Free The Fanatic by James Robertson

I must pray alane.’
    Weir nodded. ‘Very well. But this will not last. The Lord will find you work, James, and you will receive assurance. Believe me, it will happen.’

Edinburgh, April 1997
    Jackie Halkit left a message on Hugh Hardie’s answer-machine: ‘Thought I might go on your tour tonight. Maybe see you there?’ He didn’t return the call, but she decided to go anyway. It didn’t matter about paying three or four pounds or whatever the fee was. She was more interested in seeing Carlin playing the ghost. Since the meeting at Dawson’s it was as if he had set up camp in her mind.
    It was still early spring, and cold at night. Only seven other people turned up: three Japanese visitors – two men and a woman – and a slightly drunk office party – three women and a man. The man kept going ‘Whooooh!’ and running his fingers over his companions’ necks. It was amazing to Jackie that they seemed to get almost as much of a kick out of this as he did. When the guide started to talk the man settled down, and tried instead to impress the women with the seriousness with which he paid attention. ‘That’s very interesting. God, I never knew that, did you know that?’ he would say periodically, and chuckle knowingly at the guide’s jokes. The Japanese said nothing, but smiled politely when the others laughed.
    Jackie had to admit, the tour was quite well done. The script was informative and not too patronising, though it spared little in the way of gore and the macabre. The guide was dressed in black, and introduced himself, removing a hood with rough-cut eyeholes, as a former public executioner who had made it his life’s work to gather all the sins of the city together. He started with a dramatic gob on the heart-shaped setts in Parliament Square which marked the site of the entrance to the old Tolbooth: it was an act, he explained, originally performed by prisoners when they were released from the jail, but since these unfortunates were all long dead he felt an obligation, as the man who had despatched so many of their fellows on the scaffold, to uphold the traditionon their behalf. ‘Oh,’ said the office party man, ‘I thought you were a Hibs fan.’ The guide shook his head. ‘I make it a rule never to discuss football, there’s been too much blood in these streets already,’ he said. The office man was delighted to get such a lad-conscious response. The guide led his party up the High Street to the Lawnmarket, telling stories all the way, then, via the surviving upper section of the West Bow, down some steps onto Victoria Street, towards the site of his former work in the Grassmarket, thus retracing the old route of those condemned to die.
    At the top of Anderson’s Close he paused, raising his arm ominously.
    ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I must warn you before we enter the next stage of our journey, that you are about to learn of one of the wickedest and foulest personages who ever stalked the streets of Auld Reikie. And I must warn you too, that some say he still roams the wynds and closes hereabouts. I refer to the so-called Wizard of the West Bow, the notorious Major Thomas Weir.’
    He brought the party down into the narrow close, and invited them to gather in around him. There wasn’t much room. The man from the office party took the opportunity to put his arms around the shoulders of two of his colleagues. Jackie moved away from them down the slope, just behind the guide.
    ‘In the late 1600s,’ the guide said, ‘this part of Edinburgh was packed with dwellings. Some of the buildings here were the skyscrapers of their day, rising ten, eleven or even more storeys. Sanitation was at a minimum and disease was rife. Beware! If you hear the cry Gardy-loo! , it means somebody is about to throw the contents of a chamberpot or bucket out of a window. Mind where you step – this close was once called the Stinking Close and it still has a certain je ne sais quoi about it. None of you are afraid of