Thunder Bay

by Douglas Skelton

  ‘She was my lass,’ she said, the simple statement and that lone tear almost breaking Rebecca’s heart. She blinked, told herself to concentrate on the job in hand. She heard the voice of her own father, still bearing the lilt of the islands, talking about police work but insisting it worked with journalism too.

  A good officer doesn’t need emotions, but a great one knows how to use them. Without emotion, we cannot empathise. If we can’t empathise, we cannot understand. And if we can’t understand, then why the hell are we doing the job?

  Maeve didn’t move as she spoke again. ‘She used to come in that front door like a hurricane, always full of energy, always full of . . .’

  She stopped and her face quivered again. Rebecca knew what she had been about to say.

  Always full of life.

  Maeve swallowed the word back and spoke again. ‘I would tell her to shut the door behind her, but she never did. Always left it wide open, rain or shine, as she dashed up the stairs, desperate to get her school uniform off and into her jeans and T-shirt, or whatever. Every time I hear that door opening now, I think it might be her.’ Her eyes glistened as she stared into the sunlit street. ‘But it’s not, of course. It’s never her. Never will be.’

  Rebecca laid her cup and saucer on the tray. Her pad was tucked beside her, against the arm of the roomy armchair, and she wanted to scribble Maeve’s words down but didn’t want to do anything that might draw the woman from her thoughts.

  Her editor had sent her to get Maeve to do something no one else had managed. Get her talking. Get us quotes, something none of the others have.

  He’d sent Rebecca because this was what she was good at, getting people to talk, getting people to trust her. It was a skill she’d inherited from her father. At least that’s what her mum said.

  He could always get people to open up. It was a gift.

  That gift had served Rebecca well during her three years in newspapers. People warmed to her. People spoke to her, told her things. People like Maeve, who had not spoken to a single journalist since her daughter Edie had died.

  ‘I wonder if he thinks about her?’ Maeve said, suddenly. ‘That man . . .’

  Greg Pullman. The London trader who slammed his hired car into Edie while he was high on booze and cocaine. Who left her broken and dying in the street while he roared away in his high-performance dick extender. Who was that day to be sentenced.

  ‘I wonder if he considers the life he took,’ said Maeve, her voice low, barely above a whisper. ‘I wonder if he cares at all.’ Finally, she looked at Rebecca. ‘What do you think he’ll get?’

  ‘A custodial sentence, I think. He’ll do time.’

  A tight little nod, satisfied. ‘Good. I’d hate to think that he’d get off with it just because he’s got money.’

  He’d been staying in his cottage on the Black Isle for the week and had met up with some mates for a weekend jolly in Inverness. He’d decided that he was fit to drive. He didn’t even remember hitting the teenager, or so he said.

  ‘That won’t influence the judge,’ said Rebecca. ‘He’ll go away, Maeve. I’m certain of it.’

  Another bob of the head, then Maeve’s eyes drifted back to the window and the sunlight and the river flowing across the street, as if seeking out the red brickwork of the castle, where the court sat.

  ‘Ralph’s down there now. He said he wanted to see it. Wants to see the man’s face when he hears that he’s going away.’ Her gaze swam back towards Rebecca. ‘You’re certain he’ll be jailed?’

  Rebecca nodded.

  Maeve’s eyes hardened. ‘He’ll get, what? A few years? His licence taken away? But then after those few years he’ll be out again and getting on with his life. He’ll be out again to work and play, have a family. To drink again, to take drugs again, probably even drive again, won’t he?’

  Rebecca didn’t answer. She couldn’t. She knew that everything Maeve had said was possible but there was no way she was going to say so because she sensed where this was leading and didn’t want to break the flow.

  ‘But my Edie can’t, can she? She can’t get on with her life because he took it away. She won’t ever work. She won’t ever have a family, won’t ever grow old. He took all that away from her. He took all that away from me and Ralph. He took it all.’

  Maeve placed her untouched cup of tea on the tray, then stood and walked to the window. It was a sudden movement, as if she simply had to move, compelled by the rage building inside her. She hadn’t spoken to anyone about her grief, as far as Rebecca knew. She’d kept it contained, bottled up. Rebecca recalled a snatched shot of her outside the court on the day Pullman was found guilty. The muscles were drawn, the mouth a tight line, her head held so erect Rebecca could see the tendons of her neck standing out like cables. She must have wept, but privately. Now that single tear had breached the dam and it was about to burst. Maeve leaned on the sill, her head slightly bowed, and Rebecca saw her shoulders shudder.

  ‘Maeve . . .’ Rebecca began to rise but the woman held up a hand, shook her head. She didn’t want Rebecca’s sympathy. She needed to get this out. Rebecca sat back again, feeling she should somehow offer comfort but grateful she didn’t have to.

  Her phone, nestling beside her pad, vibrated against her thigh, but she ignored it. Whoever it was would have to wait. The flow, it was all about the flow.

  ‘I hope he dies in prison,’ said Maeve, her voice strong and not watered down by the tears that now fell freely. ‘I hope some other prisoner kills him. I hope he feels just a portion of the pain Edie felt as she lay there in that gutter. I hope someone guts him, the way he’s gutted me and her father.’

  Rebecca sat back. She had her quote. She had the line that would make that week’s splash. She had what no other paper had.

  The reporter within her was delighted.

  The human being was saddened.

  * * *

  She convinced Maeve to agree to a photograph, which she took with her phone. Newspaper cutbacks. No need for staff photographers; if you were lucky a freelancer would do (though none were available that day). Rebecca was too young to have known how it was in days of yore—those days actually far from yore, being just a few years earlier—but she’d heard from old hands how things had been done. There was a time when a snapper would have been sent out with her, or at least arrangements made for one to visit. But the industry had changed, moved on, become more efficient in the bid to protect profits. She was wise enough to know that ‘efficient’ didn’t mean improved.

  The shot she took was typical tabloid: Maeve holding the framed photograph of Edie and looking heartbroken. It was cheesy and it was basic. A professional photographer might’ve been more creative, but Rebecca was a mere scribbler. She waited another fifteen minutes before she made her excuses. She thought Maeve was ashamed of her low-key outburst, of her display of near-public emotion, and was relieved to see her go.

  As Rebecca walked towards her car, the October sun welcome after the interview, she glanced back at the guest house and saw the woman at the window, still clasping the framed photograph of her daughter to her chest. Rebecca gave her a small wave but it wasn’t returned. Maeve Gallagher looked so alone, it was doubtful she even saw her. She was lost in the mists of grief and anger and memories of a stolen young life.

  Rebecca turned away and dug her phone from her coat pocket. The missed call was from Chaz Wymark. He was a photographer, young certainly but she had no doubt he would have come up with a far better shot of Maeve. She reached her car, settled on the small wall separating the roadway from the riverbank, and thumbed the call back. As it rang she raised her face to the sun. Make the most of it, she thought, winter isn’t far.

  ‘Rebecca.’ Chaz sounded pleased to hear from her. He always sounded pleased to hear from her. They’d never met face-to-face but had spoken often on the phone.

  ‘What’s up, Chaz?’

  ‘Oh, big doings over here, you better believe it.’

  Over here.
Chaz was speaking from Stoirm, an island off the west coast where he lived. He provided local snippets and photographs in return for a payment so small it made minimum wage look overly extravagant. Storm Island, they called it. Her father had been born there, but the only thing he ever said about it was that it was aptly named. But big doings. On Stoirm? She couldn’t believe it.

  ‘What’s going on, Chaz?’

  He told her. While he spoke, she knew she was on to something. This time, though, there was something new, a quickening of the pulse, the flutter in the gut as nerves prepared to take flight.

  This time it was about Stoirm.

  2

  This was the longest he had been apart from his wife since before they were married. The hill on which he stood had been Mary’s favourite spot on the island. You can see the world, she used to say. Her world, anyway. Below him lay Portnaseil, the only sound the grumble of the morning ferry as it prepared to set off across the Sound, which on this fine autumn day was a refreshing deep blue. Portnaseil was the largest settlement on Stoirm, its buildings nestling around the sheltered harbour, while the other villages clung to the eastern coastline. There was nothing to speak of on the western side, for that was where the weather so often lashed at the land and the cliffs. Not today, though. He lifted his eyes towards the dark bulk of the mainland across the water, where white splashes of villages reflected the sunshine. Behind him was the island, the houses and crofts dotted across the grasslands and heather until they gave way in the west to the corrugated hills that shouldered the sky on either side of the island’s mountain, Beinn nan sìthichean. That’s where the fairies live, Mary used to tell their children. They let you visit in daylight but not after dark. That’s their time, and anyone caught on the mountain after nightfall is theirs forever.

  The breeze whispered through the reeds and tall grass around him. Spirits, Mary would say, singing to us from the other side. He listened carefully but he couldn’t hear her voice among them. He longed to hear it again, even if only once. Maybe, someday, he would.

  Two days.

  That’s how long she’d been gone.

  Just two days.

  It felt like a lifetime.

  The church stood above Portnaseil, the old graves scattered around it like standing stones, the newer burial ground off to the side more ordered. For all her love of the old stories, Mary had been a believer, never missed services. The wind could be sharp enough to cut her in half, while the rains could attack as if it was personal, but every Sunday she would pull on her coat, grab her Bible and head out. She’d be back in the kirk soon enough, he thought. Only this time she wouldn’t come home and start preparing the roast. This time she wouldn’t stop for a chat with the ladies. This time she wouldn’t come up to this hill if the weather was fine, just to find a moment to herself and listen to the spirits singing in the grass. This time she’d stay in the kirkyard forever.

  He closed his eyes and concentrated again on the soft sigh of the breeze. Just one word, he prayed. Just my name. Just one more time.

  ‘Dad.’

  For a moment he thought it was Mary. Just a brief flash of something like hope. She always called him that in front of the children. Never Campbell, never darling, never anything but Dad. But that would mean his prayer had been answered and he’d long ago given up on any help from that quarter.

  He turned and saw his daughter Shona heading up the hillside. She’d always favoured her mother—the same smile, the same laugh, the same look when she was irritated with something he had done—but now she was in her late thirties she was Mary’s double. Even her own daughter was showing a strong resemblance. Shona had defied modern naming traditions and called her only child Mary. That pleased him, because it meant a little something of his Mary would live on.

  He said nothing to Shona. He knew why she had come to find him. He stared across the Sound, his jaw clenched.

  She reached his side and stood for a moment, following his gaze.

  ‘She loved it here,’ she said.

  ‘Aye,’ he said.

  There was another silence between them while around them the world played its own symphony. The soft melody of the breeze. The glissando of the waves as they caressed the yellow sand at the bottom of the hill. The bass rumble of the ferry engine as it pulled away. The percussive cry of a gull.

  Shona slid her hand into his and squeezed. He squeezed back. He loved her but he didn’t want to hear what was coming next. He’d seen it in her eyes as she’d climbed the hill. He’d felt it in the touch of her hand. He already knew.

  She said it anyway, her words so subdued that they were almost swept away by the wind and the waves and the cough of the ferry.

  ‘He’s coming back,’ she said.

  3

  Barry Lennox had been editor of the Highland Chronicle for a year. He was a big man, probably muscled at one time but those had long since turned to fat, and he kept his hair in a mullet. He dressed in jeans and denim jackets and he thought he looked like Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon. He didn’t. He’d been in newspapers for more than twenty years—first with the dailies, then a time with a Sunday tabloid—and Rebecca thought he’d come to the Highland Chronicle to stay out of the rain, probably in the belief that working in weekly newspapers would be easy. He’d barely deposited his widening backside in the editor’s chair when he was landed with overseeing two other weeklies in the north of Scotland, the owners in London deciding that one editor was enough for all titles on the frontier of their empire. Lennox thought he could manage, because he still believed life in the weeklies was a holiday camp compared to the cut and thrust of national journalism.

  He now knew that wasn’t the case.

  He looked tired and harassed and, Rebecca noted, extremely pissed off. That seemed to be his fall-back position these days. To his credit, he didn’t take his frustrations out on his staff, or rather what was left of it, for the owners’ cutbacks did not stop at editors and photographers. Profit margins had to be defended and that meant staff had to go, even though they produced the product that created the profits. There didn’t seem to be any reduction in management, Rebecca had noticed; there was always somebody new appointed to come along and tell them all how to do their jobs.

  When the previous editor, a smart, tough and funny woman named Elspeth MacTaggart, had finally decided she’d had enough she fired off a stinging memo to the suits in the south outlining exactly where she thought they were going wrong and how much they were damaging not just the business but journalism as a whole. They ignored it and waved her goodbye. Lennox was her replacement.

  He looked up from his computer screen as Rebecca walked into his office. ‘How did you do?’

  In the car, Rebecca had scribbled the quotes on her pad before she forgot them. She read them back and saw the beginnings of a smile on his broad face.

  ‘Get it written up, three hundred words for page three but we’ll splash on the front. I’ll send you a box.’ He began to punch the keys again. It didn’t matter if a story called for more words or less—that was the way the designer had formed the page and that was it. Lennox would read her piece, though, and tweak it—knowing him, make it more sensational. He could also amend the page design if he had to, but that was a complicated business and, truth be told, an art he had not yet fully mastered. Only one person in the office had been adept at manoeuvring the intricacies of the page design system but he had been made redundant two months before. The new system, said management, who had never punched a key in anger, was so wonderful sub-editors were no longer needed. So the suits started to call them ‘content managers’ and that made them feel a whole lot better. Rebecca could write neat, clean copy but she had news for them—subs were needed, no matter what they called them. Barry had two content managers but one was on holiday and the other spent much of her time on Mondays and Tuesdays dealing with the various sport pages, meaning the bulk of the news fell to Barry. Hence his current mood.

  ‘You get a pic?’ asked Le
nnox.

  Rebecca held up her phone. ‘Not a great one. A snapper would’ve done better.’

  He shrugged that away, stared at his monitor. ‘As long as it’s in focus and we can see the woman’s face, it’ll be fine. Bung it in the system and I’ll slap it on the page.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said, fighting down a sigh. She’d only been in the job for three years but even she could see standards were slipping. ‘There’s something else, Barry.’

  His eyes flicked a question over the top of his monitor, but he kept banging the keys.

  ‘I spoke to Chaz on the way back,’ said Rebecca.

  ‘Chaz who?’ He still wasn’t looking at her.

  ‘Wymark, the freelance over on the island.’

  ‘What island?’

  Rebecca had never visited Stoirm but she called it simply ‘the island’ like a native. Her father had only ever called it that, even though he rarely mentioned his childhood home.

  ‘Stoirm,’ she said.

  ‘Right, okay,’ he said, remembering. ‘The freelance.’

  Which is what she’d said. ‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘he’s come up with a belter of a story.’

  Lennox stopped typing, gave her his full attention. ‘Okay.’

  ‘A woman called Mary Drummond died a couple of days ago, massive heart attack. Her son was Roddie Drummond and fifteen years ago he was tried for the murder of his girlfriend. Acquitted on a Not Proven. He’s not been on the island since, but there’s a chance he’s coming back for the funeral.’

  ‘Okay, get on the phone, see what you can get. Get that Chaz boy to nose about . . .’

  ‘There’s still a lot of bitterness over the case, Chaz says. It’s a fairly big island but Portnaseil is a small community, everyone knows each other.’ She immediately regretted using the words ‘small community’ because that translated to tiny sales. She also knew it was unlikely that everyone knew each other, but she thought the idea might strengthen her pitch somehow. ‘But I think this is bigger—prodigal returns, locals resent it. And then there’s the murder mystery, too.’