A Small Death in the Great Glen

by A. D. Scott

  This Saturday morning it was the usual bedlam. The front rows below the screen was a no-go area; a seething tangle of wrestling boys lit by the ghostly flickering of the black-and-white film on a worthy topic, or a topic of interest to adults and girls, they ignored, waiting for the action to resume. At a distance they seemed indistinguishable from a freshly landed catch of giant squid.

  The noise, like the keening of a storm at sea, made it difficult to hear the dialogue. The entrance of a well-known character, particularly a baddie, made the noise swell to hurricane force. Banging the seats up and down in time to the cowboys chasing the Indians, screaming out to a character to “mind yer back” or “kill him dead” or yelling “eeugh” when the hero smiled at the heroine, all swelled the racket loud enough to be heard across the river.

  Running, scampering, scuttling like rats in a pack, up and down the aisles, dodging the outstretched arms of the usherettes, the boys would make a break for the toilets in small groups, off to sneak a fag bought in packets of five or to open the safety doors to let in their chums who didn’t have the sixpence to get in. But first they had to evade the clutches of the manager as he patrolled the aisles. An ex–military policeman, he was nicknamed Ping after the Elastic Man, but he was Elastic Man with a moustache and a terrifying sergeant-major bellow, which he used at close range to yell right into the eardrum of any boy whom he managed to snare. His ability to reach out and trap a boy by an arm, an ear or the elastic of their shorts was legendary. In the town, he was known as a nice man. He gave a generous discount to members of the British Legion, showed popular, not-quite-first-release films, with good old-fashioned British war films a specialty. Parents liked him too. The sixpence it cost to be rid of their children, particularly on dreich winter Saturdays, was money well spent.

  The girls, they were altogether another story. The older ones, around twelve or thirteen, Annie watched with envy. She memorized the moves; the flick of the hair, the smoothing down of the starched-petticoat-full skirts, the sashay up or down the aisles guessing, no, knowing, that when she reached that age, she would never quite make it into a clique. At nine she just knew she had that hidden mark, that unquantifiable air about her that made her not quite right to join in, to belong. Arm in arm, two by two, went the girls sneaking a look to make sure of an audience, floating down the aisles, off to the toilets, never alone, as being best friends meant coordinating your bladder clock, and there they would meet up with other best-friend couples, to then stand in front of the big smoked brown mirrors, to practice blowing bubblegum. They had not yet reached an age where they were clever enough to talk about other girls. But their silence toward someone outside their group was just as eloquent.

  This Saturday morning seemed more subdued than usual. Grandad left Wee Jean in her sister’s care, told them he was going out to the foyer to rest his ears, promised to bring back some sweeties, and while he had the chance, he had a sly cigarette. Two puffs later, the heavy swing doors flew open, letting out a blast of noise and an anxious usherette. The doors opened out a second time. Annie emerged dragging a shaking Wee Jean, who was mewling like a sackful of kittens sensing the river.

  “The hoodie crow! It’ll get us. The hoodie crow. I saw it!”

  Annie was shaking her sister, hissing in her ear, “Don’t tell! Don’t say anything! Don’t!”

  Seeing her grandad, the little girl ran to him, clutched him around the legs, taking great big gulps of air between sobs and heartbreaking, keening wails.

  “There, there.” Grandad did his best. “There, there, ma wee pet.” Wee Jean was exhausted with fear. Her cries were now hiccoughing sobs. “Grandad, Grandad.”

  The usherette hovered helplessly flapping her hands. “It’s all right, dear, it’s just a fillum.”

  “Sorry ’bout that,” Grandad apologized.

  “Not at all. She’s a bit too young, that’s all.”

  Annie said nothing. But she was as white as Zorro was dark. That was the villain of the piece, that was who had set her sister off, Zorro.

  They walked out to a darkening sky and a darkening river.

  “We’ll get an ice cream. But don’t tell your granny. Ice cream is a Sunday treat.”

  “But can we still have ice cream tomorrow?” Jean managed to get out.

  “Of course. But mind … sssh!” He held a finger to his lips. “Our secret.”

  Grandad Ross, a grandchild’s hand in each of his, crossed the main road to the café.

  “What was that all about?” he muttered, furious at himself for leaving the child. His wife was right, his stories of hoodie crows and trows and witches and faeries were too frightening for wee ones. His favorite rhyme, “At the Back o’ Bennachie,” sung with great gusto, was about a mother who had lost her two sons.

  Oh, one was killed at Huntly Fair,

  And the ither was drowned in the Dee, oh.

  What was he thinking of, he asked himself. He knew Jean had not been herself, nor Annie, both of them had been subdued, nervy as spooked horses when they sensed the Indians surrounding the corral. They had been like this ever since their wee friend, the wee boy, Jamie wasn’t it, since he had drowned. And again, Jean was harping on about a blasted hoodie crow. All his fault.

  “Grandad, it was nothing.” Annie looked up at him. “Really. It was just Zorro, in his mask and all. It scared her.” She didn’t mention that it had scared the life out of her too. She too saw what her sister saw—the hoodie crow.

  And when they reached the other side of the road they saw that the café was closed, firmly shuttered; the usually bright happy corner of light and cheer and ice cream was as dark as the rest of the day.

  NINE

  Rob was running up the lane toward the Gazette office when he saw McAllister up ahead. He caught up with him but instead of going inside, McAllister took Rob by the elbow and led him to the entrance of a close that ran between and under the building in the three-story terrace built circa 1680. The smell of damp earth put Rob in mind of a grave. The door at the far end led to stairs going down into the basement and sub-basements where the machinery was housed. It baffled Rob how the machinery got down there; he half-believed Don’s story that the building had been constructed around the printing press. And the printers came with it, Rob had quipped, only to be hit on the head with a rolled-up Gazette.

  Back against the wall, legs crossed, McAllister produced a packet of Passing Clouds, offered one to Rob. Rob refused. McAllister struck a match on a patch of stonework, pink with enough phosphor to blow up the building. Generations of journalists and printers had sheltered in this exact spot, to smoke, to contemplate the weather and the state of the nation. This same refuge had probably been used to discuss the progress of the battle of Culloden or Waterloo, or to form the elaborate union rules, zealously enforced by the father of the chapel, that were a bane to journalists everywhere.

  “So. Tell me.” McAllister blew the smoke through his nostrils like the proverbial dragon. “Hoodie crows?”

  “Big, black and scary,” Rob shot back.

  McAllister made a fair impression of Robert Mitchum squinting down the length of the cigarette.

  “Actually,” Rob continued, “I was thinking on the same thing myself a wee while ago. Joanne said the girls were adamant; a hoodie crow picked up the boy and took him off. But now, for some reason, they won’t talk about it. Don thinks it’s all wee girls’ havers. But my mother is not so sure. And I got to thinking. …”

  “A conspiracy of crows,” McAllister muttered. “Is that the collective noun? I know it’s a parliament of rooks.” He threw the butt into the gutter. “What else have you heard?”

  “Best ask Joanne.”

  “Aye, probably best.” Though he wasn’t certain that it was. Joanne had been uncharacteristically unpredictable lately. The usual cacophony of bells struck nine. “We’ve thirty seconds to get to the Monday meeting on time.”

  “Race you up the stairs.”

  Rob was off before he could s
ee the expression on McAllister’s face.

  Me? Race? he thought. Me—the Grand Panjandrum of the Highland Gazette? And a two-pack-a-day man?

  “Let’s get started.” Don was in the chair at the head of the table. Rob was perched on the edge of the table. Joanne was slumped on a stool, elbows on the table. McAllister was leaning back, the chair balanced on two legs and at that delicate angle where a degree or two more and he and the chair would go tumbling.

  “McAllister?”

  “I’ve nothing that’s fit to print—yet.”

  Don rolled his eyes. “Well, whatever you write, can you make it more relevant? No more xenophobia stories. Most of our readers had to look that one up in the dictionary—if they could be bothered, that is. As for your lecture on Suez—putting the prime minister in his place, your diatribe on Hungary, your campaign on Scottish independence and I don’t know what else besides, I’ve told you, we’re a local paper, we report on local news. We don’t investigate, we don’t write about stuff that’s none of our concern—”

  “So tell me, where do you go for a fish supper now that the local vigilantes have targeted the Corelli business? All the way across town to Eastgate?” He didn’t get het up, he didn’t raise his voice, but the passion swept the room like a sirocco from the Sahara. “Isn’t this how it started on the Continent? Isn’t this what we fought against?”

  “Aye, all right, all right, you’ve got me.” Don held his hands up in surrender. “But please, no words of more than two syllables. And no being a cleverclogs wi’ your quotes in Latin.”

  “I did Latin,” Rob volunteered.

  “So did I,” Joanne added.

  “Aye, but can you box the compass or calculate the odds for the three thirty at Ayr? Or do anything useful with all your learning? No. So, what next?”

  “Follow up on the Polish gentleman in gaol?”

  “Enough of that for now.” Rob looked disappointed. “Leave it with me, though, I’ll fish around,” Don promised. “I’ve heard that the detective from down south has arrived. Maybe your contact in the polis”—at the word contact he wiggled his eyebrows—“maybe she can tell you more. For now, get the sports done and check if there’s anything other than drunk and disorderly at the sheriff’s court. Joanne?”

  “The usual. There is one thing, though … but it’s not news.”

  “Let me be the judge o’ that,” McAllister interjected.

  “Well, when Bill and I were out west, we came across the new scheme that Mr. Findlay Grieg has going. It’s a great big hunting and shooting and fishing affair with at least twenty rooms. Mr. Grieg calls it a lodge. Bill says it would cost a mint to build.”

  McAllister whistled. “That is news. Has anyone seen the planning application?”

  “I was going to check at the county council.” Joanne was slightly hesitant, assuming that one of the others, the professionals, would take over the story, if it became a story.

  “Good thinking. You do that. Get a copy of the planning application. I’d be very interested in whose name the application was made. Don here would certainly have noticed if it was in Mr. Grieg’s name.”

  Joanne sat up straighter than she had done for a while.

  “Another thing, Joanne: hoodie crows?”

  Don groaned. “You’re off with the faeries again. Hoodie crows! I’ll leave you to it. Some of us have real work to do.” He waved a pile of copy at them and left.

  “He thinks it’s all wee girls’ havers,” Joanne told McAllister.

  “I love the story of Annie ringing the doorbells.” Rob reached for his motorbike jacket. “I’m off to collect the football reports. See ya.”

  “Right, Mrs. Ross, from the beginning, doorbells, hoodie crows, the lot.”

  Joanne smiled. “Well, that afternoon he disappeared, my girls were coming home from school with Jamie, the boy that drowned, or was killed, well …”

  McAllister was back in his office, feet up, cigarette in hand. He thought over Joanne’s story. He didn’t agree with Don. There was something that bothered him about the girls’ story. He reached for the phone. Mr. Frank Clark the headmaster; if anyone would know anything, it would be him. He put the phone back in the cradle. Better to talk face-to-face. He’d walk over to the school.

  Hoodie crows; thoughts of them accompanied his walk down through the old part of town, past churches and shops and bars, past the back of the market and the auction rooms, left at another church, to the stone stairs, the treads of which were bow-shaped by centuries of people making their way down to the river.The vista to the north of the town was framed by the buildings, and the resemblance to a Victorian etching was made all the more authentic by the churchyard and moss-covered gravestones that lined the stairway to the right. Farmland covering the distant hills formed the backdrop of the picture. Friesian cows were mere specks in this landscape. McAllister could visualize them; heads down, obsessed with the rich green grass, occasionally looking up, they would ruminate to the spectacular views of the firth and the town and the distant haze of moorland and history.

  The pedestrian suspension bridge across the river not so much swayed as buckled, wind blasting into his right ear. Walking the short distance to the school he kept shaking his head, trying to dislodge the evil vacuum where the wind had managed to penetrate right through the eardrum.

  The school was the usual intimidating late-Victorian Gothic of the 1880s but seventy years later, mature wild cherry and sycamore trees softened the gaunt structure. Their roots had escaped up through the tarmacadam in many places; covered by fallen leaves and the propellers of sycamore seeds, they tripped the unwary. They scared Wee Jean; she thought of them as tree fingers, tunneling their way up through the earth, searching for the rapturous light, like the illustration of the Resurrection in her Sunday school picture book.

  During the day, the school echoed to the ebb and flow of five hundred children. The smell of generations of pupils, of damp wool, forgotten gym shoes, of stale milk and school dinners and carbolic soap, reminded McAllister of his own primary; the same high windows you could never see out of even when you stood on top of your desk, the same school hall, where the morning assembly, with obligatory prayers, reading of announcements and the occasional public belting of the worst offenders, took place. And the same feeling that no matter how clear your conscience, you might be picked out and punished for an offense you couldn’t remember committing. Or worse, you could be nominated for some mention or award or prize, the result of which was at the very least a Chinese burn from the other boys come playtime.

  He walked through the hall that doubled as the gym. Supervised by their teacher, following the instruction sheets, children would exercise to the music broadcast on the Home Service of the BBC. In thousands of schools, tens of thousands of children jumped as one to the fruity voice of the announcer, setting the kingdom all atremble, the calisthenics and marching done, out of time, to the tune of “The Grand Old Duke of York.” He was swamped by memories, and he shuddered.

  “Hello. Can I help you? Oh, Mr. McAllister, it’s yourself.”

  Frank Clark’s voice cut short the reverie. McAllister had met the headmaster through the committees and social functions that their respective positions condemned them to. They liked what they saw and what they had heard of each other.

  After the handshake and social niceties, McAllister began. “I wanted to talk about the boy.”

  “Jamie.”

  “Not for publication, just to try to understand.”

  Mr. Clark looked closely at his visitor. He was not about to give information for the gratuitous delight of the morbid. He’d already had the tabloids onto him.

  “Such a tragedy. I’ve never come across the like before.” Frank Clark started. “Of course the children are distressed, as we all are. The Ross girls in particular.”

  “Joanne Ross? Her children?”

  “Sorry, none of our business. But I thought she’d have said, you working together.”

&nbs
p; McAllister rubbed his face with both hands. “Of course, her children were the last to see the boy.” He shook his head, trying to settle the mind shift. He was uncomfortable with the way the conversation was heading. “Mrs. Ross told me about the interview with Inspector Tompson and the hoodie crow story.”

  “Annie lives in a fantasy most of the time. But that’s typical of children in her situation.”

  McAllister could not quite fathom what that meant but let it go.

  “Mrs. Ross has gumption,” Mr. Clark continued. “The job at the Gazette, I get the feeling that gives her the lifeline she needs.”

  McAllister had the feeling the conversation was at cross-purposes.

  “Do you think her children know what happened?” He brought the conversation back to the point of his visit.

  “No. But with children, they may not talk directly, but read their stories, look at their paintings, you soon see if there are problems, fears. In wartime, children draw planes dropping bombs, soldiers, guns, blood, all the usual catastrophes. Normally, in a town like this, they paint their family, nice houses with flowers, cats and dogs, blue skies with a big sun. Lucky them. But some show a darker element. Dark skies, rivers colored red, fire, and people standing apart, no hands joined like in most family portraits. I’m no psychologist but even I can see the effect that violence in a family can have on children. The girls walked home with Jamie, he disappears, and because they are already disturbed, they make up an explanation.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “That he, Jamie, was grabbed by a hoodie crow. It’s an explanation for the unexplainable. They can’t fathom that he disappeared into thin air, then was found in the canal, where he would never go of his own free will, so they rationalize, fantasize. That’s my explanation. But, who knows?” He paused. “Look, I can’t discuss my pupils’ family matters, but you know Joanne Ross, you know her situation …”