A Small Death in the Great Glen

by A. D. Scott

  Mum and Granny and Grandad all having tea together cheered the little girl. Annie knew better. First her mother’s questions, then their dad picking them up from school, all the other mums at the gate, teachers quiet, and a special assembly tomorrow morning—it had to be about Jamie.

  As though sensing the mood of the town, dark came early that day. Joanne, pushing her bicycle, walked home from her in-laws’ with the girls. She was pleased the fear was over. An arrest coming so quickly, that’s a relief, she thought. Chiara’s worry that she, Peter, all foreigners, would be somehow blamed, Joanne dismissed. Watching her girls running on ahead, leaping from pool to pool of grub-white street light, trying not to stand on the lines between the paving stones, chanting out the childhood rhymes, just as she and her friends had done, she convinced herself that life would soon be back to normal. Except for Jamie’s family. Poor souls.

  Annie sat at the kitchen table, hands black with Brasso, polishing away at her brass imp. She had even ironed her Brownie uniform herself.

  “Mum, next year, when I fly up to the Guides, I get a much nicer uniform, blue, not yuch brown, and you go camping in the Guides.” She kept polishing, her tongue sticking out in effort.

  Joanne had said nothing to the children about Jamie, the arrest; she had not mentioned the subject to them. She had sometimes thought that they would be fine hearing of such things, but it just wasn’t done.

  “I’m going for another badge tonight.”

  “Oh really, which one?”

  “Storytelling. Brown Owl asks questions on a book you’ve read, then next, she gives you three choices an’ you tell a story on one of them for five minutes.”

  “So that’s why you can’t put down Kidnapped.” Joanne smiled at her daughter’s excitement. “Then you’ll have seven badges altogether.”

  “An’ if our six get two more badges tonight we beat the Bluebells.”

  The Bluebells, led by Sheila Murchison, Annie’s sworn enemy, were archrivals to the Snowdrops. Secretly, Joanne agreed with Annie. Sheila at nine was exactly like her mother: a snob, a gossip and a pillar of the community. Mrs. Murchison had somehow found out the date of Joanne and Bill’s wedding anniversary, put two and two together and shared this information with all who would listen.

  Wee Jean and Joanne enjoyed being on their own by the fire, Jean coloring in her Bunty comic, Joanne knitting, Annie out, and Bill not yet home.

  “That was Jimmie Shand and his band with a selection of jigs and reels. Next we have Kenneth Mackellar with some favorites from Rabbie Burns.” The sweet tenor floated from the wireless—“My love is like a red red rose”—when the doorbell made them jump.

  Joanne had no idea who the short round brown creature was, wispy gray hair escaping from a brown hat squashed down low on the forehead, round National Health glasses and, with that myopic glare of the shortsighted, squinting in the bright light from the open door.

  “I’m Tawny Owl.”

  Half-owl, half-busybody, Joanne thought, so she had to suppress an involuntary giggle when the woman introduced herself. “Oh, yes. I’m Joanne Ross. What’s wrong? Annie, are you hurt?” Annie didn’t answer. “Come on in—er, Tawny Owl.”

  “I have to talk to you, Mrs. Ross. It’s serious.”

  “Jean, up to bed with you.” She shooed the little girl out the room. “Can I get you a cup of tea?”

  The woman refused tea, wouldn’t sit down, her outrage, like a topsail in a storm, carrying her onward.

  “I’m not stopping long, Mrs. Ross. Brown Owl asked me to bring Annie home. The child has been telling lies, she was rude, she talked back, refused to listen to Brown Owl. We had to fail her in her storyteller’s badge. We can’t have that sort of behavior in the Brownies.”

  Annie, by the side of Tawny Owl, the woman gripping her thin arm, was cowering like a mouse snatched from a field of stubble. Instinctively Joanne sided with her daughter. Brown Owl, a good friend of Mrs. Murchison, was someone Joanne would nod to in church but had never wished to make a closer acquaintance. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

  The back door slammed. Bill walked into the middle of the confrontation, took one look at the ensemble and gave a dangerous grin. “What’s she done this time?”

  Annie tried to make a break for the safety of her mother.

  “She cheeked Brown Owl.” Tawny Owl had a sudden insight as to how ridiculous this sounded. “It’s serious.”

  “Cheeked Brown Owl, eh? What did you say?” To Bill, his eldest daughter was trouble. Had been even before she’d been born.

  “She told the most fantastic tales.”

  “She’s always havering, that one,” Bill informed her.

  The woman, put out by Bill’s attitude, by Joanne’s lack of contrition and most of all by Annie’s lack of apology, scolded him as though he was the nine-year-old.

  “It’s no a laughing matter. A child is dead.”

  “We are all well aware of the tragedy,” Joanne said coldly. “But what has that to do with this?”

  Bill, irritated, rebuked in his own house, sat in his chair by the fire and waved at the woman to explain. “All right, all right, what happened?” He was beginning to scare Joanne. She prayed their visitor would not smell the alcohol on his breath—the gossip would be all over town by tomorrow.

  “For the storytelling topic—for a badge—Annie chose ‘my biggest fright.’ She then proceeded to use the tragedy of that poor wee soul’s death to tell a ridiculous tale of a hoodie crow taking the boy off into the sky, she said, then dropping him in the canal. Brown Owl had to give her a good telling-off, pointing out how ridiculous, not to say distasteful, her story was. The child wouldn’t be told—she shouted at Brown Owl and refused to stand in the corner.”

  “She said it was a big fib,” shouted Annie. “It isn’t, and she said I was telling lies.” She wailed: “But it’s true. A hoodie crow did get him.”

  Wee Jean, eavesdropping at the top of the stairs, clutched the banisters, shivered in fear and sympathy.

  “Don’t shout.” Bill glared in warning. “Of course you were lying. You’re always making things up.”

  “Bill, can I have a word?” Joanne whispered.

  “It’s true,” Annie persisted. “I did see a hoodie crow. He wrapped Jamie up in his wings.”

  “Enough o’ your lies.”

  Joanne tried to shoo the woman out the door. “Thank you, Tawny Owl. Leave it to us. We’ll speak to her.”

  “That child and her lies. She has to learn. She has to apologize or else she’ll be asked to leave. And then she’ll never be allowed to fly up to the Guides.”

  Annie let out a howl at that. Then her father grabbed her by her wrist, dragging her toward the stairs.

  Joanne pushed the startled Tawny Owl out the front door, slamming it behind her.

  “Wait. Bill. Please. Listen.”

  “You always stick up for her. No wonder she gets in trouble.” He was halfway up the stairs, dragging Annie, who was desperately clinging onto the banisters.

  “Let go.” He smacked her hand free. “It’s time you learned a lesson.”

  “Mum, Mum!” The child reached out for her mother. Wee Jean shrank into a corner of the landing, sobbing. Joanne stood helpless at the bottom of the stairs, unable to intervene, her own pain still fresh.

  “It’s true, Mum! I didn’t lie. I saw it.” Annie wouldn’t give in. “Mum, I’m telling the truth. You promised. … Mum!” She wailed the accusation.

  The sound of leather on bare flesh, once, twice, not stopping, cut through Joanne. Still she stood still for too long, an eternity, half a minute, paralyzed.

  “Enough. Stop it.” She was up the stairs and into the bedroom, grabbing the army belt in midstrike.

  Bill had done enough to satisfy his anger. He threw the belt to the floor and yelled at Joanne, right in her face, “See what you’ve done! See what happens when you go traipsing off to your precious job! You can’t look after your own bairns properly.” With a
growl of “I’m sick o’ the lot o’ you” he pushed past her. The two girls and their mother stopped breathing for a long second. The back door slammed.

  Joanne picked up Jean and put her into her bed, surrounding her with her rag dolls, trying to soothe her sobs. She then crept into Annie’s room, where the child gave an occasional heaving sob and hiccup, tears all cried out. The girl lay on her tummy, a pillow over her head, too sore to turn over. The injustice and betrayal burned deep and would take a long time to dim, if they ever did. Her mother had lied. Her mother hadn’t protected her.

  When Joanne, her own tears dripping onto the bedclothes, tried to stroke her daughter’s shoulder, an arm lashed out, a leg kicked her away.

  “I told the truth.” The child could barely get the words out. “You promised. You said I’d no get into trouble if I told the truth.” She sniffed deeply, wiped her nose on the pillow slip. “I hate him,” she said, and turning to her mother, “An’ I hate you too.”

  The weight of Abraham settled on Joanne; she had sacrificed her child to protect herself.

  SEVEN

  Rob was furious.

  “The Aberdeen paper has stolen my scoop. All I’ll get published is a few lines stating that Karl unpronounceable has been arrested. Six days after the event. Their wee worm of a reporter has someone inside the procurator’s office feeding him information.”

  “What do you expect? They’re a daily and this is big news.” Don didn’t look up; he was stabbing away at Rob’s prose with a stub of pencil. “Maybe the troll at the typewriter filled him in on more than the essentials.”

  Rob smirked at Don’s description of the legal secretary.

  “I recall there was talk of you and the lady in question once walking out together.”

  Don snapped. “Who told you that? That was twenty years ago.”

  “Oh, so there was something?”

  “Never you mind, and never believe all you hear. Especially not in this office. If you want to find out the leak, start with a certain inspector who has no time for foreigners, nor smart-alec boys wi’ a well-connected father.”

  Grabbing his corrected proof sheets, Don made for the door.

  “Don’t forget. They are a daily—they’re all about headlines. We’re a weekly, we do more judicious, considered pieces.”

  “I’m not sure I know how to do deep articles; you always cut them to shreds.”

  Before they could continue, Joanne walked in. Don looked at the clock. “Not like you to be late.” Then he peered at her drawn face. “You’re right peely-wally, are you no well?”

  “I’m perfectly fine, thank you.”

  He made for the door but not before Joanne heard him mutter something ending in “. . . women’s troubles.”

  Rob took one look and he too made for the door.

  “Gazette.” Joanne had been hoping for some peace in the empty office but the phone had not stopped ringing. The only topic of inquiries was the Polish man. Some wanted more information, some wanted to give information, some knew it had to be him because he was a stranger, others said it was because he was a foreigner, and others still said they had seen a strange man hanging about—not up the canal, just a strange man hanging around the town. Joanne told everyone to call the police station.

  Strange men—ha, plenty of them around, was her conclusion as she hung up on one particularly verbose caller.

  Ten seconds’ peace and the phone rang again.

  “Gazette.”

  “You sound as fed up as me,” Chiara said.

  “Aye, well, things are not easy right now.”

  “Can you come over later? I really need to talk.”

  “I’d love to but it’s hard right now. And I can’t get out of the office this dinnertime.” She could but she wouldn’t. The thought of facing anyone, even her best friend, after last night, made her shake. “Then I have to take time off to meet the girls from school. Bill insists.” She couldn’t say that now that Karl had been arrested, the girls would again walk home alone—a sixth sense stopped her. But the fib felt uncomfortable. “Tonight is out.” She didn’t explain. The look Annie had given her as she said cheerio outside the school this morning would haunt her for a long long time. “Tomorrow’s out—press day. And now Bill insists I keep my promise to go out west with him on Friday.” Though how they would get through a whole three days together she could barely imagine. “I’m sorry, Chiara, I—”

  “Joanne, I’m really worried. So are Papa and Aunty Lita. Peter is absolutely shattered by the news. We’ve had phone calls, an anonymous letter, and this morning, as he walked to work, someone spat at Papa. The chip shop will open as usual but the café is closed for today at least.”

  “Why on earth … ?”

  “Because some people think we hid a child murderer, that’s why.” Maybe even you, Chiara thought. “But you’re busy, so I’ll catch you later.”

  Joanne was left with the phone in her hand, feeling even more wretched, when McAllister walked in.

  “Where is everyone?”

  “Out.”

  He too retreated; his office was safer than facing a woman in one of her moods, he thought. Or was there something more?

  Half an hour later, remembering past barbs about not informing McAllister of any and every piece of information that came her way, Joanne walked across the landing and knocked on the half-open door.

  “Chiara Corelli called,” she reported. “They are being bothered by anonymous phone calls. She says people think they hid the Polish fellow, Karl, the one who killed wee Jamie.”

  “Hold on.” He waved her to a seat with his cigarette, like a magician’s wand, making smoke circles in the air. “First of all, the man, Karl, has been arrested, but that doesn’t make him guilty. …”

  “But it stands to reason, he must have done it, the police wouldn’t arrest him otherwise.”

  “No, it doesn’t stand to any reason. Let’s see what evidence the procurator presents. Just because Karl is a stranger in the town, just because he is not Scottish—”

  “But he went missing the night the wee boy vanished.”

  “—just because there was the coincidence of them both going missing on the same night—”

  “Nobody in this town could possibly kill a wee boy.”

  That was Joanne’s firm and final reply.

  Aye, McAllister thought to himself, why bother with a trial? They would, the whole community, have him hanged, drawn and quartered out on the castle forecourt at dawn, if they could.

  “Joanne, we newspaper people, we’re supposed to be unbiased. Let’s wait and see, shall we? Innocent until proven guilty? Now, tell me what Chiara Corelli said.”

  Cycling home after work, Joanne was past the corner shops before she realized what she had seen. Or not seen. The chip shop was in darkness. A recent institution in a town where ration cards and war were a not very distant memory, it stood in forlorn darkness, large pieces of board crisscrossed with battens of two-by-two covering the wide window space. Usually, the shop was lit up like an oceangoing liner, the scenes in the windows a tableau of town life. Through the fogged-up glass could be seen customers sitting at a long bench, waiting patiently, chatting to each other or reading the paper. On the high counter stood large jars containing pickled onions and pickled eggs in dark brown vinegar, which always reminded Joanne of anatomical exhibits of some obscure animal brains. At this time in the evening there were usually at least half a dozen people sitting at the small group of tables with salt, vinegar and sauce in large bottles on red-and-white check oilcloth. Fish suppers were posh, served on plates, with a knife and a fork; tea came in a cup with saucer and orange cordial, bright as a traffic light, came in a glass.

  Single men still in their working clothes, families out for a treat, courting couples, eating before making for the La Scala to see the latest Hitchcock film or Oklahoma! that seemed to have been running for forever—soon to exchange long passionate fish-and-vinegar-flavored kisses—ate at the tabl
es. Young men in small groups, about to take off for the billiard rooms, hanging around the wondrous purple-lit jukebox, searching for Bill Hailey or Frankie Lyman—never Perry Como—also congregated in the comfortable, humid chip shop. But not tonight.

  She wheeled her bike to the door where, attached with a single drawing pin, drooped a hand-lettered envelope saying CLOSED. She remembered the phone call and was appalled. Too wrapped up in the stifling, walking-on-eggshells truce that was her own home life, she hadn’t been to see Chiara. She hadn’t even called back. And now it was too late for a visit; she had to collect the girls from their grandparents’. This was the one time she wished they were wealthy enough to have a telephone at home. She spoke a promise to the stars. Tomorrow I’ll call first thing. Tomorrow.

  The phone call to Chiara did not go well. Joanne offered to meet for coffee.

  “Joanne, the café is shut. And now the chip shop has to shut too; someone chucked a brick through the window. Peter has had a couple of nasty phone calls, clients cancel meetings, one contract has been postponed, and people he’s known for years cut him dead in the street.” Chiara’s voice faded in and out as though there was something wrong with the line. “So perhaps it’s better if we wait and you come over when all this has died down.”

  There was little Joanne could think of to say.

  “Chiara, you’re my friend,” she started, “none of this matters to me and I’m sorry I haven’t called in but …”

  “We’ll talk when you come back from the west coast. Maybe things will have calmed down by then.” Her voice went very faint. “…’Bye, Joanne.”

  Rob was sitting across the table trying not to notice but taking in the gist of the conversation from the way Joanne hunched her shoulders, adding ten years to her age.

  “Chiara?” he asked after she had hung up.

  Joanne nodded.

  “Aye, I saw the chip-shop window.” He was never one to pretend. “It will get worse, I think. This is such a terrible crime. The waiting, the trial, and Peter Kowalski charged with being an accessory, all this will be very hard on the Corelli family. And every other foreigner in town.”