Cannonbridge (13 page)

At this, Toby feels an unfamiliar ache in his face. It takes him a moment to realise that he is smiling. “That’s an interesting critique. I mean, well, it’s interesting to hear you say so.”

“Why? Have you read it?”

“Oh, I spent an hour or so with it. I’m familiar with the line of its argument.”

“And?”

“I agree with you. But then, I am rather biased. You see, I... know the author.”

“Really?” Gabriela frowns, flips to the photo on the back cover. “That guy?”

Toby finds now that he is shuffling, presumably from nervousness and anxiety, and has to work hard to stand still. “Yeah.”

“Friend of yours?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then you won’t mind my saying that he looks like a bit of a doofus.”

“Nope. Nope. Don’t mind you saying that at all.”

The conversation ceases then and they look at one another in that way which is common upon the realisation that there exists a spark of attraction—a sense almost of déjà vu, as if the two of them have met somewhere before. The moment passes swiftly and professionalism is resumed.

“Sorry, sir, what was it you meant to ask? I mean beside from the book.”

“A cheese toastie.”

“What about it?”

“I ordered one. Half an hour ago. No sign of it.”

“I’ll chase up that order.”

“Thank you.”

He hesitates. “Do you know..?”

“Yes, sir?”

Is she bored? Indulgent? Grateful for the distraction? Difficult to tell.

“I hadn’t even realised that the Festival was on. When I came here tonight, I mean.”

Those elegant eyebrows are arched in scepticism. “For real?”

“Yes. I mean, I’ve never been. I’ve heard of it, of course. But never got round to actually attending. So you can imagine that I was bewildered when I found the place so lively.”

“I imagine you were.” She yawns. “So if you’re not here for the Festival, what’s brought you to Edinburgh?”

“Something else. Something connected, I suppose, with that book you’re reading.”

“That’s very mysterious of you.”

“Not intentionally. Only... non-committal. Listen.”

“Yes, sir? I’ve said I’ll look into the toastie for you.” She’s just bored, Toby thinks now, just bored and tired and doing anything to stay awake—even listening to him.

“I know. I know. It’s not that. I was just wondering... if you know of anywhere I could stay for the night.”

Incredulity. “You’ve not got your accommodation sorted?”

“No. I haven’t... Look, it was a last minute decision. I didn’t actually wake up this morning with the intention of coming to Edinburgh. I was in Ashbury first and then in Portsmouth.”

“Well, to be honest, your timing stinks. You couldn’t have picked a worse time. Festival season—everywhere’s booked up months in advance. I’ve got friends who go away for the season and rent out their own houses.”

“I know that now. I’ve tried all over town and...”

“No room at the inn?”

“No room, as you say, at the inn.”

Gabriela shrugs. “Then I’m sorry. I’ve really no idea. There are a couple of hostels you could try. Down by the railway station.”

“Hostels?”

“Yes. Backpacking places. Might be OK for a night or two.”

“Of course. Yes. I shall certainly do that. Thank you.”

“No problem. And I’ll have that toastie brought to you.”

It is clear to him that these words mark the end of their conversation. He backs away. By the time that he has taken a few paces, the woman has already returned, frowningly, to the Salazar book.

A
NOTHER HOUR PASSES.
Toby’s toastie (rubbery, undercooked, close to inedible) has been and gone. Gabriela has read another chapter or so of the Salazar volume, having set down the sandwich without making eye contact. She has made a personal phone call or two. The other customers have left and chairs have been placed onto tables. A man in his forties with stubble and a potbelly whom Toby takes to be the chef has emerged from the kitchen and has begun the process of tidying up, mopping the floor half-heartedly and wiping down the surfaces with a distracted, lackadaisical air.

Gabriela approaches Toby’s table, the last to be occupied, the last not to be cleaned and two chairs placed atop it. Judd himself is gazing into the distance, lost in the past and in possibility.

“Afraid it’s time to go now, sir. It’s past closing.”

Toby blinks, peers, focuses—as if stirring from a dream. “I see. Yes. Of course.”

“Good luck finding a place at the hostel.”

Toby stands up, pushes the chair back. From underneath the table he retrieves his sports bag. “Thank you.”

Gabriela frowns at him. “Well, good luck, sir.”

Toby nods, extends his hand. “It’s Toby, actually. Toby Judd.”

She looks at him strangely for a couple of seconds then warily accepts his hand. “And you’re interested in Cannonbridge, right?”

“Yes. Very much so.”

“You know, I think I recognise you. I saw a... kind of lecture you gave.”

Toby looks dolefully into her eyes. “On YouTube?”

She nods.

“You thought it was funny?”

“No. Not really. I thought it was... well, unorthodox. And I’ve always thought it best to question orthodoxies.”

Toby is, he realises, blushing.

“Nice to meet you, Toby.”

“You too...?”

“Gabriela Vale.”

These pleasantries over at the end of a very long shift, she walks away, opens the door and indicates that Toby avail himself of it.

“Goodnight,” he says.

“Goodnight.”

An instant later, he is outside, in the cold of the night, alone again in the city. A man with a sandwich board jostles past. Something in the unearthly paleness of the stranger’s face, the savage scarlet tear where a mouth should be, causes Toby to gasp but then, looking closer, he sees that the effect has been brought about only by stage make-up, and he feels jittery and absurd. The actor, muttering, moves away. The legend on his board is clear: ‘Nightly ghost tours in the heart of haunted Edinburgh! Ask me for details.’ Toby does not take up the man on this offer, thinking, as he watches the fellow stomp away, that he has begun to feel something like a revenant himself, his life having taken on the phantasmagorical quality of an old story, peopled by spectres and watched over by the dead.

T
HE RUCKUS OF
the Festival has died down a little and the streets are rather emptier, though there are still plenty of performers and punters trudging or weaving their way home. As he leaves the café and steps towards the Royal Mile, Toby passes a knot of undergraduates, a street performer dressed as a wizard and two clowns, half in costume, half in their civvies, bickering noisily about an unpaid debt.

Mention of money causes Toby to take a detour, across the street at a branch of NatWest, between WHSmiths and an outlet of Subway, to avail himself of a cash point. It has been years since he has stayed at a youth hostel (vague, flickering memories of a holiday in the Lake District; a brief, disastrous affiliation with the Scouts) but he suspects they won’t accept anything but hard currency. He takes out his wallet, slides out his debit card and offers it up to the thin metal mouth of the machine. It swallows it as usual, whirs comfortingly and, on its small and dirty screen, demands that he enter his PIN. Toby hunches over the thing to obscure the view of any larcenous passers-by and taps in the four necessary numbers.

The machine whirs again and the asterisks which represent the digits disappear. All is as it should be. And yet, what happens next goes against the expected order of things entirely. It deviates from the script—no list of choices (balance, withdrawal, statement request) but instead four lines of words which, in grey-green type, read:

IT WAS UPON THE MORNING OF THE FIRST DAY OF HIS THIRTY-THIRD YEAR THAT THE HERO OF OUR ACCOUNT FIRST CAME TO UNDERSTAND THAT HIS LIFE TO DATE HAD BEEN CONCERNED ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY WITH HIS INADVERTENT FASHIONING AS A SACRIFICE.

Toby recognises it at once—there are few who can count themselves as even tolerably well-read who would not—as the very first line of Matthew Cannonbridge’s second novel,
Ezekiel Frye
.

He stares at the screen, blinks, rubs his eyes, convinced, even now, that this is some sort of hallucination. But no: the words are real, the sentence is truly before him. He stabs at the machine, pressing the CANCEL button, urging it to give up his card.

It is too late. The words vanish. The screen goes blank. His card, like Jonah, has been swallowed whole.

Toby swears, violently, under his breath. He steps backwards, away from the machine, feeling suddenly that the thing is mocking him. He feels an urge to strike the silent, metal device, to punish it for the rapidly unspooling nature of his life.

Before he can do so, however, he is interrupted. A soft, concerned voice from behind him: “Toby?”

Dr Judd looks back to see who it is that is speaking.

Gabriela. The girl from the café. “Is everything all right?”

“Yes,” he says. “Absolutely fine.” Then, years of instinctive courtesy melting away in the hopelessness of a Scottish morning: “Actually, no. Truth be told: the machine’s just swallowed my card.”

Gabriela’s expression is coolly sympathetic. “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Faulty, I suppose?” A thin man with a tuba hurries by, head down, not looking for trouble.

“No,” says Toby, too quickly. “Not exactly. I mean, I don’t think so. Not a regular fault anyway. Tell me. Do you know the opening line of
Ezekiel Frye
?”

The woman seems to look at him more closely. “You’re really not all right, are you? Not all right at all.”

Even before he says the words, Dr Judd knows he will sound crazy. But it seems too late now to do anything other than tell the truth, not when he has so little left to lose. He steps a little nearer to the waitress. “Gabriela,” he says, “I believe I’ve uncovered a conspiracy of immensely complicated design. I don’t know how it’s been done, I don’t know why, and I don’t know how far it goes. If you’ve watched that wretched film online then you’ll already know something of what I’m talking about. You’ve read Cannonbridge—has it never struck you how flimsy he seems, how lazy, how underdeveloped? Listen, I don’t understand what’s going on here. But I do believe that I have been noticed. They’ve taken things from me. To be frank, my bank card’s pretty much the least of them. And I think I’m now in real danger.”

Gabriela stands her ground and looks carefully at Toby Judd. To her credit she neither flees nor declares him a madman. Somewhere nearby, a police siren whoops and sighs.

“If you want to walk away,” Toby says, “I’ll understand entirely. In your position, most people would do exactly that. But I’m going to ask you a huge favour now. I realise that we don’t know each other. I understand that you don’t owe me anything. But I think, and I don’t know why, I think that you understand something of what I’m talking about. I think, in some way, you share my madness.” He stops, gasps for air.

She does not reply. He is ready to walk away and leave her, to try to find somewhere warm and dry to spend the next few hours, until she says: “Go on then.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Try me. Ask that favour.”

T
HEY SPEAK OF
many things as they walk together, Toby and Gabriela, of their lives and ambitions, their interests and aspirations, but it will not surprise you to learn that they speak most often of the dark, saturnine writer, the impossible author, the minotaur at the heart of the maze. Gabriela listens with thoughtful attention. Toby thanks her often. He tells her something of what has befallen him since the day that Caroline left and she seems to take most of it on trust, asking occasional questions, wanting clarification about some particular incident, querying from time to time the course of events. Toby does not tell her everything—not quite—but he is surprised both by the volume of improbable events which have already befallen him and by the sangfroid with which his companion accepts it. Almost without realising it, they pass out of the centre of the city, away from the Festival, its artists and revellers, into the sleepier regions beyond. The moon is high and bright and it illuminates the streets with clear, hard, unsentimental light. It would be bright enough to see by even without the intermittent lamps but, combined, these things contrive to make the shadows still darker and more deep.

“I live in Leith,” Gabriela explains as they walk. “Two flatmates. There’s a sofa in the lounge. You’ll be OK on that?”

“Of course. I really am so grateful, you know.”

The woman frowns. “Don’t mention it. You’d do the same. But tell me this...”

“Yes?”

“Why have you really come to Edinburgh?”

“To find the truth,” says Toby simply. “You see, I remembered that the Cannonbridge Archive—a vast collection of his papers—is in a private library just outside of town. J J’s book couldn’t have been written without it. Or so he said. In any case, I meant to see what’s there for myself.”

“You think that will help?”

“I think it’s a pretty good place to start.”

“But I’m guessing they won’t let just anybody in.”

“I’ll figure something out. My mind’s made up now.”

Gabriela frowns again. Toby glances at her and finds that he is charmed by the expression.

“You think I’m crazy?” he asks.

She sighs, more in surprise at her own actions, he thinks, than from exasperation at his. “I’m letting you stay the night, aren’t I?”

The old town has given them up now and they have come to Leith, a quiet, grimy, run-down sort of neighbourhood, largely free of tourists, though peaceful enough for all that, at least at this time in the morning. There is altogether less money here—a certain meanness, perhaps, but with it a kind of honest idiosyncrasy which Toby finds refreshing after the neat claustrophobia of Ashbury and the heartless bleakness of the coast.

Gabriela lives in a first-floor flat of a tall, dilapidated building halfway down a grey and washed-out street. There is a short flight of rickety metal steps to climb in order to reach the front door. There is a tiny patch of pallid grass, garlanded with bin bags. A scrawny fox takes to its heels as they approach.