put it this way, we’re through the winter. That’s always kind of tough. The problem is, quite a lot of locals want to come on the tours but – and I can’t say I blame them – they’re not keen to wander round the Cowgate in the dark in a freezing January wind. We do a limited programme, depending on the weather and the demand. But it gets better from now on in. In July and August we could run tours every other hour if the Council would wear it. So, to answer your question, things are going all right. A healthy little number, but seasonally dependent.

  ‘That’s where this idea of mine comes in. I need to spread the potential income across the year. So I’ve been thinking, you know, spin-offs. The mugs and T-shirts option isn’t really an option, don’t you agree? But a book is a different proposition.’

  ‘The book of the tour?’ said Jackie doubtfully.

  ‘Exactly. Well, not exactly, no. I mean, you could just make a kind of pamphlet out of the tour script, but it wouldn’t be very long and it would need a lot of rewriting for it to work on the page. You know, you can’t have a rat running across someone’s feet every time they turn over page thirteen.’

  ‘You’ve got a rat that runs over people’s feet? Did you train it or something?’

  ‘Not a real one. A rubber rat on a string. You’ll have to come and get the full rat experience one night. It’s very atmospheric’ He paused, and Jackie wondered if he was going to offer her a free pass, but he only drew breath before breenging on with the sales-pitch.

  ‘Anyway, I had in mind something a bit more substantial than just a twenty-page pamphlet. A proper paperback stuffed full of Edinburgh’s haunted and macabre past. There’s tons of stuff, Jackie, as I’m sure you know, and a big market of people who want to learn about it. Or get scared silly, in an unthreatening kind of way. It’s not as if I’m the only person operating ghost tours after all.’

  ‘You certainly are not. You can’t move around St Giles in the summer for folk like you trying to flog their wares to the tourists: what with all the ghoulies and ghosties and body-snatchers and stranglers, you’d think Edinburgh history was one long overflowing bloodbath.’

  Hugh shrugged. ‘I can’t help history. Give the people what they want, that’s my motto. I don’t see many of them signing up for the Edinburgh Social and Economic History Perambulating Lecture, do you?’

  ‘All right, point taken. What about the book?’

  ‘The blurb would relate it to the tour, so that hopefully people who picked up the book somewhere would come along to do the real thing, and vice versa. But it would stand on its own too, and sell as a good read to visitors and locals alike. Now, I don’t have time myself to mug up all the stories that would be in it, but we could commission someone to do the research and write it all up. Then all we need is a spooky, eye-catching cover design and a snappy title. I had in mind Major Weir’s Weird Tales of Old Edinburgh for that, by the way.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Jackie. ‘Commission someone to write it? Who’s going to do that, you? And who’s Major Weir when he’s at home?’

  ‘A very good question. He’s one of the characters on the tour. I thought he could maybe do an intro to the book – from beyond the grave kind of thing. We don’t want it too po-faced after all. Which reminds me, you wouldn’t happen to know of anybody who might want a bit of casual evening work, would you?’

  ‘Don’t dodge out of it, Mr Hardie. If you’re not going to write this book, I hope you’re not expecting us to pay someone else to.’

  ‘You’re a publisher, Jackie. Surely that’s your job. No gain without pain. And let’s face it, you’d get the bulk of the profits. I mean, I’d only be looking for a fifteen or twenty per cent royalty depending on the print-run and the cover-price.’

  ‘Hugh, in a moment you’re going to get up and buy us another drink, but before you do, listen to me a second. One, I – the company – would
n’t pay a fee up front for a book that hasn’t been written. All we can afford to take on are finished manuscripts that we think are going to sell, and publish on the basis of the author getting paid a royalty. Two, in the unlikely event that we did pay a writing fee, we certainly wouldn’t be paying a royalty on top of that. Three, the absolute maximum royalty you can expect is ten per cent – if you write the book. You know all the publishing jargon, Hugh, but you’re short on the realities.’

  ‘But don’t you think it’s a great idea for a book? We’re talking about three or four different overlapping markets: local history, ghosts, tourists –’

  ‘Sure. If you had a finished or even a half-finished manuscript, I’d read it. I’d consider it. But I couldn’t commit to anything on the basis of what you’ve told me. To be honest, Hugh, you should think about publishing it yourself.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know where to begin.’

  ‘Well, go back to the pocket guide to publishing you’ve obviously been reading and look in there. It’s really not that difficult these days. All you need is a computer and a DTP package. The technology’s sitting waiting for you, and once you’ve paid the printers, so is all the profit.’

  Hugh gave an incredulous laugh. ‘Listen to you, you’re talking yourself out of business.’

  She laughed back. ‘Publishing isn’t like any other business. Scottish publishing isn’t like any other publishing.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘It’s true. It may not be how it should be but it is. Scottish publishing is about avoiding anything that might drag you into a swamp of debt and drown you in it.’

  ‘No wonder it’s the country cousin of London then.’

  ‘Quite. Now get us another drink.’

  Hardie went up to the bar and ordered in his loud, boolie voice. It wasn’t offensive to Jackie, it went with his friendly, disarming smile, but she saw the old men glower at him suspiciously. Dawson’s was used to students but not to entrepreneurs. Jackie could still make out the Edinburgh merchant’s school accent underlying the mid-Atlantic drawl, but only because she knew it was there. The auld yins probably thought he was English.

  Waiting at the bar, Hardie thought about his chances with Jackie. She might have knocked him back on the book proposal, but she’d asked for another drink. She was nice enough looking – but not so she could afford to be choosy. She had thick dark hair and brown eyes, and cheeks that must have been podgy ten years before and would be again in another ten. The same went for her figure – short and tending to dumpiness. But warm and inviting for all that. He imagined her in a white fluffy bathrobe, pink from the bath. It was a heart-stirring thought.

  He also thought about his ghost. The old ghost had quit on him that morning, complaining of poor wages and conditions. He’d handed over the cape, staff, wig and rat, demanded the twenty pounds lie wage held back against the return of these ghostly accoutrements, and walked off, never to be seen again. You’d have thought he might have treated the twenty pounds as a kind of bonus, but no. His last words had been to the effect that Hardie was a miserable tight-arsed capitalist bastard and he hoped his trade would drop off. Hardie wasn’t unduly upset. The guy hadn’t done a convincing haunt for months.

  ‘This is probably a stupid question,’ said Jackie, when he told her his problem, ‘but why do you have to have a ghost anyway? Surely you can do the tour without one.’

  ‘Sure I can, Jackie, but a ghost tour without a ghost …? Come on. Look, in the main season we do three tours a day. The one in the afternoon doesn’t need a ghost, it’s broad daylight and it tends to be more, how can I put it, historical. Mary Queen of Scots, John Knox, Bonnie Prince Charlie, that kind of stuff. The six o’clock tour doesn’t need a ghost either: it’s still daylight, and it caters for the fat Yanks who are about to hurry back to their hotels for the usual haggis and bagpipes tartan extravaganza that’s laid on for them there. The tour is just an hors d’oeuvre. BPC features heavily again. But the nine o’ clock tour – that’s different. That’s the cream of ghost tours. It starts’ – his voice dropped and assumed an exaggerated tremor – ‘as the night draws in, and ends in darkness. The people who come on this tour expect a ghost. Some of them have been drinking all evening. They’re in high spirits. They’re Swedish inter-railers and rowdy English students and gobsmacked Australian backpackers. I charge extra for this tour. There are little tricks and hidden delights in store for the people who come on it. One of them is a ghost. I must have a ghost.’

  ‘You must have a ghost,’ Jackie repeated. She was looking past his shoulder towards the door. ‘How about him over there, then?’

  Hugh half-turned to look. A tall, slightly stooping man had just come in. He reached the bar in three long strides that seemed almost liquid in their execution, or as if he were treading through shallow water and the splashes of each step were left for a moment in the space where his foot had just been. He was over six feet, skinny and gaunt, his face so white you’d think he’d just walked through a storm of flour. He was almost bald apart from a few wild bursts of hair above the ears. He ordered a pint and while it was being poured stared grimly into space, seeming to aim his gaze along the length of his nose. Hugh Hardie was transfixed.

  ‘He’s perfect. My God, he’s perfect. You’re absolutely right, Jackie.’

  ‘He’s not the ghost to solve your problems. He’s out of my past.’

  ‘You mean to say you actually know this person?’

  ‘Sure. Haven’t seen him for years, right enough. We were at the uni together.’

  ‘This is uncanny. Quick, call him over.’

  ‘Now just hold on a minute. Like I said, I’ve not seen him for ages. I’m not sure that I want to renew the acquaintance.’

  ‘Don’t be sulky, Jackie. Get him over and we’ll toast your alma mater. Why ever not?’

  ‘Well, to be honest, he’s a bit weird. He was a postgraduate when I was doing final year Honours. He sat in on a course I was doing – First World War or something. The guy running the course was supervising his PhD. But he dropped out – never finished it as far as I know.’

  ‘Shame,’ said Hugh. ‘Get him over, won’t you?’

  ‘Wait, I said. He was weird. Gave me the creeps.’

  ‘As far as I’m concerned, you’re just writing him a great CV. He has got something, hasn’t he? To look at, I mean. That woman over there can’t stop checking him out. He’s disturbing her. Don’t you see?’

  ‘It doesn’t surprise me,’ said Jackie. ‘All the women in the class felt the same. You tried to avoid his eye. Not that he actually ever did anything, you understand.’

  ‘Some people have that, don’t they? That amazing ability to upset other people just by being themselves. They don’t have to do anything.’

  The old men, who had glanced at the man when he came in, had not paid him any attention since. Hugh, who made his living by exploiting how different people reacted to what they saw, noticed this and liked it. The old men were never going to be his customers. Jackie and the tourist were the ones who mattered, and they had the right responses. The barman, who probably saw the guy regularly, wasn’t bothered by him. The student seemed to have fallen asleep.

  ‘What’s his name?’ Hugh asked.

  Jackie shook her head.

  ‘It’s all right, I won’t shout it out or anything. I won’t embarrass you.’

  ‘Carlin,’ she said. ‘Alan, I think. No, Andrew. Andrew Carlin.’

  ‘Andrew!’ shouted Hugh. The others in the bar stared at him, and the student woke with a jerk. ‘Andrew Carlin! Over here!’

  ‘You bastard,’ said Jackie.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Hugh. ‘No gain without pain.’

  Carlin sat with a quarter-pint in front of him, and said nothing. Hardie had jumped up to buy him a drink as soon as the one he had was less than half full. ‘Less than half full, rather than more than half empty, that’s the kind of guy I am,’ said Hardie jovially and without a trace of irony. ‘What is that, ei
ghty shilling?’ Carlin looked at him without expression, and nodded once. When Hardie went to the bar, there was an awkward silence between the other two. Jackie had been badgered earlier by Hugh into reminiscing about the class she and Carlin had both attended. The responses from Carlin had been monosyllabic. Now she tried a different tack.

  ‘So what have you been up to since I saw you last? It must be, what, six years? I mind you gave up on the PhD. Can’t say I blame you, I was scunnered of History after one degree. Well, maybe not scunnered, just tired.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Carlin. He gazed at her. She wasn’t sure if he was merely acknowledging what she’d said or agreeing with it. She was aware again of the piercing stare that had been so oppressive in the class, and lowered her eyes. Even as she did so she felt she’d conceded a small victory to him. She made herself look back up, and found him off guard, and saw something she hadn’t expected. A woundedness? Damage? Fear? She couldn’t tell.

  ‘Six years, I’d say,’ said Carlin. ‘Mair or less. Whit I’ve been up tae: this and that.’

  Jackie thought, Christ, is he on something? She wished Hugh would hurry up.

  ‘Are you working?’ she asked.

  ‘In whit sense?’

  ‘You know, in a working sense. In a job sense.’ She felt herself growing angry at him. She wasn’t a wee undergraduate any more, she ought not to be intimidated by his weirdness.

  ‘Na,’ he said, ‘no in that sense.’

  Hardie returned. ‘There you go, mate, get that down you,’ he said chummily. Jackie cringed. Carlin shifted the new pint behind the unfinished one but otherwise said nothing.

  ‘Have you got a job at the moment, Andrew?’ Hardie asked.

  ‘She jist asked me that.’

  ‘Oh, has she been filling you in then?’

  ‘Has she been filling me in? I don’t think so.’

  ‘I’ve got a job for someone who needs a bit of extra cash,’ said Hardie. ‘The pay’s not great but the work’s steady and there’s not much to it. I think it would really suit you.’