Found - Alastair Macleod (novels for students .txt) 📗

      Karen kept her head down against the rain as it beat down. She was cycling home from Alness and her job at the video shop. Dull, dreary, depressing work, but all she could find for her year out before Uni.

      As she rounded the bend on the little highland road she suddenly saw the boot of a car, a blue BMW, sticking up at an odd angle half hanging over the ravine on the left of the road. Glass was spattered around, dark tyre marks burnt on the road. Most of the vehicle was pushed deep into the bushes at the top of the ravine.

      She stopped and dismounted. She crept closer, the car suddenly slipped downwards – she jumped, then to her horror it slid slowly down, gathering speed until she heard an enormous thump and then a ‘whump’ as an explosion burst upwards. Stunned she watched the bright orange flames burn with ferocity. She felt shock and horror.

      How long she stood there she did not know. She found herself looking around in the verge into the bushes. Perhaps the driver had crawled out.

Amongst the torn and mangled brambles and willows she found a black briefcase, a businessman’s case, quite fat looking, leather covered with brass handles.

      She picked it up, and still dazed, mounting her bike she cycled home carefully. She met no cars on the road – she seldom did. Her home was a small croft house set back from this minor road.

She cycled up the lane, putting her bike in the woodshed as usual. She left the briefcase there too.
She stumbled into the house. Mum and Dad were not home – they had gone to Auntie Jean’s – they wouldn’t be in till 8.00 p.m. She picked up the phone and dialled 999. She reported the accident;

“No”, she did not get the number. “Yes, blue BMW. “No”, she did not, could not, see anybody in it.

      An hour later her parents found her sitting at the kitchen table. She gabbled out the story about the car, the police – her mother could see she was in shock.
The police arrived at 10 o’clock. She was tired now. They quizzed her about the car, but she had little to add.

      That night, exhausted, she fell into a deep sleep only to wake with a dream of the car exploding.

The next day was Sunday. She got up late. There was never anything to do in this out of the way place anyway. Karen was desperate to get away. Her foster parents were OK but they smothered her somehow. Everything was boring here – except for the car crash. My God that was awesome!

      Then she remembered the briefcase – why had she taken it? Why not? She got into trouble before for taking stuff. Anyway, no-one’s asked for it. The driver probably won’t need it where he is. She felt bad in thinking it of him, but it was true.

      She got out of bed, got dressed and went out to the woodshed. There it was, tucked in behind a woodpile near the bike. Nice bag, worth a bit – what was in it?

It was heavy. Taking it on her knee she flicked open the catches – she gasped – neatly stacked piles of £20 notes filling the briefcase met her gaze. She shut it again and looked around.

      The woodshed door was out of sight of the house, but Karen was a past master at concealment. No-one was in the door frame – she opened it again, yes it was true. She closed it quickly and placed it further back.
The police might be looking for it. She’d wait.

Over a week went past. Then the paper reported that the car belonged to a drug dealer from Glasgow, but no foul play was suspected. What little remained of his body revealed a high drug content in the tissue. He’d overdosed then crashed and was burnt in the fire.

Karen realised that if anyone suspected or knew there was money they would assume it had burned in the fire – so no-one was looking for the money. Still she had better take no action for a while. She hadn't counted it, but it looked like thousands. She itched to spend it, but she knew she would come under suspicion if she suddenly started spending.
It had happened before – the time she nicked £15 from the children’s home – various shops in the village had told the houseparent she was spending freely - she was grounded for ages.

      No, she would have to think this out. She was used to going into a shell, cutting off. She’d learned that in care, not to give, in fear of losing something yet again.

She’d never known her father – her mother had died – “taken her own life,” the houseparent had said, and her elderly grandmother hadn’t been able to cope. When she died there was no-one left but the childrens' home. Then she’d been fostered, but she wasn’t open, ready to be loved. The bit of her that could have responded was deeply hidden – she protected it from hurt. Hiding the money was like that; it was easy to shut out its existence.

      She kept working at the video shop. Cycling home was difficult – each time she had to pass the tyre marks and the gash in the bushes and each time she thought of the explosion.

      Her foster parents found her morose, uncommunicative – well, more than usual, anyway. They put it down to the after effects of the crash.

      One day, while the video shop was quiet, a young policeman came in. He was looking for a video, “Gladiator” – she helped him, finding it on the shelves. She knew them inside out now. He said,

      “Aren’t you the girl from the crash? I interviewed you that night.”

      She genuinely couldn’t recognise his face.

      “It’s alright, you were in shock. I recognised that straight away – people often don’t remember things.”

      She asked innocently about drug dealers. He told her how it was getting harder for them these days. He explained how banks were alerted to look out for people depositing large cash sums and how banks made it harder for people to open new accounts without clear I/Ds. “No,” he wasn’t in the drug squad; he was on traffic, he said. He paid for his video and left.

      Karen realised that to get any serious benefit from this money was not going to be easy. Sure, she could spend a little here and there, but £200,000! Big chunks spent would show up.

      It was a month after the crash and she was in the video shop idly reading a woman’s magazine. “Trace your ancestors – full service, find out where you came from.” For Karen this struck a chord.

She desperately needed to find out about her father and her mother, she
didn’t know who she was. £200 it said. That shouldn’t arouse any suspicion. The address was an office in Inverness.

      That Saturday she told her mum she was going into Inverness to do a little shopping. She took the bus in from the road end. It took an hour as it stopped and started for the passengers. In Inverness she quickly found the office – one floor up. “Ancestor Search” it said on the glass door. Pushing in she found a youngish woman at a computer. The room was pleasant and smelt of beeswax. Books lined the shelves behind her.

The young woman introduced herself.

“I’m Fiona Matheson,” she said. “How can I help?”

Karen explained what she wanted. Miss Matheson’s response was businesslike.

“Tracing your mother’s family will probably be easy – your father – well, that will involve getting in touch with Social Work, but you have the right now to find out.”

Karen’s heart sank, Social Work, would she ever be shot of them – but the drive to find out was strong and overcame any negative feelings she had.

      Miss Matheson said she needed the £200 now because some of the searches cost money and there were expenses such as telephone and photo-copying. Karen handed over the notes. Miss Matheson made no comment at notes rather than a cheque and popped the money into a drawer.

 "How long does it take."

     “It varies”, said Miss Matheson. “Sometimes weeks, sometimes months. Ring me at the end of next week to check on progress.”

      Karen left and headed for a nearby coffee bar – the tension that had built up because of the money, because she was tackling something big in her life, had drained away gradually in Miss Matheson’s office – she had seemed so professional, didn’t ask nosy questions about her or her money. Sure, she needed her name, date of birth, what she knew of her mother and other details like that, but not questions loaded with emotion, just factual.
Karen felt a sense of power, something was happening and she had initiated it. She felt a little high.

      Miss Matheson was good. By the end of week one she’d mapped out her mother’s family tree; MacAskills, from Skye originally, with MacDonalds, and MacLeans marrying into crofters/fishermen and, like many highland families, they had drifted to the town - in this case Inverness. Her grandfather had been a joiner and her grandmother a cook. She hadn’t known that.

      Her father’s side had taken longer - all the faffing about with Social Work. Three weeks later Miss Matheson called her at the video shop and asked her to come in next Saturday. In her office Miss Matheson explained the trouble she’d had getting the information.

      “It appears your father was not Scottish.” She said tantalisingly. “He was Spanish. His name was Francisco Escudero Marquez. He was a merchant seaman on a small cargo ship that for a time called in regularly to Inverness.”

Karen sat quietly, stunned but excited.

“I’ve only got as far as identifying the shipping line he worked for – to go further will cost more.”

Karen nodded. Of course she would pay more,

“Another £200?”
    “Yes.” said Miss Matheson. Karen had anticipated this and had brought the money with her.

      Again Miss Matheson popped the notes into the desk drawer. She handed Karen copies of the information she had researched to date. It included a birth certificate.

“I’ll phone you at work when I find out more.”

      Karen was slotting videos away in the shop two weeks later when the phone rang. Miss Matheson had tracked down her father to an address in El Puerto de Santa Maria, a small port on the Costa De La Luz – he still worked for the same shipping company in Cadiz.

      In Miss Matheson’s office the following Saturday, Miss Matheson warned her not to get her hopes too high.

“He may not want to know you. He could be a drunk, a wife beater, you don’t know, so don’t be too starry eyed – I’ve seen this go wrong before” she said. She gave Karen the details.

There was no question. She was going to Spain to find this father of hers. Flights were so cheap now that it was within the bounds of financial possibility that she had saved enough, so when she told her foster parents she planned to go on holiday with a friend to Spain they saw it in a positive light - lots of young people did it - but just who was she going to go with? Then she had an idea.

      The next Saturday she visited Miss Matheson and put it to her. Would she come with her? Karen explained that she trusted her and valued her experience. She also explained