Stonemouth

Then, while I’m paranoid-fantasising about being picked up and thrown off the bridge by three guys, one of whom I somehow missed, the van’s engine roars and it comes tearing past me, transmission whining even louder. I wonder if — as I tumble towards the waves — I’ll have time to get the iPhone out, hit Facebook and change my status to ‘Dead’. The wee yellow van jerks to a stop and the passenger door is opened.

I look inside. Powell is in the driver’s seat now, massive mitts gripping the steering wheel. He’s smiling thinly at me. The bridge employee who was driving is in the back, sitting on the floor surrounded by road cones and holding onto the back of the empty passenger seat. He doesn’t look over-pleased.

‘Happy now?’ Powell asks.

‘Cheers,’ I tell both of them, and get in. Below, just appearing from under the deck of the bridge, a small brown tug is heading upstream, its blunt bows punching through the grey waves of the firth.

‘No really supposed to do three-point turns, Mr Imrie,’ the bridge worker in the back says, as Powell shuffles the van back and forth to point back the way it came. ‘One-way, kinda thing.’

Imrie just ignores him, seemingly taking some pleasure in gunning the engine, whirling the wheel and taking both ends of the van alarmingly close to the railings on either side of the combined cycle and pedestrian path. It’s actually a five-point turn, but that’s not the sort of thing you’d choose to point out to somebody like Powell Imrie.

‘You well, Stu?’ he asks as we speed back down the path.

‘Yeah, fine,’ I say. ‘You?’

‘Um, there’s sort of a limit, Mr Imrie,’ the guy in the back says as we start to overtake traffic on the far side of the bridge.

‘Don’t worry,’ Powell says smoothly to the guy in the back, turning his head a little, still accelerating. He flashes a smile at me. ‘Dandy,’ he says. ‘Just dandy.’ He looks at my jeans and jacket again. ‘Doing all right, are we?’

‘Not broke,’ I agree.

Powell is also dressed in jeans, though his are the more conventional blue. Topped off with a white tee and a padded tartan lumber shirt, predominantly red, with expensive-looking earbuds dangling on short leads from a breast pocket. He looks tanned, and fit and solid as ever, his massive shoulder almost touching mine across the van’s cab. He was probably the strongest boy in the school when he was still in third year the first time. Star of the rugby team.

We’re still gathering speed, the bars of the railings on my side blurring past less than half a metre away. Squinting through the mist, it looks like there’s a couple of people on bikes pedalling their way up the shallow slope of the bridge towards us, a hundred metres dead ahead.

‘Um,’ the guy behind us says, ‘think there’s folk on the cycle path, Mr Imrie.’

‘Haven’t got a siren on this thing, have you?’ Powell asks him.

‘Naw, Mr Imrie.’

‘Shame. Aw well.’

He starts to brake and we pass the cyclists at a sedate fifty or so, though — largely by flashing his headlights at them insistently — he still forces them to swerve over to the pedestrian side of the track. They stop, standing astride their bikes and staring at us as we race past. Imrie waves cheerily.

‘How’s Ellie?’

‘She’s fine. Take it you know about Callum.’

‘Yeah, of course. Not totally out of touch.’

Powell looks appropriately solemn for a moment, then grins. ‘Your mum and dad been keepin you up to date with all the local gossip, aye?’

‘Mostly.’

We’re sitting in Powell’s black Range Rover Sport in the viewing area near the bridge control centre. My more modest hired Ford Ka is a couple of bays away. For some reason when we arranged our arguably melodramatic meeting in the middle of the bridge, I’d thought he would park at the north end and walk over while I did the same from the south, but he must have driven past me and parked here. Obviously hasn’t watched the same old Cold War movies I have. The Rangie’s engine purrs, barely audible, wafting a little warm air into the gently lit interior, all soft leather and hard wood. The wipers sweep smoothly every few seconds, giving us an intermittently good view of the twin streams of red and white lights flowing across the bridge.

‘So, Stewie,’ Powell says, making a gesture a bit like he’s opening a book with his massive but manicured-looking hands. ‘What was it you wished to discuss?’

I hate the name Stewie even more than Stu. I hated it as a kid and these days all it makes me think of is Family Guy. I like Family Guy; I just don’t like being bracketed with a melon-headed, homicidal, über camp baby with inappropriate diction. And I only asked for a chat, just to make sure everything was cool, not to ‘discuss’ anything. But still. I look him in the eye. ‘Am I okay to come back, Pow?’

Powell smiles. He’s had his teeth fixed. Dazzling. Cee Lo Green has dimmer gnashers. I’d thought at this point he might look all innocent and uncomprehending, maybe even hurt, pretending there had never been any problem, but he doesn’t. Instead he looks thoughtful, nods.