A Fresh Start

Adam Sinclair could have wept with joy.

He read the email for the fourth time that morning, the one that ‘Big Ernie’ had sent in response to his rather bold request.

‘Dear Adam, I am happy to inform you that the Board has approved your request for a change to your conditions of service in order to facilitate you working from home. This approval is contingent on your agreement to continue to attend the Board’s monthly meetings here in our Glasgow office and any other meetings and engagements as I require from time to time.
Ernest Savage, Chief Executive Officer, Ramsay and Barr Financial Services Ltd.’

Should he forward big Ernie’s email to Heather now, Adam had wondered, or just bide his time and hit her with the good news when he got home?

In the event, he chose the latter option, suitably augmented by a bouquet of red roses and a hearty meal in Casa Italia, and amply rewarded afterwards by a rare night of passion. Well … for passion these days, read five minutes of mild-to-moderate horizontal gymnastics.

Adam didn’t hang about waiting for a second invitation from Big Ernie.

Exactly two weeks later, he and Heather found themselves sitting in the lounge bar of the MV Caledonian Isles, as the giant ro-ro ferry made its way from the port of Ardrossan on the west coast of Ayrshire towards that of Brodick some twelve miles across the Firth of Clyde on Arran’s east, in the heart-warming knowledge that a huge Pickford’s removal lorry was presently parked in the downstairs vehicle deck stacked to the rafters with all their worldly possessions.

For Adam and Heather Sinclair, the island of Arran had always been their world, and now that world was their oyster.

Furthermore, with Mia and Jack presently absorbed in their academic studies at the universities of Stirling and St Andrews respectively, this was finally the opportunity they had craved to make the family’s three-generation holiday cottage their permanent island home. It was also the couple’s big opportunity to wind down and rekindle a once-exciting relationship which had begun to fizzle out of late, as Adam’s stress levels increased exponentially in tandem with a noticeable nosedive in Heather’s libido.

With both now having reached the ripe old age of 56, Adam could fully understand the reason for Heather’s galloping impatience and lack of interest in the fine sport of ‘houghmagandie’, whereas Heather simply could not even begin to comprehend why Adam had become such a tightly-wired basket-case these days.

However, Adam knew why. Oh, yes siree, he knew. The politest term he could come up with was ‘misappropriation of company funds’, the next best being ‘embezzlement’. But for a lad born-and-bred in the rough-and-tumble of Glasgow’s east-end, Adam knew exactly what he had now become.

A thief, a swindler and a fraudster.

Thankfully, Heather did not, but if she ever found out, Adam was certain that he wouldn’t see her again for dust. And that was precisely why he had manipulated his lords and masters into allowing him to work from home and move over to his precious island hideaway. The more distance he could put between himself and company headquarters, the better.

And, of course, between himself and Tanya.

Tanya McNair was the Chief Executive Officer’s Personal Assistant, or the ‘CEO’s PA’ as the acronym-dominated workforce put it. A superbly organised, highly efficient operator who had schemed her way up through the administrative ranks to the ‘top job’ in jig-time, the dreaded Tanya now gloried in the de facto role of kingmaker. If anyone wanted to see Big Ernie or even speak to him on the telephone, let alone influence his thinking in any way, they would have to get past Tanya first.

For most people, getting past Tanya had always been about as exasperating as solving the Herald crossword blindfolded. However, it had never proved to be a problem for Adam Sinclair. In short, Tanya was Adam’s willing little ‘belly-warmer’, as they say in these parts. Although not a particularly attractive woman per se, with her austere facial expression and infamously disapproving stare, she nevertheless had managed to retain an enviably slim, elegant and sexy figure for a lady in her early-fifties. And it was the figure that had attracted Adam, not the face.

Or to coin a phrase from his own east-end background, ‘You don’t look at the mantelpiece when you’re pokering the fire’.

Quite how Adam and Tanya managed to get away with it for two whole years neither of them knew, but they did, or at least they had done until Adam eventually decided to end the affair. And that was when Tanya had completely lost the plot and metamorphosed almost overnight from cool operator to raving lunatic, told Big Ernie to shove his job where the sun don’t shine and stormed out the door, vowing never again to return.

And now the only thing preventing Tanya from marching up the garden path and spilling the beans to Heather in a spurned post-menopausal rage was the thought of Adam doing likewise to Tony, her devoted husband of thirty-four years who also happened to be a millionaire property developer. However, Adam could never be sure that Tanya wouldn’t take leave of her senses and fly into another impetuous strop.

After all, she had done it with Big Ernie, and Big Ernie was God, whereas Adam was only Adam, perhaps not God’s first creation this time around but still inextricably in the big man’s shadow.

So, as far as Adam was concerned, the only thing for it was to get his backside out of town, hence his heart-rending request to Big Ernie, the one that had resulted in him getting the green light to work from home and putting twelve miles of choppy waters between himself and the company’s external auditors eventually stumbling upon the audacious scam which had enabled him to embezzle a total of £86,322.67 from the company’s accounts.

And twelve miles of even choppier waters between himself and the dangerously unpredictable Tanya.

As Adam and Heather sat sipping their drinks in the licensed bar of the giant ship, it suddenly dawned on him that he hadn’t felt so relaxed and happy for a very long time. Okay, the terrifying spectre of the auditors finally getting down to doing their jobs still haunted him, as did the indignity of the police investigation that would surely follow and result in the withdrawal of all his pension rights and near-certain incarceration, but at least he was now free from the relentless clutches of that half-mad bitch from hell.

‘Penny for your thoughts?’ Heather smiled.

‘None, really,’ Adam replied, not too convincingly. ‘I just can’t believe we’re free at last to set up home on Arran.’

‘Are you happy, Adam?’ she probed, reaching across to take his hand.

‘Yes, I am,’ he replied. ‘Very happy indeed. Are you?’

‘Yes, I think so. I just hope this all works out for us. It’s a big step, you know.’

‘It’s not, really. We’ve been spending more and more time in the house in Corrie over the past few years and I’m due to retire with a decent pension shortly. And you’ll pick up a good job on the island, no problem.’

‘If that’s what I want, Adam. But I might not. I might want to retire too.’

‘Fine, Heather. We can afford it. We’ve both worked for this all our lives. You just need to decide what you want.’

‘I want to be happy. And I want you to be happy too, Adam.’

‘I’m as happy as I’ve been in a long, long time, Heather. Let’s make this work. For both of us, okay?’

‘A fresh start, deal?’

‘Yes, a fresh start.’

The next few weeks fairly flew past as Adam and Heather began settling into their new life, he balancing his time between working from home on his PC and burning up the fairways of Corrie Golf Course with his next-door-neighbour, Eric, and she keeping her modest consultancy business ticking over from a distance whilst spending many a relaxed hour in the island’s umpteen coffee shops and eateries accompanied by Eric’s wife, Mairi.

One afternoon when Heather was off on another of her little social jaunts with Mairi, Adam had been deployed to do the weekly shopping.

When he came back out of Brodick’s Co-operative supermarket store, he noticed a white envelope wedged between his windscreen wiper and the screen itself. In the comforting knowledge that he was most unlikely to be the recipient of a parking ticket in the Co-op car park, he blanked it and began transferring his shopping into the rear seat of his silver Mercedes estate car, before heading back towards the store to return the trolley and reclaim his one-pound coin.

When Adam returned to his car, the driver’s door was wide open and the white envelope was now lying on the front seat. Strange, he thought, very strange indeed.

He walked around to the front of the car and did a ‘three-sixty’ sweep. Shoppers of all shapes and sizes were meandering around, heading in and out of the supermarket doors and blabbing away to each other contentedly, but nothing appeared to be untoward or even unusual for that matter.

He slid onto the driver’s seat, pulled on his seatbelt, fired up the engine and grabbed the envelope. There was nothing written on it, not a single word. He opened it slowly and removed a folded sheet of paper. It reeked of perfume. Expensive perfume at that and it smelled familiar, very familiar indeed.

Adam’s antennae shot up like a German Shepherd’s ears, and a jolt of electricity zipped through his spinal cord.

No, it can’t be? Please God, no.

He hurriedly unfolded the single sheet of paper and clocked the identity of the messenger immediately. He would have recognised Tanya’s handwriting from the summit of Kilimanjaro.

His heart skipped several beats. He closed his eyes, then opened them again. His pupils had widened in shock but immediately retracted again from the full-on assault of bright daylight.

Forcing himself to read the note felt like shoving both arms down a kitchen waste disposal unit, but he did.

‘Hello Adam.
Long time, no see. You’ve obviously been in hiding since you escaped overseas with Heather. Do give her my love, won’t you? I know your circumstances have changed considerably. So, how would you like to hear about mine? Well, not only did I tell Big Ernie to shove his job, but Tony then found out I was having an affair and left me a couple of months ago. He still doesn’t know who the lucky guy was, well not yet anyway. Suffice to say, I think it would be a good idea if we met for a chat. Lots to talk about, I’m sure you’ll agree. Meet me at Newton Shore in Lochranza tomorrow at 2.00pm. I hear it’s a lovely spot and very quiet. I’ll bring the coffees and you bring some nice cakes. Oh, and I almost forgot – we’ve put the Glasgow house up for sale and I’m moving over to Arran.
Love, Tanya.
PS And one thing I’ve always wondered. I realise that Big Ernie still has no idea about the eighty-six grand you stole from the company, but does Heather know yet?’

Adam’s brain froze solid and wet lips turned to sandpaper. His hands began to shake and the remainder of his body followed suit.

He threw the letter onto the passenger’s seat and grabbed the steering wheel to steady himself. His breathing raced as his heartbeat pounded in his ears like a pneumatic drill on old concrete.

This can’t be happening, he tried to convince himself, as the beads of sweat on his forehead graduated to discernible trickles that dribbled their salty taste into a mouth so wide-open in horror that it could have accommodated a whole Scotch Egg without touching the sides.

‘No!’ a croaky voice finally spluttered. ‘Please God, no!’

Adam let go of the steering wheel and grabbed the letter back up from the seat, his hands trembling with such ferocity that the paper began to tear. He tried to read it again, but all he could see was a kaleidoscope of jumbled-up words and letters.

As his sensory neurons flew into a blind panic, their motor counterparts somehow contrived to compel Adam to start driving. In less than three minutes he had reached the car park at Duchess Court on the outskirts of Brodick, but he had no recollection of how he had got there. He parked at the far corner, under the trees and away from any unwelcome company, and switched off the engine.

‘Calm, Adam,’ he whispered, closing his eyes and leaning his head back on the leather headrest, the way he had learned from his CBT counsellor in one of his meditation sessions a few months back.

‘Calm. Calm.’

It didn’t really work, but it didn’t do any harm either.

Some ten minutes later and still trembling, he set about moistening parched lips with several giant slugs of water from a bottle he had found in the glove compartment, one which had probably lived there since the day he purchased the car.

Eventually, Adam managed to start thinking. Thinking soon turned to planning, then to scheming and finally to plotting.

Adam and Heather had made a commitment to each other, a commitment to make a fresh start together. And there was no way he was going to allow that bitch-from-hell, Tanya, to screw it all up now.

Just after 1.30pm the following afternoon, he set out from his Corrie home on the short journey to Lochranza. Some two miles along, he stopped and parked his car next to the ‘Stepping Stones’, a well-known island feature which leads over the North Sannox Burn. There he waited, secure in the knowledge that he still had another 30 minutes available to make the remaining twenty-minute drive to the remote rendezvous of Tanya’s choosing. He then rehearsed the bones of his plot for the umpteenth time, fully aware that the meat could only be added once today’s meeting had taken place.

At 1.36pm precisely, a red Kia SUV drove past at leisurely pace, the driver being a strawberry-blonde middle-aged lady wearing sunglasses. Adam clocked her immediately. It was Tanya all right, no question about it. The high head-carriage and snooty demeanor were unmistakable. He quickly scribbled down her registration number, then started the car engine and began following her from a safe distance.

After having negotiated the Boguille, the island’s steepest and most treacherous hill road, Adam found himself entering the village of Lochranza, where now just a few yards in front, Tanya’s SUV indicated right then turned down the track past the local golf course.

When Adam did likewise, he saw her glancing in her rear-view mirror. He grinned a mischievous grin. At least the sight of her ex-lover appearing from seemingly nowhere might be enough to put her ever-so-slightly on edge.

When they reached the parking area at Newton Shore it was deserted, save for a battered old Ford Fiesta which had seen much better days. Tanya pulled her SUV over to the edge of the pebbled beach and Adam parked diagonally behind, so that he could observe the opening dynamics.

They proved to be very interesting. At first, nothing happened at all. Then after a good couple of minutes, the driver’s door of the SUV opened, after which a pair of long slender legs clad in brushed-denim jeans slid out and Tanya appeared. She turned and peered in Adam’s direction over the rim of her designer sunglasses, her hair dancing merrily in the gentle breeze, her knee-length overcoat flapping like sails on a seafaring yacht.

She still looked good, very good in fact, but she was no longer Adam’s classy bit-on-the-side or the ecstatically exciting femme fatale, a role in which she had reveled for the past couple of years. To Adam, Tanya had well-and-truly crossed the line. She was now the bitch-from-hell, the devil incarnate. And like all devils incarnate, she would have to be exorcised.

First, though, he had to play it cool.

‘Tanya,’ he announced with a big smile, as he alighted from his silver Merc. ‘Long time, no see. Imagine meeting you here. And on God’s own island, of all places.’

‘Yes, imagine,’ she smirked. ‘It must be fate.’

The two ex-lovers began walking tentatively towards each other, then exchanged an embrace so cold that it could have frozen molten lava.

‘So, to what do I owe this dubious pleasure?’ Adam teased.

‘Let’s walk,’ Tanya replied. ‘I hear the Arran air is very good for the soul.’

They then set off side-by-side but a good four feet apart, and at a pace so brisk that it simply screamed business over pleasure.

With the shallow waters of Loch Ranza on their left and a succession of quaint little houses on their right, the couple soon reached the end of the tarmac road. It gave way to a narrow waymarked path where a big sign heralded the route towards ‘Hutton’s Unconformity’, a haven for the hordes of rock-loving geologists who visit the famous old site all year round.

About half-a-mile along the path, Tanya eventually broke the deafening silence. Her tone was smugness personified, but laced with an unmistakable whiff of vitriol.

‘So, you’ve finally managed to escape the rat race and settle down in country bumpkin land with the lovely Heather, then? I’m so pleased for you, Adam.’

‘Now, now, Tanya. If I didn’t know you any better, I might think you were just a tad jealous. Your slip is showing.’

She stopped dead in her tracks and he followed suit. Her searing glare could have brought down the overhead aircraft which was winging its way from Mexico City to Hamburg.

‘Five thousand pounds,’ she snapped. ‘Or I go straight to Big Ernie and the police, and tell them about the missing eighty-six grand.’

‘That’s a lot of money,’ Adam retorted, feigning shock whilst secretly attempting to disguise his relief that five grand was definitely cheap at the price.

‘That’s five thousand, upfront,’ Tanya then smirked. ‘And a thousand every month.’

Suddenly, Adam’s display of bravado deserted him. He visibly flinched.

‘A thousand quid a month?’ he gasped. ‘Tanya, you know exactly how much Ramsay and Barr pay me, and there is no way I could afford anything like that. Five grand as a one-off payment … yes, I could probably gather that together if you give me time. But a grand a month … come on Tanya, I’d be better taking my chances with the big man … and even with the cops if it came to it.’

‘Well, let me help you put things in a clearer perspective,’ she smirked, relishing her former lover’s extreme discomfort. ‘You pay me a grand every month by direct debit into my private bank account or not only do I spill the beans to your employer and the police, but I tell the lovely Heather about our affair as well. And before you ask, yes, I’ve still got the evidence … and shitloads of it. In fact, I’ve cobbled together a full inventory … itemised phone bills, hotel invoices, text messages, your lovely birthday and Christmas cards … need I go on?’

Adam’s cool had by now totally deserted him. In its stead now was rage. He narrowed his eyes and glowered at her.

‘You bitch, Tanya,’ he rasped. ‘You absolute bitch. We agreed that our relationship would always remain private between us … “our own little secret” was what you used to say.’

‘Yes, I did, Adam. But that was before you deserted me. And before you walked out with eighty-six grand of the company’s money in your hip pocket. So, don’t tell me you can’t afford a grand a month. I was never particularly good at arithmetic, but by my reckoning a grand a month equates to twelve grand a year. Or to put it another way, a grand a month for seven years comes to eighty-four thousand. So, let’s agree on a seven-year deal and I’ll let you off with the other two grand, then we’ll call it quits. How does that sound?’

Adam’s eyes were now ablaze with fury.

‘You can f–k off, you bitch!’ he snapped, an invisible cloud of hot spittle spraying over Tanya’s face. ‘I won’t be giving you a penny.’

‘Your choice, my darling,’ she smiled, wiping her cheeks with the sleeve of her coat. ‘I’ll give you until Monday, because that’s when I need to check out of my little rented country abode and catch the ferry back to the mainland. For some reason, Big Ernie wants to speak to me again.’

Adam stood there, his feet welded to the woodland footpath in apoplexy.

Tanya continued.

‘So, here’s the deal, Adam. Same time, same place on Monday afternoon or I let the cat out of the bag. And believe me, it’s a big cat. In fact, it’s a bloody tiger.’

And at that, she turned on her heels and began retracing her steps back towards her car. Adam just watched her go, powerless to speak let alone follow her. The last time he had seen Tanya’s long slender legs floating away from him, he had been overcome with a primal urge to grab her and ravish her.

This time, though, he wanted to strangle her with his bare hands.

As his heartbeat hammered in his eardrums and his nostrils dilated in fury, a voice in his head seemed to be appealing for calm and giving him a clear message.

Not now Adam, it was saying, not now. These things take time. Time to think everything through. Time to plan. Time to cover your tracks. And time to execute.

By the Sunday evening, Adam had had all the time he needed for thinking, for planning and for covering his tracks. It was now time for execution.

It was showtime.

The layout was ideal. Tanya’s temporary island accommodation had been easy to locate for two reasons. Firstly, Adam had taken note of the make, model and registration number of her car. Secondly, she had been naïve enough to let slip that she was presently holed up in a self-catering farmhouse somewhere in the rural outback near the village of Corrie, or as she had earlier put it so threateningly, ‘close enough to your dream home to blow you a kiss’.

As it turned out, Adam soon clocked that the farmhouse in question sat a mere 200 metres off the main Sannox-to-Lochranza road, less than three miles from his own home in Corrie. Not only that, but the parking area was a good 30 metres short of the farmhouse itself and under the shelter of a copse of mature beech trees, in a location so private that a demented witches’ coven could have danced with the devil all night without fear of detection.

Once his drive-past had located Tanya’s red Kia SUV sitting innocently in the secluded parking area just below the farmhouse, he did a U-turn and headed back to the ‘Stepping Stones’ at the north end of Sannox, where he parked his own Mercedes in the gathering gloom of late evening.

He then slipped into a pair of overalls, pulled on a pair of rubber gloves, then removed his toolbox from the boot, conscious of the fact that many a year had elapsed since he last plied his former trade as a time-served motor mechanic with national vehicle retail chain, Arnold Clark, but still confident that his mechanical skills would not have deserted him.

Adam had timed everything perfectly.

A brisk five-minute walk up the gentle incline of the main road, assisted by the light from his mobile phone and blissfully unencumbered by any would-be inquisitive passing motorists, took him to the farm road-end, where he had a final look around and headed up the track, taking great care not to stumble and cause his tools to clatter against the metal casing.

When he reached Tanya’s SUV, he sat down on the damp grass to catch his breath and compose himself. He then crept up past the beech trees until the farmhouse came into view. The lights were on, but the curtains were closed. However, he could hear chatter from a television set in what was presumably the living room. Reassured that Tanya was suitably occupied, he then made his way back to her car.

Loosening the wheel-nuts was the easy part, at least three of them anyway, since the fourth was protected by a locking device. However, he then had to use his own judgement to keep them sufficiently tight to allow Tanya’s next-morning drive to take her as far as the top of the cavernous Boguille before the nuts would eventually part company with the wheels and all hell would break loose. The difficult part was crawling under the SUV to tamper with the brakes and with only the light from his mobile phone to guide him, but he managed without any real difficulty.

Adam then put his tools back in their box, checked carefully to ensure that he had left no traces of evidence behind and high-tailed it back towards his car. Once there, he then dumped the toolbox back in the boot, took off his overalls and gloves, and headed back to Corrie where he bought himself a well-earned pint in the local hotel bar and exchanged a few pleasantries with the locals.

Or put another way, with convenient witnesses to his alibi if the occasion should ever demand.

Adam’s nightcap did little to aid his sleep as he later found himself tossing and turning all night at the very thought of the enormity of the sequence of events he had just set in motion. A restless night was followed by a bleary-eyed morning and by the time the witching hour of 1.30pm had arrived, he was physically and emotionally exhausted. However, he had planned this thing as meticulously as a military operation, and come hell or high water, he was bloody-well going through with it.

Tanya had been plotting to destroy Adam’s fresh start before it even began, and now she had to pay the price. Quite simply, there was no other way out of this mess.

Exactly as planned, he parked his Mercedes at a secluded, concealed beauty spot beside the North Sannox burn, located at the foot of the infamous Boguille hill, and switched off the engine.

He didn’t have long to wait. Only three vehicles had passed – two small family cars and one rather antiquated campervan – before Tanya’s red SUV appeared in his rear-view mirror. Adam knew his own car was hidden from view, but ducked down anyway. Tanya zipped past and the game was afoot.

Now there could be no turning back.

He fired up the engine and pulled his Merc out of the small car park onto the main road, then began tackling the mile-long incline of the Boguille, keeping his car sufficiently close to observe the ensuing drama but far enough behind to avoid arousing Tanya’s suspicion.

He had no way of telling for sure when the wheel-nuts would eventually part company with her wheels, but if his judgement was still as sound as it used to be, she would have reached the top of the hill by then … the top of the hill that heralds a near-vertical descent into the village of Lochranza.

Fingers crossed, Adam, he muttered under his breath.

He watched as Tanya’s SUV disappeared over the summit and booted his Merc to make certain that he wouldn’t miss the drama which was sure to unfold on the other side. Once he had reached the apex of the Boguille and his eardrums had cracked like bursting balloons in recognition of the high altitude, Adam’s heart began to sink as the red Kia continued its descent seemingly unencumbered.

It was only when an articulated lorry began chugging its way uphill that the dynamics changed.

Suddenly, Tanya’s red SUV started wobbling erratically and a wheel flew off, almost immediately followed by another. As the two vehicles approached each other, the lorry driver flashed his headlights three times and blasted his horn, at which point the SUV glanced the offside of the lorry’s cab and careered off the road.

Adam screeched to a halt and watched in horrified anticipation as Tanya’s car plummeted down the precipitous slope of the adjacent field and began tumbling and rolling continuously until it hit the foot of the gulley.

A bright flash of light was followed a moment later by a thunderous roar and flames engulfed the SUV.

Adam’s heartbeat went nuclear as his brain tried to absorb what had just happened, or more accurately of what he had just made happen.

However, one thing was for sure. Tanya would no longer be ratting on him to Big Ernie. Or to Heather. Or to anyone ever again, for that matter. He was now free again to live the dream. Free again to make his fresh start.

His pragmatism kicked in immediately.

When the police arrived on the scene, which they surely would within a few minutes, he had to be somewhere else entirely. There was no way he could afford to take the chance of someone making the connection between Tanya and himself, however coincidental their proximity might appear. He had to get his backside out of there and fast, because the lorry driver would certainly be calling 999 right now.

He made to do a quick three-point turn, which due to the narrowness of the road transpired to be a five-pointer. However, before he shot off back in the direction of his Corrie home, he decided to check the time on his mobile, in the unlikely event that he might conceivably be called upon at some point in the future to act as a witness to the accident.

When he hit the start-up button, his WhatsApp icon illuminated and the name ‘Tanya’ appeared at the top of the screen. Adam’s eyes exploded from their sockets.

No way! Surely, she can’t have survived all that? Please God, no!

He began to read the message, hands trembling like a hopeless junkie gone cold turkey.

‘Hi Adam. Looking forward so much to seeing you in Lochranza. Hope you’ve remembered your cheque book. Oh, and by the way, I’ve got another little surprise for you. I texted the lovely Heather this morning and I’m picking her up then taking her to Arran Distillery where I’ll meet her for a wee chat over a cup of coffee once I’ve finished my business meeting with you. Who knows what we’ll need to talk about by then, but it should be fun. See you soon, Tanya.’

As the lorry driver tripped and stumbled his way down towards the raging inferno, screams rang out in the early afternoon air. However, the screams weren’t coming from the blazing wreckage of the SUV at the foot of the gulley.

They were coming from the driver of the silver Mercedes at the top of the hill.